Demand for food at home has doubled. That will lead to some strange effects in pricing as the ingredients for food outside of the home are not necessarily nor immediately substitutable.

My take on the “muh economy� npc’s is that they’re either not gainfully employed (ie retired, disabled, trust funder, government “worker�, etc) or that they’re spoiled children who have a job but would prefer to sit at home playing Xbox.

Personal insults can go both ways. It can as well be said that the opposite side are people who have no friends (there usually is at least one person with some chronic disease/cancer/obesity in one’s social circle) or aren’t on good terms with their parents.

Perhaps we can strike a balance and settle on having enough kids to replace ourselves.

I have no problem with that. I have no idea how it could be achieved though.

From society’s perspective just over two children per woman is needed. But from the point of view of an individual woman (or couple) one child is preferable.

And your chances of persuading people to put society’s interests ahead of their own interests are pretty much zero. Because from the point of view of an individual woman (or couple) such a thing would be irrational.

With massive financial incentives and an intensive propaganda campaign you might get a stable TFR of 1.7, if you’re very very lucky. You won’t get the TFR up to 2 or just above. It’s just not going to happen. We’re almost certainly going to have gradual long-term population decline. The best we can hope to do is to slow down the rate of decline. Somehow we will have to learn to deal with population decline.

Apart from destroying civilisation and reducing us all to the level of subsistence agriculture the only other alternative would be police state measures (and banning contraception would require a police state outlook that would eventually and inevitably led to a full-blown police state).

Personally I’d prefer to find a way to learn to deal with population decline. There’s no obvious reason why it can’t be done. We just have to stop pretending that we can treat people like breeding stock.

Who knows, population decline might end up leading to much higher standards of living, and much higher quality of life. Imagine a world in which every couple could afford their own freestanding home on a quarter-acre block with a back yard and a car in the garage. That used to be the Australian Dream and it used to be the American Dream. It doesn’t sound so awful to me.

Nvm the fact that 1 rabbit supplies about 400 calories, almost all of them in the form protein.

A regular-size inactive adult male requires about 2400 calories daily, mostly in the form of carbohydrates and fat, just to maintain bodyweight. People take for granted how effective our agricultural industrial complex (AiC) is at meeting the macronutritional minimum requirements of millions of people. Hunting and gathering is dead.

Yep, A.E., that’s “hedonics”, substitution” and a number of other methods that must be used to try to compare an ever-changing basket of goods. The calculations that the BLS does can get complicated – they even had some Calculus on their web site! I don’t think their sole goal is to cause CPI inflation (haha, get it?), but they’ve got to be under pressure to come out with low-ball numbers to keep the SS payments, etc. from going even higher.

It’s the cheap China-made crap that is causing the biggest errors, IMO. Can you compare an old Schwinn kid’s bike that lasted for 20 years with some modern kid’s bicycle from Target? Something will break in a year or two, and if you get a new bike, that means this bike, usage-wise, is 10X as expensive, and if you fix it all the time, how much is your time worth? I don’t think they account for the difference at the BLS.

Then, as owners of the debt, the public bank would be in a position to write it off. Viola. Jubilee Year

Not just violas, Mr. Night. It’ll be violins, cellos, and maybe even some of the woodwind instruments. They will all be burned for heat after the jubilee. Debt free, viola free, shelter free, you can dance around the bonfire in jubilation, bitchez.

I could catch a rabbit a day, couldn’t I?

How long do you think that would last if everyone in your neighborhood was trying to catch rabbits?

Those additional ‘deaths of despair’ should be laid at the feet of anyone who supported lockdowns.

And thus I predict that instead it will be pinned on white privilege.

I would make sure to time it right. If debts come due before inflation relieves the burden, one could lose all.

First, thanks for that quote.

Insofar as timing, soon would be my expectation. Nobody ever seems to contemplate how deep the damage goes. Most businesses pay their invoices within 30-60 days, auto dealers run on 90 day cycles, inventories are frozen at every step in the supply chain with expectations of demand cratering worse every time the media blares “100% overnight increase in death toll!*!� (in Hell, MI). This is entirely unprecedented. The wartime analogies don’t wash. What war saw every factory close? Or saw the armorers devastated financially as healthcare industry is now?

When it all becomes apparent is when everyone officially reopens and the factory orders are coming in at 15-25% of their previous levels. This is also a societal inflection point so the market for goods and services will also be substantially shifted in addition to being gutted. That shift is the open question.

Yeah, it’s amazing how many people forget that the economy is basically people trying to make a living. They think the economy is something sinister.

I like the formulation, “The economy is my livelihood, what’s yours?�

My take on the “muh economy� npc’s is that they’re either not gainfully employed (ie retired, disabled, trust funder, government “worker�, etc) or that they’re spoiled children who have a job but would prefer to sit at home playing Xbox.

There was a golden rule when I was a kid in the motor city: “fuck with a man’s livelihood and you fuck with your own life.�

A gorilla eats about 400 lb of leaves and such a day. It spends all its time looking for food and eating it, with no free time for anything else. That’s why gorillas never developed into humans, close as they appear to be.
I used to be a vegetarian, and then after studying things like anatomy, digestion and diet, I decided it was stupid, and gave it up. I have only to look at the difference between Pakistanis and Indians to see the harm caused to one’s physiology by excluding meat from the diet.
Even more harmful are those vegetarians who delude themselves into thinking it’s morally superior to be a vegetarian. We can only equal the morality of a sheep, say, by growing wool and allowing ourselves to be shorn by our moral inferiors.

The commenter I was replying to is one of these morons who first heard about coronavirus from CNN and thus thinks we all heard about it from CNN. No, I knew about it very early on.

As for the notion that people are going to OD because of the lockdowns, what ever happened to personal responsibility? “Give me what I want or I’ll kill myself” is not something you’d accept in the micro-world of your relationships with others. Don’t see why it should matter on a societal level.

I’m thinking certain U.S. elites want to bring us closer to the Chinese model: a market system overseen by a police state.

There is no lack of evidence for your idea.

A minority, mostly poor and dumb people, use abortion as contraception. If you want a baby boom, ban all contraception. Why would you ban only the method used by the underclass, and thus create a baby boom for them alone?

The only argument for banning abortion and not contraceptives is that abortion is morally wrong.

If you don’t think that abortion is morally wrong then it’s just another method of contraception.

I’m personally not in favour of banning contraception because I intensely dislike the idea of trying to force people to have children. If people don’t want kids then trying to force them to do so is likely to lead to bad results. I also intensely dislike the idea of government getting even more involved in people’s personal lives. If you choose to have kids it should be your choice.

Of course I have no objections to encouraging people to have more children. It won’t work but I have no objections to the idea.

If you want people to have more children it’s really simple. All you need to do is to get rid of cities, get rid of industrialisation, get rid of capitalism, compel people to attend church regularly and force them to go back to a subsistence agriculture lifestyle. Then people will have lots of kids.

Of course that would require destroying our existing civilisation and countless millions would die. And we’d end up living like medieval peasants. But at least there’d be lots of babies.

Don’t blame mitigation efforts for rising food prices. There are three other significant sources of blame: 1) those in the Trump Administration who failed to act soon enough to curb the spread 2) those in the public who pushed him to ignore the issue 3) libertarian market capitalism.

Amid U.S. meat shortages, exports to China continue

But while the number of pigs slaughtered each day fell by about 40 percent since mid-March, Reuters reported, shipments of American pork to China more than quadrupled over the same time period, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

…

Smithfield, the world’s biggest pork processor, was the largest U.S. exporter to China between January and March, according to Panjiva, a division of S&P Global Market Intelligence. Reuters reported that the company, which was bought by China’s WH Group for $4.7 billion in 2013, shipped at least 13,680 tonnes by sea in March.

Smithfield said its namesake pork plant in Virginia will be redirected to increase supplies for U.S. customers in a statement to Reuters, which reported the plant and switched to processing hog carcasses for the Chinese market last year.

https://thehill.com/changing-america/sustainability/infrastructure/497187-amid-us-meat-shortages-exports-to-china

Thanks for letting a foreign competitor which has repeatedly threatened to cut supplies of minerals and other resources to our country own and operate our food distribution. Heckavu job there libertarians. But I’m sure you’ll just accuse me of being a communist for pointing this out.

We’re gonna get the poz with Yang or Trump, doesn’t matter, because the corps will demand it and Republicans have proven incapable of giving in to their demands.

because he supports the agendas that destroy family development.

Banning abortion would certainly lead to more families, but not more traditional families which is what people are generally talking about. Here’s the way I think of it: most people use “standard” contraception and would only resort to abortion in rare cases like down syndrome or rape. A minority, mostly poor and dumb people, use abortion as contraception. If you want a baby boom, ban all contraception. Why would you ban only the method used by the underclass, and thus create a baby boom for them alone? Are you one of these Christian types who thinks dysgenics is a good thing because “the meek should inherit the Earth?”

But the idea of a Eurobond isn’t just for Germany to pay, but for smaller countries like Holland and Denmark to pay too. Basically, it seems like an idea for the taxpayer in Northern Europe to pay the tax-consumer in Southern Europe. Wealth transfers like that just create so many perverse incentives. I think they are a moral hazard.

I think we largely agree on outcomes.

However, you are starting several steps too late when analyzing the situation. Morally Hazardous Germany intentionally created the problem. “Germany Must Export” is a cultural imperative.

— German trade policy inevitably pumped huge amounts of € currency from the periphery into Germany every year.
— For the EZ to have a chance at success there must be an equally powerful mechanism moving € currency from Germany out to the periphery.

Germany has behaved immorally for two decades. They have systematically blocked every option to fix the € currency flow imbalance problem they deliberately created. The recent German assault on the ECB is merely the latest offense in a lengthy trail of provocations.
______

German cultural imperatives can only be accommodated by the sovereign DeutscheMark. This exit from the € has to happen as soon as possible to avoid a catastrophic blow out.

What happens when the:
— German Central Bank unilaterally insists the € must not be printed.
— Italian Central Bank unilaterally monetizes government debt — Italian € Printer Goes Brrrrr…..
— ECB is so weak that it is neither central nor a bank, and is openly ignored by both Germany and Italy.

Once Germany exits the EuroZone, can the € be saved?

You are likely correct that other national interests will render it unstable in the long term. However, getting Germany out of the € buys time to develop an orderly plan for multiple nations to reintroduce their national currencies.

PEACE 😷

I tell them to ask other vegan animals such as the low-land gorilla or the thoroughbred race horse.

I own many horses. The human gut is only superficially similar to the horse gut. You don’t have a giant cecum (“back gut�) filled with flora designed to digest raw fiber. You would die if you tried to live on a horse’s diet.

Yep. Anyone who seriously doesn’t realise that a horse’s digestive system is not the same as ours is just a little bit disconnected from reality.

I think veganism is bizarre virtue-signalling, an opinion based on every vegan I’ve ever encountered. But hey, if people think they can live on the same diet as a horse then they’re welcome to try it.

So glad I’m a life-long vegan (well, since the age of 14)

Props. I was a vegetarian for many years. Then, I got married.

I tell them to ask other vegan animals such as the low-land gorilla or the thoroughbred race horse.

I own many horses. The human gut is only superficially similar to the horse gut. You don’t have a giant cecum (“back gut”) filled with flora designed to digest raw fiber. You would die if you tried to live on a horse’s diet.

The idea that veganism is “moral” is ridiculous. That means that all the world’s omnivores are inherently morally flawed. I’m assuming you give pure carnivores a break because they don’t have a choice. Animals eating other animals is part of this world’s natural order. To equate it with a moral fault is to assign your own weird moral standards to a perfectly natural process.

Germany has some scalar advantages simply by virtue of being the largest country in the EU. It’s hard to separate these out, or to know whether they should be balanced somehow. There’s also a secondary factor of them being surrounded by other countries in the EU in virtually every direction – that would increase their volume of trade naturally, compared to countries with fewer neighbors, or less centrality.

But the idea of a Eurobond isn’t just for Germany to pay, but for smaller countries like Holland and Denmark to pay too. Basically, it seems like an idea for the taxpayer in Northern Europe to pay the tax-consumer in Southern Europe. Wealth transfers like that just create so many perverse incentives. I think they are a moral hazard.

Probably a single currency is unworkable between Northern and Southern Europe, with or without Germany. I suspect that Southern countries would not accept a Southern Euro for much the same reasons – that, for instance, Italians would fear Greeks playing with their books. But, at this point, any fissure should probably be considered positive. The EU needs to be accepted as a failed organization, and people need to understand all the reasons that it failed. If one of them is cultural differences between Northern and Southern Europeans, then how much stronger are those same cultural differences between Europeans and non-Europeans? The EU was not an organization build around Europeans; it was a weird, globalist organization that welcomed third world immigrants and once thought of allowing Turkey and even North Africa to join.

A lot of people have this really odd attraction to fresh eggs. I actually do believe that they look different if you inspect the yolk, but I’m really skeptical of the idea that they taste different or are more nutritional, unless you’re eating them raw, which I’d never do.

In a way, I can understand part of the appeal of having hens. People throw away a lot of food, and it is nice to be able to dispose of it in a seemingly useful manner by feeding animals that provide you with something in return.

But I think these people that keep a chicken inside the house, or let one perch on their shoulder, or hold one up to their face and take a picture are crazy.

I think quite a lot of criticism can be laid at Germany’s door, but the idea that they are being immoral for not wanting to pay other people’s bills seems bizarre. I think that one is going a little bit too far.

If Germany was an innocent bystander, I would agree with you.

However, they are not. German industrial policy intentionally runs a trade surplus with the rest of the EZ. This damages the other EZ economies via trade deficits. Without the €, value changes between national currencies would heal the breech. With the shared €, the trade imbalance damage never heals and is cumulative over time. It has now reached crippling levels visible in the TARGET2 balances.

Bottom Line — If Germany does not want a Fiscal Union, then it needs to leave the Currency Union. It cannot have one without the other.

PEACE 😷

I wonder how many extra people in the suburbs will buy chicks for the first time this year, so they can turn them into egg-laying hens. Precisely to avoid extra trips to the supermarket.

Some probably will. Seems like a bizarre reaction to a temporary shortage. But people at the moment are behaving bizarrely.

A few weeks from now when the egg shortage is over they’ll be desperately trying to get rid of those damned chickens!

I’ve heard of those ideas. I just think they’re dumb.

Here in New Jersey my weekly grocery shopping costs are already up over 15%. Milk is up 20%. Eggs are up 20%. Ground beef is up 25%. Frozen vegetables up 10%. Canned goods up 20%. No more deals, and everything seems to be up at least 15% in cost.

Almost worse than the increase , in need to wait in a line for about 45 minutes before they let us into the store.

What do you think you are? And economist? You type a few percentages and suddenly you’ve explained the entirety of economic activity in the world for all time.

You are so stupid you never heard of profiteering. You must be young. During the big wars, it was a major scandal and war profiteers were, if caught (they didn’t bribe enough), they were marched through the streets and hanged.

You don’t understand getting marched through the streets and hanged for stealing money. Now that’s economics.

One of the unintended consequences of the lockdown I see is one that I haven’t noticed anyone outside the ag industry notice:
We export a lot of hay to China; they’re our No.1 customer and they bought well over $100 millions worth last year and for years in the past. This year will be different.
We lease grazing land for cattle — genuine grass-fed beef, as it is advertised — till about April or so, depending on how the winter rains have been. Then the fields lie fallow as the grass grows until we harvest it in June and it goes out on contracts to China, Japan and S.Korea, our biggest customers by far. But this year, because ranchers can’t send their cattle to slaughter houses in the numbers they have in the past — the steak houses and burger joints are shut down and not ordering — they are keeping their cattle in graze, eating the grass that would have been harvested as hay.
We also have people bidding on any hay we may harvest who have domestic customers desperate to get whatever they can. So I expect just this one item, hay, to see exports way down this year. How this may affect East Asian economies I don’t know, but it can’t be good.

create a federal public bank and lend to all US Citizens for zero interest. Refinance all their existing mortgage, business, student, and personal loans. Creditors get their money back, no more interest rape for decades.

Then, as owners of the debt, the public bank would be in a position to write it off. Viola. Jubilee Year

I think quite a lot of criticism can be laid at Germany’s door, but the idea that they are being immoral for not wanting to pay other people’s bills seems bizarre. I think that one is going a little bit too far.

1. Create purchasing power out of thin air.
2. Hand that to Joe Sixpack.
3. Act shocked that consumer prices rise.

From 1981 to this year, vast quantities of credit-money were created and mostly handed to the financial class, who filled an OCEAN of IOU’s (counted as “wealth”) and bid up the prices of assets intended for resale (AKA investment assets.)

But the credit-inflation then went into things people counted as “wealth,” so it wasn’t seen as inflation at all.

My heavens, people are morons.

Two Frenchmen showed us the way over a century ago: Jean Baptiste Say (author of Say’s Law) and Frederich Bastiat (author of “What is Seen and What is Unseen.”) Oh, and we can’t forget Etienne de la Boetie’s “Discourses on Voluntary Servitude,” a 500 year old explanation of why the cunning few parasites always and everywhere rule the many.

What will happen now that the Executive Branch has seized control of the Central Bank’s Credit Creation facility? Will we see a race now to utterly destroy the Fiat Dollar? Finally?

I suggest that
1. Consumer prices will rise.
2. Consumer goods (esp those made overseas) will become scarce.
3. Prices will rise MORE as a consequence.
4. Politicians will seek to openly buy votes by monetizing ever-more credit-money.
5. When the link between such idiocy and crushing inflation is obvious even to the legally-blind, the entire system will collapse.

It seems to be a lot.� When I went to the farm supply place a couple weeks ago, at least two people in the store at the time were buying chicks or supplies.� And I was only there for a few minutes.

Germany can survive it because they’re rich and honest.

Do you actually mean that? Or, is that sarcasm?

Germany is a exploiter. They rigged the EuroZone single currency in their favor. And, that greed is not enough. They are now trying to push the system even more in their favour. (1)

In an extraordinary media blitz, the top two judges on Germany’s Constitutional Court (known by its German abbreviation, BVerfG) defended their controversial decision last week to effectively overrule the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) on the question of the European Central Bank’s bond buying program. …

A Bundesbank withdrawal would likely force the ECB to halt the program altogether, with untold consequences for the euro.

Germany’s short-sighted avarice does have one upside. It fundamentally weakens the Elite SJW Globalists in Brussels. Entirely by accident, Germany is bolstering opposition to EU authoritarianism.

trying to supersede the CJEU. … gives ammunition to countries — such as Poland and Hungary, which are currently under scrutiny for paring back democratic freedoms — to question the European court’s legitimacy. In other words, if Germany doesn’t have to listen to the CJEU, why should anyone else?

No one likes The U.S. Fed, but it does function as a central bank & regulator within its own odd set of rules.

The ECB doesn’t function. And, there is now uncertainty over what the rules are. As a result, the Euro (€) is on death row. The question is no longer, “Will the € will blow-up?” — It is a matter of When? And, How Badly?

PEACE 😷
_______

(1) https://www.politico.eu/article/german-judges-take-ecb-fight-to-court-of-public-opinion/

I’m thinking certain U.S. elites want to bring us closer to the Chinese model: a market system overseen by a police state.

I wonder how many extra people in the suburbs will buy chicks for the first time this year, so they can turn them into egg-laying hens. Precisely to avoid extra trips to the supermarket.

Diversity Heretic is correct. The line about exporting countries switching to domestic markets is total nonsense.

Germany can survive it because they’re rich and honest. China is neither. China depends absolutely on the export market. They’re also a net food importer, by a notable margin. The collapse of the export market is going to hurt them worse than anything short of nuclear bombardment.

So glad I’m a life-long vegan (well, since the age of 14) and minimalist who also does intermittent fasting, intermittently. I only need to worry about a half-dozen food items and I can switch them up if needed. Some of my standard food items: Brussels sprouts (eat them daily and raw), steel-cut oats, mixed vegetables, bananas, and flax wheat pita bread.

While I’m a vegan for moral reasons (like Mr. Rogers I don’t want to eat anything that had a mother), I would recommend the vegan diet as a healthy diet for everyone. I’m able to maintain a muscular, athletic build (5’11 180 lbs). And when people ask me how I get enough protein on a vegan diet I tell them to ask other vegan animals such as the low-land gorilla or the thoroughbred race horse.

Yang is pro-abortion and a shill for LGTBTQ+! nonsense.

From his website:

…I support the Equality Act and the Do No Harm Act, which would add sexual orientation and gender identity as classes protected against discrimination and prevent the defense of “religious freedomâ€� in discrimination cases.

If your solution to wealth inequality involves increased legal protections for dubious classes, then you’re part of the problem.

“Wealth inequality” is a nice way of saying that men and women can’t afford to get married and have families. Yang wouldn’t have done anything to help them, because he supports the agendas that destroy family development.

Pertinent information to the discussion from the Jew York Times.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/05/05/us/coronavirus-death-toll-us.html?searchResultPosition=1

Complete failure to address the really important points, such as that the lockdown advocates have totally changed the logic for their lockdown from “flatten the curve” to ….. “????”

In the case of Pennsylvania, the administration refuses to even tell people what their reasons are for most decisions.

You also don’t even bother to attempt addressing the question of tradeoffs.

Sad!

Bugger off, Turok.

Those aren’t the same scenarios at all. And either you know that, or you’re a fool. No other alternatives.

Someone who’s mentally ill – i.e. Levine – is not competent to make public health decisions.

What about the Juicyfruit?

Nah, nobody is getting evicted. The little people will simply stay where they are in their government-owned housing. If they want to move, they’ll have to ask permission. When their kids come of age, they’ll apply for housing, which will be assigned as it comes available. For anyone without means to get housing, they’ll have to have a qualifying job, and if they don’t, one will be assigned to them by the local jobs board.

To ensure fairness, those who have means and qualifying jobs will also be required, a la Obamacare, to seek permission to buy or build their own housing. To build they will have to show that there is no reasonable accommodation already on the market. Those who have means but no qualifying job will need to pay a solidarity surcharge. To sell a house, you must sell it into an approved exchange, which will then select purchasers. Rentals will be facilitated by the same mechinism.

All will be encouraged to join the party, but only a few will qualify for party leadership by graduating from an approved school of higher education. It worked great for the Soviet Union, and America can only make it greater.

Seems odd, but I have been seeing small fountain drinks at $1.90.

in some cases it means you have to buy a name brand item that is twice or even three times the price of the generic item.

Plus, you have to stand there looking for a substitute with people breathing down your neck waiting to get through. After a certain point, my feet are too damned sore to keep standing there looking at price tags. Exhausted, judgment and patience beginning to fail, you start just throwing things in the grocery cart so you can get out of there and sit down already.

I have never been particularly pleasant after a trip to the grocery store, now it’s even worse. Fortunately, my kids are grateful and helpful when I come home from that ordeal. They practically threw palm leaves on the floor when I finally came home with a fresh stock of toilet paper.

Perhaps it’s time for us to TAKE the houses and apartments we are living in, en masse. They can’t evict or imprison tens of millions of us.

Less radically, create a federal public bank and lend to all US Citizens for zero interest. Refinance all their existing mortgage, business, student, and personal loans. Creditors get their money back, no more interest rape for decades.

And yes, there will be people who behave irresponsibly: there always are, and pretending that fuckwits will be deterred from fuckwitted behaviour because of lockdown, is stupid.

By this logic we should have no laws at all. It’s actually easy to deter most: simply threaten punishment. Of course, a lot of corona deniers are taking a page from immigration enthusiasts: they want to prevent the laws from being enforced and then turn around and say “this can’t be stopped.”

No empire lasts forever. I have cash on hand , but at this point I’m thinking I might as well just take out more loans and spend what I have to get durable goods, more land, etc. for when the dollar becomes worthless

Who has it better off, the guy who drowns in the ocean right away or the guy who gets baked by the sun for a week and then gets eaten by sharks?

What I’m noticing is that in some lines the generic brands are getting harder to find so you end up having to buy the overpriced name brand stuff. That pushes the grocery bills up.

Yes, I hadn’t thought of that, but that is also almost certainly part of it. And for each item, you’re only paying a little bit more, but when you buy three carts full of groceries a week, it really, really adds up.

I actually just got back from the supermarket and I took careful note this time. The generic brands really have mostly disappeared from the shelves. That doesn’t mean you have to buy a name brand item for slightly more – in some cases it means you have to buy a name brand item that is twice or even three times the price of the generic item.

And you’re right about things like specials – they seem to be a thing of the past.

What’s really annoying is that it’s the smart shoppers who make an effort to keep their grocery bills as low as possible who are penalised.

You’re one of those dummies who wipes their minds of the old story when Massah changes the narrative.

Remember “flatten the curve“?

The area under the curve was the number of people who died of covid19; the area under the flatter curve was the same as the area under the humped curve.

The point was – supposedly – that “flattening the curve” would prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed. It was going to spread the critical illnesses out over a longer period of time.

You fell for that fucking nonsense when it was on TV, and then when the story changed (so that lockdowns and what-not ‘save lives‘) you fell for that, too – seamlessly.

Let me guess: you’ve also fallen for public pronouncements about climate ‘models’ – again, conveniently auto-wiping your mind as each dire forecast fails to materialise.

As I’ve said consistently since March: lockdowns are not “death free”, but they change the distribution of deaths (fewer chronically-ill septuagenarians, perhaps, but a more-than-offsetting increase in suicides, ODs etc).

When costs are in life-years (and especially healthy life-years) lockdown is a fucking abbatoir compared to “let ‘er rip”.

Bear in mind that “let ‘er ‘rip” does not mean everyone behaves exactly as they used to: it just means that people are free to take such action as they think is appropriate given high-quality information (as opposed to nonsense overblown pronouncements of impending doom). So people with chronically-ill elderly relatives will change their behaviour (if they’re not retarded).

And yes, there will be people who behave irresponsibly: there always are, and pretending that fuckwits will be deterred from fuckwitted behaviour because of lockdown, is stupid.

It is as stupid as pretending that criminals won’t get guns if guns are outlawed.

Cost-benefit analysis for competing alternatives is something gullible retards just can’t get through their thick innumerate skulls.

The economic effect of the lockdowns – particularly the absolute decimation of the labour market – will lead directly to the deaths of tens of thousands of relatively young people over the next half-decade.

Those additional ‘deaths of despair’ should be laid at the feet of anyone who supported lockdowns.

I hope that people search the internet to identify and actively seek out people who were so fucking ignorant that they actively supported lockdowns, knowing that doing so would predictably lead to a massive increase in suicides, drug OD, deaths from alcoholism etc.

Some people almost seem to feel there’s something immoral about eating at restaurants.

Not immoral per se, but it’s a big contributor to the obesity epidemic.

Or are you one of these morons who thinks that you’re living out the ideals of Thomas Jefferson by clogging your arteries?

Funny how all these coronavirus “skeptics” have suddenly discovered inequality. They point out that the rich, with their spacious homes, money in the bank, ability to work remotely; they’re having an easier time during the pandemic than the workers. And they think they’re the first people in the world to have made this discovery. They self-righteously pound their keyboards and proclaim that the rest of us are all supporters of the elite.

These are the same people who attacked us as ‘shills’ because we were going to vote for Yang rather than Trump. We cited economic inequality in justifying it, but I don’t think they listened. Their modus operandi is to continually erect strawmen and say “this is what you believe.”

Which makes sense

Grocers/Manufacturers are seeing a surge in demand. There is no incentive for them to discount

If anything grocers don’t want people to hoard

I am constantly amused these days by people around these parts wanting to micromanage other people’s lives. Nobody likes control freaks.

Ah, the old “Somebody criticized me! That means they want to control my life!” canard rears its head again.

The multiple meals of takeout sounds a lot more enticing to me.

Ok. Then you keep on eating takeout. Be sure to run up a big balance on your credit cards, too. That’s the way you can contribute to keeping globalhomo running, droog.

I don’t have a credit card. I have zero personal debt.

This might be surprising to you but some people actually like the idea of being able to make a free choice to buy takeout food (or even eat out) rather than cook. It’s called personal freedom. Deal with it.

I would have no idea what to do with a couple of pounds of lentils and I have no desire to find out.

Knowledge is good. Ignorance is not strength. It is a pity that the idea of learning is scary to you, but that’s your personal issue to deal with.

Strangely enough I have better things to do than devote my life to discovering 1001 clever meal ideas based on lentils. Again it’s called personal freedom. Deal with it.

I am constantly amused these days by people around these parts wanting to micromanage other people’s lives. Nobody likes control freaks.

Or just head on down to Raj Patel’s Mini Mart, pick up a couple of Forties, pack of Newports, two bags of Skittles, some Purple Passion blunt wraps, a giant bag of Cheetos, giant bag of Wise Bar-B-Que tatah chips, $30.00 worf of scratch offs and some miniature Zip Loc bags.

And pay for it all with your EBT.

With the mushrooms and some hot Italian sausage and tomato sauce, you’ve got a casserole.

Sausage is great for easy, flavorful dishes.

That’s because you’ve never thrown a couple cups of them into chicken stock, let them cook for a while, and then added a cup of rice. This gives you a really easy side dish with an interesting flavor and a lot more protein than mashed potatoes.

I’m going to start stockpiling beans, including lentils. I should have already been doing so.

That’s because you’ve never thrown a couple cups of them into chicken stock, let them cook for a while, and then added a cup of rice.� This gives you a really easy side dish with an interesting flavor and a lot more protein than mashed potatoes.

I have been buying specials of items like fresh mushrooms.� I haven’t seen any sales on things like pasta and the 10/$10 offers on Coke haven’t re-appeared, but there are more and more things in the weekly grocery flyer again.

Thank goodness I bought a bunch of pasta during previous sales.� With the mushrooms and some hot Italian sausage and tomato sauce, you’ve got a casserole.

Uh, as someone actually in the hospitality business, I can tell you that, in good times, my margins are out of sight.

So, are you an Escort or one of those high-flying AirBnB entrepreneurs? 😉

Smaller players have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars each buying homes for short-term rentals. Jennifer Kelleher-Hazlett of Clawson, Mich., spent about $380,000 to buy two Michigan properties in 2018. She said she and her husband cashed out their financial investments and borrowed $100,000 from employers to furnish them.

The 47-year-old expected to net up to $7,000 a month from Airbnb after mortgage payments, supplementing her income as a part-time pharmacist and her husband’s as a schoolteacher. Before the virus struck, the couple was considering buying more homes. Now, they can’t make mortgage payments because no one is booking, she said. “We’re either borrowing more or defaulting.

source: https://boingboing.net/2020/04/30/entrepreneurs-are-seeing-mini.html

Wow, plus ça change ! It’s 2006 all over again. And if they borrowed from their employers, what that really means is they raided their 401k savings. C’est la vie!

… the only people worried about the downturn are greedy stock market fat cats.

The actual fat cats aren’t very worried, and in fact are on CNBC and Bloomberg TV talking up their book to sycophants like Jim Cramer, and are perhaps even gleeful, since it’s been made crystal clear that the Fed has their backs. In fact, there’s a lot more to tell, but you’d be sharpening your pitchfork before I finished typing.

The people who are more worried are the mere Managing Directors, to whom Tom Wolfe lovingly referred as “Masters of the Universe,” who will have decent golden parachutes that might actually be collectible, but might still be a bit overextended on things like the house, the cars, and the pied-à-terre for the girl on the side.

The people most worried are the Directors, VPs, and below, who are totally expendable but not very qualified to do much more than Powerpoint presentations, especially with so many Starbucks being shuttered.

As for the Assistants and other clerical, many might be cut, but you can’t have a good Front Office without a decent Back Office, and there is not yet anything such as self-healing automation, so you’re going to keep some of those bodies around, and if you are at the top of the food chain, you are certainly not going to give up all of your assistants. Mine have split the week between them, and both are happy to still have a job.

I feel for the average consumer, because the official inflation stats were BS to start with, and have rapidly gotten worse. For the average consumer, the things they actually need have increased substantially, only in part because they have gotten harder to find, and this will only get worse as the confluence of supply chain disruptions due to decreased production meets the wave of “free money” pumped out there to keep the “bien-peasants” in beans, rice, and Coca Cola®.

But hey, petrol and TVs are cheaper, so there isn’t inflation, there’s actually deflation! So we’re told. The criminal elite don’t fear inflation, because they are levered to the hilt to finance all the hard assets and financial assets they have snapped up, and inflation will be paced or outpaced by the increase in asset values while the debt will be repaid with increasingly worthless money.

The serfs will also benefit from the burden of debt being lighted by inflation, but their stagnant or non-existent income will barely keep them fed, and at some point, faced with the choice of food or paying the mortgage, they’ll sacrifice the house. You can bank on Congress prohibiting evictions, and there will be a mass securitisation of defaulted home assets that will transfer these from the middle bag-holders, like Blackstone, to a US Agency. I just siged an affidavit for my US property manager certifying my US property is either unmortgaged or, if mortgaged, that mortgage is not guaranteed by a long list of US Agencies or programmes.

If you don’t already live in the castle or manor house, you are just another one of roughly 7.5 billion serfs our lords and masters see as problems rather than resources. Now, more than ever, they need you locked down and fearful.

if there was a conspiracy between U.S. and Chinese elites to bring the Land of the Free and Brave to its knees,

Why would they want to try something dangerous? The way things are going it’s working out just great for them. Why not just continue keeping on?

This seems like pretty bad economics to me. Normally restaurants can charge a high price because your choice is between a fountain drink and water (and possibly overpriced alcohol), but now it’s fountain drink vs. whatever’s in your fridge.

“Hospitality margins are thin in good times”

Uh, as someone actually in the hospitality business, I can tell you that, in good times, my margins are out of sight.

30% a year, every year, cash on cash, after taxes.

That’s not counting “capital gains” from appreciation of the land/property or paying down debt.

One a related note, don’t take financial advice from anyone on the internet. If it was worth anything, they’d be using/selling it.

Absolutely OK.

OK if I use this elsewhere, with attribution, of course?

Sorry, people, I got some unz software limit page (bug), well, 3 times, I guess. I didn’t think to do my usual check by opening up this page in a new tab (don’t say nuthin’, Res ;-} ) Then, I had to [Troll] myself, as I was past the 3 comment/hr limit. It won’t probably will happen again.

Thanks, Achmed. I knew you, at least, would like that one.

So “free-market� profiteering and price-gouging is “something that makes sense�?

Yes, reduce the worth of money and prices rise. Probably you equate market payments to transfers, so that if prices go up by 3% that 3% must entirely go to the pocket of the seller. You ignore that the extra 3% provides an incentive and the ability to provide more of the good. Price controls lead to shortages, there are many historical examples.

Stocks are like anything else: when they increase in price during periods of inflation.

However, trying to pick individual winners for investment is still very hard.

That’s why you invest passively, with an index fund.

It all depends on what your goal is. Is it to make money, or a political point? If it’s to make money, look historical returns which show that if you invest in an index fund and sell 20 years later, you’ll almost always beat the person who just held cash or bought T-bonds. You’ll usually beat the person who held gold.

So “free-market” profiteering and price-gouging is “something that makes sense”? So “free-market” profiteering and price gouging is “some kind of cause-and-effect relationship in this world that the oligarchs have not subverted”?

In war they execute you for it. Unless you bribe them of course. And that’s something that makes sense and is a reassuring truth about the world and how it works.

Anon (143), Thanks for an interesting and cogent comment.

“brownnosing toadies to the capitalists”

Market religionists.

The economics of restaurants has changed over time. At one time, most people ate at home if they could, and most of their unprocessed food was prepared from scratch. Restaurants were a splurge, unless you were rich.

On the other hand, poor people had to eat out because they had no cooking facilities in their hovels. And there were cheap restaurants down by the dockside to serve them decent food at an affordable price every day.

Now it’s all over-priced and a scam. You go to a fancy chain restaurant and get over-charged for artfully presented food that doesn’t taste particularly good despite its artifice. Or you go to McDonald’s and get over-charged for shit.

“I have no idea what to do with a couple of pounds of lentils”

Soak ’em overnight like you would with beans. Both are legumes. Which means both are considered magical fruits.

“and I have no desire to find out”

The more you eat the more you toot.

It’s called profiteering and price gouging.

The “free market” at its finest, working exactly the way it’s supposed to–starving you to death. Congratulations, pathetic self-deluded brownnosing toadies to the capitalists.

“contracted with the Chicoms to develop and release this corona virus”

I sense some tongue-in-cheek here. But if there was a conspiracy between U.S. and Chinese elites to bring the Land of the Free and Brave to its knees, COVID-19 and the ensuing response from the federal and local deep states would be their plan.

Buy non-US stock.

Why non-US stock?

— EU/€ is worse than US/$.
— China/RMB is even worse than EU/€.

If there are small currency plays the professional investor class has already swamped them.

Disengagement from destructive Chinese exploitation offers some opportunities in the U.S. Market. However, trying to pick individual winners for investment is still very hard.

PEACE 😷

It makes sense that food prices would rise, and that’s what gives me a little bit of hope. I’m not glad about the mere fact that prices are going up—all other things being equal, food being more expensive to come by is a bad thing not a good thing—but I’m glad that something that makes sense is finally happening. For so many years now we’ve been fed market nonsense, financial nonsense, political nonsense, on a never-ending basis. Sometimes its enough to make you lose your faith in reality. It seems almost as if the bad guys always win, and that you are powerless in a world where might makes right. Under these conditions, every little drop of truth that appears “falleth as the gentle rain from heaven,” and I rejoice in it.

I rejoice that there is still some kind of cause-and-effect relationship in this world that the oligarchs have not subverted, even though in this particular case it doesn’t do us much immediate good. If causality still exists, then there is still a judgment coming, and the people who have heaped up to themselves an inheritance of lies and nonsense will be cast down someday. The oligarchs do not control everything. They are finite and mortal. Their lies will not endure forever. God is still sovereign.

It can be very tough to try and suck some sustenance out of such a dry morsel of faith, but doing so will bear great fruits in the years to come. Love truth, love reality no matter what the cost, and try to be hopeful in it no matter how bleak it looks. Pray for and help one another. Look forward to the day when justice will come, because at some point it will.

Great stuff, Mr. Desanex! That and Helen Wheels are two great ones by Paul McCartney and his Wings band – basically he, his wife Linda, and Denny Lane (not to be confused with Penny Lane).

I bet a lot of people on here didn’t know that Paul McCartney was in the famous band Wings before he went solo. This was the British invasion and all… that’s all I remember …

Here you all go – bright sound, great lyrics, and thank you, youtube, and for your indulgence with this kind of crap, A.E.:

Video Link

Video Link

This will hit everyone hard once all that Big-Government CAREing runs out.

You’re always predicted the government’s gonna go bankrupt, yet investors are continually willing to loan the government money. Do you think you have more knowledge than all of them, collectively? Why, what are you basing it on? Are there any facts behind it? Or is it just feels all the way?

Only morons think the government can infinitely spend money, eventually, you get to a Greece-style situation where no one will loan it the money. But if you look at credit ratings and interest rates, we’re nowhere near that point.

“J. Edgar Hoover liked to play dress-up, therefore communist subversion is not real.”

-Idiot.

The multiple meals of takeout sounds a lot more enticing to me.

Ok. Then you keep on eating takeout. Be sure to run up a big balance on your credit cards, too. That’s the way you can contribute to keeping globalhomo running, droog.

I would have no idea what to do with a couple of pounds of lentils and I have no desire to find out.

Knowledge is good. Ignorance is not strength. It is a pity that the idea of learning is scary to you, but that’s your personal issue to deal with.

Buy non-US stock.