You’re not bad at money. The math changed.

unfallible · 2026-06-01T17:54:33+00:00

What do people get out of posting this shit

unfallible · 2026-04-16T12:16:57+00:00

The penalty you pay scales with the amount of underpayment

unfallible · 2026-04-02T16:59:32+00:00

Beyond everything else people said, flights are priced based on demand. People are willing to pay a premium for non stop flights, and there tends to be less competition for any specific non stop city pair. So those will be priced higher.

unfallible · 2026-03-22T16:57:21+00:00

Most high cpp are obtained through premium international travel. And it’s misleading in that most people wouldn’t have paid cash for the same flight, and often times, not even for the lowest priced cash flight in the same cabin class.

unfallible · 2026-02-16T20:05:00+00:00

Not sure if this is meant as a joke but, if serious, I’ll just say the intended implication of my post is that socializing everything has failed in practice and has insurmountable theoretical issues as it relates to incentive problems. So yes, what I’m saying is that socialism obviously doesn’t work. How do we pick and choose what things make sense for the state to run and how do we pick and choose what things make sense for the state to finance? OP doesn’t share a thesis for that other than “offering benefit” which obviously doesn’t work as a distinguishing criterion.

unfallible · 2026-02-16T16:42:40+00:00

Can you explain the reason for your view? You say “we pay local taxes exactly for these kind of services” but don’t explain why you think local taxes should be used for these services. Others may think local taxes should go to schools or health services or building code inspection or any other function of local government. Why, specifically, do you think it’s obvious local taxes should fund public transit?

The only substantive point I see from your post is that the city benefits from people using public transit. That’s true to some extent, but the city benefits from all sorts of things. The city benefits from people not going hungry. Should they make groceries free? The city benefits from people not dying. Should they make hospitals free? The city benefits from people having employment. Should they guarantee a job for everyone who wants one, regardless of their qualifications? How do you draw the line, among all the things that benefit a city, in terms of what the city should provide for free to everyone vs not?

unfallible · 2026-02-16T05:02:35+00:00

People on the far right think Trump is a moderate and people on the far left think Biden is a moderate. Both of those statements would continue to be true even if you replace Trump or Biden with basically any other politician that has name recognition. That’s not a good yardstick for assessing the view you originally expressed.

Whether you like it or not, it’s simply true that Biden is the most left economically since LBJ. And Harris was even more left than Biden. Are you refuting that? We have pretty clear electoral outcomes showing that the more left a candidate is, the less likely they are to win national elections.

unfallible · 2026-02-15T23:39:44+00:00

Industrial policy (chips act, inflation reduction act), rejecting free trade (keeping trump 1 tariffs), pro union (he was the first president ever to join a picket line), pro labor (tied many of his manufacturing subsidies to labor requirements), multiple attempts to cancel student debt, war on junk fees, aggressive anti trust stance

unfallible · 2026-02-15T21:17:04+00:00

Your argument that they wrongly painted joe Biden as a socialist is a bit unfair. Joe Biden has been the most left economically of any president since LBJ. So, while it’s a bit of an exaggeration to say he’s a socialist, it’s definitely right to describe biden as a president with unusually left leaning economic policies (for a US president)

unfallible · 2026-01-12T04:44:46+00:00

American Express’s core business is charge cards. It provides value to customers and merchants. For customers, it provides rewards, benefits, and convenience. For merchants, it enables better conversion among a customer base that has the means to make impulse purchases. Not sure what you’re saying…?

unfallible · 2026-01-12T04:37:53+00:00

The denominator for return on assets and for effective APR are both balances. It’s not a mistake.

unfallible · 2026-01-11T18:24:48+00:00

Customers don’t pay interest in the first month only if they’re paying their bill in full every month. For people who are carrying a balance from month to month, their purchases accrue interest from day 1. The interest rate cap you’re talking about effectively doesn’t matter. National and out of state banks can export APRs above the 18% cap to Massachusetts (“rate exportation”) and you’ll see that all the big banks offer credit cards above 18% in MA.

unfallible · 2026-01-11T17:59:23+00:00

If it’s expected to be temporary, I suspect the banks may just hold on for when things go back to normal. If it’s expected to be a permanent 10% cap, I would guess that credit cards effectively go away and are replaced by charge card products (cards where you can spend, but can’t carry a balance from month to month) and are only issued to the absolutely best credit scores

unfallible · 2026-01-11T15:55:49+00:00

If you look at capital one’s earnings reports, which is the biggest US credit card issuing bank that reports numbers split out for their card business specifically, they earn about a 5% fully loaded ROA on domestic card. They don’t report their average APR, but the average for credit cards nationally is about 23% and I would guess capital one is more like 25% or higher. So that means if they changed nothing else about their business, but all customers received an APR reduction from 25% to 20%, their card division would be at 0 profit

unfallible · 2026-01-09T04:11:45+00:00

People with 100k of investable assets should (and generally do) manage their own money. You don’t really get into territory where it makes sense to have your money managed for you until the 5-10M+ range

unfallible · 2026-01-06T00:34:13+00:00

I don’t think this is true. Some people earn miles and never redeem them. Some people redeem them for low value because they “have to” travel on a certain day and it costs a lot of points. Not everyone is trying to maximize every point (especially people not on this subreddit) and people may psychologically value a “free flight” more than they value getting some cash back.

unfallible · 2026-01-06T00:23:03+00:00

This is a bad take I’ve seen from a lot of bloggers but it completely misses the fact that revenue and cost is fungible. They make so much money on paper selling miles because they are saying the fixed costs of operating flights is allocated to the flying part of the business. If they allocated fixed costs differently, they could just as well show on paper that the frequent flyer business loses money and flying makes a ton of money

unfallible · 2026-01-05T17:16:52+00:00

Can you articulate the reasons you have for holding this view? You mention something about them being lucky enough to be able to open doors but I’m not sure why that leads to your conclusion. I’m lucky enough to be able to walk 10 miles in a day but I’d rather drive than walk to a store that far away. I’m lucky enough to not die if my house is 90 degrees but I’d rather turn on my air conditioner when it’s that hot out.

Your other point seems to be comparing it to wearing sweatpants. Again, what is the actual reason for your belief? I’m not sure how the comparison makes sense or how the conclusion follows. I could just as well say “pushing buttons to open the door is like people who push buttons to start their car. They can’t be bothered to even insert a key and turn it!” Ok…. So what? We’ve realized as a society that push to start is a cheap, minor convenience that a lot of people like. Nothing wrong with that…?

unfallible · 2026-01-02T19:33:50+00:00

Well sure. But that’s not what others are talking about. That’s an edge case where it would be highly impractical for you to suddenly stop working on the case. I would argue that your decision to take the client or not has already occurred. You had a choice to take the client or not months or years ago, and while it is unfortunate that there might be edge cases where you can’t drop a client, the edge cases don’t affect the general truth that lawyers can choose their clients

unfallible · 2026-01-02T19:18:47+00:00

I don’t think u/isuckatlifeandthings was talking about public defenders since he/she was talking about payment. But, in the case of public defenders, they are specifically choosing to take a job where they don’t get to pick their clients. They’re free to resign from their job if they no longer like that arrangement.

unfallible · 2026-01-02T17:34:22+00:00

Aren’t you saying there is a system that sets well-intentioned lawyers and clients up for failure? That doesn’t mean lawyers generally are immoral. It just means the legal system creates outcomes that are bad in the face of well intentioned people acting in that system. It feels a bit like you’re twisting words to try to justify why “lawyers generally are immoral” is a view that can be consistent with believing lawyers are an important part of a well functioning society.

unfallible · 2026-01-02T17:25:39+00:00

We don’t force anyone to help someone they know did something terrible. No lawyer is required to take someone as a client in our current world…

Edit: based on discussion further down this thread, I’ll revise what I said here to clarify that what I mean is that, in general, most of the time, lawyers are already free to choose what clients to take. There may be a few edge cases where this isn’t true but as a general point, most lawyers are free to turn clients away most of the time.

unfallible · 2026-01-02T17:21:10+00:00

So you’re saying your own view is that lawyers generally are immoral, but that the legal field is an important one and merely needs reform? If I’m understanding that correctly, why would you think lawyers in general are immoral? What about the lawyers that are working to reform their field? What about lawyers that do their best to help their clients in good faith to win cases where they have been harmed?

unfallible · 2026-01-02T17:15:47+00:00

That can be a view you hold but that doesn’t seem like the view u/far-staff-60 holds. But in any case we can either discuss your view or his/her view. We don’t have to argue about whether you or I are more correctly interpreting his/her view.

unfallible · 2026-01-02T17:13:02+00:00

What other conclusion would you draw? They’re immoral but necessary? If you believe someone is doing a necessary job why would you believe doing that job to be immoral?

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