Viewing profile — pashamur

It’s a real thing: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_thrift You get ahead by saving, but everyone can’t do that all together or the economy collapses.

Note that this is showing household incomes, not individual incomes. Household used to mean 1 working family member, now it's closer to 2 due in large part by more women joining th…

Most likely under-reported COVID deaths. Having looked at the Russia data at least, many deaths (earlier on) were marked with "pneumonia" and they didn't even bother testing for CO…

Isn't there always a contracting option where you can take on as many jobs as you'd like?

The other reason that prices are way cheaper second hand is that the buyer is taking the risk of buying a lemon - versus some sort of guarantee (usually) when you buy new. The sell…

Basic economics assumes a functional and competitive market. The majority of markets in America no longer fit this criteria - today's corporate environment is closer to neo-feudal …

Yes, chess masters at the top actually have groups of coaches (if they're preparing for an important match). Sometimes up to 5-10 people. Though it might not be so much coaches as …

Jim Browning (the renowned anti-scammer) recently fell for one of his own, where someone tricked him into disabling his Youtube account. So if the situation is right, almost anyone…

The poorer/richer argument only makes sense in the context of a specific consumption basket. If your main goal in life is to buy as many bananas as you can (for example), then you …

Big crashes (and fast-drop bottoms) happen not because of panic selling, but because of forced selling (covering margin calls, getting liquidated, etc). Panic selling usually leads…

I posted an interview about the open-pricing surgery center of Oklahoma which actually goes into how a free market healthcare system would work. A free market system would make for…

I wonder if the TSA has some signaling effect though apart from the actual efficacy of the security theatre. Even if it catches things rarely, the fact that it exists makes people …

Yeah, you pretty much nailed it - this article gives context, but it's pretty much as you said, most people are not adjusting by inflation & interest rate: https://realestatedecode…

Grandparent might mean median individual income instead (since household income graphs can be skewed by more people working - Elizabeth Warren writes about this in the Two Income T…

No, we simply change the game. Why is their labor not worth the new minimum wage? Is it outsourcing? Foreign tariffs or import controls. Is it robots/automation? Tax robot producti…

I'm going to refer to Lyn Alden's guide here ( https://www.lynalden.com/inflation/ ), but not all inflation damages the lower class. In fact, the wealth gap was smallest (relativel…

This depends on how the money is distributed - if we have stimulus checks (and eventually everyone has an account at the FED), for example, it's not true that well-connected intere…

Of reported cases*, which is very different than actual cases. CDC actually has a page where they estimate the true number of cases of COVID in the US, and they put it at ~115 mill…

1) 20 years is a small sample size 2) The US has enjoyed the status of the world's reserve currency since 1945, which literally means the gains of the U.S. stock market are partly …

The most important concept to understand about today's market is not short squeeze - it's gamma squeeze (which can lead to shorts being squeezed). It's about how traders got their …

There is a good article by Lyn Alden on this, but basically, the difference is how the QE is targeted. In 2008, the QE was done in order to get rid of toxic assets and recapitalize…

I think that's the appeal of Bitcoin and/or Gold: it's both cash in that it might act as a safe haven in the case of an asset crash and would retain it's value during hyperinflatio…

Not sure whether it makes sense to average all returns and call it "negative expected returns" across the board. As with any game that mixes luck & skill (like poker), trading has …