Leif Foged

software guy. owner @turboscribe. ✝️🇺🇸💻

[Leif Foged @leiffoged]

@aaron_renn Educators can't read or understand Charles Dickens.

[Leif Foged @leiffoged]

@RuthlessRuthDV @LayoffAI Obviously not. We should abolish H-1B visas.

[Leif Foged @leiffoged]

The default strategy is going to be money printing a.k.a. a massive, across-the-board tax increase on everybody.

Asset owners might be somewhat spared initially, but the resulting political instability can summon all sorts of evil spirits (like communism, where many groups decide that they also want to go on their own looting sprees).

[Leif Foged @leiffoged]

@JosieBedlam @LayoffAI Is that why the guy went out of his way to praise an Indian guy for "being the best manager I had at Microsoft and someone I am happy to say is a good friend"?

Does not sound like the words of someone who was a victim of rayyyycism.

[Leif Foged @leiffoged]

@JosieBedlam @LayoffAI The whole point of these layoffs is to reduce management bloat.

Meta did the same thing multiple times. Thousands of managers forced to transition to ICs. Hundreds of VPs and directors cut.

Management is expensive. They also tend to get lazy and coast.

[Leif Foged @leiffoged]

Lots VPs and directors have been cut in every major tech layoff in the past few years.

Asha's original post even made this clear. 14 (!!!!) layers of management in some cases. Now max of 5 and a target of 3.

You can't accomplish this without axing some VPs.

[Leif Foged @leiffoged]

@JosieBedlam @LayoffAI Or maybe he got complacent and was not able to adapt to the new challenges the business needs him to face?

It happens after a solid multi-decade run. These are demanding jobs and sometimes even good athletes get cut from the team.

[Leif Foged @leiffoged]

@Nopetwit @LayoffAI Also a big problem.

[Leif Foged @leiffoged]

@Nopetwit @LayoffAI Actually, management nest-feathering at bloated companies like Microsoft (and almost every major corporation) are a big reason why consumers are fed slop at increasingly high costs.

[Leif Foged @leiffoged]

@gregorykennedy Embarrassing to be beat by Denver.

[Leif Foged @leiffoged]

@NateAFischer @jgebbia @bchesky The people who design these systems don't understand or believe in Western standards of evidence or justice.

[Leif Foged @leiffoged]

@JesseKellyDC Average levels of industriousness, hard work, and talent no longer produce predictably average outcomes.

All the headwinds are real (gerontocracy, immigration, DEI, etc) but the only path forward is double down and dial the knob way up.

https://t.co/EXTRsWwemM

[Leif Foged @leiffoged]

Yeah, if you just gift them $$ as kids and invest it in the SP500, you can give them more flexibility. This comes at the cost of owing kiddie tax on the dividends while they are growing up.

As soon as the kids are no longer on your balance sheet, their dividends and cap gains up to ~$50k a year are tax free.

[Leif Foged @leiffoged]

@rickyteachey @SteelyDanMxmlst @AnkurGoel @lymanstoneky This seems right. But you can stop claiming the kid as a dependent to allow them to do this sooner.

[Leif Foged @leiffoged]

@aaron_renn Thanks for continuing to beat this drum!

[Leif Foged @leiffoged]

@AnkurGoel @lymanstoneky It's essentially a traditional IRA, which means nominal gains will be taxed as ordinary income.

One perk is if they turn 18 and have no income, they can roll over up to the standard deduction (currently $16,100) tax free every year into a Roth IRA as a permanent tax shield.

[Leif Foged @leiffoged]

@GreenPlusAnE Yes. Deteriorating social trust, school quality, etc are examples of things that have negative effects on quality of life, even if GDP goes up.

[Leif Foged @leiffoged]

Important observation.

Social trust-adjusted quality of life has gone down in many places (and feels unstable in many others).

[Russ Greene @GreenPlusAnE]

I think the disconnect here is that to economist types (whom I enjoy and admire), middle class = income

For normies, middle class = lifestyle:
1. own a home in a safe neighborhood
2. at least two cars
3. kids go to decent schools
The American Dream.

So when schools deteriorate, the price of gas and/or a new car spikes, fewer people feel a middle class lifestyle is attainable, even if real income is rising.

[Leif Foged @leiffoged]

@signulll They almost certainly count tapping Threads content inside IG as "Threads MAP", which artificially inflates the metric.