Helmars Šmits
4.2K posts
@Unixsystem13 @bumbadum14 why would you suddenly get paid double or triple?
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@bumbadum14 Imagine if we banned employer "benefits" and companies were suddenly forced to compete on wages alone. Imagine how easy it would be to afford healthcare (with or without insurance) if your paycheck was double or triple what it currently is.
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You can literally thank Obama care for this. Now a full time 40 hour employee costs like 3x the actual wages of what the worker makes
Bryan DeHenau🇺🇸🇺🇦@dehenau_
I know several men who at age 40, have dropped out of the work force. And.. at first, you would say “wow thats stupid” But, think about it. Without a college degree, you just spend 20 years bouncing from 15$ an hour job to 18$ an hour jobs You can’t pay bills with that 🤷♂️
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@quininecope @uncledoomer In Latvia and Switzerland it's all Whatsapp
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@uncledoomer Well yes and no. Latin America and some English speaking Asian countries. Eastern Europe loves telegram. China does their own thing. Not sure what Japan does.
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one thing that may come as a shock to americans is that literally everybody in literally every single other country is using whatsapp to do literally everything
Polymarket@Polymarket
NEW: Marco Rubio reportedly exchanges WhatsApp messages with Venezuela’s acting leader, including gossip, birthday wishes, & selfies — NYT
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@GroovySciFi Paris is better if and only if you have enough money to live there (needs more than you think) and you speak French. Then again being broke in Dallas suburbs is probably no fun either.
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I think this is class-based. Dallas suburb is the ultimate aspirational lifestyle for 90% of planet Earth. For well-to-do Americans, maybe 30% of the US population, Paris becomes the dream.
Luke Metro@luke_metro
I'm not a GDP truther but I still feel like a high percentage of people would prefer a middle-class Parisian lifestyle to living in a Dallas suburb?
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@Stefan_pavlovc @sasharma22 @Schaumby In Switzerland everyone does. How much you pay in taxes is too individual.
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@sasharma22 @Schaumby In Europe no tells you pre tax income when you ask
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@BaldingsWorld Most Nobel prize winners don't do important stuff AFTER getting that prize. Partially because they get distracted and partially because they're already old. Some exceptions of course, maybe this guy too.
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Though I do not know the exact details of this deal let me explain how China structures these deals.
1. He will get a base salary with entry levels benefits that is probably 5-10x what any US university, even as a Nobel Prize winner, would pay him.
2. He basically gets a blank check (blank in that it is wildly bigger with zero work to obtain than anything he could expect in the US even as a Nobel prize winner) for 3-5 years to fund a lab.
3. He will likely have major interest and contractual rights, ownership, and near guaranteed funding for any spinoffs, investments, companies or related for anything coming out of research as well as just related activities that is even significantly more lucrative than the base salary activity.
The short version of this story is that this professor is in all probability receiving not just a pay increase from what he would receive at any US university but probably a pay increase of at a bare minimum 3-4x what he would receive at any US university probably 5-10x along with all nature of sweeteners to go with it like lab and spinoff funding that would raise the incentives even many more multiples
South China Morning Post@SCMPNews
Omar Yaghi, the winner of last year’s Nobel Prize for chemistry, has left the United States to lead a new AI-driven research centre at China’s Tsinghua University. Read more: sc.mp/759a48 #omaryaghi #china #us #tsinghua
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@ETJY @bryancsk @TheresaAFallon Not anymore. Computer translation is 95%+ accurate these days. They'd have to keep it fully secret.
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@bryancsk @TheresaAFallon If they publish in mandarin ,it would be a form of barrier.
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In other words, China is now pulling up the ladder behind them. After so many scholars have promoted the exchange of knowledge with Chinese students, and researchers, the Chinese Communist Party now sees little advantage to share their advanced research in internationally published journals.
Financial Times@FT
China cools on overseas publication of scientific research ft.trib.al/ZbQ9Rvj
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@LambentLucien Right, but could you still commute to Helsinki where I assume vast majority of "advanced" jobs are?
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This house is $119K in a mid-sized Finnish city one hour away from Helsinki.
If you wanted to own something like this in America, you would expect to pay a hefty premium for the log construction and the wood-stove sauna. You could easily expect to drop 700K-1M dollars on a property like this.
Still, even in the States, the basic macroeconomics of housing markets apply; if you are willing to sever the umbilical cord to a tier-one metro center, your purchasing power multiplies instantly.
If you try to buy a home in Seattle, Austin, or the Boston suburbs, you are competing with tech salaries, corporate equity, and severe land constraints. Your dollar gets crushed.
But if you move three or four hours inland to parts of upstate New York, Ohio, or the midwestern rust belt, suddenly a very decent, spacious house with a yard drops from $700,000 down to $180,000 or $250,000.
The core difference between Finland and America is that in the US, you are usually trading away a lot of municipal infrastructure when you go rural or small-town. Public transit drops to zero, and schools or healthcare can become wildly variable.
What makes the Finnish version of this "inland pivot" so elegant is that Finland is highly decentralized by design. When you move to a place like Hämeenlinna or even further up to Tornio, you aren't sacrificing high-speed, fiber optic internet, flawlessly plowed roads, pristine healthcare, or a functional railway connection. You keep the first-world infrastructure, but get the small-town price tag.
The American mind breaks at this reality.
It really reveals that the housing market isn't broken everywhere — it's literally just a matter of deciding what kind of daily life you actually want to fund.
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@HaraldH96822144 @bryan_caplan From my experience and disregarding prices Swiss and French.
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@bryan_caplan Well, which grocery stores are the best in Europe?
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Go to Norwegian grocery stores before you say Norway is thriving.
Virtually the worst in Europe.
Chris Freiman@cafreiman
Norway is a shining example of how an economy can thrive with a comparatively large percentage of state-owned enterprises so long as it bats 1.000 on every other institutional arrangement and has over a trillion dollars in oil money.
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cheaper EU manufacturing like TEMU, Shein andAlibaba is never going to happen unless EU removes all labor and environmental protections and zero regulatory oversight. China and the EU are not on the same level playing field.
raulk@raulvk
So let's get this right, Ursula. This is about Temu and Alibaba. And it won't stop consumption of Chinese products because that's where goods are created. Your magic plan strengthens intermediaries (importers, traders, Amazon) at the expense of the consumer's pocket (markups). Ironically, these intermediaries are highly automated and capital intensive: it does zero for labour. What if, instead, you strike the problem at the root? Cut bureaucracy and streamline processes to boost cheaper EU manufacturing. Or if you truly believe this is the way, show the data and hold yourself accountable. Day after day, the EU becomes more extractive, stagnant, and hard to live in.
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@JCarr1024 @skdh Not if you have a fellowship paid by German government.
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Briefly after I moved to Arizona, a guy tried to pick me up by literally showing me photos (printed!) of his pickup truck (which was fairly old and rusty). He then proceeded to tell me proudly that he works three jobs, detailed the jobs, and told me how much he earns. Then he told me he could totally provide for a family and asked what I earn.
I then realized that my postdoc stipend was actually higher than what he earned working three jobs and instead talked about high energy particle physics because just by experience that's pretty efficient to turn off guys.
This is a 100% true story that would repeat in similar ways a few times. (Until I told my boyfriend to propose so I could put a ring on my finger, which he duly did -- we are still married 👍).
Dating scene in the US definitely worked differently back then. In any case, it made me realize just how hard the American working class struggles to make ends meet.
Also their obsession with pickup trucks...
x.com/Arnold_Platon/…
Arnold Platon@Arnold_Platon
I'm endlessly fascinated by what Americans think fascinates Europeans... It kind of highlights what Americans value, and their inability to understand others might have a different value system.
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My fiancé is against us sending our kids to private school. “That’s very American”, “German schools are great.”
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@littleapostate Funny, isn't it? X goes on and on about "no go" zones in Germany (hardly exist) and then you have places likes this in your own country.
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This house just sold in Macon, GA.
89% of US cities are safer than Macon, GA
According to trusty Google, this specific neighborhood is in an area has frequent "crime and blight." Residents in the area report lots of gun shots
lmao
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@mephistophalic Unless he's CEO or very close he probably can't.
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My cousin is an engineer, very intelligent, he's stuck at a medicore supply chain planning job that he hates. His father is a "high-tier" manager at a big tech company but says he can't hire him because "it would look like nepotism".
HowlingHemorrhoids@DeadlessHick
Personal lore: I am closely and directly related to an A-list celebrity that you have 100% had on your timeline within the last few months. Unfortunately, we're a white family, so me being related to one of the wealthiest people who's ever walked the earth benefits me zero.
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@MarinoLinich Careful here - could be ethnic Poles who have acquired British citizenship.
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Still, some actually do move to Eastern Europe. While the number of Poles has decreased in the UK, the number of Brits has increased in Poland.
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An underdiscussed reversal: Western Europe is now shedding more of its native population than much of Eastern Europe. Western European countries top the list in brain drain and emigration, with countries like Belgium, Sweden, Germany, and Italy.
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A good example of one of the ways in which the "good old days" were terrible:
In the 1880s, the average US rural housewife had to haul water into the house 8-10 times a day, 36 tons of water a year. And also haul out ashes & waste. (From “The Rise and Fall of American Growth”).
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@Helmars456 And fried chicken perhaps, Texas bbq, there is a nontrivial list
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Most Europeans I talk to say steak specifically in the US is quite good
Lawrence Kesteloot@lkesteloot
my experience is that in the U.S. a low-end or mid-end restaurant will serve quite good food, but in other countries you have to spend a lot to get good food, the low/mid places won't be all that great my dad had the theory that in the U.S., food ingredients are cheap relative to labor/rent, so they may as well serve good food, but in other countries the food is relatively expensive and low/mid places have to skimp on it like I've had a steak-frite in a bunch of French bistros and they're all quite mid, maybe good steaks are really expensive here? I've never had steak this bad in an American restaurant
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@alz_zyd_ Correct, forgot about those. Not so much into sandwiches myself.
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