They are basically in charge of printing US dollars and buying their own assets.
And we think crypto is bad...
We should just end the Fed and replace it with a giant algorithm, with crowdsourced and transparent consumer price data. Maybe a few humans to keep the lights on, and to figure out how a 4K TV is better 'value' than a 1080p TV, etc.
BlackRock was hired to run the feds open market bond operations. BlackRock are experts at buying bonds off the open market which is why they were hired.
BlackRock does not have control over the money supply.
See also: "non-crime hate incidents" - a person can make a complaint to police which results in a record showing up if you ever apply for a job which requires a background check (e.g. teacher, nurse), and you don't have to be informed.
That's not what I heard about their batteries, which need replacing way more often than a regular ICE setup (i.e. every small-single-digit years vs every 15 years or so).
Also, it's true that electric engines see less stress, but a lot of the rest of the car is still a car.
Drives down wages, drives up asset values. Great for the elite. Furthermore, the new arrivals (from 2nd/3rd world countries) don't complain: they're happy just to be there.
The housing statistics program shows that established immigrants on average own more expensive housing than Canadians (Toronto being the one exception). The newly immigrated on average own less expensive housing than Canadians.
Canada doesn't generally admin immigrants who aren't coming with substantial investment or education. Many are coming here with enough $$ to at least field a downpayment.
People's debts have been going up, interest rates have been lowering, credit card debt is at all time high, gdp to household debt is at all time high, number of investment houses to person is at all time high, immigration has crashed for last two years.
No, I actually agree with you. I don't think the cause of housing price inflation is immigration. I was just commenting on the parent's point implying that immigrants would be poor/lower income.
Immigrants is Australia are not the same as in Canada. Also most all Aussies (and evident with your tone) are rabidly anti-immigrant blaming everything and anything on immigrants.
>its not uncommon to have a 3-bedroom house with 20 migrant men
These are probably workers, not immigrants.
Also, if immigrants were the problem, house prices would be going up when immigration was at all time high not when immigration is nearly zero during the pandemic.
House prices are going up because interest rates are low. They will stagnate when interest rates go up regardless of what the immigration is.
I really despise reading thinly(?) veiled xenophobic comments on HN.
I myself like to think of the situation you're describing as the coal costing the utility $15/ton or whatever while the rest of us pay that $100-120/ton to repair the commons.
But certainly different sources will become less viable at different extra costs, and perhaps for coal $15/ton might as well be $100-120/ton.
COVID-era restrictions to Europe and India are dropping on November 8th. Be prepared for a reflux of desperate migrants who will happily take those jobs.
I looked at doing this in Ukraine. Here you can buy 650m2 block of land on the outskirts (20-30minutes drive) of a 2nd tier city for about $10,000.
However, I decided its better to just buy land in the USA instead for the following reasons:
1. Unless you can speak the language, or have a family connection to the workers, local tradespeople will overcharge you by 100%. If you don't speak the language, you'll need to hire a local project manager/translator anyway.
2. The selection of materials is very limited.
3. The pace of construction and design standards are stuck in the Soviet era.
4. There is nothing to do and no one who speaks English in these towns.
5. With the amount of time and money spent on building a nice house, paying a bit more for better land in a better area/country does not represent a large % increase in total costs.
6. Usually a lack of connectivity to one or more of electricity, gas, water, internet, sewer.
7. Due to the poor fertility rate of these countries, finding an eventual buyer for your house is going to be very difficult. Housing outside the cities of these countries is going to trend towards scrap value.
8. The higher latitude and lower average temperature mean either greater need for passivhaus-style design, or higher heating expenses. (Less of an issue in Italy). For example most of Ukraine is located at the same latitude as Northern Canada.
9. There's no mortgage system if you need to borrow money.
If you live in one of these areas, its little different to living in a small town in the USA in terms of total housing cost. If you're willing to build something, you can design and build a simple ICF house, with off-grid electricity, geothermal heating, well water and septic system, and Starlink internet.
This is not the Roman Empire. Those same healthy young men failed at much beyond subsistence agriculture in their home countries. IQ - a factor of genetics and upbringing - is far more important. Predilection away from violence and crime is another.
Most of the migrants from Africa/Middle East represent huge social and economic burdens that might very will permanently sink some European countries, given the differential levels of fertility between the native and introduced populations.
I was under impression that many of the European migrants from Africa are essentially the children of the upper-middle class there as that's pretty much a requirement to be able to afford the quite sizable cost of transportation and various semi-legal obstacles; someone who has "failed at much beyond subsistence agriculture in their home countries" simply can't afford to get from Somalia to Denmark; both for refugees and economic migration you would expect to get disproportionally the wealthier/powerful segments of their society.
Villages will band together to finance people smugglers to take a few of their young men to Europe. The expectation is that from welfare and cash jobs, they will send money back and repay the loan.
That's why the boats you see full of migrants are typically 100% male.
The work they perform in Europe is menial labour that could be performed by robots. They rarely end up in factories because that work requires skilled labour and literacy. The migrants are rarely literate in their own languages, let alone Italian/German.
Its social and economic destruction for the sake of cheap vegetables and virtue signaling.
You're right about the educated migrants though. Pre-2015, if you saw a person from one of these regions in Europe, they would typically be a businessman or university student, and were treated well. Attitudes are now different because of the huge influx of uneducated and often dangerous individuals from the same places.
My understanding is that since Africa is connected to Europe by either land or a very small amount of water, you tend to get the same situation as Mexican immigrants into the US. You're optimizing more for risk-takers instead of wealth (which actually works pretty well with the US's culture, but might not in continental Europe).
African immigrants to the US, on the other hand, tend to be quite wealthy/well educated. I think at one point Nigerian applicants for US citizenship were the most educated nationality. Presumably this is because the sheer cost of going there filters out a lot of people.
> economic burdens that might very will permanently sink some European countries, given the differential levels of fertility between the native and introduced populations.
And yes, EU needs productive people, I mean people who can breed well to repopulate its greying small towns.
Native population wait until mid thirties, or not having any.
A simple math tells you will soon run out of tax payers to support the government, and the government will collapse.
That would make sense only if the UBI functions exclusively as a tax credit against income taxes or land taxes.
It could pair with a UBI for children, giving families a competitive advantage against investors for housing.
The USA essentially has open borders with Central and South America right now, and a Democratic party itching to give tens of millions of people citizenship as part of a country-wide gerrymandering idea.
UBI with cash handouts would not be a good idea in those circumstances. There will be a huge amount of fraud, at least.
They are basically in charge of printing US dollars and buying their own assets.
And we think crypto is bad...
We should just end the Fed and replace it with a giant algorithm, with crowdsourced and transparent consumer price data. Maybe a few humans to keep the lights on, and to figure out how a 4K TV is better 'value' than a 1080p TV, etc.