$7.75 trillion - the increase in federal government debt over 10 years as estimated by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget under plans floated by Presidential candidate Donald Trump.
$3.95 trillion for the other candidate.
#factoftheday #AmericanDynamism
Есть два типа людей. Первые ищут грязные носки в холодильнике. Вторые просто любят Камамбер.
#twotypesofpeople
Есть два типа людей. При слове "валить" первые спрашивают куда, вторые кого.
#twotypesofpeople
About 2.8% of U.S. GDP is in the path of hurricane Milton's forecasted trajectory. If property and casualty damages will exceed allocated cash reserves of the insurance industry, expect the yield curve to steepen, for they'll be forced to sell treasuries.
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There are two types of amateur political commentators.
First, volunteer as mouthpieces for a campaign, blindly retransmitting all talking points engraved by a corresponding PR department. They're as naïve and gullible as grade school kids. The simplest symbolic gestures easily sway their egos, and by extension, voting patterns. They pay too much attention to meaningless trivialities and turn a blind eye to facts contradicting the initial premise. Blatant cherry-picking multiplied by a confirmation bias. Discussing politics with them is a total waste of time, for nothing of value is added.
The second group is everyone else.
#twotypesofpeople
October 2024
There are mistakes, and then there are mistakes that should end one's political career.
The 2016 presidential election crystallized a negative selection algorithm. The basic idea is not to vote for a candidate who, by admission or omission, managed to execute a serious mistake of enormous proportions.
In September 2012, Hillary Clinton was the Secretary of State. During her tenure, the US Ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, along with three other US citizens were killed by local terrorists. Despite the growing hostilities, she didn't act on the intelligence information and instructed the US mission to remain in place. That decision resulted in a tragedy, followed by the humiliation of dragging the ambassador through the streets of Benghazi attached to a car. Later, she took her time to acknowledge the responsibility, while initially trying to distance herself from the ordeal. This alone sealed her faith in the eyes of this voter.
Fast forward to Trump's presidency, and two equally colossal misdeeds could be recognized. First, was his handling of and posturing to the attackers on the US Capitol Building during January 6th, 2021. Luckily, that dark episode remained mostly symbolic, albeit psychologically damaging. The second unforgettable mistake deserves more scrutiny. It was the mismanagement of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Bypassing the specific details, my main beef is the flagrant number of deaths. Be it by the absolute count, by the number of deaths per 1M of the population, or by any other metric, the numbers are staggering. More than 1.2M people died. That's a number-one spot worldwide. India, a poor and underdeveloped country with a population four times greater had 533K deaths. It's 2.28 times less for those keeping score. It's a shame, especially since the gravity of the impact was preventable.
Over the years, I've heard a number of counter arguments downplaying Trump's responsibility. A distributed political system in which individual states make their own decisions. The extremely liberal nature of American citizenry with an eye towards the government's defiance. Are among the most common ones.
These claims are weak and missing the point. Which of these accurate descriptions was news to the commander-in-chief when he took office? None. At least they shouldn't be. Furthermore, the federal government can act with a heavy hand during times of crisis. Look no further than the draft during the Vietnam War or the powers of the War Production Board during WW2. It is that very leadership and guidance from Washington states were looking for. Unfortunately, it didn't occur in time due to extreme chaos in Trump's cabinet and the normalcy bias from the Fox News circus.
CEOs are routinely fired for significantly smaller errors.
#politics
October 2024
About a year ago, when anti-Israel protests were picking up steam in a few, albeit prestigious US universities, some of my Jewish friends started to raise alarms of antisemitism. Their panicking attitudes were bold and quick. Parallels were drawn with Hitler's rise to power. According to these observers, we were on the verge of a downward spiral like the one Germany underwent in the 1930s. Any anecdotal petty crime was immediately blown up to support this hypothesis. When asked about evidence none could be provided. The exceptions were young hoodlums chanting "from the river to the sea" and some rare occurrences of vandalism targeting Jewish owners in surrounding areas where protests took place.
U.S. Department of State provides the following definition
Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.
There are two types of people.
First, bitch about a shitty hand they've been dealt in life. They spend all their energy fantasizing about how it should be different, or how others got it better. They imagine spending money they don't have or going places they can't afford. They avoid planning because none of the available choices match their wants. A chase for wealth and health ends in neither.
The rest call themselves realists.
#twotypesofpeople
October 2024
Carlo M. Cipolla was an Italian economic historian. Some of his work would be tagged as "behavioral finance" today, albeit such a term didn't exist back then. He laid forth an interesting and simple idea for classifying human behavior.
With two key factors, each having two values:
- benefits and losses that individuals cause to themselves.
- benefits and losses that individuals cause to others.
we get four possible variations, as shown in the image above.
Those are helpless people, intelligent people, bandits, and stupid people.
Now you can apply this filter to the people you know or meet.
October 2024.
The top 1% of income earners paid 48.8% of federal income taxes in 2021. The same group's household wealth was 31% of the national in 2023. Keep that in mind the next time you're faced with assets distribution charts skewed to the top income earners.
#factoftheday #AmericanDynamism
25% of the U.S. bananas come through Delaware’s Port Wilmington.
#factoftheday
