turar

Gender inequity in tech has one downside if you are a male -- lack of bathrooms. If there is one male and one female bathroom on the floor, and male-to-female gender ratio is 5:1, then you're gonna have a bad time. :)

Yep. Mid-to-late 1990s. Delphi vs Java. :)

Correct, that's why I said that it was an assumption. I picked that ETF because I think the underlying assets would do well over the next 30 years, and also because it's relatively cheap to other ETFs because of the under-performance you mentioned. You can substitute any other asset there really that you think would perform better than 3.5%.

In fact renters would pay more property taxes to cover the lack of landlord's homestead tax exemption.

Remember, the loan is locked in. Everything around you may be a high rate environment, but your loan is still 3.5% when regular bank savings account would be paying, say 7%.

So, if you bought shares of an Emerging Markets ETF [1] with the money that you would have otherwise paid for accelerated mortgage payments. Today these shares are paying you around 3.5% in dividends alone.

Fast forward ten years to a high rate environment, and ten years of buying ETF shares and reinvesting dividends, I'm assuming that the dollar amount of your shares would be higher than the amount of debt you would have otherwise paid off already.

That's why no other country on Earth that I know of has 30-year fixed mortgages. They are essentially a government subsidy to homeowners via Fannie/Freddie.

[1] https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSEARCA%3AVWO

Yes. The onsite means the company is investing just as much time and effort into the process as the candidate.

I'm not sure I understand why you would pay rent to live somewhere else. I'm talking about living in the house that you bought and have a mortgage on.

Say your mortgage loan amount is $300K at 3.5%, locked in for 30 years. Instead of paying it off in 6-10 years with extra payments, I say invest those extra payments in the stock market, and keep paying the mortgage for 30 years at a locked rate of 3.5%. If that money that you invested makes anything above 3.5% over 30 years, then that's free returns to you.

On top of that, it also depends where you think the interests rates will be in 10-20 years from now. If you believe that they will be higher than they are currently, then that's even more reason to keep that loan locked in for 30 years instead of paying it off sooner. Hope that helps.

I would argue in the current situation of 3.5% mortgage rate, the best scenario is to invest the cash in the stock market. If your returns are anything above 3.5% over the 30 year load amount, you're good.

Same is true for vast majority of countries.

That would actually put labor on the same footing with capital, since capital can already move freely across borders, while labor cannot.

If you own a home in the U.S., anybody already can get your address legally and easily from your county or district property appraiser's/assessor's website. Along with how much you paid for it, and when you bought it. So calling Amazon CS rep is a hard way to go about it. :)

Outside of Ordos, I don't think there are much of any other ghost cities really, unless someone can prove me wrong. All ghost cities from 3-5 years ago that were prominently featured in media are now populated. It just takes that much time for them to get to or near their planned capacity. China's political system allows it a luxury of very long-term planning, unlike the US, unfortunately.

Here you go then: http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ :)

At this point, if I ever have to look at living in apartments/condos again, I will limit my search only to concrete high rise buildings. Which usually means at least 8 floors or taller -- I don't think it's possible to build that tall with plywood garbage.

What countries do you have in mind?

Thanks for posting this, just read the whole exchange. Wow, Chomsky is certainly in an entirely different league here. I don't think Harris even understood what Chomsky was trying to emphasize.

My point was that it's not fair that someone gets to pay a smaller tax rate just because his taxable base is larger. If anything, it should be the other way around. My original income tax vs. capital gains tax parallel was wrong though, but the premise is the same. If Joe Schmoe has managed to invest $5K in the stock market and grew it to $10K, his capital gains tax rate shouldn't be higher than Zuck's.

Why should Joe Schmoe earning an honest $75K/year have less say than that though?

It's tough to go against the US government who's subsidizing homeowners at renters' expense though. 30-year fixed mortgages are unheard of elsewhere in the world, that's why they all have to be underwritten by Fannie/Freddie in the ultimate end. And with where the interests rate are now, it's tough to resist locking that in for 30 years. And of course, mortgage interest tax deductions on top of that.

Marriage-based PR is probably the easiest and most straightforward PR path there is.

Wait, aren't a lot of modern American "brick" buildings made with plywood covered with brick siding?

FWIW, I've had consistently better experience with HomeAway/VRBO than with AirBnB

You should read/listen to this: http://www.npr.org/2015/10/20/450175865/do-we-have-less-symp...

>> "It's official: Latinos now outnumber whites in California"

These sentiments are ironic, given California's history. E.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_evolution_of_Mexic...

What college did you get into?

Doesn't Australia have its own vast remote wilderness? Or is freezing cold preferable to scorching hot?

Maybe not a five year old, but certainly an 8-9 year old.

I grew up in apartment blocks very similar to the image that was linked elsewhere in this thread: http://lh5.ggpht.com/-zHv1hczQcD4/UdgqTs1G3cI/AAAAAAAAqCI/le...

These were mid-rise buildings connecting together to form protective courtyards, filled with gathering places, playgrounds and mini-parks, inaccessible to cars, where 5-year olds could play, and 10 year olds had the whole city accessible to them thanks to good public transit.

>> I'm defending the sort of place I grew up, which combines quarter-acre blocks and trees and parks with having shops and schools and libraries within walking distance.

That sounds like a pretty rare place though. Walking distance to schools and libraries tells me either pedestrian-friendly high density, or a very small town with not many job options. If it's neither, I'd love to check it out. Where was that, if you don't mind?

I think it's precisely the opposite. In a high-density, pedestrian-friendly apartment environment, parents can actually say "go play outside", with kids free to roam around the neighborhood or larger city by public transit, without worrying too much about being run over by cars.

In a typical American suburban environment, "play outside" means play alone in the confines of the backyard, or be shuttled in cars by parents to "play dates", with most roads lacking even sidewalks.

Wealth is usually gone by the second or third generation. Her parents seemed to be employees who had to put in their 9-5, not any kind of tycoons. They did afford a prep school and Stanford though, I guess that's more than most.