I was a passenger on AC549 several years ago when this happened. In our case, the oxygen masks were deployed because the cabin had actually lost pressure. From the standpoint of mechanical safety, I have no doubt that these planes are built to safely withstand these rates of descent, and likely a multiple of them. Having said that, I can also say that when the plane began its (sudden and unannounced, understandably) descent, you could feel your guts up in your throat much like when the roller coaster drops over the top of the first hill. From there on down it was calmer, but nonetheless harrowing. It's hard to describe how exactly, but it sure felt like we were coming down in a hell of a hurry.
Only once we had levelled off were the flight crew able to inform us what had happened. Those intervening 6 or 8 minutes, however, were decidedly Type 3 fun.
For me, an airplane depresurization event without structural damage would probably be a 1.5. Worrying/Stressing in the passenger seat isn't going to affect the outcome, so might as well sit back and enjoy.
> How much could this reduce the total environmental food print of cattle?
Poore and Nemecek did a pretty comprehensive survey of the climate impact of different foods https://science.sciencemag.org/content/360/6392/987 in 2018. Their underlying data suggests that methane accounts for about 38% of the total CO2 equivalent impact of beef herds. So if this is true, beef would still be highly damaging, but materially improved over where it sits now.
I'd prefer not to say because I'd like to get along with the people who were there. But I'm pretty sure you can google the facts and figure it out. Sorry to be squishy but I seem to have made a career out of pissing people off and I'm trying to do less of that. Yeah, publicly posting the story might not have been the greatest idea but naming names is even worse.
Postmedia owns the leading daily newspapers in most Canadian cities. They required the papers' editorial boards to endorse the Harper government in our current federal election. Given the scope of their ownership and reach, this is a remarkable perversion of the press in favor of a couple of hedge funds who own Postmedia. I built an ad (and paywall script) blocker targeted only at their properties, and plan to submit to Apple later today. Pull requests welcome.
Definitely true. I was just logged in as Blackberry and had full access to all the BBM apps (!). Seems to have reverted to my proper account now. Will share a screenshot momentarily.
I think it's worth clarifying what's meant by the "double taxation of dividends". This refers to the fact that the company (at least in theory) already paid taxes on its profits, which are then taxed again as ordinary income when passed on to shareholders in the form of dividends. Arguably, this second tax occurs even when the profits are returned as capital gains (which is the case with buybacks), but in that case a) the tax rate is much lower, and b) the shareholder can choose to defer the tax payment by simply holding onto the stock until a future date. Long story short, the preference for buybacks over dividends is not about avoiding double taxation per se, but rather minimizing the tax rate of profit distributions. Per OP, one way to fix this would be to tax them the same regardless of the distribution mechanism.
Another example of how taxing capital gains at less than 'ordinary' income has all sorts of weird and often undesirable effects.
Of course, I guess the argument for it is that it has the favorable effect of encouraging capital investment, that's what it's supposed to do right? I am curious what evidence there is of how well it does that.
I haven't actually counted it up from the wikipedia article, just skimmed, but looks like maybe mostly "developing"/"third world" countries? Which are desperate to attract capital investment, and usually not entirely in control of their own fiscal policies.
This isn't really the issue. See my comment above, which in your example translates to the tax rate in company one's scenario being ~2x the rate in company two's.
Only once we had levelled off were the flight crew able to inform us what had happened. Those intervening 6 or 8 minutes, however, were decidedly Type 3 fun.
https://globalnews.ca/news/2487158/breaking-vancouver-bound-...