510 karma · joined June 17, 2021
I would also getting the increased equity in the house as each mortgage payment lowers the total loan amount.
Not sure your definition of break even. After 30 years, I will have paid off the entire house.
Anecdotally, I know people who buy single family homes and rent them for profit. My 3 bed, 2 bath single-family home has a $3,000/monthly mortgage, I could easily rent it for more than $3,500 (closer to $4,000). Take out 10% for maintenance fees, and I net $200 a month.
Did we ever find out why Manafort gave Konstantin Kilimnik polling data from the campaign? Did we ever learn why he worked for "free" on the campaign? just to come full circle, he went to prison, in part, for his fraudulent actions helping the Russian government (attempt to) destabilize Ukraine.
> Also, the word is "its" not "it's".
Thanks for that, hope it wasn't too confusing. FYI, the period should be inside the quotes for "it's."
The article is inconsequential, the report it is describing (and the evidence within that report) is the thing you keep dancing around. The report lays out in great detail all of the activities and connections.
> Someone can commit a crime without being a Russian agent.
Another thing nobody claimed. You have failed to engage in any of the substance. It's just deflection after deflection.
> The core issue here is thinking there's some real moral difference between left and right. There isn't. Think of the political spectrum in absolute value terms. People in the middle are the best people. People on both wings are the bad people.
Sounds like you've figured it all out. No need to continue.
https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/docu...
A claim neither I nor the article made. The Trump Campaign, however, had many ties to Russia (Manafort, Rick Gates) and clearly served Russian interests (changing the party platform on Ukraine, ghost written op-eds). Some of them even went to prison for it and you are still trying to claim it never happened. Did we ever figure out why his campaign manager gave campaign polling data to a Russian oligarch?
> Sure, they can dig up stuff about Trump's behavior with Russia. Along the same lines, there are tons of stories across decades painting the Clintons as pretty terrible people.
Whatabout-ism in plain sight.
> The difference here, and this is important, is that outlets like CNN do have a massive bias in favor of Democratic candidates.
It was a PBS article, so this is not relevant comment. Even so, the article was referencing a release from the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee. Why would they repeat Democratic talking points?
Can you explain who the "boy" was and how they "cried wolf"? Did you read the Senate Intelligence report? PBS: Senate panel finds Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. election [1].
"The nearly 1,000-page report, the fifth and final one from the Republican-led Senate intelligence committee on the Russia investigation, details how Russia launched an aggressive effort to interfere in the election on Trump’s behalf. It says the Trump campaign chairman had regular contact with a Russian intelligence officer and says other Trump associates were eager to exploit the Kremlin’s aid, particularly by maximizing the impact of the disclosure of Democratic emails hacked by Russian intelligence officers."
[1] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/senate-panel-finds-rus...
> you're the only one that had to read it twice, we talked about it now, good talk.
The lack of punctuation and choice of verb tense made it difficult to understand, no need for the condescending tone.
Nobody has denies this, so why is it a talking point?
> as we both agree it’s not a good indication of any individual persons experience
Which is why I use it for what it is instead of complaining about it not being something else. Any one individual is influenced by their own bias and experience, which creates an entirely different problem.
Edit: Reread and understand now...
The point is that GDP is a measure of how much the economy in the US grows or contracts, just as CPI is a measure of how much prices in the US grow or contract. You shouldn't view GDP as a personal indicator of economic growth, just like CPI isn't an analysis of costs on your personal spending. Treating it as such feels like distorting the purpose of the measure to suit a narrative.
Who? What are their credentials? What improved measure have they created?
For what goods/services? Have you been tracking the same goods/services over the past year to make this analysis?
> Inflation metrics are complicated and there is a huge incentive to keep the official numbers down as they affect trillions in spending in terms of social security and other numbers tied to official inflation.
You haven't provided anything aside from personal anecdote (without any actual data to support it). Your understanding is built entirely on your own experience, the official numbers are built on a transparent basket of goods that is meant to represent the entire country.
For me, housing costs (most people's largest expense) hasn't changed in 3 years because I have a 30-year mortgage. Does that mean that the 5% CPU measure of housing expenses is false? Of course not.
Thanks for the advice, but I re-read everything and verified that I understood. It's possible that we just disagree, or maybe your quoted comment removes all context from the discussion.
> Did you do any of those things, or are you just pointing fingers at people for not doing the same things you did't do?
Was this an example of you giving me the benefit of the doubt?
I protested, donated, wrote letters to voters, and contacted a local politician.
But that isn't relevant to the original comment, which was a person claiming that "everyone I talked to said it was horrible" is equivalent to gun rights activism.
I'm not sure about there being "joy" in crypto currencies. This article [1] argues the exact opposite, but isn't a study of any kind. I'd be interested to see the average rates of depression among crypto owners. Gangs give people a sense of community (maybe we call that "joy"), but they aren't good for people's health long-term.
[1] https://www.vice.com/en/article/akvn8z/crypto-bad-for-mental...
That's great for the people you talked to, the comment was about the NRA or any other gun rights group actually defending him. Did you friends protest for him? Did they write their congressperson? Did they raise legal funds at the gun range? If they didn't, then they aren't activists.
What about Philando Castile? The NRA didn't have anything to say about that incident until a year later.
EDIT: made less combative.
On the flip side, are millions of people who pay money to simply view art every day in cities around the world. That seems like pretty strong evidence that people get "enjoyment" from it.
> Arguably, being part of the crypto community does seem to bring some people joy.
I'd guess it's the part about the rapidly rising prices that gives them joy.
It is very common for government's to tax exchanges of money/property/goods. We see this in the sales tax, estate tax, transfer tax, cash app transfers, monetary gifts above $15k, income taxes, etc.
This isn't how investors think. If you know that future earnings are going to increase from zero due to outside circumstances (COVID, in this case), why would you base your analysis on past earnings? The past earnings don't matter, especially when you admit that they were heavily influenced by COVID.
$1 of recurring revenue from subscriptions (Disney+) is worth more than $1 spent at a Disney theme park. The recurring revenue costs less to service and is more predictable going forward. This is why businesses (like Adobe, Apple, Disney, etc.) have been working to shift revenue towards subscriptions over one-time purchases.
> Those “investors” you suggest were the Fed using taxpayer money buy and prop up the stock price. With the Fed money Disney stock price once again reached a new all time high price and a P/E ratio over 90, meaning the Fed was bailing out shareholders at a historic high of $90+ to $1 earned, where an average publicly traded company should be closer to 13-14.
It feels like you are working backwards to try and find the nefarious actions you are so positive about. The Fed deciding to bailout companies and consumers obviously helped businesses (especially consumer facing businesses, like Disney). The entire stock market exploded when it was announced.
The P/E ratio of the entire S&P 500 spiked from around 20-25x to 40-45x due to Fed and Congressional actions [1]. Average publicly traded companies do not trade at 13-14x P/E, and low interest rates for decades have made that a fact. That said, Disney isn't a traditional company because their investments and growth in streaming make them look more like a growth stock. Which is, again, reinforced by their record revenue numbers.
At the time Disney+ was losing money, but the pandemic and the bailout were indicators that the steaming business would take off (it did). Their huge content backlog had them perfectly placed to manage a production shutdown. There’s also the 21st Century Fox acquisition that was Closed in 2019 and gave them more content.
If investors expected future earnings to grow more than current losses (which were already priced in by the market), then it isn’t wild for the stock to bounce. A year later, their earnings pretty much prove it.
We could also go into the calculations of why the value of recurring revenue (streaming subscribers) is much higher than the value of non-recurring revenue (park visits).
Probably because of their massively successful streaming service that was perfectly placed to pick up the slack. They also have one of the deepest content libraries around so production stoppage hurts them less than competitors like Amazon, Netflix, AppleTV.
To drive it home, Disney had record revenue in 4Q2021, driven by streaming and parks revenue [1]. Maybe it’s you who had it wrong?
[1] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/disney-stock-soars-after-r...
> Again, life is complex. Abandon ideology.
Seems to be in direct conflict with this comment you made earlier:
> I find that when we call someone an ideologue today, or refer to an ideology, it is always a false narrative-based over-simplification of the world.
The idea of abandoning ideology is it's own ideology, no?
Even then, why do we assume they were promoted, or solved "all problems", or have some altruistic reason to make less?
The only thing we know is that they were hired by Meta sometime in the past.
Why wouldn't a future employer take that into account?