The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
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User ID: 174
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
3hr ago
Because you could just be bad at math. Or finance.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
4hr ago
Price increase in the very basics of American life - fast food - have apparently outpaced official inflation since 2014 by about a factor of 3.
Meanwhile, in California...
And minimum wages in general have been going up in urban areas.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
4hr ago
People are nostalgic for the times where you could get hired in the town you were raised and make a good life for yourself.
They're nostalgic, then, for a time their parents don't remember.
I don't even know where to buy a new CRT TV. Maybe they're cheaper now, but I don't have that option when I go to the electronics store.
You can't get a new CRT TV. But I see that Best Buy and Amazon have flat screen TVs (24") for $50. These are strictly superior to the old 20" CRT TVs. $300 gets you up to 50".
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
4hr ago
It's a specific case of a general "argument" against a harsh policy -- "well, how about we apply this harsh policy to you and yours only, how do you like that?"
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
4hr ago
But clearly, the intellectual standards at the academy have been slipping broadly as to fall for such an trap.
It wouldn't have been a trap a year ago, it would have been a triumph. The student would have been failed (or perhaps kicked out of the class or even expelled) and the TA would have been lauded for it.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
19hr ago
My supposedly intelligent Gen X peers were buying houses like mad during the bubble, using ARMs. I'm looking at them doing this and thinking they're crazy, using an ARM when interest rates were at historic lows (about where they are today, in fact).
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
21hr ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Manhattan
Manhattan's population is down a lot since the 1920s, but it's about equal to the 1960s population.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
22hr ago
Sure, it's a terrible rubric. Most likely this class simply shouldn't exist. It's probably being used for political indoctrination.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
22hr ago
At this point you're insisting a vague term ('some aspect') means something very specific (there must be a citation to the specific part of the article being reacted to). I simply don't believe this.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
22hr ago
We did see the spikes due to supply chain issues get alleviated. What didn't go away was the price increases caused by the stimulus bills, nor would it be expected that they did so.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
22hr ago
Absolutely not, not even close. I don't even live in a particularly expensive area - Hampton Roads - and 100k combined would be far beyond my ability to afford.
Scott's saying that if you made $100k (or some undefined amount less), you could afford to buy a house. Which seems to be true in the area of Hampton Roads.
he, like you, are just naively accepting blatantly fraudulent employment and inflation numbers as gospel truth
As Scott points out
Every so often, someone makes a site with a name like TruthStats.org claiming that all government economic statistics are lies, and inflation is 10,000% higher than reported.
It's never true, these sites typically turn out to be either numbers pulled out of the person's ass or government statistics plus some factor pulled out of the person's ass. The latest figures may be suspect (because they're based on incomplete data) but outside of that the stats are actually pretty good.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
22hr ago
And according to the rubric, that essay would not deserve a zero either. The quality of the argument isn't even a criterion. Just... does the essay show student read the article, did the student provide a 'reaction/reflection/discussion', is it coherent? Time Cube would deserve a zero. A well-organized treatment of sports betting would deserve 5 points.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
22hr ago
Her essay wasn't a summary, but it was hardly specific, nor did it reference findings from the article. Should a citation have been specified in the rubric as a requirement? Sure. But, personally, it goes without saying.
It doesn't go without saying. At this point you're justifying not just a low score but a zero on a section of the grading based on a criterion which didn't appear, in which case why provide a rubric at all?
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
23hr ago
It seems likely that this essay was a trap. If so, it worked.
This is the assignment. It breaks the grade down into three sections.
10 points: Is there a clear link back to the assigned article? Can the reader assess whether the student has read the assigned article?
10 points: Does the paper provide a reaction/reflection/discussion of some aspect of the article, rather than a summary?
5 points: Are the main ideas and thoughts organized into a coherent discussion? Is the writing clear enough to follow without multiple re-readings?
This is the paper.
There are links back to the assigned article. They're pretty weak, but they're not zero. The paper is clearly NOT a summary and IS providing a reaction/reflection/discussion of some aspect of the article. The organization is poor but not non-existent. This article clearly does not deserve a zero by the rubric given -- I would say it deserves at least 12 points, full points for the second item and a minimum of one point for the other two. Thus, the zero was given as punishment and not fair grading. And the claim “Please note that I am not deducting points because you have certain beliefs” is almost certainly a lie.
This is further evidence to me that red-tribers have completely abandoned most institutes of higher education. It's no longer a question of "we must reform the universities and stop them from being ideologically possessed!" but "the universities are ideologically possessed and the only way out is avoidance/destruction."
Just the opposite. This is a red-tribe student within the university attempting to obtain change from within.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
23hr ago
For Scott in particular, and probably the majority of people here, the by-party consumer sentiment explains a lot. Republican consumer sentiment is back up to post-COVID pre-Biden levels. Democratic consumer sentiment is not only much lower than Republican (presumably because Trump) but lower than post-COVID pre-Biden levels And Scott pretty much has contact only with Democrats, so he's getting a skewed view of sentiment.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
Healthcare and insurance are covered by CPI, but in a very distorted way (while this is 20-25% of total GDP... they only include out of pocket expenses, while employer-paid premiums skyrocket ... and are actual compensation, another 1-20% everyone forcibly allocates to the cartel):
PCE inflation includes these, and the trends aren't different. CPI actually tends to be higher when inflation spikes.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
The mortgage-cost chart in Scott's article shows we've almost reached the early 1980s peak of unaffordability. As in the 1940s, I do expect this to go down again, but for a different reason; back then we were building and thus increasing supply, but in the next decade or two, the boomers will be dying and thus reducing demand. That's a pretty long time though. It would be better if we could build but decades of anti-growth, anti-sprawl propaganda, along with (and partially causing) the re-centralization of employment in cities, has worked its magic.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
In my neighborhood -- a middling NYC suburb -- such a Cape would be half a million. And have taxes to knock your socks off.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
You could of course sell your assets, move to Asia or South America and live well...
You can do that if you're a certain kind of person, who can be comfortable living in a foreign culture. Most people aren't; even most expatriates aren't, which is why there are expatriate communities.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
Now, we're asking kids exiting college (which didn't teach them anything and saddled them with debt) to live like a monk for 10 - 15 years so that, on the other side, they can move into a home they still can't afford. In the interim, they can enjoy consumer products that help dull this drudgery, but don't act as compounders. Who in the hell would take this deal?
Generation X. It was the only one on offer. Well except we didn't have the consumer products.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
Oh, another thing that adds to bad vibes: the proliferation of cash discounts again. This happened during the big post-COVID inflation, but it's remained. Cash is a pain in the butt, but since 4% is 4%, eschewing the cash discount feels like throwing away money, and dealing with cash to get that little bit of money makes me feel poorer.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
How does $26.50 an hour in 2024 dollars sound? And that was after the first big drop in manufacturing employment (circa 2000)
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
The second largest city in the US, by population, is Los Angeles, at 3.9 million to NYCs 8.5 million. NYC's population in the 1960s was about 7.8 million, considerably larger than Los Angeles today. There are no US cities of similar size to New York City in the 1960s today, so your comment is utter nonsense that you obviously didn't even bother to check.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
I got it from Investopedia, but the FRED data agrees. One correction: the GFC is at 5.6% and 1990 at 6.3%
It seems to be partly a facebook thing. The comments on the actual article are more mixed.
But it shouldn't be a surprise, it's not about socialism or redistribution. It's about health insurance and their leadership specifically. Health insurance companies are known chiefly for two things -- hiking premiums and denying claims.
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