I mean yeah obviously Elon should be hit by the tax but I think there's a lot of Theranos-sized businesses where the valuation is basically fake--actual cash flow is in the low millions--and nobody is taking shares as collateral for billions

I think two changes that would be worthwhile in addition to or instead of a wealth tax would be:
1)take away the zuckerberg option, voting share must be same or less than ownership share
2)add a "consumed income tax" for the rich, where all consumption counts as income, even if it's borrowed

unlike for income, there's no "realized wealth" concept. I guess you could allow them to defer a portion of the wealth tax until the time it is sold, but this is complex and doesn't have the same "take away their power" benefit if they can continue controlling the fortune as long as they want

one issue is the mark-to-market thing. A lot of "unicorns" technically give their founders a few billion in wealth paper wealth but that would disappear if they tried to sell it to pay a tax. Maybe that's a good thing, kick the knees out of private markets and bring people back to doing IPOs

yeah, I think this is a case where the regular CPI food index is much more informative than looking up specifically thanksgiving-ish foods at a non-representative selection of retailers. And CPI food is up but not massively, at a comparable rate as overall CPI

I think most thanksgiving dinners are not rigidly by the book, people are also buying potato chips and mint milanos or whatever. There's a reason why Trader Joes focuses so heavily on prepackaged junk food

Some of that is missing essentials like eggs and butter, but I think the biggest thing is missing "goodies." Grocery stores are clever, they know how to price so that the thing you think of as the main thing is cheap but you're overpaying for that packaged snack you saw and wanted to try.

One more thing I want to say about this is while I think $150 is a realistic price for a thanksgiving dinner, this basket is still too efficient in the sense that a typical family is spending $150 and getting less than 23 pounds of meat and all of these sides and desserts

the way to help the poor is to have an efficient tax code that can raise tons of money with minimal burden. This is why european states with big safety nets all have VAT's, while the US lacks a big safety net

this does the usual thing of ignoring all of the essentials, like eggs and milk and cream and sugar and spices and salt. Sage in particular, I think sage is the most stereotypical thanksgiving herb. How are you going to prep a turkey with no herbs?

My brain wants to combine the collard greens with the butternut squash and pecans (roasted with, say, sage and vinegar and honey or maple syrup) into a salad but tbh collard greens just aren't the right kind of leafy vegetable for that

thinking of starting a "rate my menu" series whenever someone posts about thanksgiving dinner costs. I appreciate that this is a much more interesting menu than the farm bureau's or walmart's. It is still missing a lot. Turkeys have no body fat, what are you marinating it with?

Technically passes the butter test but not really since it's spreadable butter and seemingly just for the rolls not for cooking

I don't mean the developers themselves. But like you have a small group that is bidding so much for these homes that they can outbid a larger group. These are the people who should pay more tax

common problem for county and sometimes state-level maps. A nationally representative survey of 1200-1500 people is not going to have any respondents in most counties

so I think what's actually going on here is the survey did not have any respondents in Idaho, they did a regression and predicted what Idaho might have been if they'd had data

I also oil my great-grandfather's wind-up clock but it doesn't really keep time (needs repair) so idk if that can be called well-oiled