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
3mo 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
3mo 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.
HughCaulk
3mo ago
Is there conclusive evidence on how these cuts are actually going, and how much money is being saved? It’s nearly impossible to navigate the media landscape of propaganda, lies, and hit pieces to really know what the numbers are saying.
Just wait and see what the next budget reports say? See if debt to gdp actually starts falling?
Here is a projection from the CBO (congressional budget office) projecting DOGE to be a massive failure, and note this analysis is from a right wing/libertarian news org so I’d actually give it more credibility: https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/cbo-forecasts-doge-and-ai-will-be-massive-failures-sees-us-debt-exploding-productivity
HughCaulk
3mo ago
Facebook has so much garbage in it it’s incredible. To many idle hands over there.
Idk how granny actually makes sense of the app
HughCaulk
3mo ago
But the inexplicable predicament many 'rationalists' have to contend with is that their view of objective reality somehow manages to conform itself precisely within the lines of the mainstream Overton Window.
Yuuuuuuuuuup great point here. How are you Berkeley rationalists so perfectly left leaning and in alignment on all the thorny issues of our time? Crazy coincidence!
HughCaulk
3mo ago
It’s called getting trolled on the internet brah
But seriously, 1/3rd of your budget wasted is a failing company, or a nearly bankrupt government. Raise your standards
HughCaulk
3mo ago
Good take. I think Latinos and Asians (that have chosen to be in the states) actually gasp like whites!
First it’s clearly a selection bias, otherwise why would they move to an Anglo country? And secondly, we are generally respectful, rule abiding, and have good business culture. Racism exists everywhere, but whites are much less racist than inter-Asian country racism, and for Latinos, you’re making a hell of a lot more here than for the same work in your home country, so it’s hard to argue with the numbers!
HughCaulk
3mo ago
It’s just crazy to me how the left, which was the party of LSD, get us out of vietnam, hippy living is now the party of:
Ukraine proxy war, big pharma propaganda campaigns, giant national debt (which directly moons home prices)…
Tell me more about how you toured the US in a school bus for 6 years, went to Woodstock, lived on an avocado farm, and then bought your first home with your seasonal earnings
HughCaulk
3mo ago
Yuuuuuup. But that 1/3 spending is someone else’s paycheck, so expect a lot of screaming and crying as we attempt this.
HughCaulk
3mo ago
Sad thing is that the counties where it’s mostly white kids, they are definitely still learning math. In the places where they actually need it and were behind in math, this gives the teachers a way to opt out of even trying.
HughCaulk
3mo ago
2/3 being “good” for the federal government is why we are $37,000,000,000,000 in debt…
HughCaulk
3mo ago
Aging gracefully seems really difficult. Especially when your generation is the largest by number of souls and you’ve always been the most relevant as you move up through the age bracket.
Now you need to reckon with the fact that the news you consume is a scam, you got totally bamboozled and fucked over generations of youth from the Covid mega-money print, and tbh, you’re just getting old and aren’t fashionable and/or cool anymore.
I hope that when I’m older, I can be the “wise” old man with more timeless wisdom, versus “ewwww fuck tesla”, or “OMG stupid Drumpf AHAHA” type of classic boomer lib takes. Feels like some people haven’t thought a genuinely new thought for their brain in 30 years. Take more psychedelics or something, idk
HughCaulk
3mo ago
People have been educating their children competently for years. We don’t need to mandate curriculum from a federal or even state level. Let’s let teachers, who are with these kids 6+ hours a day and know them intimately, decide when and how to teach them.
Education has been getting gradually worse for years, unlikely that cutting the bureaucrats and grifters out of the DoE is going to make things even worse?
Oh the horror, how is little Johnny in Oregon going to learn math without a squadron of grifters in Washington getting paid?!
HughCaulk
3mo ago
It’s not a good idea because some industries like Ag are completely dependent on this “illegal” labor. If you could snap your fingers tomorrow and instantly deport them all, you’re going to have food shortages and food rotting on the vine in California.
Trust me, I’d rather have a few more Mexican neighbors than have food shortages!
HughCaulk
3mo ago
Yeah true we should just round up every brown person in sight. Easily doable, you got me here!
HughCaulk
3mo ago
Other counties legally have migrant farm worker visas like Aus and Canada. We don’t have this system in lieu of “illegal” immigrant work. You’d need to set up a similar system here and transition all these workers to it, otherwise food will be rotting on the vine in California
HughCaulk
3mo ago
Well if a huge portion of ag labor is from illegal immigrants, perhaps we shouldn’t be so hasty in deporting them. Most of us still, uh, need to eat every day.
Issue is that other Anglo ex-colonies have legal migrant farm worker visas, like Aus and Canada. It’s called “wuffing”. While we don’t have that at all, we just had an unspoken agreement that you let in some amount of illegal workers to fill the massive need of agriculture help come harvest time in California and other states. Effectively it does the same thing
HughCaulk
3mo ago
Also, this is such a “be careful what you wish for” sort of thing.
Conservatives are now pushing for random passport/citizenship spot checks as you’re walking down the street, that’s what “freedom” and america means to you?
Don’t have immediate proof of citizenship, get detained? Who cares if you have an American accent, we can never be too sure and that can be faked. Russian spies go through strict accent training and speak just like you and I.
“If you’ve got nothing to hide, you got nothing to fear” lmao
HughCaulk
3mo ago
Yeah this is definitely a culture war issue. I just feel like being excessively harsh on illegal immigration is punching down. Do you feel intense competition for jobs or homes from illegal immigrants? If you do, then it makes sense to be wary about more immigration.
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
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