Precision

I wonder how many of the missing are due to China's one child policy and preference for boys over girls along with the common practice of infanticide? A friend of mine and his wife couldn't have children. They decided to adopt a couple of Chinese girls. When they went to visit the adoption centers in China they found that they were full.....of little girls. No boys, just girls! They said the adoption was fairly painless because the girls weren't wanted anyway. I wonder demographically how much this hurts China as well. You certainly won't have enough females for every male so there will be a large single male population. I can't believe all these single males are going to lead to a happy populace. I would think this would severely restrict future population growth as well. A couple of interesting links...... How China's One-Child Policy Led To Forced Abortions, 30 Million Bachelors China has a history of female infanticide spanning 2000 years.

When do all the peaceful protests start in support of Frank James? My air fryer just died, and I'd like to loot myself a new one, in support of peaceful protesting of course.

From the St. Louis Fed........ Where do we peak? I stand by my estimates from November, over 10%.

Politicians say follow the science but smart people follow the math. Most homes in the US use 30KWH of power every day. Oddly enough the amount of power required to charge an EV driven for 100 miles is 30KWH (or you can charge 2 EV's driven 100 miles together for the same 30KWH). So in order to accommodate the switchover to electric cars the power grid (generation and transmission) would need to double. On top of that, many houses in the US do not have electrical service robust enough for the home and to charge an EV. It wasn't until the late 1950's when 100 Amp service was standard, nearly 30% of homes in the US were built prior to this time and may have 60 or 30 Amp service (dependent upon the age of the house). So the grid would need be able to supply twice as much power AND upgraded transmission lines would be required to double the capacity of power delivery AND many homes would require upgraded service. I don't know about anyone else but I don't see this happening in the next 30 years. There areas that don't have reliable high speed internet or cell coverage......but we're going to upgrade the grid everywhere. I don't think so.

I agree, the best path forward is to allow business to drive rather than allow the government to get involved. One of the engineers who works for me used to work for a fuel cell company. He was employed there for 3 years and left because the government project he was on made no measurable progress. He was frustrated by the slow pace and lack of team motivation so he left. I toured the Energy Department funded LLE at U of R in the 80's. They were on the cusp of solving fusion back then, nearly 40 years ago. They are still on the cusp of something and probably will be for the next 40 years. The reason why wind and solar advanced so rapidly is because business saw a way to make money. They invested heavily in technology and people. The leaders in wind and solar will reap the reward for their investment for years. Same think happened in the networking industry in the late 90's(anyone remember Cabletron, Cascade, Bay Networks, Lucent....to name a few). Lots of idea's, startups, VC money and stock options. Same think happened in the computer industry in the 80's(anyone remember Wang, DEC, Apollo, Cray, Data General....to name a few more).

What a crap redistricting map. Republican or Democrat they should hang the clowns that approved this.

There's a lot of problems with the wealth tax but this is the biggest. If you own a lot of non-liquid assets the heirs are forced to sell somewhat quickly in order to pay the tax. This is especially problematic for assets like real estate where sales aren't instantaneous and market conditions can significantly impact the sales price.

The existing estate taxes don't just apply to the Uber wealthy. If either my wife or I live into our 80's our assets will easily eclipse the $12 million exclusion limit. We do not consider ourselves wealthy and we live a modest lifestyle. Our wealth was accumulated over 35 years through hard work, saving, investing, and maxing out tax deferred investments. We already have a plan in place so our assets in excess of the exclusion limit will be given to relatives and charities rather than allow a penny to go to the federal government. Our children will have to make due with whatever is left below the limit.

I'm so shocked he would own multiple oceanfront properties with the runaway global warming and the inevitable rise in ocean levels.

Consumer sentiment hits a decade low. https://www.investopedia.com/consumer-sentiment-down-marginally-in-late-march-2022-5223691 "Sets another new decade-long low, driven by rising pessimism about inflation....." "The final value of 59.4 for March 2022 puts the MCSI 5.4% below its final reading of 62.8 in February 2022 and 30.0% under its value of 84.9 one year ago in March 2021. "

Poor Georgy doesn't have enough greenbacks to overcome a couple of trillion dollars in currency devaluation and a 40 year high 7.9% inflation rate. Even America's dolts understand what's going on when they can no longer afford their daily beverage of choice. What's the number of Democrats no longer seeking re-election, 37 (31 in the House, 6 in the Senate)? This election cycle is going to be a bloodbath. It will take Democrats 10 years after this cycle to even approach parity with the Republicans.

In New Hampshire, Regular is $4.18/gal Premium is $4.82/gal Diesel is $5.11/gal All of NH tourism is from people driving to our state. There are worries that the increase in prices will be bad for the tourism industry here. A friend of mine in the travel industry said the optimism in travel early in the year has now turned sour. The hope was that after COVID everyone would start traveling again. Now with higher inflation and in particular higher fuel prices they are seeing an influx of cancellations. Anyone with enough disposable income that they are not impacted by this is likely to find some good vacation deals.

I know that's the plan but when I lose a third of my staff it will be difficult to meet our product development launch. The engineers I lose will be the young motivated ones, I'll be stuck with the old curmudgeons and a bunch of open req's.

I thought some of you might find this interesting...... Raises in my department (engineering) are going to average less than 4% this year. My company is in New England and engineering is a hot commodity here. This is troubling as last year's raises were significantly better and we still had a 20% turnover rate. My people are expecting increases on the order of 7% as that's the inflation rate. Some interesting issues on the corporate side. Corporate decided to hold prices through the past year in order to maintain market share. The thought was that long term this was a good strategy as the lower sales margins could be mitigated with service contracts and future sales. This as expected negatively impacted profit. Purchasing parts through the supply chain was difficult as the tight supply forced us to procure from brokers at significantly higher costs. Raw material costs were higher across the board and increased faster than expected. Also, machine/fabrication shops are busy, so their pricing was much higher than in the past. Combined, these price increases were much higher than the company expected. Also, the nature of these price increases were immediate (rather than a typical phase in) and the company was unprepared to respond to them quickly. Due to supply chain issues, in December we were unable to manufacture some products. This problem has gotten worse, and I suspect that revenue will be less than last year due to our inability to ship product. Not sure if other companies are seeing the same issues. For my group the raises will be catastrophic as I can envision losing over 30% of our engineers. We are in the late stages of a product development cycle so as you can surmise the timing couldn't be worse.

Sitting around all day playing with boobs probably isn't as much fun when they're your own!

You would have thought that someone, anyone on Team Blue would have maybe run the numbers to see how much this isn't in their favor. All the gains women have made in predominantly male positions (police and fire for example) will be erased as transgender candidates outscore biological females and take these jobs. What an ironic tragedy!

Roughly 30%-50% of young women participate in high school athletics. As more transgender athletes take the starting positions from biological women, I think you're going to see a lot of anger and resentment. Young female athletes who have dedicated their lives to sports are going to be upset as well as the parents who carted them to/from sporting events over 10 years. This will become even more upsetting as large portions of NCAA scholarships for women are awarded to transgender athletes. I think this gets interesting for the Democratic party as these young women enter their voting years.

Feel like this post aged well although the "experts" say we'll only hit 10%......... https://www.kiplinger.com/economic-forecasts/inflation

Hey junior, could you tell us about your job? I mean it must be REALLY important seeing as you post here all day long.

It would be nice if they could institute something as simple as credit card verification on every account. It would get rid of kids like Wille who don't have a job, bank account or credit card.

When I see 15 year old idiots posting this kind of stupidity I have to wonder if anything can get you banned here.

You are such a predictable little pervert, I went fishing on a Sunday afternoon and caught a sucker, AGAIN! At least TRY to read the thread title junior. A poll for everyone, how many posts can little willy make without mentioning Trump. My guess is zero, ha ha ha!

I think there are 2 subjects here that aren't necessarily related. First, the LGBTQ community typically is aligned with the Democratic party and votes that way, roughly 50% are registered Democrats as per the study below. I don't know why politically they affiliate with the Democrats and really don't care. There are lots of good people in the world who are LGBTQ and I'll stop this part of the conversation there. "Nearly nine million LGBT adults are registered and eligible to vote in the 2020 general election.1 Half of registered LGBT voters (50%) are Democrats, 15% are Republicans, 22% are Independents, and 13% said they identify with another party or did not know with which party they most identify." https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/publications/the-2020-lgbt-vote/ Second, I think the real question is why does the left attracts sexual abusers, deviants and criminals? I think there a bunch of reasons such as; The left has always been soft on crime and would clearly be the preferred party of individuals that commit sexual crimes. As a quick example, remember Jeffrey Epstein? "Jeffrey Epstein donated to several Democrats throughout 1990s and early 2000s" https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/jeffrey-epstein-donated-democrats-1990s-early-2000s/story?id=64255485 The Hollywood crowd has always leaned far left and are consistently committing sexual abuse. I would include a link here but there are so many accounts that I really couldn't pick just one. Do a quick search, even I was amazed by the numbers. A recent look at politicians shows sexual harassment/misconduct to be more prevalent among democrats than republicans. I could list a few over the years but I'll just link Friday's news........ https://www.justice.gov/usao-or/pr/former-beaverton-mayor-charged-possession-child-pornography Sexual crimes are becoming a mainstream problem for democrats and aren't a fringe issue anymore. Here is a good article albeit a little old; https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/11/28/16704580/democrats-sexual-harassment-conyers-franken-moore I won't even start to discuss teachers unions, their affiliation with the democratic party or their deviant push for gender fluidity in young children. Many Americans, myself included, see this as a crime as severe as child pornography.

Good point, I certainly wouldn't want to share a meal with Putin!

Putin's endgame was to move quickly, take Kiev and install a puppet government. Sure, the world would apply sanctions, but Europe is reliant on Russian gas and after a few years everything would be back to normal. So, a few years of no economic growth for a Russian aligned government in Kiev. For an ex-KGB officer like Putin that's a good trade. The problem is that Ukraine has put up more resistance than expected. Now Putin has the problem of: More Russian troops and military equipment are being committed increasing the cost of this endeavor dramatically. More Ukrainians are being killed which will make those left less likely to accept a puppet regime. Ukraine is being devastated by the ongoing conflict so any economic benefit Putin might have received from Ukraine will likely go toward reconstruction. The longer this plays out the more time the world has to respond and apply further sanctions. The courage of the Ukrainians and specifically Zelensky have personalized this conflict for many due to the 24/7 news coverage. The grass-roots world reaction will hurt Russia on many fronts. The endgame for Putin now is much less clear. A puppet government in Ukraine will likely fail. Occupation will certainly lead to more Russian and Ukrainian deaths while becoming an economic drain on Russia. Negotiations with the current government looks like a weak afterthought with any result being seen as a win for Zelensky. Further, any of the above outcomes do not lessen sanctions in the near future. On a related note, this conflict has also revitalized NATO. The failures in Afghanistan will be forgotten as the EU countries realize how important a strong NATO is as a deterrent to Russia. Long term this could be the tipping point where Russia starts to decline rapidly. Russia's main exports will never be worth more than they are right now. Once the world transitions away from petroleum for transportation Russia will lose a significant source of income. Their strongest ally could turn into an adversary as a weak Russia becomes an easy target for China.