Chinese nationals pour more than $150 billion over five years into US real estate But during the same period, at least $127 billion went into US homes, and in the 12 months to March 2015 — the latest period for which relatively comprehensive data could be gathered — home purchases totalled $39 billion. That put… Continue reading Chinese nationals pour more than $150 billion over five years into US real estate
Category: Uncategorized
Lessons From the Trump Surge: What We Learned
1. You cannot buy victory. Although the left insists money has corrupted politics, allowing the rich to buy elections, Jeb Bush spent over $130 million on his campaign, with nothing to show for it, while Trump spent very little and still bested all of his competitors by a large margin: 2. The pundits are (almost… Continue reading Lessons From the Trump Surge: What We Learned
Coming to Terms With Our New Economy
(Parts of this essay were cut from an earlier article, which I shortened to make a new one) From Forbes: Why ‘The System’ Is Rigged And The US Electorate Is Angry Then in the 1970s, something went wrong. It was as if a strange new economic disease began to infect everything. Firms focused more closely… Continue reading Coming to Terms With Our New Economy
Genes for IQ finally found…what’s next
There have been some recent developments in genome-wide association study (GWAS) pertaining to IQ and academic achievement: Genome-wide association study identifies 74 loci associated with educational attainment: Here we report the results of a genome-wide association study (GWAS) for educational attainment that extends our earlier discovery sample1, 2 of 101,069 individuals to 293,723 individuals, and… Continue reading Genes for IQ finally found…what’s next
Ingroup/Outgroup Dynamics
Ingroup/outgroup dynamics are a topic of much interest to both the ‘alt right’ and rationalists. From Wikipedia: In sociology and social psychology, an ingroup is a social group to which a person psychologically identifies as being a member. By contrast, an outgroup is a social group with which an individual does not identify. For example,… Continue reading Ingroup/Outgroup Dynamics
Bay Area Rent Is Surging
Despite tame CPI-based inflation, rent, particularly in the Bay Area, has really exploded since 2011: The Bay Area real estate market is white hot, defying all predictions of its collapse. According to Zillow, San Jose, San Francisco, Palo Alto, and Berkeley rent has gained 40-70% since 2011, vs. only modest national gain in wages and… Continue reading Bay Area Rent Is Surging
The Economics Debate: Jobs and Automation
In the ongoing online economics debate over technology, jobs, and automation, the Luddite Fallacy and Lump of Labor fallacies are often invoked. However, the there is a point of common confusion, which is if the goal of technology is to replace labor, then over the long-term labor cannot compete with technology. I believe technology will… Continue reading The Economics Debate: Jobs and Automation
Why Do The Rich Need So Much Money?
(This post was cut from an earlier post and made into a separate blog post, with some additional editing) Another argument you’ll commonly hear is, why do the rich need so much money? Couldn’t it be spent better elsewhere? Even leaving aside rich using their status to solidify their position, consider this: are the policies… Continue reading Why Do The Rich Need So Much Money?
Biology as a Sorting Mechanism
Some try to frame the left/right dichotomy as a battle between ‘order’ vs. ‘chaos’, but it’s more like ‘egalitarianism’ (forced equality) vs ‘hierarchy‘, whether such hierarchy is biological, social, and or economic. The far-left may deny individual exceptionalism in favor of a ‘blank slate‘ approach, because they believe the state should be able to ‘perfect’… Continue reading Biology as a Sorting Mechanism
Alt Right, Part.. Whatever
From The Daily Beast: Meet Milo Yiannopoulos, the Appealing Young Face of the Racist Alt-Right Analyzing a subset of the alt-right who call themselves “neoreactionaries,” Vox’s Dylan Matthews explains this important distinction, “Most modern libertarians are individualists, motivated by a desire to prevent the masses from oppressing the individual… “Neoreactionaries are not individualists… neoreaction places… Continue reading Alt Right, Part.. Whatever