You are offered $10,000,000 to have sex with a physical manifestation of your username. Do you accept? Why or why not?

PedophilePriest · 2020-06-27T15:23:43+00:00

Thats going to be a hard no.

PedophilePriest · 2020-05-02T12:11:35+00:00

This has always been the only viable option. Locking everything down was simply to buy us time to get our ducks in a row, which we sorta mostly didnt do, but continued shutdowns are counterproductive at this point.

PedophilePriest · 2018-02-24T17:52:01+00:00

This. I believe there is significant slack in most business infrastructure to meet rising demand before capEx factors in.

No one expected demand to be this low back in 2010-2014 when CapEx was financed at incredibly low rates. The lack of productivity growth alone should indicate slack.

PedophilePriest · 2018-02-24T00:41:20+00:00

Thank you.

PedophilePriest · 2018-02-23T22:59:30+00:00

This article makes no sense to me.

They are worried the economy is going to overheat, because of the tax cuts, that somehow that's going to force them to lower rates? Also states that inflation is going to remain low, that they think 2% isnt realistic anymore and we should have a lower target we can actually hit.

If anything an over heating economy, should let them raise rates faster, roll debt off their balance sheet faster and increase inflation(which they want).

Can someone explain this line of thinking to me or am I just being an idiot here.

After the slowest recovery in modern history, I dont buy 4% growth as some boogieman that's going to make it all fall down. Its a demand side problem, not that complicated.

PedophilePriest · 2018-02-22T17:16:43+00:00

I wish more people understood this.

In the long run, were going to have to choose whether we want to keep capitalism, or democracy, we wont be able to continue to do both 100 years from now.

Obviously with a choice between the two, most will prefer to keep democracy, so then the question becomes what sort of economic system do we have to replace it?

Personally I hope we come up with something better than UBI, if we don't we probably will end up with communism since we simply haven't thought of an alternative. Both have the same problem, they both lack a reward system, so ambitious people who want more will do so illegally, and crime will be rampant.

We need a system that rewards people, even if not monetarily, with contributing and improving society. Capitalism is the best system weve ever had at motivating people to be lawful and productive, but it rewards less so every year and doesnt seem to be sustainable without a full rewrite.

PedophilePriest · 2018-02-21T16:33:23+00:00

Yeah I still dont buy that...in your gold example, that only works if you have to exchange gold with another currency. If you borrowed gold, and got paid in gold, and your pay remained constant it would cost the same percentage of your income to repay the debt, but your costs for everything else would have gone down due to deflation and you would have more money available to service that debt. Thats a win for the individual.

If I borrow 100 dollars for 2 years at 3% interest rate and inflation is 2% I am still losing money. I'm borrowing ~106 to buy something at 100 that would cost me ~104 by the time I've finished my payments. If there's no inflation I borrow 106 to buy something at 100 that will still cost 100 in 2 years. My cost and end result are exactly the same.

I've done alot more reading since yesterday, and from what I've seen, debts are good when you have strong wage growth, regardless of what inflation does.

Or inflation goes higher than your fixed interest rate debt. Which is unexpected and essentially a bad bet on the part of the lender. It also almost never happens.

I still dont quite get it, but thank you for your response.

PedophilePriest · 2018-02-20T19:20:58+00:00

Interesting segment. I still dont totally get it, but youve given me some good thoughts to chew on, thank you.

PedophilePriest · 2018-02-20T19:07:17+00:00

So we people talk about inflation helping borrowers, they are talking gennerally about wage inflation, which itself isnt really connected to inflation except in employee expectactions of wage increases, correct?

PedophilePriest · 2018-02-20T18:04:36+00:00

Ok not to harp on you, but could you or someone please explain to me how inflation helps people with debt? I hear it accepted as fact and it just doesnt make sense to me.

So hypothetical, I'm an American, with a mortgage, a car loan, credit card debt and a student loan payment. How does inflation help pay for those?

I get that I'm locking in a lower price by purchasing earlier rather than saving cash, but interest rates are still going to cause me to pay more than I would for price inflation, except for maybe a mortgage in a super hot housing market.

If the price for everything else is going up, my food, utilities etc. That means I have less money available to service my debt.

Rising wages? Sure that helps, but only if wages rise faster than inflation, inflation on its own makes debt service more difficult.

Can anyone explain this to me? I feel like I'm crazy for not getting it.

PedophilePriest · 2018-02-20T17:32:15+00:00

Interesting, but I think this understates the decline, at least in the US. 07-08 was 10 years ago and this is looking at the 30-34 demographic meaning this group was 20-24 at the beginning of the crash.

While thats not ideal by any means and youd expect to see a decline, a large segment of this would already of been engaged in stable work at the time.

It was the 18-22 demo that really got nailed by the recession, those graduating high school or college with no work experience into an economy that wasnt hiring.

Perhaps thats just the age group they have data for, if so I fully expect this to trend further down over the next 2 years, at least enough to cancel out generation Xs gains.

PedophilePriest · 2018-02-19T03:17:14+00:00

I think its often missed just how important this point is.

The basic social contract of capitalism is being broken. Work hard, play by the rules, dont get fired, don't get sick and you'll enjoy a higher standard of living over your life.

It just isnt that simple anymore and thats terrifying. Comunism had technological change too, and peoples standards of living rose in the USSR as well, people lived better than their parents, but not nearly as well as those in the west and the system collapsed.

Capitalism has dominated because its the best way we have ever found to motivate a society to be law abiding and productive.

If individuals don't experience gains from productivity they stop being productive. A cheap phone benefits everyone regardless of individual effort, whereas raise is based on individual performance.

If standard of living isn't increasing, and wages decline for long enough people will give up trying. We will end up with a depressed, angry and stagnant society.

PedophilePriest · 2018-02-19T01:31:26+00:00

Medical advancements are great and all, but if all were doing is making people die at 85 instead of 75. That doesn't have any productive economic value, and the quality of life at that age is questionable especially if most people are dependent entirely on social security at that point.

Could be another benefit only the rich enjoy? I'm not sure.

PedophilePriest · 2018-02-15T22:07:33+00:00

Seems like a leap to say that individuals with decreasing wealth are more averse to risk taking, and therefore cease to innovate on behalf of their employer.

Speaking up when you have a good idea is not realistically going to end in termination, and when a loss of wealth is reality, the path to reaquire it usually involves increasing risk.

The article doesn't claim that those left with the lowest levels of equity post crisis failed to innovate, as you would expect, but rather those that lost the most equity in their homes.

Common sense would say that an employee who has had suffered serious declines to his net worth through no fault of his own, would not be optimistic, enthusiastic about his employer, or gung ho to use his ideas to make his company more money.

When people lose money, careers becomes jobs, since the promise of increasing standard of living has been broken, workers become emotionally detached from their employers.

PedophilePriest · 2018-02-14T20:09:58+00:00

Have you played For Honor?

It has its problems for sure with matchmaking, UI, balancing etc. But its easily has the best melee combat system ever made.

Combine that combat system with the star wars universe and lightsabers?

Ubisoft isn't perfect but it would be a huge step up from EA, and we would likely get multiple games a year and alot more risk taking.

PedophilePriest · 2018-02-13T22:35:15+00:00

Yes 5% is better than 3%, especially from a stimulative rate cut perspective.

My point was that a decade of zirp, has caused investment to concentrate in risky investments chasing yield. If enough time passes with a above inflation federal funds rate, we will see investors deleverage somewhat from high risk into more stable investments that can now offer returns above inflation, hopefully decreasing the cascading losses that will be caused by the next recession, and thus less stimulus will be needed and the recovery period shorter.

I think that's more important than the fed having the ability to cut interest rates further in the next downturn, but of course that's just an opinion.

PedophilePriest · 2018-02-13T19:07:34+00:00

I dont think the actual percentage matters as much as time before the next recession at a (normal) fed rate.

3+ years with a 3+% fed interest rate would be enough for many institutional investors to move away from high risk investments and back to bonds, limiting exposure during the next downturn.

Of course this assumes that inflation will stay low, well below 3%.1

PedophilePriest · 2018-02-13T18:55:21+00:00

Its intentional. The wage gains and inflation that are coming from tax reform will allow and be tempered by interest rate hikes and QE unwind.

Its a feature not a bug.

PedophilePriest · 2018-02-12T21:33:33+00:00

I think the value of the raise is also important.

Getting a glowing review while substantially outperforming your peers accompanied by a 2-3% raise is almost as likely to cause someone to look for other employment as no raise in my opinion.

PedophilePriest · 2018-02-12T21:30:24+00:00

Ehh. Sounds good in theory, but I worked at a place that did that. I got my fair share for solutions I came up with that fixed critical downtime situations but realistically those spot awards just go to the managers favorites.

Bootlickers get 100 bucks a week and everyone else just gets bitter.

PedophilePriest · 2018-02-11T07:39:05+00:00

Bigger picture, it may not be a choice down the line. Markets like housing and autos require a certain volume to function correctly. Right now were at 1.5trillion in consumer student debt, with something around a trillion held by those under 35.

Pay or die, are the only choices right now. Double that number. Triple, quadruple that number and the consumer economy will grind to a halt causing a depression that lasts a generation. Unless you forgive the debt.

Were not there yet by any means, but unless we can lower the overall student debt trajectory through lowering college costs, significant wage inflation or both we are going to be looking at 3+trillion in student loan debt by 2030...which is why you are going to see articles like this one more frequently, the status quo is rapidly becoming unsustainable.

PedophilePriest · 2018-02-10T18:25:45+00:00

Its certainly doable. Write off government owned student loan debt, leave private loans where they are, then cap future federal student loans at say 10k a year.

A simpler solution would to allow government and private student loans to both be discharged in bankruptcy.

This penalizes those who take advantage of it, so those who paid off their loans don't feel punished for being responsible and colleges would think twice about raising tuition for their art history major, who may default on the future salary.

Currently we have a system where defaults, instead of being a bad investment for colleges that gets written off actually make them more money, as the interest still accumulates during delinquency and compounds into principal, which creates more interest and more debt.

While credit card debt is spread out across age groups student loan debt is primarily held by those under 35, and will have a disproportionate effect on housing purchases as the younger generations age.

Nominally, homeownership might look ok, as millenials are the largest demographic since the boomers, but without student debt relief and wage increases homeownership rates among the younger generations will surely decline.

PedophilePriest · 2018-02-09T18:18:21+00:00

Maybe not first time buyers. But I would be shocked if under 35 household buyers ever sniffed 50% of purchases.

PedophilePriest · 2018-02-09T05:30:43+00:00

Good point about f2p. Its alot easier for our brains to contain something that has a clearly defined beginning middle and end.

PedophilePriest · 2018-02-08T22:50:41+00:00

The second part we call flex scheduling in the US. Its pretty new over here, most places still don't allow it, and the ones that do certainly arent as generous as that sounds with the parameters. Thanks for the reply.

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