The Museum is having a scratch and dent sale for employees today. A Graves Alessi bird tea kettle is up there, $25 but it leaks along a seam. So it's non-functional, but looks good. It's Pomo. Should I buy it?
Donna - definitely buy it.
You can display it. Or get in touch with alessi. They might offer repair. Or if you don't care about authenticity I'm sure you can get a local metalshop to fix it. Doesn't your husband work somewhere like that?
My husband could fix it, of course. He can fix anything. But it's an annoying design, because it's SOOO non-functional, but does being broken make it even better? It's non-functionally non-functional? Which is SOOO PoMo?
More and more it's become apparent the the republican primary race, and it's cast of characters was chosen for the purpose of getting hillary in the White House. In other news, I'm a bit shocked there's been no discussion on here of the panama papers. Those having little to no mention of US connections, I can only imagine that a majority of our business and political elite have trillions squirreled away in overseas holdings. I'm curious to see how things play out in Iceland, they sacked the PM, and it seems the common man there fed up with the parallel set of rules there's proven to be when it comes to the dealings of the haves and have-nots. Too bad we can't get away with holing those types folks responsible here in the states, televise that stuff and people might just go along with it.
Re: Panama Papers – just don’t think Panama was a favorite place for Americans, think the list is just the tip of the iceberg for offshore accounts that are in places like Belize and the Cayman Islands…just ask Mitt Romney.
If only Puerto Rico had somehow made themselves an offshore tax-haven for the moneyed-twits we have in our midst, I might not be seeing ads urging me to call my congressman to vote down a bailout for them. Or maybe not... I look at those countries that harbor tax-fugitives (is that a term, we need to make that a thing...) and it doesn't really seem that the citizens of those places are reaping many benefits from acting as storage vessels for trillions of dollars. Hard-labor prison time is the only punishment for those folks, of course if prosecution and prison were to be doled out for skirting taxation, the law would then eliminate hard labor from the prison system.
Re: Panama Papers... Not a lot of American's because of the close association and ties with our government. Their former president is rotting in jail here in Colorado :P.... and umm... we invaded them in the '80's. Iran/Contra... etc. Basically, the Panama canal is to important to US security to allow any unfavorable government to rule there and the two governments maintain a very tight relationship.
Oh jeez duo wrote another idiotic column for Common Edge. JFC shut up. He's like another but even more annoyingly self-satisfied version of Witold Rybczynski. At least Witold doesn't outright attack all his peers to make his point.
I hear the US is pretty high on the list of places to hide money for the rest of the world... miami and nyc real estate are well known, but also a couple states are pretty friendly with their corp. laws.
Shu, Hiding money is entirely different than not paying taxes on the money you are hiding.
We are moving toward a slippery slope where under the guise of catching scoundrels, we will have a cashless economy where every transaction will be monitored, soon it won’t be enough to simply report your income, but we’ll all have to disclose where it came from and where you put it.
There are so many dishonest people today that it’s become impossible to police the bad guys…so the idea is to search everybody (so to speak) figuring a bad guy will eventually turn up. No country I want to live in…make no mistake, big-corps and wealthy Americans are moving money offshore for more fundamental reasons than just taxes.
"The developer of One57 is giving up on a plan to lease 38 unsold units as apartments. It already failed in one effort to lease units on one floor last year, and it failed in another attempt to sell all 38 units in one bundle in the fall. Now it’s going to attempt to sell the units as condos that start at $3.45 million … undercutting prices of previously sold units."
If you're worried about a cashless society, that's what bitcoin is for. still cashless, but encrypted. for what it's worth, buying gold is no longer a reasonable hedge against inflation.
People in America who make proper encrypted email get visited by the fbi in the us too. It's happening with online file storage too. Because if you do it right, it can't be broken without the key.
the trick is to mask your identity so they don't know which door to knock on. Or hide in plain site.
jlc, carrera thinks it's important to hide his money so he doesn't get taxed/ sued/ etc. and he thinks big brother government is going towards a surveillance state that will prevent him from doing that.
this is somewhat related to the panama papers thing, where people hiding money got caught.
most arch. have relatively high income, so eventually most of us will have decent assets and maybe even feel like protecting them.
I assume the hiding/protecting is more for those with a little more potential liability? My dad (financial adviser) spends a lot of time protecting money from taxes, but seems to think that the way to go is to keep taxable income low (salary) and generate most money through low tax rate sources. Basically funnel as much as you can into income generating assets. Says salaries are for suckers.
i sometimes think i should have followed his career path instead of arch, but it's a cutthroat business with only one way to measure success, $$$, not a lot of job satisfaction
Salaries may be for suckers, but they are super convenient for those of us with better things to spend our mental energy on than how to hide tax dollars. Granted, I say this as a middle-aged white woman for whom the system generally works pretty well, so i have the privilege to not worry about it.
Now if I *could* change things, I'd pay more in tax dollars but! every public school would be highly funded to serve as a community center for health, wellness, job training, social activism, connection, urban design, elder care, vet clinics, legal aid, environmental awareness, etc.
^^ Fair enough, but years ago a light bulb lit when I realized that not paying taxes was the greatest investment return known to man (was 30% at the time)…every dollar you don’t pay taxes on brings you a 30% return on your income and it cost nothing to earn that income, just a little “mental energy”. Why ask for a raise when you can give yourself one?
Wish too that we lived in that utopia you describe, but scoundrels and morons abound.
For the record: I avoided paying taxes to the scoundrels* and hid what I had left from the morons.
*just in the past 15 years: 18 federal & 266 local/state officals have been convicted of crimes….which doesn’t include scandals, accusations, arrests or indictments that have not led to convictions.
so that's like saying if you can't beat them, join them. everyone else is a scoundrel/moron, so i might as well be one too. otherwise i don't get as much money.
I don't think anyone is advocating breaking the law, just reducing tax burden
it's like buying groceries at costco vs a drugstore.
most people know the basics of stocks, bonds, and various funds, and many people save by investing though online brokerages. seems like the financial media has been really jumping on the index fund bandwagon lately, which is good in some ways because it's easy to give away a fortune in fees, but the real value of an advisor is organizing the total asset mix to maximize efficiency
pretty sure carrera is advocating either illegal stuff, or things which he would consider a 'grey' area, such as sheltering money through fake offshore businesses. he's said many times how he's a millionaire with piles of money hidden so people can't sue him if he screws up.
it's probably a good idea to put retirement savings away in a tax deferred 401k if you can. to be fair, there are a lot of people here who may not realize the impact that has. that was kind of the point of the 'rich dad poor dad' book i think (which i didn't read) (even though i didn't have a rich dad).
as a broader picture, anyone writing monetary policy in america should be saying to themselves 'does this help people who are trying to work for a living.' when the outcome of their legislation leads to 'salaries are for suckers,' something went very wrong.
If I barter (e.g. 12 eggs for a gallon of milk) what is there to claim for tax purposes? Aren't both parties trading something of equal value and therefore there is NO income?
Investments subject to capital gains are significantly lower tax subjects than all but the lowest salaries...
rich dad poor dad is more of an inspirational book than anything else... about 2 people, we might refer to one as "carrera" and the other as "........" Both work hard, are very successful, and are well respected in their fields.
basically one spends their life collecting income generating assets, the other collects liabilities (trades up for nicer houses, cars, boats, etc.) You can guess who ends up better off.
The book gets pretty repetitive and I just saved a couple hours out of your life!
There is a whole underground economy including bartering & working for cash…and it isn’t rich guys doing it. Some of the most prolific tax scofflaws I’ve ever met were in the work-for-cash construction trades. Arguably bartering is taxable, it’s just underground.
The tax code is a legal document and following it doesn’t make someone a crook. Blame the people who write it not those who follow it.
Instead of poor people trying to make rich people poor, rich people should be teaching poor people how to be rich…trouble is, in my experience, it’s like explaining electricity to a plumber.
how do i shelter my income from taxes if i need pretty much all the money i make for food and housing? when i buy bread, i have to pay all the income tax, federal and state, plus payroll tax, plus sales tax, and probably a bunch of other taxes on top (i have to drive a car to get to the store, etc.). if i need my money to buy bread so i don't go hungry, is there still a way to launder that money through a shell company?
of course, eat less and live in a smaller house and all that. but the point is, you get rich by being rich, not by working for a living. as has already been stated, earning money by working doesn't work (because salaries are for suckers). you have to start with a good size nest egg to take advantage of tax savings you're referring to, right?
carrera, i know you didn't write or directly vote on the legislation that essentially punishes people for working for a living, and you have to do what you have to do in the environment you're living in and all that, so no hard feelings. however, you can't really teach poor people how to be rich, since they don't have the money to be rich.
have you ever read the crying of lot 49? i wonder if that's real?
^^^ “…..you have to start with a good size nest egg to take advantage of tax savings you're referring to, right?”
Don’t think that’s true at all, it’s a myth perpetuated by the elite to keep people in the "trenches".
A good place for a salaried architect to start is to begin lowering your taxable income by setting up a business, nothing that cost anything to set up like an LLC, just register an entity, claim maximum dependents at work and start saving receipts for anything that could conceivably be considered a business expense…every architect home office needs a Jehs and Laub lounge chair & a Tolomeo floor lamp, right? That alone equates to about $500 in tax savings and money in your pocket. Multiply that by about 10 other ideas and you just gave yourself a $5,000 raise.
If you don’t have the stomach for that do what my one son does….he moved to a no income tax township in the suburbs and makes his in-city employer pay him as a consultant and has a “home office”. He still works downtown most of the time, but pays no municipal income tax (2.25%)…another $3,000 raise!
If you’re feeling guilty about now think of it this way, 50% of your taxes go to wars…just donate that half of your tax savings to a charity and call it even.
Did you guys notice that horrid thread with an architect's name in the title is gone? I'm happy to see it go.
Overall, I would *much* prefer to be self-employed than not. I have so many freelance jobs right now and I LOVE them, I love the freedom and sense of ownership on them (ownership of the ideas and responsibility, not like I own the client). But one half of our marriage had to have health insurance, and my husband's business is far more interesting and potentially profitable than my job is.
So a regular salary, health insurance, vacation, and a smashing 401k contribution plan are welcomed. That said, I still have my PC, and even though the financial gains from it are teeny, I *do* claim anything that seems relevant and realistic as a business expense.
Thread Central
^ what curt said, of course.
The Museum is having a scratch and dent sale for employees today. A Graves Alessi bird tea kettle is up there, $25 but it leaks along a seam. So it's non-functional, but looks good. It's Pomo. Should I buy it?
Donna - definitely buy it. You can display it. Or get in touch with alessi. They might offer repair. Or if you don't care about authenticity I'm sure you can get a local metalshop to fix it. Doesn't your husband work somewhere like that?
My husband could fix it, of course. He can fix anything. But it's an annoying design, because it's SOOO non-functional, but does being broken make it even better? It's non-functionally non-functional? Which is SOOO PoMo?
Billy Ocean?!? Had to think for a sec there. NOOOO. Now I have that song in my head!
I think it might make it better.
When in doubt... at the very least you can re-sell it for $25 if you decide you don't like it.
I wonder how often people who bought them new actually use them? Probably never...
Update: I bought it.
I will never use it, anyway. But it is handsome, and speaks to the beginning of my career in this nutty discipline.
billy billy billy...2 blocks froma Bernie convention in williamsburg....does Ben Carson loom like Bill Ocean?
i apologize tintt.
my bucket list.....Before all the good ones are gone.....need to see John Prine.
ya got to see Berrnie...when he is in the hood! Ya I'm the old Fart...looking to the future...and damn I hate political dynasties. Feel da Bern!
More and more it's become apparent the the republican primary race, and it's cast of characters was chosen for the purpose of getting hillary in the White House. In other news, I'm a bit shocked there's been no discussion on here of the panama papers. Those having little to no mention of US connections, I can only imagine that a majority of our business and political elite have trillions squirreled away in overseas holdings. I'm curious to see how things play out in Iceland, they sacked the PM, and it seems the common man there fed up with the parallel set of rules there's proven to be when it comes to the dealings of the haves and have-nots. Too bad we can't get away with holing those types folks responsible here in the states, televise that stuff and people might just go along with it.
i think the republicans are trying to end term limits. 4 more years.
Re: Panama Papers – just don’t think Panama was a favorite place for Americans, think the list is just the tip of the iceberg for offshore accounts that are in places like Belize and the Cayman Islands…just ask Mitt Romney.
If only Puerto Rico had somehow made themselves an offshore tax-haven for the moneyed-twits we have in our midst, I might not be seeing ads urging me to call my congressman to vote down a bailout for them. Or maybe not... I look at those countries that harbor tax-fugitives (is that a term, we need to make that a thing...) and it doesn't really seem that the citizens of those places are reaping many benefits from acting as storage vessels for trillions of dollars. Hard-labor prison time is the only punishment for those folks, of course if prosecution and prison were to be doled out for skirting taxation, the law would then eliminate hard labor from the prison system.
Re: Panama Papers... Not a lot of American's because of the close association and ties with our government. Their former president is rotting in jail here in Colorado :P.... and umm... we invaded them in the '80's. Iran/Contra... etc. Basically, the Panama canal is to important to US security to allow any unfavorable government to rule there and the two governments maintain a very tight relationship.
Oh jeez duo wrote another idiotic column for Common Edge. JFC shut up. He's like another but even more annoyingly self-satisfied version of Witold Rybczynski. At least Witold doesn't outright attack all his peers to make his point.
I hear the US is pretty high on the list of places to hide money for the rest of the world... miami and nyc real estate are well known, but also a couple states are pretty friendly with their corp. laws.
all according to my morning news program.....
^^don't know much about this guy duo, but reading that pos was painful, badly written, eager for attention, and his reference is building advisor?
Shu, Hiding money is entirely different than not paying taxes on the money you are hiding.
We are moving toward a slippery slope where under the guise of catching scoundrels, we will have a cashless economy where every transaction will be monitored, soon it won’t be enough to simply report your income, but we’ll all have to disclose where it came from and where you put it.
There are so many dishonest people today that it’s become impossible to police the bad guys…so the idea is to search everybody (so to speak) figuring a bad guy will eventually turn up. No country I want to live in…make no mistake, big-corps and wealthy Americans are moving money offshore for more fundamental reasons than just taxes.
In other news - Oops!
"The developer of One57 is giving up on a plan to lease 38 unsold units as apartments. It already failed in one effort to lease units on one floor last year, and it failed in another attempt to sell all 38 units in one bundle in the fall. Now it’s going to attempt to sell the units as condos that start at $3.45 million … undercutting prices of previously sold units."
Time to clean out Mom's basement.
If you're worried about a cashless society, that's what bitcoin is for. still cashless, but encrypted. for what it's worth, buying gold is no longer a reasonable hedge against inflation.
bitcoin is not going to move forward, since it is untraceable it's non taxable, big brother no like it.
^ Agree, just one “Apple Lawsuit” away from being un-encrypted under the guise of “national security”.
that's how an iphone works. that is not how encryption works.
^Not being argumentative, but the UK is already proposing to ban encryption….may be “patently ridiculous” but it’s happening.
http://www.coindesk.com/would-uk-encryption-ban-kill-bitcoin/
People in America who make proper encrypted email get visited by the fbi in the us too. It's happening with online file storage too. Because if you do it right, it can't be broken without the key.
the trick is to mask your identity so they don't know which door to knock on. Or hide in plain site.
or not use digital technology. old school, pen and paper - wuhhhh
what are we hiding again?
jlc, carrera thinks it's important to hide his money so he doesn't get taxed/ sued/ etc. and he thinks big brother government is going towards a surveillance state that will prevent him from doing that.
this is somewhat related to the panama papers thing, where people hiding money got caught.
have to have money to hide it!
most arch. have relatively high income, so eventually most of us will have decent assets and maybe even feel like protecting them.
I assume the hiding/protecting is more for those with a little more potential liability? My dad (financial adviser) spends a lot of time protecting money from taxes, but seems to think that the way to go is to keep taxable income low (salary) and generate most money through low tax rate sources. Basically funnel as much as you can into income generating assets. Says salaries are for suckers.
i sometimes think i should have followed his career path instead of arch, but it's a cutthroat business with only one way to measure success, $$$, not a lot of job satisfaction
“Only the paranoid survive” - Andy Grove
Everybody knows the currency of the future will be hugs anyways. April 15 will be hug day instead of tax day.
barter
Bartering is still taxable according to the IRS. I'm sure that happens a lot, that people pay taxes on barters (scoff).
Salaries may be for suckers, but they are super convenient for those of us with better things to spend our mental energy on than how to hide tax dollars. Granted, I say this as a middle-aged white woman for whom the system generally works pretty well, so i have the privilege to not worry about it.
Now if I *could* change things, I'd pay more in tax dollars but! every public school would be highly funded to serve as a community center for health, wellness, job training, social activism, connection, urban design, elder care, vet clinics, legal aid, environmental awareness, etc.
not knocking anyone - most everyone i know is strictly salary!
donna, i'm sure you are welcome to pay more in taxes!
i generally like the school systems, but officials around me keep getting caught taking bribes - doesn't really make anyone want to give them more $$$
^^ Fair enough, but years ago a light bulb lit when I realized that not paying taxes was the greatest investment return known to man (was 30% at the time)…every dollar you don’t pay taxes on brings you a 30% return on your income and it cost nothing to earn that income, just a little “mental energy”. Why ask for a raise when you can give yourself one?
Wish too that we lived in that utopia you describe, but scoundrels and morons abound.
For the record: I avoided paying taxes to the scoundrels* and hid what I had left from the morons.
*just in the past 15 years: 18 federal & 266 local/state officals have been convicted of crimes….which doesn’t include scandals, accusations, arrests or indictments that have not led to convictions.
so that's like saying if you can't beat them, join them. everyone else is a scoundrel/moron, so i might as well be one too. otherwise i don't get as much money.
I don't think anyone is advocating breaking the law, just reducing tax burden it's like buying groceries at costco vs a drugstore. most people know the basics of stocks, bonds, and various funds, and many people save by investing though online brokerages. seems like the financial media has been really jumping on the index fund bandwagon lately, which is good in some ways because it's easy to give away a fortune in fees, but the real value of an advisor is organizing the total asset mix to maximize efficiency
sorry, when i type on my phone all indents get lost somehow
pretty sure carrera is advocating either illegal stuff, or things which he would consider a 'grey' area, such as sheltering money through fake offshore businesses. he's said many times how he's a millionaire with piles of money hidden so people can't sue him if he screws up.
it's probably a good idea to put retirement savings away in a tax deferred 401k if you can. to be fair, there are a lot of people here who may not realize the impact that has. that was kind of the point of the 'rich dad poor dad' book i think (which i didn't read) (even though i didn't have a rich dad).
as a broader picture, anyone writing monetary policy in america should be saying to themselves 'does this help people who are trying to work for a living.' when the outcome of their legislation leads to 'salaries are for suckers,' something went very wrong.
If I barter (e.g. 12 eggs for a gallon of milk) what is there to claim for tax purposes? Aren't both parties trading something of equal value and therefore there is NO income?
Investments subject to capital gains are significantly lower tax subjects than all but the lowest salaries...
exactly jerome
rich dad poor dad is more of an inspirational book than anything else... about 2 people, we might refer to one as "carrera" and the other as "........" Both work hard, are very successful, and are well respected in their fields.
basically one spends their life collecting income generating assets, the other collects liabilities (trades up for nicer houses, cars, boats, etc.) You can guess who ends up better off.
The book gets pretty repetitive and I just saved a couple hours out of your life!
There is a whole underground economy including bartering & working for cash…and it isn’t rich guys doing it. Some of the most prolific tax scofflaws I’ve ever met were in the work-for-cash construction trades. Arguably bartering is taxable, it’s just underground.
The tax code is a legal document and following it doesn’t make someone a crook. Blame the people who write it not those who follow it.
Instead of poor people trying to make rich people poor, rich people should be teaching poor people how to be rich…trouble is, in my experience, it’s like explaining electricity to a plumber.
how do i shelter my income from taxes if i need pretty much all the money i make for food and housing? when i buy bread, i have to pay all the income tax, federal and state, plus payroll tax, plus sales tax, and probably a bunch of other taxes on top (i have to drive a car to get to the store, etc.). if i need my money to buy bread so i don't go hungry, is there still a way to launder that money through a shell company?
of course, eat less and live in a smaller house and all that. but the point is, you get rich by being rich, not by working for a living. as has already been stated, earning money by working doesn't work (because salaries are for suckers). you have to start with a good size nest egg to take advantage of tax savings you're referring to, right?
carrera, i know you didn't write or directly vote on the legislation that essentially punishes people for working for a living, and you have to do what you have to do in the environment you're living in and all that, so no hard feelings. however, you can't really teach poor people how to be rich, since they don't have the money to be rich.
have you ever read the crying of lot 49? i wonder if that's real?
jla, a team of people can accomplish a hell of a lot more than an individual.
^^^ “…..you have to start with a good size nest egg to take advantage of tax savings you're referring to, right?”
Don’t think that’s true at all, it’s a myth perpetuated by the elite to keep people in the "trenches".
A good place for a salaried architect to start is to begin lowering your taxable income by setting up a business, nothing that cost anything to set up like an LLC, just register an entity, claim maximum dependents at work and start saving receipts for anything that could conceivably be considered a business expense…every architect home office needs a Jehs and Laub lounge chair & a Tolomeo floor lamp, right? That alone equates to about $500 in tax savings and money in your pocket. Multiply that by about 10 other ideas and you just gave yourself a $5,000 raise.
If you don’t have the stomach for that do what my one son does….he moved to a no income tax township in the suburbs and makes his in-city employer pay him as a consultant and has a “home office”. He still works downtown most of the time, but pays no municipal income tax (2.25%)…another $3,000 raise!
If you’re feeling guilty about now think of it this way, 50% of your taxes go to wars…just donate that half of your tax savings to a charity and call it even.
Did you guys notice that horrid thread with an architect's name in the title is gone? I'm happy to see it go.
Overall, I would *much* prefer to be self-employed than not. I have so many freelance jobs right now and I LOVE them, I love the freedom and sense of ownership on them (ownership of the ideas and responsibility, not like I own the client). But one half of our marriage had to have health insurance, and my husband's business is far more interesting and potentially profitable than my job is.
So a regular salary, health insurance, vacation, and a smashing 401k contribution plan are welcomed. That said, I still have my PC, and even though the financial gains from it are teeny, I *do* claim anything that seems relevant and realistic as a business expense.
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