531–540 of 970 posts
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He's been wrong 100x more than he's been correct. He spends the entire day spouting random garbage, and you can cherry-pick the 10 pieces of garbage that happened to be true.
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Instantaneous change with compensation is extremely expensive. I noted in another thread that it's quite possible for the costs of compensating affected parties to reach $30.5 trillion, the current size of the US national debt. This assumed compensation had a needs component to it and only half of the US property market was compensated. The basic issue is the current US property market is estimated at $33.6 trillion.…
Right, so you could see that 30 trillion + commercial number as a loan that the federal government is taking out that they only need to pay the interest on as it accrues(as people spend their land tax credits). This is something the federal government can handle, as the system will more than pay for itself over the lifetime of the tax credits. A tax credit that gets subtracted when the homeowner defaults equal to the…
I agree you can modify how the tax credits work to potentially transfer the mortgage loss credits from the homeowner to the mortgage holder when the homeowner walks away. If you do this effectively you can reduce the cost by nearly $10 trillion but still have around $25 trillion in residential costs.
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IMHO, falling life expectancy is a macro measure of multiple failing institutions, not a singular cause. Obesity is driven by systemic commercialization and sugaring of our food supply, combined with inequality of too low a pay, too many hours, to little vacation. Even funding of highway and road infrastructure over other areas is a contributor here. Another large part of it is because we elect to keep both private h…
Let us imagine that starting tomorrow every single American is granted infinite endless and free access to anything available at any restaurant or grocery store or other food service. Do you think that in 10 years the obesity epidemic would be: better, same, worse? I have trouble imagining that it would be better. Look at people who come into access with large sums of money for reasons outside primarily mental achiev…
Everything is not falling apart, though certain institutions may be falling apart. In America, there's definitely been a breakdown of belief in its own institutions. Far more people are skeptical of things like journalism and Silicon Valley; it really wasn't that long ago that the former was constantly salivating over the latter, but now it's more of an openly vulture-carrion relationship because that caters to publi…
For example, when people stopped believing in Communism and the institutions of the Party, the USSR was done. All the nuclear weapons and KGB goons couldn't keep it together. When Roman citizens figured out that the legions would no longer protect them and they were better off paying tithes to a local feudal lord rather than taxes to Rome, the Roman Empire was done. And in the US, if nobody believes in the democratic system of government and the only way to keep their party in power is through insurrection or voter suppression, then the US as we know it will be over as well.
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We can’t sustain our current levels of spending without a growing population. The lions share of American spending goes to social services: social security, Medicare, Medicaid. If you’re referencing to automation taking over…I fully agree with your point. It seems like half the people around me have made up jobs.
The elites that control everything dont really care about social security, medicare, medicaid. Automation can make all the things they would want. Why do they need you around again? Especially when having you around creates pollution that makes things worse for them....
This is why we have constant revolution throughout human history.
Well if Malthusian scientists are to be believed then we only really have another couple of decades at best before the global population level causes society to collapse. So you could interpret recent events to be the first warning signs of that. Personally I remain unconvinced of that, though. Or at least, it seems to me that humans have the unique benefit of being able to problem solve their way out of the issues r…
Somehow we are simultaneously doomed because of both too little and too much population growth
In fact I'm pretty sure there's a potential middle ground with large enough historical population boom where both of these issues could hypothetically be realised simultaneously...
But, you know I think we should really focus on just making agriculture and energy production more efficient/cleaner, reducing waste and making care work a decent living or something.
Everything is not falling apart, though certain institutions may be falling apart. In America, there's definitely been a breakdown of belief in its own institutions. Far more people are skeptical of things like journalism and Silicon Valley; it really wasn't that long ago that the former was constantly salivating over the latter, but now it's more of an openly vulture-carrion relationship because that caters to publi…
I think there’s something more fundamental going on in the US. First, I’d want to say that we as humans love to simplify complex things. There are large macroeconomic trends at play that are boring or hard to explain, and it’s easier to blame immigrants, social media, or blame because that gives us an outlet to make sense out of complexity. For politicians, depending on their political leanings, it gives them a way t…
Very true. So many people rate the president based on how the economy or market is doing, yet they have very little influence over it.
"we no longer want to work for it. ... The last part of my rant is on the rising intolerance."
If we're not busy working or "building" something, then the other thing people tend to engage in is tearing things down.
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While I agree that buying property has become very difficult, what has changed in 2022 that prevents you from getting a stable white collar job or finding a partner? If you have the requisite skillset (which can be acquired more easily than ever thanks to the internet) getting a stable white collar job is very possible. And in the age of dating apps, so much friction has been removed when it comes to finding a partne…
Some friction was removed; some friction was added. The 'ease' of finding a partner on apps creates an illusion of 'plenty fish in the sea', but 10s still go after 10s and, apparently, so do 6,7,8, and 9s creating a very interesting vacuum. As far as skillset goes, I would argue that it is only part of the story. Knowing the right person, is the key. You want to talk to people. You want to showcase what you can do. S…
Is this not what happens in the real world too? The bit I'm stuck on is how it's gotten harder in 2022. At worst, it's the same as the past as far as I can see.
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Is this sarcasm? It's truly laughable if you don't think boomers had a clear advantage in comparison to Millennials, Gen X, etc; I'm sorry you didn't reap the benefits of the most benevolent time in America's history but plenty of your Boomer counter-parts sure as hell did. I've met enough Boomers that there is nothing wrong with generalizing Boomers as a whole. Just like a huge percentage of my generation totally ga…
>You might not like it, but Boomers took their hoard and pulled the ladder up behind them. It is what it is. And what mechanism did they use to do this exactly? >I've met enough Boomers that there is nothing wrong with generalizing Boomers as a whole. Just like a huge percentage of my generation totally gave up and resort to 'UNFAIR MEH WON'T TRY NOW'. Am in that camp? No. I don't get upset when people generalize bec…
NIMBYism making it difficult to build enough housing for everyone and inflating housing costs, for example.
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> They rely on the fact that more people pay into them then take out from them at any one time. This doesn't need to be a ponzi scheme though. Even if population size is stable, if people on average work longer than they are retired, they have to pay less than they receive, all things equal. A problem here has been that people get increasingly older, so they spend a larger percentage of their life being retired, maki…
The biggest issue with social security funding is there is a cap on it. Once you put in so much a year, you don't have to put in anymore. It's essentially a regressive system. A guy who makes a million bucks a year only has to pay social security as if he made $147K. For example, in 2022, everyone only pays social security tax on their first $147K. https://www.ssa.gov/benefits/retirement/planner/maxtax.html