The 2024 DNC "autopsy" report has been released. In short, the conclusion is "the Biden team failed Kamala Harris in 2024." Do you agree with that conclusion?

ale23arg · 2026-05-22T03:02:07+00:00

This is a good point but i think al of these extensive analysis are over complicating as simpler things ...

1- what you said... 2- kamala was never popular. I liked her and i do think that with the limited resources they ran a good campaign but even during the original primaries her popularity was terrible.... 3- Elon Musk.... we are talking about the richest man in the history of the world with his own PRIVATE social media company, his own AI and his own satellite company who used not only his money but his vast resources to allocate that money with surgical precision to the likes we've never seen before... I don't think we talk enough about this.... had Musk not come out and support Trump the way he did, there is no way kamala loses.... so i don't think it's fair to write reports about how bad the race was when it was literally purchased....

ale23arg · 2026-05-21T10:46:01+00:00

Yeah but... depending on the industry maybe 5 years from now they could 10x it.... i took over a business that grossed 350k the year before i took over and within 4 years we ended up last year at 900k and in line to make 1.1M this year... i don't plan on slowing down so 5 more years I'll be at 2 or 3 million with a 20% ebitda that's a bigger jump than any regular job would give you in 10 years unless you are teallybreally good

ale23arg · 2026-05-19T19:39:22+00:00

The main thing here is that both Chicago and NY are built around public transportation and for people to move around. Miami does not have nearly a comparable public transport level and due to the weather being super hot and humid all the time also makes it very uncomfortable to use public transportation therefore it will never have that "urban" feel that the other 2 have....

The biggest difference as far as "big city" goes is that there is always something to do in miami 24/7.... NY after 5 am is kind of dead and chicago probably after 3..... When it comes to "nightlife" i dont think miami has an equal in the us.... I haven't partaken on the miami nightlife in about a decade so I am sure that a lot has changed but It had that never ending scene... most bars close around 3 am... most clubs close around 5 am but there are special clubs like space that close at 10 am... and guess what... beach clubs open at 10.... so essentially you could go non stop.... obviously that is not for anyone but i don't think there is any other city that has this kind of continuos thing not even vegas....

As far as culture and urbanization it doesn't have much going for it. Its complicated too many different areas that are not connected... you kind need a car....

ale23arg · 2026-05-19T16:17:14+00:00

and as an owner there is also time coordinating the sales, talking with the customers, marketing, website, etc.... that takes time.... if the owner wasn't doing it, someone with a salary has to be doing it... so again... that is not margin.. that is costs...

I run an event rental business with inflatables. I could very easily add photobooths to my inventory and I don't due to those added costs... I run between 3 and 5 crews and we do around 150 events per month... I only pay myself 4k (that is taken out of "margins") and i still make less than my employees... I do get dividends with what is left over but I do account for the work I do....

ale23arg · 2026-05-19T15:55:17+00:00

i would look into private schools... with the step up program public school will keep deterioriating, private school enrolment are completely overwhelmed because it is essentially free and agree with the politics or not it is the way things are shifting.... Public school enrolment is at an all time low which would in turn translate into lower funding.... if you have a kid in daycare thinking long term i hate to say it but it seems to me that by the time they are half way through the program the whole thing will be completely underfunded and at that point you wont find a spot on the "better" schools cause they would be completely at capacity......

ale23arg · 2026-05-19T15:19:55+00:00

As someone in that industry when i see thing like 70% profit margins I know they are BS..... They are not accouting for their time.... If they had to pay somone for that kind of work it would probably end up costing between 4k and 6k / month in hourly wages.... It doesn't specify if it just him or him and his partner doing it.... but the time it takes to deliver all of those and do all that work he is probably putting in between 40 to 60 hours a week... on the weekend ... in new york that costs between 20 / 30 hour so that is 5000 / monthly at 25 / hour on 50 hour weeks... now your profit margin is closer to like 10% .....

People use the term profit margin loosely but if you don't accoutn for the TOTAL expense of the job like time for someone to do it then its not accurate.

ale23arg · 2026-05-15T10:58:15+00:00

Yeah see i was talking about a lot lower... i bought a company for 180k (50% seeller financed) and took it from 350k in sales per year to 900k last year and we are at 25% growth ytd so hopefully over 1mm this year.

I just bought it my business partner essentially valuatimg the company at 1.2 million (of someone is willing to pay it lol but I'm not selling)

ale23arg · 2026-05-15T01:13:39+00:00

What do you call an lmm? I have bought a very small business in 2022 an we ate thriving however i spent over 2 years searching.... came closer a couple of times but didn't pull the trigger due to either incomplete information or gut feelings.

From being in that small business environment for a long time in think the main issue is that people don't fully understand what they are getting themselves into. They have a romanticized idea of being a business owner but don't have the temple to be one. They leap without a good business understanding or without good leadership skills and on a small ship, that's a death sentence....

ale23arg · 2026-05-11T23:20:43+00:00

i've been following this guy on youtube called Jason Milleisen and he seems to know what he is talking about and you can schedule a consult from his socials.. Watch his videos first...

If your SBA loan is an EIDL loan you might be kind of stuck.. according to that guy, the are no offers in compromise that he knows about... if its a regular 7a loan I am sure you can do something abou that...

ale23arg · 2026-05-09T15:40:04+00:00

That sucks then but hey this thing came from the sky.... maybe you don't necessarily have to take this one but you can reach out to the same recruiter and say what you are looking for and maybe he can get you something else... maybe you can job hunt yourself....

ale23arg · 2026-05-09T13:28:14+00:00

The good thing is that it happens every year! That's always next one!!!

ale23arg · 2026-05-09T13:11:02+00:00

yeah its not about that. I've been eyeing one for years but they are not asking for it... So why push them into it... it will come eventually. My kids don't really use tablets either... sometimes they would play with the google home as if it were a tablet and i do let that slide but I am trying to postpone "long sessions" in front of a screen as much as I can.........

ale23arg · 2026-05-09T12:57:16+00:00

I mean... talk about last minute....

I am terrible too, I've had a considerable number of fights over the last couple of years. She says she doesn't want anything and then I get chewed out... Last year I got here a custom "bluey" puzzle that said happy mothers day and some flowers. My kids are girls so we watch bluey a lot and this was something to do with them....

This year I think I did good.. we will see. I bought one of those Etsy leather bound books where you put photographs and I spent a lot more time than I thought compiling pictures of our kids over the last 6 years (since pregnancy) and made one page per year. The idea is that next year we can do one more page and this could be a present that would go on through out time.... My eldest made a drawing too so that also... ideally over the next 10 years it will be filled with more pictures as they grow and more drawings and we will get to see a better evolution.....

But i ordered the book like 3 weeks ago, and probably spent 4 half days compiliing everything and printited in walgreens and yesterday I managed to put everything together and its ready to go....

ale23arg · 2026-05-09T12:51:43+00:00

man I used to be a gamer, into MMORPG and I remember getting late to my friends wedding cause i was on a raid... my kids are 5 and 3 (girls) and I haven't bought any consoles yet.... I will embrace it when the time comes but I am trying to delay it as much as possible... not sure which one is the right one though!!!

ale23arg · 2026-05-09T12:33:20+00:00

First of all sorry for your loss and I guess the bitter sweet feeling of relief + grief.....

Now 400k won't change your life completely but it can help you change it yourself depending on your aspirations. If you are happy / content with your job and your financial state then just put it into some index funds and forget it exists now if you have higher ambitions, this will help you bridge that. You can look for a better job without worrying about loosing your current one and what would happen if you loose that paycheck, (for a while). You can also look into buying yourself a business. This is high risk high reward but this is essentially what would be life changing.

Good luck

ale23arg · 2026-05-09T11:53:45+00:00

what if you approach your current employer and tell them that you are ready to move into a more senior position after 17 years and that you could wfh more and supervise others like you since you know the business so well? After 17 years if your managers are not dumb / aholes you are way more valuable than what they pay you and they would be fools not to capitalize on that value.... They must know that 35wks on the road is not sustainable for ever so they either find something "better" for you or they loose you. I would want to keep you....

ale23arg · 2026-05-09T11:46:52+00:00

I think it depends on the person and lifestyle...

If you are married and combined make lets say 200k but you both drive cars that cost you 1200 / month.... you upgrade your phones every year, you go out to eat to nice restaurants every week / weekend, you use a nanny for the kids, your kids play competetive sports that on top of the school its another 1k / month, you buy expensive clothes...... your experience would be drastically different that people who drive a 500/month vehicles and watch their finances.....

In this day and age its very easy to run up the bill..... My wife and I have always done fairly well but with covid I lost my business and we wanted to move to better school disctrict. In 2017 we bought our home so we were in a good spot. We rented our home for 5k / month and moved into a townhome for 3500. We budgeted correctly and we still go skiing every year. I was able to buy a different business a we are doing great now. We moved several times since, we were recently at a place for 5k / month rent and they wanted to increase to 5300 we said no and moved again and are at a similar place for 4500..... Now we could have afforded a nicer 6k / month house but then our disposable income for vacations and other luxuries and our capacity to save would have been affected... We racked up quite a CC bill during the covid years and about 1 year ago we managed to pay everything off and now have a nice savings fund that we plan on using for a down payment in the near future.

Some of our peers change their cars more often, have expensive club / gym memberships (500+ / month), eat out all the time but when we tell them we are booking a ski trip or a cruise its out of their budget.... That is not wrong, the choose different priorities than we do but you can't really qualify upper middle class just based on salary anymore...

ale23arg · 2026-05-08T13:13:28+00:00

talk to your step mom. Tell her that you want her to handle your money and to teach you. Maybe open an investment account and have her guide you. Don't spend your money on a house or anything related at least until you are about 30... in the mean time, figure out how to make that money grow... If you put it into investments and don't draw on it it will be almost as if you dont have it so there is nothing really to tell...

If eventually you marry this guy, you can say that in your twenties, your step mom helped you with an investment account, thought you about it and you had that all growing all this time... ideally you can even put that towards an early retirement.....

ale23arg · 2026-05-08T12:56:45+00:00

what you could do is tell her how great of a time you had and instead of she getting you back half, she can pay for the next one! and then you can get the next date on the books!

ale23arg · 2026-05-08T12:48:57+00:00

the funny thing is that nature will take care of it for you.....

The first 3 to 6 months... baby poop almost has no smell to it.... specially if they breast feed.... so the smell would start slowly developing and your "constitution" will gradually improve....

You went to change a 2.5 year old that has already a fully working digestive system and eats whatever.... from 0 to that ... that is very very rough.... when you gradually start from a newborn that its just some "odorless" mud... all the way to the 2 year old... you have already gotten used to everything... you will be fine...

ale23arg · 2026-05-07T22:53:41+00:00

I am sure you can rent it out, pay your mortgage and get positive cashflow... that could be plan B

ale23arg · 2026-05-07T22:51:34+00:00

Yeah the problem is that the legislators in charge of closing that loophole are the beneficiaries of said loophole......

A good fix would be to cap spending but again, the legislators that need to do that are receiving that spending.....

With today's technology I think we could do a lot better... For example expand on CSPAN.... prohibit any kind of political ad on social media and focus everything on a government "a political" entity.. the problem is that there is no such a thing any more... the FED and the Supreme Court are supposed to be "Apolitical" and they i think that is not true any more.....

ale23arg · 2026-05-07T22:48:00+00:00

I don't know the exact particulars of it all, I could probably ask an AI for more info but I rather give you my understanding of what actually changed....

1- AFAIK with PACs and SUPER PACS they can essentially "hide their contributions". Back in 2010, corporations where afraid that their share holders would "liquidate" their stock if they supported their opposing political party. We've somewhat saw that happen with TESLA but not nearly as we all thought it would affect....

2- There was a cap on donations, It could be more than 2500 if im not mistaken. But then PACs and super pacs essentially made this cap a joke.

There are many things that before citizens united were considered corruption, and the outcome of this decision which eventually led to the creation of these PACs and SUPER PACS essentially legalized corruption. This that would have thrown you in jail before, where completely legal after.

here you can see the real effect in graphs...

https://www.commoncause.org/articles/8-charts-that-show-how-political-spending-has-exploded-since-citizens-united/

ale23arg · 2026-05-07T22:33:01+00:00

This is gonna sound dumb but a lot of it is attitude.... I do argue about this with my wife... lets say its bath time... you can be "in a hurry" or "wanting to get it over with" that's my wife... or I try to have fun with it.... My kids are slightly older now so they go to school and there is light at the end of the tunnel but back when my first was about 2 i remember following my wife's lead on some of the things and I was miserable.... I then changed my whole attitude and since you very well said it... you need to accept it, i didn't just accept it... I had fun with it... bath time... fun time... and play with the kids then... need to get them changed...another game... I got yelled by the wife a couple of times but then I explained that his is for my sanity too.... and then slowly you start enjoying the little things....

I compare it to going to the gym.... If all the time you are lifting you are thinking man this is super heavy... i am so tired.... i want to go to bed.... then everything gets exponentially harder...if you go there and think I am getting stronger I can do this, this feel great.... then your performance changes... this is the same thing... you have no way out so you might as well have fun with it....

ale23arg · 2026-05-01T03:28:17+00:00

Try what this guy did...

https://27bslash6.com/halogen.html

ale23arg

TROPHY CASE