vania-janet/multiturn-rag-retrieval-data huggingface dataset:
Definitely more in the economics wheelhouse, but I thought it would be interesting to write a research paper on the black market premium. With marijuana becoming legalized in more and more districts it's interesting to see the effect on prices.  I live in Canada and many of my friends are very sure that prices will rise because of taxes. I am not so sure. I think economies of scale and getting rid of the black market premium will more than make up for the costs of regulation and taxation.
"Others have given some good answers. I'd just like to chime in with one more option: treasury I-series bonds. They're linked to an inflation component, so they won't lose value (in theory). You can file tax returns for your children ""paying"" taxes (usually 0) on the interest while they're minors, so they appreciate tax-free until they're 18. Some of my relatives have given my children money, and I've invested it this way. Alternatively, you can buy the I-bonds in your own name. Then if you cash them out for your kids' education, the interest is tax-free; but if you cash them out for your own use, you do have to pay taxes on the interest."
"I think this can be answered by answering the question ""Who buys 10 year old cars?"".  Generally speaking those buyers are very price conscious.  They are looking to save money on transportation rather than following the herd of people participating in the car payments merry-go-round.   The cost of parts, repairs, and gasoline for those cars do not go down over time.  Remember that many of those cars require the use of premium gasoline.  This drastically reduces demand for those vehicles, thus lowers the price. Luckily I have a really good and reasonable mechanic near me, and I can float repairs and the higher gas.  I love driving my 1999 Mercedes and it is one of the least expensive cars that I have owned while also being one of the most comfortable."
Price point I'd guess.  You can buy 2-3 lesser tablets for the price of the arguably pretty Impressive Pro 2 and/or Pro 3.   Full discolsure I have a Pro 2, I love it, but that's just because I hate the idea of having an oversized phone instead of an actual computer.
I bet it isn't too bad and if the numbers are large enough I could be better.  I've been in too many rentals where the steering wheel at my desired angle obscured the speed and I had to do this weird scrunch and turn to see my speed.  Have a Tesla S and can tell you I always glance over to see the song artist and map instead of the copy in front of me.  I prefer it, but curious how it measures in distracted driving for a glance.  If they get to full auto drive it will be much better where it is.
I think these systems of wealth re-allocation is where the heart of the debate about the American economy is or should be. Should we have our government intervene and re-allocate wealth in some way? It already does to some degree, although arguably in a bad way. It's much easier to avoid taxes when you can pay for the sort of expert good at avoiding that sort of thing. Middle/Poor class individuals end up paying more taxes relative to their income further exacerbating wealth inequality. I think it was Bill Gates and probably many others that have mentioned that one of the best ways to get money to underutilized market participants is by investing in businesses who then employ people.  I think the concern with the American economy and everything else dependent to it is that the mechanisms/pipelines for enabling the poorly utilized are outgunned by the mechanisms/pipelines for taking the money from the poor/middle class and putting it in the hands of the rich. Loan-based financial products are the biggest offenders I think. If only hypothetically I would like to see what an economy would look like if loans were simply not an option, or if the idea of merit qualifying a person for a loan/financing were significantly more accurate.
Middle class taxes are about as low as they have ever been. They are certaily much lower than most of the industrialized world.  &gt;So proportionally the middle classes end up paying the most tax and gets the least for it.  No, the rich pay the largest percentage of the tax dollars and they pay more per dollar earned than the middle class. You can check this easily from IRS tax statistics. A person paying a million in taxes a year doesn't use the roads 50 times as much as someone paying 20,000 a year either, and most other services scale similarly. So I'd say the middle class actually gets more use out of their tax dollars than the rich.
"&gt; Because something is legal doesn't make it the ethical choice.  &gt; &gt; You fail to demonstrate what is unethical about minimizing tax burdens.  Operating in a country that allows you to make profit, in my opinion, establishes a duty to pay one's fair share of taxes.  Paying legislators to make laws enabling tax avoidance is, in my mind, unethical.  Clearly we have a different idea of what is ethical and not. &gt; corporations making huge profits using the infrastructure of the region  &gt; &gt;Did the corporations have an option to refuse using that infrastructure, and instead provide their own or work with others to develop a competing infrastructure?  Yes.   &gt; Keep in mind that these favorable tax laws were lobbied by  corporations with the intent to avoid taxes in mind.  &gt;&gt;You have failed to support any argument that there is anything wrong with minimizing tax burden.  That's like your opinion man.  I don't think minimizing taxes by paying off legislators is equitable...call me crazy.  &gt;If I'm walking behind someone and they happen to drop a $100 bill without noticing, I can certainly pick it up and put it in my pocket legally, but its hardly the moral thing to do.  &gt;&gt;A more relevant example is if I order a pizza, have it sent to your house, then show up later with a bill for the pizza and my costs to send it to you, demanding you pay it. You never asked for the pizza, maybe you didn't want the pizza, maybe you didn't eat the pizza, maybe you don't like pizza, or don't like that kind of pizza. That I choose to send you a pizza does not obligate you to pay for that pizza.  Lost me on this one bro...I thought we were talking ethics...not surprise pizzas.  How about this one:   I go to your house, use your kitchen and ingredients to make a pizza, sell the pizza for a profit and give you nothing even though we had an agreement that if I could make a profit I would give you some.  However, I decide to talk to your roommate and give him a measly dollar to say ""forget about it bro...I said it's cool""."
"I am a numbers guy, the math is great. Instead of ""jane was twice her son's age when he married, and is now 1.5 times his age....."" questions in math class, I think the math problems should mostly have dollar/pound signs in front of them.  In general, I like the idea of relating to the kids' situations as much as possible. When my daughter (14) makes a purchase, I'd ask her to be aware of how many hours she had to work to make the money she plans to spend. Was it worth 4 hours babysitting to buy an iPad case? Was it worth 2 to buy lunch that we could have made you at home?  (Note, the 'convert price to hours worked' is a concept that works great when teaching budgeting to anyone, not just kids.)  The math of tax and discounts for comparison shopping works great as well so long as they understand value. A $400 sweatshirt at 50% off isn't really a bargain, in my opinion.   Next, the math of balancing a checkbook should be high on the list. Accounting for the checks that didn't clear but are outstanding is beyond many people, amazing enough.  For the sport fan, there are unlimited math problem one can create for game scores, stats for the season, etc. Young boys who will fall asleep during a stats class will pay attention if instead of abstract numbers, you add 'goals' 'home runs' etc, after the numbers.  (Note - this question is probably outside the scope of the board, no right or wrong answer. But I love it as a question in general, and if not here, I hope it finds a good home.)"
"I would contribute to the Roth over the course of the year assuming the worst case scenario (actually the best base from another POV, since you're making more money!). Save the rest of the money in a regular account, and make your final, ""top off"" contribution when you compute your final AGI for 2011 taxes. You have until April 15, 2012 to make tax year 2011 contributions. I'm in a similar situation due to my wife's overtime, which is very variable from year to year. At this point, I don't make any IRA contributions until I do my taxes."
Yeah I know, that's how it was for the first two weeks, then after a couple of launches with the guys and few playful jokes at their expense, they kinda accepted me and instead of them giving me work, I tried to make the impression of me practically begging for something to do at the office.
I'm not sure if any of those plans can be used for a kid that has not been born yet however. I'd recommend http://www.savingforcollege.com as a good starting point to get more information on your various options. As with retirement savings, money put in earlier has a lot more 'power' over the final balance due to compounding interest, so there's a lot to be said for starting early, although depending on what it takes to qualify for the plans there could be such a thing as too early ;-) ). There's nothing wrong with Managed mutual funds as long as the fund objective and investing style is in alignment with your objectives and risk tolerance; The fund is giving you a good return relative to the market as a whole; You are not paying high fees or load charges; You are not losing a lot to taxes. I would always look at the return after expenses when comparing to other options, and if the money is not in a tax deferred account, also look at what sort of tax burden you will be faced with. A fund that trades a lot will generate more short term gains which means more taxes than compared to a more passive fund. Anything lost to taxes is money lost to you so needs to come out of the total return when you calculate that. Sometimes such funds are better off as a choice inside an IRA or 401K, and you can instead use more tax efficient vehicles for money where you have to pay the taxes every year on the gains. The reason a lot of folks like index funds better is that: Given your described age, it's not appropriate now, but in the long run as you get closer to retirement, you may want to start looking at building up some investments that are geared more towards generating income, such as bonds, or depending on taxes where you live, Municipal bonds. In any case, the more money you can set aside for retirement now, both inside and outside of tax deferred accounts, the sooner you will get to the point of the 'critical mass' you need to retire, at that point you can work because you want to, not because you have to.
"I work in the legal services industry, selling these products for a competitor of theirs who shall remain nameless.  The LLC filing itself in most cases is a simple fill in the blank form. You can likely file yourself either online or through the mail, depending on the state. Only a handful require an original document.  You can apply for the EIN for free on the IRS website and usually have it within a few minutes. If you already have someone assisting with your annual LLC taxes you wouldn't need their services for that either. If their compliance kit involves any business licensing research, it may be worthwhile - but you can also order those services a la carte from vendors like LLX and BusinessLicenses.com.  What you're really paying for is the registered agent service - the address for public record with the state so they know where to send any service of process - and you're paying for the convenience of a ""one stop shop"" instead of handling all the legwork yourself."
I would then use the ROC Indicator to sell out completely out of the ETF when it crosses below zero or to buy back in when the ROC moves back above zero. As you can see in both charts the two indicators would have kept you out of the market during the worst of the downfalls in 2000 and 2008 for the S&P500 and 2008 for the ASX200. If there is a false signal that gets you out of the market you can quite easily get back in if the indicator goes back above zero. Using these indicators you would have gotten into the market 3 times and out of it twice for the S&P500 over a 20 year period. For the ASX200 you would have gone in 6 times and out 5 times, also over a 20 year period. For individual shares I would use the ROC indicator over the main index the shares belong to, to give an indication of when to be buying individual stocks and when to tighten stop losses and stay on the sidelines. My philosophy is to buy rising stocks in a rising market and sell falling stocks in a falling market. So if the ROC indicator is above zero I would be looking to buy fundamentally healthy stocks that are up-trending and place a 20% trailing stop loss on them. If I get stopped out of one stock then I would look to replace it with another as long as the ROC is still above zero. If the ROC indicator crosses below zero I would tighten my trailing stop losses to 5% and not buy any new stocks once I get stopped out. Some additional indicators I would use for individual stock would be trend lines and using the MACD as a momentum indicator. These two indicators can give you further early warning that the stock may be about to reverse from its current trend, so you can tighten your stop loss even if the ROC is still above zero. Here is an example chart to explain: GEM.AX 3 Year Weekly Chart Basically if the price closes below the trend line it may be time to close out the position or at the very least tighten up your trailing stop loss to 5%. If the price breaks below an established uptrend line it may well be the end of the uptrend. The definition of an uptrend is higher highs and higher lows.
A 529 has a custodian and beneficiary. If, say, my Mom is custodian and my daughter the beneficiary, neither my daughter, my wife, nor I can access this account. In fact, if my daughter chooses not to attend college, Mom can change beneficiaries.  So, a 529 is ideal for what you have described.  By the way, your wife may have broken the law. Money in your child's name/SSN cannot simply be taken from the account at a parent's whim. You have every right to ask for an accounting of that money and insist she return it to your child's account.  Edit - I was going to add that UTMA money may only be spent for the benefit of the child, and not for day to day items, food, clothing, etc. The article The proper use of UTMA funds provides a bit of support to my position on that.
CFDs should not be used as a buy and hold strategy (which is risky enough doing with shares directly). However, with proper money and risk management and the proper use of stop losses, a medium term strategy is very plausible.  I was using CFDs in the past over a short time period of usually between a couple of days to a couple is weeks, trying to catch small swings with very tight stops. I kept getting wipsawed due to my stops being too tight so had too many small loses for my few bigger wins. And yes I lost some money, almost $5k in one year. I have recently started a more medium term strategy with wider stops trying to catch trending stocks. I have only recently started this strategy and so far have 2 loses and 3 wins. Just remember that you do get charged a financing fee for holding long position overnight, buy for short position you actually get paid the funding fee for overnight positions. My broker charges the official interest rate + 2.5% for long positions and pays the official rate - 2.5% for short positions. So yes CFDs can be used for the longer term as long as you are implementing proper money and risk management and use stop losses. Just be aware of the implications of using margin and all the costs involved.
they are the same price as the news stand one but don't actually include the FULL magazine! And no where on the site does it say this... some of these do end up getting downvoted in the amazon reviews but I've accidentally purchased a few of these and felt screwed. 7. MANY/MOST of the books you use don't actually have an appendix. They're just flat out stripped/removed. This is because the Kindle pages and the book pages don't line up... However, in PDF versions they are there and they're working. I think the PDFs are the leaked master copy which they use to print the book. 8. Some of my Kindle books are far inferior to the print edition that I actually own due to misc errors. For example, one of them is missing a whole 2 chapters at the end which were author notes after the book was written but the Kindle version says it's the same ISBN / edition as the one I own. 9. What about Errata / bugs...? If they make a mistake do they give you a NEW copy of the book? For example in #8 that's clearly a bug... they should have included those two chapters. Do I get a new copy of the book when they fix it? Will they EVER fix it? Do my notes/highlights work with the new version? Do I get to keep the older version. In short... I do NOT mind paying. In fact I allocated the money to upgrade my entire book collection to electronic. But I'll be damned if i do that now... the experience is SO bad that I don't want to give them the satisfaction of taking my money for this crap. Further... e-books could be a REVOLUTION in the way we perceive books. Why are we limiting ourselves to JUST text? Why not interactive graphs, spreadsheets, charts. I should be able to manipulate the examples, change numbers, zoom in, etc. High resolution images for example that look AWESOME on my 30"" display. Video included/embedded directly into the book.
In one of your comments you say: Even if the pharmacy is not in the insurance provider network? This is why you got the check instead of your insurance company. I have Blue Cross/Blue Shield, and recently my wife underwent a procedure in the hospital, where one of the physicians involved was not in my providers network. I got a letter from the physicians office stating that since they are out of network, the standard practice was for BCBS to issue the check to me, rather than to the provider. I received the check and made the payment. The main contention is the difference in price, and that is what you need to discuss with both the pharmacy (actual billing) and your insurance company (paid benefits).
&gt; The government can stimulate innovation yes, but only at the expense of someone else.  I don't agree with this. There's a very good ROI on investments in innovation. I have applied for subsidies for research and innovation myself. For my government, a ROI of 2000% (!) in 5 years is what they are looking for. But they use a different metric: when I say I create a new job that did not exist that pays 50.000 Euro/year, this is added to the expected profit. New jobs at suppliers and customers are also counted. Everything is taxed between 30% and 50%. So the ROI for the government is there.  The reason innovation in the States is slacking is because the Obama administration failed to invest in research and innovation.  &gt;The actual price of money itself is manufactured  Of course it is.
You, as an apple-farmer, can hire workers *before* the crop is harvested, and therefore can grow more, and your workers can eat year-round instead of just getting a huge pile of apples at harvest-time to try and trade for for whatever they will need for the rest of the year. So back to money... The thing to remember is that all throughout, from the initial trade to this central-banking system, *all of this money is debt*. It is IOUs, except instead of being an IOU that says ""Kancho_Ninja will give one bushel of apples to the bearer of this bond in October"", it says **""Anyone in town will give you anything worth one bushel of apples in trade.""** The money is not an actual *thing* that you can eat or wear or build a house with, it's an IOU that is redeemable anywhere, for anything, from anyone. It is a promise to pay equivalent value at some time in the future, except the holder of the money can call on anybody at all to fulfill that promise-- they don't have to go back to the original promiser. **This is where it starts getting interesting, and where we can start to answer your question...** (for the sake of simplicity, let's stop calling these notes ""apple certificates"", and pretend that the village has decided to call them ""Loddars""). - So now you're still growing apples, but instead of trading them for deer-haunches and shoes, you trade them for Loddars. So far, so good. - Once again, you want some meat, except harvest time hasn't come yet so you don't have any Loddars to buy meat with. You call me up (cellphones have been invented in this newly-efficient economy), ""Hey otherwiseyep, any chance you could kill me a deer and I'll give you ten Loddars for it at harvest-time?"" - I say, ""Jeez, I'd love to, but I really need all the cash I can get for every deer right now: my kid is out-growing shoes like crazy.
"Last month I spend about 3-4 days totally diving into the Kindle, e-books, DRM, etc. My goal was to basically replace my entire book collection online with books that I could annotate, edit, etc. The result? Kindle and the DRM suck. The pirate experience an order of magnitude BETTER than the Kindle and DRM experience. 1. Not all books are even available on the Kindle or other DRM platforms. Pirated books? Not a problem. I can pretty much get any book I want in a matter of minutes. Sometimes I have to spend a while to find them... maybe 10-15 minutes. 2. The quality of the DRM books are horrible. For Kindle they use fixed-width bitmap graphics. However, many of the PDF books that I've been using use PDFs and vector graphics which means they look NICE on my 30"" monitor. 4. I can use Skim to edit and manipulate the books ... I can attach annotations, I can copy text out... I can add bookmarks, I can highlight pages. In Kindle I can do this but it's VERY basic and frankly the highlighting sucks and is hard to use. 5. The Kindle books are handicapped by the publishers and they won't let you actually copy text from them.. SOME of the publishers do let you do this but I want a CONSISTENT experience. I don't' want to be reading a book and want to copy a paragraph to a friend only to find out that this is disabled. 6. Some of the magazine editions SUCK... they are the same price as the news stand one but don't actually include the FULL magazine! And no where on the site does it say this... some of these do end up getting downvoted in the amazon reviews but I've accidentally purchased a few of these and felt screwed. 7. MANY/MOST of the books you use don't actually have an appendix. They're just flat out stripped/removed.
Oh poor me I have to drive a shiny and clean sedan instead of shiny and clean sports car on a trip I'm not even paying for /s.   Don't try and justify an entitlement complex. This guy is pissed that his ass has to be in a nice Kia instead of a nice Mustang on a trip he isn't even paying for, while the majority of the world's population still live agricultural lifestyles from the cradle to the grave.