I’m an American liberal, and I just surrendered on behalf of Zimbabwe to an inebriated chipmunk. How you like that, Zimbabwe, being controlled by an inebriated chipmunk? Bet you don’t like that much, huh?

Do these get hard at some point?

I should play in other languages.

Doing this always makes people scream at me for being an out of touch elitist, but: the basket of {median house, new car, 2 kids to college} is more affordable today (51.5%) relative to median family income than it was in 1953 (52.3%) https://t.co/z6E41TWE5N pic.twitter.com/TzATNFUgGG

— Quantian (@quantian1) March 22, 2023

This is utter crap. It’s just complete dipshittery. Smart people think they can lie with impunity because they don’t usually encounter anyone more intelligent than they are.

Well, I am smarter than every single one of them and have read wayyyyyyyyyyyy more — which is lucky for all of you. Words have meanings, motherfuckers, and I know them all. To wit, lie number one:

The drawback to using family income measures is that they disregard persons living in nonfamily households, who tend to be disproportionately young or old.

Conversely, in some situations it is appropriate to exclude nonfamily households: for example, housing affordability. It is based on family income rather than household income, because nonfamily households are not typically buyers.

This clown is using “family” income rather than “household” income so that he can deliberately exclude those most affected by how much more expensive various life needs are now. That’s the first deception. The second bit of hokum is that the female labor participation rate roughly doubled since 1953, meaning the already-duplicitous “family income” is quite a different thing compositionally since that time. In other words, it takes more people earning more money to buy not even the same things available in 1953.

One of my points was covered more eloquently by someone else in another thread, so I will just stick that on down there at the bottom. But another very important factor this omits is health care costs. Toss that in and the calculus changes enormously. Of course, that’s exactly why it was left out.

Another issue is “Average college tuition rate.” Many colleges were completely free in 1953 so the average cost here is utterly meaningless. In most states, for a state school, your tuition would’ve been $0.

The US was also in recession in 1953. That probably also changes things a bit, but that’s incidental.

If what clown Quantian claims is in fact true, this would also not be true: “Millennials only hold 3% of total US wealth, and that’s a shockingly small sliver of what baby boomers had at their age.”

Here’s what I mentioned I’d put at the bottom — hedonic adjustments. This really distorts what is actually affordable.

Thread (1/16). How is that our economic statistics suggest workers have been making slow but steady progress in recent decades, while popular perception is that their family finances are coming under increasingly untenable pressure? I've been working on this, here's my answer:

— Oren Cass (@oren_cass) February 20, 2020

What puzzles me about doofballs like Quantian and his sophistry is attempting to figure out what they are trying to prove here? Do they just want to have us believe that Millennials and Gen Z are inherently lazy, and that’s why they are not buying houses nor building real wealth? What? I mean, they obviously have it much worse. An old girlfriend’s dad had his own apartment working part-time at a grocery store in the early 1960s, for fuck’s sake. That is completely impossible anywhere now.

Quantian is a liar. Reality tells a different story.

DPReview.com to close on April 10 after 25 years of operation.

The only good camera and related gear review site on the internet closing. No real surprise, after Amazon bought them. Companies in general hate unbiased review sites. Most are now gone — this was one of the last ones standing. Its disappearance be a terrible loss to the photography community.

There are entirely too many so-called liberals attempting to surrender on behalf of Ukraine. What the hell is up with them? If they are so invested in that outcome, they should go over there and fight on the Russian side.

I’m sure Wagner would appreciate having some more bodies to spam across the lines in a human wave attack.

seen too many innocent, simple people go down after ordering pizza when they’re desperate for pizza in places where no one actually has fresh pizza ingredients, or is even 110% sure what a pizza looks like

— Faine Greenwood (@faineg) March 21, 2023

Indeed. I ordered a pizza in China once. Once. That was a large fucking mistake. I’m not sure what I got, but that was not a pizza, had nothing to do with pizza, was made by not a single person who’d ever even seen or even read about a pizza — and it tasted like licking the bottom of a dumpster.

That was sometime in 2005. Matters might’ve improved since then. At least it was cheap, though.

Ignoring all geopolitical and realpolitik considerations, Ian Welshian “roll over and surrender” for Ukraine fails the very first moral test it comes across. After all, which people should just allow their lands to be invaded, their population to be killed, their children to be stolen, solely for the reason that having this occur displeases the United States? Or for any reason at all?

Welsh and his ilk are all vile ghouls. Just terrible humans who pretend to care but only if it somehow harms the US (which in this case it doesn’t even do that).

I won’t link to anything of Ian Welsh’s, but he continues his usual clownish misunderstanding of events in Ukraine — having never spoken to an actual Ukrainian person — and also does not really understand Russia’s impetus, either.

Once Russia decided to invade, Ukraine was going to suffer either way. And no, it had very little to do with NATO encroachment. That was just a propaganda excuse, like our “Iraq had WMDs” claptrap. Now, the best outcome remaining is keeping Russia tied down in Ukraine so it’s unable to invade other states that would trigger an actual full-on war with NATO. This will of course be very bad for Ukraine but good for all the rest of Europe and the United States. Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Moldova, and Poland would’ve been next on Russia’s hit list. Because of Ukraine’s resistance, that is very unlikely to happen any time soon.

Ian Welsh has a fucking terrible, child-level (and not even a bright child’s) understanding of what Russia’s motivations and goals were in invading Ukraine, is utterly clueless about how warfare works, and has no idea at all what the stakes are for not resisting this invasion. Just a total dipshit in every way it’s possible for someone to be.