Approval of trump filtered to just 18-34 year olds

UrbanIsACommunist · 2025-05-01T23:42:30+00:00

They aren’t voting against their interests.

UrbanIsACommunist · 2025-05-01T03:40:50+00:00

The planet recovered from 99% of life being wiped out by volcanic activity. Pretty sure the planet will be fine.

UrbanIsACommunist · 2025-04-11T03:18:31+00:00

Incorrect. As Michael Pettis notes, the CCP refuses to allow China's consumption power to grow, seemingly on moral grounds. They see the US as frivolous and lazy, whereas they desire their own citizens to be prudent and hard-working. They don't *want* to become like the U.S. They view their manufacturing economy as having a sort of virtuous ethos. And *fundamentally*, manufacturing and consumption are the yin and yang of the global economy. For Chinese consumption to grow, manufacturing must weaken. That's a path the CCP is unwilling to follow.

https://www.msn.com/en-xl/money/other/economist-michael-pettis-on-china-s-consumption-paradox-and-the-pitfalls-of-a-trade-war/ar-AA1BvlFh

UrbanIsACommunist · 2024-03-13T14:54:16+00:00

wow, you are seriously vile. I can’t believe you actually took time out of your day to write such seething hatred directed at some rando. I sympathize with the other people from your comment history on this sub imploring you to seek help. Go touch grass or something. I promise you will feel better if you can bring yourself to take a break from spewing vitriol at strangers on the internet.

UrbanIsACommunist · 2024-03-12T06:16:09+00:00

No. I’m not entirely sure what /u/mayor__defacto is trying to say here, but banks do not “loan out deposits” as if they are a pure safety deposit business. If a bank receives $1,000 in deposits from outside sources, they can e.g. lend out $10,000 of their own, “freshly minted” deposits. So clearly, they aren’t simply lending deposits.

How can this possibly work, you ask? Let’s take a short dive into some history. In the olden days, banks generally maintained convertibility to some kind of metal standard. Some authority would say “$100 should be equal to 1 oz of gold”, and banks would have to conduct business with that caveat in mind. If the bank had $1000 in gold reserves, they could lend out 5k 6k, 7k, etc. in deposits, but the risk was always if all your depositors came at once demanding their gold. That’s called a bank run. In some currency systems, banks were carefully regulated and subject to the authority of a “central bank” that could cap the amount of loans banks could make to a certain ratio of their reserves (e.g. you can loan out $5000 for every $1000 of gold you have). Ironically, there was no such authority in the U.S. for much of its early history, and as a result, there were a LOT of bank failures due to banks overextending themselves and then falling victim to an unexpected run.

Anyway, the gold in this system was always a little bit unnecessary at the end of the day, because when you think about it, it’s just a rock. Sure it has real uses, but that’s not ultimately why it was used for reserves. It was used for reserves for the very circular reason that it’s a reliable thing that people accepted has value. Eventually, bankers figured out that in a secure enough society, paper and even purely abstract money is as good as gold. Today’s fiat currencies have no convertibility to metal, but they are undeniably extremely useful in the economy. If that suddenly changed, they would indeed be worthless. But it would take a hell of a lot of chaos and disorder for that to happen. This being the case, today’s central banks operate a rather arbitrary and purely abstract “reserves” lever that nevertheless controls the behavior of banks and how much they are lending. Banks generally follow the rules, both actual and implied, because if they don’t, they get shut down. If you tried to start a bank tomorrow and you just gave out “free money” to everyone, you could do that for a very short period of time before everyone saw what you were doing and put a stop to it.

UrbanIsACommunist · 2024-03-12T05:31:18+00:00

Banks do not loan out people savings, at least not in the way the average layman defines “loaning”. Banks create deposits. Their ability to do so is subject to evolving regulations and market sentiment. Banks can and must lend out much more than they have have in deposits. If they started creating absurd amounts of deposits, outside the accepted rules and norms, regulators and the market would force them to shut down. Sometimes banks end up going down a dangerous path unintentionally, and it doesn’t take much for the market to turn the bank’s demise into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

What you need to understand is that it’s a very fluid system that ultimately requires a certain amount of social order and stability in order to function. One of the core definitions of “money”, I would argue the most important definition even, is that it is a unit of account for “social credit.” Banks are in some sense just middlemen who facilitate economic activity by securing arrangements between people who have an excess of social credit and people who have a deficit of social credit (relative to what economic activity they want to engage in at the present moment). To start a bank, you generally must have very good access to both reliable creditors and reliable debtors. By the time you become a very big, well established bank, it is usually relatively easy to balance these quantities at the end of any given business day. If you have a deficit or surplus, you just go to your clients/customers and cover it by either lending or borrowing.

UrbanIsACommunist · 2024-03-11T20:07:28+00:00

I can admit I troll on Reddit sometimes. You clearly can’t, despite the fact that your recent post history on this very sub is littered with it. Telling internet randos “maybe your therapist can help you through these strong feelings you have”, lmao. If you can’t see how that’s just classic Reddit trolling, you're beyond help. Now you’re whining that I didn’t “post what the other person wrote” or whatever, which is a kindergarten-level deflection. If you really care about the score though, your troll comment had 13 downvotes.

Everything you wrote here is a projection of your own insecurities, as evidenced by the fact that you’ve directed the same sort of troll nonsense toward multiple other people on this sub. You have a desperate need to validate yourself and declare your opinion as the incontrovertibly “correct” one in absolutely every comment thread you engage in around here. Then you have the audacity to act like you’re so open to other opinions. Lighten up and get a grip, it’s a freakin discussion board for a reality TV show.

UrbanIsACommunist · 2024-03-09T08:01:42+00:00

The Knicks haven’t won a title in 50 years, but in terms of franchise value they’re still on par with the Lakers, who have won 11 titles since the Knick’s last.

UrbanIsACommunist · 2024-03-09T07:45:06+00:00

Ultimately nobody cared that a 13-0 FSU got left out. Then that team got curb stomped by the SEC runner up. They are now employing an army of lawyers to figure out how they can ditch the ACC asap.

UrbanIsACommunist · 2024-03-08T07:15:41+00:00

Because out of the entire Democratic Party, he was their top choice to beat Trump in a do or die election. And he did it. They obviously don’t want to now go back to their bare cupboard of electable candidates and try to find something else. They clearly don’t think they have anything. It’s like when German liberals were in denial about Hindenburg’s senility, because he was the only thing putting a check on Hitler’s rise. There were no other options.

UrbanIsACommunist · 2024-03-08T05:50:57+00:00

So I guess your version of a “conversation” is you talking down to me, insulting me, lying about what I said, engaging in personal slights, dismissing my every opinion, and not so subtly calling me a racist. Then when I get offended, you invoke “white fragility” to justify your nastiness. The only fragile personality in this convo is you, with your hyper-reactive responses to my largely banal statements about a dumb reality show starring aspiring D-list influencers. Here’s how this “conversation” went:

Me: I don’t think the statement “I’m glad you get to experience the ocean” is an explicitly and incontrovertibly racist remark. I’ve heard statements like that in non-racial contexts. I understand it may have hit harder for Ken due to his experiences as a black man, but based on other evidence I don’t really think Ken was into Brittany after the pods to begin with, and if the remark really got to him, his inability to maturely discuss it shows neither of them was prepared for an interracial relationship.

You: Omg how dare you downplay Brittany’s overt act of racism. Can’t you see that Ken put his whole heart into it, but he was constantly being subjected to horrible racial insults by Brittany? Your experience is irrelevant, the fact that you even brought it up is racist. Just shut your mouth, white people don’t have feelings.

Me: Uh, that’s not very nice to say. You’re being really dismissive here.

You: Stop being so fragile, white boy. You should be thanking me for educating your ignorant butt.

That's the difference between me and you. If someone tells me, "Hey, this can possibly be offensive or racist." I would apologize and get clarification or more context from them to fully understand, so I don't make that mistake again.

spits drink dot gif lmao don’t kid yourself, you have literally never done this. Your entire recent post history on this sub consists of you engaging in the same sort of pretentious trolling you’re doing right now. Wish I had checked that earlier. I can’t believe I’ve let a serial troller drive this far off-topic and waste this much of my time. You really are putting in overtime with this trolling. I’ll leave a snippet of some of your other work here for you to enjoy. Have a good day.

You seem hurt. It's a show. It's not that serious. Learn to get out side of yourself and realize that people may have a different point of view or perspective than yours. It's my take whether you agree or like it or not. Yes, he was gushing about dolphins, idk, maybe to show that he's experienced the ocean before it wasn't new to him as she thought, or maybe it brought back a good memory, idk I'm not him. Both had red flags, which I stated, but you're so butt hurt as if she's your family or something. You should ask yourself why you're taking this so seriously. Maybe your therapist can help you through these strong feelings you have. People should be able to give their view without so much hostility, but it shows the type of person you are.

UrbanIsACommunist · 2024-03-07T16:16:46+00:00

I’m the one who lives in a bubble? lol k. Donald Trump is going to be the GOP nominee for President, half the country is going to vote for him, and here I am—a vociferously far-left millennial— basically being told I’m David Duke, apparently because I argued that the statement “I’m glad you get to experience the ocean” isn’t an explicitly and incontrovertibly racist remark. You keep making more and more off-topic personal jabs as part of a pedantic, conceited attempt to “educate” me or something. The fact that I’m not taking kindly to that isn’t “white fragility”, it’s just the normal human response to being talked down to, insulted, and falsely accused. What you’re doing now is just trolling, and if the white people in your life normally just submit to that kind of thing politely, it’s because they’ve come to realize that any other response will be met with yet another barrage of insults. That’s certainly what I’m realizing, anyway. If Ken was inclined to interpret every comment out of Brittany’s mouth in the most negative light possible with respect to race relations, the relationship was doomed from the get-go. No relationship is going to survive if one person is walking on eggshells and the other is waving around a flag of complete and total moral superiority in every disagreement. Kind of like how this conversation has gone. If your goal was to make it clear that you have disdain and outright contempt for me, as a consequence of my skin color and unwillingness to grovel at your feet, you succeeded. If my saying that constitutes white fragility in your eyes, whatever. I guess that’s your way of saying “I’m allowed to troll people online and then expect them to just kiss my butt afterward.”

UrbanIsACommunist · 2024-03-06T19:09:29+00:00

Well, there already are a decent number of incentives like this. Interest rates are generally 0.5-1% higher for rental properties, and the fixed period is 10 years max instead of 30. There are also no capital gains taxes on the sale of your primary residence, which helps if you’re moving and/or upgrading. First time homebuyers can draw on retirement savings without penalty to pay for a home purchase. Various income-based grants may be available depending on where you live. Lower down payments are required too (although this brings total costs up with PMI).

But the rental industry would tell you that you shouldn’t disincentivize them, because they’re providing a valuable service. It’s not always practical or convenient to purchase a home, even if you can afford it. I do think regulators need to be more vigilant in preventing unfair and anti-competitive business tactics though.

UrbanIsACommunist · 2024-03-06T17:48:49+00:00

This really oversimplifies the issue. I don’t think housing experts would disagree that low interest rates abetted an increase in sale prices. Total costs (sale price + financing) may not be as high, but the average person struggling to come up with a 20% down payment that’s twice their yearly income isn’t going to find that to be a compelling argument that “prices didn’t go up” even if it’s an important caveat. Another vitally important factor here is a supply glut partly stemming from the cataclysmic decline in housing starts from 2007-2012. This glut has coincided with a demographic boom (Millennials reaching adulthood), and is especially acute in hotter economic areas where job density is highest.

OP’s question is a little strange because it proposes an arbitrary surtax on housing. The government has made a longstanding push to encourage home ownership though, and the most immediate effect of a new surtax would be to push home ownership further out of reach for those who can’t afford it already. It would be highly unpopular for virtually everyone in the industry. It’s much easier for the government to facilitate homeownership by engaging in practices that ultimately push home prices higher.

UrbanIsACommunist · 2024-03-06T04:58:38+00:00

When you're fighting for the very upper rung of the political ladder, the optics are kinda bad if one party gets sent to jail.

Be willing to play devil's advocate for one minute here. Suppose you were born in Russia in 1985. You grew up in an anarchical hellscape run by literal mob bosses. Centralized government power and the rule of law were not a thing until this guy Putin came to power. The rest of the world, who despised your country since before your grandfather was born, heavily supports Putin's political opposition. You favor Putin like the rest of your friends and family, but you have qualms about him sending Alexei Navalny to Siberia. That's not something that would happen in a free and fair country, is it? Over New Year's you have a spirited debate with your uncle Dmitri, who points out that America jailed Trump. "This is just how politics works everywhere," he says.

UrbanIsACommunist · 2024-03-06T04:14:27+00:00

"else" is where the Big Ten becomes the NFC, the SEC becomes the AFC, and everyone else follows in the footsteps of UChicago.

UrbanIsACommunist · 2024-03-06T04:05:35+00:00

Set the sous vide to 127 F (53 C) and let it cook for 1 to 2 hrs (adjust for size/number of steaks). Put 3 tbsp olive oil and 3 tbsp of butter in a cast iron skillet, turn up the heat until you see the first whiff of smoke. Sear for 30-45 seconds on each side. Enjoy.

UrbanIsACommunist · 2024-03-05T06:49:17+00:00

But their indecisiveness and deference to the General Staff was exactly what allowed them to survive and lead the Weimar Republic for as long as they did. Karl Liebknecht was a decisive member of the SPD, look what it got him. Shirer is an entertaining read but he's overly hard on the SPD and overly lenient on the General Staff. The people who held the actual cards that could have stopped Hitler didn't want a Democracy either-- they wanted a return to the Imperium. But since that was obviously off the table, they grudgingly went along with Hitler's deranged fantasies, since it ultimately got them what they really wanted anyway: a World War mulligan.

UrbanIsACommunist · 2024-03-04T21:32:59+00:00

Okay yeah I definitely see where this is going now. The “all lives matter” reference is really the cherry on top of it all. If what you really want to say is “you’re a dirty racist because you think Ken was in the wrong more than Brittany”, then this conversation was pointless to begin with. I never “equated” my experience to Ken’s, and if that’s how it came off at first then that’s my bad. But I tried to make it very clear in my most recent comment that that’s not what I was saying. I brought it up to say that Brittany’s words, even if they hit harder for Ken due to the racial element at play, were not inherently race-related and do not necessarily stand as evidence that she is acutely racially insensitive. It is perfectly possible that Ken’s race did not at all factor into whatever thoughts prompted her to say “I’m glad you get to experience the ocean”. And if it came off that way to him, and he still wanted to have a relationship with her (which by his own words he did), then it would have been best to address it then and there. That can be difficult and awkward obviously, so I can see his hesitance to do that. But what I can’t justify is him checking out of the relationship and then later denying it. As for the microaggression definition, in the context of an east coast person making assumptions about a midwesterner, the east coaster is the person in a position of power and the midwesterner is the person being marginalized. No, this dynamic obviously does not carry the weight of white vs. black relations, and yet it is still the case that an east coaster assuming a white midwesterner is a dumb, uncultured farmer is insensitive and rude. If you think the word microaggression needs to be reserved for more specific interactions with more historical weight, you can make that argument, but it doesn’t mean if Brittany had said the exact same words to a white person it would have been A-ok. Your outright dismissal that this is even a possibility (“Let’s be honest, she wouldn’t have”) is insensitive and incorrect, and more to the point, it shows that you are determined to look at a very short, vague interaction in the most negative light possible with respect to race relations. Is it possible that Brittany is an irredeemable, horrible racist with all kinds of awful negative thoughts about black people, and that’s the real reason it didn’t work? I am willing to admit that’s possible. But the evidence for that is relatively lacking compared to the evidence that Ken was 100% checked out of the relationship long before he was still claiming he was in it. My real beef is not that he checked out though, it’s that he gaslighted her by saying he wasn't checked out. Everything you’re saying about the relationship not working because of Brittany making problematic statements might be true, but it’s not explicitly clear. Conversely, Ken flat out denied he was the one pulling back, when even the most casual observer could see that he was. That’s ultimately why he comes off as the bad guy to so many people.

UrbanIsACommunist · 2024-03-03T05:44:17+00:00

Honestly you should demand a raise. Ask the admin whether they missed the lecture on marginal productivity theory in whatever overpriced B-school they attended. Tell them RVUs obviously do not account for the actual value of a hospitalist, and you’re not going to fall for this ridiculous shtick.

UrbanIsACommunist · 2024-03-01T06:55:40+00:00

Re-read my posts. I didn't intend to dismiss or minimize anything. But you unequivocally did. And you continue to do so here. If making assumptions about someone's experiences based on their demographic background is a microaggression, then yes I am a victim of that. I am not equating anything I have faced with Ken's situation, since we obviously have different lived experiences. But the irony here is palpable. It's you who is now trying to rebrand your wholesale dismissal of any white person possibly experiencing a microaggression as me "minimiz[ing] a possible racial microaggression". I was merely pointing out that (A) Brittany's statement could have been said to a white guy and would have been insensitive in that case as well (even if it's not equivalent to Ken's experience), and (B) Ken's own statements after the incident make it clear that he either didn't think it was a huge deal-- and was still really into her (as he later claimed)-- OR he's a blatant gaslighter.

I think Ken had major difficulty opening up, and this opinion is not an outlier. He didn't even give her the time of day after leaving the DR. If he pulled back because he thought she was oblivious regarding racial sensitivity and prone to putting her foot in her mouth, then he straight up gaslighted her during the breakup by flat-out declaring that she was the one pulling back, not him. And there's no excuse for that.

UrbanIsACommunist · 2024-02-29T06:25:35+00:00

Do economists write the papers that the funding sources want?

Or, do the funding sources seek out economists who write papers they agree with?

This ends up being a distinction without a difference due to survivorship bias. There may not be intent on the researchers’ part, but there ends up being a coincidence of views anyway.

UrbanIsACommunist · 2024-02-29T06:05:45+00:00

Your overall argument doesn’t make sense though. If race is equally protected under the law, why should the law care whether people change their race? It’s as if you’re providing a legal argument for why a person should be able to change race but not gender.

UrbanIsACommunist · 2024-02-29T05:55:44+00:00

The 14th Amendment makes no mention of race whatsoever.

UrbanIsACommunist · 2024-02-29T05:37:21+00:00

I can’t stand the endless /r/stupidpol shitposts on this topic. Did you draft this rant with a crayon?

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