> If I showed somebody two images of inner city traffic jams, they wouldn't be able to tell me which is humans driving gas engine'd cars, and which is self driving electric vehicles.
The city with self-driving cars will economically outperform the city with human-driven gas cars.
Just like America economically outperforms Europe. The best and brightest from Europe/cities with manual human drivers will leave their dying cities behind and move to the futuristic, inspiring, and highly-compensating self-driving car city/America.
Europeans are upset that America is getting away with treating the underprivileged so poorly, yet America constantly outperforms Europe $-wise. And yes, everything in life is about $.
Tesla pays 100-150K USD for new grad SWE including stock options/RSU. For AI, it’s about 150-200K.
Or you can drive 15 minutes to Google and a SWE gets 200K and AI gets 200-250K. Or “sell out” and work in quant finance for 400-500K new grad SWE as a 22 year old.
So no, people do not work at Tesla/SpaceX for the money.
I have many friends at Tesla, Neuralink, SpaceX, and they complain how little they are paid, how they have no free time, and how they hope the name brand on their resume gets them a higher paying job some day. Looks like they bought Elon’s bullshit.
> All you need is a couple of index funds and bonds.
Ah, spoken like a true middle class Boglehead.
VTI/VOO will not change your life, even after 30 years. Broad market ETFs are not worth the risk.
You’re better off doing bonds (little to no risk) or crypto (high risk, more likely for life-changing generational wealth compared, even compared to FAANG SWE TC).
By that measure, the people who had their life savings in FTX (and Celsius and Luna before that) have certainly succeeded.
Investing in total-market index funds is the single best strategy for the average investor. (In fact it's so good there's a proof! [1]) If you invested $10000 in the total US market in 1992 (30 years ago) and never touched it again, your inflation-adjusted balance today would be $72452 [2]. That's an insane 7x of real growth that requires absolutely no effort on your part. Even if you did a more conservative mix of 60% stock and 40% bond (VBMFX) you would have 4.5x real growth.
> And yet his companies are some of the most difficult to get a job at. Interesting.
It’s more difficult to get a tech job at FBI/CIA than Google. Does that make the US government a more desirable place to work?
As an aside, top talent definitely does NOT work at Elon’s companies. Top talent knows that “a good company mission” does not pay for rent, mortgage, or daycare.
> As an aside, top talent definitely does NOT work at Elon’s companies.
This is just not true. There's tons of exceptional engineers working at various of Elon's companies. Would you really claim that SpaceX doesn't have world-class engineers?
> I know that in Andrej's interview he talks about how he felt the Tesla team had become autonomous and didn't rely on him anymore, maybe George resonated with that.
Ah, yes. Andrej left because the Tesla team has everything to finish FSD this year.
It has nothing to do with Elon’s obsession with the Boston Dynamics robot, nor the failed progress on FSD.
To be fair, this doesn’t consider the fuel costs of the extra 46 kg or so of baggage allowance that passengers have, the additional check-in desks that need to be “kiosked” and/or staffed, etc.
I’m sure it still works out for them, but it’s far from obvious and probably depends on many passengers not maximizing their allowance.
What percent of Americans buy and sell a property within a year? I bet it is pretty low.
> stocks
All the major players report this information.
> ETFs, crypto
The vast majority of people use exchanges like Coinbase and Binance. These already report.
So I'm not sure what your point really is. That there are edge cases? No shit. No one is even arguing against that. The argument for return free filing is that the vast majority of people will benefit from the system. Even if there are mistakes it is easier to look over something and correct it than do everything from scratch. The people that won't majorly benefit from this likely already have more than enough wealth to pay someone to do their taxes already and honestly I'm not concerned about them.
Don't let perfection get in the way of massive improvement.
You pay capital gains on any property sale where you earn income unless you reinvest the money in another property or use the one-time exemption. I don't know why you think the sale being within a year or not makes any difference. The major players know when you sell the stock and for how much, but they don't know the cost basis. The sale could be LIFO or FIFO and you might have transferred the stock into the brokerage without them ever knowing the purchase price. These are not edge cases.
Sorry, I looked at a bad source. But looks like so did you. Here's Investopedia:
> You can sell your primary residence and be exempt from capital gains taxes on the first $250,000 if you are single and $500,000 if married filing jointly. (once every 2 years)
> You can add your cost basis and costs of any improvements that you made to the home to the $250,000 if single or $500,000 if married filing jointly.
So I'll change my question:
What percentage of home owners are profiting >$250k (single)/ >$500k (married)? What percent of them do that more frequently than a 2 year period?
I'm willing to bet that these numbers are still very low. That's the entire point. I'm sure there's nuance I've missed as I'm not an expert. But my entire point isn't about specifics, it is that your argument against this system is about edge cases. If you can prove that these aren't edge cases, I'll actually side with you. If not, I still see return free filing as an extremely beneficiary policy to the vast majority of Americans, and especially to those with the least income. I already know that 90% of households take the standard deduction, so you're going to have to make some substantial claims.
It's straightforward to calculate real estate capital gains from reported information. Remember, real estate transactions (including sales prices) are public records.
> The Tax Reform Act of 1986 required anyone responsible for closing a real estate transaction, which may include the escrow agent, title company, or attorney, to report a real estate sale or exchange to the IRS on Form 1099-S. In addition, they were required to furnish a statement to the seller of the gross proceeds of the sale. In 1998, with the passage of the Tax Payer Relief Act of 1997, an exception to this reporting requirement was allowed.
> If the sale price of your residence is $250,000 or less ($500,000 or less for married sellers) and you have lived in the property, as your principal residence, for the last two out of the last five years, your closing agent will not be required to file Form 1099-S with the IRS. The gross proceeds of the sale need not be reported to the IRS if these conditions are met.
> Be sure that your closing agent has your written confirmation that your sale is exempt from the IRS reporting rule. Most closing agents have a form, called a “Certification for No Information Reporting on the Sale or Exchange of a Principal Residence” which you will you be asked to sign at closing. The form will ask for your seller information, social security number, address, and certification that you have met the exemption requirements.
Nah, even the Porsche Cayman is more prestigious than the Tesla Plaid.