Wild Fork sells filet tenderloins from Brazil, not USDA rated. Real Cheap! No, I’m not going near them.
No doubt about it, we are in a tough spot. It’s kinda funny how both the retirement problem (SS) and the increasing plight of so many Americans are explained by the giant wealth disparity.
For SS, it’s pretty basic. While productivity, and hence GDP, have increased, wages have not. SS is supported by labor, not a penny from capital. But that’s pretty crazy. The Nation accumulated all this wealth, which is a really,really good plan for making it through the “winter” stock up! We did great! But now we should tap into that wealth. We all earned it. It just happens that it all trickled up.
At the same time, the enormous demand for alternative assets is swallowing up the middle class. Private Equity is an insatiable capitalistic strategy. Funded by debt, money raised and repackaged into chunks that are sold to restricted hedge funds, where minimum deposits are 7 digits and no redemptions before term without incurring sizable discount. PE buys up those little Main Street, boomer run dental offices. Back in the day, that practice would pass into the hands of a new doctor, one who just left medical school or some such. The young guy had a path to one of the nicest homes in town. But today, that young dentist can never match the bid from the PE. Boomer dentist is unlikely to fail to cash out, it was his plan all along. But PE cuts off the path now for that young dentist. Same for young plumbers, HVAC people, pharmacies,…it’s every where.
We have the wealth, created right here in America. Or Canada. Or the UK. We all Did a great job of saving it up, frankly. And they won’t go without a fuss. It may get pretty bad. This whole ICE shitshow is sending a clear message. We can fuck you up. Fuck you up in a way you wouldn’t imagine. . It is a scary threat. But the state can’t lock up everybody. And the pyramid needs a huge base of debtors to keep the dance music on. So grab your popcorn
I learn something every day. I didn’t know this was a thing.
Trump is talking about private equity in 401ks. Any comment on that.
Reasonable returns if you can buy a chunk.just don’t expect to see any cash flow, and no redeeming. That’s the rub. A fund of funds might fly, but the draws for the managers are going to be steep. Mostly a liquidity premium so be sure you can manage the RMD when it hits.
I’m not sure on that. In Canadian grocery stores I often see beef from Australia, Argentina, Mexico, and the US.
I know on Planet Money they had an episode on meat exports and imports between the US and Mexico. Apparently a lot of cattle are back and forth across the border, sometimes multiple times.
Thanks. I was wondering about pricing. How do you know you’re buying in at a reasonable price?
(Maybe it is too soon to ask that. I don’t have any information on how this would be structured inside a 401k.)
There’s been some discussion about similar meat from Mexico. I think it was the Canadian Food Inspection Agency or perhaps the grocery store who clarified. The meat isn’t graded e.g. Prime, Choice, etc. it is inspected e.g. for food safety. The meat is totally safe to eat. It’s less clear on how tender it’ll be.
My dad was an optometrist. He struggled to sell his practice because he wasn’t in a major urban center and most young optometrists wanted to live in the city. It was actually a great location, convenient to Vancouver, without the crazy high costs. If they’d bought his practise they could have done quite well for themselves. Instead they’d go work for the optical chains and make decent, but not great incomes. They also have far less control over their working lives and how they practice optometry.
ETA: The guy who eventually bought the practice sold it to an optical company. Another private optometry practice has since moved into town and are doing quite well.
It’s also very rare to see American lamb. I mainly see Australian and New Zealand. Admittedly a much smaller market than beef.
Those are the same sources of much of the lamb I see in stores here
No one can compete with NZ on price on dairy products and lamb.
I do see a fair amount of NZ lamb here, but one of my favorite markets usually has CO lamb.
I’ve been hearing that milk prices are higher in the grocery store in NZ than in Canada. I wonder if the people making the comparisons are accounting for the low value of the NZD…
So is the NZ lamb sold in Canada “fresh, never frozen”?
Don’t know. We never buy lamb.
Yeah, that’s what I usually see.
My dads family has a sheep ranch, but I have no idea where those lambs are being eaten.
Terry Tao lost his NSF grant. Good choice, let’s encourage the most famous mathematician in the world to go elsewhere.
The brain drain from this admin driving people out of the country will be huge. The ripples will be felt for decades in the damage this moron is causing.
I have been thinking about that as I have a few family friends planning their exits.
At this point, thats all it is though: planning.
If things go truly sideways, it will happen quickly so you would need to be able to execute a pre-arranged plan with little fuss.
A person like Tao will most definitely have a contingency plan, so you might see him head out to a country that still values his sort of research contribution if things really get bad for him personally.
Everybody will have their own unique personal limits about these things, so hard to say how many will end up jumping ship.
tl, dr: The US could see a 30-40% decline in new international student enrollment due to limited visas being granted, resulting in nearly $7 billion in lost revenue and more than 60,000 fewer American jobs.