blindwatchmaker

I have missed Matt's columns since he went on parental leave.

Does anyone have recommendations for anything similar to scratch that itch?

> 2008 was bad because the collective banks of the US realized trillions in mortgages were money on the books that wasn't real and was never going to be real

An even larger amount of money was placed on bets on whether those mortgages were real, as opposed to the mortgages themselves.

Not a hostile question, I'm genuinely trying to understand this: How is liquidity provided by, for example, someone interjecting themselves into a trade that was already going to happen?

High rents and debts are a massive drain on the economy. Less disposable income means less to spend on consumer goods and services, which hits real businesses hard, and leads to fewer jobs. The fictitious growth in the FIRE sector is not going to mask the growing death spiral in the rest of the economy forever.

> You know what Chicago and Mexico have in common? Failed liberal policies.

Agreed. It's time to get Tough On Crime, and declare a War On Drugs. Shame no one's thought of it before.

I'm not overly concerned with hurting a politician's feelings. I am bemused at the idea that someone can observe the last few decades of the capture of the government and major political parties by corporate and oligarch interests and the increasingly lucrative payoffs to these people, and not come to the transparently obvious conclusion that these are commercial relationships.

This is institutionalized and legalized bribery, not just 'access' or 'networking' or whatever euphemism you want to use to couch this in niceties.

> Another way to think about it is that if people were actually straight up buying votes on a regular basis the prices would likely be much higher

And as I said earlier, the campaign contributions are window dressing for the rest of it and I gave a concrete example. Families like the Clintons have made massive amounts of money cashing out after office, and secured lucrative sinecures for their daughter while in it.

These people and their families are insanely well off as a result of their work in government, and its not because they legislated or governed in the public interest.

Sorry, but it is that simple. We live in a second gilded age with near total regulatory and legislative capture and trying to soft pedal it by using euphemisms like 'strong networks' does not obfuscate the fact that this is a commercial relationship between bought politicians and the corporations that buy them.

In the face of overwhelming pieces of evidence, year after year after year like the article being discussed here, doing so is just pointless sophistry and contrarianism for the sake of it.

I'm sure it's just coincidental that senators and their family/friends frequently get lucrative positions on the boards of various companies, investment sweeteners, and actual positions in these companies for family. For example Joe Biden, a leading Democrat, has been in bed with the credit card industry for most of his career and supported/written legislation in their interest. MBNA was one of his biggest donors and hired one of his sons at an executive level, no doubt with very high pay.

The campaign contributions are just window dressing for the rest of it. It absolutely is bribery.

GP is not the one being disingenuous.

Could be wrong, but I think India and China rail is government run.

Re: documenting code, I've gotten a lot of conflicting advice over the years, with some people insisting code should be documenting, and others insisting on docstrings.

The 'pressure to undergo abortions in case of fetal abnormalities' sounds the only potentially troubling part of that, but I don't exactly get what's 'authoritarian' about insisting women with complications stay and be be monitored in the hospital, or firing people based on poor performance?

Am I missing something here?

Been witnessing this a lot in my city. Developers talking a big game about deregulation and additional supply being the only way to drive prices down, then building only "luxury" condos that are snapped up by speculators and prices everyone else out.

Perhaps you could acknowledge what I've actually written instead of sidestepping around it?

I thought the summary was pretty good. The objections you're presenting here are nitpicky, the NYT article is just one of the links provided and the thrust of the article that ideologically motivated opposition to minimum wage hikes was proven to be incorrect, and that is right.

I'm not really sure what to say. I thought I was pretty clear in my previous post?

Not sure that contradicts what I said? For example, Richard Nixon was a social conservative that ran on a backlash against socially progressive causes, but was still a left wing president. Supported industrial regulation with the EPA, instituted price controls, governed fully within the Keynesian framework of the day. He was to the left of most of the modern day Democratic party.

I think it's pretty fair to say that the leadership of both major parties, elites in and outside the government, and the military/intelligence services are right wing, and have been historically so in the United States barring the brief period between the New Deal and the destruction of Keynesianism in the 80s.

> It only is if you think someone who has ever set foot on Iran is an ethnic Irani.

We're both adults here and I assume we both can realize that splitting these hairs doesn't make my statement that banning everyone that's ever logged on Iran from slack is, in effect, a ban on Iranian ethnic users?

Assuming that for some reason I should take your word over his, banning for "having logged on in Iran at some point" is, effectively, banning for ethnicity.

Yeah imagine bitching because you lost a primary communication tool and a bunch of your saved data because of your ethnicity.

What way of structuring frontend prior to the react/redux 'fad' do you think was superior?

An alliance of the business elite right and the religious right against the left. Money wins.

I both lived and work near there and this is the exact opposite of my impression. King from bathurst to spadina is always jumping. The biggest annoyance for me is all the damn plants the restaurants and bars have been allowed to put on the street for some reason, makes biking there a headache.

Excessive rents and debts are a drain on consumer spending and ultimately harm the economy. The root cause isn't greedy students wanting an education (weird way to think about it), but tuition costs ballooning out of control.

It's also increasingly harder and harder to default on student debt, with states forcing extreme measures such as wage garnishing and taking away people's driving licenses: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/18/business/student-loans-li...

Fully expect to see debtor's prisons back in vogue this century.

The current situation we have is insane. It's like the height of the gilded age with no trust busting in sight, the largest corporations in the land buy out politicians and are openly taking public money.

Is there someone on Qualtrics' board that used to be management/has connections with management at SAP?

Economists pushing views and rationalizations against labor-friendly policies (including minimum wage hikes) tend to do pretty well for themselves in America, very odd that they'd feel pressured to recant something that's well received in a lot of circles. Maybe they actually were just wrong the first time around?

> Reasonable economists find an inconvenient result, so pressure them to recant

Who pressured them?