Automation is the sole reason why humanity has advanced with innovation and the only reason why life expectancy has increased for the developed and undeveloped world. Automatic production is the reason why the world turns, and your suggestion is that there's something nefarious behind it? Automation hasn't replaced human jobs and that won't come for a long time until AI is advanced enough to lessen the need for human interaction in production. There'll be a need for human intervention for the foreseeable future.

You sound a bit paranoid or like an environmentalist.

Fertilizer is also a big issue. From my understanding, ammonium nitrates and urea are produced/exported from Russian and natural gas is an intermediate in the production of fertilizers which is under limited supply as well. The food supply is low and the cost of growing food is increasing. The luxury most residents in first worlds have is that their government is able to afford to make deals in order to secure food for its citizens, albeit at an elevated price from what's normal (better than nothing). The famine usually effects those already impoverished.

They could be renovating it, but that's not really the issue. They're giving out offers above the market rate to incentivize people to sell their homes all to a single buyer. Not that it would have any relevance if there were multiple firms buying up all these homes from the perspective of the seller; the issue that arises is the monopoly that these firms have on the housing market. They have the ability to create a permanent class of renters with complete control on the price with no one to compete with them.

That's on top of the housing bubble they might create by paying above market prices.

This thread by Kim Dotcom has a relevant Twitter discussion on the state of the U.S. economy: https://twitter.com/KimDotcom/status/1525293982133407744

Summed up in the above thread, USD is in a particular fragile state. USD currently is interlaced into the global economy and highly reliant on future economic growth for solvency. The problem is, if the economic growth is stalled for any reason, it won't take much for people to lose confidence in USD and for the U.S. to default on his debt. Take this problem, and accelerate its severity ten fold post COVID spending.

In some world, USD collapsing would be the closest to Bitcoin acting as a global currency. But that is only if there was such a rupture in the global economy following USD collapse. That's not entirely realistic because it isn't fair to make the assumption that one currency crash would cause a domino effect. To add, it's not as if the Chinese economy is doing particularly great either. USD and Yuan collapses, now that would be interesting.

The Luna/UST fiasco was an anomaly.  Those people betted on altcoins and got burned because they were not investing, they were gambling. Not that I would advocate someone take a loan out to gamble on the market, but there are some ways where you might turn a profit that don't include attempting to stake some garbage algorithmic coin that is created from thin air.

OP, depending on the terms of the loan you would probably be able to turn a profit depending on the market and investment but lenders aren't ignorant to the idea of receiving less money than they loaned out with high inflationary periods. It'd be tough to get a good rate unless you predict the market.

What sort of powers does a city council member have? My guess is very little to cause significant change. California would need a complete overhaul if it wanted to fix the homeless crisis, drug problems, high taxes, and all the rest. One can try, I guess. You have more optimism than me, Godspeed.

I'm not a big fan of sanctions either to be clear. Putin isn't personally hurt by the sanctions. His oligarch billionaire friends are still doing well for themselves too. It's the middle and lower class Russians that pay the biggest price. There are plenty of Russians that don't agree with Putin and his war. If protests were allowed in Russia, I'd imagine there'd be more vocal dissent than what you're seeing. If an organization wanted to boot explicit pro-Putin athletes, then perhaps that would be more reasonable than punishing someone that has nothing to do with the invasion. Just my opinion.

Surprisingly enough, I think the self sustenance "prepper" type folks might come out on top. I would laugh at the paranoia of some of these folks, but perhaps they were on to something. For some global event to occur resulting in collapse of supply chains resulting in food scarcity, seemed slightly far fetched. Well, COVID was that event, and it's only compounded by the Ukrainian conflict.

I'd argue, though: If the world devolves into a state at which individuals must grow their own food, the standard of living has fractured so significantly, it might be beyond repair. Ask someone in the first world if they know anything about producing their own food. They know nothing, including myself.

India to ban wheat exports: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-05-14/india-says-wheat-exports-prohibited-with-immediate-effect

Citing food scarcity, an immediate prohibition on wheat exports was placed, affecting Sri Lanka/Middle Eastern countries most likely.

Note - if you're not from the immediate area around India where you might benefit from wheat exports, understand that food scarcity in countries across the world will cause a domino effect with each country limiting what types of materials they might export due to the fear they can't import enough.

You are going to have to pay more in order to maintain your standard of living. It is inevitable.

I agree. It's understated how significant the pandemic was in opening people's eyes to how easily it is to abuse the economic systems as long as you have centralized control. COVID taught people why government centralization is cancerous to economic affairs. Covid lockdown restrictions were employed as a strategy for the unobtainable goal of "zero COVID" death, hospitalizations, or cases. This tanked the economy and, because most governments resorted to money printing as a mechanism to artificially stimulate the economy while they forced people to stay home and refrain from work, inflation rose.

In retrospect, was anyone surprised at the obvious outcome of inflation/probable recession when you hand the keys to a bunch of COVID hypochondriacs? I'm wasn't.

I wish the folks that got burned in the UST/Luna fiasco would have perhaps waited for a moment and accessed the risk of what they were doing by following your advice. I'd also add -- the price charts don't have to show immediate volatility in order for there to be an incurred risk that's disproportional to any potential gains. You could be sitting on a bubble that's been stable in it's inflation until an immediate pop sends the market tumbling. Generally there are signs when growth is unstainable, but it's not always in the numbers. Need to use your head sometimes.

Good. Banning Russian athletes doesn't do anything to stop war efforts. Seems the Russian army doesn't even support the war efforts, let alone athletes not involved in any way.

If the Olympics can be hosted in China, then the selective application of virtue signaling surely need not to apply to Russian athletes. After all, an unworthy war by Russia isn't too much worse than concentration camps of muslims by China. We don't punish the athletes for the actions of a country's government.

Online banking systems get hacked all the time. Usually because everything is so centralized, it's easy to get the funds recovered or reversed so it's an easier path to recovery than irreversible crypto's. Doesn't mean people don't still lose money because of their foolishness.

Why would you rely on a bank to hold your crypto currency? Banks, online exchanges, neither serve any real purpose for security. They're merely an illusion giving people a false notion of safety. You can trust yourself, if no one other. You should be your own bank.

https://slate.com/business/2021/06/blackrock-invitation-houses-investment-firms-real-estate.html

There are also investment firms that are buying up houses well above market rate which is creating a bubble on its own. This wouldn't be an issue if a private firm wants to incur the risk of paying above market rates except for the potential government bailout in the event of a collapse. Firms like Blackrock haven't bought up enough real estate yet to create any sort of sizeable impact on the market, but if you're living in these communities and having billion dollar corporations buy out single family homes, you don't have a way to compete.

The government is not efficient at creating jobs nor do I have faith they would be able to form partnerships with private firms to subsidize the salary of the unemployed. Federal jobs training programs might be a social safety net that should be implored, but that doesn't mean the government needs to take an additional step and begin indirectly funding salaries. If the unemployment rate truly was so high that there was a reliance on government funded jobs, then you might as well explore the idea of UBI because that's essentially what this idea entails (with extra steps, of course).

Most countries already offer financial assistance to the unemployed in some way. They aren't equipped to handle a large influx of applicants if there ever was an incentive structure built into the system. I'm not suggesting a federal jobs training program with subsidized salaries would act as an incentive as long as the salary is at a market rate, but I am generally skeptical of the government getting involved in salary supplementation period.

Putin is not going to last another 10 years if the suspicion of dementia turns out to be true. I'm guessing he'll be mentally incapacitated long before the Ukrainian conflict reaches a conclusion. No need for Europe to send in the commandos. Fortunately for him, he won't have to see the epitome of military dismay following a war that would last years and result in no geopolitical gains. It would have been a harsh sight to beholden.

I worry about Putin's successor more than anything. May he be more restrained and mentally fortified than Putin.

It could. USD is losing its grip IMO because of how friviously they choose to increase their total money supply without having the economic growth to support it. The foreseeable consequence is a high inflation rate. But inflation isn't alone the primary issue -- the US continues to use sanctions to do their dirty political work which is causing countries to lose their trust in the U.S. to maintain a country's USD assets. Why bother trusting the U.S. with anything if they might freeze billions of your assets on a whim?

Nature: Antibody survey finds 2 of 3 children in U.S. aged 1-4 have already been infected by COVID-19.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-01231-y

In fact, this is wonderful news. No evidence of long COVID and lasting anitbody protection. No evidence of increased mortality associated with omicron. Just means that children were not at large risk from COVID hospitalization/death and subsequently don't need to take a vaccine.

Stablecoins pegged to sustainable fiat currencies don't have this issue. Theoretically you could make a stablecoin pegged to anything of value as long as the underlying asset exists. Inflation doesn't really factor into stablecoins unless you get to a point where you need to increase the supply of coin because of decreased purchasing power with high inflation (granted the coin is pegged to a fiat currency).

Inflation is a problem if the purchasing power of any individual goes down by artificially increasing the money supply.

U.S. inflation numbers for April: https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/inflation-cpi

Inflation rate decreases to 8.3% from 8.5%.

This might be worthy of a celebration. Rather shocked to see it slow after the conflict in Ukraine. March's inflation numbers were not reflective of the price increases due to war and so I expected a sharper increase with April's numbers factoring in for war related expenses. Regardless, the prices of goods will not come down even as the inflation rate lowers. Reminder that CPI calculates the rate of increase in consumer goods. Even if the rate of price increase slows down a little, the prices are still increasing.