This price tracking site has them at 2.50 2 years ago. How long ago were they $1?
https://aislegopher.com/product/great-value-vanilla-wafers-11-oz/078742020433
Amazon has a really useful long term price checker. Their number 1 best selling brand of Jasmine rice is Iberia. A 5 pound bag is currently 5.18. In 2021 it alternated between $5-10 depending on the deal.
You can look at any staple good this way. In competitive marketplaces prices are flat to down. It’s that brands and retailers are taking price where they can.
Amazon is not a very good reference unless you’re shopping specific brands, especially if you use your own buying history (because you will likely buy on a deal). Using packing tape as an example, here’s what I can see in price history:
- Number 1 best seller in packing tape on Amazon is Scotch 6 pack heavy duty, which is 13.99. Depending on the seller, the price varies daily, but Amazon’s price (the price that Amazon itself sells the product at, when Amazon is the seller) was 13.99 in 2021, 14.99 in 22 and 23, and now back to 13.99 this year
- Number 2 is another Scotch variety (Sure Start), price in 2021 was 12.49, then it went up to 12.99 and 13.99 over the past two years. This year it has been selling (from Amazon, not third parties) at 11.99 and 12.99.
- Number 3 is the Amazon Basics equivalent (6 pack, with dispenser) is currently 12.80, after entering the market in 2022 at 14.40
- The top selling 36 pack I can find is a no name brand that is priced at 48.99…but in the past year its low deal price is 39.19. But this is a no name brand. You wouldn’t wait for this brand to do this deal, instead, the way to think about it is that there are 80 of these brands on Amazon and there’s always one available with a ridiculous deal.
Pretty much any outlier player gets your type of comment and it looks dumb in a year or two.
Over the first 25 games last season he averaged 18/11/3 with 3.0 BPG and on a pretty bad 44/27/77
Over the next 20 he averaged 22/10/4 with 3.3 BPG on 50/34/84
Over the last 25 he averaged 23/11/5 with 4.4 BPG on 47/35/78
Wemby did not play on a playoff-relevant team last year, so we didn’t get to see him in a lot of big national games late. But the improvement really was shocking and consistent. He did it without a PG and as a rookie. And so actually it’s not insane to think that he could be a 30/13 guy with 5 BPG by the back half of next year now that he has Chris Paul helping. We are reaching uncharted waters territory.
This is absolutely not true. Insane to suggest this. It’s as close to the opposite as possible. There was a widely reported Barry Bonds / BALCO investigation in 2004. Canseco’s book was probably the tipping point for the steroids era, not something that was denied. The book came out in February 2005 and by March 17, 2005 Mark McGwire was all but admitting to Congress that he did steroids.
This is preposterously wrong. You are badly misremembering. Juiced was one of the core markers of the steroid era. Juiced led to Canseco becoming a household name - he was consistently getting attention from major non-sports outlets and ultimately it led to a Congressional hearing. And all of this was in a matter of weeks. This was all despite Canseco actually being crazy. There are many claims in the book that are hilariously ridiculous.
But the only people who called him crazy were the people he accused. Juiced went on sale in Feb 2005, was immediately a best seller, and by March there was the infamous Congressional hearing where McGwire more or less admitted to steroids. What in your mind was the timeline where nobody believed Canseco?
Not really correct. What having a mortgage does is allows you to lock in your housing payments. Rent is a component of CPI, so the way to think of it is that having a mortgage puts you ahead of renters if rent inflation is positive, and behind if it’s negative. Even if you get a 10% raise and overall inflation is 2%, if rent inflation is -1%, your mortgage is putting you at a disadvantage relative to renting.
No, you can’t. You can only claim your office as your office. That’s correct. That is also true of a large corporation
This is like everything wrong with modern science, lmao. A scientific finding with no actual underlying scientific basis, that serves no purpose other than to make grabby headlines, goes viral. And it turns out it was just a coding error. So the person corrects it, but then says “well actually it’s partially true” and modifies it to be incredibly clumsy p hacking. Like a speed run of all the traps in modern academic science.
Could not be any more wrong. People who use property as tools get to depreciate those tools as an asset. If you are any self-employed professional, in any line of work, you get to depreciate your home office every year.
It is not a “big business only” benefit to get to depreciate real estate. It’s that when you pay tax on profits, the cost you pay for real estate has to be factored in.
The players get paid no matter what. If the players get paid more than the % allocation they negotiated, they literally have to get the money clawed back out of their paychecks.
I would say the exact opposite. Kraft has looked both better with the ball in his hands and better as a blocker. Being a capable blocker is important, because it creates high value goal line looks (being a capable blocker is distinct from being a situational blocker). It’s very difficult to stay on the field as a TE if you can’t run after the catch and you can’t block. You essentially turn into a situational pass catcher.
I probably wouldn’t want shares of either one right at this moment, but Kraft right now looks like the better player. I’d keep an eye on camp but you should generally just bet on the better guy and not read too much into “styles”. They drafted both guys with the intent of being multipurpose TEs, don’t be fooled just because one is well rounded.
They got swept in the first round by the team that lost to the team that lost to the team that won the title.
Last year, the Suns got the most games out of Durant that he’s played in 7 years. They got the most games out of Nurkic that he’s played in 6 years, and only the 3rd time in his 12 year career he’s played >70 games. Nearly all of their key rotation pieces had relatively healthy seasons. And again, they finished 1 game out of the play in and got swept in the first round.
This Suns team was very far away from contention this year, and they’re old and injury prone. Right now, you’re a New York Nets fan in the 2014 offseason. There’s really not good reason to believe a team with so many aging vets will go from a first round sweep to actual contention. More likely you’re sitting here in 6 months saying “if only it weren’t for these injuries!”
Again, MSA is a poor reference. You need to look at CSA, because MSA underestimates most larger markets in dense populations. The Milwaukee CSA is 2M, and is adjacent to the 1M Madison CSA. Minnesota’s is 4M. That difference is smaller than the difference between Minnesota and the smallest “mid” market team I named. It’s also smaller than the difference between Phoenix and the smallest mid market team I named.
Minnesota is a small market. Small and big aren’t just measuring different sides of a median. And MSAs and “TV markets” are misleading because densely populated areas have more TV markets despite all supporting the local team.
If you look at CSAs, which give you a lot clearer a picture, there are 2 gargantuan markets (NY and LA) and then nine more in the 7.5-10M range. Beyond that there’s a big drop off. After the drop off are Detroit, Phoenix, Orlando, Minnesota, and Cleveland. Those are all small market teams. Technically, a few are above the median. But that’s not how things work. There are only four big market teams. Then there are nine mid-to-large market teams. Then everyone else is small.
By CSA, the difference between Miami (13th biggest) and Minnesota (16th) is the larger than Minnesota (16th) and Memphis (30th). The rankings are misleading. Most teams are small.
Government owning Boeing would make this problem much worse. The government regulating and prosecuting Boeing is a much better outcome. They could even regulate it like a utility. But ownership would mean that the government would no longer be a critical onlooker, but would be the originator of the problem. There’s nothing really that you get out of nationalization that you wouldn’t get out of heavier regulation, for a business like this. Nationalization is needed when you need to pour money in.
Imagine you start digging into this and the board of Boeing is all congressmen. Don’t you think the congressmen might want to not investigate quite as hard, if they’re liable? That’s what nationalization does. It’s necessary in some cases. Just not ones that look like this.
For reference, Austin built 23,000 apartments in 2023 alone.
https://austin.urbanize.city/post/austin-apartment-construction-how-many
Comparing AirDNA AirBNBs to the number of currently available for rent apartments (via Zillow) is not an especially good reference.
For example, there are nearly 36,000 vacant just multi-family units in Austin, as of Q4 last year. That’s just multi-family, not counting any apartments.
There are 240,000 apartments total in Austin. If all 17,000 AirBNB units were unique, individual apartment units, and none were double counted, this would be roughly a 7% increase in housing stock, in an environment where 10%+ increases are standard annually. It would make a positive change, but a very small one, and would generally just be a handout to hotel owners.
A “gazillion” is not a number. Go down the list of the richest people in the world, there are two types: heirs, and people who strategically took debt at appropriate times. The “no debt” rule is not for Warren Buffet or David Rubenstein or Jamie Dimon. It’s for uncle Frank, who will piss the money away if he doesn’t run it to the bank as soon as he earns it.
This is cope. If this person would like to open a business, paying off their mortgage would be close to the worst decision he or she could possibly make. I can’t imagine worse advice to give someone looking to start their own business in the current environment. The best thing you can do for yourself to “negotiate differently”, “act differently,” or etc is to make as much money as possible. The sole reason for this person to pay off their mortgage would be the opposite - they are intimidated by math and finances and they don’t trust themselves with liquidity. That would be a good reason to make this move.
I personally have more liquid assets than dollars on my mortgage. The reason I have not reallocated my assets to pay off my mortgage is because I’m not a dipshit. Having a low mortgage is an incredible asset - to voluntarily piss it away is a favor to the bank. Counter to what you are claiming, virtually every person who makes their money by managing money operates the same way (including Dave Ramsey). People who actually understand money don’t fear debt, they use debt as a tool. It’s people who are not sophisticated who need to pay debt as a form of dogma.
The person who should make this move is not a person who should then open a business. If you fear capital markets so deeply that you can’t sit down and do math on paper to dictate your decisions, you absolutely should not bet your own livelihood on your ability to operate an entire business.
From an investment allocation perspective it does not make sense to compare a risk free investment with a risk bearing investment. There are investment categories that are long term much better than S&P 500, but they bear greater risk, and so they aren’t “better”, just carry a different risk/reward profile. A FDIC-backed HYSA is risk-free. That’s the comparable cost, not a higher risk category. Advising someone with this risk appetite to invest in an index fund is not listening to them and not doing them a service. Probably why they are reflexively not listening to anything from anyone.
Imagine San Diego built so many units that they actually added a full second San Diego to their population.
And then they did it again.
And then they did it again.
If they built three more San Diegos on the same land, they would only be as densely populated as places like:
- Cambridge, MA
- San Francisco, CA
- West Hollywood, CA
Not fair to count market gains vs. risk free gains of paying off the mortgage. The actual savings based on this person’s math is about $67K for the risk-free alternative of a HYSA.
In this case it would be easier to retire without paying the mortgage than paying the mortgage. If this person retired today, they “pay” an additional $6K per year with no mortgage and no cash vs. keeping the mortgage and the cash. If the goal is early retirement, this would be an especially poor move.
If you care about interest this much, instead of paying the amount to the bank, take the full $288K and put it in a high yield savings account at the bank. For every $1 of interest you pay the bank, the bank will pay you ~$1.67 in interest at today’s rates. And if this ever changes, you can just pay off the mortgage then.
Paying off this mortgage costs a net of $67K of risk-free dollars. That is, this person will be $67K poorer by making this move, vs. the alternate risk free move. Not vs investing or whatever else, vs. a good old FDIC-insured savings account.
Yes, if you are writing a screed against all the places that offer low prices, it is very likely that you are experiencing a very big increase in prices. That is not surprising. If you are structurally opposed to Walmart and Amazon and you’re buying shit at Dollar General and mom and pop stores, you are going to experience price increases.
What these stores have learned over the past 2-3 years is that fewer customers shop based on price. For example, if you raise your price of rice $2-3, some customers will leave. But even when some customers are shown data that a product is getting cheaper on Amazon, rather than purchasing on Amazon, they write an unhinged screed about billionaires and social justice and the Home Improvement TV show.
The cheapest grocery store in my town is not overrun by demand, even though the difference is severe and the quality is great. People do not give a fuck about prices, and stores have been getting better about raising prices to those customers. And you are one of those customers. That’s why you’re noticing bigger price increases than everyone else.
Has anyone see this little gem posted around the interwebs? While undoubtedly we’ve seen a jump in grocery prices the last two years (and more) this is the kind of dubious, undocumented, improper context bull corn so many folks get amped up about, mostly for political posturing.
inflation