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[Flying Teasets]

The state of American popular opinion worries me; I've met three Americans who've claimed Russia is a communist state.

I was actually wondering about that.  Is Putin Too Far Left or Too Far Right?
I mean, I see him as Fascist by another name.  But I had to think on that for a bit.
The political spectrum is actually a circle.  Too Far Left and Too Far Right get you basically the same state.

I kinda agree with the people calling him an authoritarian Russian ruler who primarily gives the right-wing reforms they'd like in exchange for a long and prosperous rule. My knowledge of Russian political culture is unreliable because it is filtered through biased and ignorant minds.

The state of American popular opinion worries me; I've met three Americans who've claimed Russia is a communist state.

That's a holdover from the Cold War I think. I used to hear that a lot when I was younger from older people. It's kind of like an ancient meme. I could see how an American would default to that if they didn't follow the news or read a book on relevant topics or something.

Did you meet them on the internet recently or are they ones you ran into over the years?

I'd met them all face-to-face during the last 5 or so years. The internet and isolation could've contributed to their beliefs. I think one of them was a con-man tho.

[martinuzz]

The state of American popular opinion worries me; I've met three Americans who've claimed Russia is a communist state.

Ain't nothing communist about Russia for a long time now.
Best descriptor would be 'capitalist kleptocracy'

[Micro102]

I wouldn't even say the USSR was communist. The big thing you hear about communism is the "workers own the means of production". But there you have a government owning all the means of production, ran by a dictator. But I'm sure it's useful for propaganda to call them such.

[Madman198237]

I wouldn't even say the USSR was communist. The big thing you hear about communism is the "workers own the means of production". But there you have a government owning all the means of production, ran by a dictator. But I'm sure it's useful for propaganda to call them such.

Ah but you see the workers united to form the government, so the workers DO own the means of production.


The ones that haven't been thrown into gulag, anyway. Total workers' paradise, real great nation to be part of.

[Dostoevsky]

I can hear all the objections from right and left. Let me address a few. Much of this oil and gas will simply be substituted for (banned) Russian energy, so it is unlikely to cause net-higher emissions. There is even an environmental benefit. U.S. gas leaks less methane than Russian gas, and U.S. oil production is also less environmentally harmful than Russian production. In many places, the increase in natural gas could mean countries like Germany could use less coal, a dirtier fuel in nearly every way. In fact, the best way to cut carbon emissions in the short term — with current technologies and at scale — is to replace coal with natural gas.

A few points here--

The oil industry does not turn on a dime. Opening up more leasing here is not going to be producing substantially more fossil fuels anytime soon, and the oil industry is already attempting to do more domestic production because of the skyrocketing prices - and since they're sitting on huge tracts of unused leases, they already have the assets to start exploiting. The calls for more domestic production are mainly for future profits, and maybe some changes to the futures markets (i.e. market spirit animals).

US natural gas to europe means LNG (liquified natural gas), which is a very energy-intensive process. Since we don't have hard figures for russian leakage (though it certainly seems to be high) hard to say if it's guaranteed that US LNG is worse GHG-wise than russian normal natural gas, but it's also not guaranteed better. Also the case that we'd likely need to construct more LNG terminals both in the US and in Europe, which isn't necessarily a quick or cheap process.

Replacing coal with natural gas is good in the short term, yes, but medium and longer term is less sure. There's a lot of concern (some of which is arguably already happening) that natural gas will simply replace coal/oil as the vested interest, and the pivot to actually clean fuels will take too long to avoid some of the even more frightening climate scenarios. A lot of coal infrastructure in the US is aging and in need of replacement; replacing that with natural gas assets may effectively lock them in for their decades-long service life, even setting aside the politics.

Further, the US (and even Europe!) ending consumption of russian oil does not necessarily mean that russian oil won't be produced or sold. There are plenty of countries in the world with demand and less qualms purchasing from Russia, though this is admittedly more of a thing for its oil than its natural gas (which is harder to ship around easily).

All that said, I agree it's not an easy situation. Probably the main point I have is that there isn't any quick way to reduce the global economic consequences of cutting off russian oil and gas, and that we shouldn't kid ourselves that selling new oil and gas leasing is going to change that in the next year or few.

(relatedly, Biden announced the ban earlier today and congress is likely to legislatively formalize it by the end of the week)


As to Trump/Putin, just a note that it's not as if Putin was being peaceful during the Trump years. The 'civil war' in Ukraine was raging all that time, even as Trump was sabotaging aid to Ukraine in order to satisfy his personal paranoia. More broadly (and thankfully), a fair bit of the US international apparatus at that time was functioning much the same as it had been under Obama (and before), and was able to resist Trump's... whatever he was doing.

[Duuvian]

That makes sense. What you quoted was from the article. I pasted it because it summed it up well or was the most interesting bit of it, can't remember which.

Yes, I agree with your main point. I should have advocated more for LNG ships but I think I forgot about that after a while with cheaper fuel prices.

I don't know much about leases but supposedly there are a lot out already that aren't being used for something. Is there some advantages to having a lease without extracting on it?

Fracking was done near me in the last oil boom and I met the guy who spudded the holes by a complete fluke years later after they had shut down production. He said the drilling company he worked for at the time spudded a second hole for the (different) extraction company for wastewater nearby so they didn't have to haul as much away like they were required to. To be fair I don't know if that is credible or if he just tells locals that so they are mad at that company as he wasn't working in the same industry at the time. I do recall the company was required to take it's fracking waste somewhere else, their trucks tore up a local road or something in the newspaper.

I'm glad to hear that renewables will be looked at as a part of increasing US energy production too. It seems like something that could be done concurrently with increasing extraction, and result in more US product for export than focussing just extraction. My preference would be to lean towards renewables but oil/fuel is very expensive right now, Europe needs LNG, and we don't have clean reactors yet. It would be nice if the profits from the coming extraction boom were used to a more significant degree to diversify on constructing renewable sources for the US market to cushion the industry busts that have come with oil price fluctuations in the past and shutters production in the US and if I understand it correctly causes imports of cheaper to produce oil when the price is too low for US producers to compete with. If any of the renewable energy industries require a significant worker base the first place I would suggest building them if possible is in areas that rely on energy extraction industries for employment, because while I have no inkling of how soon and am not an expert, those people may need assistance regarding employment opportunities eventually as time marches on and it would be good to be prepared for them ahead of time instead of figuring it out as it goes.

The state of American popular opinion worries me; I've met three Americans who've claimed Russia is a communist state.

That's a holdover from the Cold War I think. I used to hear that a lot when I was younger from older people. It's kind of like an ancient meme. I could see how an American would default to that if they didn't follow the news or read a book on relevant topics or something.

Did you meet them on the internet recently or are they ones you ran into over the years?

I'd met them all face-to-face during the last 5 or so years. The internet and isolation could've contributed to their beliefs. I think one of them was a con-man tho.
[/quote]
Hmm, I might start asking random people what form of government Russia has and see if this is wider spread than I thought. I imagine it's not common but it's also a subject most Americans won't have much reason for thinking about often except in times like now. Were you able to convince them if you tried?

[wierd]

We interrupt this broadcast to bring you this important news bulletin.

Federal prosecutors secure an "all counts" victory against a Texas man who stormed the capitol during the capitol riot.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/mar/08/jury-trial-texas-man-capitol-riot

As a precedent setting case, this likely sets the tone for further prosecutions.


We now return to 24/7 coverage of  Russia -V- Ukraine: The unprovoked invasion.

[Dostoevsky]

I don't know much about leases but supposedly there are a lot out already that aren't being used for something. Is there some advantages to having a lease without extracting on it?

In short, yes - allows the company to be more responsive to price fluctuations by being able to be slightly faster in exploiting, as the leasing process is a periodic thing (and they can't be 100% confident that a given plot will be available at a given lease sale). Not all assets are worth the same, particularly when it comes to oil, so it's not uncommon for there to hold a lease that will only be profitable when price is higher than a certain level.

It's the long game, and the big oil companies have gotten pretty good at playing the long game. (At least, setting aside climate change...)

I'm glad to hear that renewables will be looked at as a part of increasing US energy production too. It seems like something that could be done concurrently with increasing extraction, and result in more US product for export than focussing just extraction. My preference would be to lean towards renewables but oil/fuel is very expensive right now, Europe needs LNG, and we don't have clean reactors yet. It would be nice if the profits from the coming extraction boom were used to a more significant degree to diversify on constructing renewable sources for the US market to cushion the industry busts that have come with oil price fluctuations in the past and shutters production in the US and if I understand it correctly causes imports of cheaper to produce oil when the price is too low for US producers to compete with. If any of the renewable energy industries require a significant worker base the first place I would suggest building them if possible is in areas that rely on energy extraction industries for employment, because while I have no inkling of how soon and am not an expert, those people may need assistance regarding employment opportunities eventually as time marches on and it would be good to be prepared for them ahead of time instead of figuring it out as it goes.

This'd require a long post in response (for the most part no issues with what you wrote, there's just a lot of digital ink to spill), but generally speaking: yeah, legislators and the white house are trying to do this. The main wrinkles with 'transition' (as enviros call it, but fossil fuel workers in the field hate) are that renewables are very geography-dependent (e.g. how much sun, how much wind) and that many workers in energy extraction don't want to be forced into the next era.

[McTraveller]

Finally working on my taxes... and I was nervous for a minute that I was going to have pay some kind of severe penalty.

The situation: Unlike 90% of USians, I do my taxes so at the end of the year I get as close to $0 refund as possible - that means I'm getting the most per paycheck that I can get.  A big chunk of that comes from child tax credits.  In 2021, the government decided to send us those child tax credit prepayment checks.  With two kids, for my family this amounted to $3000.

So my taxes show that I owe $2800 this year - which is more than $1000 and is more than 10% of my total taxes due.  The general rule is this would incur an Estimated Tax penalty.  Even though if you do the math... if they hadn't cut me those checks, I would have gotten a $200 refund, which is really quite close to $0 (in fact, given I owe my state $180, means I have petty pride of getting so close to exact...)  So if I do get penalized, it's because I didn't change my W-4 in the middle of the year to account for the fact that they paid me money I didn't want or need at the time... because I was already getting it!

Luckily, after doing a crazy form that I've never had to consider before, because in 2020 my tax burden was sufficiently low, I lucked out because if your previous tax year was way lower than the current year you don't get penalized.  At least I think it's that way.

Worst case is I file and the IRS sends me a bill, and then I can file a request for a waiver...

Annoying that something that is intended to help people, actually penalized me because I don't rely on a tax refund every spring...   "rich people problems" I know...

[Frumple]

More like "problem caused by rich people", really. Shit could be a hell of a lot simpler on the tax front, but folks make enough money from it not being simple they're able to fund the efforts needed to keep it that way

[Dostoevsky]

Always remember that the tax-prep companies lobby quite hard against efforts to make the tax system easier to do.

[Starver]

I can't even work out what the situation is, as described, McT. Definitely a needlessly complicated system, from my perspective in a far simpler taxable situation.

(When I had some of my company's shares, as a business-matched lay-away scheme thing that came straight out of my UK salary but put towards US-based stocks held by DeutscheBank (IIRC), the fuss it took to actually get the value back out of them afterwards... It needed all kinds of weird tax-forms, most of them for the IRS, like a WD40/whatever. Some form of administrative lubricant, definitely!)

[McTraveller]

I can't even work out what the situation is, as described, McT. Definitely a needlessly complicated system, from my perspective in a far simpler taxable situation.

I amaze many of my colleagues by still doing my taxes "by hand"; I don't even pay the $80 to buy a program to help me with them.

So the US tax system is basically this, for most people, for income tax only (I'm not getting into social security and medicare, or alternate minimum tax, etc):

Spoiler: US federal income tax in a nutshell; only read if you are morbidly curious or want to go sleep (click to show/hide)

The US defines two incomes - your "adjusted gross income" (AGI) and your "taxable income".  Your AGI is basically everything you have to declare as earnings. Your federal taxable income is AGI minus some things - those are deductions from income.  (AGI is important because many states have different allowable deductions than the federal government).

On the taxable income, you have a bracketed system:  The first $X are taxed at R₁%.  The next $X are taxed at R₂%, and so on.  The specific thresholds for each bracket depend on if you are married, single, are a single parent, and some other arbitrary criteria.

Your tax is figured on your taxable income, based on the brackets.

There are three ways to settle your tax owed:
1. the amount your employer holds from each paycheck (withholdings) determined by how you filled out a form called a W4.
2. tax credits - this is basically a discount on your tax bill if you satisfy certain criteria
3. pay in cash

If items 1 and 2 are greater than your tax owed, you get a refund; if not then you have to settle the balance in cash.

Key takeaway: tax deductions reduce the effective income on which you are taxed, so they reduce your tax bill by the rate in your highest bracket.  So $1 of deduction counts at most as like $0.38 a reduction in taxes.  Tax credits count as taxes paid - $1 of tax credit reduces your tax bill by $1.

Most people just follow the instructions on the W4 and forget about it.  The basic W4 is super conservative and doesn't account for a wide range of non-wage income, deductions, or credits. So most people that "take the default" end up having more money taken out of their paychecks every month, and get a big refund in the spring. Basically they give the government an interest-free loan on the excess.

What I do is do the math on my income so that I fill out my W4 so that my employer sends just enough to the government each month so that at the end of the year my tax credits plus withholdings are really quite close to my tax owed.

What happened to me is that my W4 accounts for the fact that I'm eligible for a child tax credit.  But in 2021 the government just sent everyone checks for a big chunk of that tax credit, and removed that chunk of the credit from the tax form.  So now my W4 was holding too little - I had already accounted for getting that $3000 as part of my take-home pay spread evenly over each month.  I didn't adjust my W4 to have my employer send more money each month to the government - I was just sitting on those government checks as extra cash.

Basically the IRS thought it was doing a favor by giving me $3000 of my total child tax credit spread out over a couple months - but I was already doing that through my W4. Since the IRS didn't have a mandate to check W4s, and just send that money to everyone, basically I was getting twice the credit I should have been getting.  I knew this of course and didn't spend the money - I have the cash on hand. (And earned a whopping $10 interest on it, maybe).

But because my W4s are based on not having that, my tax owed is - you guessed it - almost $3000, instead of 0.

Here's where it gets political / systematic: the government has no problem taking a zero-interest loan from you and giving you a big refund at the end of the year.  But the government really doesn't like you having a large tax owed at the end of the year - they want their money often, not annually.  This prevents some people from setting their W4s way out of whack and basically having to pay all their taxes once.  The threshold is $1000 or 10% of your total tax owed, whichever is greater.  So if you owe more than $1000, what they normally do is give you a penalty called "estimated tax" -

Estimated tax is normally for people who earn a certain amount or fall into certain employment categories, and instead of filing annually you have to file quarterly.  It's as annoying as it sounds - while it does help the government have a more steady cash flow, it's a lot of extra work.

So because I am trying to be neither a lender or borrower to the government, I got hit with the $3000 tax owed, and I'm not nearly rich enough for $3000 to be less than 10% of my total tax bill.

Luckily though there is a provision for avoiding the Estimated Tax penalty - if your prior year's total tax is small enough, you get a grace allowance because there's a reasonable assumption that your tax owed this year would be similar to the tax owed the prior year.  Since my tax owed last year was significantly less than this year (my wife and I both got paid much more this year than in 2020), and because my tax withheld this year was more than my total tax owed last year, I am apparently/hopefully exempt from the penalty, and that means I can continue to file annually instead of quarterly.

I just have to pay back that $3000 check...

It is absolutely more complex than it could be.

[JoshuaFH]

I appreciate that huge post, many of the questions I've had are finally answered.  Whenever I'd ask those questions, I'd always run into "help" that is intent on being unclear.

I was always curious about the concept of withholdings,  why give the government an interest-free loan? Usually when you loan money to the government it's called a bond, and those are meant to pay off.

[Frumple]

I mean... withholdings aren't a loan? It's a weird way to look at them, especially given the duration (at most a year, getting progressively shorter as the tax year progresses) and amount most folks deal with (the median US personal income in 2021 was <53k USD for full time workers according to the BLS, all workers somewhere below that -- the taxes on that are no more than 22%, or 11-12k, and only a fraction of that is ultimately incorrectly withheld). It's taxes taken straight from your income, generally held by your employer and sent from them to the gov't... not really a loan anymore than money being held a few days by the bank after a large deposit is.

Our tax system's just fucked up, so stuff like your deductions aren't kind of casually factored in, in the way even a bloody spreadsheet can manage, though, and so there's weirdness that accumulates over the course of a year leading to the refund and/or extra owed. That's not a loan so much as a deliberate fuckup :V