Josh Christensen

@nikicaga Retiring early might also be worse for people versus reducing hours if it leads to a more lonely/sedentary life

*Lowering* retirement ages seems untenable, even for jobs who normally retire early Reducing weekly working hours seems like a better long term solution

@krishnanrohit All good, people are misconstruing an estimate by a TD cowen which thought they could cut 30k

@JoshIsBoredNow Ah thanks!

This is 20% of their workforce.

I am tired of Earth. These people. I am tired of being caught in the tangle of their lives.

@musharbash_b @Noahpinion How does differentiate between landlords causing prices to go up and investors choosing to prioritize buying in places with faster increasing rents?

Excellent question. @Noahpinion any idea why you seem to selectively forget that housing markets are local when that’s useful for obscuring the role of private equity in raising home prices and the role of corporate landlords in raising rents?

It's worth remembering that DOGE is a failure at Every. Single. Possible. Level. At the micro level, they misread, misled and straight up lied about many of the 'savings'. They'd announce '500m saved!' and it would be some contract where the money was 98% already spent and already wasn't being renewed. At the macro level, they didn't impact spending at all. The government is spending more in 2025 than 2024, on basically the same trajectory but a little more. At the institutional level, they didn't even convince the GOP that deficits are a problem worth caring about. The GOP just passed a bill that explodes the deficit by trillions of dollars. At a personal level, Elon got run out of town with his tail between his legs and the most notable public facts about the Cracked Coders are that one of them was a mini Hitler, one was called 'big balls' and none of them bothered to learn how the government actually works before they lit it on fire. They gutted a bunch of important institutions, fired whole departments at random, decimated medical research funding, killed a bunch of people dependent on USAID, and still failed at every possible level.

New York City New York City (The Seoul of America) New York City (The Lima of America) New York City (The Zagreb of America)

@JeremiahDJohns I think the biggest thing they efficiently shift value from employees and customers to investors. So there were more employees making more money than they efficiently would or excess consumer value. That shift is efficient economically but people are losing “value”

So there's a persistent idea floating around that goes like "Private equity firms buy up good companies and then run them into the ground, and this is a huge and persistent problem". This confuses me: why would they buy companies just to ruin them? Wouldn't they lose money? PE firms are also supposedly laser-focused on profits, so the whole thing doesn't make sense. I can see a few possible explanations here, but I've never gotten a comprehensive answer which story people think is true: 1) This doesn't actually happen, PE-owned companies fail at the same rate as non-PE-owned companies. It's just a media panic. 2a) PE firms are buying stable businesses and making high-risk-high-reward bets on scaling them. Sometimes they don't work, but when they do the payoff is large. 2b) PE firms are buying distressed companies with a high chance of failure. They buy at low prices knowing failure is likely but if they turn the business around profits could be huge. In both 2a and 2b you'd see a higher rate of PE-owned businesses failing, but it could be economically rational and +EV to make high risk bets 3) PE companies are buying companies whose parts are worth more than the sum - they have more value just selling off the assets than keeping the business running. 4) PE companies are involved in some sort of contractual slipperiness, dirty tricks, or outright malfeasance where they make money even if the business fails. Scenario (4) raises another question - who's the counterparty? If the PE firms are making money despite the purchased business failing, where's that money coming from? Sometimes I hear about them 'loading up the business with loans' which then presumably don't get paid back... but big banks are sophisticated players too. They typically don't give loans to parties unlikely to pay them back. So which big banks are habitually getting fleeced over and over here? Wouldn't they learn not to loan to these companies? And if it's not the banks, who is getting fleeced? This has long confused me, and I'd be interested to see what people think. It's typically presented as "PE firms are evil vampires intentionally ruining things because they enjoy human misery" but the actual answer has to be something more than that.

Too many em dashes? What’s next? too much love? too much joy?

Reports are leaking to me that the Democratic establishment has begged JB Pritzker to "be less large" and "have less drip" in his 3rd campaign for Governor. He flatly refused. RT if you support Illinois' Big Boy! 🇺🇸

@DeepDishEnjoyer Look at places in Long Grove

HNNNNNNGGG

@dorakathryn yay! Dora! A Master!

Fuck it. Josh Brown reading the J.P Morgan research note on the US Stock Market set to the Battle Hymn of the Republic

Illinois absolutely dominates pumpkin production and processing. The vast majority of pumpkins grown in the other top states are ornamental (lame, wasteful) whereas 70% of Illinois’s crop ends up in food products (based, bountiful).

Simply put, attempts by New Jersey to stop New York’s congestion pricing plan are an attack on New York’s sovereignty. New Yorkers don’t dictate the tolls on the NJ Turnpike, or their (lack of) investment in NJ Transit.

"For years, we have heard excuses about why America can't build enough housing. Enough with the excuses, I'm going to cut the red tape, and work with the private sector and local governments to speed up building, and get it done!" THATS OUR FUTURE YIMBY PRESIDENT

American Rescue Plan Inflation Reduction Act Bipartisan Infrastructure Law PACT Act (Veterans' health care) Postal Service Reform Act CHIPs and Science Act Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health Bipartisan Safer Communities Act Respect for Marriage Act

INFLATION IS DEAD AND THE US CHIP INDUSTRY IS ALIVE

@DzambhalaHODL The argument is if towns can change the rules to delay the certification then republican legislatures will attempt to throw out the results because the results weren't certified fast enough

Can someone give me the non-conspiratorial explanation for this? It looks bad. What is the argument that isn't trying to tamper?

@GRoditiD @dieworkwear COGS usually includes the labor required to directly make the product, but usually there is some discretion on the part of the company. investopedia.com/terms/c/cogs.a…

@dieworkwear sorry to nitpick but Gross Margins are based on revenue minus cost of goods sold, which does not include labor. so your base would be $135 and at 40% GM your gross profit would be $54 for a selling price of $189.

Some misinformation in today's US presidential debate about who bears the cost of tariffs. So let's talk about how tariffs affect what you pay for a suit. 🧵