Like I talked about below, a burger, fries and a slice of pie costing $30 is completely shocking. I remember when fast food used to be cheap.
I just ran some rough numbers and at home I could make four burgers (including all components, condiments, topping, buns, etc), fries and an entire chocolate creme pie (again, including all ingredients) for about that same price. That is fucking insane.
It’s sad times when a burger, fries and a single slice of chocolate creme pie is more than $30 at a small chain fast food place.
And pundits wonder why people are upset. They’re pissed because 5 or 6 years ago that would’ve cost $10.
Simple.
I think something both rightists and leftists miss about CEOs is that a high-quality CEO unless they are truly exceptional like Jobs doesn’t help all that much, but a low-quality CEO is corporate suicide.
So (and empirical studies demonstrate this) avoiding having a terrible CEO is a lot more important for long-term company health than having someone really amazing.
I am extremely lucky in that using AI effectively requires one to be intelligent in exactly the ways that I am most perspicacious and effective (understanding large-scale data quickly, holding a lot in mind at once), while AI does not require or even penalizes the ways that I am not (math, complex syntax).
Got lucky, I guess. Other people in related fields are not gonna have that great a time, though. That is already quite clear.
What kind of world is it when a freakin’ chicken salad sandwich is $20?
It’s California so it’s gonna be expensive, but damn. I can make that at home for what, $2 total? That’s a 10x markup.
Immigration from the Third World is very bad for most countries. Not racism. Just looking at data.
All the clown-ass economists are like “vibecession” and “everyone is doing amazing, they are just lying and deluded about economic problems!” Meanwhile, a hamburger at a counter-serve restaurant that cost $8 before the pandemic is now $17.
And I’m fucking rich! So if it bothers me, it’s got to be absolutely brutal on those who are barely making it. Because even if they aren’t buying hamburgers in restaurants, they still are getting hit with those high grocery prices.
And that’s why people report bad economic sentiments.
Exactly. Property taxes are lower in California than Texas, but no matter what we pay ~$800 a month just to live here.
And we have no mortgage. Seems a bit crazy at times considering how little we get for those taxes.
If it had merely kept pace with inflation since 2012, that $187,000 home would be going for $271,000 today.
Instead, it is now going for $514,000 more than that, which is roughly a 189% above-inflation increase. But, yeah, sure the avocado toast is why millennials can’t buy homes.
Eh, that is only really true for mature companies. For start-ups and companies without a large revenue base stock sales absolutely do finance investment and capex. In fact, that’s the whole fucking purpose of them in the first place! Why would you write something this transparently wrong and stupid?
I hate this kind of smug but incorrect (but correct in some situations) clowninshness. We’ve allowed nitwits and pseudointellectuals to dominate all.
But TRANSITORY!
Those motherfuckers were so utterly wrong. Idiots.
I can’t speak for all of Europe, but certainly I feel very rich in the UK in a way I do not feel in the US. A lot of the sceptred isle is obviously shabby and declining. Even London has gone downhill a lot. It felt wealthy indeed (mutatis mutandis my own relative wealth) when I visited in 1989 or 1990. Now it has the atmosphere and sense of disarray befitting a third-tier American city in a lot of ways.
Europe is getting relatively poorer, and in many cases, absolutely poorer. Not all of it, but a whole lot of it. Krugman et al. are just wrong. They want to hold on to the fantasy.
Any idiot clown who thinks AI is “fake growth” because companies buy shit from one another does not understand even a little bit how economies work, how large corporations function, how they scale, what is involved in gigantic high-CapEx businesses, why circular buying and entangled supply chains are incredibly common1, nor why certain models not only make sense but are inevitable in certain fairly-predictable situations.
Jesus Christ, you fucking mooks. Read a book. Read anything. But mostly, just shut up.
The “transitory” disphit-ass fucknuggests were wrong at the time, wrong when they declared victory, wrong now, and will continue to be wrong in the future.
Transitory it was not. It was so annoying when Team Transitory was declaring victory when inflation was still 40% above the US historical norm. And it still is. Just shows that to most people, facts and reality do not matter even a little bit. Being on the right team does.
Assuming 2.5% inflation per year, in 2026 dollars that’s $340,000. Doesn’t seem quite as onerous then.
And if you paid an extra $400 per month on the mortgage reliably, it’d be $285,000 interest in 2026 dollars. People like to “do the math” but don’t actually do the math.