Long term capital gains are taxed at half the rate of income. So yes, share based compensation is a way to reduce taxes. There is also a line of thinking that having the leadership’s compensation tied to the stock’s performance helps align the interests of shareholders and management.

The foundational principle of Israel is the expulsion of Palestinians from Palestine since they are the chosen people and the land belongs to them.

In math and (theoretical) physics alphabetical is the presumed norm.

So the solution to forced rebooting is to have to suffer through the ridiculous boot times for windows every day?

You’re right to leave. One should always reconsider any relationship with someone who requires your adherence to their religion

Part of the success of authoritarian religions is that use the risk of ostracization as a tool of control. It isn’t easy to abandon your community, even one that treats you badly. Feeling alone in the world with no support is frightening enough to keep people in line

Or those Dairy lobby ones that talk about how much work they are doing to save the environment. What a crock

In one of my old jobs we had a couple thousand line shell script called something like prod_corrections_adhoc.ksh. It was used to jam through emergency fixes between code releases.

It still has ‘adhoc corrections’ from 2006

Is there any material difference between Edge and Chrome? I’m forced to use either of them for work and as far as I can tell they perform the same

Personally I prefer the flavour of plant-based alternatives over dairy milk. So I don’t see myself having any interest in buying it.

However, if they can engineer milk proteins for cheese production than I am very excited. Casein proteins are biochemical miracles and no plant-based cheeses are able to mimic the protein matrix in cheese properly. Instead they end up relying on starches to set, which isn’t the same at all.

Why are we starting new coal mines anywhere?

Generally agree, but damaging gas facilities can have undesirable consequences. An extreme methane leak is worse than combusting that gas

Prejudices against the LGBT community are already present in so many people that you don’t need brainwashing. Instead, this is about leveraging and amplifying the existing prejudice for political purposes.

From a purely expected return perspective it only makes sense to pay back debts vs investing if the credit spread in the debt is larger than the investment’s risk premium.

For secured debt (like a mortgage) held by someone with reasonable credit the equity risk premium is most likely larger than the credit spread.

The analysis becomes more complicated when you take into account an uncertain income stream to use against the debt. Paying off your mortgage is like buying insurance against the tail event that you lose your house because you can’t make your mortgage payments.

Insurance is generally a negative expected return activity. But the value is in reshaping the outcome distribution. Your average outcome is lower but you’ve flattened out the tail.

For me personally higher rates have been a net benefit. I have no debt and my capacity to save increased considerably over the period that rates were rising. It’s been great to get better cash yields and to pick up longer dated bonds at generationally low prices.

As we’ve recently learned it isn’t just about oil. It’s about maritime trade more broadly. One of the explicit purposes of the US Navy is to defend maritime trade. The Suez canal and the Persian Gulf are two of the most important maritime trade routes.

After the elections in 2024 the picture could be different. Putin’s long term strategy has been to weaken NATO by supporting NATO-skeptic parties. Depending on election outcomes there is a real possibility that key members fail to adhere to their Article 5 obligations

Is it maple syrup or a colored and flavored corn syrup?

Over the last year wage growth significantly outpaced inflation.

https://www.reuters.com/markets/bank-canada-may-trail-fed-rate-cut-wage-growth-runs-hot-2024-01-17/

According to that article wage growth outpaced inflation in 2023 by 2.3%.

This site breaks down various numbers

https://mishtalk.com/economics/how-is-canadian-wage-growth-stacking-up-to-inflation/

I couldn’t find a more official source, so take the numbers with some doubt.

In any case, nominal wage growth Mar 2020 - Nov 2023 was 14.7%, which is -1.3% after inflation. If we start that window in Jan 2020 we actually have a net positive 2.1% wage growth after inflation. That is 0.5% on an annualized basis.

Wage growth has been surprisingly strong post-pandemic. I think it’s going to be more sticky than inflation as well. The main ‘issue’ is that the wage growth isn’t being matched by improved economic output, which isn’t a great thing for the economy in the longer term.

We’ve had spot ETFs here in Canada for quite some time.

To me, the biggest issue with these products has always been that the underlying assets can’t be valued properly. The exchanges aren’t regulated to prevent price manipulation through things like wash trading or spoofing.

In order for the SEC to approve it a number of major issuers basically had to agree to some kind of price monitoring system. I’m sure Coinbase is critical to this as they are the only exchange based on the US that isn’t prima facie fraudulent.

The article is behind a paywall but…

Wealthsimple isn’t even a bank, let alone the next big bank. They are not a deposit taking institution. Their ‘savings account’ is just an agreement with a number of actual banks to accept deposits from Wealthsimple on behalf of their clients. Wealthsimple is merely acting as an intermediary.

Being a true deposit taking institution comes with a lot more regulation and institutional sophistication. Never mind the fact that deposit taking is only one side of what truly defines banking: aggregating demand deposits to enable lending. I’m sure Wealthsimple is looking to get into that game, but since they aren’t deposit taking I’m sure it will just be a pretty wrapper around another actual bank just like their ‘savings accounts’.

Is Horizons ETFs the next big bank because of their CASH.TO ETF? Horizons is doing a very similar thing through a different vehicle.

Having said, Wealthsimple has clearly created a competitive product suite. But their ability to offer these products fundamentally relies on other organizations (e.g., Mastercard, Big 5 banks) to do the heavy lifting. Wealthsimple’s competitive advantage is in product design and advertising.