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The Brookings Institute did a famous study. How can a person do well in the USA - ie., stay out of poverty?? 3 Things only required only in general: 1) Graduate from High School 2) Get a full time job 3) Do not have children out of wedlock https://www.brookings.edu/articles/three-simple-rules-poor-teens-should-follow-to-join-the-middle-class/

I have a suspicion this has less to do with universal healthcare than with wanting to live the ski bum lifestyle.

The United States is loaded with poor people. There are more whites in poverty than blacks. Thing is, most everyone has more than enough food to eat. Food is cheap here. Many of the poor are fat. Many Americans are fat. Most people have a place to live, a car, and air conditioning. Poor have access to decent health care. So it really depends on what you are measuring.

You're right, and re: Vancouver I totally agree, not even up for consideration. I am looking more into the interior (golden, revel, kimberley etc.). I just think at least in Canada and EU, the social safety net (mainly healthcare) solves a lot of problems that would bankrupt a similar person in the states. It keeps people off the streets and makes society itself less cutthroat. I spent 10 years in Canada so I know it's not perfect, but weighing the pros/cons vs the States, I think it's a more reasonable tradeoff. Put more bluntly: I'd trade 100 US billionaires, and all the "wealth" they've created, for a more Canadian-esque society.

If your goal is to escape the $1M homes and struggling service workers, BC may not be the refuge you think. Vancouver is one of the least affordable housing markets in the developed world, while Canadian wages are lower than comparable U.S. wages. In BC workers are being priced out of the communities they serve with long commutes, and high housing costs.

Honestly as I get older I find less and less reasons to remain in the US. Quality of life is just worse on the average. Who wants to go out to eat and realize the waitress, the cooks, even the manager are living on the poverty line or already in poverty? It's gross and has only gotten worse over my lifetime. Colorado is great because of the natural altitude, but it's not ski bums and crunchy hippies anymore, it's the rich who can afford 1M+ homes, and the have-nots that serve them and are forced to live in, essentially, ghettos. BC is looking better by the day. I am lucky to have citizenship options elsewhere in actual first-world countries.

#15. Germany $53,485 - $346,614 is higher than #28. US $68,998 - $696,277 ?

Depends on how you measure wealth. Looks like the US has the highest number on the far right. If you are seeking to qualify that number, perhaps keep in mind that the US also is the Country with the most opportunity for success, if not one of them. With opportunity comes success and failure, which also creates income/wealth disparity. If you further want to qualify the number on the right, Americans also spend as much or more than residents of any other Country and my guess is the savings rate in the US is not as high as some of the other countries, on average. And then there is the recently ended open border policy that allowed anyone to come into the US - not conducive to increasing per capita wealth statistics. I think the only thing one can conclude is that your chart should be taken with a grain of salt.

Yep, if you start your adult life with student loans, pay a high rent, and have to finance a car your net worth stays near zero for a long time, even if you have a high income.

I am reading....looks like rents and debt could be the main reasons...it seems that if you factor in the value of public safety nets (that Europeans have and it is like an hidden wealth and US have not) the gap is bigger...

Yes, unpermitted operations should just get shut down until they get a permit. It’s that simple, imo. Looks like a datacenter near Palm Beach is also get shut down. That would be close to Mar-a -Largo: https://www.wpbf.com/article/florida-project-tango-decision-ai-data-center-palm-beach-county/71940999

The reason Southern Europeans have higher median wealth isn't because they earn more money. It’s because of housing equity. In Italy and Spain homeownership is high and properties are passed down through generations without massive mortgage debt. Americans have access to the world’s largest high wage labor market and the opportunity to build a business. They have exceptional earning potential and purchasing power. The same economy that produces extreme inequality also creates extraordinary upside for those who succeed. Americans have substantially higher disposable incomes than Italians or Spaniards even though median wealth is higher in some European countries.

Trump targeting PIX payment system via tariffs. I don‘t think this goes anywhere: https://www.wsj.com/world/americas/trump-brazil-payment-system-pix-097bacaa?mod=world_feat3_americas_pos2

In median wealth for person....is behind Italy, Spain, Portugal....etc... If you have different numbers please show them ( and source). Thx.

Hi, I always get the impression that people on this forum think of US as a rich country...with a great capitalistic system that produce wealth left and right if you only want to put the effort and have the initiative to do something in your life...the American dream...everyone has a shot at big success... Enough talk let's show the numbers (global wealth report 2026 is the source)...: Median Wealth vs. Mean Wealth per Adult Rank (Median) Country / Market Median Wealth (USD) Mean Wealth (USD) Impact of Inequality / Insights 1 Luxembourg $394,005 $654,732 Balanced distribution; exceptionally wealthy middle class. 2 Belgium $277,166 $408,000 High wealth equality with widespread homeownership. 3 Australia $210,783 $616,036 Widespread wealth, but heavily skewed upward by ultra-rich. 4 New Zealand $206,617 $449,852 Strong balance between total country wealth and distribution. 5 Denmark $203,771 $523,344 Robust social safety net supporting middle-class stability. 6 Hong Kong (SAR) $187,968 $648,267 Major financial hub with extreme capital concentration at the top. 7 Canada $147,811 $399,886 Significantly more equitable distribution than its US neighbor. 11 Italy ~ $110,000 $279,439 Solid baseline wealth due to high homeownership and private savings. 15 Germany $53,485 $346,613 Low homeownership rates; real estate wealth is concentrated in few hands. 28 United States $68,998 $696,277 Extreme gap; billionaires heavily inflate a mean detached from daily reality.

More like a dragon egg that had been marinating for a decade at medium heat before anything comes out of it.

Agreed. There has been one modest step towards something like this in an effort to reduce tax fraud (folks claiming dependent credits for children who don’t exist). It has been quite standard for decades now for Social Security cards/numbers to be made available for newborns by filling out a form made available to parents at the hospital where the birth took place. Still possible for some folks to fall through the cracks if they aren’t born at a hospital, or if their parents aren’t responsible and either don’t request one or lose one if it was issued. But the idea that from birth an individual should be uniquely identified and given documentation regarding their citizenship status either for free or at low cost makes a lot of sense. I wonder how citizenship was provable in the Roman world? In the New Testament, the Apostle Paul was arrested and brought before the local authorities. He surprised the local governor by appealing his case to Caesar in Rome, which was his right as a Roman citizen. Perhaps he did not look that wealthy, because I recall that the person to whom he was appealing his case reacted in surprise and mentioned that his own Roman citizenship had cost him quite a bit of money. Paul replied something to the effect that he was born a Roman citizen. I think his father was a Roman citizen, which under Roman law, made him one also, from birth. At any rate, he appears to have been believed, and was sent on his way as a prisoner to Rome to have his case heard there. Unfortunately, I think the emperor at the time would have been Nero, which probably didn’t bode well for the eventual outcome of his appeal. My guess is there would have been some sort of birth registry/records available that would have supported Paul’s citizenship contention 2000 years ago.

https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/pollution-musks-unpermitted-xai-power-project-hits-hardest-black-communities-2026-07-14/ Focusing just on the emissions element: A Reuters analysis based on that information found that those 30 turbines alone could emit nearly 2,500 short tons of nitrogen oxide, 4,000 short tons of carbon monoxide and 22 short tons of formaldehyde annually, assuming they operate continuously at 80% of capacity. According to the EPA, gas turbines are typically operated at loads of 80% or more to achieve efficiency. ... The xAI site’s potential emissions far exceed a Clean Air Act threshold that requires permitting for facilities capable of more than 100 short tons annually of pollutants such as nitrogen oxide.

Any output filters are provided as an overlay to the underlying model. It should not effect frontier model development.

100%. All holders during that time learned that the hard way. I put in a small position about 2%, and lost most of it. The dilution and additional capital was just something I could not stomach, even as I saw Prem pour more hundreds of millions into it. Someone said balls of steel and that's for sure. Needless to say my Eurobank position ended up being a decent tax loss write off later on, and I realized none of these things are guaranteed. The real money was made on that next capital raise. There's a chance some of even Fairfax's current investments are zeros eventually. However over time if you have a good method, the winners more than make up if you can hold onto them long enough. That last part is also no easy task. Buying Fairfax at $500 and seeing it trade $260 was also not easy. The thing that gives me more confidence now is that their model is truly very well put together and more balanced, their equity portfolio is reasonably diversified so that no one thing(including god forbid eurobank) will sink them, and their insurance operations are solid and diversified, and they have a healthy respect for leverage and how they invest their float. I think they also have good management with sufficient bandwidth to serve as a sounding board for the associates and consolidated holdings. And their own approach in this area is sound. Even so, I won't put more than 25-30% in it. I've even thought about what I'd do if it grows to be 50% position, I currently think I'd likely let it run. Having said all that, even now, you need to be psychologically prepared for a 50% drawdown at any given point in time. as Charlie Munger reminded us, that's even happened a few times in the storied history of Berkshire Hathaway. Leverage is a killer and a stressor in those situations. I remind myself of that whenever I get bullish.

I think this could easily be solvable with a national ID that is provided free of charge or a very small fee to any citizen. I don’t think the democrats would disagree to this. Pretty much every country but the USA has this, why can’t the USA do this as well? Behind would solve the problem once for all rather than the current patchwork. Running around with a birth certificate to validate your identity is ridiculous. I guess the passport card serves the same purpose but it took me almost 2 months to get it after I was naturalized. And yes, it can take month to get a new birth certificate . This depends on the county you have been born with, whether there were name changes (like with married women) etc.

Yes, I agree. If we self censor, users in other countries that can these cheaper models are at an advantage. In any case, the business model for LLM providers like OpenAI becomes highly questionable. They would need to recoup their entire R&D expense in the roughly 3 month lead they have to open source models.

I think there is a legit concern about noise pollution from the cooling towers. This should be a solvable problem with lower noise systems, sound barriers and buffering zones. Other than that, the environmental impact is lower than light industrial or a shopping center.

Yikes…I’ve only been really aware of them the last few years, and forgot about how painful it must have been for Fairfax and other shareholders to see what they thought was a reasonably priced 30 euro stock just get hammered and see new shareholders join and dilute their ownership at a MUCH lower price. Right around the time of the Great Financial Crisis, I was participating in a short term stock market game with a few other fellow employees as we tried to learn about investing. Everyone started with $1 million of fictional money and could buy on margin, sell short, etc. The game would end in something like six months. I started out investing in a couple of large companies, including Berkshire, then comparing my results with competitors, realized I wouldn’t have a chance of winning. The leader, by far, had borrowed another million on margin, and then used it to short some small bank stocks that looked to be exposed to losing in the Crisis. I just rode his coat tails to a second place finish doing the same thing. However, the software was flawed, and never enforced either an interest cost on our borrowing, or issued any margin calls. Both of us were allowed to run negative balances in the multi million dollar range without selling our positions out, and they recovered enough by the end of the game to allow us both to finish 1st and 2nd. But it was a good lesson to learn about myself (with fictional money) that I could easily fall into the trap of being a short term speculator, and lose everything if I were to let myself take on leverage and then use it to make risky short bets. So when I finally began investing some of my own retirement funds, I specifically chose not to have the ability to borrow on margin or short stocks, as I didn’t think I’d be able to control my speculative urges if I were to allow myself either of these options….

so kind of like how talking with a super woke politically correct snowflake type human being can be a bit frustrating even when you are talking about "safe" topics?