Yes, currently very few companies report paying ransom payments. When this tax is introduced the motivation for hiding payments will be even higher, and go up with the tax rate. So when you say "With each increase in tax rates, a market equilibrium will be reached where the funding of ransomware is significantly reduced" I would guess instead that reporting will go down.
You didn't say anything about tax evasion in this post, which seems like an important thing to consider. Most ransomware payments are made secretly, right?
Worsening housing and rent problems in California, Canada, major metropolitan areas, Japan, China, and other places that are facing housing shortages could ignite support for Georgism.
Do Japan and China have housing shortages? I thought Japan was the canonical "zoning done right" example. And doesn't China have some sort of over-supply sitatution due to government subsidies?
slatestarcodex being contra hanson on healthcare
That case (I didn't follow the others) seemed like it was mostly about confusion over what Hanson's position even is. Maybe because Hanson and/or people misunderstanding him tried to compress it into short tweets.
But how can you know that? Couldn't there be actual insider sources truthfully reporting the existence of such discussions?
Yes, I perhaps should have said "I think there is a 99% chance this is made up". As a general rule, I think any politically charged story based on "anonymous insider sources" should be considered very low credibility, and if there is no other support, then a 90+ chance of being made up is about right. More credibility points lost in this case for the only source being a tweet from a guy who seems to be advertising some kind of passport acquisition service.
There can simultaneously be an crisis of immigration of poor people and a crisis of emigration of rich people.
The tweet's screenshot doesn't seem to be talking about rich people in particular being the ones leaving (which I think is usually termed "capital flight"; that is, the money leaving is more important than the people).
Canada also is looking to impose a $25k penalty and double its ‘exit fee’ for citizens who leave the country, to ‘curb the emigration crisis.’
This is made up, apparently.
https://thezvi.substack.com/p/monthly-roundup-18-may-2024/comment/56269684
https://www.yahoo.com/news/users-spread-unfounded-claims-impending-163724801.html
Recent headlines are about too much immigration (e.g., https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-canada-stuck-in-population-trap-needs-to-reduce-immigration-bank/), so 'emigration crisis' doesn't make much sense.
Unless you also think the United States is an outlier in terms of spouses who don't unconditionally love each other, I guess you have to endorse something like Kaj_Sotala's point that divorce isn't always the same as ending love though, right?
Maybe, although what is "sufficient" depends a lot on the rate of catching the evaders. I don't have a good guess as to what that rate is.