You could have just joined CPAC!

reference: https://www.chron.com/politics/article/CPAC-Dallas-we-are-all-domestic-terrorists-banner-17359959.php

Good news: there’s a third option!

Similar experience for me! I joined the co-ed service “fraternity” Alpha Phi Omega… they coordinated many different volunteering efforts and projects; but also had some social events for the members. Great way to meet kind-hearted people!

I bet like “free to play” games they’ll find a few “whale” users who will spend inappropriate amounts of money. There’s a long history of people paying for companionship… Now it’s even more fake :(

The question is when, not if. But it’s an expensive question to guess the “when” wrong. I believe the famous idiom is: the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.

Best of luck!

Artificial Stupidity

Even if they do; if your employer “provides” the insurance they’ll take a cut of any cost savings :(

There’s already an annual child tax credit: https://taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/what-child-tax-credit

I’m sure they didn’t even check if birth rates are influenced by this…

It’s overvalued in my market at the moment, (Dallas) majority of properties sitting on the market for over half a year and making several list price reductions. COVID inflated the market a bit too much and it needs to come down… 10-20% would be a fair amount I’d expect it to drop over 2 years.

But there are a lot of external factors I’m not considering in my estimate: like idiotic tariffs, incompetent leadership at the state level, and a possible demographic shift depending on how people react to immigration reductions (and possibly net emmigration)… I give a significant chance something out of left field will upend the economy 🤷‍♂️. But who knows when the people in charge change their policies every other day and then insist their new opinion has always been their super secret plan all along…

Housing prices are sticky to go down because they’re also an investment. People (in aggregate) have a tendency to hold rather than sell at a loss. Also note it varies significantly across geographies.

Edit: also houses are not liquid so that also adds to the stickiness of pricing. It takes time for price signals to develop due to the slow (often over a month) & infrequent nature of transactions. It also matters that there’s an industry of professionals who benefit from keeping prices higher.

Republicans are so dumb :(

Imagine the loss in productivity from having so many people fired & quickly re-hired. Not just from those people; but the HR & administrative effort; the re-org of responsibilities among the other employees; and the nonsense time it probably took up in so many “mandatory departmental meetings” discussing what was happening…

Every Republican presidential term in my lifetime has had a recession start. None of the Democratic ones have…

Regan; one started each term. First Bush had one in his term. Clinton had none in his 2 terms. Second Bush had a HUGE one each time (dot com and great recession). Obama had none in his 2 terms. trump had one in his first term (triggered by covid & shutdowns; which his (in)actions intensified…). Biden didn’t have one (but; just barely… and only by the official definition [NBER]; he did have two negative real GDP quarters, so one could argue this point). Now we’re starting trump’s second term, so we’ll see (it’s pretty clear we’ll have a recession within 2 years).

This isn’t really debatable unless you ignore the evidence. Stock market and real GDP growth are overall way higher under Democrat presidents. One link for reference (but many more are available): https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11127-021-00912-y