kevin

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kevin

kevin

@oscarthecount

Former commodities analyst and banker. Opinions are my own

Katılım Mart 2011
230 Takip Edilen43 Takipçiler
kevin
kevin@oscarthecount·
@AOC I asked for a vodka soda, is that so hard?
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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Someone can certainly *make* a billion dollars. That’s not the same thing as earning. Growing fast and disrupting markets also often means chasing and wielding market power, political influence, and scale. Take Airbnb. They heavily lobby politicians against passing housing laws to protect working class residents because it’s bad for their business model. Airbnb could not exist at its current scale and size without the housing market destabilizations, displacements, and exploits that are supercharging the evictions of working people everywhere from Puerto Rico to Jackson Hole. Now young people are planning for a future where they will never be able to afford to own a home while others have 20 and live off renting it out to them at extortionate rates with zero protections. Yes, a tiny amount of people can make billions of dollars doing that. And millions of everyday Americans are bearing the cost.
Paul Graham@paulg

Sure you can earn a billion dollars. I've been teaching people how to do it for 20 years. The way you do it is to start a company that grows fast. You don't have to do anything bad to make a company grow fast. You just have to make something people want. paulgraham.com/ace.html

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kevin
kevin@oscarthecount·
@Bitcoin_Teddy This is a pretty basic principle covered in every Econ 101 book
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Bitcoin Teddy
Bitcoin Teddy@Bitcoin_Teddy·
Palmer Luckey might be the only billionaire in Silicon Valley willing to say this out loud.
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kevin
kevin@oscarthecount·
@thetransitagend Isn’t it more the compounding of network effects stemming from originally settling here/where MIT, Harvard, etc started? Love NY and the public infra and the ability to charge high taxes is a result of network effects that ultimately came from the fact that NY has deep ports
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Matt Stoller
Matt Stoller@matthewstoller·
This whiny billionaire just drove Spirit Airlines into liquidation. He is now trolling the mayor of New York City because he doesn't want to pay taxes. Oh and he got the Florida legislature to strengthen noncompete agreements so his hedge fund employees can't leave. Great guy.
Wall Street Rollup@WallStRollup

Ken Griffin at Milken: “What the mayor of New York has made clear to my partners, and principally my New York partners, is that we need to double down on our bet in Miami"

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kevin
kevin@oscarthecount·
@matthewstoller It is telling - even really dumb people understand a simple concept
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Matt Stoller
Matt Stoller@matthewstoller·
It’s so telling the guy with the negative fifty approval rating pardoned by Trump for corruption is like ‘leave billionaires alooooooone
Eric Adams@ericadamsfornyc

Mayor Mamdani’s video targeting Ken Griffin and using his home as a prop traded thousands of real, good-paying jobs in our city for social media likes. The video was irresponsible, and the Mayor should do the right thing and apologize. I am going to call @leddalhlwee to let him know the Mayor’s video does not reflect the sentiments of the majority of New Yorkers, and ask him to reconsider. Targeting millionaires and billionaires may make for a great video, but driving out the top 1% of earners, who pay more than 40% of our income tax, is bad policy. We need a city where the person who drives the limousine is gainfully employed, and the person who sits in the back of it is acknowledged for their contributions to our city.

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Patrick Carroll
Patrick Carroll@PatrickC1995·
One of the biggest mental blocks of the left is their inability to think about value creation in any way other than manual labor. A good counter-example is the professional athlete, or pop-star. Who did Tayler Swift exploit to become a billionaire?
𐌁𐌉Ᏽ 𐌕𐌉𐌌𐌉@OrevaZSN

No one “earns” a billion dollars. No one can work a billion times harder than anyone else. There is no good, ethical, or righteous billionaire. That kind of wealth can only be accumulated through the exploitation of the working class. No exceptions.

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kevin
kevin@oscarthecount·
@BlacklionCTA This isn’t creative destruction, it’s delayed consolidation (the planes aren’t just going away). Low industry margins required scale. Blocking JetBlue/Spirit didn’t change that outcome, it just guaranteed pre-petition shareholders got zero.
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Brent aka Blacklion
Brent aka Blacklion@BlacklionCTA·
A lot 'capitalists', lamenting Spirit Airlines shut down, ~14k lost jobs, and blaming gov't/Sen. Warren. It is isn't gov't fault Spirit was a bad business that should go away. I remember when creative destruction was capitalist. Now everyone is a dem socialist.
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kevin
kevin@oscarthecount·
@RepCasar That ‘profit’ is primarily the dispatch curve doing its job. Generators bid cheapest-first, the marginal plant needed to meet demand sets the clearing price for everyone. Gas spikes? Everyone clears high. It’s auction design, not a CFO twirling his mustache
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Congressman Greg Casar
Utility companies are a monopoly.  You don’t have a choice which one to buy from – so the prices are supposed to be regulated. But now these monopolies are jacking up prices to rake in huge corporate profits— sometimes it’s 25% of your electric bill! That’s way higher than a normal business.  I have a bill to stop it.
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Matt Stoller
Matt Stoller@matthewstoller·
These clowns are acting like Spirit is the first airline bankruptcy. There have been 200+ since deregulation. What we need here is some good old fashion public regulation. And that's been obvious. I wrote it in 2024 as well.
Heritage Foundation@Heritage

Spirit Airlines has ceased operations. Thanks to Elizabeth Warren & the Biden admin, consumers will now have fewer flights & higher fares. Heritage’s @RealEJAntoni warned about this 2 years ago: heritage.org/transportation… Socialism always delivers the opposite of what it promises.

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kevin
kevin@oscarthecount·
@thejfc @DouglasLFarrar @RajMahal819 @mattyglesias Exactly. Also, what anti-trust attorney has ever given a client a black and white answer? 😂 Also, it’s clear they needed to raise prices to survive. This whole “they’d raise prices by 24% to survive, the gall!” is comical.
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kevin
kevin@oscarthecount·
@mahasr199 “Average” from his speech is doing the heavy lifting here
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kevin
kevin@oscarthecount·
@BladeoftheS Not really fair comparison - the copper isn’t the expensive part of the repair. That said, no idea how this thing actually prevents theft
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BladeoftheSun
BladeoftheSun@BladeoftheS·
He's charging $300 for this 'device'. The value of the copper in every lampost is less than $50. The cost of these devices alone, never mind fitting them. would cost the same as repairing 250 years worth of copper theft.
BladeoftheSun tweet media
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Elizabeth Warren
Elizabeth Warren@ewarren·
The Big Four airlines (American, Delta, Southwest, United) control 75% of the U.S. market. Fewer choices = higher prices for you.
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Gulag Gulagovich Gulagov
Gulag Gulagovich Gulagov@glevonian·
Nobody cares if your stupid coffee shop closes.
Peter McCormack 🏴‍☠️🇬🇧🇮🇪@PeterMcCormack

A minimum wage of £15 would end my coffee shop, it would have to close, as would many other businesses. I’ll explain for the economically illiterate. Staff costs are currently half our costs, a £15 minimum wage is actually more than £15 an hour for the company, because you have to add: - 12.07% holiday - Sick pay - Maternity pay if and when required - National insurance - Pension contributions These costs would mean the shop loses money because remember, energy costs are up, rates are up, regulations are up. Now you can pass these costs onto the consumer - that would mean charging a lot more for coffee, people won’t pay it. The likes of Starbucks and Costa can, because they have economies of scale. The independent doesn’t. Now the little socialist will say well this is your fault, if you can’t run a business that can afford to pay its staff properly, but the little socialist has never run a business and does not understand the dynamics. Now I could pay some staff off and fill those hours myself or reduce us to one staff member during certain periods - but this proves the point that a minimum wage costs jobs. There was a time when these jobs were done by kids, perhaps on the weekend, paid a lower wage, no holiday and no silly employment rights. Perhaps they were even paid cash. The dynamic worked and small businesses like this could operate. It was also a great first job. Sadly now it isn’t worth employing entitlement youngsters at this level of pay. So alas, I don’t need the stress, the business would close, a number of jobs would be lost. Economics is about understanding these dynamics, no vibes. The cost of living is not solved through passing on inflation to the business, it is solved by ending high inflation and creating prosperity. This is what socialists don’t understand, they can’t create prosperity, they can only destroy it.

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Hughes-on-the-Wold
Hughes-on-the-Wold@NotThatHughes·
My business is only viable if I underpay my workers
Hughes-on-the-Wold tweet media
Peter McCormack 🏴‍☠️🇬🇧🇮🇪@PeterMcCormack

A minimum wage of £15 would end my coffee shop, it would have to close, as would many other businesses. I’ll explain for the economically illiterate. Staff costs are currently half our costs, a £15 minimum wage is actually more than £15 an hour for the company, because you have to add: - 12.07% holiday - Sick pay - Maternity pay if and when required - National insurance - Pension contributions These costs would mean the shop loses money because remember, energy costs are up, rates are up, regulations are up. Now you can pass these costs onto the consumer - that would mean charging a lot more for coffee, people won’t pay it. The likes of Starbucks and Costa can, because they have economies of scale. The independent doesn’t. Now the little socialist will say well this is your fault, if you can’t run a business that can afford to pay its staff properly, but the little socialist has never run a business and does not understand the dynamics. Now I could pay some staff off and fill those hours myself or reduce us to one staff member during certain periods - but this proves the point that a minimum wage costs jobs. There was a time when these jobs were done by kids, perhaps on the weekend, paid a lower wage, no holiday and no silly employment rights. Perhaps they were even paid cash. The dynamic worked and small businesses like this could operate. It was also a great first job. Sadly now it isn’t worth employing entitlement youngsters at this level of pay. So alas, I don’t need the stress, the business would close, a number of jobs would be lost. Economics is about understanding these dynamics, no vibes. The cost of living is not solved through passing on inflation to the business, it is solved by ending high inflation and creating prosperity. This is what socialists don’t understand, they can’t create prosperity, they can only destroy it.

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kevin
kevin@oscarthecount·
@bryanrbeal @BladeoftheS They don’t. But that’s not a decision any municipality is making unilaterally
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BladeoftheSun
BladeoftheSun@BladeoftheS·
How do they generate a lot of tax revenue? They literally have no employees. The companies that own them pay NO TAX. And YOU subsidise their electricity costs. So actually they COST you money.
Mike Bird@Birdyword

Many people do not seem to want data centres built near them, despite the fact that they don't cause that much traffic and often generate a lot of local tax revenue. I suspect it's partly because they're ugly! My proposal:

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free palestine 🇵🇸
free palestine 🇵🇸@eclairification·
the federal minimum wage is still 7.25. I am 34 and have never made more than 20k/yr, rarely more than 15. it’s really important that i, as a working person oppressed by capitalism, follow news and politics coverage written by people paid 6 figures to live in the culture city.
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