Gdanning
1yr ago
Oh, that is not how I read it; I see "land usage shouldn't be based on ethnicity" as an endorsement of private property, as opposed to non-market based arrangements, such as feudalism.
Gdanning
1yr ago
I had a heat pump in my rental apartment in Philadelphia. It seemed to very effective, both in winter and summer. That was an air-source heat pump, however, and it was not a huge apartment. I don't know how cost effective it was.
Gdanning
1yr ago
Of course middle class and richer people save more than poor people. Having barely sufficient income to cover needs, and hence having little left to save, is the definition of being poor.
As for why rich people who work a lot prefer paid labour, the answer is obvious: They get more utility out of paid labor (enjoyment + whatever they buy with their income) than unpaid (enjoyment alone).
Anyhow, talking about rich people not working does not address OP's point about relative utility of X extra dollars for a poor vs more affluent person. I can guarantee you that the local homeless guy would get more out of the $165 I recently earned than I will.
Gdanning
1yr ago
My 401k is actually down overall over the last 3 years.
On Sept 18, 2019, the SP 500 closed at just under 3007. Yesterday, it closed at 3873. If your 401K is down over the last three years, I fear that you have only yourself to blame.
Gdanning
1yr ago
then things got way worse again
What things? Not [unemployment[(https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf), nor personal income. Even inflation has not gotten worse since March
Gdanning
1yr ago
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Yes, there in fact something about the definition that says that poor people save a smaller proportion. Again, "poor" by definition means that your income is barely enough to cover basic costs, so, by definition, a poor person will have very little surplus income and hence will be able to save a very small proportion of their income. In contrast, if your income is large enough that you can save a large proportion after paying your costs, then by definition you are not poor.
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No, my reasoning does NOT imply that working as a bank director is as enjoyable as volunteering for a charity. I said merely that, given the same job, getting paid yields more utility than not getting paid.
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Yes, I meant more utility. And, if you think that economists think that my example is wrong, then I think you are misunderstanding them. There is a $150 check on my desk right now, waiting to be deposited. I can literally throw it away, and will not miss it. That is how little marginal utility I get out of that $150. In contrast, $150 for a homeless person can make the difference between sleeping on the subway and sleeping indoors, for more than one night.
Gdanning
1yr ago
Well, presumably he gets a lot of utility out of crack or booze. Besides, that $165 means that he can now get both crack AND booze. Or crack AND several meals at McDonald's. In contrast, I am able to buy crack and food and booze even if I throw the money away; it has very little marginal utility for me.
Gdanning
1yr ago
That's my point. If you had just put your money in an SP500 index fund, you would be up 29% in 3 yrs. You need a better strategy.
Gdanning
1yr ago
I can't comment on your personal finances, obviously, but you were originally saying that people **in general **are in despair because the economy **in general **is supposedly so terrible, and that, specifically, that things have gotten "way worse" since March. But, none of that is true.
Gdanning
1yr ago
Again, I don't see where there is evidence that things are either a 4 or a 5. So, it is hardly surprising that people are not particularly upset, though FWIW I don't think that polling on "right direction / wrong direction" has improved.
Gdanning
1yr ago
But none of these people were illegal immigrants, were they? They have all requested asylum, if I am not mistaken, and hence they indeed have the right to be in the country pending adjudication of their asylum cases. See discussion here.
Nor, contrary to what some on the left have opined, is he guilty of human trafficking, which requires the purpose of using the victim for commercial sex, labor or services.
Gdanning
1yr ago
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No, the specific issue is not marginal income; you referred to pct of** total **income: "Also, don't middle class and richer people save a higher proportion of their incomes than poorer people?"
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Because they get paid for the paid work. You seem to think that the argument is that a rich person gets zero marginal utility from money. That is not the claim. If I am a lawyer or doctor making $300,000, then obviously I by quitting I am giving up quite a bit of utility. But that says nothing about the issue at hand: It tells us noting about whether I would get as much utility from an extra $1000 as would a poor person. And, btw, people who are rich enough not have to work quit work all the time -- it's called retirement -- and often they spend some of their time volunteering. So, your assumption that rich people don't never quit work and go volunteer is empirically false.
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Then let's ignore money. Suppose 100,000 people own three cars each (call them "Group X"), and 100,000 other people ("Group Y") have no cars. I give each of them a 2003 Honda Civic. Which Group members are most likely to use their new cars" It is Group Y, right? Why, if that obviously true, if it is so impossible to make a comparison between the utility each gets out of the car? It isn't.
Gdanning
1yr ago
The big COVID drop as well as recent drop barely registered for me
It looks like the closing price was 60.56 on Feb 19, 2020, and then it dropped to 41.65 at the close on March 18. That is about a 33% drop. The Vanguard SP500 index ETF closed at 298.88 on 2/19 and dropped to a closing low of 197, also about 33%. And, on 9/18/2019, the Vanguard ETF closed at 263, versus 355 on Friday, 1 35% gain, versus the 36% gain for your ETF. Looking at the chart, your ETF seems to basically follow the SP 500 over the last 5 yrs, but perhaps with a bit less volatility. It has a higher cost (0.20 %) than VOO (0.03%), but that might not matter much.
PS: Your annual gain is actually a bit less -- 10.27% per this formula: 72.28 = 53.11e^(3*x)
Gdanning
1yr ago
The final steelman is that border towns do have the infrastructure (which is not the same as resources). They have local state and nonstate entities which deal with this all the time. Similarly, SF is richer than
Detroit, but which is better equipped to deal with 8 inches of snow?
Your formula doesn’t account for compounding. It wont work well over long periods.
Edit;oops am on small screen and read that as /3. Yeah i think your formula is close enough
Gdanning
1yr ago
I assume that recent arrivals need all sorts of services other than a mere roof. And indeed there is whole network of agencies in border areas which provide such services. Are doctors in MV conversant with the health issues common to migrants from Central America? With the symptoms of common diseases in Central America? Are there even medical, educational, etc, staff who are fluent in Spanish in MV? Are there local Spanish-language religious services? Those are just a few things that pop to mind. Are there others? I don't know,and THAT IN ITSELF is an illustration of the issue: Part of the infrastructure is people with the knowledge of what needs these people are likely to have.
Gdanning
1yr ago
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If that is what you meant, it greatly weakens your point.
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If they value status, then the status is part of the utility they derive from working. You have answered your own question.
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It really seems like you are not saying anything. If X are not using the car, then it must not be providing much marginal utility to them. The fact that they are driving their other cars instead shows that they got little extra utility from the Honda, and in fact, miles driven is a perfectly useful common measure of utility, because that is why people acquire cars: to drive them, because driving them makes up most of the utility they get from them.
The problem with your approach is that it completely unable to explain why I turned down a free cookie today after lunch, whereas a homeless person almost certainty would have accepted the cookie.
Gdanning
1yr ago
I was referring, of course, to treating those diseases, not deporting those who have them.
Anyhow, if MV has to import professionals from TX, doesn’t that sort of imply that they don't have the infrastructure in place?
Look, OP asked for a steelman. The infrastructure issue clearly is a one. That doesn’t mean that DeSantis is a good guy, nor that he is a bad guy. Ditto re people in MV. Ditto re the migrants themselves. But surely you are willing to admit that maybe, just maybe, sending the migrants to MV was not in their best interests?
Gdanning
1yr ago
And the litany of other services? Are you really arguing that there is NO chance that an area in which migration is a constant featureswill have better infrastructure to deal with migrants than some dinky island 1500 miles from the border?
The news articles very clearly state that they were fooled into going, not that they were coerced. And, as for what they thought was in their best interest, that is irrelevant: the OP was about MV residents, and their views. If they are correct that the migrants best interests were not served by being sent there, then what is the basis for criticizing them.
Gdanning
1yr ago
So the steelman is ...
A disingenuous paraphrase of a steelman is actually a weakman. The steelman is exactly what I said it is: That migrants need services that are more readily available to them in border areas than in Martha's Vinyard.
also that the migrants are too dumb to make good choices for themselves. That's definitely less racist than thinking they are all carriers of scary foreign diseases.
I, of course, said neither of those things. Don't you have any self-respect?
Gdanning
1yr ago
That seems to be a complete misrepresentation of the ad. The ad is narrated by Nate Boyer, who is apparently an ex-Green Beret and a football player who played one preseason game for the Seahawks. This is the narration of the ad in its entirety:
"I'm Nate Boyer. I served as a Green Beret. The first time that I heard about Colin Kaepernick I thought, the guy hated America. I chose to do an open letter to Colin, and Colin ended up reaching out. He said, 'Would you kneel with me?' I said, 'I can't do that, but I will stand next to you.' You don't always have to like how people choose to express their freedoms, but we were both willing to just have a conversation. That's what freedom of speech is. You know, the right to speak out. That's what we fought for."
The visuals are brief clips of the two of them, a picture of someone holding a BLM sign, and a picture of someone holding a sign which says, "We [heart] our police."
That's it. How you can interpret that anodyne message of "everyone should have the right to speak / let's have a conversation" as an endorsement of Kaepernick's message, or as "conveying that Kapernick didn't intend the protest to disrespect the military or the country" seems quite incomprehensible to me.
Finally, you are certainly entitled to your opinion re whether Kaepernick's kneeling was not protected because it was really a time/place/manner restriction, FIRE filed an amicus brief in favor of the high school football coach who was fired for praying on the field, so their position that Kaepernick's speech should be protected is perfectly consistent with their past position, which tends to undermine the claim that they are somehow becoming woke.
Gdanning
1yr ago
For a supposedly "right aligned" organization, they sure have a lot of National Lawyers Guild members on staff. Along with libertarians, old school Republicans, Bidenesque Democrats, etc, etc.
Gdanning
1yr ago
The context generally solves the problem -- here, the manosphere is not a single entity, so it can't possibly be an actual quote -- but why not explicitly indicate that it is a paraphrase, such as by saying, "the manosphere says, in essence, 'Excellent question . . .'"? Or, a trailing indicator, kind of the opposite of [sic], such as [paraphrased]?
I believe the OP is referring to this definition of "liberal."
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