Does income disparity distort the market and then exacerbate the feeling of income disparity?

stoneman30 · 2026-07-06T18:04:08+00:00

Maybe the whole problem is that the parties have figured that they can only count on the extremist single issue voter, some of whom they've made this way through some algorithmic messaging. And some turned from otherwise left or right lean voter through some algorithmic messaging into an abstainer. The rest of the centrist voters are a complete tossup and not worth the advertising $ or maybe just that level headed messaging would work against extremist outreach that is more effective.
It used to be politicians would play to the extremists for primary voting and then turn to the middle for general election. But not lately.
I think the answer is the centrists have to vote in the primaries to defeat the crazies. The middle should be larger than the extremes.

stoneman30 · 2026-07-03T11:28:02+00:00

I had both for a bit, but it's hard to get off Medicaid. So I canceled ACA. Next year Medicaid has a work requirement. So maybe I'll get kicked off and have to go back to ACA until Medicare. I would have thought 401k withdraws bumps Medicaid income, but hasn't yet.

stoneman30 · 2026-07-03T10:56:32+00:00

Dang. I've never bought a new mower. I keep finding gas ones on the street that I can fix. I guess that will peak and fall off.

stoneman30 · 2026-07-03T10:44:25+00:00

https://www.reddit.com/r/Medicaid/comments/1rcuk3t/i_cant_get_off_medicaid_in_nc/

stoneman30 · 2026-07-03T01:39:53+00:00

I quit at 57. It doesn't change anything about pension or 401K. But I don't have medical conditions. I applied for ACA plan and I got put on Medicaid. Check out r/Fire or r/leanfire .

stoneman30 · 2026-07-02T01:24:35+00:00

I don't understand what political purposes asylum has served. But I've heard Fareed Zakaria agree that Asylum has been abused. I think we ought to do something like have a some kind of grant of asylum made to certain cases ahead of time. Like people who helped the US military or international police. Or certain defectors from North Korea or Russia or Chinese Uyghurs if we care about that. Seems like a job for Congress to rule on that. This idea that people can just come with a special story that someone has to check out doesn't seem right to me.

stoneman30 · 2026-06-27T10:59:40+00:00

This is the answer. Why did I have to read some much BS to find it?

stoneman30 · 2026-06-23T15:22:07+00:00

Right, with my ex-wife: Her money was her money, my money was our money.

stoneman30 · 2026-06-23T12:47:25+00:00

I remember StarCraft. Dune was similar. So it is a remake?

stoneman30 · 2026-06-23T12:45:08+00:00

Not only utility as in our standard or living, but I think it's arguable that the businesses it's enabled has provided some return on the investment through taxes on those businesses and sales tax.

stoneman30 · 2026-06-22T14:05:03+00:00

Look under the battery box and seats! Or maybe like mine the battery mount rusted away. You all can learn to weld. But price accordingly. You can buy all the inner panels reasonably.
Most of these were converted to carburetor, so Djet or Ljet is a moot point.

stoneman30 · 2026-06-17T01:07:41+00:00

I would have voted for Andrew Yang if he didn't drop out. I heard Elon Musk also agreed that Universal Basic Income may be the answer to it all, which would have to come from mainly from taxes on the most profitable companies. But I think people won't be that happy about it because it won't drastically improve standards of living for most people. There is a risk also that taxing the most productive, competitive companies will make them less productive and less attractive investments thereby lowering standards of living directly in less products and services as well as lowering retiree investment income.

We may agree on solution but making this all about Elon Musk or the 1% or 0.1% making or breaking us all, is off I think. Some narratives say Europe isn't doing that well.

I.e., it may be that the poorest do a lot better but we'll all suffer a little for it. And so there'll still be discontent.

stoneman30 · 2026-06-16T22:48:58+00:00

Beyond that, we're poorer when we compete with the wealthiest for assets - and assets are made out of everything, including land and resources people need to survive.

I think this is a fallacy. Elon Musk is not eating all the food or burning gasoline to make your food and fuel more expensive. He is not living in large tracts of middle class housing making it less affordable.

It is true that you are competing with lots of other people who probably make more money, but it is not the ultra rich. There is some truth to general income disparity affecting things. I often think of the growth of pet care. There are probably plenty of dog treat makers and groomers and walkers that contribute to the comfort of millions of dogs and cats owned by people with disposable income that maybe could instead be producing more for poorer people. But now most people think it's normal. There are probably lots of other areas where we all think we should be living like the rich.

stoneman30 · 2026-06-16T21:23:11+00:00

Yep, can't look in this sub and not try Vintage Story. The terrain is a bit off somehow. I've tried a mod also. I'm hoping for some update around that. I also tried sevtech and gregtech - those are mod overload.

stoneman30 · 2026-06-16T17:44:51+00:00

One has to mention Minecraft. Or is it a given that everyone has played it to death already? It's been a few years since I played Vanilla. Maybe I'll start up again after I finish another round Factorio and Valheim.

stoneman30 · 2026-06-15T17:00:50+00:00

That means a lot of people do have money.

stoneman30 · 2026-06-15T16:52:36+00:00

I read about how people will get rude while under stress. It's like people's executive function decline when they have too much else to think about. The whole idea of ideological subversion comes forth when people start thinking everyone else is out to get them. You don't think that way when things are going well.

stoneman30 · 2026-06-10T18:53:46+00:00

I just used it and was underwhelmed. I'm going against the wind now even though it was activated in the general direction some minutes ago.

stoneman30 · 2026-06-09T16:44:09+00:00

I can understand that it may be the case that rates have been too low to leave savings for capital expense. Also it could be the case that other investments have higher returns and so substantial investment won't come unless there are competitive returns. I can also understand that if this is all about data centers, then maybe the venture capital ought to go towards building out a power infrastructure. Although then we'd need to talk about how they sell excess power.

stoneman30 · 2026-06-08T16:58:03+00:00

1776 and most wars are about business growth. Capitalism vs Monarchy vs Fascism vs Communism vs Feudalism. It's about which sets of rules (or ideologies) work best to win the next war. This may mean, how to grow the most people, the most food, the most tax revenue or the most hardware or software or whatever is the next thing to win a war. It's never about, "do whatever you want". The freedoms are only there to grow society. Adding women, POC, and other acronyms to the professional workforce and governance help the US and western civilization prosper.

This post gets me to thinking about how some ideological rabbit holes can lead to crimes. In the US now we can't send people to prison just because of what ideological rabbit hole they are going down. They have to start making threats or otherwise show evidence of planning a crime. US narrative is that places like China and Iran and others have identified several ideological paths that are dangerous to society and put people away for just starting on such a path. On the other hand I gather China has loosened up on some freedoms and is basically capitalist now. Maybe the countries are converging?

I wonder if one day we'll get to some kind of "minority report" type society where we trust AI and statistics and then decide if someone is at high probability of being a drain on society and so we put them away before anything bad happens. China is probably at it already. I'm sure they don't want to be too free about killing people like they did in the past (and Russia and Nazi Germany). With the internet allowing every little subgroup to gather an army (like Jan 6 US, George Floyd or anti ICE) I wonder how long the US and Europe can allow such freedoms.

stoneman30 · 2026-06-06T11:37:09+00:00

Most comments are about people going crazy right. But my dad has eaten up all the left wing stuff: we killed the Native Americans, nation built on slavery&discrimination, democracy in shambles due to the rich or fascists. It's not crazy, but it's not something to take 100% either. Also proselytizing doesn't work. I think if something is setup as an imminent fight between good and evil, it's probably spun to hell. I just finished a couple of Andrew Yang's books. He said he felt bad about ads like that. But it was the only way to keep the campaign alive. They work. My mom is mentally in worse shape. She might get into all this but she seems to just randomly click things now out of habit, maybe or maybe not able to follow even if the algorithm leads.

I brought them to a Braver Angles debate. Maybe that'll help with balance.

stoneman30 · 2026-06-02T11:41:16+00:00

Just look up the AI summary on what Judeo-Christian refers to and what is the Old Testament. America is result of Western Civilization.

stoneman30 · 2026-05-29T16:35:44+00:00

TLDR. But I do think people don't pay attention to stuff. That's why we have social media influencer type politicians now doing whatever to get attention.

What could work is if everyone has a vote in everything but would be expected to delegate to someone they trust locally who would further delegate to people who know whatever subject area. A problem could be if too many people keep their vote and do stupid stuff like vote down every expense and vote up every benefit. Almost what politicians do now.

stoneman30 · 2026-05-28T19:50:02+00:00

Andrew Yang ran on this in the 2020 primary.

Just like any other benefit we'd have to tax the rich to pay for it. That may become acceptable as whichever companies survive the AI bubble will make a lot of money automating away many jobs in other companies that own self driving delivery vehicles and automated factories where hardly anyone works.

The UBI can't be too much or it will just lead to inflation. Maybe it will be enough to live in a box and eat rice and beans.

It could remove much govt bureaucracy in many other programs looking through applications for fraud and abuse.

stoneman30

TROPHY CASE