styrophone

Is there a relative tax advantage to waiting to sell ESPP shares? AFAIK, an ESPP discount counts as earned income in the same year, and LTCG tax advantages would only apply to growth, which would be the case for holding any other stock over that period.

It seems your comment is characterizing the OP as a complaint mostly in search of sympathy. That doesn’t strike me to be the purpose of the post at all.

The OP is using him or herself as an example of a real behavior in response to real economic incentives, no matter how unsympathetic you find their circumstance. The fact that this situation discourages moves that most other markets encourage is a worthwhile point to bring up. Among other things, it reduces supply which has a profound effect on new buyers.

Incentives influence actions much more than personal criticism does. The OP’s relatively fortunate outcome does not mean that they don’t have something relevant to share. In contrast, targeting them with pejorative shaming is totally unhelpful.

>it will always be cheaper to buy than rent.

That's decidedly untrue. In many markets you can make the case that conservative assumptions result in a cheaper buy option. However, the Bay Area in particular throws that calculus in reverse for many neighborhoods and property types.

Your argument seems to rely on the premise that buying is monteraily cheaper in the long run as long as you're willing to put in nominal sweat equity and risk. And that labor buys you some sort of citizenship that money, for the same amount of tenure, does not. The Bay Area market does not reward that puritanical ethic.

I did the same thing to help me get my head around it. For anyone else finding it difficult to imagine the probabilities in Monty Hall intuitively, consider replacing the 3 doors with 100 doors. After you choose the first door, the host opens 98 of the remaining 99 doors. That generalization, at least for me, helps to show that the problem can be reduced to the choice of 1 door vs all unchosen doors.

Yeah, the choice of a non-inertial reference frame for this example is a little confusing to me too. I also haven't been able to find an independent mention of the spinning astronaut experiment.

I think this thought experiment assumes the astronaut is spinning around an axis orthogonal to their belly. From the cartwheeling astronaut's perspective, the other one is also cartwheeling in their own plane.

A lot of spam doesn't expect a response and only cares about link impressions.

>It also pains me to see such luxury spent on the elderly. While you may have a personal attachment to them, the rest of society would do much better with that money spent to educate and help the new generations.

I don't think we have any reason to believe that this is an unearned luxury lavished on a lucky elderly couple. It appears more likely that this is their own money, saved and invested over their lifetime, and their's to spend how they wish. Furthermore, advanced age is no reason to cast someone off to a bland waiting room. It's not healthy for a society to consider somebody's value limited to their future contribution potential. I'm happy to contribute economically to present-day's elderly folks, not only for my own attachment to someone, but for the social contract that I, too, will be old, and I doubt I'll suddenly just want to stand in the corner.

> I heard it does strange things to the mind to cut rat heads for an hour straight

I've spent a few years doing that. While I can see how the image might appear to folks who haven't been in that field, it's a bit hyperbolic to to think of it as a soul-bending meat grinder. Conducting an animal study in a reputable institution is regulated by an ethics committee with the purpose of scrutinizing scientific motivation and the care of animals. When you're clear on the purpose, methods, and minimum animal requirements, it isn't butchery. Furthermore, keeping the animals comfortable (through medication and other means) doesn't just serve to make the researcher feel good; it also eases stress on the animals, which otherwise can confound medical data. In short, it's a sophisticated professional endeavor, and the science gets more mindshare than the visceral unpleasantness of performing surgery on an animal. It has also been my experience that most people without experience in animal research can be quite surprised by the degree of similarity between animal care and use committees and human subject research review boards. Animal researchers can have a fairly high bar to clear to justify the use of vertebrate animals.

I don't think suicide is inherently a much worse cause of death than many others, but it is often associated with a mental illness, outside of which the sufferer would not choose to die. Althoigh the illness manifests as free will, it is an illness nonetheless that might be treated. I don't mean to say that it is impossible for a person of sound mind to choose not to live any longer. However, given how often treatment results in improved will to live and improved quality of life, I think it would be irresponsible to assume a healthy mind without challenge and go to euthanasia as a first resort standard of care. We certainly wouldn't do that for any other presentation of symptoms.