The younger generations don’t want to work, and they don’t want the responsibility, maybe true, but they do understand that they are being undermined by big business and big government, I don’t really blame them, culture tells them to jump through all the hoops and the government shits on them, I only worked as hard as I did because I knew there was a payoff, these young people see no payoff, just indentured servitude.
Totally agree, I was generalizing, and I don’t think that kids today have the kinds of advantages that gen jones or gen x had, but if they want to succeed, they are going to have to push through the disadvantages they face.
I actually hired a few guys out of college recently and I was quite surprised with what they are dealing with out there. These talented American computer science grads are having a very tough time even getting interviews! I've been super happy about what these guys bring and you're telling me that they are getting completely shut out in favor of H1B hires?
WTF is going on??? We keep this up for much longer and I'd think we should bring back the guillotine.
It's like "Honest Bob's Used Cars" being run by, well, not an honest Robert. If ya hafta put it in the name, then......
Every generation inherits both good and bad from previous generations. This is still a tenant I hold. "Carter's" stating that Boomers defend The System That Works so stridently is an astute observation. As an older Millennial, the varied success of those in our generation is evidence to those older of "see, it works" when those around me have the house, the family, the new cars, etc. Only to be contrasted with "what's wrong with you?" when I or other peers struggle with unemployment (Covid) or previous income levels due to Life Outside Our Control. Let's not even get started with marriages and their realities.
Plenty of Boomers err in their ability to adapt their thinking to changing reality as well as oversimplify groups (this also is a human proclivity in general). Thus: "Gut it out and try harder, you whiny and wimpy kids." [who were raised by whom???] Awesome. Thanks. Imma take my marshmallow now, even if I have the capacity to wait for five.
I am a Boomer, technically generation jones, they have been cutting rungs out of the ladder since before I graduated high school, every year is more difficult than the last, especially for the younger generations, the powers that be, put the candidates in positions that they find palatable, to say that the general population, the plebiscite, the proletariat, has any real say in what happens in Washington DC is laughable, we are largely along for the ride.
I can't tell if the greatest generation raised the worst, or if the boomers were just the first generation with enough life expectancy from birth (the first to live well into their 70s on average I believe) to stick around long enough to cause real harm to the generations coming up behind them.
The Greatest Generation is probably the most scammed generation. Look at all of the things that gave the federal government all sorts of extra powers. All those massive public programs, intelligence agencies, massive wars, federal income taxes, the fed...etc
I'm actually not sure if all those started during the time of the Greatest Generation, but I'm kinda guessing they did.
In this day and age, you're not going to nickel-and-dime or bootstrap your way into a house. Even a down payment requires tens of thousands in one big-ass chunk if you want a Merely Crippling monthly payment instead of an Even More Crippling one.
I myself have decided not to buy a house until and unless I can do it in a way that doesn't leave me either house-poor or an hour from work. Which, as I figure it, will require at least $200,000 a year. My boomer dad doesn't get it on at least one level.
But! But! But!...What about EQUITY? What about The American Dream?
What about living on instant ramen and rainwater just to say I'm a homeowner? What about putting 20,000 miles a year on my truck commuting?
Getting rid of the illegal aliens would maybe loosen the housing situation, and it’s much worse in Canada. when I was working, I never lived more than 15 minutes from work, and I considered my coworkers who lived an hour and fifteen minutes away from work less paid than I was, ten extra hours a week and not getting paid for it…
I value living close to where I work over (theoretically) owning a home. An hour or more commute? Hard pass. GRANTED...life happens, job changes happen, there is a family involved with schools and friends. Still, if one can swing it, relationships and time spent in the present are very valuable.
I can dig this ~ my first house was in PO-mona, Ca. and it often took me two hours to drive to work unless I hit the road three hours before opening time .
So, that's what I did, I wasn't willing to pass on the chance to buy a house, any house, I lost money on it every year I owned it but when I finally sold it I got enough to make a down payment on a shithole house across town from my then job .
-Nate
(yes, it's still a shit hole but it's _MY_ shithole until I die )
You'd have to simultaneously get rid of the illegals AND increase/improve the housing stock. We're getting new subdivisions all the time up here, but they're all full of half-million-dollar houses. I was under the assumption that I was doing something wrong with my life, but my wife and I are supposedly in the upper 50% of household earners in the USA, but we're not buying a half-million-dollar house...
You will have a flood of housing over the next 10 years as people die. Period. That's what is going to happen. Just building is kind of a "throw more trailers in the park" sort of deal. Speaking of which, anyone seen what trailers cost now?!?!?! I can't move from this house simply because every thing is set up to prevent any upward mobility now.
500k subdivisions in your area is INSANE. Are they actually selling and filling up? If so what the hell are those people doing for work UP 'dere to afford that?
It seems that the cheapest you can stick-build a new house these days, in ANY state, is about 300k. And thats without the interventions of such annoyances as E-Verify.
Getting rid of the illegal and marginally legal aliens would help most everything: housing. health care. depressed wages. crime. traffic. schools. welfare and other entitlement abuse.
Since the real number of people to be deported is probably much closer to 100M than anyone in our government would like to admit, this is not insignificant.
I don't know how much lending parameters have changed in the last 10 years. In 2015, I bought a house with only 5% down. That was a good decision because the payment was less than rent and it was much closer to my job. Although it didn't appreciate in the first 5 years (not a concern to me), it was also very low maintenance in that time period.
I do know many people in my neighborhood bought their houses in the past 5 years with under 10% down. That really shouldn't be a challenge unless you are making minimum wage (in which case your problem is your job, not the housing market. Probably highly correlated) or you live in a stupid area of the country. I wish I could live in LA but I can't see tolerating the costs.
There are places in the country where you can get a good but not fancy house for $300k or less, have a payment near or less than rent, and not have a horrific commute.
Do you think it's that they don't want to, or that they don't see the payoff? Four years of school, possible debt from that, then trying to break into whatever field you chose.
They see only doom, dei, and importing the third world to lower wages, and the government will help you if you have the right skin tone, but will shit all over you if you are not imported.
i dont know anyone that doesnt want to work and ive only heard that from the older generations. nobody can afford anything and everyone is hiring foreigners. what are the actual citizens supposed to do?
They don’t want to work as slaves, Farley says mechanics are making 100k, yeah, maybe one in fifty, and the manufacturers are making difficult to repair vehicles, also difficult to troubleshoot, I know car mechanics that quit the dealer scam.
And I should add, they are only slightly worse than the lies about “a shortage of engineers” that I have endlessly heard for more than 40 years. And to make that worse, f***ing academia has been spewing that BS even more than the corporations.
Government contractors. Not civil service. The contractor is on the hook to provide someone of a certain skillset in a short time period. They will hire a white man if that is what is required.
That's wrong in at least one case I know personally.
I have a 22-year-old co-worker who not only puts in 50-60 hours a week, he's constantly hitting the gym AND forever bringing in sculptures of cartoon characters he made himself, with surface finishes so flawless that I, a man who's been building model kits for almost 45 years and have a refined eye for molding quality and surface detail, genuinely thought were airbrushed, polished plastic instead of baked clay.
He's less than half my age and he legitimately inspires me.
If one were a young person (roughly high school grad to recent college grad) with some ambition, they could survey the landscape of their peers and see how lazy and unprepared the labor competition was. And then outdo them.
I went to an abysmal public school system until college; I was forced to: My mother was the curriculum director, and her father was on the school board.
Have to go one step further to the parents. What kind of parent would let their kid rot with bad teachers and schools? Or rely on any school to teach their children all the most basic skills?
A ton of people don’t have the ability to readily move to a district with good schools. And a ton of people are poorly educated themselves and don’t really know what’s going on. And even if they are paying attention, do they know that this year’s B is the 1990’s D? Do they know that most school districts in the country take in between $15-20k per year, per child? There is so much money in the system, and such poor outcomes.
My parents willingly sent their children to poor schools; it was the only local option, other than the snake handling, unaccredited Christian school that graduates 2-3 students a year.
The schools remain poor 20 years later, even with aggregate county property tax receipts that are 2.5x now what they were then.
It’s extremely hard to change public schools. It seems the only thing to do is bankrupt them by everyone leaving.
Not saying that your parents made the wrong choice, but as Thomas Sowell points out in “charter schools and their enemies” accreditation is not at all correlated with student outcomes. This also aligns with your -free-market, go learn and then outwork them- opinions in other areas.
The school system has zero competition where I grew up.
The people working there generally do the best they can with the resources they have, but ambition is limited.
When I graduated, the principal said something that I will remember for the rest of my life:
“Our goal here at XYZ high school is that everyone graduates.”
Not that everyone learns something, or gets into the college of their choice, or gets into any college, or is prepared to complete college. Just that they check the most basic box.
I agree that the economy and housing is incredibly discouraging for young people. At the same time it’s probably never been easier to distinguish yourself amongst a hoard of discouraged low T pot head, SSR eyes zoomers.
that's me too. I was telling friends recently that I'm perpetually frustrated in my car endeavors because I think everything should still cost what it did in the '90s....
There’s a price point at which cars should pretty much only be paid for in cash. Let’s arbitrarily call that $100k. If you can service the loan of a $100k car, you really should just save for a few months and buy a cheaper car outright. I’m not that debt averse, but a loan on a $100k+ car?**
And on that same note, a toy (which presumably no one is buying a $100k+ Corvette as their only car or daily driver) should always be bought in cash. Finance your DD, sure, there are practical reasons for that, but your toys? Buy them outright.
*yeah yeah I know, arbitrage on interest rates and all that, but come on man.
"There’s a price point at which cars should pretty much only be paid for in cash. Let’s arbitrarily call that $100k. If you can service the loan of a $100k car, you really should just save for a few months and buy a cheaper car outright. I’m not that debt averse, but a loan on a $100k+ car?**
And on that same note, a toy (which presumably no one is buying a $100k+ Corvette as their only car or daily driver) should always be bought in cash. Finance your DD, sure, there are practical reasons for that, but your toys? Buy them outright."
Morally, I agree.
Practically, I could not agree less. A $100k car is no big thing now. Suburbans and Tahoes cost $100k. Ford Super Duties cost $100k. I hate it, but there you go.
Now let's look at the argument for a toy. We won't even use big numbers or high-end Corvettes, because that makes it too easy for me to argue my side. Let's say you are 45 years old in 2018 and you are thinking about financing a new 2019 Stingray at the base MSRP of $55,900. Instead you decide to save for it over the next six years.
You arrive in 2024 and now the 2025 Stingray costs $69,995. The $55,900 you saved up no longer does the job. You need to save for two more years. But meanwhile the Stingray has increased in price six percent to $73,995. You are now 53 years old. And you spent the last eight years of your life not owning a Corvette. Now your body hurts in ways it didn't hurt before. Now your kid needs help with a down payment on a house, and your wife is sitting you down saying, "What's more important -- you having a sports car, or Brayden having a home?" Also, you have gone from a 7-speed manual car with reasonable operating costs to a fake Ferrari with an automatic transmission.
You decide to take the middle path and give Brayden half your $75k nest egg. Now you have $37.5k and the 2028 Corvette is $78k. It will increase in price approximately $4500 a year from now on. If you can save $10k a year this math will resolve for you in the year 2036, when you are 63 years old.
Congratulations! You're another old man limping in and out of a Corvette and rubbing it with a diaper. On the way to the show-and-shine you got passed by some 45-year-old in the same new Corvette. He appears to be having a lot more fun than you are, but you can't figure out why. After all, you own your car.
It's not an extravagant toy, by any means, but I have had the thought that I won't be able to ride my Suzuki V-Strom when I'm 70 years old. Much more than 10 years out for me. It does help me appreciate it now.
Absolutely. There are certain cars I want to experience now as I don’t think they will be an apt choice in 10 years. I don’t exactly know that for certain, but it can be a good bet.
I always think of what an older friend used to say when he would buy something with no plans to buy it again: “This should see me out.”
Comment of the month easily. And let’s not leave out the fact that you might not even make it through the six years. A good friend was 6 weeks short of his 53 birthday when his time was up. So there is at least some merit to living today.
I have a picture of me at a BMX race in 1994 with three fellow racers, all around my age. I'm the only one left. I am 54 years old. It can be sobering.
My dad had a *rough* upbringing. He's worked tirelessly since he was like 14. Has never taken more than a few days off here and there over the course of the next 50 years. He isn't great with money so there isn't a whole heck of a lot saved up, but he has always made sure that we are provided for. A car for the kids when they needed one, undergrad degrees, insurance until the government said no more, etc.
He went to a family friend's funeral about 7 years ago or so. This family friend was in his mid-50s or so before passing on. My dad and I were standing next to each other, an he took one look at the body in the casket, turned to me and said something to the effect of "ya know, you can't take any of it with you. I'm going to buy the car."
So he traded in his Scion tC and got a Fiat 124 Abarth, of all things. He has since put over 70k miles on it with literally zero issues that I'm aware of. He drives it every day unless the snow is deep, in which case he will take my mom's car. He loves the thing. It makes him very happy, and it's nice to see him happy. He has a bad back and bad knees, and despite the discomfort it gives him he still happily grimaces with pain to get in and out.
While I don't much like thinking of mortality, I won't end up with any real inheritance. Which, honestly, is fine to me. It's my parents money. They should use it as they see fit while they are alive. But the little Fiat will be mine one day; it will be my honor to take care of the thing he dreamed of and cared for.
Good for him. My father keeps giving up stuff he wants, based on the idea that I should inherit. I know better than that. Not at the modern rate for end of life costs.
I'm not sure he isn't already juicing. I went lifting with him last month and he was putting up a lot of weight for a 51 year old, let alone an 81 year old.
I can't perfectly align "isn't great with money" to generously providing for his family in ways that really matter. Great story, though. I, too, am glad he has that car.
Ok yes your argument is clear.. But why does our hypothetical man need a NEW Corvette? Why not buy a low mile used 2019 7MT in 2024 for... idk, 45 grand? 50 grand? Wouldn't that be a more enjoyable car for him anyway?
Playing devils advocate: why let some other dude fart in the seats for six years then pay for his deferred maintenance? Why not take out a loan and go to Bowling Green for delivery?
For your first point: Tuff Stuff is 6 bucks at Home Depot, should only take 1/2 the can and 30 mins if you take your time to rid the car of all previous farts and dust. For the second, just how much deferred maintenance could this car possibly have with 17k miles on it? Plenty of 7MT cars within 500 miles of me that are under 50,000 miles and 50,000 dollars. I'm sure a couple might have a minor issue here and there but it's still the last real Vette ever made, and I'm gonna say our hypothetical man would still be happy with a 6 year old car because that's the car he saw when he decided he wanted a Corvette. And he was sorely disappointed with the more expensive, paddle only, Great Value 458 that came next.
Or adjust your expectations. I’m hardly the poster child of deferred gratitude, but I desperately wanted an F355 Ferrari, Porsche 993, or Acura NSX when I was a kid. Those things were tantalizingly close for a while but have since spiraled out of attainability (and honestly out of desire; at some point they just don’t have any appeal at the prices they command). So I adjusted my gaze and landed on a sports car that I love and can afford. Wanting what you have and all that.
The FD RX-7 and the Mark IV Supra are ridiculous, too. I can't imagine spending $150,000-200,000 on a Mark IV Supra, those things are more expensive than NA1 NSXs. Can still find the Z32 300ZX Turbo at relatively reasonably prices, though. The 3000GT VR-4, too.
I like to think so. Sometimes I feel down, and then I think about how I have a hot blonde wife, two awesome kids, a sports car I’ve always dreamed of, a cool Jeep DD, a nice house in a good burb, etc etc. Maybe I don’t have a Ferrari or a beach house, but I’m going to go bone my wife as soon as she’s done brushing her teeth and that’s pretty great too.
education dorks will use it to write papers on using debt to fund your lifestyle when the loan is paid off in 3-5 years out of current income. This is the real "buy borrow and die" Guys with 300k of equity in a house when it's "buy borrow and pay off"
I didn't do the home equity loan when I bought the audi but I'm sure it was less than the 8ish% I got. I just paid it off fast enough where the paperwork wasn't worth the hassle.
Oh I don't really want a Huracan. I just sold my g-body for life reasons, and I already used the home equity loan to fund a room addition. I'm all good on debt for now!
Also possible to fail at something due to inadequate housing, an excessive commute, malnutrition, shabby clothing (anti _Dress for Success_), or humiliation / burnout / depression / lack of incentive. Something Dave Ramsey (a fraud and a false teacher who has harmed many), and never mentions.
I was doing some consulting at his HQ in Franklin TN last year. It definitely has a distinctive corporate culture. Many companies talk about it but they walk the walk.
I had never met so many people who relocated to take a job. Their recruiting process is epic. Even I as an outside consultant had to sit down with two HR people and just talk about myself. I guess I passed some test? It was just this side of a cult but in fairness there were many bright and hard working people there.
In my opinion, Ramsey is like Nietzsche. It's fair to rebel against them and be a contrarian, but it's very wise to at least know what they're trying to say and why.
Or because they have read the New Testament and realize that he preaches the Love of Mammon in contradiction to the words Christ. Or because they realize that they can't follow his false teachings without violating 1 Tim 5:8 (depriving children of proper housing & education). Or because they have had bad experiences with co-workers who are his disciples.
Or because they realize that his "examples" are wrong and retarded, e.g., "Buy a $1000 car, save $100/month, and trade it in for a $2,200 car," neglecting that the $1000 car will cost you $250/month in repair / maintenance (and possibly a job due to absences), and that the dealer (he said "trade in") markup will far exceed the $1200 that you saved (e.g., the dealer will give you $300 on trade-in and then price at $4995). Or "buy a power washer, earn $600/day, save up for 'code school' and make $150k/year."
Or because they realize that most of what he says is "blaming the victim;" blaming younger generations for not living life on Boomer Mode, and never says ONE WORD against the policies that created the current situation. Especially (as Jack recently mentioned) intentionally drive wages to zero and rent to infinity. And policies like STEM-OPT, which give a 15% TAX INCENTIVE to hire Indian nationals & CCP agents instead of Americans. Or policies which artificially limit US medical school admissions while allowing foreign medical graduates ("FMG's") to practice in the US with substantially less education. Or "US" medicine programs which only admit residents from one specific non-allied foreign country:
IANAA but I thought the real juice for an expensive lease was getting the corp to pay it pre tax.
Also on residential real estate, Blackrock buying it. A few pols are talking about banning this and it's high time. Data centers too. Fuck those things.
You sound like my accountant. Maybe you should try being a fun accountant.
20+ years ago, I made my son a partial owner of my business when he was in HS, so I could hire him, pay him a dividend as a means of saving for college, and not have to pay work comp on him. He was the best help I ever had, and made bank... as did the business because we were a stripped down lean, mean money-making machine. It was pretty great.
When it came time for college, I went to my accountant and said, "he's an owner -- I think a mechanical engineering degree is a deductible "continuing education" expense." I thought I was brilliant.
He (like you, no doubt) did not agree. Killjoys, all of you. ;)
There was only one Bob Newhart, RIP. ACF'ers have spoken well of him, and his sister, a Sister / teacher at a Catholic school who also had an outstanding sense of humor.
I liked Bob’s story from when he was an accountant about how it was taking hours to balance the petty cash at the end of the day at the insurance company where he worked and then he realized he could just reach into his pocket and chip in the extra thirty six cents or whatever it was off or else pocket the extra if there was an overage. His boss said that wasn’t following sound accounting practices when he found out.
I once had a un fun accountant who nixed all my creative deductions. He ended up going to jail for embezzling from a non profit he did volunteer accounting for.
The rules aren't different but, yes, it's usually not done. I'll add a "personal use of vehicle" as other income on the 1040 with some calculation to justify it if the IRS ever comes a knocking. Some people bury a lot of stuff in their business, some other people less so. I'm not an auditor so if you're gonna do it, just make it not obvious.
Uninformed people tend to say things like "IF YEW HAVE A BIDNEZZ THERES ALL SORTS OF THINGS YEW CAN DEDUCT!" And I want to say, "Only if you're into fraud. Otherwise, if it's a personal expense / benefit, it's not deductible. And if it's a business deduction, it's something that you otherwise don't want, like "potash."
0-“I believe … that governments are rarely more efficient than markets”
Since when?
1-“The reality of the situation is that our government has stacked the deck against employing Americans for more than twenty years now. Compared to an American worker, an H1-B costs less to hire and less to employ. He is also unable to participate in most labor protection schemes and/or complain to the DOL about what you do.”
All of those displaced, REAL American workers are freed up to (1) do something that the drone / worker bee replacements cannot or will not do OR (2) enjoy Eudaimonia.
You say this all the time as if saying it enough times will make it so. What should all the American IT graduates do if they find the jobs they thought would be available when they started college four or five years prior are filled by immigrants? Should every American start their own company and hire their own H1-bs to do the actual work? Should they all network with rich and connected people in college so they have the inside track to a top tier firm and introductions to potential clients? What exactly should tens of millions of Americans do?
The only bright side I see is that the Big banks including Goldman Sacks are now offshoring more of the junior and middle level investment jobs to India.
Just had lunch today with a newly retired buddy of mine who said that AI use on my old job was hollowing out the knowledge of the specialized teams like I used to work on.
I could see something similar 20 years ago where we had new hires who had never worked on a trading floor like I did, and they lacked all the skills I had gained from working face to face in a tense environment. They could never glean those skills with client contact only through email and phone calls. I had an intuition for certain situations that they just couldn’t pick up on.
Now, of course, none of this matters anymore. The most successful youngsters going forward will be in the trades or in government jobs with pensions.
It's still really odd for me to come to grips with the fact that by choosing (in 1981) to "throw away" the native intelligence that was my birthright and pursue a life in the skilled trades, rather than head to State U -- that I was actually falling up, rather than down.
It's very strange how things work out. I'm exceedingly grateful.
Stan, that’s quite the silver lining! None of us knew what we were doing when we were that young, so it is indeed gratifying when it works out. I know exactly how you feel. We see all the ways things could have gone wrong, so when things went our way we view it as a gift! We also tend to discount our hard work that got us here. But I love the line “The harder you work the luckier you get.”
I saw a story a long time ago about a kid who got a perfect score on his SATs and ended up starting his own plumbing company. The reporter asked his dad what he thought about it, and the wise dad said “The world needs smart plumbers, too.”
The devaluation of the trades by the intelligentsia in the country was/is a national tragedy. But I just saw the latest numbers that men no longer see the value in going into debt for a dumb college degree and see jobs in the trades as the way to become a success. Just in time with AI taking the white collar jobs.
Yes: they should hustle! From the moment one lands at an American airport, one should be besieged on all sides by dozens of young highly-skilled Americans selling you counterfeit watches, tours, drugs, prostitutes, and tuk tuk rides, and begging. IOW, just like the Subcontinent!
0-I have never advocated for people to study something “vocational” in college that closes potential doors, eliminating optionality. I always encourage people to study something enduring at a quality school (reasonable heuristic is endowment per undergrad capita and then career placement) instead.
1-Every American cannot start a business that will provide them a higher quality of life than they could get from the JERB they’d like to have, but if I were feeling squeezed by the presence of immigrants who were (somewhat) second class non-citizens, I’d pretty quickly find a way to turn that bug into a feature by profiting off of their vulnerabilities.
2-Relatedly, the sooner one learns that connections and relationships tend to matter more than “I am very smart,” the better. Tight knit groups of immigrants have built up powerful flywheels for themselves by doing just that, right?
3-Investment banks have long been willing to offshore non front-office jobs, but the “real” banking jobs (i.e., you have clients (senior), talk to clients (middle), or work for those above you (junior)) are more at threat from AI, because it’s an apprenticeship model. You learn the job by osmosis from the people above you. If there’s no apprenticeship, there’s less of a future.
Regarding (2): This was made illegal by the Civil Rights Act, so all of us MONSTER TRUCK/COCK bros in our echo chamber would be litigated into the ground if we engaged in the same behavior as the immigrants you admire. Our gov’t prevents the freedom of association that you rightly note as valuable to success. Side question for our resident Truck Mandarin: am I allowed to drive wife’s HUGE dually to town,that she uses to pull a horse trailer? If she does truck things with her truck, do I need to apply for a special dispensation to use it for non truck things?
Point (2) goes far beyond JERBs. If I can do anything to help the esteemed membership of ACF, it will be to move them off the “plantation” of the JERB mindset.
I would not be caught dead driving a truck unless it were in use for a task necessitating a truck, personally.
'0-“I believe … that governments are rarely more efficient than markets”
Since when?'
My whole life. I believe in the sane application of market forces to pricing and availability, with as little government intervention as necessary to ensure a modicum of fairness. Not because it's so great to be fair, but because otherwise you get Robespierre.
You, on the other hand, use the word "market" the way swingers use "lifestyle" -- as a neologism to refer to a perverted philosophy where everyone gets fucked in weird ways and the social fabric is rent permanently asunder. You stand in the middle of a concentric ring of governmental and societal defenses designed to tilt the playing table in your favor, and deceive yourself that you eat what you kill or vice versa.
Let me tell you the day you will be on your knees along with the Dollar General crowd: the day the petroyuan overtakes the petrodollar and the daddy of the Fed can't pump enough fake money into the machine to make your fake investments produce fake returns. You are a parasite gnawing on the corpse of a system set up with blood and treasure two generations ago, and your glee is indistinguishable from that felt by the people in the ghetto who briefly used "the Chase money glitch" to buy new sneakers.
I had forgotten about the Chase Infinite Money Glitch.
“You stand in the middle of a concentric ring of governmental and societal defenses designed to tilt the playing table in your favor, and deceive yourself that you eat what you kill or vice versa.”
Christ Alive is this untrue! I am a contrarian and am on the wrong side of the consensus in almost everything I do, particularly of late. You should know enough personally to connect the dots, and know why I can’t / won’t memorialize anything further.
“The day the petroyuan overtakes the petrodollar and the daddy of the Fed can't pump enough fake money into the machine to make your fake investments produce fake returns.”
If this happens - and it could - the world will be so fucked that you’ll have to take a number and stand in line to step off the roof of a sufficiently tall building to ensure death upon impact. So I don’t spend much time worrying about it.
“You, on the other hand, use the word "market" the way swingers use "lifestyle" -- as a neologism to refer to a perverted philosophy where everyone gets fucked in weird ways and the social fabric is rent permanently asunder.”
You are about to inspire me to enter the virtuous and wholesome fields of check cashing and methadone clinics.
You *should* work in check cashing for a while. You should work in a system that explicitly exploits the vulnerable so you can recognize the signs of that exploitation when they occur in industries with better PR and flashier offices.
I like to help vulnerable people, like the millions of female content creators who can continue to make a living on Onlyfans (because of me), rather than prey upon them.
When I lived in Japan I understood that I was a guest there. However, being a guest, I knew that it was their country, not mine. I was not and am not entitled to any of the fruits of their labor no matter how much I contributed to their society or how hard I tried to fit in. I don't see how this is so hard to understand: the natives of a country ought to be in charge of who their neighbors are. They ought to be able to decide who to let in and how many of them. They ought to be able to bar immigration completely.
I like globalism (and I might be the only one here who does). I have a great wife from a foreign country and all our kids were born there. I love traveling back there whenever I get the chance. Thanks, globalism! But I'm not blind to the realities of living in a foreign country being surrounded by the natives and only being able to barely scratch the surface of their culture. If the H1B crowd is solely here to make money we're better off without them as they'll make no effort to fit into our culture or bother to understand it in any meaningful way. That is an important point beyond just the economic reality and ignoring helps no one.
"I don't see how this is so hard to understand" A certain extremely populous culture tends to not promote critical thinking or empathy. I recall one recounting a corporate training session:
Instructor: "Make sure your necktie is clean & pressed."
Student (raises hand): "But here in India we do not wear neckties."
Instructor: "Yes. As I was saying, make sure your necktie is clean & pressed."
Also, enjoying other, distinct cultures (especially Japan), is the opposite of globalism. Globalism is about destroying all worthy cultures and replacing them with third world slop.
Kaman = Ovation. They made some super interesting stuff in the '70s, I once had a Magnum 1 bass and it was a very nice instrument. Deacon and Breadwinner guitars aren't priced sky high last time I checked. I don't care about the bowl back acoustics, they are probably their bread & butter, but seeing how I rarely play anything with more than four strings....
I hope I die before I see a 'Guitar Center Wangcaster 9000' or 'Guitar Center DonkDonk Precise Bass' :
0) go into, or out of production (due to poor sales or whatever)
1) if actually made, fetch five figures on the vintage/collectible market
I have owned and played a bunch of Ovation (and Applause!) acoustics, both USA and Korea.
I can't believe... and I mean CANNOT BELIEVE... you didn't mention the man who used an Ovation Magnum II bass to sell 11.9 MILLION COPIES of ONE SINGLE ALBUM!!!!!!!
I will not subscribe to the “stick it to (x)”. I don’t want billionaires paying higher property taxes because I don’t want anyone paying property taxes. NYC budget is absurd and abusing their billionaires is at best a short term fix. Manhattan, being an island, has limited space. It will always be expensive. It’s not expensive because 10,000 rich people own property their for when they are in town.
I saw the TX H1-B story and wondered how long it would take to show up in ACF and the answer is not long. Based on Jack’s comments about the significant Indian readership I am wondering do any of them comment?
The flip side of how H1-B hurts American citizens is how it exploits those who take part as if they are indentured servants. At this point H1-B should be eliminated and immigration completely overhauled to a merit system and fixed numbers allowed per year based on the needs of the country.
Either way what we learn in TX is that when demand decreases so do prices. This is quite the breakthrough and I hope someone realizes what has been discovered and advocates for it to be tried other places.
I made the mistake of going to a city reach out meeting trying to drum up support for renewing the 2%lot tax on retail, restaurants and building supplies.
I was being fed so much bullshit I had to walk out. They were saying they need it to fix roads. Only 38% of the homes in the area are primary residences. They also say "locals" only pay 34% of the total generated by the LOT. They were flabbergasted when I asked what total property tax revenue was paid by the 62% of homes (I don't know the breakdown when you add in commercial property) that are only occupied a few months out of the year.
I would be good money the total value of those homes is much higher than the 62% of lots they represent vs. 38% fully occupied.
Locals pay 100% of the LOT tax they pay. It would hurt less and soak second home owners more to just raise property taxes. It is also as regressive of a tax as I can think of.
This is a moral issue for me- I see property taxes as immoral and evil. Why is it legal to tax someone forever on something they bought? We are supposedly an ownership society.
Working on my WV ancestry I discovered property owners in the late 19th century were expected to devote a certain amount of time working on the county road running along their farms.
The modern equivalent of that is property tax. If you want a road, and you want the fire department to come when you call instead of running a credit check, something has to pay for that.
I'm not saying property tax is always or even mostly implemented on a fair or reasonable basis mind you.
Gonna disagree, because we have modern technology that can pave a road more efficiently and at a better result than everyone doing it in front of their house. Commercial travel/shipping of goods today is significantly more than in the 1800s, probably was almost 0% back then when almost all business was local except what came by mail. Back then you needed your road to get your goods to town. Today businesses need your road to get their wares moved around.
And most importantly, now we have cars that use fuel, and a gas tax, so in my perfect world, the gas tax would be whatever it cost to build and maintain roads.
Property tax is probably the best, and possibly fairest, way to fund a municipality.
Revenues are fairly consistent and predictable from year to year for the city. And with certain protections in place (e.g. Calif Prop 13), it is also consistent and predictable for the payers. [I will admit that there may be states that balloon assessed value and really hammer their citizens; but that's not an intrinsic problem to property tax.]
At least with property tax, what no matter what happens to the property, the revenues come in. To quote my old property professor: the land doesn't give a shit who owns it.
The alternatives?
Progressive income tax is worse. High earners' incomes fluctuate significantly in good/bad years which makes municipal budgeting difficult. As illustrated by California's record budget surpluses back to back with record budget deficits.
Sales tax is extremely regressive -- everyone has to spend money on necessities. And the poorest among us will spend a greater proportion of their income on sales tax then those who are better off.
I pay 20% fewer $ in property taxes, on a home that is 5 -6 times the value (estimate sale price not assessed value) here in Idaho than in NY, for a public school that beat the snot out of the public and Catholic school available where is was.
Unfortunately in Illinois i cannot trust the public schools. We have some of the best in the state but i dont need them convincing my girls theyre boys
It's supposed to buy us an educated society with educated voters, but no longer fulfills its purpose. I would be delighted to pay more property tax for those results. In my state, VT, that's in the category of "not going to happen."
My wife was just talking to a tradesman whose son got into Norwich University on a full ride scholarship, in part for athletic ability and in part for his excellent grades in a VT high school, from which he graduated early. Then he goes to Norwich, they find out he cannot write a paragraph, and he has to spend a year in remedial classes before doing college-level work. Good thing VT, in 2025, had the second highest per pupil spending in the country. At least he is going to a college that won't let him graduate without actual skills; it could have been worse.
VT's high but unavailing education spending also freezes out needed spending on roads, both at the state and municipal level. I could go on, but will instead go to bed.
If you can't write a paragraph by the time you're in college, you are 13 years behind in your education. It's laughable to think a couple remedial classes can fix that. As a parent, how do you not know your child can't write a paragraph?
Michigan exempts primary residents from paying school millages. "The State" apparently makes the school districts whole. Our school district is fine. The kids are all based. My son and his friends make fun of the CNN clips their history teacher plays.
One thing that was not heavily emphasized in the Bloomberg H-1B article is that Texas, which is among the three Sunbelt states (along with Tennessee and Florida) that does not collect state income taxes, has rather elevated property taxes. And then also elevated home insurance rates.
I’d rather pay a reasonable state income tax than a property tax over which the homeowner has no control.
There are other factors in the pockets of softness in the North Dallas market: Huge growth post-COVID (many remote workers); high (and growing) property taxes. Other DFW markets (e.g., Highland Park) remain rock solid in terms of pricing.
Yeah the “Texas is super awesome” crowd hasn’t convinced me especially because the property taxes. Ohio Republicans seem hell bent on driving down all taxes except property taxes and making them huge. This has to be sheer laziness on behalf of politicians since a decent portion of people will go vote for property tax levies “for the kids” without any analysis of where the money is going and how it is being spent.
I don't know if there's a "right" way to do property taxes, but Michigan's Prop A from the 1990s that caps property tax increases is not the worst way to go about it, especially in the long run. Texas renews your assessment continuously and you pay based on whatever the market value (probably a quick assessed value by an overworked or lazy mass appraiser working for their local government) is in any given year. Michigan caps tax increases every year at the rate of inflation or 5% whichever is lower. Assessments in my county are typically a year or two behind current year market prices due to state law requiring us to use the two previous years' worth of sales data to help determine values each year. Of course, Michigan has income tax on top of it, so property taxes don't need to be as onerous...
Highland Park is an extremely affluent part of Dallas. It would take financial Armageddon for it to lose value. There is no shortage of people who want to live there.
Based purely on asking prices (I have only been in HP a few times in my life, but I do know people who live there and/or grew up there), I think it’s pretty spendy for what you get in return, even if they do have a quality public school system. And then the property taxes and insurance, both of which are elevated.
How exactly? People with lower incomes will spend less, and pay less tax. They will also be able to live frugally , pay off their mortgage and be able to live almost for free if they choose.
Here in Ohio let’s say a $200k house pays $4000 in property taxes. At a 10% sales tax that family would need to spend $40k per year before sales tax is “worse” than property tax. They would also be able to pay off their mortgage sooner if they chose, further saving interest paid.
'How exactly? People with lower incomes will spend less, and pay less tax. They will also be able to live frugally , pay off their mortgage and be able to live almost for free if they choose.'
Two families. One earns $500k post tax, spends $300k, invests $200k. The other one earns $50k post tax, spends $50k because there is no way to operate a family in the United States in 2026 without spending $50k.
The effective tax rate on the second family is 66% higher than on the first family.
'Here in Ohio let’s say a $200k house pays $4000 in property taxes. At a 10% sales tax that family would need to spend $40k per year before sales tax is “worse” than property tax. '
If your family has a $250 weekly grocery bill, $400 on a car and $200 on insurance every month, they are more than halfway to spending $40k a year and no one has put on a stitch of clothing or put a gallon of gas in a car. But it's worse than that. That 10% tax has to be ADDITIVE, because the state and the counties are barely breaking even at 6.5 to 8.5 percent now. So you end up with European VAT level of taxation at 16.5 to 18.5.
Which is why I ask when the topic comes up. Property, income, consumption all have winners and losers. And yet we need some level,of government, so how to finance it?
No. Income taxes end when you stop earning. That is a good thing.
Property taxes never end and are dictated to you, you do not control them. Hence why I think they are immoral, you can be taxed out of your ability to otherwise afford to live in property you own.
Income tax is a massive burden which makes it much harder to own property or retire because it vaporizes income so much right out the gate before you have even used it. In this scheme you don't even own your full earnings. A far greater financial abuse since most states then levy consumption taxes on money that has been taxed.
Property tax is complaining about a much much smaller and downstream issue, imo.
Well I’m not a fan of income taxes, but to me they are less evil than property taxes. I would prefer to eliminate all taxes and shift to sales tax for a lot of reasons including one very simple reason- the government at all levels (city, county, state federal) employs many many people to make the tax system work. All those jobs could be eliminated by sales tax, which is a simple calculation on purchases. This would reduce the size of government and the cost of government.
In my extremely biased point of view (I work in property tax for my county) I'd rather get rid of income tax. I live in a township with a low millage rate in a modest (under-assessed) house and having my income tax deleted would save me SO MUCH MONEY I'd be happy pay property taxes every year. I don't know how many people are in our situation, though.
I'm in favor of making government smaller (and have a plan to get out of this myself in the next 10 years), and you have to make government smaller before you can get rid of any taxes. I don't think any of the tax elimination movements will get traction without that requirement getting met. I'd happily switch careers tomorrow if it were the case, though.
Here in Ohio we are going to force the issue. Looks like property tax elimination will be on the 2027 ballot and polling shows it will pass by a huge margin. After that it’s up to the state government to figure out what to do. Since it is heavily (R) one might think it could be very positive but limited government conservatives seem to be a rare breed among the elected.
That is why reducing federal employment, especially in Washington DC, has been so important. It’s the much needed first step to kill the government beast that devours everything.
The dog not barking: no one misses those employees.
I am not surprised. India will do what it thinks is best for India. The US will do something, usually with bad results. This is also an immigration failure. Any immigrant should be assimilating and becoming an American.
Just scroll her feed to get an idea of what she’s doing.
She is a housewife in Cedarburg, WI disgusted by the invasion so she devised a method to track them down, and she will teach people how to do if you DM her on X.
She is also in contact with the State Department and some state governments so that they can start using her methods, since it’s statistically valid.
Since being a landlord is a commercial activity, it’s against the law for an H-1B who is not supposed to work outside their job. She has said she is not directly going after illegals, but the H-1B landlords are the node for the whole business of Indian realtors selling to H-1B landlords, then providing illegal renters in a corrupt circular criminal enterprise. Go after the landlords and you find the other crooks.
She even has banks and trading firms contacting her so that they can identify future bad loans that H-1B’s will abandon when they run back to India.
The best part. She just got her Green Card, because she is from Quebec and married a Wisconsin local. She is a patriot!
I'll take the other side of that that bet, as I'm pretty sure Substack lacks the ability to block commenters. It was designed for about a dozen comments on an author's posts, not the sort of robust community that we have here.
Maybe. Maybe it's nice to have some diversity in thought though.
It can get stale when half of the discussion threads end up with all involved agreeing that yes obviously anyone to the left of Ronald Regan will murder you and your family in their beds, and/or discussing which shade of Brown is doing more to genocide specifically White American Catholics Males.
If we're gonna apply that train of thought to some of the commenters and viewpoints on this board, one should take time to note that there is a measure of distance between a generally agreeable "right-leaning" fellow and those that are more sympathetic to the Third Reich than, say, your average Mexican laborer.
I was there for the reddit purges, the twitter purges, and a bunch of random purges of small commenting sites on the internet where anybody right of Mao got banned. If a couple people got their feelings hurt and stopped commenting here, that's on them. This place is exceptionally civil considering the topics broached.
For a basically unmoderated forum it is remarkably civil!
Though, with the notable exception of That Which We Are Not Allowed to Speak (coughIsraelcoughcough), most of the commenters here have broadly similar opinions so the need for moderation isn't so strong anyway.
Being on forums long enough to have seen goatse used frequently as a rickroll keeps one from being thin skinned. Or any time spent lurking at peak era /b or /pol.
I likely don’t need to be there day-in and day-out, unless I just wanted to smoke cigars with him all day in Austin. If I were just picking a city in Texas to live in, I would select Dallas. Coincidentally, what is almost certainly the finest private cigar “collection” in America is located there - Halfwheel.
There will be tremendous economic growth taking place in the Texas triangle throughout the remainder of my conventional working years (I’m 37)), but I hope never again to be in the labor market (at least on the supply side).
A fantastic goal. I have zero plans to ever work again. It took a few years to get used to spending down my investments, but now I’m extremely comfortable with doing so. I always have a Plan B and C, too. I see the genius of what my investment guy set up, and thankfully he’s much younger than me.
You’ll figure out where you need to devote most of your time when you get rolling with this endeavor.
It is not an uncommonly held view that the 14th was maliciously misinterpreted to justify mass anchor babies and birth tourism. It was for recently freed slaves and a few distant edge cases. It just hasn't been successfully challenged.
It does seem to be the most poorly-drafted clause in the entire Constitution. Note that it wasn't applied to Amerindians until the 1920s.
What I haven't read a lot about is that there are so many possible levels of legality for the parents:
* Diplomats
* Invading armies
* POWs (I have heard a lot about German POWs stationed in the US: many stayed in the US)
* Illegal aliens ("invading armies" in plainclothes?)
* Student visas (Kamala Harris / Vivek Ramaswamy*)
* Temporary foreign worker visas
* Permanent residents
* Non-citizens by virtue of their ethnicity (enslaved Africans in the Civil War Era) <--- [The direct intent of the law]
* Citizens
* Claims to be pro-life. Ergo "life begins at conception." Was conceived IN INDIA by TWO INDIAN CITIZENS about 8 months before their "temporary" arrival in the US. Ergo not an American.
I remember working at radio shack in the mid to late 90s where "realistic" and "Optimus" house brands went from about 50/50 designed and made by X Japanese company to just being literally name plate changes on car stereo head units. Fun times.
The most telling thing about Mamdani was basically starting that the city/renters/trusts would own apartments. The plan goes like this: tell landlords to fix up their units, or else. Oh, and btw you can't go up on rent either. If you as the landlord can't make a profit, that's not our, the city's, fault. Communism in action!
I'm a free market guy, but the H1B stuff has been getting out of hand. All these layoffs and yet companies are still getting H1Bs. I'm not opposed for companies subjected to federal labor laws getting a moratorium on H1B workers. Especially in tech sectors, they act like the people they are laying off can't be trained.
I had a pair of in house designed Optimus bookshelves with the 360 degree ribbon tweeter. They sounded great but they were easy to fry (which I did). I also had an awesome sounding Optimus above rear deck 3 way( true three way) speakers that were an easy replacement for Toyotas weird 8x7 back speaker.
In my basement is my dad's old Realistic radio/receiver and a double tape deck. There's also a record player to complete the set, but I fucked the head up in a failed attempt to upgrade 7 years ago. The receiver needed a new speaker output switch but it still works great. I use a bluetooth to RCA adapter plugged into the aux input, and it plays thru some decent Klipsch towers. Forget exactly which model.
I'm in tech; more so due to my up bringing (both micro and macro) and less due to a stint at 'the shack. My father, whom we fondly refer to as "Sparky" - is an electrician by day and a tinker-er / mad scientist at night. Given his influence and my coming of age on the early internet, it was natural to adopt tech and when old enough to work, end up at Radio Shack (or Circuit City!).
My father was very adamant (and proud) that I go to college, the first in the fam. He didn't want me working hard outside in holes like he did.
Funny how things have come full circle. The excitement and promise of tech and the early internet have given way to fractured disillusions. For my own children I struggle if college will be worth it for them.
Perhaps my son will be an electrician, Sparky Jr. has a nice ring to it.
I understand your concerns about the value of college. Yet I'm also terrified of what happens if Heritage Americans* listen to "Mike Rowe" and "Dave Ramsey" and abandon the "commanding heights" of society more than we already have.
Oh man; I actually forgot about those! I was there for that; though the stores I operated out of didn't sell a ton in their markets. (Mostly I focused on selling Compaq computers and Sprint PCS phones - as that was where the spiffs were!)
Haha, that sounds about right. I raced those things so hard they wouldn’t even last the warranty period. The local managers I’m sure hated me for that.
My first business was selling motors for them. I was ordering motors from Tamiya and taking apart Crest toothbrushes and selling them at a markup.
RS was really a Mecca for a kid into electronics. And as annoying as pushing the cell phones was, I never had a bad experience going through them for a phone.
...that's also an elected official ostensibly a "public servant" - essentially using the power of his office to target a private citizen because... uh, we don't like him? "Your papers are not in order, comrade... you don't live here"... Bernie Sanders also owns a house he doesn't live in... I bet virtually every member of Congress owns real estate they rarely live in... but of course they're allowed to while CEO whoever is not.
Nevermind the oppressive precedent of the state taxing assets you've paid for, thus ensuring all you do is rent them from the government... the useful idiots of NYC think they've empowered a system for "justice", but all they've done is simply empower a system. That's the ultimate grift of socialism, you vote for it thinking it's going to work for you, but it's designed to work for the political class.
'...that's also an elected official ostensibly a "public servant" - essentially using the power of his office to target a private citizen because... uh, we don't like him? "Your papers are not in order, comrade... you don't live here"...'
Manhattan is essentially built out. There are no empty lots to build new homes. So when there are 10,000 homes with no one living in them, that means there are 10,000 residents who can't buy a home and who are forced into relationships with BlackRock and/or other firms that purchase real estate then rent it back at exorbitant rates.
The fallacy of the beard applies a bit here. It would be awful for the mayor of New York to direct public ire at a sanitation worker or restaurant employee. This person, by contrast, has obtained about $200 million dollars -- that is two hundred MILLION -- of real estate appreciation on homes he does not use and which directly cause other families to not have a home. Period point blank.
'Nevermind the oppressive precedent of the state taxing assets you've paid for, thus ensuring all you do is rent them from the government... '
That precedent was set in the Book of Domesday from 1086. It is settled. All we are doing now is arguing over implementation.
By the way, if you apply this tax to the average American home at the same rate that it's being applied to this man... you get $312.50.
By that rationale, there are millions of people who are in desperate need of a reliable car for transportation. Anyone who has more cars than they need should surrender their spare cars to the government. When should a state official stop by and take one of yours?
...at any rate, the delusion is that taxing CEO whoever will then house a bunch of sanitation workers or restaurant employees. If that was true, then California would be the easiest state to own a home...
"By the way, if you apply this tax to the average American home at the same rate that it's being applied to this man... you get $312.50"
Again, you've got plenty of vehicles to spare, right? You won't mind if the state just takes one?
As always, funding socialism is always the burden of someone just a little richer than you are...
Of course I don't object to all taxation, and never said otherwise... I was in the military, so a federal employee paid by the taxes paid by American citizens...
...and that's my point. Taxes should serve a direct interest for the taxpayer. I'd be completely fine with higher taxation if the benefits were immediately returned to me...
But it doesn't work like that in reality. It's always a grift... or effectively a ponzi scheme that always... always... always fails. Every time. See Social Security.
...and ultimately this isn't about enabling some greater productivity or serving the taxpayers with the taxes the city will collect... this is about punishing success and empowering a political agenda.
I despise Mamdani, and some of his other housing issues.
But this seems to me to be less about "punishing success" than about towing a ship/airplane/car that's been left in port / at a gate / at the Departures curb indefinitely.
Vancouver, IIRC, passed something similar after a significant portion of the housing stock used to launder Chinese "hot money" and sitting vacant.
I completely agree on the government protecting American real estate from foreign speculation... that's not what Mamdani is doing. It's just more property tax because he thinks those with greater success should be punished. It is literally the same refrain every socialist has used in all of human history... and again, the main point is nothing will be solved. It just makes stupid people feel good.
"By that rationale, there are millions of people who are in desperate need of a reliable car for transportation. Anyone who has more cars than they need should surrender their spare cars to the government. When should a state official stop by and take one of yours?"
If I let one of my vehicles sit inoperative outside for six months, the township will tell me to demonstrate its use or surrender it. This sort of thing happens to poor and middle class people all the time. Buy a trailer and don't move into it... maybe because you're in jail, or working shifts out of town. See how long it takes the state to take it.
That being said, you and I are coming from the same perspective of "protect people from the state." The thing is that anyone with a $238M house has received the benefit of government preference more times than ten thousand people like you and me have.
We don't need to play this game where "if they can do it to a billionaire, they can do it to me." They're already doing a hundred things to you that aren't being done to billionaires. You and I pay ten times the effective tax rate of a billionaire. We have no security in our property or persons compared to them. Their decisions magnify misery for uncounted thousands of people. Do they deserve equal protection under the law? Absolutely. Right now they are more than equal.
So how does Mamdani's tax address the hundreds of things being done to me that aren't being done to them? What is actually going to happen now that justifies the increased tax on $5mil properties?
You personally? Nothing, unless you're visiting NYC and are marginally safer as a result. If you get hit by a taxi, there will be another half billion dollars of public service available to you. Maybe someone will fix the station lights on the 1 train. I have no idea. The only real effect it will have on you is if you're bidding on a house against someone who sold their condo in NYC for less money as a result of the tax bump and therefore has less ability to knock you out of the process.
“You and I pay ten times the effective tax rate of a billionaire.”
People become billionaires through ownership of assets, typically assets that appreciate significantly post-purchase / creation; which is to say, investment.
The tax code in America encourages investment. Which is one of the reasons that Americans enjoy such an extraordinary standard of living.
The response to this phenomenon should not be “I want billionaires to pay more in taxes (their ‘fair share’)”; rather, it should be “I now understand the incentive structure in place, and I will respond accordingly.”
Amanda Bartolotta is amazing: https://xcancel.com/amandalouise416/status/2062182782529409460#m She has previously documented the money flows and points out that _everybody gets paid_ (brokers, lawyers, lobbyists, hiring managers (kickbacks) except the displaced skilled Americans.
At this point, there's a pretty broad "Bernie to Bannon" consensus in the public, numerous bills have been proposed, but I don't see anything really changing soon:
I drove my Boxster GTS 900 miles to Maine last week, nothing but good times. Learned that the convertible roof is kind of fake, underneath the van as is a magnesium shell that keeps things rigid and very quiet. You can't even get a convertible in a Corvette can ya?
No one is talking millionaire taxes here cause there ain't no millionaires. But we have a fake oysterman, woman abusing socialist with a concentration camp tat who is running to get on the Senate ballot.. I am having fun asking family and neighbors whether there is anything that Plattner could do that would disqualify him in their eyes? Raping a 12 year old? Ritual murder? Goat fucking? People are avoiding me a little.
Platner probably winning the seat is such an embarassment for everyone involved.
The people in general crave populism at the moment, whether that's from the left or the right, so who does the DNC push? An ancient woman who couldn't be more out of touch. The DNC is a cancer, a parade of horribles whose worldview is stuck in 2005. The party leaders are leacherous idiots, all of them.
So they get... Platner. Which, yikes.
Susan Collins SUCKS and needs to get voted out. She has been a pox on American politics for nearly as long as I have been alive. Thanks to Donny T and his own brand of cruel stupidity the GOP is polling so poorly that her ouster is basically a given.
All of that said, it is a bit amusing that many of the same people who will gladly overlook DJTs own myriad flaws and scandals will get upset about Platner. This is the exact guy that Trump has brought to the American political forefront and I don't know that there is a way back.
That's kind of funny because Collins is generally despised as a RINO. The SAVE act has popular support and I'm surprised Thune's attempt to quash it failed.
The $109,000 hybrid Corvettes is not aspirationa, a $40,000 Corvette is aspirational. Before we were unwillingly sucked into clown world a loaded Camero SS was priced a few thousand less then a loaded L-82 Corvette. We will not discuss Jack’s S600 V-12 MB but domestically a loaded Buick Electra 225 was also a few thousand less then a comparable Couoe or Sedan Deville. Memo to file: Doctors and Lawyers that could afford the Cadillac bit drive the Buick 225 because it was the right thing to do. Ok think of it as the new rich driving the Yukon XL to Costco because and Escalade would send the wrong message to their neighbors. However now with our inverted Bell Curve economy the masses are driving used Caravans and the well off are not. To circle back to the topic at hand a $110,000 Corvette is a toy for those that pay cash not something to aspire to….
What annoys me most and Mamdani and his growing legion of DSA acolytes is their audacity to declare the American dream dead before people have had the opportunity to determine that for themselves. The tone I get from them is a lot of "Trust me bro, the game is cooked, best just burn your prime working years throwing rocks at ICE Agents instead of figuring out how to actually be productive and enjoy the fruits of said productivity"
My father told me this bit of wisdom when I was just nine years old: there's a lot of money to be made in convincing someone how they're getting screwed by someone else.
Of course, little did I realize back then that the monetary rewards pale in comparison to the political power to be gained through such blatant pandering.
The younger generations don’t want to work, and they don’t want the responsibility, maybe true, but they do understand that they are being undermined by big business and big government, I don’t really blame them, culture tells them to jump through all the hoops and the government shits on them, I only worked as hard as I did because I knew there was a payoff, these young people see no payoff, just indentured servitude.
If they "don't want to work," why do so many of them seem to spend so much time studying STEM and applying to hundreds, if not thousands, of jobs?
I think they are in the minority.
there are way too many of those stem students unemployed or underemployed even from the best universities
Definite minority.
Perhaps they should’ve studied humanities or taken a SPAM-track (Social Media, PR, Advertising, Marketing) course of study instead.
If they major in the humanities like I did they can become soulless government drones like me!
No question the younger set doesn't want to have to pay their dues like we boomers did .
Luckily my son followed my lead and now owns two houses and makes 2X what I ever did .
Less bitching and more working will do it.
-Nate
In 1960, about half of 30 year olds were married homeowners. Now, it's about 15%.
Seems like a lot of people are still "paying their dues" at 50.
I'm not going to comment on "kids these days." Every generation faces different challenges. Every generation has its share of winners and losers.
Totally agree, I was generalizing, and I don’t think that kids today have the kinds of advantages that gen jones or gen x had, but if they want to succeed, they are going to have to push through the disadvantages they face.
I actually hired a few guys out of college recently and I was quite surprised with what they are dealing with out there. These talented American computer science grads are having a very tough time even getting interviews! I've been super happy about what these guys bring and you're telling me that they are getting completely shut out in favor of H1B hires?
WTF is going on??? We keep this up for much longer and I'd think we should bring back the guillotine.
Agreed
“John Carter” had an interesting take on this in the context of the marshmallow test a couple weeks back:
https://barsoom.substack.com/p/when-the-experimenter-fails-the-marshmallow
I don’t disagree with what he writes here.
Neither do I.
I’m starting to change my opinion about the “greatest generation” being partially responsible as well, and maybe not so great.
It's like "Honest Bob's Used Cars" being run by, well, not an honest Robert. If ya hafta put it in the name, then......
Every generation inherits both good and bad from previous generations. This is still a tenant I hold. "Carter's" stating that Boomers defend The System That Works so stridently is an astute observation. As an older Millennial, the varied success of those in our generation is evidence to those older of "see, it works" when those around me have the house, the family, the new cars, etc. Only to be contrasted with "what's wrong with you?" when I or other peers struggle with unemployment (Covid) or previous income levels due to Life Outside Our Control. Let's not even get started with marriages and their realities.
Plenty of Boomers err in their ability to adapt their thinking to changing reality as well as oversimplify groups (this also is a human proclivity in general). Thus: "Gut it out and try harder, you whiny and wimpy kids." [who were raised by whom???] Awesome. Thanks. Imma take my marshmallow now, even if I have the capacity to wait for five.
I am a Boomer, technically generation jones, they have been cutting rungs out of the ladder since before I graduated high school, every year is more difficult than the last, especially for the younger generations, the powers that be, put the candidates in positions that they find palatable, to say that the general population, the plebiscite, the proletariat, has any real say in what happens in Washington DC is laughable, we are largely along for the ride.
Boomers err? Why, I’ve talked to many of my local Boomers and they wouldn’t think that’s possible!
But seriously, as a late Boomer, I absolutely detest being around the entitled Boomers who surround me in my retiree heavy area.
They are basically the walking dead. They have mostly let themselves go physically and mentally. It’s disgusting.
They are totally set in their ways, and not the least bit inquisitive or forward looking.
I can't tell if the greatest generation raised the worst, or if the boomers were just the first generation with enough life expectancy from birth (the first to live well into their 70s on average I believe) to stick around long enough to cause real harm to the generations coming up behind them.
Seems like the silent generation is the one that is the first to be doing really well on the life expectancy lottery.
The Greatest Generation is probably the most scammed generation. Look at all of the things that gave the federal government all sorts of extra powers. All those massive public programs, intelligence agencies, massive wars, federal income taxes, the fed...etc
I'm actually not sure if all those started during the time of the Greatest Generation, but I'm kinda guessing they did.
In this day and age, you're not going to nickel-and-dime or bootstrap your way into a house. Even a down payment requires tens of thousands in one big-ass chunk if you want a Merely Crippling monthly payment instead of an Even More Crippling one.
I myself have decided not to buy a house until and unless I can do it in a way that doesn't leave me either house-poor or an hour from work. Which, as I figure it, will require at least $200,000 a year. My boomer dad doesn't get it on at least one level.
But! But! But!...What about EQUITY? What about The American Dream?
What about living on instant ramen and rainwater just to say I'm a homeowner? What about putting 20,000 miles a year on my truck commuting?
Getting rid of the illegal aliens would maybe loosen the housing situation, and it’s much worse in Canada. when I was working, I never lived more than 15 minutes from work, and I considered my coworkers who lived an hour and fifteen minutes away from work less paid than I was, ten extra hours a week and not getting paid for it…
I value living close to where I work over (theoretically) owning a home. An hour or more commute? Hard pass. GRANTED...life happens, job changes happen, there is a family involved with schools and friends. Still, if one can swing it, relationships and time spent in the present are very valuable.
I can dig this ~ my first house was in PO-mona, Ca. and it often took me two hours to drive to work unless I hit the road three hours before opening time .
So, that's what I did, I wasn't willing to pass on the chance to buy a house, any house, I lost money on it every year I owned it but when I finally sold it I got enough to make a down payment on a shithole house across town from my then job .
-Nate
(yes, it's still a shit hole but it's _MY_ shithole until I die )
You'd have to simultaneously get rid of the illegals AND increase/improve the housing stock. We're getting new subdivisions all the time up here, but they're all full of half-million-dollar houses. I was under the assumption that I was doing something wrong with my life, but my wife and I are supposedly in the upper 50% of household earners in the USA, but we're not buying a half-million-dollar house...
Half Million dollar house? That isn’t even a starter home in Toronto.
You will have a flood of housing over the next 10 years as people die. Period. That's what is going to happen. Just building is kind of a "throw more trailers in the park" sort of deal. Speaking of which, anyone seen what trailers cost now?!?!?! I can't move from this house simply because every thing is set up to prevent any upward mobility now.
500k subdivisions in your area is INSANE. Are they actually selling and filling up? If so what the hell are those people doing for work UP 'dere to afford that?
505k will get you a 1,200 sq foot house here. God I miss that mortgage payment.
It seems that the cheapest you can stick-build a new house these days, in ANY state, is about 300k. And thats without the interventions of such annoyances as E-Verify.
Getting rid of the illegal and marginally legal aliens would help most everything: housing. health care. depressed wages. crime. traffic. schools. welfare and other entitlement abuse.
Since the real number of people to be deported is probably much closer to 100M than anyone in our government would like to admit, this is not insignificant.
the insane thing is that 100m isnt even all of them its just most
100 million? That's nearly a third of the country. I think your math is a little off.....
I don't know how much lending parameters have changed in the last 10 years. In 2015, I bought a house with only 5% down. That was a good decision because the payment was less than rent and it was much closer to my job. Although it didn't appreciate in the first 5 years (not a concern to me), it was also very low maintenance in that time period.
I do know many people in my neighborhood bought their houses in the past 5 years with under 10% down. That really shouldn't be a challenge unless you are making minimum wage (in which case your problem is your job, not the housing market. Probably highly correlated) or you live in a stupid area of the country. I wish I could live in LA but I can't see tolerating the costs.
There are places in the country where you can get a good but not fancy house for $300k or less, have a payment near or less than rent, and not have a horrific commute.
He is essentially correct.
His use of the marshmallow test in his analogy is spot on.
A most excellent piece.
The smaller marshmallows especially hit home with all the shrinkflation going on the past decade.
There’s a website out there that tracks the shrinking package size of supermarket items.
I’m predicting that at some point soon cereal boxes will be one Cheerio in thickness.
Do you think it's that they don't want to, or that they don't see the payoff? Four years of school, possible debt from that, then trying to break into whatever field you chose.
They see only doom, dei, and importing the third world to lower wages, and the government will help you if you have the right skin tone, but will shit all over you if you are not imported.
The younger generations saw through the scam.
i dont know anyone that doesnt want to work and ive only heard that from the older generations. nobody can afford anything and everyone is hiring foreigners. what are the actual citizens supposed to do?
They don’t want to work as slaves, Farley says mechanics are making 100k, yeah, maybe one in fifty, and the manufacturers are making difficult to repair vehicles, also difficult to troubleshoot, I know car mechanics that quit the dealer scam.
Yeah, the corporate lies about those mechanic jobs are nauseating and infuriating.
And I should add, they are only slightly worse than the lies about “a shortage of engineers” that I have endlessly heard for more than 40 years. And to make that worse, f***ing academia has been spewing that BS even more than the corporations.
Agreed
Yep, and pay them pennies for warranty repairs they are forced to perform..of which there are PLENTY.
Sure, at a Mercedes dealer in a major metro area.
Work for the government? Ironically, government contractors in my field are severely restricted from hiring H1Bs.
those are sometimes not even open to white men here
Government contractors. Not civil service. The contractor is on the hook to provide someone of a certain skillset in a short time period. They will hire a white man if that is what is required.
That's wrong in at least one case I know personally.
I have a 22-year-old co-worker who not only puts in 50-60 hours a week, he's constantly hitting the gym AND forever bringing in sculptures of cartoon characters he made himself, with surface finishes so flawless that I, a man who's been building model kits for almost 45 years and have a refined eye for molding quality and surface detail, genuinely thought were airbrushed, polished plastic instead of baked clay.
He's less than half my age and he legitimately inspires me.
Sounds like a rare craftsman.
If one were a young person (roughly high school grad to recent college grad) with some ambition, they could survey the landscape of their peers and see how lazy and unprepared the labor competition was. And then outdo them.
Easily.
How much of this blame are we going to lay at the feet of the teacher's unions and their abysmal schools?
Not much, imo.
I went to an abysmal public school system until college; I was forced to: My mother was the curriculum director, and her father was on the school board.
Despite your ability to pull yourself up by your bootstraps, I’m not sure you’re actually disputing my point.
Have to go one step further to the parents. What kind of parent would let their kid rot with bad teachers and schools? Or rely on any school to teach their children all the most basic skills?
A ton of people don’t have the ability to readily move to a district with good schools. And a ton of people are poorly educated themselves and don’t really know what’s going on. And even if they are paying attention, do they know that this year’s B is the 1990’s D? Do they know that most school districts in the country take in between $15-20k per year, per child? There is so much money in the system, and such poor outcomes.
Ok and? Parents somewhere are tolerating that. Parents who don’t care and don’t try.
You’re right. And also: some of the blame goes to the schools.
My parents willingly sent their children to poor schools; it was the only local option, other than the snake handling, unaccredited Christian school that graduates 2-3 students a year.
The schools remain poor 20 years later, even with aggregate county property tax receipts that are 2.5x now what they were then.
It’s extremely hard to change public schools. It seems the only thing to do is bankrupt them by everyone leaving.
Not saying that your parents made the wrong choice, but as Thomas Sowell points out in “charter schools and their enemies” accreditation is not at all correlated with student outcomes. This also aligns with your -free-market, go learn and then outwork them- opinions in other areas.
The school system has zero competition where I grew up.
The people working there generally do the best they can with the resources they have, but ambition is limited.
When I graduated, the principal said something that I will remember for the rest of my life:
“Our goal here at XYZ high school is that everyone graduates.”
Not that everyone learns something, or gets into the college of their choice, or gets into any college, or is prepared to complete college. Just that they check the most basic box.
From what you’ve written about your father, he was not a good parent.
Accurate
That sounds like conservative boomers telling young people to go get married by 25, as if a compatible mate is just waiting for you down at the store.
Telling young people to get married is the last thing I would ever say, it’s not a fair trade, the man gets screwed 9 times out of ten.
I agree that the economy and housing is incredibly discouraging for young people. At the same time it’s probably never been easier to distinguish yourself amongst a hoard of discouraged low T pot head, SSR eyes zoomers.
If some of these zoomers were given an SSR as their primary vehicle, I suspect their use of SSRIs would end.
1800 a month for a lease of is ridiculous. Resale be damned. Yet again i am cheap
... which is why you're a zillionare (or gonna' be one).
I still feel broke
feel broke to get rich
or whatever
on that billionaire grindset
Objectively, I'm doing fine but looking at what the wife spends every month is driving me mad at the moment.
Take what she’s spending per month, enter the amount in the inflation calculator for 2015, and you’ll feel much better.
As a cheapskate, I can’t deal with our inflated prices rationally so that’s my work around.
Think how it feels to be calibrated in Y2K money, man.
that's me too. I was telling friends recently that I'm perpetually frustrated in my car endeavors because I think everything should still cost what it did in the '90s....
One of many pearls of wisdom in this post:
SUCCESS
A successful man is one who makes more money than his wife can spend.
A successful woman is one who can find such a man.
https://x.com/hannahiamthest1/status/2063142147990155746?s=46&t=pOghkxSbQl2pg4CLby5nCA
There’s a price point at which cars should pretty much only be paid for in cash. Let’s arbitrarily call that $100k. If you can service the loan of a $100k car, you really should just save for a few months and buy a cheaper car outright. I’m not that debt averse, but a loan on a $100k+ car?**
And on that same note, a toy (which presumably no one is buying a $100k+ Corvette as their only car or daily driver) should always be bought in cash. Finance your DD, sure, there are practical reasons for that, but your toys? Buy them outright.
*yeah yeah I know, arbitrage on interest rates and all that, but come on man.
"There’s a price point at which cars should pretty much only be paid for in cash. Let’s arbitrarily call that $100k. If you can service the loan of a $100k car, you really should just save for a few months and buy a cheaper car outright. I’m not that debt averse, but a loan on a $100k+ car?**
And on that same note, a toy (which presumably no one is buying a $100k+ Corvette as their only car or daily driver) should always be bought in cash. Finance your DD, sure, there are practical reasons for that, but your toys? Buy them outright."
Morally, I agree.
Practically, I could not agree less. A $100k car is no big thing now. Suburbans and Tahoes cost $100k. Ford Super Duties cost $100k. I hate it, but there you go.
Now let's look at the argument for a toy. We won't even use big numbers or high-end Corvettes, because that makes it too easy for me to argue my side. Let's say you are 45 years old in 2018 and you are thinking about financing a new 2019 Stingray at the base MSRP of $55,900. Instead you decide to save for it over the next six years.
You arrive in 2024 and now the 2025 Stingray costs $69,995. The $55,900 you saved up no longer does the job. You need to save for two more years. But meanwhile the Stingray has increased in price six percent to $73,995. You are now 53 years old. And you spent the last eight years of your life not owning a Corvette. Now your body hurts in ways it didn't hurt before. Now your kid needs help with a down payment on a house, and your wife is sitting you down saying, "What's more important -- you having a sports car, or Brayden having a home?" Also, you have gone from a 7-speed manual car with reasonable operating costs to a fake Ferrari with an automatic transmission.
You decide to take the middle path and give Brayden half your $75k nest egg. Now you have $37.5k and the 2028 Corvette is $78k. It will increase in price approximately $4500 a year from now on. If you can save $10k a year this math will resolve for you in the year 2036, when you are 63 years old.
Congratulations! You're another old man limping in and out of a Corvette and rubbing it with a diaper. On the way to the show-and-shine you got passed by some 45-year-old in the same new Corvette. He appears to be having a lot more fun than you are, but you can't figure out why. After all, you own your car.
This. On certain things in life you need to look 5 or 10 years out.
It's not an extravagant toy, by any means, but I have had the thought that I won't be able to ride my Suzuki V-Strom when I'm 70 years old. Much more than 10 years out for me. It does help me appreciate it now.
Absolutely. There are certain cars I want to experience now as I don’t think they will be an apt choice in 10 years. I don’t exactly know that for certain, but it can be a good bet.
I always think of what an older friend used to say when he would buy something with no plans to buy it again: “This should see me out.”
Never mind
Comment of the month easily. And let’s not leave out the fact that you might not even make it through the six years. A good friend was 6 weeks short of his 53 birthday when his time was up. So there is at least some merit to living today.
I have a picture of me at a BMX race in 1994 with three fellow racers, all around my age. I'm the only one left. I am 54 years old. It can be sobering.
A testament to the type of people who involved with BMX in the 80's? What's your hypothesis?
2x cancer, 1x genetic aneurysm.
Let me tell you what none of them did:
* crash race cars
* go to prison and get in fights there
* ride motorcycles at 180mph plus
* drink 15 shots of vodka night after night
* seduce the wife of a PTSD Marine sharpshooter with multiple tours
* jump from the 3rd story of a building
* get hit by a 10-wheel truck at speed
* bend a car in half and have their spleen removed by a seatbelt buckle
Three decent, fit men who generally did the best they could and served their families to the best of their abilities.
"And I only alone am escaped to tell thee."
Here's a fun, somewhat related little anecdote:
My dad had a *rough* upbringing. He's worked tirelessly since he was like 14. Has never taken more than a few days off here and there over the course of the next 50 years. He isn't great with money so there isn't a whole heck of a lot saved up, but he has always made sure that we are provided for. A car for the kids when they needed one, undergrad degrees, insurance until the government said no more, etc.
He went to a family friend's funeral about 7 years ago or so. This family friend was in his mid-50s or so before passing on. My dad and I were standing next to each other, an he took one look at the body in the casket, turned to me and said something to the effect of "ya know, you can't take any of it with you. I'm going to buy the car."
So he traded in his Scion tC and got a Fiat 124 Abarth, of all things. He has since put over 70k miles on it with literally zero issues that I'm aware of. He drives it every day unless the snow is deep, in which case he will take my mom's car. He loves the thing. It makes him very happy, and it's nice to see him happy. He has a bad back and bad knees, and despite the discomfort it gives him he still happily grimaces with pain to get in and out.
While I don't much like thinking of mortality, I won't end up with any real inheritance. Which, honestly, is fine to me. It's my parents money. They should use it as they see fit while they are alive. But the little Fiat will be mine one day; it will be my honor to take care of the thing he dreamed of and cared for.
Raising my glass to your dad!
Good for him. My father keeps giving up stuff he wants, based on the idea that I should inherit. I know better than that. Not at the modern rate for end of life costs.
Fuck that shit! Get him on TRT and tell him to go out in flames!
I'm not sure he isn't already juicing. I went lifting with him last month and he was putting up a lot of weight for a 51 year old, let alone an 81 year old.
You know he's on here, you could tell him directly!
I can't perfectly align "isn't great with money" to generously providing for his family in ways that really matter. Great story, though. I, too, am glad he has that car.
Ok yes your argument is clear.. But why does our hypothetical man need a NEW Corvette? Why not buy a low mile used 2019 7MT in 2024 for... idk, 45 grand? 50 grand? Wouldn't that be a more enjoyable car for him anyway?
Playing devils advocate: why let some other dude fart in the seats for six years then pay for his deferred maintenance? Why not take out a loan and go to Bowling Green for delivery?
For your first point: Tuff Stuff is 6 bucks at Home Depot, should only take 1/2 the can and 30 mins if you take your time to rid the car of all previous farts and dust. For the second, just how much deferred maintenance could this car possibly have with 17k miles on it? Plenty of 7MT cars within 500 miles of me that are under 50,000 miles and 50,000 dollars. I'm sure a couple might have a minor issue here and there but it's still the last real Vette ever made, and I'm gonna say our hypothetical man would still be happy with a 6 year old car because that's the car he saw when he decided he wanted a Corvette. And he was sorely disappointed with the more expensive, paddle only, Great Value 458 that came next.
https://www.cars.com/vehicledetail/8161ab8d-ed86-4998-9162-8aefdf514fb0/?aff=atempest&utm_campaign=atempest&utm_source=autotempest&utm_medium=trp&utm_campaign_id=1&utm_trusted=TRUE
I find it amazing the number of people who will not even consider a mint low mileage car as an alternative to paying up for a new car.
There are nice low mileage cars everywhere if you’re the least bit patient. But people aren’t patient. Their loss.
I’m just about to help a buddy look for a 2018-2022 10th gen Honda Accord with the 2.0 liter turbo since his got totaled.
For a DIY guy: $300 in fluids and filters, $2000 in tires, half a day in detailing.
For a normal person going to the dealer, the tire cost is the same, the detail goes to $500(?), and the catchup service is probably $2k as well.
Very likely worth it either way.
Or adjust your expectations. I’m hardly the poster child of deferred gratitude, but I desperately wanted an F355 Ferrari, Porsche 993, or Acura NSX when I was a kid. Those things were tantalizingly close for a while but have since spiraled out of attainability (and honestly out of desire; at some point they just don’t have any appeal at the prices they command). So I adjusted my gaze and landed on a sports car that I love and can afford. Wanting what you have and all that.
Great point here as well.
f355 my beloved
Every once in a while I look at NA NSXs to see how much more I'd have to save for one...
As do I with any year C2 Vette coupe at this point.
2 of the 3 can be had under 100k reasonably often, and one of them has low operating costs; why don't you go for it?!
Cause you can buy at least 3 S2000s for 100k, maybe even 4 if one is scruffy. Or 10 scruffy Challengers like mine!
“Sorry kids, I know you wanted to go to college [and oldest wants med school] but daddy needed one of the cars he wanted when he was 15.”
I’ve been tracking NSX’s for a long time, and you are correct, their prices have exploded recently.
The FD RX-7 and the Mark IV Supra are ridiculous, too. I can't imagine spending $150,000-200,000 on a Mark IV Supra, those things are more expensive than NA1 NSXs. Can still find the Z32 300ZX Turbo at relatively reasonably prices, though. The 3000GT VR-4, too.
And Matt Farah was disappointed in only making like $5k on his after two years of ownership and factoring in an engine out service. Poor guy.
Is this the peak male experience? Learning to love the life you have instead of attaining the life you want?
I’m genuinely wondering aloud here, and having just turned 40, contemplating desire and destiny.
I like to think so. Sometimes I feel down, and then I think about how I have a hot blonde wife, two awesome kids, a sports car I’ve always dreamed of, a cool Jeep DD, a nice house in a good burb, etc etc. Maybe I don’t have a Ferrari or a beach house, but I’m going to go bone my wife as soon as she’s done brushing her teeth and that’s pretty great too.
Yeah Jack, buy the car if and when you want it. I don't recall ever seeing an armored car following a hearse.
So sell my house and daily a Huracan?
Yes.
I wonder how my wife will take the news.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/cRuQ3x1jVwQ
Huracans are such great cars, too. You *could* drive one daily.
https://youtu.be/LJkKInFVWDQ?t=37
I wonder if that kid had an oil change done at any point in those 12k miles.
Is home equity loan and Huracan an option?
Home equity loans are a MAJOR driver of sports and super car purchases. Half of the "cash buyers" I saw were home equity buyers.
education dorks will use it to write papers on using debt to fund your lifestyle when the loan is paid off in 3-5 years out of current income. This is the real "buy borrow and die" Guys with 300k of equity in a house when it's "buy borrow and pay off"
I didn't do the home equity loan when I bought the audi but I'm sure it was less than the 8ish% I got. I just paid it off fast enough where the paperwork wasn't worth the hassle.
Oh I don't really want a Huracan. I just sold my g-body for life reasons, and I already used the home equity loan to fund a room addition. I'm all good on debt for now!
Fair! But we’d support your choice if you did get a Lamborghini!
"Now you have $37.5k..."
Where I thought this was going is that a low mile 2019 Stingray still costs $55,900.
There is that as well. While you're saving, the dollar is falling and the new car you wanted is now an expensive used car.
I'm not one of these people, but I have seen some of my friends buy stuff they can't afford, and then step up their game.
Now that I think of it... I guess that was me. Have a crazy expensive house that made me raise my rates.
Also possible to fail at something due to inadequate housing, an excessive commute, malnutrition, shabby clothing (anti _Dress for Success_), or humiliation / burnout / depression / lack of incentive. Something Dave Ramsey (a fraud and a false teacher who has harmed many), and never mentions.
I was doing some consulting at his HQ in Franklin TN last year. It definitely has a distinctive corporate culture. Many companies talk about it but they walk the walk.
I had never met so many people who relocated to take a job. Their recruiting process is epic. Even I as an outside consultant had to sit down with two HR people and just talk about myself. I guess I passed some test? It was just this side of a cult but in fairness there were many bright and hard working people there.
People who dump on Ramsey do so because they understand math but not psychology.
In my opinion, Ramsey is like Nietzsche. It's fair to rebel against them and be a contrarian, but it's very wise to at least know what they're trying to say and why.
Or because they have read the New Testament and realize that he preaches the Love of Mammon in contradiction to the words Christ. Or because they realize that they can't follow his false teachings without violating 1 Tim 5:8 (depriving children of proper housing & education). Or because they have had bad experiences with co-workers who are his disciples.
Or because they realize that his "examples" are wrong and retarded, e.g., "Buy a $1000 car, save $100/month, and trade it in for a $2,200 car," neglecting that the $1000 car will cost you $250/month in repair / maintenance (and possibly a job due to absences), and that the dealer (he said "trade in") markup will far exceed the $1200 that you saved (e.g., the dealer will give you $300 on trade-in and then price at $4995). Or "buy a power washer, earn $600/day, save up for 'code school' and make $150k/year."
https://xcancel.com/yonann/status/2049157693873827918#m
Or because they realize that most of what he says is "blaming the victim;" blaming younger generations for not living life on Boomer Mode, and never says ONE WORD against the policies that created the current situation. Especially (as Jack recently mentioned) intentionally drive wages to zero and rent to infinity. And policies like STEM-OPT, which give a 15% TAX INCENTIVE to hire Indian nationals & CCP agents instead of Americans. Or policies which artificially limit US medical school admissions while allowing foreign medical graduates ("FMG's") to practice in the US with substantially less education. Or "US" medicine programs which only admit residents from one specific non-allied foreign country:
https://x.com/MaryBowdenMD/status/2037514903330676838
https://x.com/marybowdenmd/status/2037905486020747410
https://x.com/MaryBowdenMD/status/2038669980804280705
NYC needs to become a 51st state, cut it off at the Tappan Zee bridge and see if it can become self-supporting.
Lol, they won't even let SI secede.
Give them their independence
Give them to New Jersey.
cruel and unusual
While totally impossible, love the idea.
The amount of financial parasitism that NYC exerts on the Federal Government would be illegal but for who the beneficiaries are.
Fark that. I’m not giving away two Senate seats to a permanently disfunctional. We already have California and a few others for that.
Yes. That is right.
OT - It just occurred to me today, don't know what took me so long:
AI data centers ARE the paperclip maximizer problem. And we didn't even get real AI first.
IANAA but I thought the real juice for an expensive lease was getting the corp to pay it pre tax.
Also on residential real estate, Blackrock buying it. A few pols are talking about banning this and it's high time. Data centers too. Fuck those things.
It goes on your w2
Not if its a business expense.
Yes it does. Well. It should. If you work for a major corp and you get a car, that perk is taxable
You sound like my accountant. Maybe you should try being a fun accountant.
20+ years ago, I made my son a partial owner of my business when he was in HS, so I could hire him, pay him a dividend as a means of saving for college, and not have to pay work comp on him. He was the best help I ever had, and made bank... as did the business because we were a stripped down lean, mean money-making machine. It was pretty great.
When it came time for college, I went to my accountant and said, "he's an owner -- I think a mechanical engineering degree is a deductible "continuing education" expense." I thought I was brilliant.
He (like you, no doubt) did not agree. Killjoys, all of you. ;)
There was only one Bob Newhart, RIP. ACF'ers have spoken well of him, and his sister, a Sister / teacher at a Catholic school who also had an outstanding sense of humor.
He went to my high school in Chicago. Real name - George Robert Newhart.
I liked Bob’s story from when he was an accountant about how it was taking hours to balance the petty cash at the end of the day at the insurance company where he worked and then he realized he could just reach into his pocket and chip in the extra thirty six cents or whatever it was off or else pocket the extra if there was an overage. His boss said that wasn’t following sound accounting practices when he found out.
I once had a un fun accountant who nixed all my creative deductions. He ended up going to jail for embezzling from a non profit he did volunteer accounting for.
The not-for-profit -- was it a "Learing Center"?
What about for small S/C corps?
The rules aren't different but, yes, it's usually not done. I'll add a "personal use of vehicle" as other income on the 1040 with some calculation to justify it if the IRS ever comes a knocking. Some people bury a lot of stuff in their business, some other people less so. I'm not an auditor so if you're gonna do it, just make it not obvious.
Thanks for stating this.
Uninformed people tend to say things like "IF YEW HAVE A BIDNEZZ THERES ALL SORTS OF THINGS YEW CAN DEDUCT!" And I want to say, "Only if you're into fraud. Otherwise, if it's a personal expense / benefit, it's not deductible. And if it's a business deduction, it's something that you otherwise don't want, like "potash."
I would kill to have a data center in my town. Our local electrical co-op would be a government profit center, pay for 2 new schools.
0-“I believe … that governments are rarely more efficient than markets”
Since when?
1-“The reality of the situation is that our government has stacked the deck against employing Americans for more than twenty years now. Compared to an American worker, an H1-B costs less to hire and less to employ. He is also unable to participate in most labor protection schemes and/or complain to the DOL about what you do.”
All of those displaced, REAL American workers are freed up to (1) do something that the drone / worker bee replacements cannot or will not do OR (2) enjoy Eudaimonia.
You say this all the time as if saying it enough times will make it so. What should all the American IT graduates do if they find the jobs they thought would be available when they started college four or five years prior are filled by immigrants? Should every American start their own company and hire their own H1-bs to do the actual work? Should they all network with rich and connected people in college so they have the inside track to a top tier firm and introductions to potential clients? What exactly should tens of millions of Americans do?
The only bright side I see is that the Big banks including Goldman Sacks are now offshoring more of the junior and middle level investment jobs to India.
And they’ll wonder in five years why they dont have experienced bankers. Accountanting is doing this too
Just had lunch today with a newly retired buddy of mine who said that AI use on my old job was hollowing out the knowledge of the specialized teams like I used to work on.
I could see something similar 20 years ago where we had new hires who had never worked on a trading floor like I did, and they lacked all the skills I had gained from working face to face in a tense environment. They could never glean those skills with client contact only through email and phone calls. I had an intuition for certain situations that they just couldn’t pick up on.
Now, of course, none of this matters anymore. The most successful youngsters going forward will be in the trades or in government jobs with pensions.
It's still really odd for me to come to grips with the fact that by choosing (in 1981) to "throw away" the native intelligence that was my birthright and pursue a life in the skilled trades, rather than head to State U -- that I was actually falling up, rather than down.
It's very strange how things work out. I'm exceedingly grateful.
Stan, that’s quite the silver lining! None of us knew what we were doing when we were that young, so it is indeed gratifying when it works out. I know exactly how you feel. We see all the ways things could have gone wrong, so when things went our way we view it as a gift! We also tend to discount our hard work that got us here. But I love the line “The harder you work the luckier you get.”
I saw a story a long time ago about a kid who got a perfect score on his SATs and ended up starting his own plumbing company. The reporter asked his dad what he thought about it, and the wise dad said “The world needs smart plumbers, too.”
The devaluation of the trades by the intelligentsia in the country was/is a national tragedy. But I just saw the latest numbers that men no longer see the value in going into debt for a dumb college degree and see jobs in the trades as the way to become a success. Just in time with AI taking the white collar jobs.
Nailed it!
"start their own company"
Yes: they should hustle! From the moment one lands at an American airport, one should be besieged on all sides by dozens of young highly-skilled Americans selling you counterfeit watches, tours, drugs, prostitutes, and tuk tuk rides, and begging. IOW, just like the Subcontinent!
e.g., Michael Palin : https://youtu.be/aHeYRI0KHmY
Recently from a motorcycle (20s): https://youtu.be/TvjrqR3wzd0 (Full song; RIP Stephen & Audun: https://youtu.be/5mKX21of0sM)
Some good points:
0-I have never advocated for people to study something “vocational” in college that closes potential doors, eliminating optionality. I always encourage people to study something enduring at a quality school (reasonable heuristic is endowment per undergrad capita and then career placement) instead.
1-Every American cannot start a business that will provide them a higher quality of life than they could get from the JERB they’d like to have, but if I were feeling squeezed by the presence of immigrants who were (somewhat) second class non-citizens, I’d pretty quickly find a way to turn that bug into a feature by profiting off of their vulnerabilities.
2-Relatedly, the sooner one learns that connections and relationships tend to matter more than “I am very smart,” the better. Tight knit groups of immigrants have built up powerful flywheels for themselves by doing just that, right?
3-Investment banks have long been willing to offshore non front-office jobs, but the “real” banking jobs (i.e., you have clients (senior), talk to clients (middle), or work for those above you (junior)) are more at threat from AI, because it’s an apprenticeship model. You learn the job by osmosis from the people above you. If there’s no apprenticeship, there’s less of a future.
Regarding (2): This was made illegal by the Civil Rights Act, so all of us MONSTER TRUCK/COCK bros in our echo chamber would be litigated into the ground if we engaged in the same behavior as the immigrants you admire. Our gov’t prevents the freedom of association that you rightly note as valuable to success. Side question for our resident Truck Mandarin: am I allowed to drive wife’s HUGE dually to town,that she uses to pull a horse trailer? If she does truck things with her truck, do I need to apply for a special dispensation to use it for non truck things?
Point (2) goes far beyond JERBs. If I can do anything to help the esteemed membership of ACF, it will be to move them off the “plantation” of the JERB mindset.
I would not be caught dead driving a truck unless it were in use for a task necessitating a truck, personally.
'0-“I believe … that governments are rarely more efficient than markets”
Since when?'
My whole life. I believe in the sane application of market forces to pricing and availability, with as little government intervention as necessary to ensure a modicum of fairness. Not because it's so great to be fair, but because otherwise you get Robespierre.
You, on the other hand, use the word "market" the way swingers use "lifestyle" -- as a neologism to refer to a perverted philosophy where everyone gets fucked in weird ways and the social fabric is rent permanently asunder. You stand in the middle of a concentric ring of governmental and societal defenses designed to tilt the playing table in your favor, and deceive yourself that you eat what you kill or vice versa.
Let me tell you the day you will be on your knees along with the Dollar General crowd: the day the petroyuan overtakes the petrodollar and the daddy of the Fed can't pump enough fake money into the machine to make your fake investments produce fake returns. You are a parasite gnawing on the corpse of a system set up with blood and treasure two generations ago, and your glee is indistinguishable from that felt by the people in the ghetto who briefly used "the Chase money glitch" to buy new sneakers.
I had forgotten about the Chase Infinite Money Glitch.
“You stand in the middle of a concentric ring of governmental and societal defenses designed to tilt the playing table in your favor, and deceive yourself that you eat what you kill or vice versa.”
Christ Alive is this untrue! I am a contrarian and am on the wrong side of the consensus in almost everything I do, particularly of late. You should know enough personally to connect the dots, and know why I can’t / won’t memorialize anything further.
“The day the petroyuan overtakes the petrodollar and the daddy of the Fed can't pump enough fake money into the machine to make your fake investments produce fake returns.”
If this happens - and it could - the world will be so fucked that you’ll have to take a number and stand in line to step off the roof of a sufficiently tall building to ensure death upon impact. So I don’t spend much time worrying about it.
“You, on the other hand, use the word "market" the way swingers use "lifestyle" -- as a neologism to refer to a perverted philosophy where everyone gets fucked in weird ways and the social fabric is rent permanently asunder.”
You are about to inspire me to enter the virtuous and wholesome fields of check cashing and methadone clinics.
You *should* work in check cashing for a while. You should work in a system that explicitly exploits the vulnerable so you can recognize the signs of that exploitation when they occur in industries with better PR and flashier offices.
I like to help vulnerable people, like the millions of female content creators who can continue to make a living on Onlyfans (because of me), rather than prey upon them.
When I lived in Japan I understood that I was a guest there. However, being a guest, I knew that it was their country, not mine. I was not and am not entitled to any of the fruits of their labor no matter how much I contributed to their society or how hard I tried to fit in. I don't see how this is so hard to understand: the natives of a country ought to be in charge of who their neighbors are. They ought to be able to decide who to let in and how many of them. They ought to be able to bar immigration completely.
I like globalism (and I might be the only one here who does). I have a great wife from a foreign country and all our kids were born there. I love traveling back there whenever I get the chance. Thanks, globalism! But I'm not blind to the realities of living in a foreign country being surrounded by the natives and only being able to barely scratch the surface of their culture. If the H1B crowd is solely here to make money we're better off without them as they'll make no effort to fit into our culture or bother to understand it in any meaningful way. That is an important point beyond just the economic reality and ignoring helps no one.
"I don't see how this is so hard to understand" A certain extremely populous culture tends to not promote critical thinking or empathy. I recall one recounting a corporate training session:
Instructor: "Make sure your necktie is clean & pressed."
Student (raises hand): "But here in India we do not wear neckties."
Instructor: "Yes. As I was saying, make sure your necktie is clean & pressed."
Also, enjoying other, distinct cultures (especially Japan), is the opposite of globalism. Globalism is about destroying all worthy cultures and replacing them with third world slop.
THANK YOU
Kaman = Ovation. They made some super interesting stuff in the '70s, I once had a Magnum 1 bass and it was a very nice instrument. Deacon and Breadwinner guitars aren't priced sky high last time I checked. I don't care about the bowl back acoustics, they are probably their bread & butter, but seeing how I rarely play anything with more than four strings....
I hope I die before I see a 'Guitar Center Wangcaster 9000' or 'Guitar Center DonkDonk Precise Bass' :
0) go into, or out of production (due to poor sales or whatever)
1) if actually made, fetch five figures on the vintage/collectible market
I have owned and played a bunch of Ovation (and Applause!) acoustics, both USA and Korea.
I can't believe... and I mean CANNOT BELIEVE... you didn't mention the man who used an Ovation Magnum II bass to sell 11.9 MILLION COPIES of ONE SINGLE ALBUM!!!!!!!
Did it on purpose
I will not subscribe to the “stick it to (x)”. I don’t want billionaires paying higher property taxes because I don’t want anyone paying property taxes. NYC budget is absurd and abusing their billionaires is at best a short term fix. Manhattan, being an island, has limited space. It will always be expensive. It’s not expensive because 10,000 rich people own property their for when they are in town.
I saw the TX H1-B story and wondered how long it would take to show up in ACF and the answer is not long. Based on Jack’s comments about the significant Indian readership I am wondering do any of them comment?
The flip side of how H1-B hurts American citizens is how it exploits those who take part as if they are indentured servants. At this point H1-B should be eliminated and immigration completely overhauled to a merit system and fixed numbers allowed per year based on the needs of the country.
Either way what we learn in TX is that when demand decreases so do prices. This is quite the breakthrough and I hope someone realizes what has been discovered and advocates for it to be tried other places.
Speeds indian.
made me lol
SAAR MIATA BEST CAR FOR MUMBAI ROADS
I made the mistake of going to a city reach out meeting trying to drum up support for renewing the 2%lot tax on retail, restaurants and building supplies.
I was being fed so much bullshit I had to walk out. They were saying they need it to fix roads. Only 38% of the homes in the area are primary residences. They also say "locals" only pay 34% of the total generated by the LOT. They were flabbergasted when I asked what total property tax revenue was paid by the 62% of homes (I don't know the breakdown when you add in commercial property) that are only occupied a few months out of the year.
I would be good money the total value of those homes is much higher than the 62% of lots they represent vs. 38% fully occupied.
Locals pay 100% of the LOT tax they pay. It would hurt less and soak second home owners more to just raise property taxes. It is also as regressive of a tax as I can think of.
This is a moral issue for me- I see property taxes as immoral and evil. Why is it legal to tax someone forever on something they bought? We are supposedly an ownership society.
Working on my WV ancestry I discovered property owners in the late 19th century were expected to devote a certain amount of time working on the county road running along their farms.
For the time that seems reasonable.
The modern equivalent of that is property tax. If you want a road, and you want the fire department to come when you call instead of running a credit check, something has to pay for that.
I'm not saying property tax is always or even mostly implemented on a fair or reasonable basis mind you.
Gonna disagree, because we have modern technology that can pave a road more efficiently and at a better result than everyone doing it in front of their house. Commercial travel/shipping of goods today is significantly more than in the 1800s, probably was almost 0% back then when almost all business was local except what came by mail. Back then you needed your road to get your goods to town. Today businesses need your road to get their wares moved around.
And most importantly, now we have cars that use fuel, and a gas tax, so in my perfect world, the gas tax would be whatever it cost to build and maintain roads.
Property tax is probably the best, and possibly fairest, way to fund a municipality.
Revenues are fairly consistent and predictable from year to year for the city. And with certain protections in place (e.g. Calif Prop 13), it is also consistent and predictable for the payers. [I will admit that there may be states that balloon assessed value and really hammer their citizens; but that's not an intrinsic problem to property tax.]
At least with property tax, what no matter what happens to the property, the revenues come in. To quote my old property professor: the land doesn't give a shit who owns it.
The alternatives?
Progressive income tax is worse. High earners' incomes fluctuate significantly in good/bad years which makes municipal budgeting difficult. As illustrated by California's record budget surpluses back to back with record budget deficits.
Sales tax is extremely regressive -- everyone has to spend money on necessities. And the poorest among us will spend a greater proportion of their income on sales tax then those who are better off.
I pay so much to fund the public schools i refuse to use
I pay 20% fewer $ in property taxes, on a home that is 5 -6 times the value (estimate sale price not assessed value) here in Idaho than in NY, for a public school that beat the snot out of the public and Catholic school available where is was.
Unfortunately in Illinois i cannot trust the public schools. We have some of the best in the state but i dont need them convincing my girls theyre boys
Usually it's the other way around
No kids, so no use of public schools for us, either
It's supposed to buy us an educated society with educated voters, but no longer fulfills its purpose. I would be delighted to pay more property tax for those results. In my state, VT, that's in the category of "not going to happen."
My wife was just talking to a tradesman whose son got into Norwich University on a full ride scholarship, in part for athletic ability and in part for his excellent grades in a VT high school, from which he graduated early. Then he goes to Norwich, they find out he cannot write a paragraph, and he has to spend a year in remedial classes before doing college-level work. Good thing VT, in 2025, had the second highest per pupil spending in the country. At least he is going to a college that won't let him graduate without actual skills; it could have been worse.
VT's high but unavailing education spending also freezes out needed spending on roads, both at the state and municipal level. I could go on, but will instead go to bed.
If you can't write a paragraph by the time you're in college, you are 13 years behind in your education. It's laughable to think a couple remedial classes can fix that. As a parent, how do you not know your child can't write a paragraph?
I asked my wife the same question, but since I was not part of the original conversation, don't know.
Michigan exempts primary residents from paying school millages. "The State" apparently makes the school districts whole. Our school district is fine. The kids are all based. My son and his friends make fun of the CNN clips their history teacher plays.
THIS
One thing that was not heavily emphasized in the Bloomberg H-1B article is that Texas, which is among the three Sunbelt states (along with Tennessee and Florida) that does not collect state income taxes, has rather elevated property taxes. And then also elevated home insurance rates.
I’d rather pay a reasonable state income tax than a property tax over which the homeowner has no control.
There are other factors in the pockets of softness in the North Dallas market: Huge growth post-COVID (many remote workers); high (and growing) property taxes. Other DFW markets (e.g., Highland Park) remain rock solid in terms of pricing.
Yeah the “Texas is super awesome” crowd hasn’t convinced me especially because the property taxes. Ohio Republicans seem hell bent on driving down all taxes except property taxes and making them huge. This has to be sheer laziness on behalf of politicians since a decent portion of people will go vote for property tax levies “for the kids” without any analysis of where the money is going and how it is being spent.
I don't know if there's a "right" way to do property taxes, but Michigan's Prop A from the 1990s that caps property tax increases is not the worst way to go about it, especially in the long run. Texas renews your assessment continuously and you pay based on whatever the market value (probably a quick assessed value by an overworked or lazy mass appraiser working for their local government) is in any given year. Michigan caps tax increases every year at the rate of inflation or 5% whichever is lower. Assessments in my county are typically a year or two behind current year market prices due to state law requiring us to use the two previous years' worth of sales data to help determine values each year. Of course, Michigan has income tax on top of it, so property taxes don't need to be as onerous...
Highland Park is an extremely affluent part of Dallas. It would take financial Armageddon for it to lose value. There is no shortage of people who want to live there.
Yes.
Based purely on asking prices (I have only been in HP a few times in my life, but I do know people who live there and/or grew up there), I think it’s pretty spendy for what you get in return, even if they do have a quality public school system. And then the property taxes and insurance, both of which are elevated.
Property taxes are problem because home values are a problem.
It's a home. You live in it, not an investment. It should not appreciate at the rate it does.
Liberal counties inevitably using that as a cash cow for their pet projects is a symptom, not the core problem.
The market will determine home values. Home values are not a problem, the government is the problem (99% of the time).
In so much as the government prints infinite dollars, backstops real estate crashes, and incentivizes mortgage debt, and home related tax policy, yes.
Property in certain, high profile parts of Texas has appreciated tremendously of late (before taking a leg down).
One wonders how expensive those houses would be without the overhang of high property taxes and insurance to curb them.
How would you propose funding the government? I'm no more a fan of taxes than the next guy, however that money has to come from somewhere.
Sales tax. Make groceries (excluding junk food, pop and snacks) and baby supplies tax free.
I tend to agree. At least that makes everyone have some skin in the game.
It disproportionately burdens those with lower incomes. I am not saying they should have no skin in the game, but it isn't awesome.
It would also be ineffective in many rural areas.
How exactly? People with lower incomes will spend less, and pay less tax. They will also be able to live frugally , pay off their mortgage and be able to live almost for free if they choose.
Here in Ohio let’s say a $200k house pays $4000 in property taxes. At a 10% sales tax that family would need to spend $40k per year before sales tax is “worse” than property tax. They would also be able to pay off their mortgage sooner if they chose, further saving interest paid.
'How exactly? People with lower incomes will spend less, and pay less tax. They will also be able to live frugally , pay off their mortgage and be able to live almost for free if they choose.'
Two families. One earns $500k post tax, spends $300k, invests $200k. The other one earns $50k post tax, spends $50k because there is no way to operate a family in the United States in 2026 without spending $50k.
The effective tax rate on the second family is 66% higher than on the first family.
'Here in Ohio let’s say a $200k house pays $4000 in property taxes. At a 10% sales tax that family would need to spend $40k per year before sales tax is “worse” than property tax. '
If your family has a $250 weekly grocery bill, $400 on a car and $200 on insurance every month, they are more than halfway to spending $40k a year and no one has put on a stitch of clothing or put a gallon of gas in a car. But it's worse than that. That 10% tax has to be ADDITIVE, because the state and the counties are barely breaking even at 6.5 to 8.5 percent now. So you end up with European VAT level of taxation at 16.5 to 18.5.
Which is why I ask when the topic comes up. Property, income, consumption all have winners and losers. And yet we need some level,of government, so how to finance it?
Property taxes go to local funds that do things like build and maintain every day infrastructure. They are one of the less bad taxes.
It would be better to be rid of income tax entirely and shift to consumption tax.
Instead we'll get all three!
No. Income taxes end when you stop earning. That is a good thing.
Property taxes never end and are dictated to you, you do not control them. Hence why I think they are immoral, you can be taxed out of your ability to otherwise afford to live in property you own.
Income tax is a massive burden which makes it much harder to own property or retire because it vaporizes income so much right out the gate before you have even used it. In this scheme you don't even own your full earnings. A far greater financial abuse since most states then levy consumption taxes on money that has been taxed.
Property tax is complaining about a much much smaller and downstream issue, imo.
Well I’m not a fan of income taxes, but to me they are less evil than property taxes. I would prefer to eliminate all taxes and shift to sales tax for a lot of reasons including one very simple reason- the government at all levels (city, county, state federal) employs many many people to make the tax system work. All those jobs could be eliminated by sales tax, which is a simple calculation on purchases. This would reduce the size of government and the cost of government.
In my extremely biased point of view (I work in property tax for my county) I'd rather get rid of income tax. I live in a township with a low millage rate in a modest (under-assessed) house and having my income tax deleted would save me SO MUCH MONEY I'd be happy pay property taxes every year. I don't know how many people are in our situation, though.
I'm in favor of making government smaller (and have a plan to get out of this myself in the next 10 years), and you have to make government smaller before you can get rid of any taxes. I don't think any of the tax elimination movements will get traction without that requirement getting met. I'd happily switch careers tomorrow if it were the case, though.
Here in Ohio we are going to force the issue. Looks like property tax elimination will be on the 2027 ballot and polling shows it will pass by a huge margin. After that it’s up to the state government to figure out what to do. Since it is heavily (R) one might think it could be very positive but limited government conservatives seem to be a rare breed among the elected.
That is why reducing federal employment, especially in Washington DC, has been so important. It’s the much needed first step to kill the government beast that devours everything.
The dog not barking: no one misses those employees.
Just because you're not earning doesn't mean the police stop patrolling or the fire department stops coming to your house.
I can't imagine you thinking that your electric or water bill should be zero just because you retired.
A number of Indian commenters have been run off by the “they took our JERBs crowd,” I fear.
no way they could be chased off that easily
On a few occasions it has been pretty rough in here for those from India
Apparently they were told the same "You'll be welcomed as liberators" lie that Bush & the Neocons told our men headed to Iraq.
https://xcancel.com/amandalouise416/status/2062182782529409460
https://superstore.wnd.com/whistleblower-digital-version-october-2025/
And most joyfully undertook the assignment: https://xcancel.com/WallStreetApes/status/2040998821216600208
“I came here on H-1B Visa in 2004, everybody was Americans — fast forward now, you don't see any Americans” (big smile)
oh lord its turning into brampton
god save texas
See https://www.avoidablecontact.com/p/sunday-ot-frisco-kids-gc-goes-in/comment/272446353
I am not surprised. India will do what it thinks is best for India. The US will do something, usually with bad results. This is also an immigration failure. Any immigrant should be assimilating and becoming an American.
Firstly, they never completely assimilate and stay tribal to a degree forever.
Secondly, assimilation goes both ways, as in baking 'izzat' into our culture. Nay, I says.
The melting pot is a lie.
Resistance is futile
Sir ML, check out this fascinating woman on X hunting down H-1B landlords in her spare time. https://xcancel.com/juicystar1908
Just scroll her feed to get an idea of what she’s doing.
She is a housewife in Cedarburg, WI disgusted by the invasion so she devised a method to track them down, and she will teach people how to do if you DM her on X.
She is also in contact with the State Department and some state governments so that they can start using her methods, since it’s statistically valid.
Since being a landlord is a commercial activity, it’s against the law for an H-1B who is not supposed to work outside their job. She has said she is not directly going after illegals, but the H-1B landlords are the node for the whole business of Indian realtors selling to H-1B landlords, then providing illegal renters in a corrupt circular criminal enterprise. Go after the landlords and you find the other crooks.
She even has banks and trading firms contacting her so that they can identify future bad loans that H-1B’s will abandon when they run back to India.
The best part. She just got her Green Card, because she is from Quebec and married a Wisconsin local. She is a patriot!
I'm familiar with her! Vive la JuicyStar libre! Imagine the poutine she can make with direct access to high-quality local Wisconsin cheese curd!
I also think that jobs.now is really making a difference: a lot of PERMs* are failing, which means fewer lifetime invaders & fewer anchor babies.
* Must read for all citizens; (ignore the URL; it has essentially nothing to do with Trump): https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-immigration-h1b-visas-perm-tech-jobs-recruitment
bet you any money im blocked by several people lol
I'll take the other side of that that bet, as I'm pretty sure Substack lacks the ability to block commenters. It was designed for about a dozen comments on an author's posts, not the sort of robust community that we have here.
you can mute and block someone by clicking on their profile but i doubt it gets used much
I'll match you lol
A lot of thoughtful, interesting commenters in general seemed to have been turned away to preserve the echo chamber.
Thoughtful and interesting perhaps, but for the most part stamping off in a huff of ad hominems.
Maybe. Maybe it's nice to have some diversity in thought though.
It can get stale when half of the discussion threads end up with all involved agreeing that yes obviously anyone to the left of Ronald Regan will murder you and your family in their beds, and/or discussing which shade of Brown is doing more to genocide specifically White American Catholics Males.
reality is right leaning
or something
If we're gonna apply that train of thought to some of the commenters and viewpoints on this board, one should take time to note that there is a measure of distance between a generally agreeable "right-leaning" fellow and those that are more sympathetic to the Third Reich than, say, your average Mexican laborer.
I was there for the reddit purges, the twitter purges, and a bunch of random purges of small commenting sites on the internet where anybody right of Mao got banned. If a couple people got their feelings hurt and stopped commenting here, that's on them. This place is exceptionally civil considering the topics broached.
For a basically unmoderated forum it is remarkably civil!
Though, with the notable exception of That Which We Are Not Allowed to Speak (coughIsraelcoughcough), most of the commenters here have broadly similar opinions so the need for moderation isn't so strong anyway.
Being on forums long enough to have seen goatse used frequently as a rickroll keeps one from being thin skinned. Or any time spent lurking at peak era /b or /pol.
I haven’t seen any comments from BOOM in a while. What ever happened to him?
i hope hes doing well
Miss him for sure. Good auto insight and a fellow engineer from what I could tell.
Agreed
absolutely sharp as a tack
Too busy moving to Atlanta :)
I have considered moving to Texas, actually.
Have another business I want to get off the ground and the putative co-founder will be living (and smoking ~10 cigars every day) in Texas.
Do it! Sounds like a great opportunity.
Plus a new community to network in.
Let me know if you need your GT3 exercised while you’re away :)
Lot of variables to resolve first.
I likely don’t need to be there day-in and day-out, unless I just wanted to smoke cigars with him all day in Austin. If I were just picking a city in Texas to live in, I would select Dallas. Coincidentally, what is almost certainly the finest private cigar “collection” in America is located there - Halfwheel.
There will be tremendous economic growth taking place in the Texas triangle throughout the remainder of my conventional working years (I’m 37)), but I hope never again to be in the labor market (at least on the supply side).
A fantastic goal. I have zero plans to ever work again. It took a few years to get used to spending down my investments, but now I’m extremely comfortable with doing so. I always have a Plan B and C, too. I see the genius of what my investment guy set up, and thankfully he’s much younger than me.
You’ll figure out where you need to devote most of your time when you get rolling with this endeavor.
Best of luck!
bro is a chimney
H1B's need to be banned. Period.
I updated my thought on that as well, I meant to say eliminated but limited ended up being posted.
Rescind birthright citizenship while we're at it
Agreed, that change is 50 years out of date.
What's a practical method to get there? I agree with you but fear it needs a constitutional amendment, which is not likely.
It is not an uncommonly held view that the 14th was maliciously misinterpreted to justify mass anchor babies and birth tourism. It was for recently freed slaves and a few distant edge cases. It just hasn't been successfully challenged.
Supreme Court case pending as we speak.
It does seem to be the most poorly-drafted clause in the entire Constitution. Note that it wasn't applied to Amerindians until the 1920s.
What I haven't read a lot about is that there are so many possible levels of legality for the parents:
* Diplomats
* Invading armies
* POWs (I have heard a lot about German POWs stationed in the US: many stayed in the US)
* Illegal aliens ("invading armies" in plainclothes?)
* Student visas (Kamala Harris / Vivek Ramaswamy*)
* Temporary foreign worker visas
* Permanent residents
* Non-citizens by virtue of their ethnicity (enslaved Africans in the Civil War Era) <--- [The direct intent of the law]
* Citizens
* Claims to be pro-life. Ergo "life begins at conception." Was conceived IN INDIA by TWO INDIAN CITIZENS about 8 months before their "temporary" arrival in the US. Ergo not an American.
The arguments based on the meaning of "reside" are interesting too. But I can't seem to get around that the 14th amendment means what it says.
Yes, along with a bunch of other visa categories.
These lizards always find loopholes to ruin everything in a rules based society...
I remember working at radio shack in the mid to late 90s where "realistic" and "Optimus" house brands went from about 50/50 designed and made by X Japanese company to just being literally name plate changes on car stereo head units. Fun times.
The most telling thing about Mamdani was basically starting that the city/renters/trusts would own apartments. The plan goes like this: tell landlords to fix up their units, or else. Oh, and btw you can't go up on rent either. If you as the landlord can't make a profit, that's not our, the city's, fault. Communism in action!
I'm a free market guy, but the H1B stuff has been getting out of hand. All these layoffs and yet companies are still getting H1Bs. I'm not opposed for companies subjected to federal labor laws getting a moratorium on H1B workers. Especially in tech sectors, they act like the people they are laying off can't be trained.
I’m still rocking a pair of Minimus 7s in the garage. These are branded RCA though.
I had a pair of in house designed Optimus bookshelves with the 360 degree ribbon tweeter. They sounded great but they were easy to fry (which I did). I also had an awesome sounding Optimus above rear deck 3 way( true three way) speakers that were an easy replacement for Toyotas weird 8x7 back speaker.
I had those as rear speakers in my VW Quantum wagon because the stock ones sucked.
In my basement is my dad's old Realistic radio/receiver and a double tape deck. There's also a record player to complete the set, but I fucked the head up in a failed attempt to upgrade 7 years ago. The receiver needed a new speaker output switch but it still works great. I use a bluetooth to RCA adapter plugged into the aux input, and it plays thru some decent Klipsch towers. Forget exactly which model.
Government-issued indentured servant permits are not the free market, they are a subversion of the free market.
not just a moratorium but a total reversal
"Millions must go." -- Rupert Lowe
Ex-radioshacker here as well. End of high school and into college. Turn of the century (very late 90s, more so early 2000s).
All things considered, for being retail, it wasn't too bad.
Did you subsequently go into something related to technology, or follow a completely different path?
I'm in tech; more so due to my up bringing (both micro and macro) and less due to a stint at 'the shack. My father, whom we fondly refer to as "Sparky" - is an electrician by day and a tinker-er / mad scientist at night. Given his influence and my coming of age on the early internet, it was natural to adopt tech and when old enough to work, end up at Radio Shack (or Circuit City!).
My father was very adamant (and proud) that I go to college, the first in the fam. He didn't want me working hard outside in holes like he did.
Funny how things have come full circle. The excitement and promise of tech and the early internet have given way to fractured disillusions. For my own children I struggle if college will be worth it for them.
Perhaps my son will be an electrician, Sparky Jr. has a nice ring to it.
Thanks for the reply. I had forgotten that we had previously chatted; there's a DM for you here at Substack.
I understand your concerns about the value of college. Yet I'm also terrified of what happens if Heritage Americans* listen to "Mike Rowe" and "Dave Ramsey" and abandon the "commanding heights" of society more than we already have.
* https://firstthings.com/what-vivek-gets-wrong-about-citizenship/
Were you there for the Xmods era?
Oh man; I actually forgot about those! I was there for that; though the stores I operated out of didn't sell a ton in their markets. (Mostly I focused on selling Compaq computers and Sprint PCS phones - as that was where the spiffs were!)
Haha, that sounds about right. I raced those things so hard they wouldn’t even last the warranty period. The local managers I’m sure hated me for that.
My first business was selling motors for them. I was ordering motors from Tamiya and taking apart Crest toothbrushes and selling them at a markup.
RS was really a Mecca for a kid into electronics. And as annoying as pushing the cell phones was, I never had a bad experience going through them for a phone.
...that's also an elected official ostensibly a "public servant" - essentially using the power of his office to target a private citizen because... uh, we don't like him? "Your papers are not in order, comrade... you don't live here"... Bernie Sanders also owns a house he doesn't live in... I bet virtually every member of Congress owns real estate they rarely live in... but of course they're allowed to while CEO whoever is not.
Nevermind the oppressive precedent of the state taxing assets you've paid for, thus ensuring all you do is rent them from the government... the useful idiots of NYC think they've empowered a system for "justice", but all they've done is simply empower a system. That's the ultimate grift of socialism, you vote for it thinking it's going to work for you, but it's designed to work for the political class.
I guess we'll just never learn...
'...that's also an elected official ostensibly a "public servant" - essentially using the power of his office to target a private citizen because... uh, we don't like him? "Your papers are not in order, comrade... you don't live here"...'
Manhattan is essentially built out. There are no empty lots to build new homes. So when there are 10,000 homes with no one living in them, that means there are 10,000 residents who can't buy a home and who are forced into relationships with BlackRock and/or other firms that purchase real estate then rent it back at exorbitant rates.
The fallacy of the beard applies a bit here. It would be awful for the mayor of New York to direct public ire at a sanitation worker or restaurant employee. This person, by contrast, has obtained about $200 million dollars -- that is two hundred MILLION -- of real estate appreciation on homes he does not use and which directly cause other families to not have a home. Period point blank.
'Nevermind the oppressive precedent of the state taxing assets you've paid for, thus ensuring all you do is rent them from the government... '
That precedent was set in the Book of Domesday from 1086. It is settled. All we are doing now is arguing over implementation.
By the way, if you apply this tax to the average American home at the same rate that it's being applied to this man... you get $312.50.
By that rationale, there are millions of people who are in desperate need of a reliable car for transportation. Anyone who has more cars than they need should surrender their spare cars to the government. When should a state official stop by and take one of yours?
...at any rate, the delusion is that taxing CEO whoever will then house a bunch of sanitation workers or restaurant employees. If that was true, then California would be the easiest state to own a home...
"By the way, if you apply this tax to the average American home at the same rate that it's being applied to this man... you get $312.50"
Again, you've got plenty of vehicles to spare, right? You won't mind if the state just takes one?
As always, funding socialism is always the burden of someone just a little richer than you are...
Is your position to object to all taxation on principle? Is there any form of taxation that you don't consider "socialism?"
Of course I don't object to all taxation, and never said otherwise... I was in the military, so a federal employee paid by the taxes paid by American citizens...
...and that's my point. Taxes should serve a direct interest for the taxpayer. I'd be completely fine with higher taxation if the benefits were immediately returned to me...
But it doesn't work like that in reality. It's always a grift... or effectively a ponzi scheme that always... always... always fails. Every time. See Social Security.
...and ultimately this isn't about enabling some greater productivity or serving the taxpayers with the taxes the city will collect... this is about punishing success and empowering a political agenda.
I despise Mamdani, and some of his other housing issues.
But this seems to me to be less about "punishing success" than about towing a ship/airplane/car that's been left in port / at a gate / at the Departures curb indefinitely.
Vancouver, IIRC, passed something similar after a significant portion of the housing stock used to launder Chinese "hot money" and sitting vacant.
I'm not sure I get the towing reference...
I completely agree on the government protecting American real estate from foreign speculation... that's not what Mamdani is doing. It's just more property tax because he thinks those with greater success should be punished. It is literally the same refrain every socialist has used in all of human history... and again, the main point is nothing will be solved. It just makes stupid people feel good.
"By that rationale, there are millions of people who are in desperate need of a reliable car for transportation. Anyone who has more cars than they need should surrender their spare cars to the government. When should a state official stop by and take one of yours?"
If I let one of my vehicles sit inoperative outside for six months, the township will tell me to demonstrate its use or surrender it. This sort of thing happens to poor and middle class people all the time. Buy a trailer and don't move into it... maybe because you're in jail, or working shifts out of town. See how long it takes the state to take it.
That being said, you and I are coming from the same perspective of "protect people from the state." The thing is that anyone with a $238M house has received the benefit of government preference more times than ten thousand people like you and me have.
We don't need to play this game where "if they can do it to a billionaire, they can do it to me." They're already doing a hundred things to you that aren't being done to billionaires. You and I pay ten times the effective tax rate of a billionaire. We have no security in our property or persons compared to them. Their decisions magnify misery for uncounted thousands of people. Do they deserve equal protection under the law? Absolutely. Right now they are more than equal.
So how does Mamdani's tax address the hundreds of things being done to me that aren't being done to them? What is actually going to happen now that justifies the increased tax on $5mil properties?
You personally? Nothing, unless you're visiting NYC and are marginally safer as a result. If you get hit by a taxi, there will be another half billion dollars of public service available to you. Maybe someone will fix the station lights on the 1 train. I have no idea. The only real effect it will have on you is if you're bidding on a house against someone who sold their condo in NYC for less money as a result of the tax bump and therefore has less ability to knock you out of the process.
“You and I pay ten times the effective tax rate of a billionaire.”
People become billionaires through ownership of assets, typically assets that appreciate significantly post-purchase / creation; which is to say, investment.
The tax code in America encourages investment. Which is one of the reasons that Americans enjoy such an extraordinary standard of living.
The response to this phenomenon should not be “I want billionaires to pay more in taxes (their ‘fair share’)”; rather, it should be “I now understand the incentive structure in place, and I will respond accordingly.”
Why didn't I think of being an investor instead of smoking all this crack and having these abortions? I really didn't understand the incentives.
That’s the thing about incentives: they change behavior.
People have been saying the younger generations don’t want to work for decades. It’s an embarrassing trope.
theyve been saying it so long the younger generations have since retired
A couple of general work visa comments:
GBNews Expose (30 min): https://youtu.be/IyimKb7Ku6
Update yesterday from Kayleigh McEnany: https://xcancel.com/kayleighmcenany/status/2063312981090328755
Amanda Bartolotta is amazing: https://xcancel.com/amandalouise416/status/2062182782529409460#m She has previously documented the money flows and points out that _everybody gets paid_ (brokers, lawyers, lobbyists, hiring managers (kickbacks) except the displaced skilled Americans.
13 AG's (Indiana, Alaska, Arkansas, Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana,
Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and South Dakota) commented in support of some minor H-1B reforms; it is noteworthy that they repeated, weakly, some of the primary concerns with the program: https://image.subscription.in.gov/lib/fe2e11747364047b721071/m/1/e5a0bae4-8928-470f-b6c7-87c56571d2d1.pdf
At this point, there's a pretty broad "Bernie to Bannon" consensus in the public, numerous bills have been proposed, but I don't see anything really changing soon:
https://xcancel.com/BTT1024/status/2063004500198084734
https://xcancel.com/SanDiegoKnight/status/2062631715802365971
I drove my Boxster GTS 900 miles to Maine last week, nothing but good times. Learned that the convertible roof is kind of fake, underneath the van as is a magnesium shell that keeps things rigid and very quiet. You can't even get a convertible in a Corvette can ya?
No one is talking millionaire taxes here cause there ain't no millionaires. But we have a fake oysterman, woman abusing socialist with a concentration camp tat who is running to get on the Senate ballot.. I am having fun asking family and neighbors whether there is anything that Plattner could do that would disqualify him in their eyes? Raping a 12 year old? Ritual murder? Goat fucking? People are avoiding me a little.
Canvas not van ffs.
Ps I don't know about HB1S but Indian guys can play a great tennis game.
I thought they were into cricket.
Vijay Armitraj! (he's the only Indian tennis player I know and only because he was in a Bond movie)
Platner is a real peach.
“But but... remember that time we canceled Al Franken?!”
Could have had Harvard Lampoon in the Senate and running r/jackhole (D-ME) instead.
*Edited for correct Lampoon
No more rotten than most of those in DC.
Platner probably winning the seat is such an embarassment for everyone involved.
The people in general crave populism at the moment, whether that's from the left or the right, so who does the DNC push? An ancient woman who couldn't be more out of touch. The DNC is a cancer, a parade of horribles whose worldview is stuck in 2005. The party leaders are leacherous idiots, all of them.
So they get... Platner. Which, yikes.
Susan Collins SUCKS and needs to get voted out. She has been a pox on American politics for nearly as long as I have been alive. Thanks to Donny T and his own brand of cruel stupidity the GOP is polling so poorly that her ouster is basically a given.
All of that said, it is a bit amusing that many of the same people who will gladly overlook DJTs own myriad flaws and scandals will get upset about Platner. This is the exact guy that Trump has brought to the American political forefront and I don't know that there is a way back.
That's kind of funny because Collins is generally despised as a RINO. The SAVE act has popular support and I'm surprised Thune's attempt to quash it failed.
She's despised on both sides!
The $109,000 hybrid Corvettes is not aspirationa, a $40,000 Corvette is aspirational. Before we were unwillingly sucked into clown world a loaded Camero SS was priced a few thousand less then a loaded L-82 Corvette. We will not discuss Jack’s S600 V-12 MB but domestically a loaded Buick Electra 225 was also a few thousand less then a comparable Couoe or Sedan Deville. Memo to file: Doctors and Lawyers that could afford the Cadillac bit drive the Buick 225 because it was the right thing to do. Ok think of it as the new rich driving the Yukon XL to Costco because and Escalade would send the wrong message to their neighbors. However now with our inverted Bell Curve economy the masses are driving used Caravans and the well off are not. To circle back to the topic at hand a $110,000 Corvette is a toy for those that pay cash not something to aspire to….
$5000 used Caravans or Town and Countries are looking pretty good to me these days...
What annoys me most and Mamdani and his growing legion of DSA acolytes is their audacity to declare the American dream dead before people have had the opportunity to determine that for themselves. The tone I get from them is a lot of "Trust me bro, the game is cooked, best just burn your prime working years throwing rocks at ICE Agents instead of figuring out how to actually be productive and enjoy the fruits of said productivity"
My father told me this bit of wisdom when I was just nine years old: there's a lot of money to be made in convincing someone how they're getting screwed by someone else.
Of course, little did I realize back then that the monetary rewards pale in comparison to the political power to be gained through such blatant pandering.
The Man is holding you down!