Political Economy

CA FL

Chill Evil, Political Economy

The Dream of a Florida Retirement Is Fading for the Middle Class.

In only a short time Florida got extremely expensive. It used to be vastly cheaper than California. Now it’s only slightly cheaper, comparing like-for-like areas, etc. And yes, I do know; I’ve now lived in both places.

One of the things I liked about Florida-that-was is that it was one of the few places in the country where lower-middle-class people and the rich lived right next to each other1. Up until about 10 years ago there, that was widely true. Now neighborhoods like that have mostly disappeared.

Too bad. I liked the old Florida better.

  1. A colleague of mine from the UK commented on this, and that it reminded him of Australia in that respect

Hacker Brain Lacker

Chill Annoying, Clowns, Political Economy

It’s unusual that there is one person in this Hacker News comments thread who actually understands how housing market pricing works.

US will ban Wall Street investors from buying single-family homes | Hacker News

Typically, there is no one. Observationist is correct. Institutional investors deliberately act as market makers because they have more analysis, more money, more ability to hold, and greater resources in general. In the housing market — which is small-volume and illiquid with high transactions costs — this matters a lot.

Literally every other person in the entire comments has zero idea how pricing in the housing market functions nor how institutional investors can and do manipulate it despite purchasing a relatively-small percentage of available stock.

I’m always surprised by how fucking dumb the “smart” people at places like Hacker News in fact are.

The Times

Chill Political Economy, Politics, War

Priorities for the new year:

1) Constrain Russia and China enough to keep them from steamrolling most of Europe and Asia, respectively.

2) Prevent third world Islamic migration from destroying Western Civilization.

3) Reverse the trend in the US of anti-wind, anti-solar and anti-battery sentiment. This antipathy to the inevitable future is more dangerous over the long term than what Trump is doing directly.

Cripes, we have a lot of shit to do. Best get started.

Shaped

Chill Evil, Political Economy

Ask an economist, they’ll tell you that this not happening because “reasons.” But it’s the most salient single fact that has shaped our present poor political outcomes.

Uned

Chill Annoying, Clowns, Political Economy

Oh, fucking clown. Real product compensation is not a good measure of inflation or compensation as the average worker experiences it. This is just an over-educated attempt to sneak something in that most people won’t know what it means to make himself look clever while dunking on his enemies. Well I’m smarter than he is by far and here’s why it’s bunk.

RPC is based on the Producer Price Index, which is a measure of the price of what firms sell. The worker & family actually experiences inflation as the Consumer Price Index (or at least far closer to), which is rent, food, healthcare and all those essentials of living. So, check this out: if the price of making things rises faster than the CPI, real product compensation will make the worker look much better off even if their actual cost of living isn’t improving much at all.

In other words, as usual this econ is attempting to con you. After all, it’s right in the name of the profession. It’s what most of them are paid to do.

There’s about five other things wrong with this RPC way of measure this but I just don’t have time to write about them all. A clownish asinine dipshit is all this dude is. Should’ve gotten a real education somewhere, but probably doesn’t have the brain to handle it.

Grim

Chill Political Economy

I suspect the majority of the reaction against AI is akin to when factory workers were first substantially replaced by machines followed not long after by most of the remaining jobs being shipped off to Mexico and China. It feels the same. It’s just the first time knowledge workers and “creatives” have been hit in a really large way.

And they’re not reacting well. I understand, though. I just wish they’d had more sympathy when their “inferiors1” had their livelihoods eviscerated years ago.

They cared little and did nothing. Now the reaper is coming for them too.

  1. As they see them.

AI Ayo

Chill Political Economy, Tech

MIT report: AI can already replace nearly 12% of the U.S. workforce.

I agree with that assessment. No matter what you’ve read — particularly if you’re on the left and predisposed to hate tech and any form of knowledge advancement that doesn’t relate to a new, innovative gender — the newest AI models are quite good at many things. Certainly they could replace most of the juniors in my own field that I’ve worked with over the years and many of the mid-level folks too.

No one is reckoning with how quickly this fact is being weaponized by the MBA class or that it’s already demonstrably occurring. Predictably, economists are and will be in denial about this at least a decade after it is already happening.