> If the EU countries were leaving NATO to form their own military alliance, then I would agree with you but that hasn't happened and maybe never will.
The whole point is that, in general, global cooperation has worked well in the last 80 years. Europe doesn't want that to change but the US didn't vote for this guy once, but twice. Fool me once, shame on me, fool me twice, shame on you.
So Europe won't leave NATO, but it is pivoting to being more self sufficient. It's another area where the US is quickly spending the political capital it accumulated for decades.
> That is not explained by increased deficit, but by net increase in demand.
A yield going up means you pay more for the same thing. So if the US wants to issue more debt, they can. The fact that more debt was bought but the yield went to means the supply grew faster than the demand. So an absolute increase in demand, but a net decrease, thus a higher price as shown by the yield
That is not true. Yield is going up globally, so you need to adjust for the difference in yield.
For example, the US and Euro (average) yield have gone up by almost the same amount in that period, and other currencies like Japan and Australia have experienced an even larger increase.
I’m not sure why the level of discussion in this post is so poor.
"I’m not sure why the level of discussion in this post is so poor."
Its because bond yields and fixed income in general isn't well understood by the public. Even in finance, its often not correctly understood except by those working in fixed income or the IT teams that support them. Funny thing is, often the devs in those departments understand global finance better than the CEOs running those firms because of how fixed incomes is seen by other departments. Basically, its the lowest department because it doesn't get great yield while ironically requiring the best math and economics knowledge to do.
You are misunderstanding some basic things about bonds. Bonds are weird. Higher yield means the bond gives out more coupons (yield, money, etc). But the bond itself costs exactly the same no matter the yield when first bought.
The actual thing being bid on in the bond market is the yield itself. Higher yield is sort of like a higher price in that it means you have to offer more to the lenders. However, what they are actually betting on isn't the ability of the US government to repay. What they are actually betting on is the future inflation rate. So a higher yield doesn't mean what it means for corp debt (ie we don't think you will be able to pay this back). A higher yield for t-bills actually means lenders think inflation will increase in the future. Hence the FED raising rates to fight inflation.
PS But seriously, the bond market is very weird and most people mess up what changes in yield mean for different kinds of bonds because they don't mean the same things (unlike securities ie stocks).
PPS This is all because of the reduction in the amount of oil available worldwide, which triggers increases in global rates, which triggers increases in US rates.
I like your post a lot, in that you're describing how this doesn't say anything about anyone's chances really. However...
> but also with poor people abusing their democratic powers to unjustly take from others that which they have not earned
How would they abuse their democratic powers? It's their decision to vote either way. So who says that's unjust? Certainly it's not abusing their democratic powers.
Abusing of power happens on the other end of the spectrum, especially in the US thanks to citizens united.... Surely all those super PAC dollars don't buy any influence... As a result, the voice of a single rich person might be stronger than a whole quintile of the population. So chances are that they are unjustly given things that aren't theirs (i.e. advantageous contracts, laws that help them etcetera).
I hold, i guess as a basic principle, that tyranny of the majority is an unjust failure case of democratic systems.
Fully agree Citizen's united has resulted in legalized corruption. But 2 wrongs do not make a right, ethically.
There's nothing unjust about a rich person getting superior results through access to better resources though. Eg hiring a better tax accountant or financial advisor.
Why should the tax code be structured in a way that a rich person can pay less in taxes than a poorer person or someone who cant access such expertise? Is it just that a rich person can buy admission for their dumbass kid to a prestigious university too?
Please, tell us all about how they deserve preferential treatment and its right that shit always flows downhill, never uphill, that for those to whom much has been given, less will be expected
While you might be talking about the exceptional cases where rich are paying a lower marginal rate than 1%-er W2 earners, for the basic tax brackets the more you earn you exponentially pay more than those who earn less.
Fair tax is either Flat tax (We all pay 10% of our income) and user pays (You want infrastructure for your business? then pay for it).
Look, Warren Buffet should not pay less tax than his secretary. That is corruption of the tax code. Lets start with that. Also the nonsense where ultrarich can live off ultra low interest credit that effectively allows them to pay no or little income tax
Fully agree he should not pay less tax % than his secretary, however I also would contend he should not pay more either. that is if his secretary is paying 20% so should he.
I do think he should pay more absolute tax than his secretary... 20% of billions is lots more than 20% of $100k .
What I'm talking about is progressive tax rates where the % goes up the more you make. I do not think Warren buffet should pay 25% of billions just because his income has more zeros than his secretary's .
To the extent that people might say "Yeah but he uses more roads than the rest of us!", IMO that should be covered by user pays to tie the cost to the user. Gas tax is one such way this can be done. Business taxes are a bit crude but also could work.
Some post offices in the US also function as a so called notary public. Basically, they can verify your identity and attest that it's you who sent/did something.
This is used quite often for important things that don't have offices themselves.
For European governments that have their email and such running with Microsoft, it's quite the signal when individuals lose their email because the US doesn't like them. See international criminal court.
> we have an (ever growing) list of forbidden clauses that even when written and signed by consumer are null and void
I'm pretty sure that's true almost everywhere. Law beats contract. The real question is how strong the laws are. In the US not so much because of small government and stuff, especially in red states.
The law matters very little when enforcing it in court often means a multiyear lawsuit against an opponent which employs an army of attorneys, has effectively unlimited amounts of money, will likely cost you ruinious sums of money, and for an outcome that's far from guaranteed.
You can do that too. You can show up, represent yourself and pay a few hundred dollar court fee, while the big company has to waste hundreds of thousands of dollars to defend themselves from you. You'll probably lose the case if you don't have a lawyer, but in a place like the US, you don't have to pay the other side's legal fees unless the case is frivolous (which it won't be).
>The law matters very little when enforcing it in court often means a multiyear lawsuit against an opponent which employs an army of attorneys, has effectively unlimited amounts of money, will likely cost you ruinious sums of money, and for an outcome that's far from guaranteed.
Or when you can't even enforce anything in court as you've already given up your right to spend all your money suing, as binding arbitration is the required and only mechanism to "resolve disputes." To make it extra fair, the corporation pays the arbitration firm for their "objective" decisions and not you.
Has it actually happened that someone went to court and the court told them no, you have to do binding arbitration? Or is it just something they put in the contract to scare you? Has anyone argued they didn't actually agree to what the country thinks they agreed to? You could start by just saying no, you didn't agree to that, and the company will have to prove you did.
In the Gamer's Nexus video, he gets drunk before accepting the terms so that it isn't legal consent. A drunk person can't enter a contract.
>Has it actually happened that someone went to court and the court told them no, you have to do binding arbitration? Or is it just something they put in the contract to scare you? Has anyone argued they didn't actually agree to what the country thinks they agreed to? You could start by just saying no, you didn't agree to that, and the company will have to prove you did.
So you are missing the fuel for the return trajectory, which they plan to make there IIRC. So add in situ resource utilization to your list.
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