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[quote=spdrun]Funnier parts:
(1) Chicago to Louisville is under 5 hr by car. They could have rented each bumped passenger a Lambo or limo and got them there the same day. For that matter, wet lease on a King Air is ~$1500/hr — could have stuck them on a private plane for less than vouchers + hotel.
(2) The doctor involved was an immigrant and possibly a criminal. Trump came down on his side, not the airline’s. If that’s not irony, dunno what is.
(3) Everyone is blaming United, not the overgrown mall cops.

In all seriousness, if they’d have offered $800 to $1000 cash (actual cash or check), I’d have climbed over other passengers to get it, then rented myself a Porsche one way, bought a case of cigars, and got to Louisville in style.[/quote]

It is amazing how people are often closed to alternatives once they are set on a path (travel plan, career path, home purchase). So much easier to present alternatives when people are not already seated and buckled.

Regarding the doctor’s past, more evidence in this internet driven society everything is unforgiving. You only got one shot in life, do not stray, don’t not error, anything you ever done could come back to haunt you.

Of course, corporation vs the police/military. That’s an easy one. Everyone knows the police and military can do no wrong. They are like the priest/clergy class.

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[quote=zk][quote=EconProf]

Lots of economists jokes come to mind. Economists who forecast with a crystal ball must learn to eat crushed glass. Economist forecasts–seldom right, always confident.

[/quote]

And my favorite, the classic “Economists have predicted 9 out of the last 5 recessions.”[/quote]

Hey, what goes up, must come down. Timing might be off sometimes, but hey, that just means the prediction is ahead of its time. Lol.

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[quote=Essbee]For 2017:

My relative’s good friend had a GPA > 4, all A’s, a bajillion extracurriculars. Asian-American. She got into UCLA, Berkeley, and USC, but not into Cornell, Brown, or Stanford.[/quote]

Asian American admission within the Ivy League schools (including Stanford) is capped under a 15% quota. She can be the next Einstein but the quota reigns supreme.

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[quote=EconProf]
I suspect we are in another bubble.
Trust me, I’m an economist.[/quote]

It certainly has the feel of it, folks in the home improvement and remodel business tell me it feels like 2005 all over again. plus we are due for one timing wise aren’t we?

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[quote=FlyerInHi]So the county with the shortest life expectancy in the nation voted overwhelmingly for Trump. WTF!?
Oh well, these guys are hopeless…. better put resources supporting refugees, new immigrants and the coastal working classes.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/west-virginia-tug-river-obamacare/?hpid=hp_hp-more-top-stories_tugriver826pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory
They are poor, sick and voted for Trump. What will happen to them without Obamacare?[/quote]

That’s well established. I have met several folks who directly benefited from the ACA yet continue to wish for its repeal.

You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. Especially if the person that led to horse to water was black.

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[quote=harvey]The healthcare changes won’t likely affect me much directly, but I can’t help but to be fascinated watching this whole thing unfold.

We are watching history in the making. Has our government ever done something so wrong, on such a large scale?

I’d say the the Vietnam War was the biggest fraud in American history. Prohibition was huge, and a fraud of sorts. Anything else on that scale? The unraveling of ACA could easily be the biggest policy fuckup in American history as measured by the size of the population impacted.[/quote]

Might need something like this to create the backlash needed for true universal care…

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[img_assist|nid=26260|title=Rich’s valuation graph|desc=…|link=node|align=left|width=100|height=86]

Just roughly looking at Rich’s valuation graph. Peak was 180, historic median at 105. That was roughly 40% reduction. You got a few folks that lucked out and hit 50% reduction, just like you had some folks that got 30% reduction, the average thus being 40%.

Now we are at 125, getting down to historic median of 105 takes a 15% drop, not 50%.

Very likely given timing wise we are due for a recession soon.

The question here is it is a no brainer to wait for the bubble crash. Is it worth waiting for a 15% cyclical adjustment.

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[quote=spdrun]You’re assuming that nominal pricing of anything is linear, which it is often not. Especially when we’ve gone from no-drama Obama in charge to the drama queen in chief with his retinue of clowns.

A significant % of SD County’s population is very worried right about now, and worried people don’t like to sign long-term leases, spend money, or invest in property with family. It’s depressing, because the situation of most immigrants (legal or not) isn’t much different than my family’s 40 years ago.

Question is, will the left side of the aisle do everything in its power to provoke chaos before the 2018 and 2020 elections? It’s telling that Yellen (Obama appointee) is yipping about raising rates, even with crummy growth estimates for Q1-17:

http://seekingalpha.com/article/4053152-u-s-economic-growth-slowing-q1

A recession might be seen as “less damage” than GOP being successful.[/quote]

A recession will likely occur regardless of Yellen.

Reminds me of Gingrich blaming high gas prices on Obama.

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[quote=moneymaker][quote=spdrun]
Thirdly, a 7-10% of SD County’s population are people who could be directly affected by immigration policy, hitting rental demand at the lower end.[/quote]

Not sure where you got this from spdrun but I suspect the numbers could be way higher. If Donald deported all illegals living in San Diego I believe it would bring down rents in San Diego due to the number of vacancies. I don’t see this happening, but is something that is possible.
Now if rents were to drop, would that affect home prices? Is there any anecdotal evidence out there? Almost not worth worrying about, but none the less a very interesting point that I had not even considered.[/quote]

Somehow I don’t think the illegal population is responsible for driving up cost of rent…

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[quote=harvey][quote=ocrenter]the measure of a plan’s success comes at how it prevents and reduces ER visits. [/quote]

That is an important measure.

Another measure is how it prevents ER visits that are never paid.

From what I can see, the Republican plan doesn’t even attempt to address this problem.

Back to square one.[/quote]

Yup. Repeal and replace, and watch that cost start to climb once again. And maybe next time around we might just get enough courage to go all out for universal coverage.

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the measure of a plan’s success comes at how it prevents and reduces ER visits.

tax credits that disproportionally favor people that pay taxes (and thus have insurance already) doesn’t address the issue of the lower income groups that previously treated the ER as their source of primary care.

the tax credit scheme can work if the Republicans are willing to remove the mandate for the ER to treat the sick and dying.

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[quote=FlyerInHi]One thing about Chinese culture is that they believe in education. Historically, administrators in China were people who passed the rigorous imperial exam system. Now, the threshold is graduation from the best universities in the world.

Chinese technocrats are very knowledgeable and they know what works. I believe china will be able to successfully engineer a shift to a consumer economy. Then they will welcome international immigrants/expats from all over the world as their population ages.

There will be no looking back once China becomes the biggest economy. I’m bullish on China.[/quote]

We know you are, Brian. You are probably working on getting your properties annexed by the PRC.

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Nobody knows China better than the only other country within the greater sinosphere, Taiwan. Here’s an article reporting escalation of capital flight, this time, complete departure of all capital by Taiwanese investors. A lot of that cash will likely end up in Californian real estate.

http://www.chinapost.com.tw/taiwan/business/2017/02/06/490900/SPECIAL-REPORT.htm

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[quote=flu][quote=ocrenter]
Once Irvine got the two Ranch 99 markets within 10 minutes of each other, it has never looked back. Ranch 99 is very conservative, so unless they have the numbers to sustain two stores, they would not have made their move. With the new Balboa store and them keeping the old Clairemont Mesa store open, the floodgate now opens…[/quote]

There’s a reason why they did this. Someone in my circle knows the people that run the place in San Diego.

The two stores exist and the do sort of cannibalize each other’s sales. The reason why they did this was if they didn’t there was going to be someone else that was going to do it (IE a korean supermarket). And then that would have impacted their sales. So, the thought was to have two locations to minimize another competitor.[/quote]

A bit too late, they already lost a big chunk of 4S/RB/SR business to H-Mart when they took over the Ralphs over at east end of Mira Mesa.

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[quote=flu]I think that because now we se 85c Bakery and Ding Tai Fung soon to be in UTC, that’s a sign…

The cat is out of the bag, and San Diego has caught on…. I think what we’ll see is certain pockets in San Diego slowly turn into places like Irvine or Diamond Bar, etc.[/quote]

I agree.

Once Irvine got the two Ranch 99 markets within 10 minutes of each other, it has never looked back. Ranch 99 is very conservative, so unless they have the numbers to sustain two stores, they would not have made their move. With the new Balboa store and them keeping the old Clairemont Mesa store open, the floodgate now opens…

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