The average American has more wealth than pretty much everyone on Earth. You can't seriously think that it's because Americans are all genetically smarter than everyone else?
Variation within a group can be explained by different factors than variation between groups. That is, it could be completely true that Americans with higher IQs are more likely to become wealthy. But as a group America's success is due to other factors than IQ.
I don't use Snapchat, so correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't those relatively new developments? From a quick Google search, it seems that the acquisition of Looksery and the launch of "Snapchat Lens" didn't occur until September 2015. By then, Snapchat already had at least 80 million daily active users. While their current real time computer vision stuff is definitely not something the average engineer could make, it does seem like they started out as a cookie cutter app.
This isn't limited solely to vegetarians/vegans. Any diet that goes against your social group is difficult. Take keto/low-carb diets. It's amazing how snacks and foods I've been offered from friends and family that are just pure sugar.
I think that's true, but the same statistics of people on diet can be found, and I think (without any statistics of my own) that culture and group mentality plays a role there as well.
>Some people (like me) think that effective tax rates of roughly 50% (US, California, Marin County) are too high.
Wealthy people aren't getting taxed 50%. You're thinking of income taxes. Wealthy people don't make income. Genuinely wealthy people make their money from land they own and rent out and from stock they invest and hold.
"Wealthy people aren't getting taxed 50%. You're thinking of income taxes. Wealthy people don't make income."
Income tax is indeed what I am talking about and people do indeed get taxed at (roughly) 50%. You can use whatever term you'd like for those people.
The income limits for the top tax brackets are in the low six figures. Presumably you'd see those raised significantly to avoid these punitive rates on the "non wealthy" ?
If you own an apartment building and rent it out, you have to pay taxes on the income it provides.
The grocery store won't take stock certificates in payment for a gallon of milk. Instead, you have to sell it. As soon as you do, you are recognizing a capital gain and are taxed on it.
>If you own an apartment building and rent it out, you have to pay taxes on the income it provides.
Which is why the most common advice among long-term real estate owners is "buy more property".
Wealthy people don't have a higher need for milk (or any basic necessities) than the average person. So why would they need to sell any significant portion of their wealth? As someone said elsewhere in this thread, the problem is we don't tax wealth directly, only when it's transferred.
The problem is that Google and Facebook aren't ISPs. One doesn't have to use Goog/FB to use the Internet. There are other search engines and social networks. One can log out of their Goog/FB account. For most Americans, only one or two ISPs are available where they live.
It's actually extraordinary how many "Yelp extortion" claims I've seen without a single bit of proof. It's not at all difficult to record a telephone conversation with a Yelp representative.
I've seen some thoughts about this:
- Some of the businesses claiming "Yelp extortion" actually deserve their bad reviews.
- Some of the businesses claiming "Yelp extortion" posted fake positive reviews. Unbeknownst to them, Yelp bots automatically detected and removed the fake reviews. Later, after rejecting a call from a Yelp rep asking to advertise, the business owner decides to check their Yelp page and sees that their fake reviews are gone, incorrectly deducing that Yelp is extorting them.
Would they have to? The USA has a GDP (PPP) per capita around 3x that of Mexico. The sheer magnitude of the difference in purchasing power would make patio11's claim true, even if they were hypothetically, in our president's words, sending us drug dealers, criminals, and rapists.
I'm not sure exactly what you are arguing for here, so please correct me if I'm wrong. You seem to to saying that the middle class in Mexico are not the same as middle class in the US because their wealth + income would not be regarded as middle class by US standards.
I don't think that is a good argument, since once they move to the US they would be making middle class wages in the US, since they have the relevant skills to be employed in middle class jobs.
Not in OP's video. There's literally no way to escape the full-screen without pressing the escape key. You can't even double-click. I'm actually impressed by how user-hostile that video is.
A pretty small percentage, obviously. The top grossing movies of 2016 were Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Finding Dory, Captain America: Civil War, The Secret Life of Pets, and The Jungle Book. All of these movies would be impossible to do without CGI.
Viewers want movies to be spectacles. If we're watching something in a theater, we have high expectations of the production value. Otherwise, why even waste the time and money going to a theater? We can watch the "good", low production value movies at home.
I think the home is starting to turn into the movie theater. It's fairly common to see 4k 55" TVs in people's homes; I'm wondering how far they can take the sizes for a residential area. The accompanying sound systems for these home theaters are high quality as well. I guess it's an arms race to out-spectacle what you can get out of an increasingly performant screen from Samsung, et al.
This is a good point, the experience at the theater used to be drastically different that what you'd get at home (VHS, non-widescreen, stereo audio, etc), but the gap is certainly closing. Combine that with highway robbery concession prices, being surrounded by a bunch of strangers... the theater is starting to look less appealing.
> Rogue One: A Star Wars Story… would be impossible to do without CGI.
It's a prequel to a movie that had exactly one computer generated element in it, which was a wireframe model that took so long to render that they couldn't re-render it when the final design changed.
They _chose_ not to make it without CGI. It wouldn't have been impossible.
My point was that they would not have been impossible without CGI. All four of those movies could have been made prior to the mid-80s, with different technology. I chose Rogue One and Jungle Book because one comes from a family of movies that excelled in practical effects, optical compositing, and modeling and the other has a version which was made in the 1940s.
Decades ago, Finding Dory would have been hand animated (though, even that had moved begun moving to computers in the late 80s). I haven't seen Captain America, but I would guess similar types of movies existed before hand (the 80s and early 90s are full of over the top action movies and practical effects; some of which still hold up today).
Visual story telling doesn't require CGI. It might be the most pragmatic way to do things now (due to time, cost, complexity, etc.), but it's not the _only_ way.
In what way? It didn't contradict the 1977 version in any way (that I'm aware of). It's been nearly 20 years since I've seen the 1997 version (we watch the 1993 version at home). Had you never seen the special editions, rogue one would not appear out of place.
I understood his point; mine was that _I_ don't watch the 1997 (or later) version of Star Wars (though I've seen it). My children have only seen the 1993 release of Star Wars. If my son was old enough, he'd watch Rogue One and have no issues having never seen the "upgraded" releases.
