Dinar

You missed the reference, if memory serves me properly both Chaim Grade and Tomas Sowell were raised by widow and grandparents respectively.

So, it makes me very perturbed, but much less than the single mother for two main reasons: the single mother lives off me while these guys do not. The more important reason is that the single mother propogates the cycle of poverty and underclass, she will not raise future Thomas Sowell or Chaim Grade, at best her kids will be unskilled workers, at worst future convicts and teenage mothers on welfare.

Common, a 2 bedroom for a single guy? I lived in a studio when I was single, so did my friends. This is also very area specific, in some areas given the cost of living, $15 an hour is a fantastic wage, in others barely enough to make ends meet. As to your question, a decade or so ago, the Economist magazine quoted a study that claimed that a single mother with 2 kids would need an income of more than $100K per year, before your after-tax income would exceed government benefits that she would get if she would choose to stay on welfare. My guess is that very generous government benefits particularly over the 2020-2021 turned a lot of people off work. Not having to worry about paying rent - no evictions did not help either.

I own and would buy today: FB (Facebook), Safran (SAF FP), Charter (CHTR - via LEAPs), New England Realty (NEN), CP (Canadian Pacific Railroad), FND (Floor and Decor), Heineken Holdings (HEIO NA), MSFT (Microsoft - a bit conflicted on this one - cost basis 117 in April of 2019 but LEAPs are attractive), Alphabet (GOOG), Davide Campari (CPR IM), Swedish Match (SWMA SS), British American Tobacco (BTI), Aena (AENA SM), L'Oreal (bought in spring of 2017, still think that it is very attractive), RELX (RELX PLC), Cranswick (CWK LN), Robertet (RBT FP). I own but would probably not buy today: ODFL, CRL, ALC, MNPP, Christian Dior (CDI FP), Rentokil (RTO LN) - I am miffed at the largely stock deal, Hingham Savings (HIFS), Dominos (DPZ), MSCI (MSCI Inc).

Assalam aleikum! When you are in NYC, let me know, I would love to grab a drink. I am older than you are - born in the late 70s, but still remember trips with my grandfather to the Alai bazari. I grew up in Tashkent, lived near the tractor factor - old Tashmi. You?

Thank you very much, will do.

I do not believe that you can finance commercial real estate at a 3.5% 30 year mortgage rate, even multifamily. Yes, for oneself one can get a mortgage for a house at 3.5%, but not for a $100MM building as far as I know. You also have liquidity issues and jurisdictional risks with bricks that are much bigger than with shares. To each his own.

Why? If real estate deserves to rate a 4% cap rate which is 25x multiple, why not companies with growth = inflation?

I was lucky since: a) I was born in the 1970s rather than when Stalin was running the country; b) I was an only child of very hard working and accomplished parents - my mother ran an IT department for a global exporter and had 40 people reporting to her, and yet she had to work another job as well to make ends meet; my father worked two jobs. I was pretty sheltered, although when one reads Balzac and Shakespeare and Dickens at the age of 10 and sees how the poor in their stories lived and then compare it to your life in the USSR, well, the comparison was not in favor of the USSR. The shops were empty - literally (no cheese, no meat, no fish, no sausages, no clothing, no books, no toilet paper). You could not really say anything anti-government, and these days the atmosphere on American campuses and large corporations with political correctness is similar. You do not get arrested in the US for saying certain things, yet, but... Crime was pretty bad - to survive most people broke laws, and it is a slippery slope from stealing from the government to stealing from other people, to robbery, murder. Corruption was insane and everywhere. No respect for human life, we were all cannon fodder for the glories of communism. Afghan war was good example. My grandfather was jailed for being a Latin spy - whatever that means in the early 1930s. He was lucky, he was released after seven months in jail and immediately left for the other side of the USSR. Adults felt it much more than I did, I was twelve when I left the workers's paradise. Had I been born 50 years earlier, would have been orders of magnitude worse. Stalin's purges and orchestrated starvation in Ukraine killed tens of millions.

Ball faced lies. Marx's utopia was not achieved not because there was not a global revolution. Marxism failed because it violates human nature and logic. What is the point of work if there is no reward? How do you allocate scarce resources? They whitewash/ignore the evils of communism and its consequences even where mass murder was not committed. They conveniently forget that every communist country had massive repression and most had mass executions that would make Nazis pale in comparison. Communists killed more people than Nazis did. The reason that communism is required on a global scale is because people flee communist countries at the earliest opportunity. So if the entire world is communist, there is nowhere to flee. The basic tenet of Marxism is to each according to his needs and from each according to his abilities. Think about how that would work in practice? Everyone or a lot of people want caviar, lobster, furs, jewelry and living next to Central Park in a five bedroom apartment overlooking the park so how do you allocate the scarce resources? If people live the same regardless of how hard and well they work, what is the incentive to work? They do not explain the consequences of no reward for differential labor, and consequences for abolition of private property. In the USSR, there was an article in the penal code that would allow authorities to jail you for not working, or for being homeless, etc...

I spent my childhood in the former USSR, and read this book and also books by Varlam Shalamov. It is a great book in my opinion, and yes, communism is always terrifying, it's just the degree varies between Stalin and Brezhnev, but it is just different degrees of hell.

I own bti and swmay, agree with the quote

Growth on the top-line is accelerating, as the transition from print to digital is basically over, the hit to exhibitions business from Covid-19 is in the rear view mirror, and the main division - risk is growing. So from 4% on the top line, to 5-6% on the top line, 6-7% on operating income and low double digit EPS growth between leverage and buy-backs. Why did you sell?

RELX PLC - RELX is the ticker

I would buy a basket of the following European companies (assuming your relative can avoid touching it for 10 years): Robertet (RBT FP), L'Oreal (OR FP), Davide Campari (CPR IM), Aena (AENA SM), Heineken Holdings (HEIO NA), I would also make a half allocation to Dior (owns LVMH). If you relative is willing to look at British pound, I would suggest RELX PLC & British American Tobacco as well as Cranswick PLC. I own all of the companies that I mentioned. I own a big position in Dior but I bought it in 2012 and I am nervous about Chinese economic situation and impact on consumption. If he is willing to own USD denominated assets, I own and like Charter (CHTR), NEN (but he should own it only on swap, otherwise tax headaches are insane for a non-US investor), Dominos Pizza, Facebook. In Swiss Franc, Lonza and Alcon are somewhat attractive. In Swedish krona, I own Swedish Match and I think that it is quite attractive. In Canada, I like both Canadian National and Canadian Pacific. In the US I also own MSFT, but I am hesitant to recommend it - bought around $117 in April of 2019.