Author: smartistone

Some people bristle at the suggestion that one should not own foreign stocks in an investment/retirement portfolio. After all, if the market is random and market timing is impossible, then excluding foreign stocks is the same as timing and therefore disadvantageous. This reflects a common misunderstanding about the stock market, which is that the inability… Continue reading Foreign Stocks Don’t Belong in Your Portfolio

Do you have to be smart to care? I don’t know. People who are are really dumb (IQs below a certain threshold such as 80 or so), don’t. But many really smart people care a lot about social issues. Contrary to the liberal media archetype of the low-IQ troglodyte conservative, in order to care greatly… Continue reading Notes: Do you have to be smart to care?

This article went massively rival, having been shared multiple times on Reddit and elsewhere: The inescapable weight of my $100,000 student debt It ends on a somewhat positive note, with the author becoming an editor for The New York Times, but he says he will not pay his debt off until 2032, when he turns… Continue reading My $100,000 Student Loan Debt

I’m by now sure we’ve all read the infamous anti-Trump op-ed that has rocked the world and Trump administration: I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration. The question on everyone’s mind is, who wrote it. Not surprisingly, leads have come up short. The major problem is no one really knows what constitutes… Continue reading Anti-Trump op-ed

Huntington’s Legacy They are both right in some respect. It’s not like they have to be mutually exclusive. Islamic fundamentalism is the dominant threat, yet the mixed-economy system does seem to be the prevailing one in the 21st century , displacing communism and socialism in many parts of the world. Big authoritarian powers like Russia… Continue reading Fukuyama vs. Huntington

From Ross Douthat The Impotent Executive But Trump is still extraordinarily weak. Some of that weakness is invisible because we simply take it for granted; it’s just part of the scenery, for instance, that this White House has no legislative agenda, no chance of advancing any policy priority on the hill, barely two years into… Continue reading The Political Circus

The elite really are different from the rest of us: (source: THE BELL CURVE AND COGNITIVE ELITES) The typical elite-school grad has an IQ of around 138. That is around a 1-100 rarity. By comparison, the cutoff for Mensa is 132, which is approx. 1-50 rarity. As Dr. Peterson says, society is stratified by ‘hierarchies… Continue reading The elite really are different from the rest of us

From Vox Day The end of empire: There’s also the fact that whites are getting wise to what’s happening and public trust is plummeting. A volunteer army not only relies on patriotism, but it relies on civic duty. It is why we still call military service a duty. Some still call politics “public service” even… Continue reading Blacks and the Media Narrative

An article from Japan Times, America is one of the few cultures with insults for smart people, by Ted Rall, went hugely viral. In the context of this blog, the viralness can be attributed to the shared narrative that society neglects and or is indifferent to smart people, which all smart people irrespective of their… Continue reading Is the U.S. Hostile to Smart People?

Tyler Cowen ponders why inflation isn’t higher. Since the liquidity trap is gone, and inflation remains well under control, the liquidity trap does not seem to be the reason why inflation did not explode post-2008, following the Fed’s stabilization measures. In spite of substantial deficit spending under Trump, Bush, and Obama, the Trump tax cuts,… Continue reading Why isn’t inflation higher?