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teamonkey @lemm.ee
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People Are Okay With Wind & Solar Installations In Their Neighborhoods, Studies Say
  • As I understand it, the efficiency of a wind turbine increases with blade size, so multiple smaller personal wind turbines are less efficient than fewer, larger turbines that serve a neighbourhood, as well as costing much more and using more overall resources.

  • Jacob Rees-Mogg says HS2 money should be used to scrap inheritance tax
  • It’s an entirely intentional deception. People get the fear that they’ll not be able to pass on their 3-bed semi-detached*, a dinner table set and the last dregs of a private pension to their kids, so they vote so that rich people don’t have to redistribute wealth.

    • Usual caveat for London 🙄
  • ‘Capitalism is dead. Now we have something much worse’: Yanis Varoufakis on extremism, Starmer, and the tyranny of big tech
  • Capitalism has a definition. He’s saying that the markers that define Capitalism (as opposed to Mercentilism, Feudalism, etc.) are no longer there.

    Specifically he’s saying that you can now no longer be on the top rung by privately owning the means of production, which is probably the biggest hallmark of Capitalism.

  • Nigel Farage fury as regulator finds 'no evidence' of bank account closures due to political views
  • The costs are high. Finance regulations force the banks to investigate high-profile clients for any conflicts of interest or reasons where a bank may be facilitating something illegal or sanctioned. It is literally illegal for the bank not to perform these checks. They can’t just put on blinkers and claim ignorance.

    It would be at least negligent to shareholders, and possibly outright illegal, not to act on that information if there were significant risk.

  • 'Solar leafs' outshine panels in UK breakthrough - Energy Live News
  • It doesn’t make sense to think of it in terms of how much of the Sun’s energy it uses because solar energy is essentially free and unlimited, it comes from an outside system, we don’t need to mine it or carry it or anything and we can’t ‘waste’ it in the same way we can other fuels. All it tells us is the maximum theoretical limit.

    10% more energy from solar means a rooftop array could generate an extra 300-500W which is a genuinely useful amount of energy.

  • Earned income taxed twice as heavily as capital gains for some in UK, study finds
  • Absolutely, a change to CGT may affect the risk-return profile of individual investments and might make some unpalatable. But it wouldn’t slow or stop investing altogether. One thing that has a bigger effect would be how much spare money people have to invest, how much they earn above their costs of living.

    People have a financial incentive to invest their money somewhere (stock market, bonds, businesses, property, interest-bearing bank account) because if they don’t, their money devalues. Economically speaking it doesn’t matter so much where, so long as money cycles around the country and doesn’t sit doing nothing - or leave (which is another issue with global investments). A change in CGT would have to be hugely disruptive to change that incentive.

  • Earned income taxed twice as heavily as capital gains for some in UK, study finds
  • To start with I think we need to stop giving credence to bunkum theories that state that people are free to provide or withhold their services as they see fit. It’s not the case for the majority of people.

    Most people cannot afford not to work, they have no choice until they are financially secure enough, which few are. Either that or they physically can’t work, but in most cases they MUST work to pay rent, eat, survive. Even if you’re specialised in any job, when unemployed it’s only a matter of weeks before you need to pick any job, whatever you can get. Raising or lowering income tax will not affect that, only the amount of money you have when employed.

    Even if you don’t HAVE to work, the financial incentive is always to work, because it gets you more money, which is the promise of a better time. Changing income tax doesn’t affect that either, just the rate at which you accumulate wealth, but if you don’t have to work at least you have a choice not to.

    What affects employment more than income tax? Employment taxes. Because a business finding it cheaper to employ more staff… employs more staff. That financial incentive again, and a completely different set of levers. You can increase income tax and decrease employment tax, or both together, whatever. Independent.

    You know what else can take people out of the workforce? Reducing CGT. It allows people to retire earlier or live off their investments. Changes the threshold of where your financial incentive to work balances your body’s ability to can. Whether that’s good or bad depends on your point of view.

    On the subject of CGT, again, look at where the financial incentive lies. At what CGT threshold does it become more profitable not to invest in some vehicle, even risk-free-rate bonds, rather than stuffing a mattress? CGT only affects realisation of assets, so with a rate increase you would expect an increase in longer term investments, you might see people delaying retirement. It’s unlikely to affect actual investment, really only the amount of ready cash people have affects that. Lower income tax/higher CGT may actually increase investment in that case (though it’ll probably be mostly invested in other countries through SP500 or global trackers, so maybe not a good thing for the country).

  • Earned income taxed twice as heavily as capital gains for some in UK, study finds
  • Capital gains tax discourages investment and innovation. Income tax discourages work

    Are either of those statements true? Does capital gains tax ACTUALLY discourage investment? Does income tax ACTUALLY discourage work?