The Massacre That Spawned the Alt-Right
Forty years ago, a gang of Klansmen and Nazis murdered five communists in broad daylight. America has never been the same.
www.politico.com
America as two countries literally?
- Thread starter Toshi
- Start date
www.politico.com
Seems to be the common denominator."She decided on a new Jeep"
A fucking 7 year loan on a JEEP?? She's gonna be underwater for at least... well all those 7 years.
A $45,000 Loan for a $27,000 Ride: More Borrowers Are Going Underwater on Car Loans
Consumers, salespeople and lenders are treating cars a lot like houses during the last financial crisis: by piling on debt to such a degree that it often exceeds the car’s value. This phenomenon can leave owners trapped.
www.wsj.com
This phenomena is astonishing to me.
1. Who is this fucking dumb?
2. What bank is this fucking dumb?
At least when it was housing a home could be viewed as an asset that could gain value.
Must match plurality, my bro-tato. These phenomena or this phenomenon.
But yes, much dumbness. See the whole consumer survey bit where consistently 40something percent of Americans (and 20% of those making $100k) couldn't come up with $400 in a pinch for an unexpected expense. Living on the knife's edge out of stupidity.
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The American Dream Is Killing Us
By almost every major statistical measurement, the average American is worse off than they were a generation ago.
It isn't that hard to observe that the US has turned into a constitutional monarchy.
"The friends now split the payment of more than $900 a month, which they owe to Pearl Hawaii Federal Credit Union for 84 months."Seems to be the common denominator.
A $45,000 Loan for a $27,000 Ride: More Borrowers Are Going Underwater on Car Loans
Consumers, salespeople and lenders are treating cars a lot like houses during the last financial crisis: by piling on debt to such a degree that it often exceeds the car’s value. This phenomenon can leave owners trapped.
This phenomena is astonishing to me.
1. Who is this fucking dumb?
2. What bank is this fucking dumb?
At least when it was housing a home could be viewed as an asset that could gain value.
Lawmakers are killing this popular retirement tax break for the wealthy
Lawmakers are severely curtailing the "stretch IRA," a strategy allowing wealthy Americans to leave sizable inheritances to beneficiaries who can then tap those assets for decades.
Most truly wealthy have their money invested in their companies or after-tax. This impacts the working wealthy - kids of high savers, doctors, lawyers, etc. They might die with $2-4mm in retirement assets - maxed 401k/IRA for entire life, lived off after-tax savings through retirement, retirement accounts are what's left. It's a low blow because it still doesn't impact Koch/Bezos level wealth. Wealth tax or death tax on income of that scale will blow the amount drawn from taxing inherited IRAs out of the water.
*edit - to add some context here: when I say kids of, that means all ages. For Boomers, those kids are in their 40-50's - Gen-X. And Boomers whose parents are just now dying, are being forced to spend a chunk of their retirement funds early-on. It's lifetime savers who are getting burned in this process.
My family, who even though we lived in a van for part of my childhood, will likely leave an inheritance for my sister and me. This new law, if passed, will force both of us, who have higher incomes, to draw substantial additional income at notably higher tax rates. Our income levels are high, I won't pull back from that (upper 3-5%), but pale in comparison to the upper .5% who would be putting monumentally more back into the tax pot via wealth or inheritance taxes. The big difference is how those funds are taxed (or effectively not). Like most people in our range, we spend our money, supporting the economy, unlike the hype-wealthy who sit on those funds.
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The Pandemic Will Cleave America in Two
Some will emerge from this crisis disrupted and shaken, but ultimately stable. Others will come out of it with much more lasting scars.
amp.theatlantic.com
yepThe Pandemic Will Cleave America in Two
Some will emerge from this crisis disrupted and shaken, but ultimately stable. Others will come out of it with much more lasting scars.
Ouch
www.theatlantic.com
We Are Living in a Failed State
The coronavirus didn’t break America. It revealed what was already broken.
www.theatlantic.com
that was good.Ouch
We Are Living in a Failed State
The coronavirus didn’t break America. It revealed what was already broken.
Careful, when *I* say shit like this, I'm an out of touch leftist loonie!Ouch
We Are Living in a Failed State
The coronavirus didn’t break America. It revealed what was already broken.
We're just getting started.Ouch
We Are Living in a Failed State
The coronavirus didn’t break America. It revealed what was already broken.
Everyone standing around with their dick in their hands waiting for their government to save them.
I'm starting to see a lot of very unconfidently phrased "Trump will save the economy" comments lately from the Trump lovers within my client base. You can start to see the cracks forming.
Ironically, that group is the one that's taken the worst hits because they were super aggressively invested and refused to listen to professionals. They are also the group that is making the flip from investments to cash, again refusing to listen to professionals.
Those people are the moron mirrors of people blaming trump for ruining the economy.
Massive debt anyone?
Those people are the uneducated morons blindly following their "team" leaders. And unfortunately, their are a majority of the population that fall under that category on both sides. It's just that one side is more about racism, global destruction, and unwittingly (?) social, medical, and financial inequality.
As for Trump destroying the economy, we should have gone into a recession 3 years ago, no matter who was in charge. The tax changes took away the US' ability to bail out the economy using interest rates and throwing cash at it without digging a huge hole. It drove up prices because companies bought back shares (decreasing # shares; increasing price/earnings ratios). Over the last 2 years, earnings have been flat or down across the country. Now we're looking at companies taking loans and grants, who are no longer able to buy back stock, with earnings that are dropping. P/E are going to fall rapidly, driving the stock market and economy back to where it should be.
He might not have crashed the economy, but he inflated the bubble making collapse exponentially worse.
That’s all I was saying.
I don’t think 22m unemployed is ‘where we should be’ though. And economies world wide facing similar difficulties show it’s not solely a red hat phenomenon, as convenient as that notion may be in an election year.
Other places without such rabid government-phobia are doing way better than us in taking care of Joe Sixpack now sitting on his ass inside.
Our politicians don't make the money printer go brrr enough, IMO. Look at Treasury yields! This is insane.
We have a special red hat problem though. We don't need employment right now. We need bills paid. That can be done without sending hair didders and nail salon workers right next to people breathing on them.
Idiots don't realize that we're about to have an economy tanked on way higher death rates and people scared to go out in about two months. That's way worse than artificially halting and propping up the economy temporarily.
This. My household is a high spending household (see trickle-down
) - comfortably over $100k on one card last year alone and we're a non-debt household. Our spending has dropped by 35% in the last month and I don't see it getting better even once we are allowed to go out again. I doubt that half of that cut will come back if the economy recovers, which is only going to hurt people downstream. We won't be going to bars or dinner or concerts.Wifey doesn't want other people that aren't in our immediate friend group in the house and even then, we've all agreed that we need to sit outside with masks on. She's still buying from local businesses for delivery or pick-up, but what happens when they close because other people stop buying from them? We stop too and that money just goes to paying off the house or investing. Right now I've fronted our hair person the whole household's haircuts for the next 4 months, because she needs it and if push comes to shove, I'll do it for the year. But who does this? Not many people, especially when they are at risk of losing their jobs and income.
The money that was just thrown at large companies to not get repaid was done solely to prop the stock market, which is NOT the economy. Economies are driven by sales. People with money can buy things. The amount of money that was thrown at the large companies in large part could be used to keep the country afloat because people spending would keep jobs in place for those on the bottom, support structure of society, while those higher up the chain wouldn't have to worry about jobs collapsing because their companies have no sales or people with money to buy their products when things more normalize.
I'm doing it now. I fucking hate it. We pay a service who hires "immigrants", who I assume are illegal and she treats pretty shitty. I wasn't aware of this until I was home one day while they were cleaning. I need to resolve that with a person who doesn't manage to have 5 people to my house for 3 hours for $110. That's less than min wage before profit is taken out.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Wednesday he favors allowing states struggling with high public employee pension costs amid the burdens of the pandemic response to declare bankruptcy rather than giving them a federal bailout.
Somebody's going to get mad enough to plunk this fucker eventually...
Somebody's going to get mad enough to plunk this fucker eventually...
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We're dumping every spare dime into savings. I've even quit paying the extra against principal on the mortgage just to have liquid cash. I figure if we come out the other side none the worse for wear, I'll just drop a hunk of change on it. Might mean an extra month or two in the long run, but whatever. Wife (who actually manages our checkbook) told me yesterday last months spending was half of our usual amount, including the set of tires we had to buy for the Mazda. This trend will continue for the foreseeable future. Who does this hurt? My bike shop. My coffee roaster. The local indy book store. The lesbian coffee shop. A half a dozen breweries, costco liquor. Mira Sol New Mexican food truck. I guess the good news is I should get thinner?
There is a great culling on the horizon for the aviation industry come sept, and it is going to be awful. I figure the best case scenario for my particular little slice of commercial aviation is maybe half of us remain employed. If I'm amazingly lucky, this base might even stay open. I have enough seniority, that if it gets to me than commercial aviation as we know it doesn't exist any more. I can envision a scenario where I'm working nights and weekends again, in some hell hole like PSP or SLC, and maybe feeling grateful for it. And holy fuck, that's an almost even darker scenario.
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I've up'd savings too, and been investing extra on these dips.
I spent over $600 less in March than in Feb on 'entertainment' and I'm guessing April will be similar.
question: why do links from Bloomberg always say ...
I spent over $600 less in March than in Feb on 'entertainment' and I'm guessing April will be similar.
question: why do links from Bloomberg always say ...
That's what he calls beer.
Booze is the only entertainment I have left... well, I guess there's the heckling of the teenagers... but that gets old pretty quickly.
Throw things at them.
with all the money we're not spending on various things, i've upped my ESPP by a factor of 7.5This. My household is a high spending household (see trickle-down
Wifey doesn't want other people that aren't in our immediate friend group in the house and even then, we've all agreed that we need to sit outside with masks on. She's still buying from local businesses for delivery or pick-up, but what happens when they close because other people stop buying from them? We stop too and that money just goes to paying off the house or investing. Right now I've fronted our hair person the whole household's haircuts for the next 4 months, because she needs it and if push comes to shove, I'll do it for the year. But who does this? Not many people, especially when they are at risk of losing their jobs and income.
The money that was just thrown at large companies to not get repaid was done solely to prop the stock market, which is NOT the economy. Economies are driven by sales. People with money can buy things. The amount of money that was thrown at the large companies in large part could be used to keep the country afloat because people spending would keep jobs in place for those on the bottom, support structure of society, while those higher up the chain wouldn't have to worry about jobs collapsing because their companies have no sales or people with money to buy their products when things more normalize.
and like toshi, we are continuing to pay our house cleaner. she's independent so there's that.
Yeah - I include hurling things at them to be "heckling"...
Because the URL unfurl invokes what looks like a spider, and Bloomberg apparently checks for those and thus returns its philosophical question.question: why do links from Bloomberg always say ...
@binary visions close enough?
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Yep. In order to create the cached preview, the forum has to query the page and something about that request apparently looks like a bot.
Robot prevention tools query the calling browser for its capability to use Javascript (no JS is a pretty suspicious flag when evaluating for bots), so it's very possible that's what triggers it.
To work around it the forum software would have to generate the previews dynamically on every user page load, which would be inefficient.
Some interesting discussions on this Sam Harris Making Sense podcast episode.
Conversation with Daniel Markovits
Making Sense with Sam Harris: #205 — The Failure of Meritocracy on Apple Podcasts
Show Making Sense with Sam Harris, Ep #205 — The Failure of Meritocracy - May 22, 2020
podcasts.apple.com