“As mentioned by some other comments, these taxes are potentially ruinous to larger family farms.”

Complex multi-party negotiations are much easier in person. Even extremely good videoconferencing systems result in a loss of nuance.

The issue is that the “list price,” which people without insurance pay, is vastly higher than the price that people with insurance (the large bulk of the population) pay.  As an example, when our child was born, the “list price” came to about $28k.  The insurance actually paid about $11k, and our portion came to about…

Really, we should pay our government officials more. Like a lot more. It would reduce the incentive to cash out as a lobbyist and ensure that people aren’t turned off by running for office for financial reasons.  

Given that negotiation and compromise is supposed to be a key element of governance, not having people in the same place would make that even harder. 

That was my immediate reaction as well...

Agree 90%, although the model is similar in that, for gyms, if utilization is too high, your costs don’t go up, but your revenue goes down. Gyms sell far more memberships than the facility could handle if a large portion of the customers started showing up regularly.  So, heavier-than-expected utilization means that…

Tesla, maybe, but not Amazon or Facebook.  The more you shop at Amazon, the more money they make (since their gross margins are positive).  For Prime Video, their costs are essentially fixed, so if you love the service and use it a lot, it doesn’t cost them more.  For Facebook, the more you use the service, the more…

Living Daylights is the classic, clearly.  

It’s not bad, but nothing tops Pussy Galore.  

Was recently at a conference where, when Q&A rolled around, the moderator said “as a reminder, questions are a sentence which ends in a question mark.”  Said it in a “I’m joking, but really, I’m not joking” tone, and it worked. 

Given their budgets, that means he’s getting paid about eighty bucks.

Video looks interesting, but that video player is awful. Why not just use YouTube?

Amen on the ethanol.  So long as the Iowa caucus is at the start of the presidential election cycle, I fear ethanol is here to stay. 

Except, in a city, there’s actually something worth getting to at the end of the trip. 

but as with bikes, occasionally you have to deviate from the path to survive in the city.

Coulda kept going.  You would have been in Delaware - not great, but at least something of an improvement. 

You do, but, typically, the increased risk of default is smaller than the increased cash flow from the payments.  

Just hopefully not for relationship advice. 

Well, that $442/hour did include the actual truck and plow, it wasn’t just the driver.  Fair rate looks like (based on the other quotes mentioned) about $250/hr.