Jump to content

52-80

Legacy Members
  • Posts

    16452
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by 52-80

  1. 9 hours ago, PRONG HORN said:

    BTW protestors are  gathering in Malmo for the Eurovision contest not to celebrate the competition, but to protest because an Israeli girl is in the finals.  Does Greta think she should have been disqualified? 

     

    It's important to remember that most activists participate as a matter of fashion, not as a matter of principle. 

     

  2. 18 hours ago, closetohumping said:

    My posting history should tell most people that I'm not some jingoistic guy who thinks America is infallible.  I believe in diversity but holy hell, can customer service reps speak English?

    if a company has a presence on facebook or twitter i use that first.  gets things in writing and, often, things get solved much more quickly and painlessly. surender in bangladesh pretending to be herb in overland park doing the responding.

    16 hours ago, ajax said:

    I'm seeing some reports that interest and sales at Starbucks is sharply declining. They could be going the way of Radio Shack. I for one am here for it. Their coffee sucks and is overpriced.

    their rolling 12mo sales figure are extremely stable and still growing.  starbucks imo is not a coffee company.  its a sugary-drink company.  in a big city its a reliable place to piss or use as impromptu rendevouz spot. 

    • Hook 'Em 1
  3. But yes, its an absurd measurement. Whether a dude was worth $700M or $1.3B at age 29 or age 33 is beside the point.

    That the worlds economic system rewards winning competitive endeavors is completely "natural".  The reward being determined by actual consumers of those products, even if you yourself are not one directly. 

    Out there is a person or a firm that's really wealthy from being the best at mining and refining silicone. And another one that's good for turning it into wafers. And another one that's good at designing chips and circuitry and boards. And another that's good at writing low level software, and high level software. And another one at making radio antennas, and LCD displays, and ad infinitum. And they're all fucking rich and have yachts and college protestors all over will decry them as ruthless capitalists and shit.

    And the cumulative result of all of that is now there exists a handheld device that Americans use for 4-5 hours a day, everyday, for 4-5 years, and it'll have cost them a total of 20 hours of average gross wage.  That's fucking amazing. 

    People being allowed - encouraged, even - to pursue wealth by creating things that other people value is a good thing.  What does it matter if they were seeded with outside money or parental money.  And anyway if you have a problem with that, you have a problem specifically with inheritance tax, not with "the system".  It's pretty cool that normal people have the option to get basically whatever food they want, whereas in the past they were limited to 2 pizzerias and 3 chinese shops in their city.  I don't use Doordash, I don't contribute to their revenue, I don't buy their stock . But the mere fact that they're rich doesn't make you or me poor.  A lot of this grumble is really just driven by ego.

    • Like 1
  4. 7 hours ago, immamac said:

    Palmer wasn’t a billionaire before 30 and still technically isn’t a liquid billionaire. 

    Doordash guys are late 30s pushing 40 and 2020 IPO they were 35-36. 

    The fact remains that there are no non acquisition, liquid self-made billionaires. It’s an absurd measurement, but the point remains that there are many sub 30 year old billionaires who are all nepo billionaires. 

    There are some wealthy individuals no doubt, and we aren’t counting some of the crypto people who are shadow whales, however there are very few non inflated/speculative paper hundred millionaire under 30 either. 

    Oculus only needed to raise to Series B, and sold for $2B.  With 25% equity, Palmers' shares in FB would've been worth $1B in 2016 or if he converted to SPX wouldve been 2019.  He also would've had a massive chunk of Anduril, which landed a $1B deal with DoD before he turned 30. Put in a tech multiple and Anduril by itself is in the diez-commas club. 

    Doordash's 2020 S-1 (IPO) filing revealed co-founder Stanley Tang was 27 and Andy Fang was 28.  Only Tony Xu was 36.  The IPO also went bonkers as it was offered at $102 and basically opened double and stayed there in the $200s while those dudes were in their 20s.

    • Hook 'Em 2
  5. 44 minutes ago, tbone_ said:

    What if we had a social and economic structure that rewarded companies and executives based on how many people (US citizens?) they employed and how much they paid those employees vs how much return on (ever consolidating) capital they can create?

    Thats already how it works in effect today. What do you suppose the scatterplot of # employees vs CEO pay look like for the country?  

  6. 10 minutes ago, SydneyCarton said:

    But that sure doesn't jive with the math done from my link and the relative purchasing power of 1970s versus now. So who's lying? Equivalently, today's lower class barrier should be...280k per household?

    You are looking at the math backwards. 
     

    The adjustment isnt communicating that $280k (equivalent of $35k in 1967) is the lower class threshold.  

    It’s communicating that in 1967, 35% of households earned $4.5k or less. In 2020, only 26% of households earned that little in equivalent dollars (=$35k nominal).

    Over time, there are more people in the higher brackets, and fewer people in the lower brackets - based on dollars adjusted for what it buys  

     

     

    IMG_6262.jpeg

    • Like 1
  7. 34 minutes ago, SydneyCarton said:

    How does this graph even work without being cross-sectioned with cost of living. You're telling me that 35,000 is comparable the same in 1970 as it is in 2020?

    When they say “in constant 2020 dollars” it literally means it was adjusted using cost of living (CPI) referenced in 2020. 

    I.e. the earnings surveyed in 1965 was adjusted *upwards* to 2020 equivalent to account for cost. 
     

    (And 2020 was used because that was the last publication from the Census https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2021/demo/p60-273.html)

    3 minutes ago, Celery Man said:

    you're asking how it is that yoga pants on modern american fatties is bad for me?

    Hey man…different size for different guys

  8. 2 hours ago, Brisketexan said:

    One of the keys is learning to be content with LESS -- that is, "enough."  We are bad at that, and we've built a system that DISDAINS that (get rich or die tryin').

    What does it actually mean that a system disdains that - and why is societal value on personal ambition bad?

    Your industrious neighbor founds a new company called Lulumelon transforming lycra into yoga pants for fat people. Youre not in the market. But fat people love the product and voluntarily reward the company with success. Your neighbor is massively wealthy and also generated new value in the economy. Why is that bad for you?

  9. 1 hour ago, Brisketexan said:

    TLDR; we used to have a healthy middle class, now we're doing a damned fine job of killing it.  Don't tell me it can't be done here, because it WAS done here.


    the “middle” class is shrinking because…theyre moving upwards.

    IMG_6261.thumb.png.f1e91daf35547394dbb61b8d2d4c5cef.png

     

    34 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

    The measure of success for a society should be how good - or at least, "good enough" - life is for the remaining 90%.

    The problem is, I think that I am in the minority as to that belief in this country.

    OK, and how would you measure that? 

  10. 3 minutes ago, 52-80 said:

     

    IMG_5926.jpeg

    When adjusting for household size, as households were larger in the past

    IMG_5979.jpeg.a2e1bd1deb9eb3e4c4b2fc569578a5b5.jpeg
     

    Quote

    We find that each of the past four generations of Americans was better off than the previous one, using a post-tax, post-transfer income measure constructed annually from 1963-2022 based on the Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement…

    We also find that the higher educational costs incurred by younger generations is far outweighed by their lifetime income gains.

    Paper: https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/feds/files/2024007pap.pdf

     

    Sorry, doomers

     

     

    • Hook 'Em 1
  11. 1 hour ago, immamac said:

    The growth at all costs mindset paired with nepotism, ethical collapse and non merit based selectivity have turned everything into shit. There is not a single billionaire on planet earth under 30 that isn’t a product of nepotism. At a time in history when there are the most billionaires ever. Let that sink in. 

    Oculus guy, Luckey Palmer. 2 of the 3 Doordash guys. All a tick over 30, worth over $1B before they hit 30.
     

    And if you count hundreds of $M, plenty of other silicon valley products - many immigrants - who werent seeded with family money. 

    • Hook 'Em 1
  12. 9 hours ago, 956 Worldwide said:

    These kids are not bringing the Revolution. 
     

     

    Well, its only Protest Spring camp right now. 
     

    Once theyve gone through summer’s Strength & Conditioning program and get the roster shored up, Fall protests are going to be LIT

    9 hours ago, HouTex said:

    I was in DC Monday and yesterday and drove right past GWU and didn’t see any protesters or problems.  Guess it’s away from the main drag. 

    You have to drive to the county juvie

  13. 10 hours ago, Bevo said:

    There are protesters with all sorts of agendas. There is a very small group of orthodox Jews who don't believe Israel should be a state. There are communist and Marxist Jews who are leading rallies. There are non-Muslim blacks who believe that Jews control the economy. So, just like stereotypes, it is difficult to paint with a broad brush - there are a variety of personalities that compete to develop an overarching picture.

    Its the Jewish Larry Elder. Or, as the LA times like to describe, “the black face of white supremacy”

  14. 18 hours ago, Gene Parmesan said:

    Burgers can be cooked well done and still be juicy, but you need to get fatty ground beef and not lean.  I don't know if it was the FDA or some other organizations findings, but cooking poultry to 150 and holding that temp for 5 minutes kills the salmonella the same as cooking to 165.  I generally pull breasts somewhere between 150-155.

     

    It's FDA guidelines. And the nice thing about the Combustion thermometer is that its programmed to alarm you based on that FDA time-exposure protocol.  So you dont need to use target temp for doneness, and you dont need to keep a stop watch to time the exposure manually.

    • Hook 'Em 1
×
×
  • Create New...