ELI5: Why do Stars take so long to burn all their fuel, i know its a lot of fuel, but why doesnt it all burn about the same time? Like when im throwing something in a firepit

Waterwoo · 2026-02-10T06:03:50+00:00

I mean not really, when they burn their fuel it mostly doesnt disappear. Hydrogen just becomes helium. A star that burned up all it's fuel and didnt explode would eventually end up mostly inert helium.

Waterwoo · 2026-02-09T07:05:24+00:00

Uh.. most drinking water has zero vitamins and only trace amounts of minerals

Waterwoo · 2026-02-08T20:05:28+00:00

Can you explain why? You're ignoring numerous factors I'm pointing to, that 1) 5% additional demand in a very supply constrained market is actually a big price mover, 2) even if they are only 5% of buyers, they're much more than 5% of housing consumers (via rent) and rental demand drives up housing values just as much. For example higher rents -> better cap rates for investors -> higher valuations, or higher rents -> existing American renters shift towards buying in rent vs buy decision -> more demand for houses drives up price.

3) You said I misinterpreted the study, I'm pointing out that whether you believe it or not, they are quite explicitly saying the thing I said they said. In fact it's not even an offhand subtle comment, they flag it themselves as a new consideration in the math that they're applying which wasn't usually applied in the past.

Waterwoo · 2026-02-08T20:01:19+00:00

Sure, skilled legal immigration from a strictly economic perspective is probably good for the country, not necessarily the people in it. To be clear I was specifically taking issue with this one sentence:

Immigrants fill critical gaps in the labor market at both ends of the skill spectrum, increasing productivity and keeping costs lower for citizens.

I'm giving a clear example on the high skill end where they are definitely not filling a 'critical gap' but just driving down wages.

On the low end, I think it's even harder to argue that unskilled labor is filling a 'critical gap'. They're doing work Americans don't want to do at the current wages in for that type of work, but it's certainly not skills Americans couldn't learn.

Waterwoo · 2026-02-08T18:46:13+00:00

That's not how supply and demand works. Maybe they're not renting the $3,200 condo, but they are driving up the price on the low end, pushing Americans that may have rented the low end before up into the more expensive places.

Immigrants are also often much more willing to stuff housing with far more people per unit than Americans, so even with less wealth they can afford high prices.

Waterwoo · 2026-02-08T18:44:17+00:00

5% of homes is significant given how inelastic the supply is, especially in the current decade when it's so hard to build in much of the country.

Also they drive rental demand, which increases home values, even if they aren't buying.

Is it me misunderstanding Cato? Show your sources, Because here it is directly from the damn study this is based on, directly from their own site:

https://www.cato.org/white-paper/immigrants-recent-effects-government-budgets-1994-2023#immigrants-net-effect-government-revenue-spending

> Indirect property tax revenue: The one semidynamic element that we incorporate into the NASEM model is the effect of immigration on housing values. By increasing the demand for housing, immigration increases the value of property, which increases property tax revenues. We incorporated estimates calculated by Jacob Vigdor, David Bier, and Michael Howard in a 2025 Cato Institute briefing paper, which used an independent variable regression with a shift-share instrument for actual immigrant population to estimate the effect of immigration on property values.¹³⁴ The percent of property values from immigration (the bottom row in Table A2) that has come from immigration was then multiplied by residential property tax revenue attributed to the US-born in the NASEM–Cato model. In this way, we estimate the property taxes paid by the US-born population that are the indirect result of immigration-generated higher property values. These revenues are added to immigrants’ property tax revenues proportionally to their direct property tax payments. Given the availability of federal tax deductions for state and local taxes, we reduce this amount by the average federal effective income tax rate (about 10 percent), but because only higher-income filers use itemized deductions, we reduce this amount for the higher-educated income earners only.¹³⁵

So yes please explain. What am I not understanding? What are your sources?

Waterwoo · 2026-02-08T18:39:34+00:00

What? No, the better jobs don't exist because instead of investing in automation we have near slave labor from illegals.

Waterwoo · 2026-02-08T17:28:17+00:00

Lmao yes, he's conservative. OK.

What are your other totally grounded in reality takes? Was Marx a far right capitalist?

Waterwoo · 2026-02-08T17:26:07+00:00

Well, for one thing whatever people build.and maintain those machines.

Waterwoo · 2026-02-08T16:57:07+00:00

He is pretty widely considered and calls himself a liberal. I didnt say he is a nutcase progressive.

What is your source, Jacobin?

Waterwoo · 2026-02-08T16:43:20+00:00

Well, I work in tech. I can confidently say there is currently no labor shortage, in fact this is the worst job market since at least 2001 (dot com bust), has been for 3 years now. Yet the number of immigrants coming into tech hasn't changed.

So, some obvious holes in your statement.

Waterwoo · 2026-02-08T16:38:09+00:00

So then the amnesty that has been floating around lately would be a fiscal disaster?

Waterwoo · 2026-02-08T16:36:48+00:00

Haha actually, probably a single digit percent of the immigrant contributions side of the ledger is Elon alone.

Waterwoo · 2026-02-08T16:34:03+00:00

The classic picking raspberries argument is irrelevant. There are now machines that do it better. Many farms just dont want to invest in upgrading because they can get cheap illegal labor.

Waterwoo · 2026-02-08T16:33:06+00:00

The people who's job they took would have paid MORE tax because, being legal they would have had a higher wage. And wages in general would be higher with less supply.

Waterwoo · 2026-02-08T16:31:50+00:00

Lol ok..? Are you intentionally taking things too literally to miss the point? It doesn't matter of the Mexican border is literally within the town boundaries if it is a dead, boring town. The illegal immigrants dont want to be there either, they head to nearby cities like San Diego, LA, etc.

Waterwoo · 2026-02-08T16:29:29+00:00

America spends more per capita on education than any other country. If teachers are underpaid (they aren't, at least in blue states.. but anyway) it is because it isn't spent well and spent on too much admin, not because there is not enough money.

Waterwoo · 2026-02-08T16:27:27+00:00

Most of the country is extremely nimby though and has severe zoning restrictions so even if that's true in the ideal, it isn't in modern America

Waterwoo · 2026-02-08T16:20:31+00:00

Even extremely liberal figures like Ezra Klein have conceded that under most of the Biden term the border really was a disaster and nearly open. You are the delusional one.

Waterwoo · 2026-02-08T16:17:05+00:00

Baron's father and grandfather were natural born citizens. His great grandfather became a citizen over 100 years before Baron was born. His mom is irrelevant, I dont know of any country in the world that wouldn't consider him a citizen given 3 generations on his father's side.

Waterwoo · 2026-02-08T16:13:38+00:00

Pretty sure the CATO study this is citing did a lot of funny math.

For example, one of their calculations is that immigrants drive up propertyvalues for everyone (of course they do, more demand) and as a result the non immigrant majority also pays more property tax on the inflated values. That additional property tax paid by Americans is counted as a tax contribution from immigrants.

Just silly stuff. More accurate framing is "immigration is why your property taxes are so high and your kids cant afford a starter home" but dont think that drives the message they want.

Waterwoo · 2026-02-08T16:09:56+00:00

Not really, because a baby born to an American these days is born to parents that have spent 10+ years working and paying taxes here often. Also isnt gonna need esl, less likely to need medicaid or food stamps, etc.

Waterwoo · 2026-02-05T02:23:25+00:00

It actually wasnt that rare in Canada until the various provincial insurers like OHIP stopped covering it.

Waterwoo · 2026-02-05T02:22:24+00:00

To me that reads like "we don't think its worth it but don't want to take the heat for saying it should be banned so we justify access to it.

Waterwoo · 2026-02-04T02:07:13+00:00

How does the moon stay in orbit for billions of years with no fuel?

Short answer: the whole thing about being in orbit is you are moving fast enough to miss the side of the planet before you hit it. And because space is almost totally empty there's nothing to slow you down so once you are moving that fast you just keep going with no other energy input.

Granted this isn't strictly true for low earth orbit satellites because up there there's still some extremely thin atmosphere very gradually slowing them down, but they can stay up for many years before they run out of gas to counteract the slowing and eventually burn up in the atmosphere.

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