Author: philg

HOA fee inflation

by philg

Chronicles of an Inflation-free Economy, #4822…

Our neighborhood HOA fee is going up 18 percent for 2025. The management fee (same firm) is going up 43 percent. Xfinity’s fee for cable TV to every household is going up 7 percent (each house must separately purchase Internet service). Xfinity’s fee for telephone/Internet service at the clubhouse is going up 70 percent to $7,000/year. Landscaping and irrigation services are going up substantially, but perhaps that reflects the landscape and systems getting older (22 years). “Janitorial” (cleaning our clubhouse/gym, mostly?) is going up 13 percent. Insurance is going up 10 percent.

From the Official Newspaper of Inflation is Transitory….

Full post, including comments

The pit bull named “Buddha”

by philg

Happy Bodhi Day for those who celebrate. Gemini says the following about this holiday:

Bodhi Day commemorates the day Siddhartha Gautama became the Buddha, or the Awakened One. The name Bodhi comes from the Sanskrit word for enlightenment and the species of tree under which the Buddha meditated.

Nonviolence, or ahimsa, is a core principle of Buddhism and is central to Bodhi Day celebrations … Some Buddhists observe vegetarianism on Bodhi Day to practice non-violence and compassion.

“Woman killed by her own pit bull in Roxbury was “heart and soul” of family” (CBS, last month) is a story about a Maskachusetts woman who won’t be celebrating Bodhi Day:

Brady-McGinnis was mauled by her pit bull Buddha outside their home on Dennison Street in Roxbury around 4:30 p.m., according to McGuire. … Investigators said the dog also attacked Brady-McGinnis’s husband as he tried to save her and two Boston police officers. All four were rushed to the hospital. Brady-McGinnis died in surgery, according to McGuire.

ChatGPT failed to generate an image of a Buddhist pit bull named Buddha, but Grok obliged:

Related:

  • “Pit bull that fatally mauled 4-year-old girl in San Joaquin Valley was her ‘playful’ family dog” (Los Angeles Times, September 8, 2024): Zoey Hawkins loved to sing and dance, especially in her Cinderella dress, and she loved to play with the family dog. Since Zoey, 4, was adopted two years ago, she and the pit bull were constantly together. … An investigation found no evidence of neglect or criminal wrongdoing, and the dog had no history of violence or aggression, said Elizabeth Jones, the department’s public information officer. … “She and the dog were inseparable,” Vargas said. “They played with each other, they were around each other and the dog was always super playful. We have literally no clue why the dog did this, or turned on her in this way.”

From the $2 trillion/year federal Department of Health and Human Services today:

Full post, including comments

What is happening in Syria?

by philg

Our media is full of stories about fighting in Syria, but they all seem to be targeted at people who are smarter than I am and/or who have a much deeper understanding of history and geopolitics.

From the New York Times:

An array of different groups have been taking territory from the government in other parts of the country as well.

Clear as mud, in other words.

A few questions, for starters:

  • I thought that Turkey was fighting to prevent Kurds from having their own country. But now Turkey is also fighting to depose Assad, the secular ruler of Syria, so that Islamists can take over?
  • Syria declared war on Israel in 1948 and, like Lebanon but unlike Egypt and Jordan, was never interested in a peace treaty or recognition of Israel. If there is a new government, is Syria then still at war with Israel?
  • Does Israel have a dog in this fight? Would Assad retiring to Jeddah, as Idi Amin did, be good for Israel?

I would appreciate an overall high-level explanation.

Full post, including comments

Coronapanic lockdowns made American kids nearsighted

by philg

Today is Pearl Harbor Day, in which we remember that the Japanese attacked American military installations in Hawaii on December 7, 1941 (2,403 total killed, nearly all military, in response to which we killed nearly 1 million Japanese civilians via aerial bombing, including 100,000 in one night over Tokyo; will the Queers for Palestine protest this “disproportionate” response today?).

Let’s look at the most recent major war on U.S. soil, one that we started and fought against an indifferent viral foe. “Increases in Myopia Progression in Kids Tied to the COVID Pandemic; Closure of schools and cancelling of activities likely played a role” (MedPageToday) is a new-to-me wrinkle in the old coronapanic story of “cure worse than the disease”.

In the overall cohort of over 2,000 children in this retrospective observational study, the change in mean spherical equivalent from 2020 to 2021 was 2.2 times greater than the change from 2019 to 2020 (0.42 D vs 0.19 D), reported Rebecca Mets-Halgrimson, MD, of the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago and Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, and colleagues in the British Journal of Ophthalmology

… it’s important for clinicians to understand the impact of screen time and near work on myopia progression, particularly in younger age groups …

Looking at the prevalence of myopia grouped by age, 8-year-old and 17-year-old patients had the greatest increase compared with baseline. When grouped by refractive error, children with low myopia (-0.5 D to -3.00 D) showed the greatest change in mean spherical equivalents in 2020 to 2021.

The choice of language is interesting. It is not the Covidcrat-ordered lockdowns and school closures that caused 8-year-olds to suffer lifetimes of impaired vision. It is the virus (the “pandemic”) that killed 80-year-olds that attacked our children. Also, before coronapanic we couldn’t have imagined that there was anything wrong with parking kids in front of computer/tablet screens for 8-10 hours per day. Our understanding of Science is constantly evolving (except when the Science is settled).

Related:

  • “COVID lockdowns led to spike in kids’ vision problems, 1 in 3 now nearsighted, study finds” (from the Deplorables, September 2024): Myopia can progress rapidly during critical growth periods, particularly in children and adolescents, Chen noted. … “Prolonged indoor living reduced outdoor activity for children and adolescents while increasing screen time, potentially exacerbating the ocular burden on this population and worsening the myopia crisis.”
  • ChatGPT’s response to “generate a picture of an extremely near-sighted child using a personal computer” is below. (Gemini refused to do this so we can’t see what a nonbinary child of color would look like in Coke bottle glasses.)

Full post, including comments

How does the “Ferrari for sale” scam work?

by philg

Here’s a recent text message:

How does the scam then work? I respond with “Sorry, but we ran out of SF90s last Wednesday” and… then what? How does this person (or robot?) end up with my not-very-hard-earned-and-certainly-undeserved Bidies?

Or maybe this SF90 shopper is legit. I took some pictures of a Ferrari SF90 (fewer than 2,000 produced?) in Fort Worth, Texas back in May 2024:

I can’t remember if I posted any on Twitter or Facebook.

Perhaps the sender assumed that because I’m committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion that, naturally, I would own a car made by a company that is committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion. (But, then, why would I want to sell a car that will remind me of DEI with every trip to Publix?)

From the Ferrari web site:

The photo of an all-white team seems to have been purged from the Ferrari site, but it was up long enough for X to capture when Ferrari proudly posted about their plan to discriminate by race, gender ID, etc.:

Meanwhile, let’s check on the rare collectible vehicle that we actually do own. Its value seems to be increasing. Received November 24, 2024:

Speaking of scams, here’s a recent invitation for me to become friends on Facebook. The account is owned by someone with the Arabic male name “Kareem” and the pictures are of a blonde:

And a Facebook comment exchange (original post is about San Francisco)….

Full post, including comments

Parallel New York universes

by philg

The front page of the New York Post right now has no fewer than four stories about Daniel Penny, the man on trial for murdering the mostly peaceful Jordan Neely. Penny’s fate is currently being decided by a jury.

The front page of the New York Times right now has zero stories. In the parallel universe of the NYT, Jordan Neely was never killed and Daniel Penny was never put on trial.

Photos from May 2023:

Separately, what are people thinking about the Manhattan murder of Brian Thompson, the UnitedHealthcare CEO? A customer whose relative died after claims were denied for a treatment that, in the killer’s mind, might have saved the relative’s life? A disgruntled former employee? It can’t be an unhappy long-term shareholder. Before adjusting for inflation, the stock is up 100X compared to 30 years ago (outperforming Apple and NVDIA? (tougher to compare with NVIDIA because the company didn’t go public until 1999)):

Related:

Full post, including comments

What happens with federal tax policy?

by philg

Now that folks have had a chance to digest the Election Nakba… what are you all forecasting for tax policy? This is one of the few areas of federal policy where we could productively change our behavior given a change in the policy.

My guess is that the Trump Big Bang tax law that went into effect 2018 gets extended, more or less unchanged, thus revoking the expiration dates of 2025 and 2028 for various individual and business tax provisions. My basis for this prediction is that Congress hates cutting spending, but enjoys cutting taxes. That’s how we get the deficit spending that started in earnest when Congress refused to implement Ronald Reagan’s proposed spending cuts, but did oblige him on the tax rates that he suggested.

My first prediction for a change is that the limit on state/local (SALT) tax deductibility will be raised or eliminated in order to get some cooperation from the Party of the Economic Elite (i.e., the Democrats). My second prediction is that there will be some sort of enhancement of the current system for extracting money from the childless (the “drones”) and giving the cash to those with children, e.g., via tax deductions or tax credits or “refundable tax credits” for those who don’t bother to work and instead enjoy playing Xbox with their children for all after-school hours. There is nothing that American politicians love more than making the childless work another few hours every week so that parents can enjoy time with their kids.

What would I do about taxation if I could be dictator for a day?

  • no change to current tax rates (I assume these are already the revenue-maximizing rates and the federal government needs at least $36 trillion just to pay back debt)
  • no change to the mechanisms that Donald Trump put in place to keep multi-national companies from parking all of their profits offshore
  • the IRS prepares a draft tax return for every American income taxpayer (i.e., about half of us) with all of the information that it has received and enables us to edit it
  • eliminate the estate tax, which generates a huge amount of unproductive legal and accounting activity and hardly any revenue (about $20 billion/year against a federal budget of $7 trillion)
  • eliminate the Generation-Skipping Transfer Tax, which is a complicated add-on to the estate tax
  • eliminate the step-up in basis that assets get upon an owner’s death (so capital gains liability would increase on inherited assets once they’re sold)
  • index capital gains taxation to inflation so that fictitious (inflation-driven) “gains” aren’t taxed (see Uncle Joe’s capital gains tax (what could have been, unburdened by what was) for an example of what would happen to a long-term investor in GE stock who actually lost money in real dollars and then loses more to a tax on inflation)
  • eliminate charitable donation deductions (this prevents multi-billionaires from escaping taxation by giving money to the foundations that their kids control, etc.; Warren Buffett has already announced that the U.S. Treasury will get bupkis after he croaks because 99.5% of his money will go “to a charitable trust overseen by his daughter and two sons when he dies.” (USA Today))

Despite the elimination of the estate tax, note that the above changes would result in a huge increase in revenue from dead people and their heirs. Right now someone can inherit a $20 million house from two parents, completely tax free (estate tax exemption for a married couple is about $28 million), and the basis is $20 million, not the $1 million price that they paid in nominal dollars way back when or the $3 million price that is the $1 million adjusted for inflation. Thus, the heir could sell the $20 million house and pay no tax at all because the basis was stepped up to $20 million. If the above changes were implemented, an immediate sale of the inherited house would subject the heir to capital gains and Obamacare tax on a $17 million inflation-adjusted gain or 0.238 * $17e6 = $4 million. Same deal with a $2 million house (i.e., a Biden starter home!), but it would be perhaps $400,000 in revenue for the Federales rather than the current $0. (States that impose a capital gains tax (i.e., not Florida!) could be similarly fattened by these changes.)

Since my ideas are never popular with anyone else, I guess we can say for certain that none of the above changes will ever happen!

Readers: What do you think will happen?

Background…

and what if Congress can’t agree on any bill?

Full post, including comments

Florida hurricane relief idea: buy a reciprocal membership to the Ringling Museum

by philg

Happy GivingTuesday!

When practical, I think it is better to buy stuff from people who’ve suffered a natural disaster rather than donate money (see Japan Relief Idea: Buy a folding saw and Japan Relief: Idea #1 (buy a knife)). Sarasota was hit at full Category 3 strength by Hurricane Milton (albeit apparently not as badly damaged as whatever apparatus was supposed to count votes in California!). The Ringling Museum there is a great cultural institution and a $200/year membership there (mostly tax-deductible?) gives a family access, via a digital card downloadable to a DouchePhone Wallet, to about 1,000 museums nationwide via the following networks:

  • MARP (Museum Alliance Reciprocal Program)
  • NARM (North American Reciprocal Museum Association)
  • ROAM (Reciprocal Organization of Associated Museums)
  • SERM (Southeastern Reciprocal Membership Program- Also SEMC)

If you’re going to hit just two or three museums in a year and weren’t smart enough to get a SNAP/EBT card (see How to get free museum admissions for life: sign up for food stamps (SNAP/EBT)) you’ll recover the $200.

Ahead of their time?

Anyone else want to offer an idea for GivingTuesday?

Full post, including comments

A social justice warrior is out at Intel

by philg

A follow-up to Why wasn’t diversity Intel’s strength? (August)….

Pat Gelsinger, a vigorous Black Lives Matter warrior in 2020 (below), has “retired” at age 63 from the Intel CEO job, 17 years before he would be old enough to run for U.S. President.

Same guy a couple of months later in 2020 (CNBC):

VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger said at a CNBC @Work virtual event on Thursday that for any open position at the technology company, the hiring process will have to include consideration of both a woman and a minority candidate. … Previously, the company had in place a rule that no hiring process could be complete unless a woman or person of color was interviewed. Now the company will require hiring managers to consider at least one candidate from both backgrounds. “We’ve focused lots more on gender than race, and now we need to put emphasis on those areas together,” Gelsinger said at the CNBC event.

A 2021 Fast Company interview:

I am proud of where we’re at right now. My two biggest business units are run by women. My biggest technology leadership role, technology development, is run by a woman. That’s just unheard of in the tech industry. Also, four of my nine board members are females … So right now, overall, we’re pretty good. But I’m still not satisfied. It needs to be better. There are still areas where we have representation gaps. Our African American community, we’re not where we need to be. We have to keep working on those areas.

Part of his 2022 “Corporate Responsibility Letter”:

(there was no responsibility to keep up with AMD and TSMC?)

In 2022, he explained why God wants us to discriminate by skin color and gender ID:

Is Gelsinger a recent convert to the religion of diversity, equity, and inclusion? He shared Bill Gates’s hostility toward white males in 2018:

In retrospect I’m kind of amazed that shareholders couldn’t have sued Intel to force the board to fire this guy back in 2020 or 2021. Gelsinger plainly disclosed that his priorities were on the skin color and gender ID of workers and executives rather than on profits for shareholders or competitive advantage for products in the marketplace.

Separately, how is Intel Arrow Lake doing? The high-end 285K desktop CPU is out of stock everywhere so either they can’t make them or consumer demand is high. Supposedly there is a microcode update coming that will improve performance for gaming addicts. I am surprised that microcode updates are safe if done in the obvious way (written to EEPROM). What if the power is interrupted? Are these “updates” actually patches in which replacement or additional microcode is loaded during the boot process into volatile memory within the CPU chip? So it doesn’t matter if the process doesn’t complete because it will just happen again the next time the computer is booted?

Full post, including comments

What is Hunter Biden going to do now?

by philg

Hunter Biden has been pardoned for everything that he did or might have done over the past 11 years, including any payments to the Big Guy, not paying more than $1 million (pre-Biden dollars) in income tax to the IRS so that gender studies degree loans can be “forgiven”, exercising his Second Amendment right to own firearms, etc. This has some people excited because Joe Biden explicitly said that he would not pardon Hunter. The apparent broken promise shouldn’t be difficult for a cooperative media to spin: Donald Trump is setting up a dictatorship and the resistance needs Hunter on the outside, fully armed, to lead a battalion of Warriors for Democracy (who are also collectors of original contemporary art).

Let’s suppose however that Trump, in command of a $1 trillion/year military, is too formidable a target for the #resistance to take on. What then will the Burisma board member-turned-painter do for work?

Perhaps painting is the long-term career, but “Why would anyone pay $500,000 for a painting by Hunter Biden?” (Guardian, 2021) is an even more difficult question to ask now that Hunter’s dad is no longer in a position to do favors for potential buyers. Let’s assume that the market for original Biden oil paintings has been saturated.

Legal? Hunter Biden, age 54, has a law degree, but Wikipedia doesn’t describe any experience actually working as a lawyer. Hunter lives in Malibu, California (Daily Mail), but there is no evidence that he has ever taken or passed the California bar exam. He can’t start handling family court or eviction cases, therefore. (There is no limit to the work available in California in child support litigation (the state offers unlimited profits to the successful plaintiff) or representing landlords. See below, for example.)

Lobbyist? Hunter Biden was never an elected politician or high-level government worker.

At least as recently as 2023, Hunter Biden enjoyed transportation via private jet (New York Post). Let’s say that requires at least a $2 million/year annual income. What’s the path via which Hunter Biden can make that happen?

How about motivational speaker? Americans love a recovery story and Hunter’s can be inspiring. Maybe he can talk about how his 16-year-younger immigrant wife saved him from various addictions and there will be two much-loved themes to hit (drug-/alcohol-dependency and the benefits of open borders). Hunter could get paid $10,000 per hour to speak to groups of Democrats.

Separate question: Does Navy Joan Roberts get to see her grandfather President Joe Biden now? (state-sponsored NPR) What does Joe Biden have to lose by spending some time with the stripper-turned-plaintiff’s daughter? He’s not going to be running for another political office.

Related:

Full post, including comments