Oh we know lol

People with their birthday on Monday are not going like that their birthday is always on Monday…

Things seem to work fine with the calendar we have anyway.

programmer’s eye twitches

“But many who are first will be last, and many who are last will be first.”

However it’s obtained it’s something very hard for the well resourced and powerful to do. Jesus anticipated it’s the “very least” in this life who have the capacity to be recognised as “first” in the Kingdom.

The sentiment is there though…

2 Thessalonians 3:10 “While we were with you, this we commanded you: If someone won’t work, then neither shall they eat”

Matthew 20:30

“At resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven.”

I think that’s where the sentiment comes from. It’s explicit in Mormonism (I think). In mainstream Christianity the saved don’t become angels, they become like angels.

Matthew 19:28

Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, at the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man sits on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.

[end quote]

Whether “12 tribes of Israel” here is figurative of the global church or not, there still definitely some role in judgement delegated out to the apostles.

Can’t speak for Catholics but most reformed protestants (evangelicals) will be being taught their sins are already washed away and any judgement for the ‘saved’ after death is only about their quality of walk with god and quality of reward in heaven, it’s not a heaven/hell judgment. That’s only for the ‘unsaved’.

In Matthew 16 Jesus gives Peter the “keys to the kingdom” and in Revelation the new Jerusalem has pearls for gates. That’s where it comes from.

It comes from Matthew 16

15 “But what about you?” Jesus asked. “Who do you say I am?”

16 Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”

17 Jesus replied, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven. 18 And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. 19 I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”

[end quote]

So, yes, authority given to St Peter to “bind and loose” in heaven and on earth. How that’s supposed to work alongside it being Jesus separating the sheep from the goats is anyone’s guess.

The reason this takes place at the “pearly gates” is because the new Jerusalem descending from heaven in Revelation is described as having giant pearls for gates.

Colloquially, expat tends to imply self funded, or at least bringing wealth with them in some respect. That’s not what the word literally means but it’s how I see it used. This is consistent even with foreign professionals coming to work in, say, London. Few people refer to them as immigrants though that’s what they are technically. (I’ve seen people be called an “ex pat from their country” or an “international worker”, these both in the city of London referring to office based professionals) The word immigrant seems to be reserved (at least in Britain) as a pejorative because it implies low skill and by further implication, a net cost on public services.

Maybe globalism was a bad idea? Maybe we should just create a lot of monkey spheres and each find our own local and relative level of happiness?

The battle against global starvation is one of the few things that’s actually going well…

https://assets.ourworldindata.org/uploads/2018/03/Famine-death-rate-since-1860s-revised-768x540.png

Twitter: looks like the reich guy won!

Me: https://open.spotify.com/track/2RlgNHKcydI9sayD2Df2xp?si=H4xTyfGUTputdg6R4GVAbA

Thanks. Yes will certainly read up on it. I’ve come to finance somewhat backwards, having to learn very specific technical things for working in IT and I’m now working backwards to some generalities I might have totally missed.

Is this a tax on the market cap of the company though? Or is it a tax on assets it holds?

I believe the general sentiment is “Bezos / Amazon is worth XX billion why can’t the state have a slice of that for social good?” But I think various existing taxes are smaller and too far removed from the headline value of the market cap of the business. And there isn’t anything that would enrich the public purse to that degree short of having a comparable stake in the ownership of the business.

I think Germany actually does something like this but I don’t know much about it.

Ultimately I think it’s right that something feels a bit ‘wrong’ about one man like Musk, Bezos, Gates having control over such huge wealth, but as I was saying above those complaints generally ignore that this is a value of an asset not cash and it’s not like the government could do something with Amazon shares if it has them other than just sell them. The complaints also generally ignore that these uber wealthy are paying tax whenever they sell stock to have more cash on hand, and that one day whenever they cash out of the company entirely, that’ll be a windfall tax take for the government too.

I get that the inequality feels wrong. But it’s hard not to feel like it’s “we the people” that make Amazon (or whatever) so valuable by continually choosing to trade with it. Same way professional footballers have an absurd amount of money. But then millions of people are all willing to spend $x to watch them specifically play. If we don’t like it we have other choices, but we don’t want to.

Yes, tax havens are a problem

I’d almost say that companies should be taxed not on profits but on revenue

This is what sales tax is though. Tax collected at the point of sale (ie revenue). You can collect it direct from companies instead but all you’d see is the ‘sales tax’ line of your shopping cart go higher.

Profit is taxed instead of revenue (in general) because companies operate on wildly different margins (the difference between revenue and profit). So let’s ignore the fact it would get passed directly onto consumers and assume a revenue tax is borne by the companies… Say your revenue tax was 2% you might have a negligible effect on Apple, they have a large gap between their revenue and costs so they just absorb this as a tiny dent on profits, Tesla might be hit moderately hard (the amount of profit they turn compared to revenue is smaller so a revenue tax makes a much larger impact on profit), and it may have a catastrophic impact on Starbucks (very small gap between revenue and expenses so decreasing revenue via a 2% tax almost completely eradicates profits).

I’m making up which company’s which just to illustrate that a revenue tax doesn’t land equally across companies. Some industries are low margin some are high margin and a revenue tax disproportionally clobbers low margin industries. Which might not be the effect we wanted. So it’s better to tax profit.

This does create issues where companies deliberately don’t turn a profit because they aggressively reinvest in expansion and acquisition.

You don’t have to repay income. When you repay the loan should you get the tax back?

Yes that’s true, I was trying to make the point that the ownership of the company is usually directly responsible for its success, whatever form that takes. And forcing the dilution of ownership (by taxing a company on its overall market cap rather than its profits) is only going to be disruptive to whatever arrangement made it successful in the first place (be that forcing control out of the hands of a good founder or diluting the control of a group of investors that approved a good board). Don’t get me wrong, that might sometimes be a good thing. It’s just that the logic “you’ve made this company is so successful you’re going to have less control over it” is unlikely to work out well in the long run. Better to take more taxes from profits if anything (as long as that’s internationally competitive) or have stronger laws preventing companies with huge value from muscling in and taking over competitors or whole industries (eg Musk etc)

And what exactly is the difference between a loan and a loan acting as income?

Why? Are any loans ever taxed?

There were tax evasion schemes in the UK where wealthy people could take loans from an offshore entity they contributed to and never pay the loans back. But this was shutdown fairly quickly by HMRC (British IRS) and a bunch of people were fined / went to jail. Don’t know if the same is true in America?