HughCaulk
8d ago
Yup. A functioning society might instead give these sort of social payments to women aged 25-35, which renew for 10 years if you have 2+ children.
But instead we give it to the oldest generation, who also has the most wealth of any generation on average…
HughCaulk
8d ago
Talking to the boomer/elderly people I know, the thing that outrages them the most is either when their stock portfolio goes down rapidly, or any talk of cuts to social security/medicare.
Those doesn’t really seem like benefits to the younger generation who needs to pay for gibs, besides the obvious “when you’re my age, you’re gonna need some good healthcare”
HughCaulk
8d ago
I understand and mostly agree with what you’re saying in the first part, but blaming it on immigration in the second is a non sequitur. It seems like a multi-faceted problem and likely more of a “good times make weak men, weak men make…” more than anything else.
Also, when your country is run by 70+ year olds, all decisions are short-termist by definition. A 30 year cares about the future, a 70 year old is gonna be dead in the future!!
Everyone has their complaint and diagnosis tho. For libertarians it’s the switch off a gold standard #WhatHappenedIn1971. For progressives it’s the wealth gap and not enough gibs tearing apart the social fabric. For you, it’s brown skins ruining the inner city and tekkin jerbs.
Realistically, it’s a polycrisis and probably just what happens when an empire ages. Get a plan B and get out if things get too bad!
HughCaulk
8d ago
Seems like E having some mental health problems. Not otherwise sure why you’d alienate a large portion of your EV customer base by going so aggressively right/Trumpist, and then burn that bridge 4 months in.
He has successfully made himself the center of attention though! 4D gigabrained play? I’m not really seeing it
HughCaulk
1mo ago
Of course not. These “rationalists” are rational as long as their takes don’t touch anything political or CW-related. Otherwise, yikes
HughCaulk
1mo ago
There’s also another ending where we all die/are reduced to slaves. Happy endings often sound fake/gay/cliche so maybe you’d like the more cynical version.
With a new tech, it’s hard to even comprehend the direction things will take. But it’s a well regarded consensus that P(doom) is high and rising, so this is an effort to write a fictional story about how “doom” happens. If you can do better it would be a great contribution to AI safety and alignment.
HughCaulk
1mo ago
Lmao that’s a great point
Hard to escape from this sort of thing these days, I guess? Shame to see very divisive topics being taught in public schools nonetheless. There needs to be a way to opt out of public school via some sort of school choice/voucher system. Competition is a good thing!
HughCaulk
1mo ago
These people are sick. Teaching kindergarteners about sexual fetishes will never be ok, whether it’s gay or straight. Unfortunately there are a lot of very intelligent pedophile/groomer men, who’ve successfully convinced suburban white women that it’s a moral imperative to ram this down children’s throats, and steamroll the wishes of parents.
Need to look into sending the kids to catholic (or other reasonable religious) school, especially in these hyper-woke areas.
HughCaulk
2mo ago
Because everyone else’s fiat currency depreciates even faster and is all around worse than the dollar. This is just how fiat currencies are designed.
The slow and steady transition to bitcoin & hard money is marching forward…
HughCaulk
2mo ago
These sort of comments are popular but don’t make sense to me. Trump is simultaneously a political genius who can win two elections with the deck stacked completely against him, and also a blathering idiot with the critical reasoning and planning skills of a 3rd grader.
Not to mention his cabinet being comprised with very intelligent people and industry veterans…
HughCaulk
2mo ago
As of now, sure. But if it’s really a trade war against China, then an obvious escalation would be tariffing any other country that trades with China. Encourage other countries to turn their backs on China to keep access to US market.
HughCaulk
2mo ago
Of course. Just give out 100 blanket pardons at the end of your term.
A lot of these earlier crypto announcements were clearly insider traded, cause you can see these crazy flows actually on the blockchain. Tradfi very opaque
HughCaulk
2mo ago
Idk when the S&P dumps 20% in a week it’s a pretty good buy signal. Especially if you’re on a longer term time horizon
HughCaulk
2mo ago
Breaking: all reciprocal tariffs halted for 90 days EXCEPT on China. Tariff rates over 100% on Chinese exports.
So it seems like it’s more of a targeted war against China specifically? Likely giving other nations time to choose (with us or against us), and slapping the nations who chose to align with China with huge tariffs in 90 days.
Interesting choice to make as a country then… do we want cheap goods from China but lose access to the American market? Or do we want to be able to sell to Americans?
The next “stick” will be weaponizing the financial system against China-aligned nations, while China dumps treasuries and tries to spark a financial crisis.
HughCaulk
2mo ago
Yeah unironically this. Sprinkle some typos, call someone a fag, etc. AIs will never be at this level 😄
HughCaulk
2mo ago
Of course, since we can export “nothing” (ie: fiat money) for something (like real imports). So our material wealth is greater than most other counties (who don’t have this power up).
Things are not all rosy though. Chronic disease is higher here than any western nation, life expectancy is down, and severely lags behind our peers, deaths of despair are up… material wealth is not the only type of wealth. And at what cost?
HughCaulk
2mo ago
You’re missing the point here imo. This is economics 101 level analysis. America isn’t drilling for oil and then trading oil for Japanese cars. That’s what a persistent and high trade deficit means.
America is creating dollars ex-nihilo and then trading these dollars for real overseas goods. This is how having the reserve currency is a huge blessing, since we can trade unbacked paper money for real cars, computers, microwaves, etc!
But this blessing turns into a curse. This benefits individuals and orgs which can create dollars out of nothing, who are people with assets who can create money through debt. The government debt being at $37T is an exact symptom of this too, all these paper bonds have been exported overseas and we’ve received real items in return. The issue is that poorer people don’t benefit much from this “print money for overseas goods system” and it increases wealth inequality over time. Also, it hollows out your manufacturing base, for an increasingly financialized economy (dominated by the coastal regions in the US)
Tarriffs attempt to undo this curse, as being the reserve currency is starting to cause major issues at home (wealth inequality, ballooning government debt, no manufacturing is a national security issue). There’s going to be major pain. But it’s better now, than later, when the USG goes ~bankrupt and needs to default on the entire financial system. That’s gonna be some pain…
HughCaulk
2mo ago
Yes, and that American/domestic producers will compete to gobble up these new margins on the newly more expensive goods.
HughCaulk
2mo ago
Saying that manufacturing jobs haven’t left America, and especially in the middle states is just plain stupid
HughCaulk
2mo ago
Why exactly are they non sensical? The first order effect is that tarriffs make it more profitable to produce things in America vs offshore, so there will be more jobs and industry created here. It’s only the secondary and tertiary effects where it starts to get ugly
HughCaulk
2mo ago
If houses depreciate significantly it crushes bank loans and mortgage backed securities basically making them worthless. This caused the 2008 crisis.
If most people put 20% or less on their mortgage, and the price of houses goes down >20%, they own zero equity and will just walk away, not pay loans, and hand the keys to their lender. Now it’s the banks problem and a brewing financial crisis.
HughCaulk
2mo ago
Very detailed explanation, thanks a lot.
The entire reason the founders set the system up the way they did was to make things intentionally hard to coordinate.
Yeah, and this is why DOGE will likely fail. They will get some culture war cuts and furious headlines, but it’s actually up to Congress to not just pass CR bills that roll over the last budget into a new one. Congress will actually need to sack up and significantly cut outlays. Won’t hold my breath.
HughCaulk
2mo ago
Actually I’ve found that the zerohedge in house analysis is pretty accurate (and sensational, but they are in the selling-clicks business). A lot of their reposts and features from different figures like Peter Schiff (long time gold bug) is very doom and gloom.
But also, they’ve been shilling gold for years and now it’s up >50% YoY on one of its biggest pumps ever?
Secondly, doom and gloom doesn’t mean that stocks are going to zero, economy dead. Really we are in a slow motion crack up boom, where runaway government spending moons the currency supply and this pushes home prices, stock prices, and asset prices all to unfathomable highs.
Ok then do “young married couples” payments, 25-35 yrs old + 10 years for 2+ kids.
No need to get all autistic-ragey about it…
All my peers are worried about financial pressure and difficulties with having kids. Falling birthrate is a problem, so do subsidies?
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