At no cost to the tax payer?
I keep on reading bail out but I’m inclined to think it’s going to more like a bail in. Depositors transformed into shareholders. I read about these possible type of changes after the last banking crisis.
The negative development in our service business underscores that we have much work ahead of us to stabilize our business and return to profitability," said Siemens Gamesa Chief Executive Jochen Eickholt, who joined from Siemens Energy last year.
I can't take an article seriously that starts like this:
> The greenies’ dream of “clean” (except for millions of dead birds) energy from wind farms is dying in the face of the poor economics (even with tax subsidies) and unreliable technology
Stupid greenies! I was right to be sceptic, look at the end:
> It is beyond the time to end subsidies for wind power. Not only has atmospheric CO2 risen without serious consequence, the doomsaying models proven consistently wrong, but the financial thumb on the scale via subsidies has encouraged development of a technology that is still immature, if it ever will be viable.
Simon Michaux presents the deck of data showing details of where his calculations are coming from that show even the first generation of renewables to replace fossil fuels is going to outstrip our capacity to source the minerals (lithium, copper, vanadium, manganese, cobalt, etc required for only the first generation of renewable energy) and the amount of energy to be replaced based on efficiencies is exorbitant. Summary: EROI going down, mineral requirements going way up spell issues moving forward.
Right from the introduction he assumes all EVs will be using Li ion which is already being phased out of everything but top performance luxury vehicles, then goes on to double count the storage asking where one could possibly find a few trillion Wh of batteries. Then blindly asserts that recycling will be impractical when recycling facilities already exist and are fighting over access to dead batteries.
He then bemoans the lack of a better solution which, as the people who have been promoting renewables for half a century have been saying the entire time while the infrastructure was torn down, is trains and ebikes (or just bikes in most areas).
Every single statement is fractally wrong and I'm only a paragraph in.
I’m interested in the new phase out and the realistic time frame. It’s not this: https://www.theverge.com/2022/1/24/22898666/panasonic-4680-t...
Currently recycling is very low.
I think he’s focused on what’s likely in production for the near future and the real material problem of all infrastructure ( its massive)
I'm hoping we can spend some tax money on real infrastructure rather than handouts for rich people to line elon musk's pockets. A train line, a bike lane and a handful of trolley busses take far less network upgrades than 10,000 luxury cars.
It would also help immensely if we could find our sanity and build some 400kg LEVs and NEVs with a 2kWh battery and a 150cc range extender rather than 2-5t padded ego protectors with 50-100x as much battery.
The bus and bus network of the future is more likely to be built and operated by Elon Musk than any Government agency. Auto-routing, and segregation by socio-economics (based on rider ratings and enforced subscription fees) is the killer feature of a sustainable mass transit system.
[1] It is becoming clear that intermittent wind and solar cannot be counted on to provide adequate electricity supply when the electrical distribution system needs them.
2] Adequate storage for electricity is not feasible in any reasonable timeframe. This means that if cold countries are not to “freeze in the dark” during winter, fossil fuel backup is likely to be needed for many years in the future.
3) After many years of subsidies and mandates, today’s green electricity is only a tiny fraction of what is needed to keep our current economy operating.
[4] Even as a percentage of electricity, rather than total energy, renewables still comprised a relatively small share in 2020.
5] Most modelers have not understood that reserve to production ratios greatly overstate the amount of fossil fuels and other minerals that the economy will be able to extract.
6] The world economy seems already to be reaching limits on the extraction of coal and natural gas to be used for balancing electricity provided by intermittent renewables.
7] Conclusion. Modelers and leaders everywhere have had a basic misunderstanding of how the economy operates and what limits we are up against. This misunderstanding has allowed scientists to put together models that are far from the situation we are actually facing.
Offshore wind especially in the north sea is barely tapped and powerful all year round. There are many other constant green energy options such as hydro, waves, currents, geothermal, etc. The value is in including a wide variety of all and over a large enough territory so surplus in one area can compensate a shortfall in another.
Grid energy storage includes MANY creative and easy to implement ideas. Tesla style batteries are the most mundane. The cost and setup of grid scale storage is much lower than the alternative.
Nobody is refuting that there are not alternatives & solutions. Each of the pts are supported. It’s the shear scale of replacing conventional energy & we haven’t really dented its use.
This is from today’s James Kunstler blog:
The solar electric I installed on the house nine years ago is down. It’s supposed to feed that monster called the grid. Since April, I noticed that the electric bill is creeping up way beyond the usual seventeen bucks that the electric company charges home solar producers for the privilege of feeding their system — which, let’s face it, has a downside for them because the intermittency of so-called alt-energy disorders their operations.
Sure. But the limits are very far off, the main problem is replacing 150+ years of energy infrastructure. Green needs large buildups a solar roof is a "nice hobby" but we need massive scale. To get to this point we need a lot of government investment like never before.
It is doable though and not as out of reach (from a major percentage) as some people would say. Green is already far more affordable than any alternative including fossil and nuclear. That was a very hard part. Getting it to scale is the second challenge and it's moving, right now funds and supply chain issues are the blockers.
The Fed is trapped: It can’t raise too much since trillions of debt rely on very low rates. If it doesn’t raise enough then
inflation will cause a recession.
It is a position is of its own making. It shouldn't have allowed this massive debt to accumulate in the first place. Cheap credit and the massive debt that comes with it is the main cause of inflation. Now that the whole economy depends on credit and debt, solutions to inflation can't be applied since they negatively affect credit.
They've printed their way out of a recession since '08 by kicking the can down the road, and we can't kick it any further without creating a large number of losers.
IMHO, it's a sign that American innovation has peaked. It's also reflected by the markedly decrease in intellectualism (as if American culture wasn't anti-intellectual to begin with). When I see young students from other countries and compare them to Americans, there is very little valuing education in fact the antagonism is occurring.
For example, math is being scapegoated as systematically discriminating against the lowest performers while the highest performers are being subject to the equivalent of forced confessions, guilt and pushed ridiculous theories about race. Yet despite that camp's calls for equity, it is still okay for Asian Americans to be discriminated at academic institutions and various other fields while there are increased calls for virtue signaling towards other groups who do not get the same scrutiny and insanely high standards. Meanwhile the lowest end of the society are allowed to steal (as long as its under $950), commit crimes without consequences (take a trip to SF to see thanks to calls for community patrols post-Floyd) and descend into the inhumane (mental health issues from drug addictions and poverty being normalized) because there is now a sort of compassion industrial complex armed with the loudspeaker that is social media to manipulate opinions while cancelling out the rational as the enemy.
Meanwhile, the military are increasingly spending large amount of money in video games, making young Americans idolize military & war, if not evident from the war mongering cries out of America for a conflict that they largely put in the groundwork to trap their old enemy, censoring, cancelling any opposing view to their narrative. We are all confused, angry, quick to point fingers at one another, instead of nuanced takes, whatever narrative invokes emotions strongest drowns out other side, regardless of whether they are grounded on reality or outright fabrication.
This is the trickle down effect I notice also at YC, I see increasingly bad ideas being pushed like blockchains without any real adoption, trading of unregistered securities, and SaaS companies without real revenues raise ton of money but with no real business plan or use case. It's clearly a race to IPO and find exit liquidity. ex) Coinbase
This is all a giant mess and I ponder, how did America stoop this low, where did it all go wrong?
A lot of the problems of focusing on equality can be connected to internet media making visible a tremendous amount of previously hidden inequity, (literacy rates are highest ever right?), I don't see what it has to do with interest rates
I do see a separate parallel problem of too much dumb capital chasing returns that are in the past not the future, but that can also be connected to the maturation of internet/web platform and the rollout of 2010s web tech to legacy industries; applying web tech to healthcare and like Africa is low-risk high reward ... capital floods the low grounds first
My point was that wealth gap increased due to QE and a class war masked as racial equity is being waged amongst the 99% as a result (without any net benefit to society since the 1. source of wealth come from excess supply of money which makes debt cheap for those in position to take advantage of it vs those who are oppressed by it 2. increasingly diminishing to non-existent value added widgets and services being sold, see my coinbase example above), not between the actual winners or losers of the system but rather the professional advocates from both ends who are seizing the narrative to push their political views in all spectrum of American society, culture and individuals through that tiny screen we carry in our pockets.
It's over man. Just sit back and watch it hit the wall. Anyone who has never sat down and modeled out a DCF in excel can't tell the difference between your argument and the crackpot ones on 4chan about jewish illuminati. Half of the people who have modeled out a DCF have enough assets to maybe have a chair when the music stops, and they won't risk it trying to explain how the game works to anyone who doesn't already know.
"source of wealth come from excess supply of money which makes debt cheap for those in position to take advantage of it vs those who are oppressed by it"
You have to remember - someone who can make money at a risk is much more appealing if you can't make any at a low risk via bonds. Even people who have no business speculating on things get money thrown at them because borrowing money to fund these is also cheap, so there's two seperate forces squeezing a lot of money being thrown around. This can sometimes be a good thing - interest rates fell to these levels during 2008, because we desperately needed something to incentivize people to move money around and boost the economy. But we never raised it from those 2008 lows, kicking the can down the road - and cheap lending has made rampant speculation on both assets and securities much more common. This drives up the prices of both, leading to higher rents, impossible to buy cars, jobs at companies that are artificial pumped up by debt (think Silicon Valley stupidness, where money is being thrown at practically anyone who can breath), riskier and riskier business practices and investments (crypto!), and a lot of other really bad things. The Fed was too slow to raise interest rates and slow growth before it got out of control, and it's lead to very few people getting much richer off the ability to properly leverage these low interest rates, and that money has to come from somewhere - so it comes from the people too poor or unwilling to speculate on the price of houses or large companies.
That debt was already sold at low rates. Now it's going to get inflated away. New debt will be more expensive, old debt will be losing effectively 10% of its value as the price of everything else goes up.
It’s even worse - if the Fed actions tank the markets, then millions of retirees who have been enjoying high market values are screwed and have no other source of wealth or income.
On the one hand, retirees bring nothing of real value to the economy. We serve them because of the obligations they built up over their working careers. But, they get the focus of attention because a) they have all the money, b) they have all the time to be engaged in politics, and c) they vote. But they're purely an extractive cost center. A kind of economic parasite that keeps getting bigger and bigger with the magic of compounding interest.
On the other hand, the younger working class generations, who are the real engines of the economy that keep us all fed and served, are legitimately suffering and failing to acquire a significant stake in the economy. Sure, employment is high but pay is low compared to their parents. When shit hits the fan, the young generations are largely gonna shrug, because who fights to defend something they don't have a stake in?
You're talking about living breathing humans. "extractive cost center" is a weird way to describe "person who paid social security their entire working life". You're not wrong about what you're saying but fuck can you act like there's real people involved here and not just numbers? Are retirees _really_ economic parasites?
Let's not forget that consumption is bringing in revenue to _someone_ which does provide value to the economy. Unbelievable
If you want to work on and solve big hairy problems, you can't get caught up in the weeds.
We can acknowledge the humanity of the humans who make up the constituent parts of the colossus while also saying that the colossus, the sum of those humans, is a potentially negative force on the stability and sustainability of the system.
Sure it's not the most humanizing but it is valuable to disassociate oneself from our human side in order to analyze inhuman systems. The perspective isn't without value, and GP wasn't implying it wasn't, but to take the time to elaborate the point going through the motions to emotional pad it would have been time wasted for most of us.
It's something I appreciate about this community, that we can express ourselves in such ways in order to convey a point without any fat on it. I still assume the person making the point understands that there the fat is there without needing to explicitly mention it. It's a sign of mature dialogue IMO.
For a lot of people, what is even the point of living if there's no retirement to enjoy?
They are an extractive class insofar as their present contributions are net negative. But you are forgetting they likely spent their entire life building up that account, both in terms of an actual retirement and the broader accounting of total life's contributions. Indeed, it is something that hopefully you and I will enjoy one day, because we've earned it.
That idea reeks of short-term thinking, and a world of endless work for no reward as your worth goes to 0 once you stop contributing.
True, but almost every society expects its elders to still do some kind of work, usually house work and child care, which helps free the healthy adults to do the more difficult work. Those who can't do that are usually very close to death.
So then what is the complaint? They are indeed contributing to society. We enjoy the level of technological advancement that we do because our innovators are free to innovate, and not wasting their time on prosaic matters (because the elders cover that for them)
"For a lot of people, what is even the point of living if there's no retirement to enjoy?"
The point is you are supposed to be helping other people in some way. Not just being a useless turd and forcing young functional people pay rent to you so that you can do nothing but sit on your fat ass and shit in your diaper. They also lived in a society that was much more prosperous than any young person ever will. Considering that now everything is ruined, it's hard not to look at them and imagine they share some small part of the blame.
Maybe if people cared less about saving up a big sum for themselves to "enjoy their retirement", aka being a self-centered moron, then the world wouldn't be such a shithole today.
> forcing young functional people pay rent to you so that you can do nothing but sit on your fat ass and shit in your diaper.
They own the house, which they bought and paid for. It is their property to rent or not rent as they see fit. You pay money for said privilege. They are not squatting on communal property, and short of returning it to the market the property would otherwise sit unused and wasted.
Are you saying that young "functional" people should have free housing? Most of you had some for 18, 20, maybe even 25+ years with your parents. Is it that you want that to last forever? Do you guys think you are Peter Pan or somethign?
> Considering that now everything is ruined, it's hard not to look at them and imagine they share some small part of the blame.
Don't let generational nihilism color your vision so much. There is a world of opportunity out there, especially here in the US, but young people think said opportunity looks like Twitch streaming or professional influencing or pretending that are innovating, but it's not. If those kids would pull their heads out of their asses and start learning how to be boring they will find there is lots of ways to get ahead in life, and that there aren't a lot of easy answers on YouTube.
"Everything is ruined"... like, c'mon, if that's really what you think then you've barely even lived
> retirees bring nothing of real value to the economy.
Sure they may not be producing anything, but is there any value to the idea they consumers still? A lot of FIRE philosophy is you work hard so you can earn retirement early too -- people aren't going to work all their lives either, there has to be a light at the end of the tunnel. It is saddening that it may not be the case for many.
This is an incredibly bigoted screed. Describing human beings who were the economic engine for 40-50 years and paid in to the system as a "parasite" and a "purely an extractive cost center" is truly appalling.
>"It really seems like a powder keg for revolution."
I would argue your entire post seems like a powder keg for some self-reflection.
//On the one hand, retirees bring nothing of real value to the economy
Not true. If retirees have money, that's money they got paid for doing actual contribution. If you devalue that money that's devaluing their life's work and contributions.
Not an advocate for crypto etc, but it feels wrong that a bunch of folks like Powell etc get to decide the fate of whole generation's peaceful retirement.
I hope you never grow old or become wealthy, friend. It’d be quite the shame for you to become the very thing that you hate.
You’re living in housing built by someone in the past, driving a car engineered years ago, on bridges and roads built decades ago. You enjoy technologies that people even 30 years ago could only dream of, things you did not create or contribute to.
And then you have the gall to whine about those builders, savers, investors, and innovators who created those things.
Kind of sounds like you’re the extractive cost center, to be honest.
The point is, the things that make the economy work and grow is the production of things. Regardless of how many investments a retired person has, they by definition do not produce things.
Which supports the claim that they are low, and, consequently that young people (who often stand to inherit from their elderly relatives) have a stake in the investments of old people not getting wiped out.
I’m surprised this is top comment. Everyone ought to rebalance their assets as they get closer to retirement. If you are retired you should have a minimum of 3-10% of your portfolio in bonds, which typically fluctuate less than stocks. Then you draw from your bond assets to actually get money.
As long as your stock assets aren’t touched for 3-5 years it doesn’t matter what the market does in the next few months.
I think this particular advice from The Intelligent Investor is unreliable. Back then, bond yields were substantially higher, dividend yields were significantly higher, equity valuations we significantly lower, etc etc. The rest of the book is top notch though.
The Intelligent Investor was not written in a time when interest rates were zero (and real interest rates were negative).
Using the suggested approach would demolish a bond portfolio. Assuming Barclays Aggregate index as a proxy, if interest rates rise to 7%, then half the value of the bonds would be lost.
Note that correlation of rising rates and rising stock market exists until about the 4-6% rate region before the market starts to be truly negatively correlated with bonds above that number.
Based on all my reading over the past several years, this is the first time in history that so many bonds have been priced at or near zero (including below zero rates). I think Benjamin Graham would be writing a supplement to his book if he were alive today.
A typical retiree portfolio should have a significant portion in bonds (or more likely, bond funds). Initially this will hurt, but over time, higher rates mean higher bond returns
Equity markets can take a hit at pretty much any time for completely unforeseen reasons. This is expected and should be factored into a "safe" withdrawal rate (see Bill Bingham and the 4% rule).
Anyone who was relying on an equity market that never tanked, to survive retirement, was doomed from the outset.
1 - holding bonds versus bond funds are very different, as in the first case, you control the timing of the sale, and in the second, the fund does. That has all sorts of implications about losses (as well as capital gains) in any particular year.
2 - Interest rates have been at zero (ignoring this week's interest rate hike). Using the Barclay's Agg duration of 6.7 (as of this week), then you are just asking for pain in your bond holdings. Stocks may or may not go up or down, but bonds are either going to go down or generate basically zero cash flow. Many people have embraced TINA as a result. [0]
Let's not be naive. The Fed put itself in this position. You're correct. Most of the rest of us will - once again - take a massive shot to the wallet. But to The Fed and its "fan base" it's simply another cycle in the process of moving more from the bottom to the top.
Put another way, you or me are simply not The Fed's priority. I'm not sure why we voted for them.
Not once in my lifetime have I seen the fed tank the markets. It's more like the fed being tailwind. Since 2008 the pattern has been for the fed to be way behind the curve by keeping real interest rates negative and raising rates very slowly and with tons of advance warning even as the stock market and economy rips higher.
This is always the case though, there are always retired people. They have raised rates and damaged market values in past. Its a decision they are comfortable taking.
Plus, at least current US retirees have social security, which may not last another 20+ years in current form (unfortunately for people paying in today).
There is no reason the US federal government would have to nominally end federal social security benefits. The federal government has the power to simply create new money.
However, it would be prudent to assume that the social security benefits will have less and less purchasing power (since each USD will have less and less purchasing power), and the government will not increase the amount of the benefits sufficiently to offset the decrease in purchasing power.
Biden has attempted to cut social security numerous times.
The elite will eventually get their way because it represents such a vast source of untapped value to extract from. Will it be in my lifetime? (im in my 30s).
That I don't know but I do know that they are gunning for it as well as Medicare and Medicaid and if a US bankruptcy does not wipe it out then eventually they will find a way to take it.
If the federal US government is borrowing in a currency they control, I do not see why US leaders would choose to go bankrupt over simply issuing new money to meet debt obligations?
And Social Security and other government benefits/services are continuously cut, at least where I live as far as I am concerned since they never keep up with price increases for the things I buy.
>If the federal US government is borrowing in a currency they control, I do not see why US leaders would choose to go bankrupt over simply issuing new money to meet debt obligations?
To be clear I do not expect a bankruptcy to be a likely outcome. I just consider it a non-impossible possibility. The only scenario I can think of is if some event moves so quickly that the government cannot respond in time before its too late. Even then, I still feel they probably have options.
>And Social Security and other government benefits/services are continuously cut, at least where I live as far as I am concerned since they never keep up with price increases for the things I buy.
Yes they are being devalued and thats the constant battle that is being fought. While the US continues to print money to give to the rich, they sneak things in such as small cuts here and there as well as further taxes on the poor (ie. You now have to pay an additional tax on more than 600$ worth of ebay sales. This was snuck into the relief bill.)
> (ie. You now have to pay an additional tax on more than 600$ worth of ebay sales. This was snuck into the relief bill.)
No, that is not a recent addition to tax liabilities. You have always had to pay tax on income. The only difference is eBay (and other facilitators) are required to report it now.
Its still closing a unofficial loophole that lower income people relied on. That counts as part of the war to extract every last penny on the poor.
There are a lot of other nefarious things in the bill such as requiring manufacturers to install a device to monitor the driver if they are impaired(beyond 2026). This will lead to fines that will lead to further eroding of what little wealth the poor already have left. Was very smart of them to introduce it far off into the future so it can be slowly integrated into people new car purchases. This is why I believe the addition of the 600$ reporting requirement was no innocent ploy to just shore up this revenue stream. It was purposely introduced at an opportune time.
It's not a loophole it's tax fraud. Not reporting your income does not make it legal. In the end if your income is low enough you'll mostly be offset by the standard deduction anyway.
>In the end if your income is low enough you'll mostly be offset by the standard deduction anyway.
The point was that it is another barrier introduced to extract as much value from the lower classes as possible. In fact you had missed the original point completely.
Shouldn't there be an "invisible hand" at work to settle this problem automatically when Fed over-raises or under-raises? With the invisible hand and free market arguments, this should have been a non-problem at the first place. But... since the initial move was not natural (lots of cash injection), the natural final move has to be sudden and forceful. These analysis-paralysis rate hikes seem like lots of pawns to be lost before the final blow. It just opens a window of opportunity for ahead-of-the-curve retirees to save their wealth, not helping to avoid the final effect.
Only small fraction (2.5%) of retirees rely on their 401(k) plans as a single source of income. The majority relies on social security. High inflation will affect many more people, and not just retirees.
This literally could mean the difference between living independently or not for a lot of people.
Not to mention everybody working today with a 401k as their retirement plan will lose value no matter their age, which means they have to work longer than planned. This is a real life impact to a lot of people.
> This literally could mean the difference between living independently or not for a lot of people.
Given that quality of assistive care matters, it could literally mean the difference between living and not for people.
Of course, on the other hand, so could runaway inflation for lots of people into the same age group (not every elderly person is self-sufficient on retirement income; many are supported by younger, working family members.)
I have no idea why you thought that a subthread on estate tax and what it says about younger people's interest in older folks savings was the most germane place to post that, but I hope you feel better having gotten it off your chest.
Depends. If you plan to draw down your savings to 0 to survive retirement maybe. But if you have enough saved up for a safe withdrawal rate to survive retirement, why not keep it invested normally and have more for your inheritors?
Retirees who are fortunate enough to have substantial retirement assets should take precautions against risk. If they haven’t then that’s their problem. I’m retiring in 30 years, my retirement accounts are all stocks. If I was 65 I’d have my 401(k) heavily in bonds and fixed income.
That's a bit callous of you, not to mention shortsighted. If the Baby Boomer generation loses financial security, they will as a group A) tighten their spending habits and B) not retire.
Either of these effects on their own would hurt the younger generations, and together would make the already slow wealth building hit a brick wall. (I'm 25, for the record, and I don't expect to be debt-free or a homeowner until well into middle age)
While it really shouldn't be true, and at the level of financial mechanics probably isn't, the stock market has become the measure of the economy. Remember, pensions are dead and buried, and the nuclear family standard means that relying on your children (read: you and I) is not the bulwark it once was. That means 401(k) performance is really, really important, as terrible as that may be -- its just the reality right now.
It’s really not callous. If a boomer’s 401(k) is still heavy on stocks they’re being greedy! De-risk, people. I don’t want to let inflation tank my economy to protect a generation of greedy grandparents.
Generally 401(k) plan ratios are not managed individually. Most will have target date funds[0] that automatically transition in to progressively less-risky investments as you get closer to retirement.
The problem is... almost no financial instruments outside of stocks can provide a meaningful return any more, so even the target date funds are almost all stock.
I noted your other "time in the market beats timing the market" comment, which suggests you are an active investor. That's great! But very few Americans are active investors, and expecting them to become so is unrealistic.
Its a problem of realpolitik, which is why, going back to my original comment, you should still care, if only for how it will affect you.
[0]: Here is an example prospectus of a 2055 target date fund. Note the graph showing the changing allocation of stocks/bonds/money-market funds (or CDs). By retirement, nearly half the portfolio is still stocks. https://prospectus-express.broadridge.com/summary.asp?client...
Half stocks is a great example of diversification. If there’s a huge correction (say 20%) they’ll lose 10% — hardly something that would drop you from prosperous to poverty stricken.
If they are one of the lucky few with a defined benefit public pension, like my parents have, having your RRSP (401(k) in Canada) biased towards stocks is a sounds investment policy.
I’m actually quite impressed they haven’t started that push yet —- guessing COVID still sort of being a thing but no longer spoken about due to it polling poorly makes this a non-ideal time.
On the other hand, as there’s effectively no border enforcement during this administration, I guess they’re already accomplishing their goals without needing the media to ram “Americans can’t/won’t do the jobs” down your throat.
You are not looking at the reality of the situation if you think the average American has a "gigantic amount saved up". The average American is working paycheck to paycheck and is lucky to have a couple hundred bucks for a rainy day or unexpected car repair.
You've been played by a study designed to manipulate the view of American wealth. The median household has a gigantic amount of wealth, over $100k worth. Not having $1k in a checking account doesn't mean you can't afford $1k or even a $10k expense.
Sure if you define 'household' as home owners, of course their assets are well above $100k because of the hyper inflated housing market in the country.
I would _love_ to see how someone renting an apartment and working minimum wage with less than $1k in their checking account can get a $10k loan. What are they going to do, go to the check cashing place around the corner and walk out with 10 grand? (that's saracasm btw)
I don't. All households. Majority of households have > 100k wealth. Your claim is patently wrong, when taken against your citation which shows nearly everyone found _some_ way to pay the expense. Personally I would just pay with a credit card so I can let inflation shred away ~0.5% of the real cost, but I'd be tossed away with those who 'cant afford' it by your interpretation of the study.
I usually keep less than $1k in fiat accounts and I could easily have tens of thousands tomorrow if I like, and my household is far poorer than the median household. It's called selling (or borrowing against) assets. The median household can do the same thing. Only an idiot holds fiat in a savings account when inflation is raging.
I'm skeptical but willing to believe 56% of people can't find $1k on the spot in fiat cash because of the structure of their wealth. However statistically _most_ households have a hundred times over that in net wealth. Carefully reading the study, it becomes apparent the vast majority are able to alter the composition of their wealth or future spending to accommodate the expense. 59% were going to pay outright (if you add in the 15% that said they would pay and cut their budget), and if you add in people like me that would let it sit on credit to let some real value inflate away, it goes up to 79% who would pay it outright either by debiting from their fiat stockpiles or credit card. Only 4% actually needed to take out a personal loan, and only 10% would resort to family. Factor in that probably 14% of adults are 25 or younger or in school, and it starts to become apparent that the overwhelming majority of adults can afford a $1k expense.
> I'm skeptical but willing to believe 56% of people can't find $1k on the spot in fiat cash because of the structure of their wealth.
It's not too far fetched.
1. Buy a house in the 80s when they were like 60k-80k.
2. Work a normal'ish non-tech full time job where you make 35k / year.
3. Fail to pay off your original mortgage over 20-30 years and end up getting a 2nd mortgage.
4. Pay your current mortgage, property taxes and other bills every month.
Pretty sure anyone who is single in this position would have nothing left over per month and be living an extremely tight lifestyle with not much to spare a few days before their next pay check.
Throw in a couple of bad decisions over the decades and you could have no savings too. Something tells me a decent percent of 55-70 year old folks fall into this category.
You are living in a bubble. This may be true for you and the people you associate with, but for the majority of Americans, it's not true in the slightest.
The following source does indeed show a 50th percentile (median) household wealth of $100K, but if you read the damn thing it shows the median contribution from property is $120K, which presumably means, if you were to exclude property owners, the average would be MUCH closer to 0.
It also shows that 30% is contributed overall from property and another 30% from retirement accounts... Which can't be accessed until late in life and don't help you cover unexpected expenses.
> The assets with the highest median
values are primary home equity
and rental property equity. The
median value for home equity and
the median equity in rental prop-
erties, which are not statistically
different from each other, were
$118,000 and $120,000, respec-
tively
people say this every time rates go up. The fed is not trapped. Rates went up from 0% in 2015 to 2.25% by 2018 and nothing bad happened. Inflation remained low, bonds did well.
I've had crippling chest pains and ended up in the ER after a heartattack-like symptoms later to be determined as "spasms with unknown cause". My cardiologist can't diagnose it, says he need and MRI which I would have to pay for out of pocket.
3 months later and I can do some degree of exercise but not the same amounts as before. I know more people, that I meet in person, with similar symptoms, just lesser degree and they have recovered faster. A couple fully.
There is definitely something going on here that is not being talked about because it's inconvenient. It's unnecessary as it only happens with one specific type of vaccine applied to a specific part of the disease. The effects last long enough that it's worth being cautious.
From this article:
“When the vaccine was rolled out the goal should have been to focus on people at risk, and that should still be the focus,” says Memoli. Such risk stratification may have complicated logistics, but it would also require more nuanced messaging. “A lot of public health people have this notion that if the public is told that there’s even the slightest bit of uncertainty about a vaccine, then they won’t get it,” he says. For Memoli, this reflects a bygone paternalism. “I always think it’s much better to be very clear and honest about what we do and don’t know, what the risks and benefits are, and allow people to make decisions for themselves.”
The authors here agree (I’d really like professionals to discuss this for it’s highly disturbing; but obvious why it wasn’t communicated to subjects)
Thx, that’s promising.
I find it interesting that the fda has to play games: technically the vaccine is still under emergency use authorization & not approved (last paragraph)
I don't know if any of the failed vaccines had antibody dependent enhancement issues but even if not it is a failure of medical ethics to not disclose the risk sufficiently since it was a risk for trial participants. This paper is not expressing concern over approved vaccines.
Yes it’s interesting that they are using previous corona profiles. You would think a yr is long enough but I’m patient and will hedge my bet by losing my job.
Previous corona profiles? The article was written before the vaccines were widely available, so the only people who had received them were in the clinical trials.
A year is absolutely long enough. To quote Derek Lowe in the "From the Pipeline" article:
"We have hundreds of millions of people who have been vaccinated to produce antibodies against the non-Delta coronavirus protein domains and are who are now being exposed to the Delta variant. To reiterate, there is (to the best of my knowledge) no evidence whatsoever of ADE in this situation. In fact, we see the opposite: people who have been vaccinated are far less likely to become infected with the Delta variant, and if they become infected, they are far less likely to experience severe disease. These trends have been seen over and over in different populations, and they are the exact opposite of what you would see if ADE were operating. If the mechanism proposed by Yahi et al. were happening in the real world, then we should see higher Delta infection rates among vaccinated people, with more severe disease. We are not. We are seeing the reverse. The vaccines simply to not appear to be causing ADE, no matter how many reasons one might be able to spin for them to do so."
But it was rolled out to those at highest risk first no? It wasn't until many months later my wife (who wasn't employed in healthcare at the time and is relatively young) was able to get scheduled. By that point it had become clear the at risk population hadn't had an opposite effect than intended.
Unfortunately not in much of the country. Many states prioritized healthcare workers, healthcare administrators, and the spouses of healthcare workers regardless of age either simultaneously or before the compromised and elderly. Meanwhile, Florida Governor Ron Desantis was ridiculed by the media for prioritizing elderly and compromised in his state.
That's really burying the lede - all they are saying is that there should be bigger, more explicit forms given stating that that there is possibly a chance of ADE. That article doesn't even attempt to prove that as possiblity. They even admit that "Current data on COVID‐19 vaccines is limited, but does not so far reveal evidence of ADE of disease."
