111–120 of 324 posts
Does anyone know why it is that their insurance businesses post underwriting profits? Is there anything structural? Why does GEICO have such a cost-driven moat?
GEICOs moat is customer satisfaction. Obviously selling direct means their product is a great value, and service means hard to get their customers to switch.
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You just described the history of China, South and Central America, the Middle East, Eastern and Western Europe, Australia, our friendly Nordic pillagers. Am I missing any? Oh that's right all those empires that crumbled to dust to form our current nations, them too. You just described the history of Humanity.
Yeah, it isn't that America doesn't deserve its riches, it's that just about every current national government doesn't deserve its riches. The working class is as globally exploited as its ever been. edit: Yo guys I'm not saying we need to give it all back. History is stained in blood.
Life back then was short, nasty and brutish. If the population continued to grow with corresponding progress, we'd be fighting even more over the limited resources available.
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they all represent a net gain for Americans from the barren lands, primitive structures and meager output of 1776. Starting from scratch, America has amassed wealth totaling $90 trillion. This was a gain that was achieved not by starting from scratch but by stealing lands from indigenous people and forcing Africans to work that land. I'm not sure if you can describe the kidnapping, murder, rape and ultimately genocid…
While I think it's important to remember these atrocities, I think that for economic understanding it's important to note that these were not the major drivers of growth. Remember that atrocities like that happened in many places that did not grow into giant economies. Stealing land and enslaving people may have given a head start, but clearly something else delivered the big gains. If you look at the history and the…
Two hundred years of slavery was not a major driver of economic growth?
Edit: Serious question, rephrased: do economic historians really not consider slavery a major driver of growth? If so, that would be highly counterintuitive. We're talking about the free labor of ~10 million people over two centuries, in an economy that was almost entirely agricultural.
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Yeah, I made the "capitalist hajj" to Omaha in 2005. It was fun, though I didn't really learn anything I didn't already know by reading his stuff. Like he says, buy Vanguard mutual funds.
What about BRK.A?
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> the big boost was started by the industrial revolution Exactly. Now, lets look at some of the causes of the first Industrial Revolution First, large tracts of lands in Britain, largely held in the commons, were stolen from the peasantry and given to private individuals and landlords, as part of the Enclosure movement. This forced the peasants to look for work in cities en masse, providing cheap labor for the capita…
Your first point is interesting. People gloss over how disruptive the industrial Revolution was, and the downward pressure it put on the wages of farm workers. I'm not convinced by your second one. Why didn't states like Portugal industrialise equally quickly? Or within America, why didn't states with more slaves grow faster? Germany has no history of slavery, and the same is true for modern industrialisation transit…
If you are making profit to support a lavish lifestyle relative to your local peers and (crucially) there is no free market value of your laborers' labor, then what incentive do you have to apply innovation?
Some (cotton gin), but certainly less than a free (in all senses of the word) labor market where a shortage of workers leads to increased wages and a push towards mechanization.
Does anyone know why it is that their insurance businesses post underwriting profits? Is there anything structural? Why does GEICO have such a cost-driven moat?
Their insurance businesses don't always make money. There have been years in the past that they posted big losses.
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0.64% MER is much higher than what you can get with Vanguard. Mutual funds are about 4x less expensive, some ETFs are 10x less expensive.
My personal view of using Wealthsimple is a stepping stone, I've realise that I've throw away money to the banks with higher then needed MERs and Wealthsimple provide a easy way of transferring my money in and saving money now. When my portfolio is larger and I'm seeing a higher cost with them VS doing it myself I'll look into buying ETFs myself. The lowest bank mutual fund in Canada that I've seen in from Tangerine…
Without having to handle rebalancing yourself? AFAIK then Wealthsimple and Tangerine are already the lowest you'll find without working with ETFs or index funds directly.
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they all represent a net gain for Americans from the barren lands, primitive structures and meager output of 1776. Starting from scratch, America has amassed wealth totaling $90 trillion. This was a gain that was achieved not by starting from scratch but by stealing lands from indigenous people and forcing Africans to work that land. I'm not sure if you can describe the kidnapping, murder, rape and ultimately genocid…
While I think it's important to remember these atrocities, I think that for economic understanding it's important to note that these were not the major drivers of growth. Remember that atrocities like that happened in many places that did not grow into giant economies. Stealing land and enslaving people may have given a head start, but clearly something else delivered the big gains. If you look at the history and the…
There's one particular passage I'd like to point out, on page 5: Our efforts to materially increase the normalized earnings of Berkshire will be aided – as they have been throughout our managerial tenure – by America’s economic dynamism. One word sums up our country’s achievements: miraculous. From a standing start 240 years ago – a span of time less than triple my days on earth – Americans have combined human ingenu…
I don't often see this sort of pride in America. Normally the flavors I do observe are hyper-nationalistic and filled with bravado... I'd go even further: our current presidential administration spends a lot of energy telling us that America sucks because the people in it suck, the government they built sucks, and the ideals they aspire to suck, and that the solution is to deal out cruelty to the right kinds of peopl…
Wtf are you talking about? This has never happened.
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they all represent a net gain for Americans from the barren lands, primitive structures and meager output of 1776. Starting from scratch, America has amassed wealth totaling $90 trillion. This was a gain that was achieved not by starting from scratch but by stealing lands from indigenous people and forcing Africans to work that land. I'm not sure if you can describe the kidnapping, murder, rape and ultimately genocid…
Yes, we took land from indigenous peoples, and enslaved Africans. And yes we did awful things. But isn't it obvious that neither of these things created the wealth we have today? To my thinking, our current wealth derives from technological innovation, process engineering, psychological insight, most of which would not have been possible without welcoming people from other lands, and being willing to work with those…