[carlsbadworker]

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[carlsbadworker]

[quote=HLS]What has happened to independent, investigative journalism ?? In the past, I respected 60 Minutes for original stories, but it seems that they have gone to the dogs too…
[/quote]

Journalism doesn’t pay the bill, so what do you expect? Some says Google killed newspaper, but I think it’s the readers. No one wants independent investigative story anymore, just look at how polarized this nation is.

[carlsbadworker]

[quote=spdrun]Intarweb news isn’t much better if you’re getting it from biased outlets like Faux.[/quote]

+1. It is an echo-chamber but that’s what we want to hear.

[carlsbadworker]

I guess scaredy can chime in, but I feel the biggest liability in life is kids. But then again, on balance sheet, we bring no money into the world and take no money off to the heaven as well.

[carlsbadworker]

[quote=spdrun]You lost a zero somewhere — I’m getting $56k per citizen, call it $100k per taxpayer.[/quote]

I believe he is adding medicare and social security liability as well, which can be evaporated with a change of the law.

[carlsbadworker]

Have you seen this?

Yo

An app whose only function is to send “Yo” has raised $1.2 million in funding!

I am going to write an app that says “Shit!”.

[carlsbadworker]

I think it’s the stupid rules that don’t allow the use of technology. If only referee watches replay from different angel like we do. Heck, they should be able to afford one Google Glass each. When the stakes are high and rules are stupid, of course you cheat.

[carlsbadworker]

Any particular brand you’d recommend from baron? I am a wine person but I do drink lots of beer in summer.

[carlsbadworker]

Wow. -0.1% deposit rate!

I predict strong mattress sales. LOL.

[carlsbadworker]

Thanks to Bernanke/Yellen, the valuation of any asset is poor, but that does not mean the bubble is bursting anytime soon with Fed’s foot on the gas all the time.

I also disagree that “shadow inventory” is going to be a predictor of the next bubble burst. Every bubble is unique and will burst in its unique way. Last time, it was an over-supply from the foreclosures. Next time, it could come from under-demand with lower wages.

For example, I don’t think the Chinese real estate bubble will burst the same way as the U.S. housing bubble. The hefty down payment requirements there would ensure that foreclosures won’t be a problem there. But that is not to say, there won’t be a crack on the demand side (which is fueled by everyone’s wishes to be multi-millionaire just by buying a home) or from the middle man (shadow banking collapses, taking down the loans that factories need to operate).

Frankly, I think globally we are all paid too high for what we are worth on average. With huge improvement in machine learning in recent years, the machines that will take our jobs are just around the corner, unless you are the very few who invented the machines to replace the service jobs. Wages now need to be depressed for the service sector as they did for the manufacturing sector years ago. It is almost inevitable.

Luckily, in U.S., I think it just means we are just less wealthy than we thought we are. As for emerging market, I am not so sure about their social stability when everyone starts to realize still how poor they are.

There is a mother of all bubble-bursts coming, if that ultimately happens, as we see political turmoil around the world hurts the never-seem-to-end productivity growth. Until then, you can probably see both stock market and housing market keep climbing for quite a few percentage.

[carlsbadworker]

By the way, I think this is an opportunity because I believe the stupid Dodd-Frank rules are making it hard for RE investors with low real financial risks to qualify for loans. And they only lend to people with experiences in RE and typically has other assets as well.

[carlsbadworker]

[quote=scaredyclassic]I’m guilty of being equally rude.

Sometimes I pretend to have never heard of jesus.

That’s gets their excitement level through the roof….

Then when they start I say Oooooohhhhhh. That jesus! Yeah I already have a religious identity. But thanks.”[/quote]

Or the next time someone tells you that Jesus died for your sin. You could say, “What? He dies?! I was reading that book, man.”

[carlsbadworker]

By the way, I am not saying that we shouldn’t help kids from poor family. But I just don’t see why we have to use race (out of so many other criteria that we could use) to help some of the poor kids out there.

[carlsbadworker]

[quote=blake]Semi OT: Jesse Jackson says blacks inadequately represented in tech companies

Here comes another shakedown …[/quote]

Nice! I wonder why anyone hasn’t caught up with the fact that Asian American female’s life expectancy is 10 years longer than that of African American male. As the logic from deadzone goes, the healthcare system is now supported primarily by tax payers, so we should start enforce life expectancy quota with Obamacare.

It wouldn’t be fair otherwise, would it?

[carlsbadworker]

[quote=AN][quote=CA renter]
As for those innovations, while I respect the fact that many people are in love with their iPhones, the main innovation was getting a mobile phone into a person’s hand. That was done well before this past decade. Navigation is cool, but the rest is just “fluff” as far as I’m concerned. We had notebook/laptop computers decades ago, so the iPad isn’t such a big deal, IMO. And 24/7 connectivity is as much a burden as it is a blessing. We had voice recognition decades ago, TV cards for computers were available back then, too. And “Picturephones”/teleconferencing was available decades ago, as well. There have been some advances in biotech, but with cancer, for instance, we’re still using many of the same drugs and treatments that we were using decades ago. Drones???? Don’t get me started on drones! 🙁

Sorry, but I’m just not seeing the life-altering innovations that you seem to be seeing. Of course, I’ll admit that you are more tech-focused than I am, so you’re more likely to notice the incremental changes that might be a big deal to you (and others like you), but not nearly as impressive to me (and others like myself).

I also think you greatly underestimate the extent to which our economy IS zero-sum.[/quote]That’s the most ridiculous post I’ve ever read. My only response to a post like that is lol.[/quote]

I actually think the post is not that ridiculous. Technology is slowing down on subjective level. Planes are flying to more places but we are not travelling any faster than the decade ago. Some NASA exploration is still on-going, but we felt that we have seen all that is to see and traveling outside the solar system is still not a reachable goal. In 1970, Congress promised victory over cancer in six years’ time; four decades later, we are still here. The nuclear industry and its 1954 promise of “electrical energy too cheap to meter” sounds like yesterday’s dream after Fukushima. Energy and batter are holding the progress for new technologies.

But on the other end, people forgot that technology progress is never linear and these “incremental changes” might amount to something in the future. We are closer ever to AI thanks to the steady Moore’s law. That’s making machines equal to human, which stands back on millions years of evolution. And then there is bio-science, we are creating new DNA and organism, a domain that used to belong to God.

It is after all impossible to predict the future progress of the technology. But Internet does unleash a great amount of creativity and collaboration, with time, I think it will eventually amount to something.

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