Taxing unrealized capital gains? So someone like Bezos who's annual increase in wealth is in the form of amazon stock, would have to sell that stock to actually have the liquid cash to pay for this tax? Come tax season wouldn't it lead to a bunch of founders having to flood the stock market with their stock, hence a large decrease in the stock price and consequently lower taxable amount? Hence a self defeating tax?
Then there's the inflation question. If CPI is 3%, and my capital gains amounts to 6% of my portfolio, my real increase in wealth is only 3%. But I pay tax on 6%?
I’m not endorsing the idea, but just thinking about how it would play out...
I suspect that for the reasons you just gave, you’d see a quick transition in the marketplace where companies stopped paying high-end roles largely via stock, and founders like Bezos greatly reduced their personal holdings.
If they’re trying to target only the top 0.1% it would probably have some floor like the first $1M per year that is exempt.
But yeah this would seem like it would very much punish concentrated ownership of large companies.
In reality though it would probably ha e some stupid loophole like it only applies to individuals so then people could avoid it by transferring their stock to intermediate LLCs or something.
Increased stock flow not tied to the CEO’s utility of wealth and possibly opening opportunities for other people to buy stocks at a lower value but likely to rebound? Sounds like a boon for the market and smaller traders.
It's particularly self-defeating if it scares away foreign investors (or scares local investors out of the country), causing a net decrease in tax revenues from the lost business.
This is quite interesting. There is a certain very small percentage of the world's population that is immune to the HIV virus. These people's T-cells have the CD4 receptor, but not the CCR5 receptor. The HIV virus needs both these receptors to successfully affect the host's cells. The absence of the CCR5 receptor still allows the person's T cells to function normally, so if this works, it can pave the way to creating offspring who are immune to HIV
There are literally millions of healthy people without CCR5 receptors. (Millions is approximately 0.01% of world population and this mutation's frequency is certainly greater than that.)
What about possible dependencies which are also missing or required in those healthy people? That is, if you remove CCR5, are there other components which should be removed/replaced/inserted to enable the anti-HIV functionality? I would venture to guess that nobody really knows... yet.
Apparently removing it may have other consequences:
> Even if editing worked perfectly, people without normal CCR5 genes face higher risks of getting certain other viruses, such as West Nile, and of dying from the flu. Since there are many ways to prevent HIV infection and it's very treatable if it occurs, those other medical risks are a concern, Musunuru said.
Under normal circumstances retaliatory tariffs may be important, but I think because of the relatively asymmetric nature of US-China trade (the US's massive trade deficit to China), I'm definitely more interested in how the tariffs are affecting the Chinese manufacturers and American consumers. But yes a more complete analysis should look at both sides.
I’ve often wondered why given our position vis a vis China, economically, previous presidents have been reluctant and unwilling to take these steps. Before Obama and Busch, it was Reagan and Busch senior who were reluctant to tske steps against Japan. We had the upper hand and also had logic and trade law on our side, but other than token measures were weak in this regard. Were they just too deferential to short term concerns and or offshoring interests?
Reagan and Bush believed in free trade - maybe not completely, but it was something like believed would turn out better for the long run. Note that nobody worries about Japan taking our jobs anymore.
Since we don't have parallel universes to play with we can never experiment to see which approach is better.
By all means fair trade. But what Japan was doing wasn’t fair trade. We’d open markets but they’d put up all kinds of reasons and non tariff barriers to exporters, up to ridiculous extremes such as saying Rossignol (French) was unfit for Japanse snow. I mean even if this outrageous claim were true, let the buyers decide. Sure, Japan now is not overly unfair, but in the mean time over 20 years US workers had unfsir competition. Same was happening with China, but now someone is finally willing to call things out snd say “enough”.
I find it interesting that the top three highest voted comments, and their top sibling comments don't mention any potential concerns about unintended consequences or the effects on the average and poorest people (the NYT article cites evidence such negative effects happened, including suicide).
The first sibling comment of the third highest voted comment throws out a worry, and it was downvoted.
I don't know what this means exactly, but I think it's worth the average HNer to ponder.
Are you familiar with c diff? Placebo's don't work. It's dangerous to have placebo controlled trials with this disease. The current standard of care is a course of very strong antibiotics which still leave > 25% chance of recurrence. These antibiotics are most often used as a control group in c diff infections.
In general, placebo controlled trials are usually conducted for diseases which don't have an effective standard of care, or for conditions which aren't serious enough to be considered life threatening. For more serious diseases where a standard of care exists (standard of care is usually scientifically discovered but validated by placebo controlled trials), you conduct trials and compare the performance of the new drug/therapy with the existing standard of care as the control group.
Yup. It's like wanting placebo controlled trials for cancer. It would be unethical and ungodly harmful to condemn people to suffering and death just so people could gather data that wouldn't even compare the results to the current best practices.
I'm not sure. Historically, Indian governments have been most undeserving of our taxes simply because they've misspent it and/or misdirected it to achieve their own means (corruption, buying votes etc). Saying "yes but this government is different" also doesn't hold water when you look at the massive farm loan waivers that were just granted, and more waivers are on their way. How do you think the waivers were funded? Through our hard-earned tax money. Who do you think the debtors will now vote for in the next election cycle? The current ruling political party ofcourse.
Finally, there are a lot of disadvantages for being on a completely centralized digital payment platform from an individual liberty point of view. Imagine that a significant portion of your net worth is just a number stored in a "secure database" which falls under the jurisdiction of some government. Now image that you vocally disagree with the government's policies enough for the government to start taking notice. It becomes very very easy for the government to shut you up - all they have to do is strongarm the bank to freeze that number. Its not as hypothetical as it sounds as the Indian government has done this before.
A large portion of black money was deemed to be held up by the bureaucracy - bribes paid by private individuals and corporations to government employees and politicians. Had demonetization been done along with a hiring freeze (and subsequent trimming down) of the bureaucracy, I'd have been more certain that the motives behind demonetization were to root out corruption. However, the bureaucracy is now larger and more powerful than ever under this government. Thus, the incentives to seek bribes still exits because of this power imbalance between the powerful bureaucrats and relatively week individuals.
Governments have so much leverage they don't need to be efficient to be a huge net benefit.
Consider the cost to build and maintain a road network vs. the benefits it brings.
PS: Further, it's not a question of collecting more money from everyone it's a question of collecting the same money from everyone which is a benefit even if you end up burning the extra money.
> Governments have so much leverage they don't need to be efficient to be a huge net benefit.
But aren't you just saying that when you have $1 Billion then paying $500k more to a contractor doesn't seem that bad based on the net benefit it would bring to have a dream home.
But imagine if this was a charity (something which govt is, if we look at it a certain way), that inefficiency means more people could have benefited out of it.
Efficiency gain's are clearly beneficial. My point is governments can be effective in providing roads and common defense etc without being efficient.
India is a case in point, they have enough infrastructure to allow for rapid growth even with a highly corrupt government. While they could do a better job, the increasing standard of living allows for ever improving government services even without increasing efficiency. Further, as standers keep rising the pressure and ability to reduce corruption increases both because governments can directly pay more and because better options show up outside of government.
PS: In the US and I suspect most other countries you can reduce your tax burden by donating just fine. So, taxes are effectively a non issue in terms of charitable donations. Thus tax evasion is simply money people are keeping for personal use.
> I'm not sure. Historically, Indian governments have been most undeserving of our taxes simply because they've misspent it and/or misdirected it to achieve their own means (corruption, buying votes etc).
Depending on who you ask, Governments will always be undeserving of your tax money. Also, I'd rather prefer my tax money be spent on farm loan waivers than be stashed away hidden from the Government under a carpet or in a foreign bank, if that's the comparison you want.
> Finally, there are a lot of disadvantages for being on a completely centralized digital payment platform from an individual liberty point of view. Imagine that a significant portion of your net worth is just a number stored in a "secure database" which falls under the jurisdiction of some government. Now image that you vocally disagree with the government's policies enough for the government to start taking notice. It becomes very very easy for the government to shut you up - all they have to do is strongarm the bank to freeze that number. Its not as hypothetical as it sounds as the Indian government has done this before.
Are you suggesting that you should keep significant amounts of your money hidden from the Government because you think they might unduly target you because of your wealth and views? Isn't that how black money is defined in the first place - keeping it hidden from the Government? That is a civil liberties issue, the solution for which cannot be to keep your money hidden from the Government.
> A large portion of black money was deemed to be held up by the bureaucracy - bribes paid by private individuals and corporations to government employees and politicians. Had demonetization been done along with a hiring freeze (and subsequent trimming down) of the bureaucracy, I'd have been more certain that the motives behind demonetization were to root out corruption. However, the bureaucracy is now larger and more powerful than ever under this government. Thus, the incentives to seek bribes still exits because of this power imbalance between the powerful bureaucrats and relatively week individuals.
I don't see the connection between a hiring freeze in bureaucracy and demonetization. Bureaucrats are a fraction of the population of the country and tackling corruption in bureaucracy is something that must be done regardless.
> Also, I'd rather prefer my tax money be spent on farm loan waivers than be stashed away hidden from the Government under a carpet or in a foreign bank, if that's the comparison you want.
Those aren't the only two alternatives. How about you lower the tax rate and create incentives so that the farmers actually pay back the loans. Right now, farmers take loans with the assumption that they'll be waived, and the cycle continues. I'm not shooting on the farmers here, I'm just saying that farmers, like bureaucrats, like businessmen, are human. If they're incentivized to game a system, they will. For once it'd be great if my tax money could be better spent on other things that would actually benefit the country (strong defense, capable law and order through an effective police and judiciary, etc.) rather than indirectly buying votes for the current political party in power (farm loan waivers etc.). Hell given the binary option of farm loan waivers vs stashing my cash abroad, most businesses will still stash it in real estate, abroad, etc.
> Are you suggesting that you should keep significant amounts of your money hidden from the Government because you think they might unduly target you because of your wealth and views?
No. Even after tax legitimate money is at risk if its just a number stored in a "secure" database somewhere. Whoever has ultimate control over that database has power over you. With cash, gold, you can carry them with you and anonymously pay for goods/services without compromising on your privacy. I was merely pointing out one limitation with a completely central digital payment platform.
> I don't see the connection between a hiring freeze in bureaucracy and demonetization
Ok who is on the receiving end of bribes? The bureaucrats/politicians. Demonetization was supposed to hit the tax evaders (usually bribe givers) and the bureaucrats (bribe takers). Maybe they both were seemingly hurt with demonetization as they both had cash stashed. But since the bureaucracy still exists (and has become more powerful eg - http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/the-taxman-now-has-mor...), there is no incentive for the bribe takers to stop taking bribes. Tell me this new bill won't be abused and misused. Looking at the history of laws being abused in India, I'd bet that it will be
Look at it this way. I have $100. I can either spend all of that $100 on stuff that makes me happy, or I can give half of it to the government which will spend most of it on stuff like schools that my kids won't go to, roads I won't drive on, charity (welfare) for people I don't even know. They're wasting all of my money on stuff that doesn't directly make me happy!
No matter how well a government is run, there will always be people who complain about it, and not without cause.
Of course the alternative (extreme libertarianism) ends up being worse in pretty much every way, but in that case it is the world that is shitty, not some big government.
After I discovered Pandora back in 2010, I haven't looked back. While it lacks ability to play a song on demand, where it truly outshines are its recommendations. Maybe its the nature of their recommendation algorithm - they call it the music genome project; a content based recommendation ending using very finely refined categorizations as opposed to the methodologies most other recommenders follow - a mix of collaborative filtering and content-based, but not as detailed on creating categories that a song can fall into.
I know I'm sounding like such a fanboy but I discovered some of my favorite bands and artists after hearing them first through Pandora's recommendations. I've often heard songs I liked at random places, shazammed them, and created a channel on Pandora, which has led to some really good artists that I would've never heard through other media. So for music discovery, Pandora is where its at. I really hope this company sticks around.
Most of the time I don't want to pick a song. I want to listen to a certain genre and just have music play. Pandora was perfect for me. I paid for Pandora ONE for 5 years.
This year I cancelled and moved to Spotify.
For $2/month it was a great product and a great deal. But the product didn't change over a 5 year period. I found stations got stuck into the same set of songs and would stop adding new ones. I wonder win the last time the Music Genome Project was updated? More infuriating, their buggy Adobe Air desktop app was never fixed or updated.
Three years ago the price moved to $3/mo. Two years ago it moved to $4/mo. This past year they got rid of any grandfathered discounts and charged $5/mo. I was sick of paying more for the same product and jumped ship. I do miss my radio stations, but Spotify's prebuilt playlists are pretty good replacement.
> I found stations got stuck into the same set of songs and would stop adding new ones.
There was this odd bug on some stations that caused unrelated tracks, at least from a human standpoint, to play. Most notorious were some classic rock stations. After a couple hours of play, they'd start playing comedy. I could understand if there were some parody bands or musicians like Spinal Tap or Tenacious D seeding the stations, but these stations had none of the sort.
They must have, i'm a Spotify sub and i've never used FB with Spotify. At least, that i remember. I rarely (read: maybe once a year) login to FB so i despise any FB-only login services.
How opposed would you be to creating a shell fb account with zero personal info and a fake name, in order to log in to products? I realize you shouldn't have to take this extra step, but so many wonderful products DO require an fb login...
It's sad how much room there is to disrupt music with what i consider basic features in data storage.
Eg, why are we still using playlists? I want to be able to sort/listen to my music by tags, ranging from "cool" to "energetic" to "happy". Ie, a string tag, a tempo tag, and an emotion tag. I want to be able to filter queries to an arbitrary number of tags and genres. I want to be able to filter by who it was produced by, who played in it, per album or per song.
Most of the features i want don't require any complex content recognition algorithm. And yet, like it's 1990, most of the music apps i use (spotify, google music) lack what i consider to be basic features.
Why did Gmail "pave the way" with tagging instead of folders, and yet i'm still stuck using Playlists in Google Music? Why does Spotify support a nice rich community for playlists, but seemingly won't let the community add meaningful data to songs, albums, etc and then let me query my song collection from that?
I know, i'm sure there are plenty of mp3 players and etc that do this just fine - but i use Spotify, and i want the features in there. I want a streaming collection of on demand music. I like the variety. I'd kill for my above features with a Spotify-like package.
The answer is that "cool" and "happy" tags won't find the music you want. Vivaldi's "Spring" and Bobby McFerrin's "Don't Worry Be Happy" and "C'Mon Get Happy" by the Partridge Family are all "happy." As is "Sailing" by Christopher Cross and Charlie Pride's "Kiss an Angel Good Morning."
Turns out that what most people really want when they say "I want to be able to sort/listen to my music by tags" is something that feels like a curated playlist, where the songs naturally work together one-after-another without being jarring, usually within some music category if not within a narrow genre.
> The answer is that "cool" and "happy" tags won't find the music you want. Vivaldi's "Spring" and Bobby McFerrin's "Don't Worry Be Happy" and "C'Mon Get Happy" by the Partridge Family are all "happy." As is "Sailing" by Christopher Cross and Charlie Pride's "Kiss an Angel Good Morning."
Are those all the same artist? The same album? The same genre?
My point in the above questions is that of course a single field won't perfectly fit to all songs in existence, but "fit" is subjective. If i want "up tempo" music, and i don't request anything else, then give me all up tempo music. Rage rock, rap, symphony, all of it. I can refine the filter if i want.
This allows me to query "play me all up tempo music from Dave Matthews Band". "Play me all happy music from Dave Matthews Band's album Live at the Rocks", and etc.
> Turns out that what most people really want when they say "I want to be able to sort/listen to my music by tags" is something that feels like a curated playlist, where the songs naturally work together one-after-another without being jarring, usually within some music category if not within a narrow genre.
Clearly that's not what i want, as i am extremely dissatisfied with Playlists.
Expecting all music to somehow be grouped into non-flexible folders (which is all playlists are) seems silly to me. Do you think i shouldn't be able to Search Google/Internet for custom terms?
Why can i not search music for custom tags, but i can search for genres? Having tags doesn't mean Playlists can't exist, but it can allow me to refine my UX to exactly what i want. I'm sick of curated Playlists, and i'm tired of trying to remember all song names in existence to build my own. I want better data to build collections of songs.
I don't disagree with you that a well-tagged music repository would be useful - indeed this is the goal of the music genome project - but am trying to point out that the typical requirement for "tagging" music is well beyond almost any individual user. Songs need to be tagged by genre, subgenre, style, mood, tempo, instrumentation, vocalist style, intensity, scale, key, and many more categories in order to adequately be able to mine the database and return results that the typical user would find useful. Then the user would have to be sophisticated enough to form queries that would return useful results. Maybe "uptempo" would be a meaningful result for you but a cross-section of all uptempo music would return unacceptable results for pretty much everyone else.
Who wants to follow Van Halen's "You Really Got Me" with the Endaro Mahaanubhaavulu? Answer: nobody. So you need to define genre. OK, you select "Rock". Now "You Really Got Me" is followed by "Non E Per Sempre." Oops. Still the wrong genre - and also the wrong language.
So you specify "English" words and try to tighten the genre. Now this is harder: is Van Halen "hard rock" or "metal" or "glam rock" (answer: could be any of the above). Pick the wrong one, and you'll accidentally expunge "You Really Got Me" from your listening experience, or include a bunch of Poison and Tesla songs, and you really hate those bands because you think their lyrics are dumb.
Uh-oh. Now you need a way to categorize the thoughtfulness of the lyrics.
The fact is that the requirement that most listeners have is something much more intelligent than a database search. If you've attempted to use the music genome project to find music, you'll know what a difficult process it can be. The music it returns is extremely hit-or-miss - and it is exquisitely tagged. By the way, I do think that the music genome project will solve your particular requirement "show uptempo music from Dave Matthews Band."
I'm not saying it's not possible. I'm saying it requires next-gen AI to (A) adequately categorize music on all needed dimensions and (B) assist the user in forming meaningful queries.
I'm also saying that the experience of radio broadcasting over the last 50 years is that listeners almost always want something that feels extremely familiar and highly curated....
> Who wants to follow Van Halen's "You Really Got Me" with the Endaro Mahaanubhaavulu? Answer: nobody. So you need to define genre. OK, you select "Rock". Now "You Really Got Me" is followed by "Non E Per Sempre." Oops. Still the wrong genre - and also the wrong language.
Of course, that's why you combine filters. You keep speaking of single queries.
Sure, people may disagree with what is uptempo or not, but they already do that with genre's, i know i do haha.
I'm not saying it will be perfect. I'm saying right now we have nearly no useful ability to discover music. I'm extremely dissatisfied with music discovery, and i have no control in most applications.
> I'm also saying that the experience of radio broadcasting over the last 50 years is that listeners almost always want something that feels extremely familiar and highly curated....
Which sucks, because it's clear most popular products (Spotify/etc) agree with you - and i detest it. I have been given zero, completely zero meaningful features to interact with. At best i have magic in the backend to "hopefully maybe implement what i might want". There is no interaction to allow me to try and shape this with any meaningful feedback over what each interaction does.
What does this Heart do? Is it permanent or is it just temporary? How do i build a dynamic playlist off of a mood? How do i remove certain artists/genres/instruments/vocals from the mood?
Most music playing services give me absolutely nothing. And it's terrible, to this user at least. I just want features, and no one is implementing user facing features.
edit: To be clear, i'd settle for community tagging. Hell, i'd setting for the ability to tag posts myself, with no other contribution. I can't even play music by a tag i define. I promise you, i can manage to tag some music myself - but i have no ability to do that. The best i can do is build a playlist, which is like 1990's Mail folders. Completely useless for dynamic applications.
How is this not the essence of things? Ie, the essence of discovering music? As a music lover, discovery is very important to me - as without it i stagnate on the same set of music.
It may not be the correct term of "disrupt", i don't follow the startup culture too closely - all i mean to say is, most products i've seen have bare bones discovery methods and don't let the user help inform the platform about what discovery they want. It would be like Searching Google if the only thing it gave you was precompiled lists of sites you might like.
So, i long for someone to "disrupt" this space by providing obvious (to me) content discovery and categorization methods. If you could provide me with a Spotify-like solution, and throw in meaningful ways to search, filter, discover, etc content? I'd switch in a heartbeat and i'm sure music lovers would spent quite a bit of time on that platform in the same way that they contribute to Spotify.
I haven't used Pandora in a long time, but I have to say that everything you mention can be applied to my experience of Spotify's discovery/radio features as well. Plus it handles playing songs on-demand.
I can't seem to get spotify to recommend me anything besides rap music. I use the checkboxes to indicate I like classical, the Dead, Phish, Dylan, Cash, and more but I have never once had anything besides rap music show up on my discover weekly. It's a bit frustrating.
There's recommendations at the bottom of individual playlists now so I can look there but still a pain that I can't get a nice mix in my discover weekly.
The most important thing for Google Play Music after the "upload your own stuff":
It does a great job caching songs ahead while you're on Wifi, so you can minimize data usage while out and about. Plus, with the caching it also works offline perfectly well.
I feel a bit sorry for all the other services, but on a technical level Google Play Music has outplayed them all entirely.
Oddly enough I love GP's recommendation set so much more than Pandora's. It's so much better attuned to what I like and don't and what I like to explore. It's very good at distinguishing what I like and what I don't, and I'm pretty picky about what I listen to.
I was amazed by Pandora's recommendations too. That is, until it gave me the error "We're sorry, but we couldn't find any more music to play on your station right now. Try switching stations."
It was my main (only?) station. I had some 30 songs on it, pretty good sampling of my tastes (pretty typical pop/rock/etc. music... Daughtry, Train, etc.). It gave me great recommendations which for a while completely blew my mind over and over (when my friend told me about the human classification part, I was like, I KNEW there was no way a machine could've done this so well), but it eventually outright failed and just gave me that message. So I gave up on it too. I guess that's better than Spotify which just plays my own songs over and over again at my "radio" stations...
Not long after I discovered Pandora, they banned me for living in the wrong country. No, they didn't want my dollars. Off with you scum in non-English speaking countries, your money probably smells funny.
It's ok, there's Spotify now, which doesn't arbitrarily ban users for living in the wrong place. Spotify has become a much better, much more flexible service. Even if Pandora were to lift its ban on foreigners, there is no longer a market for their service here. Sorry Pandora, you had the momentum, but threw it away.
#1: That has to do with terms of licensing deals imposed by the music labels, not an arbitrary decision by Pandora that they don't want to accept your money.
#2: It is the case with ALL music and video streaming providers. Apparently you lucked out with Spotify, but that could be the opposite for someone else.
Stupid, yes... but the bad guys here are the record labels rather than the streaming services.
It's 2017 and music labels/companies still want to say, "you can't hear this song because we haven't settled distribution rights... and can't make any money off of it... so... poo on you"
Not that it's much better, but Spotify will let you live in the wrong country as long as you can pay from the right country (like Apple, they depend on the billing address for debit/credit card).
But that's all ignoring the actually source of these restrictions. They don't come from the services themselves. They come from the outdated music industry structure that hasn't kept up with the internet-enabled globalized world.
It wasn't high on the user count, compared to Spotify (and probably Pandora) but Rdio was __the__ music streaming service for any music nerd. Their recommendations was better than Pandora (probably why Pandora bought them out); UI/UX was better than Spotify (ability to browse on web while listening on phone was a feature I miss greatly); the breadth of information (on the site / app) available about a song / album / artist / recording beats anything I ever encountered outside of a now shuttered 'pirate' library.
The last one is something that no other service I have encountered even considers (maybe Spotify has some recording info?). Also their API was a joy to use and very helpful support staff.
Sorry for the rant, especially when comparing your observation to something that no longer exists.
Edit: but one can hope that Pandora will put all of that wonderfulness together one day in to their own product.
Music Genome Project is unique in that the annotations are done by humans. So it's very difficult to outperform. I hear Spotify, with the help of The Echo Nest's machine learning expertise, is close though.
It was fun discovering music with pandora, but I got sick of hearing the same thing over and over again. I started paying for Spotify. I discover music with spotify too by just searching for people's playlists too. Sometimes I just wanna listen to the same track in a loop for hours. Sometimes I don't, I love that choice.
This is still pretty true for me today. I use Pandora for discovery, and Spotify for maintaining fixed playlists.
Google play music actually works great for both of these functions, but the app is extremely unstable on my phone (Moto X running 5.1), so it isn't an option for me.
Your metric for success seems to be "not enough people died relative to previous such moves, hence its a success", which is rather morbid.
Also your point about "major move that directly affected the entire country but did not end in large scale riots" is vague in its definition of "major move". During the partition, people were forced to leave their homes, belongings, ALL material wealth in the name of religion/politics/whatever and move to a different location in fear for their lives and the lives of their loved ones.
Does demonetization compare to this?
During demonetization, among other things, all the honest Indian had to do was wait in long queues to exchange cash (which is not convenient by all means - its very very harrowing), and the dishonest Indian figured out how to convert their cash to the new currency through the black market.
We can debate about the pros and (many many more) cons about demonetization, but thats another topic. Overall, India today is very different from the India 70 years ago when the partition took place, so I disagree with your comparison as well as your metric for success.
> Your metric for success seems to be "not enough people died relative to previous such moves, hence its a success", which is rather morbid.
Why is it "morbid"? Did you call out the OP for associating the death of a 100 people due to an economic move like demonetization morbid? If not, then why am I being singled out? Just because my opinion doesn't fit your narrative?
> Also your point about "major move that directly affected the entire country but did not end in large scale riots" is vague in its definition of "major move". During the partition, people were forced to leave their homes, belongings, ALL material wealth in the name of religion/politics/whatever and move to a different location in fear for their lives and the lives of their loved ones.
Does demonetization compare to this?
Yes it does. Because the OP was talking about "implementation" of the move and not about "intent". The displacement of people during the Partition was of a small percentage of the entire populace. Yet it was not managed properly at all. Did it not result in the death of close to 2 million people by some estimates? Or is the death of 2 million people due to Partition not as morbid as the death of 100 people due to demonetization?
According to me, demonetization should have resulted in large-scale riots. Even the Supreme Court of India concurred: http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/demonetisation-sc-q.... In other countries where demonetization took place there were large scale riots and huge political instability. Read up on Myanmar demonetization which led to large-scale riots leaving thousands of people dead.
The very fact it did not end in large-scale riots leads me to believe that it was a success. Whether there are any long term benefits to the move economically remains to be seen.
> During demonetization, among other things, all the honest Indian had to do was wait in long queues to exchange cash (which is not convenient by all means - its very very harrowing), and the dishonest Indian figured out how to convert their cash to the new currency through the black market.
And most of those converting their cash were caught and the rest are still being caught. Did you fail to read the news?
> "Why is it "morbid"? Did you call out the OP for associating the death of a 100 people due to an economic move like demonetization morbid?"
I call it morbid because "not enough people died hence its a success" is a bad argument. What is your cutoff for the number of people to have died for it to have become a failure? How do you arrive at that cutoff?
> "The displacement of people during the Partition was of a small percentage of the entire populace. Yet it was not managed properly at all"
Yes a relatively smaller percentage than demonetization (but not small by any means). Furthermore, less people were affected by partition but the impact to those affected was much higher. In demonetization, more people were affected but the average impact to those affected was much lower. They might even be the same area under the curve in terms of suffering. But how do we quantify that? Simply saying that "less people were affected yet more people died during partition in contrast to demonetization where more people are affected but less people died" is an incomplete argument. More people are affected by the poor air quality of New Delhi but less people die because of it than the partition, does that mean that the air quality measures that the government has taken (banning unleaded fuel etc.) is a success?
> "And most of those converting their cash were caught and the rest are still being caught. Did you fail to read the news?"
Survivorship bias. You only hear of the ones that got caught. There are so many that got away scot-free.
Also, do you always believe or agree with what the Supreme court says or recommends? How do you feel about the mandatory standing for the national anthem before any movie? Should that be something that the state should enforce? Hitler made it mandatory for civilians to perform the Nazi salute towards him.
> I call it morbid because "not enough people died hence its a success" is a bad argument. What is your cutoff for the number of people to have died for it to have become a failure? How do you arrive at that cutoff?
The cutoff was not given by me. It was given by the nay-sayers including the Supreme Court of India. Who speculated "financial emergency" and "large-scale riots"? Was it people who supported demonetization or those who opposed?
> Yes a relatively smaller percentage than demonetization (but not small by any means). Furthermore, less people were affected by partition but the impact to those affected was much higher. In demonetization, more people were affected but the average impact to those affected was much lower. They might even be the same area under the curve in terms of suffering. But how do we quantify that? Simply saying that "less people were affected yet more people died during partition in contrast to demonetization where more people are affected but less people died" is an incomplete argument. More people are affected by the poor air quality of New Delhi but less people die because of it than the partition, does that mean that the air quality measures that the government has taken (banning unleaded fuel etc.) is a success?
But you are again trying to tie an economic move like demonetization with something inherently negative: pollution. How does pollution compare to the Partition or Demonetization? How does that analogy even make any sense? We are talking about "implementation" of "intent". I gave comparison of Partition because the Partition of India was an "intent" in the same way that the demonetization was an "intent". The "implementation" of the "intent" failed with Partition but not with demonetization. How do I quantify that? See the demonetization exercises carried out by 6 countries before India. It was bloody and ended in either coups d'état or large-scale riots. Both did not happen in India.
> Survivorship bias. You only hear of the ones that got caught. There are so many that got away scot-free.
You are in the realm of speculation here. It is for you to prove that "so many go away scot-free".
> Also, do you always believe or agree with what the Supreme court says or recommends? How do you feel about the mandatory standing for the national anthem before any movie? Should that be something that the state should enforce? Hitler made it mandatory for civilians to perform the Nazi salute towards him.
I agree with mandatory standing for National Anthem irrespective of whether it is before any movie or in any public place. Now you taking it to the other extreme of comparing standing for National Anthem to that of Nazi salute is completely uncalled for. Are you actually comparing Nazi ideology with upholding the Constitution of India? The Supreme Court only upheld the Articles of the Constitution. Read the order of the Court. This is not some Nazi diktat. Please widen your perspective.
Yet you used that data point to call the move a categorical success.
> But you are again trying to tie an economic move like demonetization with something inherently negative
No, I'm not trying to tie anything. I'm just trying to make you understand the fallacy that might have inadvertently crept into your reasoning (happens to the best of us!) Also I'm not comparing demonetization to pollution, I'm comparing the policy of demonetization to the policy response against pollution. Or to make it even simpler, I'm comparing the government policy to curb corruption to government policy to curb pollution, or the government policy to prevent deaths during the partition. Just because one policy response led to more deaths than another, doesn't mean that the former response wasn't as flawed as the latter. Especially since there are so many differences between the initial conditions that existed during the partition and the conditions that exist today. I will repeat here that simply saying that "less people were affected yet more people died during partition in contrast to demonetization where more people are affected but less people died" is an incomplete argument. Apples and oranges my friend.
> You are in the realm of speculation here
Unfortunately not. Will this data ever be publicly available? No. Did a black market exist? Most definitely.
> Are you actually comparing Nazi ideology with upholding the Constitution of India?
What if I don't agree with some of the articles of the constitution? Can I exercise my free speech rights to criticize the said articles without being charged with sedition? Can I express those free speech rights by not standing up for the national anthem and not be charged for an offence? Unfortunately not. I am being instructed by legislation to sit or stand or perform some other body movement to uphold the legitimacy of a document, or an ideology, which I may or may not agree with. That was true for the Nazi salute as well. There are very very subtle points that deal with things like burning the national flag and not "respecting" the national anthem. I urge you to check out the first amendment of the american constition and US supreme court rulings regarding their national anthem and national flag and what constitutes disrespect and what constitutes a criminal offence. Its fascinating stuff. The Indian constitution and the our Supreme court have a long way to go!
Anyway, time to get on with my life. Do definitely read up on the First amendment and try comparing that with the free speech as guaranteed by the Indian constitution. Its a good perspective to have.
> Yet you used that data point to call the move a categorical success.
No I did not. I only countered a point that was made by the OP who said demonetization was a failure because 100 people died by citing a point that the Opposition parties in India made during the demonetization phase (about large-scale riots).
> No, I'm not trying to tie anything. I'm just trying to make you understand the fallacy that might have inadvertently crept into your reasoning (happens to the best of us!) Also I'm not comparing demonetization to pollution, I'm comparing the policy of demonetization to the policy response against pollution. Or to make it even simpler, I'm comparing the government policy to curb corruption to government policy to curb pollution, or the government policy to prevent deaths during the partition. Just because one policy response led to more deaths than another, doesn't mean that the former response wasn't as flawed as the latter. Especially since there are so many differences between the initial conditions that existed during the partition and the conditions that exist today. I will repeat here that simply saying that "less people were affected yet more people died during partition in contrast to demonetization where more people are affected but less people died" is an incomplete argument. Apples and oranges my friend.
So you can explain this to the OP of the post who said that demonetization was a failure because 100 people had died. Do you now understand why I'm countering this specific point? Because it makes no sense to compare an economic move with deaths. Apples and oranges indeed.
> Unfortunately not. Will this data ever be publicly available? No. Did a black market exist? Most definitely.
Of course it will be. You are assuming that the RBI will not publish data on remonetization. You are also assuming that the Income Tax department automatically accepts every deposit made between November 8th and December 31st as white money without conducting an audit. In fact, I'll argue that it has become so much more easier now for the Government to easily audit deposits as they have entered the formal system to catch evaders and bring them to book than to go after those who had hoards of cash stacked in their secret lockers.
> What if I don't agree with some of the articles of the constitution? Can I exercise my free speech rights to criticize the said articles without being charged with sedition?
You have already done it.
> Can I express those free speech rights by not standing up for the national anthem and not be charged for an offence?
If you are in India you are duty bound to stand. It is part of fundamental duties of every citizen of India. If you don't like it you can give up your Indian citizenship and adopt citizenship of another country.
> I am being instructed by legislation to sit or stand or perform some other body movement to uphold the legitimacy of a document, or an ideology, which I may or may not agree with. That was true for the Nazi salute as well.
No both are different. When you sit or stand, you do it for the concept of India and not for an ideology. The Nazi salute was a salute for an ideology that only catered to one section of society. The Constitution of India has a place for all except those who question the very ethos of India's existence. If you do not agree with the legitimacy of document you have no business accepting citizenship under the very document. That is highly hypocritical don't you think?
> There are very very subtle points that deal with things like burning the national flag and not "respecting" the national anthem. I urge you to check out the first amendment of the american constition and US supreme court rulings regarding their national anthem and national flag and what constitutes disrespect and what constitutes a criminal offence. Its fascinating stuff. The Indian constitution and the our Supreme court have a long way to go!
No we don't have a long way to go. India is a Sovereign Nation. Just because the US has a particular constitution doesn't mean we need to adopt the same. Would you be happy if we adopted the Second Amendment as well? It's ridiculous to compare constitutions. These are documents that are made based on historical as well as cultural differences. The United States is not as diverse as India. It's constitution would wreak havoc in an already fragile Indian society.
You're incredibly rude, short sighted, and all your huffing and puffing amounts to is a poor utilitarian defense of a horribly executed demonetization.
Sorry to be brash, but I'm appalled at your behavior and I'm about to walk into work so there's no time to dance around the facts.
Ok so now my "behavior" is under question with my statements being called "morbid", "rude", "short sighted", "huffing and puffing". Is it because I have a contrary opinion to yours? I fail to understand how my comments are "rude" when it's very apparent that you are the one being rude here (and you admit it yourself: "Sorry to be brash").
> "I'm about to walk into work so there's no time to dance around the facts"
I wasn't expecting a factual rebuttal after you called me "rude, short sighted" and "huffing and puffing" anyways.
Then there's the inflation question. If CPI is 3%, and my capital gains amounts to 6% of my portfolio, my real increase in wealth is only 3%. But I pay tax on 6%?