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Articles to Read.
Higher Incomes, Higher Tax Rates
An article in the New York Times the other day was titled “The Rich Really Do Pay Lower Taxes Than You,” and one in Bloomberg was subtitled “The Wealthiest 400 Americans Have the Lowest Rates.”
It is not true.
Economist David Splinter has a new critique of the Saez and Zucman data behind the NYT and Bloomberg stories. He found that the authors made numerous flawed assumptions, which threw their estimates way off.
The NYT got its headline from the Saez-Zucman tax rate estimate for the top 400 taxpayers, who are a subset of the top 0.01 percent. Without the 400, the NYT and Bloomberg would not have their incendiary headlines. Auten and Splinter do not estimate the top 400, but the Saez-Zucman tax rate for that group is still far above Auten and Splinter’s estimate for the bottom group.
In conclusion, reporters and columnists should be much more skeptical of Piketty, Saez, and Zucman data. Economists make many assumptions when preparing estimates, and the trio always seem to choose the assumptions that inflate their figures for income and wealth inequality while underestimating top-end tax rates.
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To be a successful creator you don’t need millions. You don’t need millions of dollars or millions of customers, millions of clients or millions of fans. To make a living as a craftsperson, photographer, musician, designer, author, animator, app maker, entrepreneur, or inventor you need only thousands of true fans.
A true fan is defined as a fan that will buy anything you produce. These diehard fans will drive 200 miles to see you sing; they will buy the hardback and paperback and audible versions of your book; they will purchase your next figurine sight unseen; they will pay for the “best-of” DVD version of your free youtube channel; they will come to your chef’s table once a month. If you have roughly a thousand of true fans like this (also known as super fans), you can make a living — if you are content to make a living but not a fortune.
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Different Ways to be Rich in 2019
It’s estimated only 5% of people in the United States are millionaires. So if we’re using millionaire-status as a way to gauge wealth in this country, a lot of people are never going to get to the point where they’re considered “rich.”
But there are plenty of other ways to live a wealthy life that extend beyond how much money you have in the bank or your portfolio. And even those with a lot of money may not be considered rich when you look at other areas of their life.
Here are some ways to be rich in this day and age that go beyond money.
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Fake doctor saved thousands of infants and changed medical history
A new book, “The Strange Case of Dr. Couney: How a Mysterious European Showman Saved Thousands of American Babies,” by Dawn Raffel (Blue Rider Press), tells the story of Martin Couney, a self-appointed “doctor” — his credentials turned out to be nonexistent — who nonetheless saved thousands of infants, and introduced incubators to the modern world.
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Why We Need to Dream Bigger Than Bike Lanes
In the 1930s big auto dreamed up freeways and demanded massive car infrastructure. Micromobility needs its own Futurama—one where cars are marginalized.
Our current model is to beg for twigs. More often than not, bike infrastructure is created reactively. Typically in response to a collision or near collision with a car, an individual or advocacy group identifies a single route that needs better infrastructure. We gather community support and lobby local officials for the desired change, trying as hard as we can to ask for the cheapest, smallest changes so that our requests will be seen as realistic.
What’s the problem with this model?
It’s like imagining a bridge and asking for twigs—useless, unable to bear any meaningful weight, easily broken. And it’s treating bike infrastructure like a hopeless charity case.
But when roads, highways, and bridges are designed and built, they aren’t done one neighborhood at a time, one city-council approval at a time. We don’t build a few miles of track, or lay down some asphalt wherever there is “local support” and then leave 10-mile gaps in between. And yet this is exactly how we “plan” bike infrastructure.
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The latimes.com also show ads on their website and they boast about their 1.3 million daily readership, which can amount to a significant income, yet nothing compared to their print ads. In the days of print, whether I paid for the paper or not, the advertiser paid for it. Today, the advertisers see's exactly how many times their ads have been viewed, and pay accordingly. The rise of Ad blockers did not improve the situation.
At the end of the day, the price that you and I pay, whether it is for the print copy or digital, it is only a very small part of the revenue. The price paid for the printed copy was by no means sustaining the newspaper business. It was advertisers all along. And they paid the price for the privilege of having as many eyeballs the newspaper could expose their ads to.
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NBA exec: 'It's the dirty little secret that everybody knows about'
It is the afternoon of Feb. 26, during a three-games-in-four-nights stretch, and Miami Heat center Hassan Whiteside is on a roll. Tomorrow night, his Heat will host the Golden State Warriors, then fly to Houston to face the Rockets on Feb. 28. But now he's rattling off what time the Warriors game will end (10 p.m.), when they'll board their flight (11:30 or later), when they'll land in Houston (2 a.m.) and arrive at the hotel -- he figures it'll be 3 -- before playing the Rockets later that day. "And that's just what we've got tomorrow," he says.
Sleep matters, Whiteside says -- it matters a lot. It "could be the difference between you having a career game or playing terrible." But therein lies the conundrum of NBA life. For something so important, it's remarkably elusive. As Whiteside says: "It's just so hard to get the sleep that you need."
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- 1.5 Million Packages a Day: The Internet Brings Chaos to N.Y. Streets
- What Most Remote Companies Don’t Tell You About Remote Work
- My company sold for $100 million and I got Zilch. How can that be?
- Remembering Don Valentine
- Hitman hires hitman who hires hitman who hires hitman who tells police
My Update:
More working :)