sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
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User ID: 636
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
10mo ago
That's $300k after tax. Put 180k of that into PITI and you're on your way to not saving much.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
10mo ago
To be clear, the airspace is not closed. That is merely a "possibility" in a world where swiss quangos declare that the chagos islands are rightful Mauritius clay.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
10mo ago
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
10mo ago
Driving a car is an activity that requires a license. Is the implication that existence itself also requires a license?
I don't think the existence of a national id implies that people must carry it around all the time. It seems perfectly legitimate for a national ID to be required when you use government services or vote, but having to carry around papers every time you walk out the door lest a commissar stop you is a bridge too far.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
10mo ago
Free citizens don't carry IDs in their own country. I'm aware that there are countries where this is required, and I'll leave the modus tollens as an exercise for the reader.
Seems to me that ICE can make good progress focusing on jails and employers.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
10mo ago
perfectly analogous to my university consultant example
I admit that there was no A/B test to figure out if this guy should be paid 450k or 500k or 550k.
However, is anyone actually doing the math on how much grant consultants increase grants received? I kind of doubt it. I suspect that those guys have some marketing and the university spends money on them because they have to do something, and everyone sits through the info session because they have to.
At least with EA there is at least some external validity. The money goes in, and 95 cents on the dollar goes out. Autists are working around the clock to see if you really are as effective as you claim. Ironically, this means EA charities operate more like a business than your average grants consultant, because they've got people keeping an eye on their bottom line and the business doesn't exist just to enrich the guy who runs it (unlike the grant consultant). They have to actually deliver shareholder value, where the shareholders are the recipients and the donors.
So I guess what I'm trying to say is, yes, charity is big business, and that's a good thing.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
10mo ago
You have to give some allowance to Heinlein for writing this during the sixties when this actually was novel to some extent. Sixty years down the line it seems stale and cringe (and I felt the same way about Stranger in a Strange Land) but that's at least partially a "Seinfeld isn't funny" phenomenon.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
10mo ago
Sorry, yes, that is what I meant.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
10mo ago
And even if that doesn't count for anything, it's still that he did it because of external forces that made it easier for people like him.
I last heard this argument deployed to explain why white men didn't earn their accomplishments. I really didn't expect to see it deployed to explain why it doesn't count that TW spoke out against a bad thing.
If only Hlynka were here to see this.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
10mo ago
Many essentials can be moved outside the country, though, or otherwise made cheaper through mechanization. Lots of vegetables come from Mexico and staples are much cheaper than they historically used to be thanks to combines.
To look at only the first order effects here is to miss the entire point. The first order effect is what is seen, but you are missing everything that is not seen. We wouldn't be better off today we kept all the farming jobs that people were doing in 1900 around, even if a farmer losing his job to a combine "reduces average wages" when you look at it in a very specific way.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
10mo ago
I strongly suspect it is the same in every grant-driven industry everywhere. (Indeed, the whole "Effective Altruism" grift has largely consisted in insisting that EA is totally different, it's definitely going to make real change, instead of just creating new jobs and generous salaries for charismatic people who would rather attend conferences in exotic locales, than do the hard work of producing meaningful work.)
EA is meaningfully different. The average charity spends 20% on overhead, and for arts and culture charities the "sweet spot" is apparently a whopping 35%.
Look at the recommended charities on GWWC (GWWC is recommended as the best overall resource for charities on ea.org). GiveDirectly spends 95% of its money on charitable expenses. For AMF it's 99.4%. Malaria Consortium is at 12% and HKI is at 16%.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
10mo ago
Absolutely fascinating. I can't figure out a reason why the admin would do something like this. Even if he's trying to pump up user numbers on the forum for some reason, I don't see why he would be backdating the posts. If anything, newer posts are better for creating the appearance of activity.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
10mo ago
Except he isn't "the left", he's one guy, and he's not responsible for it being "very difficult for anyone not on the left to bring an issue to public attention".
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
10mo ago
Musk is more likely to die in jail than in Mars.
Aren't we all?
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
10mo ago
but this gets back to the original point that you appeared to be attempting to refute, which is "outsourcing is an it-depends not an obvious win". Arguing for countering second-order effects against a first-order loss is decidedly still in the category of "it depends" not "an obvious win".
No, the point I'm trying to refute is that FTAs are not a benefit for most people. I freely admit that the guys who used to assemble cars in Detroit would be better off with 200% tariffs on imported cars. It's just that most Americans don't assemble cars in Detroit.
This would be true if it was feasible to move everything outside the country. However, there are many critical things that aren't. (As a topical example: you can't move the landscaping work required for building a house in the middle of a country outside said country, for hopefully obvious reasons.)
I don't see what this has to do with my point. Things that can't be moved outside the country, aren't.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
10mo ago
Rock salt doesn't usually melt at room temperature.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
10mo ago
You must have seen the statue though.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
10mo ago
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
10mo ago
Some people would say that a "regular car" is more like a Mitsubishi Mirage (17 k$) or a Nissan Versa (19 k$ with CVT).
Surely a "regular car" can't be one of the two cheapest cars on the market? One of which is discontinued due to lack of demand?
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
10mo ago
the Mustang is the only car Ford sells (and the only car any American automaker makes)
Are you working off an unusual definition of "car"?
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
10mo ago
Fair, I was calculating per person. About 80% of people pay some kind of federal tax (including payroll taxes) so it's like $550 per person.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
10mo ago
Second, DEI is being rolled back both in government and business.
I work at a company where DEI has been rolled back and internal discussions of this are uniformly condemning the change. I have literally not seen a single person defending them. I know I can't be the only one who isn't sorry to see them go, but the culture is still such that people don't feel safe expressing that.
Woke at the top may be on the ropes, but on the bottom it's still alive and well.
I don't think that they can go after your savings account. Medical debt doesn't even affect your credit score.
If the hospital plays hardball you can wait until it goes to collections and then settle for pennies on the dollar.
Disclaimer: I've never tried this but report back if you do.
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