I agree and Michael Burry has warned about it. There's no real price discovery on these index funds. Money comes in - buy all in the fund regardless of any fundamental. And many of those stocks aren't that liquid so in an exit and a dump, they will get destroyed.
Bold statement. Based on what? Being better at tactics everyone would have used in the past if they had the might?
Fast forward to today and you can still come up with an easy list of 20 countries that exhibit human rights abuses on their own people on a day to day basis.
Ok now add in the $210 trillion in unfunded liabilities that aren't part of the national debt. And mix in a little wage gap, AI impact, political divide, foreign conflicts, wars and military spending. Oh and the current annual interest expense is about 38% of all federal individual and Corp tax revenue.
How do you service the debt? You print and print. And then that causes more unrest. You can't default and you can't keep rates high enough for long to matter on inflation. Because you have to print to service the debt which only grows with higher rates and time, which you have less of when unrest grows.
Not alarmist at all. The can was kicked in 08. We are in a debt spiral. Government spending is a component of GDP, % of GDP is NOT the context. We are insolvent. 210+ trillion in unfunded liabilities! And about 70% of spending is mandatory.
The USD as world reserve currency is the biggest sword the US has.
At current rates or higher we just piss off every country as they trade in eurodollars. They have started the process and will move off USD unless we get back to a favorable rate for their debt loads.
With our debt load, it's either lower rates and continue to print and inflation (traditional and/or more asset bubbles). Or elevate rates and boost our interest expense and suppress the economy while fighting inflation until entities quit buying our debt and we lose significant power. And then, we still need our money printer and more inflation occurs.
As for me, I'm going with keeping recent "elevated" rates so big banks can scoop up smaller ones in short term and inflation has some check, then back to lower rates after election. I'll hold inflation hedging assets indefinitely.
US is screwed financially. Still better than most economies, but still screwed. Unfunded liabilities, AI, wage gap, education and housing costs, populism, political divide, geopolitical battles. There is no thesis that is great for the US unfortunately. It's best pitch is other countries are just as screwed or more.
There is no way out of the debt load. All solutions require printing like crazy. Or defaulting but you cannot give up the world reserve currency and the fallout would be catastrophic.
There is one way. US government can mint print any coin denomination they like. If US Mint print 10T usd coin for just special occasion and hand it over to Feds, all is good. I am waiting for this crazy idea to happen.
Seriously. You can also buy a Firewalla or similar and activate the auto-blocking of porn sites with a button. I also block Roblox for a good chunk of the day too haha. But my 6 yr old figured out he could hop of wifi and use the cellular connection to get around the Roblox ban.
You can't prevent adolescents from accessing porn. I used to dial-up to playboy.com. Magazines were available too as dad's just left them out. Kids know VPNs nowadays too.
Their idea of having everyone submit government ID to view website content is ridiculous.
You can join the military at 17. But in Texas, I guess you can't look at porn for another year.
100%! I posted data on American ancestry below which is pretty eye opening.
My grandfather was an American of German ancestry and served in the 95th infantry fighting in Europe in WW2. He's just as American as the wagon trail people. And Arnold Schwarzenegger is just as American as both of them too.
> When people in my home country think of an “American” they think of people of British descent.
Your home county is just completely wrong in their understanding.
Top 3 Ancestry groups (2015 Census) are actually 1) German, 2) Black/African-American and 3) Mexican. English comes in #5. [1]
If you tally English/Scottish/Welsh, you are only talking about 10% of the US population is British descent. And that was from the Census in 2015. In 2020 they had a White category which was #1, and only 8.2M identified explicitly as English and 1.75M as Welsh.
> if you relocated the population of say Bangladesh to the US, and gave everyone US citizenship, they wouldn’t suddenly become “American.”
They would. You don't have to adhere to some sort of defined American culture or fully assimilate into it, it's not Denmark. If you travel to NYC, Miami, Atlanta, New Orleans, Iowa, LA, San Fran, Dallas, Seattle, you are going to get different people and experiences and cultures. I can assure you they are all very much Americans.
I'd argue that those that worry about a scale of Americanism and where they'd place their own fellow citizens are actually the least American if anything. We can call it the American Culture Paradox. Those that think they are the most American and categorize or judge others are actually the least American!
> The American founders clearly recognized as much when they created a distinction between native-born citizens and naturalized citizens and wrote it into the Constitution.
Yes because they had such massive distrust for the monarchy they didn't want outsiders infiltrating and taking over their new government and country.
> Top 3 Ancestry groups (2015 Census) are actually 1) German, 2) Black/African-American and 3) Mexican. English comes in #5. If you tally English/Scottish/Welsh, you are only talking about 10% of the US population is British descent.
And yet, the vast majority of American language, culture, law, civil institutions, etc., come from the British. That’s why there are deep similarities between the Anglo countries on a variety of dimensions.
> They would. You don't have to adhere to some sort of defined American culture or fully assimilate into it, it's not Denmark.
You’re playing a word game where “American” is some shallow legal distinction, but “Danish” implies both a legal definition and a cultural one. Americans have a distinctive history, culture, and worldview which recent immigrants do not share. My parents were fully formed when they came to America at the age of 39. They aren’t American in anything other than a narrow legal sense. They don’t share American values, they aren’t the product of American history, etc. They are Bangladeshis—they think like Bangladeshis, embrace Bangladeshi values, etc.
My kids are markedly different in worldview and values from my parents (in ways that are often quite disconcerting to me, as an immigrant who is only halfway to American). Other Bangladeshis would instantly recognize that “your kids are Americanized.” You can chafe at the label because it offends your sense of multiculturalism, but the phenomenon exists and is instantly recognizable regardless of what label you use.
> And yet, the vast majority of American language, culture, law, civil institutions, etc., come from the British. That’s why there are deep similarities between the Anglo countries on a variety of dimensions.
And yet the English language is a West Germanic language.
Culture is objectively NOT a vast majority British.
Law - so what. Civil institutions - not really. Country was inspired by Parliament and Magna Carta but devised a better foundation.
The US is nothing like Great Britain. There's vastly more impact from Italians, Irish, Germans, French, Spanish, Mexicans and Blacks in our cities than British. Almost nobody celebrates anything British in any city lol. We celebrate our victory over them and that's it. California and Texas alone are bigger than the entire UK. British descendants are just a blip on the 330M+ population.
Yet you find celebrations and cuisine and other cultures and impact from many other ancestries and heritages. US Infrastructure - Irish and Chinese built railroads. Highway system was derived from the Germans. The British are irrelevant and again, your people back home are just wrong in their understanding.
I'm not playing a word game. You have a very antiquated perspective and I don't think you quite understand America. That's not abnormal. Many you might consider way more American than you don't either.
I understand what you are saying though. I truly do. I just think it's a non-productive perspective for this country. What point does it serve to alienate and put people in a box?
I have Muslim employees. They don't partake in things that others do. It's ok. I know Bangladeshi & Indian men share a bunch of values and perspectives with southern US men over northerners in general too. They also share values with regard to hierarchy/age/position with many New Yorkers and Chicagoans.
No American citizen needs to feel so insecure because they might have different values or don't share a certain culture. People that have never left America don't share the same cultures or values either (north vs south, right vs left). We have distinct regional cultures and we have anomalies even within states (Miami, Vegas, Austin, Chicago).
Your original statement "If my ancestors had shaped the America that exists today it would look very different!"
That's the point of America. At some point there were Blacks, Mexicans, Irish and Italians that felt like that.
Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. And a general belief in exceptionalism is a tradition.
E pluribus enum - out of many, one. That's what happened. And what will continue to happen. Your British narrative is just false.
