OldGuyWithQuestions

6.1K posts

OldGuyWithQuestions

OldGuyWithQuestions

@jsmithsky3412

Retired attorney and US Army infantry officer; history curious and democracy adjacent. Fully aware of possible self-idiocy.

Katılım Nisan 2016
104 Takip Edilen476 Takipçiler
OldGuyWithQuestions
OldGuyWithQuestions@jsmithsky3412·
Sure. AND - let me say this one more time. the government IS NOT A BUSINESS. The DoD, for example, has never, not once, returned a profit. It is ALWAYS a cost center. The entire government (except for the tax collectors) is a huge cost center, and always will be. AND the people who run it (Congress and the President) have decided that we will never, ever increase revenue AND we will increase expenses. If you owned a business and the CEO told you, good news, we have cut revenue by X%, we are another $2T in debt this year, AND we are borrowing another 500T dollars with no possible revenue stream to pay for it, and which will never turn a profit, would you keep that CEO in his office? So when you say "performance-based", what do you mean?
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Cynical Publius
Cynical Publius@CynicalPublius·
As someone who has spent significant time in the US federal government and significant time in the venture capital/start-up world, I can attest that the private sector is vastly more efficient and high performance-based than the federal government. In the private sector, if your financials are not strong, your business dies. In the public sector, they ask "Financials? What are those?" I believe that distinction is the reason for the disparity in performance levels.
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OldGuyWithQuestions
OldGuyWithQuestions@jsmithsky3412·
And you will get no takers. At all. They will want their cash immediately, from a bank whose check is good. Nobody wants to be your bank. AND they will immediately assume that you have bad credit, or you would be getting approved for a mortgage. (If you can't qualify for a mortgage, they are taking a huge risk on you.) The 3% is irrelevant. 7 month BofA CD's are at 3.5%, with essentially no risk. Put the $500K into a index fund; good chance they see 8-10%. Again, with some risk; but NO risk of having to harass you and do some kind of foreclosure action. AND if you can pay it off in 5 years, they will think, why aren't you getting a 15 year mortgage and pay it off early? Why are you asking THEM to take all the risk? Huge red flags there. It used to be you could do that. Maybe you still can if you off over-market prices, and they know you, or you're family, or something like that. Otherwise...good luck.
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Yonan
Yonan@yonann·
Grant Cardone explains how to buy a house with no bank and no mortgage. "Find everybody in your market that has a home paid for, go to them and say I'll give you your price but you're gonna lend me the money, I'll give you 3% interest for five years and then I'm paying it off" "You want 500 grand for your house, I'll give you your 500, I'm putting 25,000 down, you become the bank, you're giving me a loan and I'm paying you every month"
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Elon Musk
Elon Musk@elonmusk·
Actually, AI/Robotics will mean everyone can have a penthouse if they want. The output of goods & services will be several orders of magnitude higher than today’s economy. Read the Iain Banks Culture books for the best imagining of how it will be. That said, what is the future you want? Amazing abundance seems the best to me.
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Elon Musk
Elon Musk@elonmusk·
Universal HIGH INCOME via checks issued by the Federal government is the best way to deal with unemployment caused by AI. AI/robotics will produce goods & services far in excess of the increase in the money supply, so there will not be inflation.
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OldGuyWithQuestions
OldGuyWithQuestions@jsmithsky3412·
This makes very little sense. At least one theory - with evidence - argues the wheel was first developed by miners to move ore. (See below.) However true that is, there are LOTS of examples of humans multiplying their OWN ability to move things by using wheels. You don't need pack animals to figure that out. (See: rickshaws; wheelbarrows; mining carts; handcarts used by LDS pioneers, etc.)
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Informal Geek
Informal Geek@Informal_Geek01·
@gorilla_rape There’s numerous examples. Here’s one. If you weren’t being dumb you’d also know why the usage of the wheel was relatively limited due to the relatively low amount of pack animals in the Americas. Again, your bias is large enough to sink a ship.
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wyatt
wyatt@gorilla_rape·
i really think its important that we teach every single child in the united states that when we arrived here that the indians had not even invented the wheel. They didnt even have carts. And until the spanish arrived , did not domesticate horses. They ate them.
Mîsâkan@miisaakan

Hampshire College Professor Noah Romero on Decolonizing Education: “The future depends on Indigenous knowledge [Anti-Capitalist Values]. If we want to decolonize education, that means undoing, dislodging, subverting, all those things that make up the foundational DNA [Capitalism] of everything that we see navigating a settler society like the US.”

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OldGuyWithQuestions
OldGuyWithQuestions@jsmithsky3412·
@Ne_pas_couvrir I don’t know how this is a surprise to anybody. Though I do have to point out “frontier house” is a show about life on the frontier, not in the cities. Those two were not the same.
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Benjamin De Kraker
Benjamin De Kraker@BenjaminDEKR·
I am genuinely curious what changed so dramatically that Elon went from "inflation and government spending will collapse America" to "government should write endless checks to all Americans and this will create deflation" in, like, 14 months The supposed reason is "AI" but that didn't suddenly emerge in the last year. Yet his views on this have taken a full 180 in that same timeframe. To the point that it sounds like a different person entirely. Still have not seen a coherent explanation.
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OldGuyWithQuestions
OldGuyWithQuestions@jsmithsky3412·
@jhaskinscabrera UBI does not create purpose. If you're not spending your free time doing something now, on your dime, (Village theater! Painting! Backyard blacksmithing! Home brewing!) you are not gonna do it when you are permanently unemployed.
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OldGuyWithQuestions
OldGuyWithQuestions@jsmithsky3412·
It doesn't happen. This is all magical thinking. There is no way to pay for it. And it's very, very bad policy. This is characteristic of Musk: he does many incredible things, but he also has attacks of grandiosity. (See: "Mars Colony"; "DOGE will save two trillion dollars".) Everyone gets excited when he does. The best way to deal with it is to ignore.
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OldGuyWithQuestions
OldGuyWithQuestions@jsmithsky3412·
Zero. THERE IS NO MONEY FOR UBI. We are $39T in debt now, with it mounting by $1-4T per year. There is no money for UBI. AI will likely eliminate jobs and thus decrease, not increase, revenues. We cannot possibly afford to pay everyone $4,000-8,000 per month, forever. (AI will not eliminate costs; someone has to grow food, and that someone needs to be paid. Someone will build the robots, and THEY need to get paid. TANSTAAFL.)
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OldGuyWithQuestions
OldGuyWithQuestions@jsmithsky3412·
@stackerco Why doesn't your middle school Algebra 1 and 2 class not teach you differential calculus? Why doesn't your high school history class make you learn the detailed history of the two US invasions of Canada? Or why the War of Jenkins' Ear started?
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stacker
stacker@stackerco·
The church says “we never hid anything, you just didn’t look hard enough.” Even though the curriculum never taught it. Where would you look? And why would you have ever thought to look beyond the church’s approved curriculum? Why didn’t you as a teenager go to the church library vaults? Why didn’t you examine that one article from 1974 before you were born instead of just believing what the church taught you in 1992 before the Internet was on your home? You’re so stupid just to trust the church. Your fault you didn’t look. We all knew about this, only lazy people like you didn’t know. Is this institutional betrayal like this lady says?
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OldGuyWithQuestions
OldGuyWithQuestions@jsmithsky3412·
It's NOT a sales tax. The excise (sales) tax was paid when the house was sold to you. That's a one time tax. Property taxes are different, and still entirely constitutional, and no more "unfair" or "wrong" than any other tax. You can try to reframe what property taxes, in an attempt to make them "unfair", but that's true of ALL taxes - payors ALWAYS feel they are unfair. Name the tax; the person paying it can give you "good" reasons why it's immoral/unfair/not good economical/etc. If you don't want to pay property taxes, sell your house. Rent. Put the "taxes" into an index fund. Feel free. But taxes are a cost of living in a society. They have been used by states in one form or another since the beginning of societies. Rome used them. Egypt had property taxes. And - oh - there are personal property taxes as well in a number of states. That used to be things like farm equipment, horses, cows, slaves, etc. Now, it may well be things like cars. It could easily be pants and shoes, but that's politically and practically impractical. Personal property taxes were constitutional and traditional as well.
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Rabbi Handler
Rabbi Handler@HandlerRabbi·
@jsmithsky3412 @Handre Yes, but this is different. You should not be required to pay a sales tax in perpetuity on a product after you already paid the sales tax once when you purchased it. Do you pay a tax on your pants and shoes every year you own it?
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Handre
Handre@Handre·
Americans pay property taxes averaging $3,719 annually on homes they supposedly "own" (Census Bureau, 2024). Miss those payments for three years and watch armed sheriffs auction your house on courthouse steps—even if you bought it with cash decades ago.
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OldGuyWithQuestions
OldGuyWithQuestions@jsmithsky3412·
It is the same thing as any other tax or bill that you owe. (Pay Your Bills!) Process varies from state to state and county to county. (PLEASE Pay Your Bills!!!) But they give you several warnings; if you refuse to pay the bill they can take you to court, get a judgment, and execute on the real property. This will end up with the property being sold at auction; the new owner will end up getting the sheriff to evict you. So: the lesson is exactly the same as every other tax you owe, and every other bill you owe; PAY THE BILL. It's not a hard thing to do.
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OldGuyWithQuestions
OldGuyWithQuestions@jsmithsky3412·
@upstatefederlst Again, over and over, much of the Constitutional republic was a compromise. The Framers were weakening state's independence. But they could not ignore it entirely, or there would have been no Constitution.
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OldGuyWithQuestions
OldGuyWithQuestions@jsmithsky3412·
They were absolutely "they were highly capable politicians of their era who got a lot of things right", AND they made hard compromises to get important things done. They (at least in the Constitution), did not let the perfect stand in the way of the good. Had they not made the EC compromise (or the 3/5 Compromise), we may well have continued - and died - with the Articles of Confederation. The alternative was not the system we would like to have NOW; the alternative was probable complete collapse of the American experiment.
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Rabbi Handler
Rabbi Handler@HandlerRabbi·
@Handre You don’t really own your home. You’re renting it from the government with your property taxes—Miss your rent payment, and the government will evict you!
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Fountainhead Forum
Fountainhead Forum@FountainheadFm·
@Handre Regarding ownership of property, see what happens in every state if you have a tenant who doesn't want to leave.
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OldGuyWithQuestions
OldGuyWithQuestions@jsmithsky3412·
So what? If you don't pay your income taxes, watch the IRS show up and garnish your bank accounts. And maybe put you in jail. If you get a speeding ticket and ignore it, the police will eventually pick you up and put you in jail. The answer is; PAY YOUR TAXES. MOST EVERYONE ELSE DOES. IT'S NOT HARD TO FIGURE THIS OUT.
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OldGuyWithQuestions
OldGuyWithQuestions@jsmithsky3412·
That's not remotely true. There are SOME people who have a non-work-related purpose. (They "live to dance", say. Or they love gardening. Or fishing.) But most people do not; they fill their free time with TV, doom scrolling, video games, poker, etc. Given more free time, that's what they will do. Does not mean they are "slaves"; DOES mean relatively few people have passions and talents that are more than weekend hobbies.
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Rogue Scholar Press
Rogue Scholar Press@RogueScholarPr·
People criticizing this with “noooo i won’t have a purpose i need to earn my free time” Can’t relate to this at all. If you don’t know what you would do with free money and free time maybe you’re a natural born slave
Elon Musk@elonmusk

Universal HIGH INCOME via checks issued by the Federal government is the best way to deal with unemployment caused by AI. AI/robotics will produce goods & services far in excess of the increase in the money supply, so there will not be inflation.

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OldGuyWithQuestions
OldGuyWithQuestions@jsmithsky3412·
They do include it (the net value, of course!) in their net worth. It's absolutely appropriate. If you do a FAFSA or a financial statement for a loan, it will be there. It's absolutely true, as well, that it's not very liquid. (You can sell it; refi; do a HELOC and pull out equity, or a reverse mortgage if you're older), but it IS an asset. It can and will be liened in your old age if there are Medicare/assisted living expenses; you can be forced to sell it in bankruptcy; it will be an asset in your estate, etc. Obviously the fact you live in it, and would have to pay for housing anyway, plays a role in how you deal with it. But a financial asset it is. The fact there are costs associated with upkeep is irrelevant. That may well go to its ACTUAL net value, but that has nothing to do with it being an "asset". (For example: you may own a classic car (an "Edsel") worth $50,000. That car requires insurance, maintenance, care, etc. It is STILL a financial asset.)
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theficouple
theficouple@theficouple·
Will never understand why people don't include a home in their net-worth. If the home is worth $550,000 and you owe $200,000 that $350,000 absolutely goes to your net-worth. ...What am I missing!?
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OldGuyWithQuestions
OldGuyWithQuestions@jsmithsky3412·
@elonmusk This is complete nonsense. This is the SAME guy who, a year ago, promised to cut government spending by trillions, and told us it was easy and simple and quick. (And fraud.) UBS is quintessential magical thinking.
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Keşfet

@elonmusk @SawyerMerritt @Not_the_Bee @gorilla_rape @Ne_pas_couvrir @BenjaminDEKR @jhaskinscabrera @BarackObama