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Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

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Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#361

Post by _aavaa_ »

dahfizz wrote: post #336
xnorswap wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By not demanding better legislation, you're still being ripped off. What you describe as a "very nice low rate" is higher than the legislated EU wide limit. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/EN/legal-content/summary/fees-for-...

But I get minimum 2% cash back when I use my card. Prices are 0.4% higher because of the fee, but I still come out way ahead. You can easily get 5% back on gas, groceries, Amazon purchases, etc. American credit cards are awesome if you know how to use them.

> I get minimum 2% cash back when I use my card. Prices are 0.4% higher because of the fee, but I still come out way ahead.

You, and people who use such cards, do. But everyone else is having to pay for your cash back.

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#362

Post by greedo »

noduerme wrote: post #304
pjc50 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Argentina has 100% annual inflation and going up while the US has less than 10% and going down. The USD is not going anywhere spectacular, because there is no more stable country to flee to. The one thing that can reliably trigger inflation in almost any country is oil/gas shortages on the global market, and you can't hedge that with precious metals nor store a 20 year supply in your house.

>> the US has less than 10% and going down First of all, there's no evidence it's going down. Secondly, 10% is a wild figure. That's far over the breach for the population to begin to alter their behaviour by either hoarding or spending. My point was, the mentality of coping with even 10% inflation is very foreign to Americans. But it's a learned skill, and people will learn it. When they do, it will resemble Argenti…

You should look at inflation rates in the 70s and 80s. This didn't destroy the US, though it was painful.

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#363

Post by Dylan16807 »

cpursley wrote: post #259
Dylan16807 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When the accusation was thought crime, I find it pretty reassuring. Sometimes governments jail people for protests, and locking a bank account seems similarly or slightly less bad to me. Not great but not newly worrying. Or is it that you don't consider direct organizational efforts to be a subset of taking part in a protest? I'm generally fine with it, I think. Do you have anyone in particular in mind that was in th…

Locking someone’s bank account means you can’t pay your rent/mortgage (become homeless), can’t buy food, can’t purchase your medicine, can’t work.

Were accounts locked for much longer than the protest?

And sticking someone in jail does those too.

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#364

Post by kortilla »

tokai wrote: post #220
atdrummond wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve lived in two dozen countries and the US is the most community oriented of them all outside major cities. US charitable giving alone suggests your view of the country as individualism run amok is likely not the whole story.

Charity is peak individualism. In real communal places helping those in need is handled structured and organized, not just hinging on individual decisions.

Charity is not individualism. You’re making a false equivalence between collectivism and the government. There are huge collectivist communities in the US (generally centered around religions) that have very structured and organized ways of helping those in need.

It is peak collectivism to accomplish this without requiring the monopoly on violence and the taxation that comes with it.

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#365

Post by olalonde »

ericmay wrote: post #355
olalonde wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. If you want to buy a pad Thai in Thailand, US dollars are probably going to be more widely accepted. On the other hand, if you have savings in an inflating currency, you might want to convert them to a medium that holds value well in the long term, rather than US dollars. That does include S&P500 stocks but those are not bearer instruments and not easily accessible, especially in foreign countries.

Well you can sell the stock and convert it into dollars and then use those. That's something I can do easily today if I wanted regardless of the country I'm in so long as I have the Internet and an ATM. Gold you can't travel with (weight and loss due to theft and also probably actually illegal) and is also not accessible, and Bitcoin you can't buy a coffee with. Other available crypto currencies just do worse jobs th…

> That's something I can do easily today if I wanted regardless of the country I'm in so long as I have the Internet and an ATM.

That's not the case for most people in most countries. There are billions of people who are not even able to open a bank account, let alone a US stock brokerage account. Bitcoin and gold are way more accessible to the average person.

I agree that every instrument has a different set of tradeoffs though.

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#366

Post by kortilla »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #192
localplume wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

except prepping mostly isn't "I got mine, screw you" but "I need to protect myself and my family". even then, US society isn't even "I got mine, screw you". I don't understand where that even came from because its not even close to true. maybe europeans thinking they're somehow more collectivist even though I've found Americans to be far more friendly and collectivist than europeans.

The US is the only major Western country where its citizens buy guns to protect themselves from other citizens with guns. I'm not really seeing how that counts as "friendly and collective", but I live in the EU so perhaps I just don't understand these things.

Being prepared for a robbery has zero relationship with how you treat people in general.

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#367

Post by tokai »

kortilla wrote: post #364
tokai wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Charity is peak individualism. In real communal places helping those in need is handled structured and organized, not just hinging on individual decisions.

Charity is not individualism. You’re making a false equivalence between collectivism and the government. There are huge collectivist communities in the US (generally centered around religions) that have very structured and organized ways of helping those in need. It is peak collectivism to accomplish this without requiring the monopoly on violence and the taxation that comes with it.

>You’re making a false equivalence between collectivism and the government And you are imagining things and claiming its what I am thinking.

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#368

Post by supermatt »

albert_e wrote: post #337
supermatt wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love the idea of coins, but I wish they didnt have a value written on them - 200 AUD in that case - about 30x less than its material value. I can just imagine someone inheriting my coins and spending them for face value!

> I can just imagine someone inheriting my coins and spending them for face value! self-deprecating joke about your genes :)

Heh, could well be myself in older age (or even the next week, maybe...) :D

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#369

Post by eYrKEC2 »

eYrKEC2 wrote: post #24
sfjailbird wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are whisperings in the investment community that the market is manipulated. Almost all gold trading is ETFs, and their gold holdings are managed by a chain of custodians several layers deep, none of which conduct public audits. The terms of the ETFs make it clear that they are completely absolved from any risks and responsibility for the holdings. At the same time, the practice of leasing out the gold in the va…

It does seem that gold is not short. The price does seem manipulated to stay below $2k/oz.

Oops, I meant "net short", not "not short".

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#370

Post by olalonde »

RandomLensman wrote: post #311
olalonde wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you had bought something productive like the S&P500 50 years ago, would have outperformed gold That's correct. Almost everything beats the US dollar (except other fiat currencies).

As I said, currency is by design (targeted positive inflation) not there to be a long-term store of value. Not sure anything but productive assets could really be that.

> Not sure anything but productive assets could really be that. reply

I just mentioned one: gold. It's a bit early to tell for Bitcoin, of course it's probably not going to be doing 225x every decade, but I could see it holding its value better than the US dollar does.

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