Octopus Overlords

LawBeefaroni wrote: ↑Thu Nov 04, 2021 2:20 pm

Carpet_pissr wrote: ↑Thu Nov 04, 2021 2:16 pm

Smoove_B wrote: ↑Thu Oct 28, 2021 12:34 pm

BREAKING: SEC says Sen. Richard Burr had material nonpublic info re COVID economic impact.

His brother-in-law called his stock broker **the next minute**

Who calls brokers in this day and age?! You can do it yourself on your smartphone in 5% of the time it takes for that bs!

People who have no idea what they're trading and who rely solely on insider info. Probably doesn't even know the ticker symbol.

Can we also assume he had no idea about SEC laws? Although I admit they are more of a joke these days than a feared financials enforcer...

Carpet_pissr wrote: ↑Thu Nov 04, 2021 2:24 pm

LawBeefaroni wrote: ↑Thu Nov 04, 2021 2:20 pm

Carpet_pissr wrote: ↑Thu Nov 04, 2021 2:16 pm

Smoove_B wrote: ↑Thu Oct 28, 2021 12:34 pm

BREAKING: SEC says Sen. Richard Burr had material nonpublic info re COVID economic impact.

His brother-in-law called his stock broker **the next minute**

Who calls brokers in this day and age?! You can do it yourself on your smartphone in 5% of the time it takes for that bs!

People who have no idea what they're trading and who rely solely on insider info. Probably doesn't even know the ticker symbol.

Can we also assume he had no idea about SEC laws? Although I admit they are more of a joke these days than a feared financials enforcer...

His brother-in-law is a Senator. SEC laws aren't meant for the likes of him.

LawBeefaroni wrote: ↑Thu Nov 04, 2021 2:42 pm

Carpet_pissr wrote: ↑Thu Nov 04, 2021 2:24 pm

LawBeefaroni wrote: ↑Thu Nov 04, 2021 2:20 pm

Carpet_pissr wrote: ↑Thu Nov 04, 2021 2:16 pm

Smoove_B wrote: ↑Thu Oct 28, 2021 12:34 pm

BREAKING: SEC says Sen. Richard Burr had material nonpublic info re COVID economic impact.

His brother-in-law called his stock broker **the next minute**

Who calls brokers in this day and age?! You can do it yourself on your smartphone in 5% of the time it takes for that bs!

People who have no idea what they're trading and who rely solely on insider info. Probably doesn't even know the ticker symbol.

Can we also assume he had no idea about SEC laws? Although I admit they are more of a joke these days than a feared financials enforcer...

His brother-in-law is a Senator.

insert facepalm here

I assume that is not adjusted for inflation since I don't see it anywhere.

Would love to see a similar graph for workers in the service industry.

Carpet_pissr wrote: ↑Tue Nov 09, 2021 5:12 pm I assume that is not adjusted for inflation since I don't see it anywhere.

Would love to see a similar graph for workers in the service industry.

It's adjusted for inflation as CPI is the denominator. It means their real wages have declined about 30% since the 1970's.

Absurd. But we knew inequality and the wealth gap has been widening in this country for decades. That graph shows a tiny portion of the whole picture.

I would bet a lot of money that if you graphed real wages of blue collar and/or service workers vs white collar over the same period, you would see some inverse correlations.

Ask and ye shall receive. This is distorted by a relatively big bump due to COVID.

Edit: Stealth edit happened but originally there was a question about comparing the situation with the truck drivers to retail workers

Capitalism has spoken.

New York @GovKathyHochul is calling for an end to remote work which is a terrible decision. Remote work is great for quality of life, productivity, and most importantly, the climate. Politicians on both sides need to stop putting the commercial real estate industry before people.

Yeahhh, no. Office workers are never going to return to commuting en masse. Few people want to, and many are specifically taking WFH jobs that let them live hundreds of miles from their employers. Boston (and especially Cambridge) is busily converting office buildings into lab space and luxury housing, which we can do as the epicenter for biotech. Scientists and lab techs can't work from home, and they make enough to live in those fancy towers. The city is remaking itself for the people who need to be there.

In NY the pressure is almost 100% from the banks/hedge funds. They are having a proper meltdown over their commercial real estate holdings. My employer is being pressured to mandate a return to the office at least 2 days a week. I'll not be a part of it and my boss has already told me he doesn't expect me to commute 4 hours to/from.

Smoove_B wrote: ↑Fri Nov 12, 2021 10:13 pm Capitalism has spoken.

It's not capitalism. It's special interest and cronyism.

Capitalism lets dinosaurs die.

LawBeefaroni wrote: ↑Sat Nov 13, 2021 10:14 am

Smoove_B wrote: ↑Fri Nov 12, 2021 10:13 pm Capitalism has spoken.

It's not capitalism. It's special interest and cronyism.

Capitalism lets dinosaurs die.

It’s a package deal. You can’t unbundle them a la carte like a Newegg special.

Carpet_pissr wrote: ↑Sat Nov 13, 2021 10:49 am

LawBeefaroni wrote: ↑Sat Nov 13, 2021 10:14 am

Smoove_B wrote: ↑Fri Nov 12, 2021 10:13 pm Capitalism has spoken.

It's not capitalism. It's special interest and cronyism.

Capitalism lets dinosaurs die.

It’s a package deal. You can’t unbundle them a la carte like a Newegg special.

Of course. But "capitalism" hasn't spoken. American Capitalism has.

malchior wrote: ↑Tue Nov 09, 2021 3:36 pm

The truck drivers that pick up containers at the ports are paid by load, and cover all costs themselves. It's not a bad life if you can pick up a load in half an hour. With all the congestion and increased security, it's taking 3-4 hours extra to pick up a container. It's a money losing proposition, and few are willing to lose money to be heroes of commerce.

LawBeefaroni wrote: ↑Sat Nov 13, 2021 11:26 am Of course. But "capitalism" hasn't spoken. American Capitalism has.

That's fair - as well as your original point. I'm still kinda amazed that after 16+ months of remote work for most companies and organizations, there's such a strong push to get back to in person, right as the next wave is about to hit. There's no logical explanation other than money. As I've mentioned elsewhere, my wife's company had record profits in 2020, yet they're mandating a return in December and unless lawsuits are successful, will not mandate masks or vaccinations. Why? Because they have been doing major renovations to their HQ and a big empty building apparently makes the CEO (and shareholders) sad. I really don't understand how NYC doesn't pivot to using the real estate for anything else - housing, education, community centers - pretty much anything to support the people that live there. I know it's complicated, but when you (as a mayor) make these kinds of statements it's pretty clear you have business and not people's interest in mind.

Default wrote: ↑Sat Nov 13, 2021 12:01 pm The truck drivers that pick up containers at the ports are paid by load, and cover all costs themselves. It's not a bad life if you can pick up a load in half an hour. With all the congestion and increased security, it's taking 3-4 hours extra to pick up a container. It's a money losing proposition, and few are willing to lose money to be heroes of commerce.

Help us, Sam Porter Bridges. You're our only hope.

You'd think the people whose goods aren't being delivered would be willing to pay a little more.

Smoove_B wrote: ↑Sat Nov 13, 2021 12:08 pm I really don't understand how NYC doesn't pivot to using the real estate for anything else - housing, education, community centers - pretty much anything to support the people that live there.

The owners of commercial real estate want commercial real estate prices. And the city wants commercial real estate taxes.

LawBeefaroni wrote: ↑Sat Nov 13, 2021 4:16 pm The owners of commercial real estate want commercial real estate prices. And the city wants commercial real estate taxes.

Hells yes.

Offices are still too empty and too many workers are at home – that has an impact on our economy and ripples across the entire city.

I’m putting a stake in the ground: It’s time to get back to the office. 2/

I understand her panic, but the trend/future is not in her favor. Many companies, big ones, the trendsetters, are realizing the future of work looks different.

I guess you can try to fight it, but good luck.

Alternatively, you could embrace the future and start planning and moving to adapt.

Yes, it will take decades. Yes it will be hard, and expensive, but so is spinning your wheels.

And again, I totally get that for her in particular, mayor guvnah of what will probably be the hardest hit per SF city in the country by this shift.

Carpet_pissr wrote: ↑Thu Nov 18, 2021 12:55 pm I understand her panic, but the trend/future is not in her favor. Many companies, big ones, the trendsetters, are realizing the future of work looks different.

I guess you can try to fight it, but good luck.

Alternatively, you could embrace the future and start planning and moving to adapt.

Yes, it will take decades. Yes it will be hard, and expensive. So is spinning your wheels though.

I would be more concerned that if all of these generically skilled office workers can WFH and never see an office again, then they can work from offshore.

My Vitamin D levels have always been abysmally low, even when taking supplements religiously. After a year and a half of working from home, they were back to normal in my latest bloodwork. I seriously think in large part that *I can actually now see sunlight 8 hours a day*.

Every time I heard that Radiohead lyric "A job that slowly kills you" I thought of my little cubicle. I pray I never have to go back to the dungeon.

I like that we keep calling the Gov of NY a mayor.

RunningMn9 wrote: ↑Thu Nov 18, 2021 9:14 pm I like that we keep calling the Gov of NY a mayor.

Ha! Fixed.

CNBC has spent the last two days informing me the chip shortage is over and "the supply chain" is about to open up. The worst is behind us. I just received an email from an auto OEM advising they need an accounting for supplychain resilience related to global shortage of silica and silicon that are in short supply due to power distribution shortages in China.

Maybe this goes in the global warming thread? OOIC? I don't know it all blends together now.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/arielcohen ... sequences/

https://news.metal.com/newscontent/1016 ... ow-supply/

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... b-job.html

You might want to sit down:

Roughly two-thirds of the largest publicly traded US companies have reported better profits this year than the same period in 2019, the WSJ found, citing FactSet data. Nearly 100 of those were performing at least 50% better this year than in 2019.

Former US Labor Secretary Robert Reich called this phenomenon a “symptom” of “the economic concentration of the American economy in the hands of a relative few corporate giants with the power to raise prices.”

Inflation may be a problem for consumers, but the bigger issue is a lack of competition, Reich said.

“Corporations are using the excuse of inflation to raise prices and make fatter profits,” he said.

...and then make sure that the blame is passed on to those who don't have their best interests at heart.

I frequently visit Slickdeals.net, and still chuckle to myself when I read people’s posts talking about a certain item not being a good deal bc it was on sale for so much less, 2 years ago.

There’s a sense that people are expecting prices to go back down to ‘normal’ levels after what may actually be temporary inflation.

That’s not the way it works. Most (no?) companies aren’t going to lower prices even if their supply of X from China goes back up to more normal levels.

They will find a way to justify keeping the price at the new normal (if they even justify it at all).

Five Guys has a sign on their door looking for people to start at $17.52/hr. That seems...pretty good, until you figure that even with a regular 40-hour week it only works out to $36,442/yr, and that's just barely a living wage in these parts. Still, I'll bet it's a lot more than they were paying before Covid.

I missed this hot take in the NYT:

The conventional wisdom is that when it comes to policy prescriptions, economists put more weight on keeping the economy from shutting down, while epidemiologists put more weight on saving lives. That’s an oversimplification, of course, but there’s some truth in it.

...

What is clear is that the two disciplines’ models don’t line up: Each group emphasizes the part that it’s good at. The new working paper, whose authors are a mix of economists, epidemiologists and experts in related fields, notes that “a reasonable critique of most economic models” is that they make “strong and unrealistic assumptions” about disease transmission that neglect the diversity of individual cases. But “a reasonable critique of most epidemiological models,” the paper continues, is that they fail to properly consider the sort of cost-benefit calculations that predictably influence how people behave in the face of health risks.

In closing:

The upshot of the six hours of talking, according to Darden, was that there should eventually be a unified model for combating disease transmission “that retains the core elements that both economists and epidemiologists hold dear without becoming so big that it can’t be analyzed.” Achieving that, he continued, “requires a willingness to compromise.”

So a model that somehow justifies the unnecessary death of hundreds of thousands of people as long as the economy continues to churn. Got it.

CNN

President Joe Biden announced Wednesday he is extending the pause on student loan payments until May 1.

The payments, which were set to restart on February 1, have been paused since the beginning of the pandemic. Biden pointed to the ongoing Covid-19 crisis in the country as the reason for the extension.

CNN

On Tuesday, another 2,500 flights have been canceled, with more than 800 of them within, into or out of the United States, according to tracking website FlightAware. More than 5,100 flights have been delayed.

Monday was an even bigger nightmare for travelers, with more than 2,800 flights canceled, and 11,000 delayed.

Globally, airlines canceled more than 6,000 flights on Christmas Eve, Christmas and the day after Christmas. In the United States, more than 1,200 flights were canceled and more than 5,000 were delayed on Sunday alone as staff and crew call out sick.

Isgrimnur wrote: ↑Tue Dec 28, 2021 12:58 pm CNN

On Tuesday, another 2,500 flights have been canceled, with more than 800 of them within, into or out of the United States, according to tracking website FlightAware. More than 5,100 flights have been delayed.

Monday was an even bigger nightmare for travelers, with more than 2,800 flights canceled, and 11,000 delayed.

Globally, airlines canceled more than 6,000 flights on Christmas Eve, Christmas and the day after Christmas. In the United States, more than 1,200 flights were canceled and more than 5,000 were delayed on Sunday alone as staff and crew call out sick.

As I mentioned in the other thread it's the cascade. One of my dopey co-workers is stuck in Mexico right now. Flight got cancelled on Sunday night and might not be able to get back before the New Year.

I have a mother-in-law and her sister who have been with us since Dec 10. They are scheduled to leave on Jan 10 (international flight). If anything interferes with that departure...let's just say "beast/rage mode" is not just appropriate terminology for gaming. I'm already thinking there is no way I will be able to retain what little sanity I have left until Jan 10. It's a "one day at a time" kind of mental gymnastics I have to play with myself.

Think she knew something back on 12/17-12/22? Lots of COVID plays there.

The Roblox one is interesting.

Congress passed a rule allowing investors to start a new business and avoid paying even a 23% capital gains tax. It’s an intended giveaway, unfortunately.

That article is a bit misleading, as the rule should limit the QSBS exemption based on the initial investor. But the rules aren’t clear so people are taking positions that may not prevail.

But this is why an administration that can run things matters. And why robust IRS enforcement should exist — even though auditors are often unfair in applying new rules. And why tax policy should be written in the open, not back door party deals where you can identify who set the “small business” definition to $40 million.

Not sure this is deathwatch or viral economy but it's just gross. Aaron Rupar is just amazing at surfacing hypocrisy in his peers.

WASHINGTON—Some $100 billion has potentially been stolen from Covid-19 relief programs designed to help individuals and businesses harmed by the pandemic, the U.S. Secret Service said.

The funds have “attracted the attention of individuals and organized criminal networks” world-wide, the agency said in a news release, though its estimate of stolen benefits represents just a fraction of the trillions of dollars in government relief provided since last year.

The Secret Service said it would work closely with a variety of federal agencies—including the Labor Department and Small Business Administration, which have key roles tracking and administering relief funds—to investigate and recover fraudulently disbursed funds.

Need a crowdsourced bounty program to identify fraud on publicly transparent grants this.

Qui tam