Let's hope software gets enough less bloated to make that workable.

I don't think the idea is that the upgrade will take it from decent to stellar compared to other things you might be able to buy for the same money, it's about paying a bit extra now to be able to go from decent-in-2026 to decent-in-2031 while paying a fraction of the cost that you would buying a full replacement in 2031, not to mention saving a bunch of waste. And then in 2036, and 2041, and 2046... They haven't been around long enough to be confident it'll work out that way, but that's the bet in my mind.

You could stop using it first I suppose

New York is the Ljubljana of America

I don't know what starvation and gulags have to do with anti-capitalist reform. In this country (the USA), capitalism is what produces gulags and starvation.

On the contrary. The U.S. has so much food that 72% of Americans are fat. There is simply too much tasty food available. This happened in a very short space of time, historically speaking, thanks to capitalism. As for gulags, one would need to use a very cynical definition to believe that. Especially when we have real gulags around the world today.

I imply that the alternative to capitalism is starvation an gulags because that is roughly what happened the last 37 or so times humanity tried something else. That's just from the last century. Capitalism isn't perfect, but it's infinitely better than everything else.

And there's the indirect capex that their revenues will pay for indirectly, like in the case of oracle

Even if an audit never comes they could be incorrect.

Audits often find incorrect in favor of the person audited as well. If you are not audited that is a bad thing as you have no idea if things are wrong, and it could be costing you a lot of they are wrong.

For sure.

That's fine as far as it goes, but I don't think that gets you what this article is for, which is things like using the same binding context-dependently to navigate between emacs splits and regular window manager windows, context-dependently. Which is a fun bit of overengineering.

Yes, the entire point would be to avoid such brittle engineering and entanglement of the two

Which argues in favor of the inheritance tax mentioned.

There could be other solutions too -- say, require a virtual wash trade at time of inheritance, so the capital gains from the parent's lifetime are taxed at time of death and the child gets the stepped up basis. Somewhat different than an inheritance tax, but at least not a giveaway.

The full value of the shares (original basis plus step-up [or step-down] in basis) is already part of the estate and so is already subject to the inheritance tax rules.

It's just that the exclusion amounts are fairly high, so in practice the tax owed is often $0.

Right, the point of the person you replied to was about the scenario where inheritance taxes are small or non-existent - they literally said step up in basis makes sense when inheritance is taxed meaningfully.

I know. I read that. I was adding the practical point about basis establishment and record-keeping; I never disputed their other points.

"taxes only ever go up" is an incredible belief to hold in a historical run of decades of tax cuts.