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Goredho

Certifiably Surly
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Everything posted by Goredho

  1. We don't disagree on much. Where I am at, the average Walmart shopper is not looking for a dopamine hit. The average Walmart shopper is shopping there because they have to. Their wages are flat relative to inflation, but their housing is rapidly getting more and more expensive as relatively wealthy outsiders (I'm one of them) pay inflated prices divorced from what the local economy would dictate what a house on the hill built by people with real skills would cost.
  2. Eh, the disappearance of manufacturing jobs in the U.S. is not because someone in 2016 is buying cheap shit at Walmart. It's because Walmart decided to start sourcing from overseas in the late 80s/early 90s to cut costs and grow revenue because there were no other (at least easier/less risky) ways to grow revenue. Your grandma didn't make that decision. Neither did George Bush Sr or Bill Clinton. Walmart's corporate leadership did. To the degree that politicians made their decisions possible, it was only after lobbying efforts from companies like Walmart to grease the wheels and make "globalization" possible. Over the last 40 or so years, that corporate "globalism" got consumers hooked on cheap prices like a pusher giving a junkie a cheap hit to make sure they come back for more. That's where your grandma comes in. It has come at the expense of jobs held by consumers while those corporate CEO's became billionaires. There is only one problem. It doesn't take someone with an economics degree to see that the side effect of eliminating your consumer's means to consume makes this an unsustainable way to increase corporate value. And so the billionaire CEOs are in tough spot today. They can't squeeze more blood from the low and middle class turnip to keep increasing the valuations of their corporations so as to maintain their position as billionaires. At the same time, unrest is rising in the economic classes beneath them that are having their jobs eliminated, classes of people who are surviving on the cheap goods that were only made possible through the elimination of their jobs. So what's a billionaire CEO to do? You use some of your billions to blame it on the getaway driver -- the government. You buy the media companies that provide the windows by which the common man understands the world outside their direct observation. You use those windows of information to focus their ire on the government and people they already distrust. You use it to blame your enemies and to turn the different layers of the lower 98% income distribution against each other. You capitalize on their desperation, their calls for radical change to get one of your own elected President. A special kind of guy who is skilled as a wrestling heel. Someone who gets as many people to hate them as love them. Someone who can keep people's attention on their outrageous acts while other steps are taken unnoticed. Steps to erect an oligarchy and kleptocracy where your economic status as a billionaire CEO is ensured. Ensured beyond the point in which it can be sustained through the free market capitalization of an exhausted resource -- the American consumer.
  3. Eh, I can think of worse ways to die.
  4. I'm pretty sure Emilio Estevez's character in "The Breakfast Club" was in detention for taping this dude's butt cheeks together.
  5. Cheaper alternatives for consumers only exist after a strategic decision is made by a corporate leadership to import cheaper alternatives. It's not a literal time machine. It's more of a prosperity time machine. You make the average person's existence ugly enough to where they will accept the conditions you dictate to survive.
  6. Yep. If we were smart, we'd quit spending our time on Surly and found an NGO that replaces NOAA. Call it Liberty Weather Services, work a flag into the logo and make the right contributions/donations. We could hire all the fired government meteorologists and scientists for 50% of their previous salary, buy all the now surplus government equipment and infrastructure for a nickel on the dollar "to help pay off the national debt" and charge the government 150% of what NOAA used to cost for our superior services.
  7. Presidents did this? Or wealthy CEOs looking to ever-lower costs in pursuit of keeping their graphs trending up and to the right?
  8. Because Justin Trudeau is trying to pour fentanyl into your kid's mouths.
  9. If you uproot your kids, I would do it in the next couple years. Impacts of uprooting for kids under 8 are not that bad in my experience, over that and their brain has to deal with a lot more loss. YMMV.
  10. That just means Elon increased government savings by an order of magnitude more than the deranged liberal media deep state gives him credit for.
  11. I have a fantasy where Elon Musk is interviewed on “Between Two Ferns” and Zach Galifianakis holds up this photo and asks him, “Mr Musk, you have been called a real life Tony Stark, the world’s greatest businessman and even ‘digital Jesus’. But this photo shows you are simply the second coming of Mike Lindell. How does that make you feel?”
  12. We just need a good Tonkin Trumpkin Gulf Incident.
  13. America after a quarter of elevated coffee prices:
  14. Welcome to the thunderdome, Gayton Bigsby
  15. Who would have thought that in 2025, the phrase "Keep Fucking That Chicken" would become sound financial advice.
  16. Eh, I'm pretty sure we could just ask Steve-O.
  17. After a ridiculous amount of anxiety, I rebalanced my allocations to where I can't be wiped out by an intended or unintended market crash. I now sleep better. Dipshit can do what he wants (he was always gonna) and while I will be affected, I am not so exposed to equity risk that I would be looking to rebuild a retirement nest egg at age 55. I am not sure even an intelligent billionaire can really appreciate the effects that this global game of economic chicken has on the psyche of the 401K investor class. They are in danger of making a crash a self-fulfilling prophecy, which may be their goal anyway. I mean, we've seen what people will accept from their government if they feel financially squeezed a bit. Inflation hurt the non-investor class whose money was going toward immediate survival needs and that was exploited for votes. This new economic crisis stands to squeeze the people above them in the 98% income distribution.
  18. Musk is gonna be bailed out with military contracts for the cyber truck. I mean, think how quickly WWII would have ended if we had had these on the beaches of Normandy?
  19. My name is Dorkmandias! Nerd of nerds! Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair!
  20. I guess what I mean is, if the U.S. were to take a military action in an attempt to absorb another sovereign nation in N.A., would NATO nations help that other nation defend itself from the U.S.?
  21. These retaliatory acts could be used as a pretext for military coercion. What are the odds Canada becomes our Ukraine?
  22. I am in my last 5-10 years of a career and on track for a comfortable retirement. I have a high paying salary now, but it’s likely my last one based on what I’m seeing with peers who are in the job market today. Given that my future salary will more than likely be reduced, I will not have a runway of peak earning years to recover from big market losses if they happen in my time left. So I’m looking to be more defensive with the assets in my portfolio generally while also setting up for interest payments that will be A) reinvested while I have the high paying job, B) drawn from (if necessary) to offset salary shortfalls whenever the high paying job goes away or C) drawn from in retirement.
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