vania-janet/multiturn-rag-retrieval-data huggingface dataset:
Well-defined definitions of a successful tax plan and its likely outcomes. Concrete, simple tax brackets. Hard numbers with real world value, not rhetorical promises washed through special interest groups and lobbyists. Well done.  There's no way the current administration will do anything remotely this intelligent.
Yeah we don't have a computer system tracking anything. I thought this too before I started working there. We move things all the time to make sure certain products are merchandised properly. I have to go hunting for packaging and items all the time.
um, yes. the point of an audit is verification. you could have claimed to have bought fax machines and pocketed the money, and giving them a list claiming you had bought 5. without them physically inspecting, how would they know the difference?  its amazing your level of distrust for government yet trust of others
We run into this all the time with our EU clients. As far as I can tell, the only requirements when it comes to invoicing have to do with sales tax, which is determined at the state level, and only in the case that items are taxable. It seems that the service provided to you is not taxable and so there is no obligation under Californian law to provide you with the invoice you need.  That said, it would be nice to provide this information to you as a courtesy. We don't provide the information typically required by EU tax authorities on our receipts either, but whenever one of our EU clients requests a more formal invoice we gladly send them one.
"Can't vouch for LA, but property typically is taxed at either the appraised value, the most recent purchase price (""if it wasn't worth that much, you wouldn't have paid that much""), or some combination of the two (usually highest of the two, to prevent ""$1 and other goods and services"" from lowering the tax to zero). You have now explicitly paid a total of $125k for the property; the fact that you bought it in two stages shouldn't be relevant. But ""should"" and law are only tangentially connected. I'd recommend asking a tax accountant who know your local practices, unless someone here can give you an authoritative answer."
"You should be handling it in another way. You cannot, strictly speaking, have AR entry if you didn't issue an invoice. You should record it as a current income. Unless you're on accrual basis (in which case you could either create a ""dummy"" invoice or not accrue this income), AR has no real meaning to you.  AR means that you billed someone and you have the right to the money. With Amazon affiliate program you do not have the right to the money until they decide you do, and once they do decide that - they just pay you."
If the cards are tied to a specific vendor, they will work only at that vendor. If they're generic cards just charged with a specific amount of money, they should work at any vendor who accepts that card network... though there may be specific exceptions.
Late to the party, but it's just improving your cost basis in a defined risk trade even further. If you want to put up less risk capital but want to test the waters, this can be one way to do it. Another could be buying cheap OTM butterflies or financing a further otm option with the basis reduction from the debit spread if you want to gamble a bit further and venture into 15-20 delta positions. Usually, I am doing debit spreads with a buying atm and selling a couple strikes further otm or at least at the most liquid strikes, but if it's a high flier, it can be disappointing, but a good trade. If you're more of a contrarian in where you buy your calls/puts, it's absolutely a good way to lessen your risk on a calculated bet.
Do you withdraw cash from your credit card? That is called a cash advance, and interest is usually started from the day you withdraw it.
"The fee structures are different for PIN-based transactions versus ""credit"" style transactions. Usually there is a fixed fee (around $0.50) for PIN-based transactions and a varying fixed fee plus a percentage for credit transactions (something like $0.35 + 2.5%). There are also value limits for PIN-based transactions... I believe that you cannot exceed $400 in most places. The signature feature of credit transactions isn't there to protect you, it signifies your agreement to comply with the contract you and the credit card issuer, protecting the merchant from some types of chargeback. Some merchants waive the signature for low dollar value transactions to increase convenience and speed up the lines. All of your other questions are answered elsewhere on this site."
"paying it off over time, which I know is the point of the card That may very well be the card issuer's goal, but it need not be yours. The benefits, as your question title seems to ask for -  That said, use the card, but don't spend more than you have in your checking account to pay it when the bill comes.  What you may want to hear - ""Charge the furniture. Pay it off over the next year, even at 20%/yr, the total interest on $2000 of furniture will only be $200, if you account for the declining balance. That's $4/week for a year of enjoying the furniture.""  You see, you can talk yourself into a bad decision. Instead, shop, but don't buy. Lay out the plan to buy each piece as you save up for it. Consider what would happen if you buy it all on the card and then have any unexpected expenses. It just gets piled on top of that and you're down a slippery slope."
As far as the money goes, it all comes down to the terms.  What is going to cost you the least?  Look for hidden fees and costs with the store credit.  You will need to read the fine print of the credit agreement some automatically sign you up for a service that will cost you extra money every month.   Compare what the costs are going to be over the term you will pay it off.  A good calculator to help you figure this out is http://www.amortization-calc.com/ It is designed with larger loans but works for smaller loans too.   Realize that you will have to add fees and finance charges into the total loan amount to get a good comparison. ** Unless you NEED a computer you should wait until you can afford to pay for it.  Charging these types of expenses tends to lead down to a pit of debt that is hard to get out of.  Wanting a computer really bad is not the same as a need.
I don't think that there is any good way a study can average this and bring a useful result: The core problem is that there are people that will spend more money than they should, if they become technically able to, and the credit card is just one of the tools they abuse for that (similar to re-financing with cash-outs, zero percent loans, etc.).  On the other side, there are people who control and understand their spending, and again, the mechanism of payment is irrelevant for them. Studies measure some mix between the groups, and come up with irrelevant correlations that have no causality. If you think any tool or mechanics got you in financial trouble, think again: your spending habits and lack of understanding or care get you in financial trouble - nothing else. In a world where it is considered cool to 'don't understand math', it is no surprise that so many people can't control their finances.
"I don't know, but I can guess. You'll notice the Elite card has higher rewards. A card might want to convince merchants that they represent high end buyers, and use that to negotiate higher merchant discounts. Issuing bank: ""Our 10 million card holders are sophisticated and have lots of discretionary income. If you don't agree to this rate, we'll terminate the contract and they will take their business elsewhere.""  Merchant: ""But it's twice the rate of everyone else! I'm sure these customers have other means of payment, and besides, how many of those card holders are actually using it?"" Issuing bank: ""Our cardholders signal their interest in the benefits of cardholding by paying us an annual fee. If they didn't want one, they'd stop paying right? They clearly know they have one and our records indicate they use them regularly. We're pretty sure if you don't wise up they'll shop at your biggest competitor, another client of ours. pause Frankly, they already do."""
The answer: don't use your actual card number. Some banks offer virtual credit card numbers (services like Apple Pay are functionally the same). Bank of America's virtual cards work like this: The virtual card number is different from your actual card number, so the merchant never sees your real card number. In fact, the merchant cannot even tell that you are using a virtual card. You can set the maximum amount to be charged. You can set the expiration date from 2 to 12 months. Once the merchant has made a charge on that virtual card, only THAT MERCHANT can make any further charges on that same virtual card. It is not possible to discover the real card number from the virtual card number. So the result is that your risk is reduced to the merchant not delivering the order, or charging too much (but not over the limit you set). There is nothing to be stolen since your real info never goes over the internet, and once a merchant has used the virtual card once, no other merchant can use it. Other banks may have virtual cards which have fewer features. The only DISadvantage of this is that you have to go to the bank's website whenever you want to make a purchase from a new merchant. But you don't have to worry about them stealing your real credit card information.
The gift card for specific stores has no fee. In our budget of nearly $500/mo for supermarket, it would be easy to just buy 10 x $500 cards, and then be careful with them.  A look at your past 12 mo of spending should provide a hint what GCs might work for you.  Else, for a $4.95 fee, I've bought $500 generic Visa cash cards. When my new credit card offered a 10% cash bonus for spending, I spent. Took us nearly 18 months to burn thru 500 cards. But a net $4500 gain was sweet.  Update - the cash card racks all appear to have a sign that these cards may no longer be bought with a credit card.
I use cash exclusively. I go to the cash machine once a week and withdraw the money I want to spend in one week (so I have to plan if I want to buy something expensive). Otherwise I leave the card at home. As bonus you get anonymity, i.e. big brother cannot track you.
Is that your prediction for our future here in the United States? Greece?  Yes, a slow crash as more and more money is drained from the economy to pay the FIRE sector—finance, insurance, and real estate—not the goods and service producing sector.   I never thought about it; but, we are starting to look like Greece.  High debt, low play, slow sales, high rent.....
Is China in a position to do anything meaningful - if they cared they would let the yuan appreciate and thus increase their domestic spending and reduce their trade surpluses. China does not care - or rather they have an interest in seeing Europe crumble as they relatively gain power.
I did an analysis on this not too far back for work, and despite the headlines, I don't consider this to be too much of a macro risk yet (or if it ever will be).  Perhaps a canaries in the coal mine kind of thing
do you really want another overblown economic crisis that lets billions starve? Throwing money at the problem to temper it is the only solution. What needs to happen while that is being done is aggressive reform and belt tightening - and that's not happening fast enough which may then lead us into a larger full blown crisis. i.e. you may just get your wish.
It's only symbolic if things continue as if nothing had happened.  Once large segments of people start becoming poor, it ceases to be symbolic and starts becoming real. Will a Greek default be felt in the US?  Hard to say, but probably not.  Will it be felt in Greece?  You bet it will.
"I think a big part of the issue is ignorance. For instance, the US govt cannot default on its loans, yet you keep hearing people speak as if it could. The US govt also does not have to borrow to pay for anything, it creates its own money whenever it wants. These 2 facts often evade many people, and they feel the US govt should act like a household, business, or a state govt. This disconnect leads to a lot of confusion, and things like ""fiscal crisis"". Just remember Rahm Emanuel - don't let a crisis go to waste.  Disclaimer: this is not to say the US should create money whenever it wants without thought. However, the simple fact is it can. For those interested in more, check out Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). Its economic study in a world not based on gold standard, or convertible currency (fiat currency)."
"I sometimes ask myself this question.  But I was totally blown away that you missed the main reasons I think we are in trouble.  Wall Street is a casino, and worse than that, it is a rigged casino that is more and more dependent on computers making trades.  And we are at their mercy.  One greedy bank, one computer glitch, and it's off to the races we go again.  I'm blown away by what they did in the 2000's, and the fact that they got  away with it totally and completely.  You worry about government debt, and social security/medicare, but consider that if wall street banks hadn't *purposely* collapsed the American (and world) economy for a few quick bucks, we wouldn't be in this recession for almost 6 years now, and people/businesses  would have paid a lot more taxes.   And as far as I can see, we are just waiting on  the next bubble that wall street will inflate and pop.  We could reduce government debt to zero, and wall street could still take the whole thing down again, with no fear of repercussion.  So long as they can make a profit, why wouldn't they?  EDIT: Removed some ""choice words"", made this more readable."
Anyone who has Russian interests keep saying this. I recall Iran was saying the same thing until sanctions hit them hard.  The Russian sanctions are not pleasant for Europe but they won't do nearly as much harm as Russian sources are trying to make them out as doing.
There's no way the greek government has the cash to defend a peg. Defending a peg takes a lot of cash. If your currency goes above the peg, you need to print more. If it goes below the peg, you need to buy it back, with euros for example. Greece has no euros, and so cannot defend a peg.
Sounds like a good time for the government to borrow a lot of money and plow it all into infrastructure projects like roads, water pipes, etc.   It will put people to work, fix a lot of things that need to be fixed, and put us in a much better position than Europe when its all over.
Santander - Spains largest bank was unable to fulfill it's obligation to finance the airline Norwegian's purchase of new planes. The contract was signed, but Santander had no money. They will now meet angry Norwegian's in court. If I had any money in any Spanish financial institution - bank, stocks, bonds, pension- or other funds - I would get them out today. They have been cooking their books. This is not Lehman Brothers, this is another Enron.
I spent some time last year in the UI system and its crazy that it is actually at least as bad there as described in the article.  Even if UI only gets like 50% of its funding from public, Illinois debt crisis resulted in them being almost 2 years behind in funds.  The grad students were being held up. I was basically told not to consider going there. It's crazy how these  schools were 20 years ago were competing with Ivies and now their tenured faculty has been looking to leave.
Over the last 100 years this has happened twice. It cant be considered an outlier. Especially considering the misery is far from over, euro crisis, looming pension crisis, food crisis, etc. There are a lot of things far from resolved. An event that happens once every 50 years is hardly an outlier just unlikely.
A VAT means that the cost of goods in your country just went up by that VAT percentage. This would mostly effect how the poor and middle class spend their money which currently is very selective.  Additional economy slow downs can generate another recession.   That's what I understand, anyway. The numbers in this numbers game are very very important and is difficult to generate in theoretics.
Winter is coming... and Ukraine's gas bill is due.  Don't expect the IMF backed plan to win over the currently sympathetic Ukrainians... when they are freezing to death and are being asked to take Greece like austerity measures.  Don't expect EU voters to subsidize Ukraines gas bill.  By march of next year... expect a full blown grand exodus of support for a western plan, especially in Ukraine.
Keep in mind that this only really affects a few European nations, and we currently have a surplus.  We’ve seen a rise of popularity of wine from other countries such as Australia and New Zealand, so it might only be region-specific wines that’ll be noticeably affected (such as Champagne for example).
What's amusing is that these proposals seem like miserable comprises and unachievable dreams at the same time. I have absolutely no faith that the EU is going to progress in a meaningful way, in the near or medium term with these 3 pillars. The EU is too broad and politicaly diverse at this stage...  Edit: typo
One can't, this is a systemic problem and when One bank goes pop, it drags a couple down with it. While swaps should have worked to keep the system safe at one time, when money was real, they now act as anchors that drag the entire chain down because the volume of funny money debt is so great its just not ever getting paid back. Best bet is to burn the Fed down
"Depends on the country, whether its a currency issuer with floating exchange rate, and what the debt is denominated in. For instance, the US has no real debt, b/c its all in US dollars and can be printed at any time. It has no need to borrow anything, it issues its own currency. It used to be different 4 decades ago, on the gold standard, so in general people still think currency issuers need to borrow (or earn) to spend. Just a relic in thinking.  But when the country does not issue its own currency, then it does need to earn or borrow in order to spend. In this case, it could borrow from anywhere that will lend it money. In US, a state would fit this description. Or Greece, as it borrowed Euros, for which it is not an issuer of.  EDIT: just came across this blog http://pragcap.com/where-does-the-money-come-from Its title, ""Where does the money come from"". Maybe he saw this question. Anyway, the US does not need to borrow money. Why would it borrow what it creates? From the video: ""Thinking is hard, that's why we don't do it a lot"". Great line."
Actually nearly the entire western world is following in Japan's footsteps. A decade from now debts of 200%+ / GDP will be common place, why because populations are ageing &amp; older people tend to spend less &amp; western economies are consumer driven.  Meanwhile, as happened in Japan, people don't want to pay more tax or lose entitlements &amp; politicians don't want to take them away for fear of losing votes. However, in the new normal of constant volatility and low interest rates and few growth opportunities western countries with their own currencies will probably get away with it for quite a long time. But watch Japan, because they're a decade ahead and if they collapse or even somehow solve the problem then the West is probably not far behind
&gt;Consider the following scenario. After a victory by the left-wing Syriza party, Greece’s new government announces that it wants to renegotiate the terms of its agreement with the International Monetary Fund and the European Union.   The election is on June 17th, but I don't see Syriza winning.
A socialist government mismanaging the economy?  Say it ain't so!  Cut taxes, liberalize the labor force and employment laws, reduce government services and welfare, encourage entrepreneurship, eliminate barriers to international trade.  This is not rocket science.  Get your shit together, France.
I love the constant denial on this site that mounting debt is an issue. By the way, this is an insult and not an invitation for a discussion. I really don't give a fuck what you or u/geerusell think on the issue. You are both total fucking idiots with your bullshit Keynesian views.
You keep claiming higher taxes will do X when history shows you that's not entirely true.       We need to both rein in spending and change where the remaining money is spent in the budget. We also need to take the wealthy at a higher rate so that the 'burden' is equal to the proportion of wealth in this country that they own. Framing it as an either/or is a logical fallacy.
Name one country that spend that much money in such short period to get out of recession.  You have to find some sub-saharan despot to match the number.  (no. japan ain't it. considering the massive surplus current account and trade balance.)  https://tradingeconomics.com/japan/current-account  https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/current-account
&gt;Thats fine and dandy, but it would never ever pass congress.  So the people should elect a congress that aren't such a bunch of blindly ideological fools. If they choose not to do this, then let them go down with the ship. The point is that cutting government employees in the middle of a period of low economic growth is not a way to fix anything.  Also I'll just add that Australia is no miracle economy, our government should be lauded for the way they handle the purse strings, but they simultaneously inflated a massive property bubble (currently deflating gently - for now) which still poses  large threat to our immediate future. That said our budget situation is in a good place, even if we have run a few deficits lately.
The government multiplier effect is zero sum.  You will see a multiplier in the short term, but taxpayers will have to pare back spending in the future to service the debt, reversing the initial multiplier.  The funding burden for education and infrastructure spending should fall more heavily on those actually using it - more tuition fees, toll roads, etc.
They didn't have more **going into** the war. I would be really surprised if they didn't have more relatively short term debt as they were **in the midst of a global freaking conflict**, man.  Well I'll be damned, we both want the same thing. I just don't want to open the unlimited money taps without carefully considering how long we can leave them open  Edit: If you're deciding whether or not to spend a crap ton of money you don't have, it helps if you haven't already spent a crap ton of money you don't have
slash the expenses. tax the bare minimum if at all. let the free market fix thr problem. all the issues here (healthcare, education, military) are problems the gov created.. even if they had the foresight to stop spending our taxes on bs and used it to reflect EU norms, I dont trust for one second a top down solution would outperform a truly free market (not a half ass free market). And still.. even if we re-prioratize our expenses, we are still stupid in debt. it will crash. thats the only way this gets fixed.. or we blow up the world to prevent it.. but how long can you flex a muscle?
"Forgive me, I don't know what you mean when you say ""its Canada"". Are they not a good example of a country that supposedly offers free college but is struggling to do so?   And would the near social implosion that is currently happening in Greece be a better example then?"
You can't prove any part of your last two paragraphs. Since this is the internet I'm inclined to not believe what you say (shocking).  I can provide a million examples of how the private sector is doing a higher quality and cheaper job of all of the things that government does.  Edit: I'm a college graduate living paycheck to paycheck, please don't advocate for higher taxes because trust me it won't help me or anyone you think it will help. (Because it never does)