As a fan of Pilot's fountain pens, I've come to rely on their aim for quality. Their pens and inks just work.
One of the things many fountain pen users complain about with Pilot is that their converters don't work like other fountain pens. But in each case there are specific design choices that shine. Their cartridges have wider openings than standard ink cartridges. In part this makes their cartridges and converters proprietary, but the wider mouth and the hinged lid on the cartridges makes for better ink flow.
The CON-40, often criticized for low ink capacity, fits their smaller pens, and has small agitators in the converter, allowing every last drop to get to the feed, and making cleaning easier. The CON-70, generally liked for its capacity, also has a unique feature of a metal tube that runs the length of the converter. This tube, which could have simply been a rod to hold the rubber stopper that enables pump filling, is a tube so that you can actually hold a blunt syringe to the tube mouth and squirt water straight to the back of the converter allowing you to clean it out properly.
I love using well-designed products, and their writing instruments are among my favorites.
I agree. Their fountain pens and inks are just rock solid, and I've practically never run into an issue with any of mine. I wish more companies would obsess over the details like Pilot does.
You seem to forget that given the way taxes work, eventually, anyone, with any amount of money, will be considered "wealthy" because we'll keep running out of other people's money.
You're wealthy, or the definition will change to include you. The spice must flow.
>because we'll keep running out of other people's money.
that doesn't make a whole lot of sense, for two reasons. For one, as even Paul points out in the piece, a wealth tax below what's practically a risk free return on capital (~5%) doesn't eat into the capital stock, it simply means wealth grows slower, but still increases.
Secondly, there's no monotonous historical direction towards higher wealth taxes, in fact the opposite. We're living in an age of low wealth taxation, with only half a dozen countries or so, if I'm not mistaken, imposing one at all.
The risk free rate of return is usually only a point or two above inflation, and I’d argue that real wealth, rather than nominal wealth, is the true measure to look at to determine whether someone’s position has improved, stayed flat, or decreased.
> it simply means wealth grows slower, but still increases
But what does this mean? If you have a load of money in some companies, that's helping to fund their activities, and the companies' share price goes up a bit, you haven't gained any money. And you won't gain any until you sell some shares, which is already taxed.
The debt doesn't just go away, and interest is paid on it. It's not "free". Etrade's best rate is 10.45%. If your stocks go bust, you're still on the hook for the margin debt.
That’s not how it works, though. Buy, borrow, die doesn’t rely on retail margin rates. It’s closer to 3-5%.
Assets are used as collateral for loans that don’t require any repayment until death. Generally the borrower can borrow up to 75% of their collateralized asset, and that loan is not taxed. When they die the assets are passed to heirs and stepped up to their current value as the new cost basis. They’re sold to repay the loan and interest. No taxes paid on the loan “income”, no taxes paid on the capital gains, 3-5% interest paid for the outstanding balance of the loan and I’m sure some of that gets taxed. Because the collateralized asset stays invested the entire time, it usually grows faster than the interest that will eventually be paid.
The 10.4% margin rate is Etrade's best interest rate, and it's only for large amounts. I looked it up.
> When they die the assets are passed to heirs and stepped up to their current value as the new cost basis...no taxes paid on the capital gains
And then your entire estate is taxed at 40%.
> and that loan is not taxed
Of course it is not taxed. A loan is not income, and is not an asset. It's a liability.
> Because the collateralized asset stays invested the entire time, it usually grows faster than the interest that will eventually be paid.
The higher the return, the higher the risk. It is normal practice to borrow money to invest it hoping for higher returns than the interest. It is not a scam.
Let’s say you put $20M as collateral for an SBLOC loan. The collateral amount and grows at ≥7%/year and you’re charged interest on your loan of 4%/year. You pull $1M/year that goes into the loan. This goes on for 40 years.
At death the cost basis is stepped up to the value at the time of death. All capital gains are erased.
Next, the loan is paid back before any distribution to heirs. This is done at 0% tax rate because it happens before any distribution to heirs.
Finally, the heirs get what remains and any inheritance tax applies to that.
So you got to live with no income tax related to capital gains. The capital gains are wiped out upon death.
Had you paid taxes along the way, you’d leave about $37M to your heirs (and none of that would be touched by inheritance tax).
If you did the SBLOC strategy,
The portfolio grew to around $300M. The loan principal and interest are around $100M. Taxes are $64M. Your heirs get to keep $136M.
There’s less risk since there is never any sales over a longer period, so the returns approach the average.
There’s more tax paid by the SBLOC strategy, it just happens very acutely instead of over time. The heirs are also left with significantly more.
All you're saying is that you can borrow money and invest it and hopefully you make more off of the investment than the interest on the money.
A loan is not income. After all, when you borrow a half million to buy a house, you aren't charged income tax on that. You also are not charged income tax on stuff you charged on your credit card.
That's even better. You just transfer beneficial ownership and route dividends to a different bank account. And now you have a LOT more Americans literally invested in Amazon/X/Meta's success. But poor Jeff, he did have to sell his yacht (no, the other one).
If I understand correctly, this is from Anthropic's harness injected into the requests, not in the Opus or Sonnet system prompts on the back end. Is that right?
One of the things many fountain pen users complain about with Pilot is that their converters don't work like other fountain pens. But in each case there are specific design choices that shine. Their cartridges have wider openings than standard ink cartridges. In part this makes their cartridges and converters proprietary, but the wider mouth and the hinged lid on the cartridges makes for better ink flow.
The CON-40, often criticized for low ink capacity, fits their smaller pens, and has small agitators in the converter, allowing every last drop to get to the feed, and making cleaning easier. The CON-70, generally liked for its capacity, also has a unique feature of a metal tube that runs the length of the converter. This tube, which could have simply been a rod to hold the rubber stopper that enables pump filling, is a tube so that you can actually hold a blunt syringe to the tube mouth and squirt water straight to the back of the converter allowing you to clean it out properly.
I love using well-designed products, and their writing instruments are among my favorites.
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