sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
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User ID: 636
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
5hr ago
I don't see "internal eliminations" in that document.
Gemini suggests that the document says UHC got $290B in premium revenue and Optum Rx earned $80B and Optum health earned $64B primarily from UHC. I don't think the other Optum divisions could be considered patient care upon a cursory check.
That is a significant chunk of UHC premium revenue, so I take your point there. However, the money staying in the family like this would make UHC more likely to pay out claims than if it were going to a truly external company, and yet the common complaint is that they don't pay out enough.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
11hr ago
Retail pharmaceutical spending accounts for 10% of total health spending. It's not the reason for high costs.
The same thing happens with insurance-owned clinics
What fraction of healthcare spending goes through insurance owned clinics?
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
12hr ago
That's certainly true. But that would incentivize insurance companies to pay out more claims.
Insurance companies are probably not sufficiently motivated to play hardball with providers on costs. At the same time, people are getting most of their premiums back even if they don't like how much care they get for those premiums.
Insurance companies are legally obligated to pay out 80% of premiums. I'm sure there are plenty of cases where they deny claims for bullshit reasons, and this is perhaps even part of their business strategy, but the big picture is that they spend the vast majority of premiums on payment for care.
It's not clear to me what "shifting profits" has to do with this, because the regulation is about how much premium revenue is spent on healthcare rather than anything to do with profits.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
13hr ago
The various alternative chronologies are good for a laugh, e.g. we wuz Pechenegs n shit.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
1d ago
Punishing people for taking part in an armed conflict is a war crime.
Isis are unlawful belligerents and so its members can be prosecuted.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
4d ago
How much maternity leave do you get?
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
4d ago
I haven't worked directly with zoomers but from what I can tell the real zoomer malingerer power move is mental health leave under the FMLA.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
4d ago
Fair, if you get them paid out then it's a different story. I haven't had such a situation myself.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
4d ago
Well yes, I'm not talking about lying about being sick. I don't max out my sick days but I'm also not a "no sick days ever" guy. That doesn't require lying.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
4d ago
You can buy a watch with even better accuracy than an omega for about thirty bucks.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
5d ago
The "no sick day" pride thing is confusing to me. My employer allows a certain number of sick days, why would I not take advantage of those for days when my productivity would be affected by being sick or my recovery would be impaired by working? Not to mention knock on effects of getting my co-workers sick.
There's no bonus for not using any sick days.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
5d ago
"Dear Penthouse, I never thought it would happen to me..."
Fair, though it seems that Tesla is only 5% of the EV market.
Is there a possible future where Nvidia is 5% of the Chinese chip market? Perhaps, but I suspect it requires significant derisking from the Chinese point of view - that is, China should be able to produce Nvidia chips with Chinese engineers that won't be recalled if tensions mount. Otherwise there's just no advantage to China of being susceptible to lock-in. At that point it may be simpler for China to produce equivalent chips in factories that don't say Nvidia on them, and I'm sure China's brightest minds could find a way to make chips that you can run CUDA on.
This hasn't happened (yet?) for Tesla because 5% of consumer EV marketshare is simply not a big deal and carries no risk of lock in or dependency.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
6d ago
I'm saying that the handwringing about low Chinese household consumption is propaganda
That's not what you said.
In reality, even 40% is fairly normal in nations we recognize as successful upstanding members of the international community
Then there's no need to argue that actually Chinese consumption is more than 40% of GDP, right?
You also annoy me with this constant appeal to paywall.
Buddy, you're no picnic yourself. You're treating arguments as soldiers. You make a blustering claim that someone has it wrong and then retreat to "why do you care??" and "it's actually fine, okay??" when it turns out he's pretty close after all. Your original claim about propaganda turns out to be rhetoric - claims about Chinese consumption are window dressing. Is Chinese consumption 40%? That's okay, totally normal, you just hate the Chinese. Is Chinese consumption 65%? See, just like America, no problem here. Very troubling.
The last link wasn't paywalled and it went on to explain why 46% is a lowball too.
And says:
Even after adjustments, China’s household consumption rate remains low
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
6d ago
I don't even have a "problem" with their system in the context of this conversation, and it seems a bit facile to resort to accusations like that when we're discussing a narrow empirical question about Chinese consumption as a fraction of GDP which you were the one to dispute.
@aquota said it's 40%, you said that's bullshit propaganda and provided a paywalled source to support that which, it turns out, suggests the true number is 46%.
Now you're saying that 40%-50% is perfectly normal, actually. Well, maybe, but then why call the original claim imperial propaganda when it's pretty close to correct?
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
7d ago
After domestic chips become better than H200 (or rather, domestic systems + power subsidy become competitive with Nvidia clusters) and there's wide adoption of Huawei CANN and Cambricon NeuWare, I predict that they will relax controls on imported chips, maybe replacing it with a simple tariff. Your model suggests that they will tighten controls. It's an empirical matter, we will see in a matter of 2 years, most likely.
Hardly. If Chinese chips become better than the best Nvidia has to offer, there is, as you say, little reason to ban imports since approximately nobody will want to use them. EVs are a good example - how many Chinese people buy American EVs? I'd assume the number is approximately zero since American EVs are about 5x the price for a comparable product.
Of course, if Chinese chips are better than Nvidia's best, the prospects for Nvidia market share become quite slim. You seem to want it both ways - Nvidia exports to China will ensure Nvidia's dominance in China (lock in! Efficiency! Yields!), but also China is going to ensure that domestic chips are the market leader.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
7d ago
Sure, let's throw that in to the consumption number.
That brings us to 46% for China and 65% for the US based on the numbers above, once we apply the increase from the text you quoted. Still, the gap is fairly significant.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
7d ago
How is it not supposed to help? Money is good, market share is good.
We were just discussing long vs short term thinking. Money and market share are the short term returns, the question is about the long term.
In a more relaxed geopolitical environment, they may not even stop 100%, just like they're still buying high-end Western CNC machines, despite being able to make functionally similar ones now. Nvidia will still have better yields, lower unit prices, higher power efficiency, more polished software, likely for decades. It's not like they have a philosophical commitment to not buy at all, they are simply focused on becoming strategically invulnerable to export controls after years of American gloating about how they'll fall behind and die, starting with Huawei.
We're not in a more relaxed geopolitical environment. We're in an environment where China is doing everything it can to stimulate domestic chip production including by banning imports of certain chips in the first place, which sounds like a philosophical commitment to not buying at all to me.
If you believe that China is interested in being invulnerable to export controls and you believe that Nvidia use can lead to lock-in, it follows that China's strategy would be to avoid the lock-in in the first place, which means that there is no long term market for Nvidia chips in China.
The main argument against this has nothing to do with Chinese plans to stop buying chips later
Correct. I brought up the other argument in a previous thread where you responded with a non-sequitur about orange man having bad trade policy. Here I'm limiting myself strictly to your claim that chip exports would be beneficial in the long run for Nvidia.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
7d ago
This feels like a misdirection. The price level of China vs the US doesn't matter for the question of how much of Chinese GDP is household consumption. In each case the ratio can be calculated in local currency without any need for PPP adjustments.
The article you linked is (apparently, based on your excerpts) discussing correct PPP factors based on household expenditures, which is really not the same question at all.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
7d ago
I still don't understand how exporting chips to China is supposed to help the US in the long run when the Chinese long run plan is to not import chips.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
7d ago
Chinese consumption is not that low, read this.
It's paywalled. What does PPP have to do with the fraction of Chinese household income that goes to consumption?
Yeah but have you had None Pizza With Left Beef?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/None_Pizza_with_Left_Beef
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