Lord Ratner

Yup. The only people who fantasize about Europe as an enlightened paradise are the ones who have never lived there.

Not very familiar with the first amendment, huh? When you support a law you shouldn't think about how it will be used, you should worry about how it will be misused. This dude was making a political point. AOC is on the record saying that protests should make you uncomfortable. She specifically chose something that she enjoys without considering that the protest against her could be framed in a way to make her quite uncomfortable. Just because you can't see the political point doesn't mean there isn't one. And all of that is largely irrelevant. We have the first amendment for very specific reasons, and laws that prevent sexual harassment in the workplace have no applicability in the public forum.

No, but I am planning to transition from investing in the market (401k) primarily to investing in real estate and hard assets. Not entirely, because I could be wrong. But I don't trust the government to stop meddling with the market. The ECB just announced they will buy private debt if needed to stabilize their policy across the EU... "Purchases of private sector securities could be considered, if appropriate." That's insane. The entire premise of investing is using information and intellect to judge the likelihood of one business succeeding or failing in the marketplace. How can you make that assessment when the government can apply huge asymmetric force simply because they decided a company is useful in supporting their policy plans? I'm sure the selection process for these securities will be transparent and consistent... And yes, definitely buying gold. Not because I have use for it, but because that's where people and governments go when they get scared. Uh, yeah. What's that got to do with anything? The world kept working after Bear Stearns and Lehman vanished. But if you were financially involved with them, your world might have been rocked. The financial crisis gave way to Occupy Wall Street on the left and the Tea Party on the right. But there was no inflation, so the furor died down. Will it this time around? Dunno. The 20%+ inflation in some European countries isn't going to just "keep working" either. That's fine. You've established that pretty much anything that doesn't result in humanities extinction will count as success for you. You asked for specifics, and I've pointed out pillars of the modern financial system that I consider unsustainable, with pretty specific metrics. You seen to have confused the collapse of *this* financial system with there being "no financial system," which is clearly absurd.

It's already happening. Is Belgium developed enough to count? Because the farmer revolt isn't a minor dispute. Keep inflation above 6% and the natives are going to get mighty restless, especially if unemployment starts rising, which it *always* does during a recession. Also, how rare are you talking? It's been 100 years since the US had a major disruption. That's actually a long time, historically. We're due. We haven't, actually. Nothing is more dangerous to a society than demographics, and we are going the way of Europe as far as birth rates go. And immigration isn't a solution. Low skilled labor won't prop up an advanced economy, and poaching skilled labor from the rest of the world just outsources the problem for a while. Social Security and Medicare are excellent gauges of our country's ability to leverage a smaller population of more productive workers to pay for everyone else. It isn't going well. The only way out of debt without pain is growth, and our growth has been abysmal *with* unprecedented monetary and fiscal stimulus for well over a decade. What's it going to look like without the debt fairy? Agreed, but no one is arguing the extinction of the species. This is a bit too vague. I would consider the system unchanged if: - The dominant 5 currencies are all still fiat - Central banks are still engaging in Quantitative Easing *and* inflation is managed (<3%). - The Eurozone currency block maintains the same membership. In particular, Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain remain while the Euro maintains relative parity with the dollar. - Tariffs, or a schism between the west and China, basically some sort of end to the free trade arrangements between the alleged superpowers. Taiwan must still be independent. - Social Security and Medicare largely remain true to their current incarnation. Same for the social safety nets of the European nations - And this will be the interesting one. 9 years you say? Then our debt will have to be *above* ~$50 trillion, since deficits are a feature, not a bug in this Keynesian world. The extreme austerity required to prevent this would be, I think, a sign the system failed. Changes to any of the above will be accompanied by massive social disruption. We disagree here. I see a system that magnifies bubbles to increasingly dangerous levels. And the growing income inequality, a direct result of the Fed's policy, clearly indicate that "everyone" is not getting richer. Inflation is going to kill the argument that "income inequality doesn't matter since everyone is still better off," an argument I've made for years, erroneously. Inflation will bring the ultra rich back to being rich and the "enriched poor" will be poor again. It could be something like crypto, but I doubt it. Whatever it is, it will tie a currency to a fixed asset. It'll be the only way to restore trust in a reserve currency. Surely. Believe me, I hope I'm wrong. But there were a lot of people holding your position in the mid 30's. They ignored the signs, as I think we are now. The pandemic just accelerated the timeline a couple decades.

It'll be riots either way, but how we exit is a big question mark. We now get to choose between runaway inflation or the collapse of the credit markets. The only eventual emergence from this mess involves the complete destruction of the modern financial system. Keynesian economics and MMT are dead. But it has to be unwound over time, rather than allowed to implode. Our entire system only functions with the fed "printing money" through two incredibly stupid mechanisms: - Bond purchases to artificially suppress interest rates so the government can maintain insane deficit levels. This in turn suppresses the private rates and encourages unproductive, irrational (wasteful) investing. Reference pretty much every SPAC from 2020/2021, and the housing market. - Forcing reserves down the throats of the banks such that the Fed has to offer a *higher* rate for overnight deposits than the fed funds target. So we force banks to take these reserves to "stimulate" the economy, then we pay them to do fuck-all with them. If your system *requires* a government entity with the unconstrained ability to spend money that does not exist, your system is broken. And everyone in the industry plays along with the bullshit excuse of "that's just how banking works" or "the modern world needs these instruments to keep the transactions flowing." It's all horseshit. We've been riding the high of a slowly and artificially decreasing interest rate since Volker blew everything up in the 80s. That allowed for ever-increasing borrowing, which only stimulated growth by taking (stealing) it from the future. Sounds great, except once you hit 0%, the party ends. And here we are. Now we have to reconcile the fact that 50 years after the wide scale adoption of fiat currency, the experiment failed. We've run out of countries with cheap labor to exploit and the boomers didn't have enough kids to sustain the growth rates they wanted. But they made billions in what effectively became a Ponzi scheme. It'll start with a recession, soon. Then once the credit markets crack, the Fed will step in and go back to the only thing they know: printing. That'll be the unofficial signal to the world that high inflation is baked in for the next 5-10 years. But now the loss of earnings means no raises. There's a lot less distance between the Sri Lankan riots and American riots than we think. With a savings rate of 4%, there's no slack to handle inflation like we had in the 70s. And the collapse of globalism thanks to China and Russia is only going to pour plutonium onto a uranium fire. At the end we'll end up back on the gold standard, or something similar. It'll be a generation or two before the world trusts fiat currency again. But they always go back to it, because rulers always have bigger dreams than they have wallets, and voters are easily bought. Lots of people have seen this coming, but they had no idea just how much the government could spend to prop it all up. Turns out inflation was the party-crasher we were waiting for.

You can't play a game where the referee is allowed to change the rules at will. This will end poorly

My guess is the government changes their tune suddenly and claims there is no longer a vaccination mandate, and thus the case has no standing to proceed. This is exactly what they did with the mask mandate when a federal judge issued an injunction, because they realized it would be much worse to their cause to have a completed ruling that sets a precedent. If they just admit defeat (by admitting nothing at all and simply dropping the mandate with no explanation) now, then 20 or 30 or 100 years later when the next pandemic hits, they won't have a clearly established precedent stopping them from doing what they want.

This is a growing sickness in our system. The ability to produce an excellent product or provide a great service seems to die with the founder. Then whoever the shareholder-elected board installs to run the company bleeds it dry one CEO at a time until a shell is left. Each pays themselves in stock options, takes on corporate debt to buy back shares and boost the price a few pennies, then quietly leaves a hundred million bucks richer while the stock works it's way down to zero. And when the consequences of their shitty management finally manifest, they are either long gone or pulling the handle on the golden parachute. Just look at Boeing. Capitalism is being raped by the modern financial system while everyone else argues over bathrooms and abortions. The Democrats have declared war on meritocracy and individualism, both prerequisites to a capitalist system, so that leaves the Republicans to save us. I'm doubtful. Tucker Carlson gets it, but he's a bit quick to embrace a conspiracy and his foreign policy views aren't playing out well either. Who will be our hero?

I'm not sure that's the appropriate metric. Biden isn't selling water softeners at Costco, he's the leader of the free world, elected by us. Part of the application for the job is what kind of a man or woman you are. Of course one of my main arguments *against* Trump to the conservatives I fly with has been that America deserves a better man than Trump. I always ask, "would you want your daughter dating Trump?" And "Trump has cheated on every relationship he's been in." These stories were not systematically hidden from the American voters by the press and Big Tech. Say what you will, but Trump raised three very functional children who are fiercely loyal to him (with two still to be determined). There is much more to consider, but that says a lot to a lot of voters. And he was up against a candidate who regularly painted himself as a grounded, no-nonsense family man. Biden was one of the dumbest people in the Senate for years, but he was supposed to be moderate and compassionate. Obama was clearly a man deeply committed to his wife and kids. But the "smartest man I know" according to Joe Biden was addicted to hookers, crack, illegally owned firearms, and curiously, filming all of his crimes. That same son, deeply flawed, had incredibly lucrative connections to foreign businesses with government ties to our adversaries, all on the basis of his blood connection to the senator/vice president/president. You don't think that's relevant to the voters interest in selecting a president? You don't think most people will look at that dumpster fire of a 52-year old and think, no way his high-profile parents aren't aware of this? How would that story affect a security clearance? OSI: Do you or any of your family members have connections to officials of foreign governments? You: Me? No not really. My son is on the board of several foreign companies with ties to their respective governments. Hmm? Oh yeah, China is one of them, sure. And he has hours of footage of him engaging in illegal activities involving drugs, prostitutes, and firearms, many of which he suspects have already been seized by members of the Russian Mafia. But other than that I can't think of anything... Right... By this logic, what did the candidate do that was illegal, many of the arguments against Trump vaporize too, as they still remain largely unproven. As to question one, seriously? First, have you seen any of the videos? They are hilarious, but quite obviously real. Second, have you ever, EVER, in your life, seen politicians let that type of story hit without categorically rejecting it? Your question should be has any Biden family member actually gone on the record denying the authenticity of the videos? Spoiler alert: no. I'm not sure the nepotism argument has legs given the Kennedy, Bush, Clinton dynasties. Ultimately it's not illegal, nor should it be, to use family members as advisors, or for them to use their name as a campaign tool. I wish the American people didn't go for it, but it's not illegal. Joe Biden rented his home to the secret service for years. Trump rented them rooms at his hotels. Ok, neither really bothered me. But Trump's kids didn't become "gajillionaires" because of their father's access to the highest office in the world. And at least the American people got the Abraham accords out of the arrangement. What are we getting now?

Just watched the Hunter Biden videos. That fact these aren't dominating the news cycle is a testament to a broken system. I know we only have 3 liberals here, but I'd love to hear a defense of the near media-blackout. If Eric Trump had 15 seconds of similar video leaked, it would have never ended. The dude flat out says his laptop, stolen by Russians, could be used to blackmail him. It's mind-blowing.

It's a transitory peak, don't worry 🤣😂 If you really want a laugh, find one of the sites that uses the 1980 inflation formula. It's more like an 80 year high.

This is quite conveniently timed. Now that we have Hunter Biden, on tape, admitting that the Russian Mafia stole a laptop full of incriminating evidence, with the potential to blackmail him, while he makes "gajillions," I'd say the laptop story has some legs.

There's always an excuse. The guys hired in the last few years spent 10-17 years stuck at the regionals. The TWA guys got stapled twice. B-scale, mergers, integrations, bankruptcies, pandemics... It's always something. You either act as a unionist or the bad times will persist. You don't have to like it. I don't. But it's a unionized career, so act accordingly. You did, but others don't. I always find it funny when an old guy tells me about how when he was hired they said he'd be a captain in 5 years and they'd have to back up a dump truck full of money to his driveway. Then he got screwed by xxx or yyy and it took decades to get where he was "supposed to be." That's why he can't afford to follow the union guidance this time. Sorry. But don't worry, he tells me, you'll be a captain in 5 years and they'll have to back a dump truck full of money to my driveway, so I shouldn't worry about him acting like an independent contractor, it'll be different for me... Even after a pandemic these guys still don't see the irony or hypocrisy. But pilots are funny creatures...

There are two potential outcomes. 1. The progressive movement concentrates into a smaller and smaller core of activists who eventually get discarded from the Democratic party machinery. The more extreme they get, the smaller the coalition will be. I think they are very close to, or have already passed a point of no return. Their only power is in the asymmetrical advantage social media communication gives them, coupled with the disproportionate representation of progressives in media and academia. 2. If they are successful in holding the party hostage and maintaining their grip over the moderates (by scaring the liberal voters into believing conservatives are monsters that hate them), they will eventually trigger a fear response and humans will do what they've done really well for thousands of years: hate and harm people who act or look differently. I didn't think this was the prominent threat until they literally started going after the kids. Smart on the one hand, because societal changes are mostly generational, but much riskier on the other hand, because parents will get very brave very fast when their kids are at stake. I think they have taken for granted the victories of the past, but racism, sexism, homophobia, and xenophobia have not been removed from the human heart, and they can spread faster than most think. It's going to boil down to the post-2022 election Democratic party. If they don't excise the progressive movement from their ranks and get back to their class-based roots, the second option becomes more likely.

The left has defined themselves over the past few decades as the crusader party. Problem is, they ran out of crusades. The causes will get progressively dumber as they chase the high they felt from fighting racism, securing gay rights, protecting the environment, etc. How ironic. They created a better world and are miserable in it.

First, strong dollar. But more importantly, the broader market believes a few things that steer away from gold: 1. Inflation will be controlled by next year 2. The Fed will not raise rates as high as they are signaling, and will resume QE soon-ish. 3. Earnings will see double digit increases next year. I think those three things are very wrong. But I also think there will be a deleveraging cascade that will hit gold and silver just like it did in March 2020. After the margin calls I plan to buy both.

If the metal moves in July, there will be no contract. I'm tired of listening to pilots bitch about the contract, then spend 15 minutes on the phone fixing a catering problem, or refusing to write up small discrepancies that will delay their flight, or chasing contractually non-compliant assignments for a few bucks, etc,etc,etc. "Well I don't want to delay the passengers..." "But they might have to cancel the flight!" "I'm not going to screw over the FAs" "I just want to get to the hotel" "I have family in Tulsa, so I'm just going to get us there." It's the same here as it was in the military. A lot of type-A people who love the smell of their own farts. But if it isn't a specifically-enumerated decision authority for the PIC/A-code from the FAA/11-202, the tough guys get real soft when it gets to be time to cancel the flight. Fatigue, weather, maintenance, doesn't matter, the metal moves. And since the motivations in the airlines are completely different, it's made me rethink my military experience entirely. I always thought it was fear of being passed over, or missing the next award, or not getting the desired assignment that kept military pilots grinding on, despite the regs and despite safety. But none of those considerations exist at the airline. So the only logical conclusion is that pilots are by and large a bunch of golden retrievers that get immense validation from "getting it done," even when no one gives a shit on the other side of the table. That's probably a good thing in the context of a risk mitigation career. But it makes you incredibly vulnerable at the negotiating table.

Bitcoin will not go up until/unless the fed resumes Quantitative Easing. When exactly that happens is going to be the biggest factor in determining the fate of our entire economy.

Here's an unpopular opinion: You shouldn't have to invest in the stock market to improve your financial situation. There is one constant over the last three recessions. The retail investors always get cleaned out. Look up how Robin Hood makes money. The further we get from being an economy that rewards productivity, the worse this is going to get. Banking should not be the easiest way to become a millionaire.

I'd run a bus full of orphans of a cliff for a threesome with her and AOC.

What generation do you think made this possible? What's the average age in Congress? What generation has dominated academia for the past 30 years? Who ran the Fed? Obviously it's not an indictment on *all* boomers. There are plenty who lived honest, honorable lives. But anyone who decries the laziness, weakness, sensitivity, neediness, absence, wokeness, etc of a generation that is only just now reaching the age and ability to have influence over the vast systems they are a part of (millennials, the genZers are still completely subordinated) is being obtuse. Millennials did not create participation trophies. They didn't create infinite useless social-studies degrees to justify tuition costs for themselves. They didn't increase the tuition costs, nor did they increase the administrative staffs. They didn't change the interpretation of Title IX. They didn't put critical theory or Marxism into the curriculum, nor did they invent critical race theory or intersectionality. They didn't create CDOs, mortgage backed securities, or order-flow processing fees. They didn't set the interest rates to zero. They didn't rezone entire regions to prevent stable housing growth. They didn't lower the lending standards in 2002-2006, and they didn't bail out the banks when those lending standards destroyed them. They didn't invent Quantitative Easing and they didn't raise the debt ceiling a few dozen times. They didn't outsource our entire manufacturing base to a geopolitical adversary. They didn't come up with global warming and they certainly didn't fly their private jets to Davos to pontificate on carbon emissions. There's a huge list of societal changes that the US underwent from 1990-present, and the boomers were overwhelmingly steering the ship. Gen X certainly didn't help, but they were more profiteers than anything, and their sins, the wholesale destruction of the common polity through social media algorithms designed to increase marketing revenues, are another topic. I'm sure our generation will have our own sins, but that doesn't change the facts, or who owns them. The successful millennials who were lucky to have good parents (another factor that didn't used to matter as much in America), good genetics, and good timing should be wary of leaving the others behind. That evolved sense of fairness is not easily tamed. The boomers who created the greatest income inequality in modern American history will be dead by the time the bottom half radicalizes and starts "eating the rich." If the poor can't save (0% interest rates + inflation = savings destruction), can't invest (wildly overpriced equities), can't support a family on a single income, and especially when the implications of the Millennials being the first generation to be worse-off financially than their parents becomes the norm, cheap TVs and free phones won't keep them quiet.

Neat. But societies don't work through anecdote. You can pull yourself up by the bootstraps all you want (I certainly did as I sit comfortably in the upper 10%), but the distribution of wealth doesn't lie, and the boomers leveraged trillions of future wealth into their pockets, so now their kids have to pay more for housing, education, transportation, and investments. All while real wages have stagnated or declined. But hey, we can get TVs pretty cheap... And while all this has happened, the upper echelon of society has engineered weapons-grade blinders to avoid the unpleasantness of the increasingly desperate reality of those in the bottom half. It's much more comfortable that way, until the proletariat come knocking on your door with their pitchforks and torches. Most intelligent animals have a very finely-tuned sense of fairness, and brother, it hasn't been fair for a while. COVID was the single greatest transfer of wealth to the top earners in history. Most people can't follow the complicated chain of financial implements used to move money from the middle-class pockets into the investment accounts of the rich(Robinhood, Bitcoin, etc), but they can still smell a scam somewhere in there. What's amazing to me is how the conservatives have been asleep at the wheel. They seem so fucking proud of their non-representative success stories, like yours, that they have completely missed the raping and pillaging of our capitalist system by politicians, foreign actors, and the financial industry. Those who *do* are now subordinated to those who manipulate. I hope I'm wrong, but we'll know very soon. The chickens have all come home to roost at the same time, and the "smart money" (insiders) are already positioning themselves for the pain. I expect they'll all be on CNBC shilling their holdings to the retail investors before they become much less valuable. The final scam before the bill comes due.

Overturning Roe does not ban abortion, as you said, and I don't think as many states as people think will ban it. I suspect only the most conservative states will outright ban Roe. Most of the rest will probably end up somewhere around where Europe ultimately settled, 12-16 weeks. CDC claims 91% of abortions are week 13 or earlier. So you're probably not going to see enough of a crime spike to rue anything.

In a single sentence you prove my point. Exactly what is an "anti-Democratic opinion? Are you implying the court overruled a democratically enacted law on abortion? I'm not sure at this point that you understand the purpose of the SCOTUS. Or perhaps you aren't familiar with how Roe was ruled? I'm but a layman, but I'm pretty sure voting, not opinion polls are how democracies function, yes? Again, please point me to the democratically-enacted abortion law (either through direct voting or representative legislation) that the court has overturned here. Ok, you're fucking with me now, right? Who exactly do you think is *constitutionally charged* with determining what is correct in the constitution? I'll give you a hint, there are only 9 correct answers... This goes back to you not not understanding how an originalist works on the court. He did not call for re-examining whether you can use contraceptives with your wife. He called for re-examining whether that determination is meant to be a legislative one, or a judicial one. If you can't grasp the difference then this conversation will go nowhere. But you wouldn't be alone. Yes, exactly how Roe cited the 14th amendment. And yet there's nothing in the Fourteenth amendment that in any capacity protects abortion. This is where reading either Roe itself or the majority opinion would be valuable, as it quite clearly spells out the utter lack of support within the 14th amendment for abortion protections. Let's take a look: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." Life and property obviously aren't at issue here (unless you mean the fetal life, which you don't). So we have liberty and equal protection. Now, if you believe that in 1868 the country believed that anti-abortion laws represented a threat to the liberty of women, I'm not sure you'll find much historical support for that. So liberty is out. And men are not given any special privilege to abort a fetus, not does constitutional law consider gender differences to be "unequal protection." So explain to me, slowly, because I don't read much, how the fourteenth amendment applies. This is another one of those strange misunderstandings of how the court works, which is much more eloquently explained in the majority opinion that I could ever hope to do. But this logic doesn't hold in any historical context, as we have some pretty heinous rulings that had to be overturned 50 plus years later to right egregious wrongs. I think every black American is quite happy that stare decisis is not immutable. I don't think you know as much as you think you know.

You fundamentally do not understand the constitution, and thus do not understand Thomas. *Exactly* like Roe and the inferred right to privacy, substantive due process is a concept that has no actual basis in the constitution. Therefore regardless of their views, an originalist will oppose such precedents. The inability to separate legal reasoning from personal beliefs is a foundational flaw in progressive ideology. If you have the time, read the dissent with the specific focus of finding constitutional arguments. In over 60 pages, there are none. But on the risks of losing birth control and gay marriage, if we're cherry-picking non-majority concurrences, here's some from Kavanaugh, who will be on the court long after Thomas retires. "First is the question of how this decision will affect other precedents involving issues such as contraception and mar- riage—in particular, the decisions in Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U. S. 479 (1965); Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U. S. 438 (1972); Loving v. Virginia, 388 U. S. 1 (1967); and Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U. S. 644 (2015). I emphasize what the Court today states: Overruling Roe does not mean the over-ruling of those precedents, and does not threaten or cast doubt on those precedents." "For example, may a State bar a resident of that State from traveling to another State to obtain an abortion? In my view, the answer is no based on the constitutional right to interstate travel. May a State retroactively impose liability or punishment for an abortion that occurred before today’s decision takes effect? In my view, the answer is no based on the Due Process Clause or the Ex Post Facto Clause" Roe proved that you can't answer deep societal debates with court-derived solutions. Now the system can once again work as intended. The population of each state gets to decide what is best for themselves, as long as it doesn't violate the constitution. Or a federal law protecting abortion can be passed. Or a constitutional amendment can be ratified. But if those solutions aren't reasonable, then maybe the left should reconsider the meaning of democracy.