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2021 - Is inflation finally back in the conversation?


Reagan1k

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On 7/2/2023 at 7:09 PM, Bozo_Casanova said:

Maybe we should cut taxes again

Wealth tax is the prescription. The Billionaires have a Supreme Court ready to protect their billions in a case that will be heard next session. Truth is stranger than fiction. 
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The billionaires are in good hands:


 

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13 hours ago, bernorange said:

I think that case could have bigger implications than just "omg billionaires".  I'm curious to find out how it might apply to staking rewards with various crypto.  Crypto staking rewards are not realized income until the crypto is sold.

I bet it'll be the case that if it moves wallets that'll be the taxable event. It's a cryptoCURRENCY, you're still able to directly spend it for goods and services (allegedly lmao), so any movement would be undistinguishable as a purchase or moving between accounts (wallets in reality I know, not a perfect analogy)

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Not sure if this is the right thread, but here goes

Is the global view that the US$ is weakening, I ask because we some suppliers that are in Europe, and until the last couple of weeks they were fine taking PO's in US$ and billing us in American greenbacks, but today makes the 4th time that we were asked to issue the PO in Euro's and we will be billed as such (4 different companies in 3 different countries). 
Did I miss the memo, or was Uncle Warren buying into Japanese brokerages a wake up call to the almighty dollar?

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40 minutes ago, Wally Fairway said:

... Did I miss the memo, or was Uncle Warren buying into Japanese brokerages a wake up call to the almighty dollar?

De-dollerization is a growing trend, but mostly in non-USA aligned spheres (ie. BRICS & 3rd world).  It surprises me to hear that there is pushback on using dollars for international trade coming from the EU.  Things happen gradually and then suddenly I guess.

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Not sure if this is the right thread, but here goes
Is the global view that the US$ is weakening, I ask because we some suppliers that are in Europe, and until the last couple of weeks they were fine taking PO's in US$ and billing us in American greenbacks, but today makes the 4th time that we were asked to issue the PO in Euro's and we will be billed as such (4 different companies in 3 different countries). 
Did I miss the memo, or was Uncle Warren buying into Japanese brokerages a wake up call to the almighty dollar?

Explanation on buffet deal.

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11 minutes ago, babysdaddy said:


Explanation on buffet deal.

 

 

 

 

One of my better investment mistakes was not buying more BRK.B than I did (10 shares) in Jan 2012 because I couldn't swing a round lot at the time and was super focused on trading options.
Still a good trade tho.

Edited by Bozo_Casanova
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Just now, Cheeseweasel said:

That's exactly the point. We've given CEO's a task and rewarded them for completing that task. All Hail Hydra. 

Well more to the point, it's literally against the law for them NOT to ship jobs overseas if it would hurt shareholder value. Fiduciary duty and all that. God bless America. 

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On 7/8/2023 at 6:42 PM, Bozo_Casanova said:

One of my better investment mistakes was not buying more BRK.B than I did (10 shares) in Jan 2012 because I couldn't swing a round lot at the time and was super focused on trading options.
Still a good trade tho.

Don't even get me started - I first found out about BRK in the late 1980's (best annual report I'd ever read, then or now), cost about $1,800/share, didn't pay dividends, or split; and my 401k offered only about 9 or 10 investment options (including cash, stable money fund, couple of bond funds, etc. And I didn't really have any extra cash and didn't open an investment account until the early 1990's, by then I'd forgotten about Uncle Warren......man-o-man what could have been.
10 shares of that is worth just over $5 million; makes my eyes tear up just thinking about it

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23 minutes ago, Wally Fairway said:

Don't even get me started - I first found out about BRK in the late 1980's (best annual report I'd ever read, then or now), cost about $1,800/share, didn't pay dividends, or split; and my 401k offered only about 9 or 10 investment options (including cash, stable money fund, couple of bond funds, etc. And I didn't really have any extra cash and didn't open an investment account until the early 1990's, by then I'd forgotten about Uncle Warren......man-o-man what could have been.
10 shares of that is worth just over $5 million; makes my eyes tear up just thinking about it

My big regret is all the houses I sold. If I wouldn't have ever sold a house and just rented them and kept them steady I'd probably have an extra 1.3 or 1.5M in net worth and I'd be more or less on easy street with 5 or 6k in passive income coming in every month.  That would sort of literally pay my monthly bills on all the important stuff (mortgage, utilities and food) and anything I make I could more or less blow on stupid stuff/fun or reinvest in more investments.  I tell every single 25 YO homeowner who will listen DO NOT SELL.  They almost never listen.  It's brutal when you look back at that 149k townhouse in the woodlands that would rent for 2400 a month and is worth 300k and would have been free and clear 4 years ago, or the two places in kingwood that had a combined 175k total on the 2 mortgages when i sold them (6 and 10 years ago) and would now be worth 650k, or the mortgage in Victoria that would have been paid off last June that would be worth 200k.  argggggggh, I want to cry all over again now.  And and and.  I am such a stupid.  

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1 hour ago, Wulaw Horn said:

My big regret is all the houses I sold. If I wouldn't have ever sold a house and just rented them and kept them steady I'd probably have an extra 1.3 or 1.5M in net worth and I'd be more or less on easy street with 5 or 6k in passive income coming in every month.  That would sort of literally pay my monthly bills on all the important stuff (mortgage, utilities and food) and anything I make I could more or less blow on stupid stuff/fun or reinvest in more investments.  I tell every single 25 YO homeowner who will listen DO NOT SELL.  They almost never listen.  It's brutal when you look back at that 149k townhouse in the woodlands that would rent for 2400 a month and is worth 300k and would have been free and clear 4 years ago, or the two places in kingwood that had a combined 175k total on the 2 mortgages when i sold them (6 and 10 years ago) and would now be worth 650k, or the mortgage in Victoria that would have been paid off last June that would be worth 200k.  argggggggh, I want to cry all over again now.  And and and.  I am such a stupid.  

Man we all got those, you’re probably doing a lot better than most.  Like Too Short said, think positive everything else will flow.  Gettin it.

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46 minutes ago, Snake Diggity said:

Man we all got those, you’re probably doing a lot better than most.  Like Too Short said, think positive everything else will flow.  Gettin it.

Meaning to buy Berkshire hathaway in 1989 is worse, but yeah- this is a pretty simple one that I wish my 23 YO self would have understood. 

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14 hours ago, jimmyjazz said:

Looks like the inflection was somewhere in the early 90's.  It's almost bilinear.  Yay.

image.png.def68a6b5e736c5e4b755359b6e0c188.png

 

(1) What's the size and responsibility of a typical public company CEO across all these decades?

Here's the approx market cap of the #1,2,3,10th, and 20th largest companies adjusted to today's $:

1990: 144B, 125B, 70B, 44B, 23B (its exxon, ibm, merck, att, slb)

2000: 600B, 355B, 307B, 155B, 86B (msft, cisco, walmart, att, verizon)

2023: 2000B, 1800B, 1200B, 360B, 288B (aapl, msft, goog, nvda, pfizer)

The SVP for apple's iphone division alone is responsible for as much revenue as all of 1990's exxon.

(2) Given that CEO pay is risked in the form of equity pegged to company value and growth, what is the issue with that?

 

 

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11 hours ago, Wulaw Horn said:

My big regret is all the houses I sold. If I wouldn't have ever sold a house and just rented them and kept them steady I'd probably have an extra 1.3 or 1.5M in net worth and I'd be more or less on easy street with 5 or 6k in passive income coming in every month.  That would sort of literally pay my monthly bills on all the important stuff (mortgage, utilities and food) and anything I make I could more or less blow on stupid stuff/fun or reinvest in more investments.  I tell every single 25 YO homeowner who will listen DO NOT SELL.  They almost never listen.  It's brutal when you look back at that 149k townhouse in the woodlands that would rent for 2400 a month and is worth 300k and would have been free and clear 4 years ago, or the two places in kingwood that had a combined 175k total on the 2 mortgages when i sold them (6 and 10 years ago) and would now be worth 650k, or the mortgage in Victoria that would have been paid off last June that would be worth 200k.  argggggggh, I want to cry all over again now.  And and and.  I am such a stupid.  

samesies.  every place i lived in and had an opp to buy and didnt (was getting housing stipend), i massively regret.  all those markets went bonkers.

a sibling retired early this year from a rental portfolio.  i kept / am keeping recent and current properties. 

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2 hours ago, 52-80 said:

(2) Given that CEO pay is risked in the form of equity pegged to company value and growth, what is the issue with that?

Are you positing that CEO equity wealth is a (reasonable) function of their performance and not a windfall side effect of a Fed policy induced asset bubble?

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3 hours ago, 52-80 said:

 

(1) What's the size and responsibility of a typical public company CEO across all these decades?

Here's the approx market cap of the #1,2,3,10th, and 20th largest companies adjusted to today's $:

1990: 144B, 125B, 70B, 44B, 23B (its exxon, ibm, merck, att, slb)

2000: 600B, 355B, 307B, 155B, 86B (msft, cisco, walmart, att, verizon)

2023: 2000B, 1800B, 1200B, 360B, 288B (aapl, msft, goog, nvda, pfizer)

The SVP for apple's iphone division alone is responsible for as much revenue as all of 1990's exxon.

(2) Given that CEO pay is risked in the form of equity pegged to company value and growth, what is the issue with that?

You're really outdoing yourself with overlooking worker productivity gains. CEOs are the folks deciding to keep pay (costs) as low as possible, while enshittifying products as much as possible. And then they get a big fat bonus for it. 

I don't think it's unreasonable to hold a negative view of CEO's getting paid 100-500x what their workers do. Especially when the """growth""" they're responsible for is nine out of ten times a short term quarterly play that's fucking over the future company. 

Are you a CEO or something? You're awfully defensive of our nascent oligarch class

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2 minutes ago, bernorange said:

Are you positing that CEO equity wealth is a (reasonable) function of their performance and not a windfall side effect of a Fed policy induced asset bubble?

* the point is that first and foremost, the superficial comparison between 1960 and 2020 is moot given the growth in the size of a corporation.  in 1960, a line worker is responsible for assembling 10 widgets per day.  an executive oversees the 100-person company's total production of 1,000 such widgets.  in 2020, the line worker assembles 10 widgets per day.  the executive oversees the company's now total production of 10,000 such widgets from 1000 employees.  should their relative pay remain constant?

* secondly, the "bubble" implies a downside risk, which the CEO's equity is then exposed to (it's a "risk asset"). 

* thirdly, such equity appreciation lifts non-CEO-exclusive savings...like 401ks.  don't you have one?  are you complaining about that?

* finally, the Fed policy is determined by board members elected by the country's president.  what responsibility does the CEO share in that?

you surely own equity.  you have a vote.  you want CEO pay to be fair (its literally coming out of your equity).  what is your alternate proposal to make it fairer?

 

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17 minutes ago, 52-80 said:

* the point is that first and foremost, the superficial comparison between 1960 and 2020 is moot given the growth in the size of a corporation.  in 1960, a line worker is responsible for assembling 10 widgets per day.  an executive oversees the 100-person company's total production of 1,000 such widgets.  in 2020, the line worker assembles 10 widgets per day.  the executive oversees the company's now total production of 10,000 such widgets from 1000 employees.  should their relative pay remain constant?

This isn't backed by reality. Workers are significantly more productive than they were 50 years ago. That line worker is doing a hell of a lot more in 2020 then they were in 1960, and they're probably way better educated with student loan debt to boot

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15 minutes ago, Cheeseweasel said:

More productive because of equipment/computers, but less skilled. A machinist on an assembly line could demand more pay because he had an actual skill and was difficult to replace.

Person loading boxes at Amazon, not so much.

are you trying to say there's a labor market where parties can agree on the compensation for their labor; and owners of enterprises can vote on how they choose to pay their managers?

what if i dont LIKE how these people vote and what they do with their businesses?

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29 minutes ago, 52-80 said:

what if i dont LIKE how these people vote and what they do with their businesses?

It's less their voting, and more their oligarchical use of their wealth to influence politics and domestic policy to further enrich themselves. 

But I know I'm talking to the opfor here, y'all will denigrate workers as unskilled for using technology but ignore the significantly increased production of value to the business as a result. Is it your position that people should be paid not for what they produce, but rather where their caste station in society dictates?

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7 minutes ago, washparkhorn said:

A tale of two cultures:

F47E8515-4050-4C1B-A297-80446181FBD4.thumb.jpeg.9240234d617b4593c8eedbbc6b637d53.jpeg

Good ol bobby kotik. Everyone loves a rich guy that grabs em by the pussy

Edit: great pull to demonstrate a good example of US product enshittification. Every product Activision touched has turned to shit and is lacking long term direction but profits are up at least 

Edited by Captainant
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1 hour ago, Cheeseweasel said:

More productive because of equipment/computers, but less skilled. A machinist on an assembly line could demand more pay because he had an actual skill and was difficult to replace.

Person loading boxes at Amazon, not so much.

They were more productive because those skilled machinists were replaced by a much smaller group of even more skilled individuals (specialized machinists, engineers, programmers) when they figured out how to build a robot to replace those "skilled workers", who suddenly became expendable dipshits in the eyes of John Q. CEO.

It wasn't Jack Smith who built those robots.  Tim Cook ain't the one building the next better attention magnet.  

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2 hours ago, 52-80 said:

* the point is that first and foremost, the superficial comparison between 1960 and 2020 is moot given the growth in the size of a corporation.  in 1960, a line worker is responsible for assembling 10 widgets per day.  an executive oversees the 100-person company's total production of 1,000 such widgets.  in 2020, the line worker assembles 10 widgets per day.  the executive oversees the company's now total production of 10,000 such widgets from 1000 employees.  should their relative pay remain constant? *

* secondly, the "bubble" implies a downside risk, which the CEO's equity is then exposed to (it's a "risk asset"). **

* thirdly, such equity appreciation lifts non-CEO-exclusive savings...like 401ks.  don't you have one?  are you complaining about that? ***

* finally, the Fed policy is determined by board members elected by the country's president.  what responsibility does the CEO share in that? ****

you surely own equity.  you have a vote.  you want CEO pay to be fair (its literally coming out of your equity).  what is your alternate proposal to make it fairer? *****

 

First of all, your never responded to the gravamen of Bern's question, which is whether the compensation is in fact a function of performance, BUT:

* Productivity has increased across the whole economy, largely as a result of automating routine work, which enhances the value of any individual worker. Thus, why would any individual executive in any particular company benefit from the value created to a greater extent than the workforce as a whole? 
** So? (This is also a trick question)
*** Are you asserting that senior executive compensation is in fact broadly correlated to stock price performance? (Not a trick)
**** Are you saying that normalizing executive compensation would be amount to punishing executives for Fed policy?

As a stockholder, I see equity compensation as something that comes at my expense, much like cash compensation. And that's fine as far as it goes, and beneficial to the extent that it aligns to my interest but it can become problematic if it is excessive, like the compensation of any other employee. 

Edited by Bozo_Casanova
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22 minutes ago, Redneck Mutha said:

They were more productive because those skilled machinists were replaced by a much smaller group of even more skilled individuals (specialized machinists, engineers, programmers) when they figured out how to build a robot to replace those "skilled workers", who suddenly became expendable dipshits in the eyes of John Q. CEO.

It wasn't Jack Smith who built those robots.  Tim Cook ain't the one building the next better attention magnet.  

Are you saying they should learn to code?

Edited by Cheeseweasel
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