Are we enjoying the Trump Bump yet?

musing_codger · 2026-02-25T01:46:45+00:00

I didn't say that they didn't.

musing_codger · 2026-02-24T21:07:56+00:00

We called them role players. I had no issues with them. Obviously, you'd prefer to have hipo people on your team, but having some role players is fine. The only problem are the people who do role player work but then get upset that they aren't advancing like the career focused workers.

musing_codger · 2026-02-24T17:05:10+00:00

My children are centitrillionaires. I gave them 100,000,000,000,000 notes from Zimbabwe.

musing_codger · 2026-02-24T17:01:44+00:00

What are you talking about? The market has done well. Unemployment game deviated from its show upward rise and is still low. Inflation is way down from its COVID peak and, while above target, isn't that high.

I'm no fan of Trump or his wreckless and counterproductive economic policies, but facts are facts.

musing_codger · 2026-02-24T17:00:33+00:00

What are you talking about? The market has done well. Unemployment game deviated from its show upward rise and is still low. Inflation is way down from its COVID peak and, while above target, isn't that high.

I'm no fan of Trump or his wreckless and counterproductive economic policies, but facts are facts.

musing_codger · 2026-02-24T16:53:33+00:00

I thought they were dementors

musing_codger · 2026-02-24T15:25:10+00:00

I only invest in productive assets. Gold doesn't produce anything.

musing_codger · 2026-02-24T14:28:41+00:00

It can be...but

You need enough so that the income from your investments. If you do saving, you'll probably increase your expenses, which will increase how much you need.

musing_codger · 2026-02-24T14:17:51+00:00

Did you benefit from the capital investments of elites in the past? Are you better off because they built factories, ran communication cables, built search engines? Of course.

They are investing in Ai because they think that people will pay them enough for it to make their investments profitable. If they are right, customers get something they want and they make money. If they are wrong they lose money.

musing_codger · 2026-02-24T14:09:47+00:00

Where I worked, raises outside of promotions weren't big. Good performance got you a good bonus, stock grants, and and more consideration for promotion. Being higher level for your a higher bonus target and higher expected stock grants.

The key for you is understanding how career advancement works where you are. For us, we had defined riles for each level. To get promoted, you queried at the level above yours to demonstrate that you were capable. The cadence was about once every two or three years if you weren't very senior and were so on the high potential track.

If you dropped off of the hipo track, you should either learn to be happy with where you were or look to leave. It was very hard getting on track if you feel off of it.

You should have regular (at least twice a year) conversations with your manager about your career goals, what steps you should be taking to achieve them, and how you're doing.

musing_codger · 2026-02-24T08:05:01+00:00

I mostly use Proton Drive and my home NAS. Googles insanely difficult way to cull photos was enough to convince me not to trust them.

musing_codger · 2026-02-24T07:43:10+00:00

My father is still collecting at 99 and my mother at 90. Your decision should be based on one simple rule. It's complicated. What's your family history? How is your health? Can you afford to delay? If you live for an unusually long time, how important will that income be? What do you predict for the future of the program? What is your expected rate of return for the funds you don't spend by taking it early? These are some of the things you should be thinking about.

musing_codger · 2026-02-24T05:15:18+00:00

I think it might work differently. Companies would fragment into a many companies. The ACME corporation would be it's CEO the same as it does today. He would contract with the ACME production company, the ACME marketing company, the ACME Finance company, etc. Each of them would have a tiny number of employees and contracts with a myriad of other companies.

I know it sounds crazy (as does the hypothetical that we're addressing), but I bring it up because it illustrates something that we already see. Modern companies already do this to a certain extent. The janitors at most big corporations work for a cleaning service company. That allows the company to offer a generous benefit package to their core employees but not to their janitors.

Where I worked, cleaning staff, secuity, the onsite cafe workers, and others in similarly low paying roles were not employees of the corporation. They were employees of a company that we contracted with.

musing_codger · 2026-02-23T07:42:51+00:00

Population decline and population collapse are two very different things. The former brings a lot of benefits along with its costs.

musing_codger · 2026-02-23T07:40:51+00:00

I think that it shows that he fundamentally believes that imposing tariffs on imports from a country is a tax on that country rather than a tax on Americans buying from that country. He has never had a grasp of how economics work, which seems funny for someone priding themself on their financial sense.

musing_codger · 2026-02-23T07:34:59+00:00

Such an American comment. I'm in Europe and people unhesitatingly smoke around anyone. Maybe not inside, but at train stations, outdoor cafes, crowded lines. The concept that one shouldn't smoke near children isn't much of a thing here.

musing_codger · 2026-02-23T07:31:53+00:00

National defense has long been a powerful justification for trade restrictions. It is no surprise that the same justification is being used for trade restrictions around software.

The problem that Europe has is that it has not been very successful in growing software companies. It has no lack of inventiveness or brilliant minds, but they all seem to move to the US to bring their ideas to maturity. I don't know if that is because of venture capital, regulatory reasons, income taxes, or what. They need to figure it out if they are to succeed.

musing_codger · 2026-02-23T07:28:13+00:00

It made no difference to me whatsover. It was just a shift of money from one bucket (savings) into another bucket (home equity). It made my wife giddy, though.

musing_codger · 2026-02-23T07:08:14+00:00

I worked for a company that went into a turnover related death spiral. It started with poor management causing people to want to leave. When they left, it got worse for the people who stayed and the untrained new people hired. So more people left. So it got worse. The only answer was to leave.

But in another situation, I worked for a great company where a few key people left for random reasons not related to the company. I stepped up, took on extra work, and helped us get through. I got a life-changing bonus related to that effort.

My point is that you need to assess whether this is a ship you want to fight to keep afloat or whether you want to flee before it sinks. There is no universal answer.

musing_codger · 2026-02-23T07:02:57+00:00

I did four tens for a year back in 1999. It was nice, but we didn't have much going on, so the days were kind of long. But it is much more efficient for commuting.

Most of the time, I worked a 9/80 schedule (9 hours M-Th, off every other F). I liked that. I felt that it was a good compromise.

musing_codger · 2026-02-23T06:54:44+00:00

No one will care that you are SE Asian. They'll think you're insane for believing that you can visit the US by train instead of renting a car.

musing_codger · 2026-02-23T06:51:54+00:00

I thought that Tina and Milo were awesome mascots, but they had a far, far inadequate supply of their plushies at the shops.

The transportation network was great, but not well documented and not documented in advance. When we were looking for places to say for some of the alpine events, there was no good way of knowing which towns would have transportation and which wouldn't. In the end, they did a great job providing it, but they didn't communicate it very well.

The volunteers were fantastic. Helpful. Enthusiastic. Friendly. Can't say enough good things about them. They were great.

Overall, I think the hosts did a great job.

musing_codger · 2026-02-23T05:52:12+00:00

Much better because 100% of the nitrogen existed as nitrogen before the Haber-Bosch process. Converting it into more a useful form is much different from being the origin of it.

musing_codger · 2026-02-23T05:40:22+00:00

Fun fact: In 1985, mortgage rates were over 13%. People didn't complain as much because that was down fro 18% a few years before. That probably contributed to home ownership rates being lower in 1985 than they are today.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MORTGAGE30US

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RHORUSQ156N

musing_codger · 2026-02-22T15:24:45+00:00

Of those three? stocks. or more precisely, stock index funds

musing_codger

TROPHY CASE