vania-janet/multiturn-rag-retrieval-data huggingface dataset:
The value to you of a tax free fund is going to depend largely on your current marginal tax bracket. For example if you had a regular MM that was paying 1% and it was taxable, then your net off that one percent would be  If the tax free MM fund pays .75% then you would be a tiny bit ahead using it, if you are in the 28% bracket, but you would be behind if you are in anything lower than 25%   The primary market (IMHO) for Tax Free money market funds is for high wealth individuals who are in the 33 OR 35 percent brackets
Most of that money goes into regulations of and subsidies for the healthcare market which is the reason for the insanely high market prices; they basically suffocated every last bit of competition.  'Welcome to society' isn't exactly a fitting expression... taxation is justified as long as everyone pays equal rates in exchange for an equal withdrawal of benefits. Everyone profits equally from courts and police.  Which is not the case for mandatory public health insurance: you force a minority at gunpoint to pay confiscatory tax rates (that's the only way you will be able to fund it) in order to finance a service they don't profit from at all. It's the exploitation of a minority and nothing else. Same goes for every form of forced redistribution of wealth.
"You're confused. This has nothing to do with taxes. It has to do with screwing people out of profit-sharing.  The shell company pays bogus/hyper-inflated fees to the parent company, who pays taxes on them.  That way, the contract with the shell company that says ""you get 5% of the profits"" now means nothing."
Cash has zero value until it is transformed into something material.  Cash hoarders realize no improvement in their lifestyle by gaining more cash than they need.  If corporations are already so flush with cash they only inflate the stock market, why would further tax breaks improve anything?  An inflated stock market only improves income for very few.  People who need money will spend it and put it back into circulation.  People will not hoard cash if they know more will show up regardless of their ability to perform.  Less financial pressure and less resentment of the rich for their preferential treatment would create a more positive attitude among the population and improve productivity.  A happier work force is a more productive work force.  People should only work part time anyway so they can have a life outside of work to enjoy their lives while they have the health to do it.  Slaving your life away until you can't do the things you always wanted to do does not improve a person's outlook.  Life according to me.  Was a reduction in unemployment compensation, medicare, medicade and SNAP payments included in the study?  There may be a reduction in spending on crime and addiction as well.
"Yeah the biggest problem with this is that it far more heavily taxes the poor than the rich.  Poor people spend *all of their income.*  Month-to-month, living paycheck-to-paycheck, poor people have no choice but to spend their entire incomes on basic necessities, utilities, etc.  Rich people on the other hand spend very little of their incomes.  Most of it gets stashed in hedgefunds and overseas holdings and doesn't really ""change hands"" in a way that allows it to be taxed under this style of tax structure.  So your tax continuously hits 100% of the wealth of the bottom 75%(ish) of households while largely bypassing the rich folks who have more money than they can *spend*.  In short, this kind of tax structure is really bad for anyone who doesn't make $300k+ a year and store most of their wealth in stocks and so forth.  If you want to help the general public (households making less than $300k/year), you need to generate more tax revenue from *investments* and *capital gains*.  A 2% tax, say, on stock trades valued over $10,000 obviously wouldn't hurt poor people at all, and also wouldn't really hurt the rich.  Cuz if you've got 10 grand (or a hundred, or thousand, or whatever) to stash in shares of Amazon or whatever, you're really not gonna miss the $200 that comes off the top of your trade.  But this *would* generate huge tax revenue, as there are thousands of such transfers a day."
If amazon paid dividends, those dividends would be taxed at payout at the long term capital gains rate, and they would be paid out of cash amazon has left after it already paid corporate taxes on profits. Amazon has decided they can add more value to investors by using cash to grow instead of paying dividends. When the investors sell the stock, they will owe capital gains on the growth of that stock. If amazon is correct that using cash to grow, then investors will effectively pay more when they sell the stock than they would pay today if dividends were paid. 2 - asset appreciation is not income. Those investors will realize the income when they sell the stock, and they will pay the tax then. 3 - he is missing the point entirely on why amazon runs a low profit or how business strategy translates into financials. Low prices are not a function of low profitability. Low profitability could be an adverse result of low pricing, but being low profit in order to be low price is a ridiculous and failing strategy. Amazon’s low pricing is a function of their unparalleled buying power, unparalleled consumer and product data, amazing logistics prowess, clever loyalty programs like amazon prime, and many other brilliant things they’ve done. Their low profitability is a function of their investment in things like amazon fresh, amazon Alexa, drone delivery, automated convenience stores, building out cloud computing infrastructure, and many other R&amp;D projects, $4 billion in original content spending for amazon prime video, and all kinds of expenditures years ahead of when they become profitable. By the time consumers want it, amazon already built it three years ago - this is the power of amazon. Sometimes multi billion dollar experiments fail, and all that money was for nothing. Sometimes they lose money for a few years and then become the infrastructure that runs a third of the internet. Amazon does not let fear of failure stop them, they invest in growth with their cash. This is how Bezos thinks - how do we build the future, not how can I avoid tax I do need to make a disclaimer here - there could be special tax treatment of classic cars that makes my example not work. Also classic cars may not appreciate in value.
I think you are thinking too hard about this. If a billionaire's assets increase 70% in the stock market, he created $700M in new wealth.  If 300 people each create a million dollars in new wealth. We have 300 new millionaires creating 300M in wealth, but still 70% of wealth among the 301 people was created by the billionaire. 300 new millionaires is still a good thing, no matter what you think about how to tax a billionaire's assets.
Couldn't you say the reverse, the lower investors are taxed, the more willing they are to invest into risky investments like sub-prime mortgages?  Edit: I think the major point John is trying to get across is that their are a myriad of factors that motivate people, profit is one of them, but not the only one.  And this business/financial culture thrives on and breeds people who's sole motivate is profit. Not helping the world, or creating something interesting, or feeding children, or creating a better quality of life for society, but pure profit above all else.     So if profit is your only motivation for anything, then having a 3% greater tax rate is completely uncalled for.
I'd invest in yourself.  Start up a side business.  Take a certification class that gets your foot in the door for something else (auctioneering, real estate sales, whatever).  Bid on a storage auction and try to re-sell it.  Learn Spanish (or whatever second language is best for your area).  And so forth. Most of the suggestions thus far are either debt reduction or passive investment.  You have good control on your debt, and most passive investments pay jack (though Lending Club might be a bit better than most).  Build up another basket to put your eggs in and build equity and cash flow instead of interest and dividends.  You're young.  This is the time to learn how to do it.
"For finance, you need to have a strong handle on how to use Excel. I don't mean ""I can write some formulas and make a complicated worksheet"", I mean ""I know the VBA language and can utilize macros and specific coding to streamline processes and eliminate some tasks"". Having VBA on your resume is a definite plus, especially in addition to the CFA L1/L2 candidacy. [Here's a great resource for learning VBA](http://www.excel-vba-easy.com/).  In addition to VBA, the ability to use R (the stats program) can also be incredibly helpful. That's a whole new beast than Excel, and has amazing capabilities that are almost perfect for finance. [Here's a resource](http://www.statmethods.net/) for learning the programming, but it requires a strong understanding of statistical methods and maybe another stats program like SPSS. If you Google ""learn R quickly"" or something like that, you can come up with something.  It sounds like you're a Seattlite (Amazon, Boeing, Russell), and so am I. If you'd like help networking, feel free to PM me. I'm a recent college grad, and over the past few years, I've built a pretty solid network in the investments community here. I can at least connect you to people that might be able to help out. If nothing else, I can at least give a ton more resources to learn from.   Edit: Also, Russell often uses LinkedIn to find new hires to interview. If you have a lot of groups and stuff in common with the HR team, you pop up higher in their searches. Look up their HR team, and find out what groups they're in, what companies they follow, etc.   Also, do you know if you want to go into corp. finance or investments? Two very different games."
Former investment banker here. I joined an M&amp;A group and then decided not to do PE, but that was what most peers did.   1) When in school, get the top grades. They want to see that you barely make mistakes. You're going to be dealing with other people's money, so very little room for error.   2) join the student finance organizations. If you can't join em, then create one. If that's too much, then go to their meetings and sit in. Do something. Get out there and don't take no for an answer.   3) do something on the side that shows your genuine interest. Start investing your own money. Come up with an investment thesis. This is going to show them you actually care about what you want to do and you're not all talk.   4) network. Network. Network. Friends of family. Family of friends. Strangers. You don't know who can help you, so know everyone. If you show that you are eager and willing to learn, people will bend over backwards to help you. Just remain humble. Don't be a snarky dick.   Stay focused. Stay determined. If something doesn't go your way, it's not the end. No road isn't always straight and paved. You might have to go on a winding gravel road to get to where you want to go, but if you want to get there bad enough, you'll make it. And maybe along the way, you might realize that it's not something you want to do, so you'll pivot. Nothing wrong with that. Do what you want, not what you think other people think you should do.   Good luck!
A more recent example is petrobras after their huge bond sale and subsequent corruption scandal. A lot of people questioned Petrobras' long-term ability to maintain sufficient liquidity to pay back the loans, but the cashflow and long term projections are more than solid. A year later the stock was pushed further down because a lot of amateur Brazilians invest in Petrobras and they sold while the stock was artificially depressed due to a string of corruption scandals and poor, though temporary, economic conditions. One of my favorite plays back in 2008-2011 was First Solar on the run-up to earnings calls. Analysts would always come out of these meetings downgrading the stock and the forums were full of pikers and pumpers claiming heavy put positions. The stock would go down considerably, but would always pop around earnings. I've made huge returns on this move. Those were the good ole days. Start off just googling financial news and blogs and look for lawsuits and/or scandals. Manufacturing defects or recalls. Starting looking for companies that react predictably to certain events. Plot those events on your chart. If you don't know how to back-test events, learn it. Google Finance had a tool for that back in the day that was rudimentary but helpful for those starting out. Eventually though, moreso than learning any particular strategy, you should learn these three skills: 1) Tooling: to gather, manipulate, and visualize data on your own. These days automated trading also seems to be ever more important, even for the small fish. 2) Analytical Thinking learn to spot patterns of the three types: event based (lawsuits, arbitrage, earnings etc), technical (emas, price action, sup/res), or business-oriented (accounting, strategy, marketing). Don't just listen to what someone else says you should do at any particular moment, critical thinking is essential. 3) Emotions and Attitude: learn how to comprehend risk and manage your trigger finger. Your emotions are like a blade that you must sharpen every day if you want to stay in the game. Disclaimer: I stopped using this strategy in 2011, and moved to a pure technical trading regime.
"I am sorry to hear that.   Well, finance is a VERY large field encompassing decades upon decades of research, and thousands of pages of research. This question is usually a difficult one to answer simply because of the scope. My usual answer to people is to browse around this sub and the internet and learn from that, and then for specific questions to ask.   For your purposes, take a look at investopedia.com. While here it's an ""okay"" source, for a beginner I think it's a good place to start.  Is there any specific thing you have a question about now?  I know you mentioned the Big Short and some other things. Just keep in mind anything coming from Hollywood will be *extremely* biased."
Each trade will cost you nearly $10 to buy and then $10 to sell. With $1800 that is literally 1% of your initial investment lost to fees.   It would be far wiser for you to learn with play money instead.  Head over to investopedia and use pretend money:     http://www.investopedia.com/simulator/    If you're absolutely fine with losing your $1800 than go ahead and jump into some companies you like.  I would not recommend that though.  Put the $1800 into one single position that you will hold for a few years and play with pretend money to get a better feel for short term trades.
By constructing a portfolio from stock and bond ETFs across the world, Betterment reduces your portfolio’s sensitivity to swings. And the diversification goes beyond mere asset class and geography. For example, Betterment’s basket of bond ETFs have varying durations (e.g., short-term Treasuries have an effective duration of less than six months vs. U.S. corporate bonds, which have an effective duration of just more than 8 years) and credit quality. The level of diversification further helps you manage risk. Dan Egan, Betterment’s Director of Behavioral Finance and Investing, examined the increase in returns by moving from a U.S.-only portfolio to a globally diversified portfolio. On a risk-adjusted basis, the Betterment portfolio has historically outperformed a simple DIY investor portfolio by as much as 1.8% per year, attributed solely to diversification. Now, let’s assume that the investor at hand (Investor A) is a sophisticated investor who understands the importance of diversification. Additionally, let’s assume that he understands the optimal allocation for his age, risk appetite, and investment horizon. Investor A will still benefit from investing with Betterment. Automating his portfolio management with Betterment helps to insulate Investor A from the ’behavior gap,’ or the tendency for investors to sacrifice returns due to bad timing. Studies show that individual investors lose, on average, anywhere between 1.2% to 4.3% due to the behavior gap, and this gap can be as high as 6.5% for the most active investors. Compared to the average investor, Betterment customers have a behavior gap that is 1.25% lower. How? Betterment has implemented smart design to discourage market timing and short-sighted decision making. For example, Betterment’s Tax Impact Preview feature allows users to view the tax hit of a withdrawal or allocation change before a decision is made. Currently, Betterment is the only automated investment service to offer this capability. This function allows you to see a detailed estimate of the expected gains or losses broken down by short- and long-term, making it possible for investors to make better decisions about whether short-term gains should be deferred to the long-term.
"As you pointed out in reference to cost-cutting, fiduciary lawsuits come out when things go wrong. When directors successfully increase stock value, everyone including shareholders is happy.   I'm not sure exactly where the best place is to look for such cases, but here's what my google-fu yielded:  * [Example 1](http://www.nytimes.com/1993/11/25/business/the-media-business-excerpts-from-ruling-in-paramount-case.html): Paramount is sold to Viacom at a lower price than QVC's offer, shareholders sue. Paramount claims they were looking out for long-term but shareholders sued them for screwing them out of maximal share value.  * [Example 2](http://www.professorbainbridge.com/professorbainbridgecom/2012/05/case-law-on-the-fiduciary-duty-of-directors-to-maximize-the-wealth-of-corporate-shareholders.html): Dodge v. Ford Motor Co, Ford had a majority share in his company and wanted to stop paying dividends to shareholders so he could expand his business. At trial Ford ""testified to his belief that the company made too much money and had an obligation to benefit the public and the firm’s workers and customers."" The court disagreed, as his motor company was set up for profit, not charity. Ford was ordered to resume paying dividends.  Interestingly I found many more lawsuits where corporations sacrificed long-term for short-term. It seems once incorporated this is where the internal incentives and pressures lead many managers, lawsuits are merely one of these pressures."
Well they don't have a fiduciary duty to be politically correct lol. Just politically correct if it relates to profitability. And I guess you're right that if they waste time and energy there... they might have been able to use it elsewhere.  But honestly this is a gang of crooks. And you can see it in the compensation plans. Most of them have nothing better to do.
It means a government giving out money to encourage a particular product (or service) to be bought or sold. Some people will use the word more loosely to refer to any financial incentive, even if it's not coming from the government. Wikipedia has a list of examples that may be helpful: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidy A commonly-mentioned one is farm subsidies, where farmers are paid to produce certain crops.
"I'll make this short so you can understand it.  1 - ""Financialization"" is not a word or a real concept.  2 - Real wage stagnation is a problem, but its causes are much more subtle (and less conspiratorial) than you think.  3 - The auto companies are not trying to skirt their legal obligations. Rather, they're offering to pay people out NOW rather than in small amounts for the rest of time. It's a voluntary arrangement that people can opt into."
"because bankers are crooks is a very close answer. Just accept the truth that financial industry is the only service industry that could turn into giant parasite chopping pieces from real economy. I am not anti-financial, because greed is not banker's fault, but just one significant part of human nature. Every human being has greed and fear built in it. But financial industry is the only one which is built on exploiting greed and fear. Governments are throwing gasoline canister into that fire in desperate extinguish attempts, trying to ""regulate"" but only making it worse. With all that ""counter-cybercrime"", ""counter-terrorism"" and ""counter-everything"" efforts, ordinary people will be hurt as always."
"If one takes a slightly more expansive view of the word ""saving"" to include most forms of durable asset accumulation, I think the reason some do and most don't is a matter of a few factors, I will include the three that seem obvious to me: Education Most schools in the US where I live do not offer personal finance courses, and even when they do, there is no opportunity for a student to practice good financial habits in that classroom setting. I think a simple assignment that required students to track every penny that they spend over the period of a few months would help them open their eyes to how much money is spent on trivial things that they don't need. Perhaps this would be more effective in a university setting where the students are usually away from home and therefore more responsible for the spending that occurs on their own behalf. Beyond simple education about personal finances, most people have no clue how the various financial markets work. If they understood, they would not allow inflation to eat away at their savings, but that's a separate topic from why people do not save. Culture Since much of the education above isn't happening, children get their primary financial education from their parents. This means that those who are wealthy teach their children how to be wealthy, and those who are poor pass on their habits to children who often also end up poor. Erroneous ideas about consumption vs. investment and its economic effects also causes some bad policy encouraging people to live beyond their means and use credit unwisely, but if you live in a country where the average person expects to eat out regularly and trade in their automobiles as soon as they experienced their highest rate of depreciation, it can be hard to recognize bad financial behavior for what it is. Collective savings rates reflect a lot of individuals who are emulating each other's bad behavior. Discipline Even when someone is educated about finances, they may not establish good habits of budgeting regularly, tracking spending, and setting financial goals. For me, it helps to be married to someone who has similar financial goals, because we budget monthly and any major purchases (over $100 or so) must be agreed upon at the beginning of the month (with obvious exceptions for emergencies). This eliminates any impulsive spending, which is probably 90% of the battle for me. Some people do not need to account to someone else in order to spend wisely, but everyone should find a system that works for them and helps them to maintain some financial discipline."
Subsidy usually means gratuitous financial support. For example, if for whatever reason you live much below the living average paying utility services in full might be too expensive - you'll be out of money before you even think of buying food and basic clothes. Yet it's clear that once can't live in a city without utility services.  So the government might have a program for subsidizing utility services for people with very low income - a person brings in proof of low income and once it is low enough government will step in and pay that person utility services in full or in part depending on actual income he proves. The same can be organized for anything government or some organization wishes to support for whatever reason. The key idea is someone gives you free money for spending on some specific purpose.