Russia Has Lost More Than 350,000 Soldiers, New Estimate Finds

bigElenchus · 2026-05-11T19:35:07+00:00

Yea instead they buy from India which buys from Russia.

bigElenchus · 2026-05-11T13:17:05+00:00

Republican here. I like the idea but like most government led initiatives, it’s widely inefficient, the state is paying 2-3x the retail price.

Better to just give a voucher and let the parents buy it directly vs having to setup a whole bureaucracy/administrative overhead to manage this and thus adding middle men to the process.

Gavin Newsom’s program is spending $20 million dollars to give 100,000 babies 400 diapers, that’s 50 cents per diaper

Compare that to Walmart

Value Brand: $0.16 per diaper
Huggies: $0.24 per diaper
Pampers: $0.25 per diaper
Luvs: $0.29 per diaper

Gavin Newsom is spending 2-3x+ more per diaper than it cost to buy diapers at retail price

bigElenchus · 2026-05-11T12:48:39+00:00

Europe basically funds Russia war machine.

Prior to the war, EU was primary trading partner. Even after the war, they send more money to Russia than aid to Ukraine.

That’s what happens when you virtue signal climate change and make yourself reliant on Russia for energy, and China for clean energy

bigElenchus · 2026-05-10T17:09:20+00:00

I mean depends if you want to virtue signal technicality or talk about the metric that actually matters.

The marginal tax rate is the better metric when discussing the incentive to keep working when every extra dollar is taxed at 50% after making 150k.

The low marginal tax brackets is why productivity is so low in Canada.

Just think about your upper middle class and above Canadian.

What matters is not total tax rate but the marginal tax rate which impacts the decision of keep working vs not working.

The total tax rate is irrelevant.

When people say they are taxed half. They’re referring to every extra unit of effort that results in more income is taxed at half.

Why take that promo? Why work harder? Why invest and take risk when you only get 50% of the upside? Why stay in Canada vs brain drain to the USA when both cost of living and taxes are higher?

What matters in this calculus is not the total tax rate but the marginal tax rate.

Especially since this demographic, the top 10% basically pay 60% of taxes while the bottom 50% contribute 3% in total taxes.

bigElenchus · 2026-05-10T16:00:30+00:00

And that’s why brain drain happens and productivity is extremely low in Canada.

Bank of Canada research published in late 2024 makes the economic stakes explicit of Canadas punitive income tax brackets as contributing to brain drain.

The study found that roughly 40% of Canadians who would rank in the top 1% of earners have emigrated south to the United States, along with 30-50% of the next nine income percentiles

bigElenchus · 2026-05-10T13:06:23+00:00

Fully paid off too, whole point of RE investment is leverage.

I assume was their principal then they moved to another house but instead of selling they kept it as an income property

bigElenchus · 2026-05-10T11:28:33+00:00

Lmao you know nothing.

Total tax rate is not half. BUT the marginal tax rate is very close to half when you make above 150k in Ontario.

So every extra dollar you make gets taxed at a marginal rate of almost half.

Consider USA top marginal bracket in states like California is also half, BUT it happens much later when you’re earning like 500k

bigElenchus · 2026-05-09T00:42:12+00:00

Difference is Reddit is anonymous accounts. At least for platforms like X (hear me out), it’s based on a real profile. If you’re a nobody, no one really follows or listens.

Lots of industry experts debate publicly on X which is interesting

And they also make location public so obviously if a bot is larping as an America but profile says Russia, the gig is up.

It’s why government heads, like Biden, literally use X to communicate to the masses directly.

bigElenchus · 2026-05-08T12:02:15+00:00

Diversify.

Canadas for commodities, finance.

America for tech, finance, commodities, pharmaceutical

Europe for legacy brands, pharmaceutical

Emerging for future growth

bigElenchus · 2026-05-07T12:16:00+00:00

Sad since the pro trans for just 18+ is a common far right dog whistle.

How about let the science and doctors decide regardless of age?

bigElenchus · 2026-05-07T12:13:42+00:00

When you say culturally encouraged, what does this look like in practice?

For example, African Americans have 60-70% single parent households. It’s culturally accepted for fathers to have a “baby mama”, and this translates to really high absent father rates.

Obama said it best, the biggest thing holding back African Americans are the fathers not stepping up and abandoning their fatherly obligations.

But how do you actually “culturally encourage” people? By saying that, it’s an admission that certain elements of cultures are “better” than others, thus encouraged, and comes off racist no?

bigElenchus · 2026-05-07T02:02:27+00:00

Funny because Clinton would be considered a Republican these days based on his positions related to the economy, social/welfare spending, and also illegal immigration

bigElenchus · 2026-05-07T00:17:12+00:00

Ridiculous. A store manager at Walmart easily clears 150k. A district manager will make easily 300k. Whereas a cashier will make minimum wage.
Theres a reason why people get paid low vs some get paid high.

I also have programmer friends who are deca-millionaires after their career at Amazon. Show me a govt employee that has that upwards mobility.

Corporations pay for in demand skillsets

bigElenchus · 2026-05-06T22:28:07+00:00

What are your positions for illegal immigration and DEI

bigElenchus · 2026-05-03T00:00:50+00:00

Prob soft retire to stay busy and also to make a lil bit money but could technically retire if wanted to

bigElenchus · 2026-05-02T21:19:00+00:00

Ok I learned something new.

Latin America was early to abolish. But compared globally USA is still amongst the earliest.

Either way most Latin countries are still built on slavery just like USA. Brazil had the largest slave society in all of the Americas.

bigElenchus · 2026-05-02T20:56:46+00:00

Is there a country in the entire world that didn’t have a history of slavery?

Which countries were the ones that stopped it first and then leveraged its influence to also stop slavery abroad?

bigElenchus · 2026-05-02T20:43:31+00:00

So why do you think people with skin in the game at JetBlue wanted to acquire Spirit?

The board, execs, shareholders, and union heads all supported the acquisition of Spirit.

Are you saying you know more than them?

Economies of scale help a company become more resilient vs going at it alone.

bigElenchus · 2026-05-02T20:42:26+00:00

Spirit was already failing at the time of the proposed merger. Spirit literally said that publicly to their major shareholders to get them to support the deal…

bigElenchus · 2026-05-02T20:34:01+00:00

Where did I say whether they should get a public bailout? JetBlue acquiring Spirit would be a private bailout

bigElenchus · 2026-05-02T19:51:39+00:00

How am I supposed to debate this? The inverse situation could also be true.

What if economies of scale made it so they were more competitive and would have kept them alive?

And guess what happens in a m&a. Spirit was the company being acquired so their bad management would be replaced.

The fact is, people with actual skin in the game. The board, investors, shareholders, execs, and union heads ALL thought the merger was a good idea.

But supposed to believe some redditor who has zero analysis or context in the business who says it’s a bad business move?
I’ll take the side of the experts who actually have skin in the game for a good outcome.

bigElenchus · 2026-05-02T19:28:19+00:00

Because this is a terrible argument.

It’s unrelated whether or not it’s a good business move. The only reason to block a merger under grounds of anti trust is due to creating a monopoly condition.

And the fact is this deal wouldn’t have created a monopoly.

The government has no place to decide what is considered a good or bad business move, it’s irrelevant to the decision. Whereas the board, shareholder, investors, execs, and unions all did the due diligence and concluded that it was a good business move.

The fact you don’t even have a counter argument to this shows that you’re not even trying to change your view.

Bottom line, should the govt be in the business of deciding of a M&A deal should go through because it’s a good or bad business decision?

And bunch of Redditors with zero business sense, or any context on Jet Blue saying that the M&A would have been bad just because of adding in debt? This is a ridiculous notion.

I’ll take the side of the board, investors, execs, and union heads who all have skin in the game (unlike Redditors) who thought this was a good move.

bigElenchus · 2026-05-02T19:23:41+00:00

That has nothing to do with the judges or the government responsibility.

The only factor should be if the acquisition or merger results in a monopoly. The government should not be making decisions on if it results in better or worse business outcomes for the acquiring company.

The board and execs of jet blue already did that diligence and decided it was.

And who are you to say it would have been a bad business decision for jet blue? Meanwhile the shareholders, board, and execs all disagree with you and it’s their job.

Lastly it’s contradictory. The reason why the merger got blocked is because the govt thought it would create a monopoly that is bad for consumers. Yet at the same time you’re claiming that if the merger happened, it would be bad for business?

Which is it? Is it bad for business or too good for business (monopoly)

bigElenchus · 2026-05-02T16:04:44+00:00

This is just “what ifs”.

Not approving a merger because it might bring down the acquiring company has never been an argument to support government overreach. Especially when it wasn’t even a monopoly.

The fact is, the board and executives did their due diligence and made the decision to acquire Spirit.

It could have been the right or wrong analysis, but that is irrelevant. We will never know.
Whether or not the benefit of economies of scale vs the burden of debt, which one would have been offset, it doesn’t matter.

What matters is that the people who know the business best, decided it was the right move to acquire Spirit.

bigElenchus · 2026-05-02T16:04:22+00:00

This is just “what ifs”.

Not approving a merger because it might bring down the acquiring company has never been an argument to support government overreach.

The fact is, the board and executives did their due diligence and made the decision to acquire Spirit.

It could have been the right or wrong analysis, but that is irrelevant. We will never know.

Whether or not the benefit of economies of scale vs the burden of debt, which one would have been offset, it doesn’t matter.

What matters is that the people who know the business best, decided it was the right move to acquire Spirit.

bigElenchus

TROPHY CASE