[spdrun]

Until we can measure standard of living in different ways, more stuff is better.

No offense meant, but that’s the stupidest thing I’ve read rattling off a smart man’s keyboard in a long time.

Taken to the extreme, you’re saying that a morbidly obese divorced guy who had two coronary bypasses and works 90 hours a week, but has a BMW, Porsche, iPad, and coastal 6-bedroom home in La Jolla has a better standard of living than a happily married woman who works 35 hours a week, is healthy, in good physical condition, and has a two bedroom condo in City Heights, a 10-year-old Camry, and an Android tablet.

Come on, you’re smarter than that. It’s a complex mixture of health, happiness, relationships, free time, and quantity of toys.

[spdrun]

You’re showing your brainwashing here, FlyerInHI…

Standard of living is based on consumption of goods and services TO A POINT. Excessive consumption (say, an iPhone, iPad, and two laptops per person) is just inefficiency, not to mention rape/pillage of Gaia. What’s the fucking point of more toys if you have no time to enjoy them?

If you look at many of the wealthier European countries, their standard of living is DIFFERENT, not necessarily lower. Smaller homes, less likely to own a home, maybe only one car on average.

But the cars on the road are newer and cleaner than the US, health-care spending is lower, people have much more time and ability to travel (only 30% of Americans have passports, and fewer than that ever travel outside of North America). Savings rates and the social safety net are better, so there’s less constant fear of financial ruination. (Less fear, period — did you know that kids are encouraged to walk to school … alone … in Germany starting at age 8 or so?)

Australia and Canada are much more similar to the US, BTW, largely due to lower population density than Europe.

See also — social mobility rankings. It doesn’t look good for the US, and perpetuating the same situation won’t solve anything:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility#Country_comparison

[spdrun]

Nation of immigrants? So are Canada and Australia, not to mention Germany and the UK at this point, and none of those countries work as long as the US on average.

Why the hell should GDP be the measure of the worth of a country anyway? As far as inflation and investments — it’s at best neutral. If value of money goes down 10%, value of investment goes “up” by a commensurate amount, you still end up with the same amount of money.

Good investments pay dividends, and that’s where the focus should be.

[spdrun]

You can’t say “the opposition” as if it were a unified force, since many people look cross-eyed at the Fed’s policies, for many different reasons.

[spdrun]

Considering that Americans already are one of the most overworked industrialized nations, why is working more a good thing? If anything, we should collectively take two steps back and slow the hell down. I’m not talking about people who already have paying investments. This should go for EVERYONE.

Actually, opposition comes from the left as well as the far right. Speaking as a mild leftist, I know Rand Paul won’t be able to block it, but I hope he gives her a hellacious case of heartburn during her nomination hearings. (I’ll make sure to buy stock in the makers of Maalox beforehand, of course.)

[spdrun]

^^^

Amen. There was an article this summer (maybe in the Times), that people were hard-pressed to find an 2-bedroom apartment in Manhattan/nearby-Brooklyn for under a mil. Yet, I’ve routinely found the same, mostly in less-trendy neighborhoods in more “plain-Jane” pre-war buildings for under $500k, sometimes a LOT under. It all depends on how high your standards are and how much hand work you’re willing to do.

[spdrun]

Private insurance companies are also EXTREMELY bureaucratic as well — and the problem is that each doctor has to deal with QUITE A FEW of them, each with their own brand of bureaucratic stupidity.

[spdrun]

What proliferation? There have been a mere handful of cases of poisoned/tampered Halloween treats in the past 50 years. (If you believe Snopes, the most egregious one was done by a kid’s own father for insurance reasons.)

http://www.snopes.com/horrors/poison/halloween.asp

The only proliferation is that of stupid rumors and fears fanned by the media who’s out to make an easy buck out of totally anomalous stories.

Every time I hear this kind of fearmongering, it takes me one step closer to getting on a one-way flight and moving to a place that’s not polluted by the US/Anglo media.

[spdrun]

Yep. Just a thinly veiled excuse to search 2200 vehicles without any probable cause.

And score overtime at a non-annoying (for the cops, as opposed to for everyone else) hour. A DUI checkpoint at 2 am on a Friday night might not be so popular with the younger cops, many of whom are budding alcoholics and will likely want to be out driving drunk themselves. 🙂

Yeah, cynical bastige here.

[spdrun]

Disgusting. Personally, I’m beginning to think that the excrement needs to be swept out from the top down. Between this and gross abuse of stop-and-frisk, if this kind of insanity is a matter of policy, Ray Kelly (soon to be a civilian after Mayor Bloomberg leaves) should be criminally indicted on Federal civil rights and racketeering charges. In addition to being totally wrong, this kind of publicity gives NYC and the NYPD a terrible name.

Wouldn’t be the first commissioner to be locked up — his illustrious predecessor (and one-time Dzerzhinsky of Iraq), Bernie Kerik was sent to Club Fed for a few years on corruption charges.

[spdrun]

No, but if you push muni and state yields (read: borrowing rates) down preferentially, you’d be allowing the entities to borrow more money for infrastructure development at a given repayment cost.

[spdrun]

Yeah, boneheaded move on the part of Temecula cops, but what makes you think this wouldn’t happen outside of CA? Just bored Jerkwater, USA cops having their idea of fun and booking overtime.

I’ve encountered the same nonsense in other states as well — piss-ante little town in Virginia about 30 mi west of Dulles Airport doing their thing at 4:30 pm on a weekday.

Oddly, I’ve never had my license run other than in California (by Border Patrol no less) — they usually ask whether you’ve been drinking and let you go once it’s obvious that the car doesn’t reek like a brewery. (Driving a well-maintained, very conservative older car might help with that.)

[spdrun]

And my point is that we already have TOO MUCH “creative destruction” in the US. It results in wasted potential — like it or not, most tech founders and artists come from upper-middle-class (at least) backgrounds.

The next Steve Jobs might be working in a call center in Dubuque Iowa, trying to make ends meet. Good Will Hunting was just a movie 🙂

You still had brilliant people doing their creative things in the 1960s when inflation was low, educational opportunity was accessible and cheap, and income disparity was much lower than in 2013.

[spdrun]

And what’s wrong with coasting? The average American is overworked as it is — it would do us some good to step back, smell the flowers, and slow down. Why the FUCK is having as many people as possible working a 40+ hour week inherently a noble goal?

If anything, financial stress is an impediment to creativity, since it uses up mental “cycles.” Who has time to think about founding the next tech company if they’re working ridiculous hours to get the rent paid and to cover food costs?

http://blog.southeastpsych.com/2013/09/03/financial-stress-leads-to-decreased-mental-functioning/

[spdrun]

What is roughly constant?
The Fed’s inflation target is now 2% ( below the 3% average)

I’d go for the 2% (or even 5%) target iff food, (pre-tax) energy, and housing purchase prices were included. Basically returning to the saner pre-1980-or-so inflation metric.

Basically discourage speculative investment in necessities and maintain a feedback mechanism to prevent bubbles in same. Make energy adjustment pre-tax to allow for taxation of fossil fuels to fund investment in cleaner sources.

If you want to be a landlord, OK. If you want to horde real-estate and flip it, screw you. If you want to be a farmer, chef, or grocer, OK. If you want to trade in food futures, screw you. Same goes for energy.

It’s bizarre to exclude things that are CRITICAL from inflation metrics while leaving the fluff in there. If you want to create bubbles, create them in areas where the US is actually LACKING, like clean energy, infrastructure investment, etc.

Not in areas where we’re glutted, like housing or social network stocks 🙂

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