rkbabang

^^Immigration is always a hot button for many. The fact is that our demographics suck in the US (although not as bad as some other countries), we aren't even having enough kids to replace ourselves. Immigration is the ONLY thing standing in between us and a shrinking population. Yes, it should be far easier to bring in professionals like Doctors and Engineers, and yes it should be far easier to come in if your poor as well. People look down on the immigrants who break the law to come here. I don't. We grew up here and literally didn't lift a finger to get here, while these people risked their lives and freedom to get here. That's the kind of can-do grit I respect. If the laws are stupid, ignore them. As for assimilation, that has always been a problem. People in the 1800s complained that the Irish wouldn't work, they were violent criminals, and even questioned if they should be considered human. They were considered to be nothing but drunkards and criminals. Every wave of immigration from the Irish, to the German, to the Jewish immigrants in the early 20th century created hatred of the main group immigrating in at the time. But immigrants have lots of kids and those kids grow up as Americans. I'm the son of an immigrant myself and I don't speak a word of Portuguese (my father's 1st language) . While he never learned how to read or write in any language, my brother and I are both college graduates and have professional careers. I only have one brother, but some of my father's sisters have as many as 8 kids. Immigrants have lots of kids and while they themselves may not assimilate completely their children do.

Immigration is a tricky issue. Yes, there are many problems with taking in the poor from other countries, crime being a big one, but the problem of a shrinking and aging population without enough working age people to have a healthy growing economy is an even bigger issue in my opinion. There are costs and benefits to immigration, but the benefits are what made the US what it is. We should think long and hard before deciding to kill the goose that's been laying the golden eggs for well over a century.

The US is a big country with many different internal cultures. I live in New Hampshire with the least restrictive gun laws in the US and a murder rate of about 1.55/100,000. Which is less than Canada (~2.0/100,000) and just a little worse than France (1.3/100,000). Overall it's one of the safest places in the world to live and everyone owns guns (even the leftists and liberals), it isn't unusual to see people open carrying firearms in public places and no license at all is needed to buy, own, carry openly, or carry concealed. I read somewhere that New Hampshire has the highest rate of machine guns per population. Of course if you use a gun irresponsibly in New Hampshire you will go to jail, we aren't New York or California.

Best tweet I've seen on the SF Whole Foods closing: "BREAKING: San Francisco leaders are expressing concern that Whole Foods' exit from the city as a result of 'high theft' and 'hostile transgender customers' will make it extremely difficult for residents to steal healthy food." https://twitter.com/amuse/status/1645555480704475138?s=20

The power of compounded interest!

Exactly. And "Assault Riffles" is a red herring. In many years the murders from hammers exceed the number of murders from riffles of all types.

You are lumping in suicides in that number. I'm not afraid of suicide when I'm walking the streets.

You have to be careful with gun statistics, because they love to lump in suicides with "gun deaths". Which makes places where guns are more readily available look worse in the "gun deaths" statistics, because in heavy gun controlled cities and states people tend to find other ways to off themselves. The focus on crime in SF right now is probably due to the stabbing of the Cash App founder Bob Lee a few days ago. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-04-06/i-just-lost-my-best-friend-friends-family-mourn-cash-app-founder-after-fatal-stabbing-in-san-francisco I agree with @Blugolds11 above where he says "they will want to take the next step, and the next step, and the next step", which is why this is my position on the matter:

My wife just bought a set of Tupperware at Target. It looks and feels just like the stuff we had when I was a kid in the 70s/80s. Apparently you don't have to go to a party to buy it anymore. https://www.target.com/p/tupperware-heritage-get-it-all-set-30pc-set/-/A-86507159?preselect=85452290#lnk=sametab

Exactly. And as far as I know god never said a word in support of either side.

Also a good thing to note is that if you buy/sell options in a IRA or 401K you don't have to worry about the taxes on the gains.

Ok, my statement was a little too broad. Obviously it isn't even possible to read "everything". But you should search out different views, make an effort to break out of your bubble, and read things that have some value even if biased. Try to see the bias and see if you can extract the value and ignore the non-sense. Also try to see things from the point of view of people you disagree with. If there is no value in something at all (i.e. CNBC) then I agree you should ignore it completely. I do think ZH has some value as long as you keep the source in mind as you are reading it. It's one of those sites that I skim the headlines and read an article here and there.

Well the system IS corrupt. Collapse may or may not happen in your lifetime though. You need to realize that the system has always been corrupt, so ask yourself what is different now? You should read everything, but believe nothing 100%. You should hedge your bets a little both ways. If you don't think it will collapse, prepare a little for the collapse, and if you think it will collapse, prepare for the case where it doesn't. No one knows what will happen, the system can get carried along by momentum for a very long time, or it could collapse this decade, or we could all be killed by AI in the next 5 years. Read everything, believe nothing, prepare for everything you can think of, and enjoy the ride. I've always enjoyed ZH, but have never taken it as any type of gospel. “I don't believe anything, but I have many suspicions.” ― Robert Anton Wilson

The largest slices are categories containing multiple positions. Real Estate is two homes with 100% equity (no mortgages) Crypto is around 90% BTC & ETH and some small positions in others. Energy is CVE.WS, EPSN, GENGF, PBRA, SRUUF, VTS, WMB ALT Asset managers is almost all Brookfield, with some BX & PAX RIETs are AIV, AIV calls, CLPR, HIW Healthcare is ALNY, ISRG, SDGR, SWAV And of course CASH is cash. The second chart is the same data with only stocks (crypto, cash, and real estate removed).

Of course. Although I have always been far more anti-authority than my surrounding culture, there is a chance I would have bucked the system and gotten myself killed. I will never know.

It's just my opinion vs. his. The universe doesn't care. A college professor can tell me what the benefit of eugenics would be, and even if he convinces me that he is correct I'll still value human freedom over utilitarianism. But again, the universe doesn't care.

Sometimes you need the tide to go out to find this stuff out. But with crypto it's hard to sympathize with the victims. I know they are completely ignorant, but shouldn't their lack of knowledge make them hesitent to invest large sums of money? "The money was intended for her grandchildren's education, but she lost all but CA $10,000 ($7,300). 'The whole thing was based on trust,' she told CBC News last year. 'What Aiden has done, I think, is awful — and I don't know how he can live with himself.'" Crypto is supposed to be trustless. If you are investing a ton of money based on trust into crypto, you are doing wrong.

I'm all for this. As long as it's paid to anyone who has every personally been a slave and paid by anyone who has ever personally owned a slave. No one should be responsible for the actions of their ancestors. And even if you think they should be, my ancestors where literally dirt poor. My father grew up with no education, no electricity, no plumbing, in a dirt floor hut his family shared with his aunt and her family. His father grew up homeless and familyless on the streets by himself at age 10. None of my ancestors were responsible for anything to do with slavery, so I shouldn't ever have to pay a penny in taxation for anything like this. Imagine being held financially responsible for the actions of your ancestors? Now imagine being held financially responsible for the actions of someone else's ancestors? Some people have the nerve to call all of this "justice". I call it theft.

My advice is try to consolidate everything to one brokerage. I have almost everything in Fidelity. Way back we used to have accounts at a number of different firms, and I found it too hard to keep track of, so I consolidated everything over to Fidelity where my 401K was. I rolled my wife's old 401ks over to a Fidelity Roth IRA at one point so even her accounts are there now too. I set her account giving me permission to view from my account, so I can view everything on one page. So now we have my 401k, our IRAs, our brokerage accounts, and we even use a Fidelity cash management account as our checking account. So I just track everything there in one spot. I also have other stuff but I track it all separately. I've got crypto (about 18% of net worth right now) which I track separately with a spreadsheet and I have real estate (around 35% of net worth) which is separate and I have one small account (about 1.5% of net worth) at Interactive Brokers which is managed by someone else for me and that I just look at separately. So when I figure out what my performance for the year is I ignore crypto, real estate, and the managed account and just look at Fidelity. Crypto bounces around like crazy and real estate you never really know exactly what it's worth anyway until you try to sell it.

1) Slavery is not okay with me or you (I think by your comments it is safe to presume). But in a society who thinks it's ok then slavery will be treated as if it's ok. The people who think otherwise will be called all the things I am now called when I say taxation isn't ok: Naive, dreamer, doesn't know how the world works, foolish, doesn't understand history, doesn't understand economics, etc, etc, etc. I still think that slavery would never be ended if it weren't for the industrial revolution. Once slavery was largely not needed, it was easy for people to be convinced to get rid of it. Without mechanization, people would never have admitted that making someone do work for you was wrong. It was just too convenient. The same way we all use our phones and ignore the children mining cobalt in the 3rd world. This will look barbaric in future generations. So if the industrial revolution hadn't happened you would either support slavery right now or most of the people around you would and you would be thought a fool. 2) Same with murdering natives. In that society you would be a lonely voice in opposition and you wouldn't matter. 3) Yes, even an individual can be correct with the entire world wrong. I look at morality as something that can be discovered by reason. Reason tells me that slavery is wrong and taxation is theft. Both of those things would have been laughed at a few hundred years ago, now only one of them is. A few hundred years from now? Who knows. Most people don't reason though, they adopt the morality which they are taught and always simply accept the things which are common in their society as good and necessary. If you want to change the world for the better you need to somehow convince people that you are correct. There is no other way. God certainly isn't going to do it for you. Although it is probably easier to package your opinions up into some religion then go out and proselytize for converts. People will believe anything if they think their religion requires it. Which is why Mohammad claimed to talk to god in a cave and Mr Smith claimed to find the golden plates, and some 3rd rate science fiction writer created scientology. Religion has always been one of the best ways to brainwash people (politics being the other).

It seems like you have a good sense of what you think is moral and what you think isn't, but that isn't good enough for you. You want something in a position of authority to tell you that you are correct. I'm perfectly fine knowing that there is no greater authority than my mind. The only thing that enforces any moral code is society itself. When a large number of people think the same thing is correct than for that society it IS correct. And when a large number of people think that some action is wrong, then for that society it IS wrong. That really is it. We ARE just tap dancing to the chemicals in our brains and in the brains of those around us. That bothers you for some reason. It doesn't bother me at all.

Thanks for the video. I think he's eventually going to be correct. I just don't think he's got the timeframe right. He thinks the dollar dies quickly in the next few months. I think it will happen gradually over the next few decades. I certainly hope that I am correct, because what he is predicting would be extremely messy and will certainly evolve much death and destruction world wide. I think (hope) the can keeps getting kicked down the road for a long time yet.

This is so true. I remember a story my parents told me about buying their 1st house in the mid 1970s (the house I grew up in). They ended up in a bidding war with another couple and ended up with the higher bid. Their purchase price was somewhere around $34k and the realtor told them after closing that they beat the other couple by $200. We lived in that house for 18 years and they sold it for 6 figures in the early 90s. In the end that $200 was completely insignificant.

What, did they forget to include the disclaimer? *This is not financial advice to buy or sell any investment, please do your own research before investing. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Blah, blah, blah, don't sue me.

I agree. K-8 is the only thing that should be required. Learn how to read and do basic math. High School should be more rigorous and not be for everyone. College should teach you your field of study for your career. Get the bellow average students out of school and into the work force to start learning a trade at 14yrs old. This will make high school more valuable for someone who wants a general education and be knowledgeable about the world. And removing the unnecessary fluff from a bachelors degree could give people back a year of their lives to enter the workforce as a professional and start earning/contributing a year earlier. It also gives liberal arts professors intent on brainwashing an entire generation of young adults far less power.