GatorD42

7 ms·

31.
by GatorD42 8y ago
Conan Doyle was fascinating, I highly recommend the biography Teller of Tales, he was prescient about a lot of things (submarine warfare, other military issues during WWI) but also fooled by the rampant fraud in the spiritualist movement, l
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by GatorD42 8y ago
The CPI shows higher inflation than the PCE, which would seem to contradict your claim that PCE is better measure for capturing those categories. Given the large errors I have observed in measurement of electronics and wireless plans (biase
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by GatorD42 8y ago
I didn’t word the hypothetical that well. A better way to think about it would be a brand new iPhone 5 that to you looked and felt like an iPhone 5, but magically appeared like an iPhone X to everyone else. The “fashion effect” is the zero
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by GatorD42 8y ago
How much would you pay for a brand new iPhone 5 (the iPhone new in 2012) that looked exactly like an iPhone X and was indistinguishable by anyone else? If it's less than the price you would pay for a real iPhone X that price difference
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by GatorD42 8y ago
My argument isn't that the CPI is misleading mismeasuring prices, but falling to amount for quality improvements in products. I'm not sure the MIT data disproves that claim.
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by GatorD42 8y ago
I think there are many reasons to be skeptical of inflation and productivity statistics because they don’t seem to capture the rate of innovation in consumer goods such as smartphones and related areas like wireless plans. I wrote a piece o
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by GatorD42 9y ago
Caps lock to control is also super useful for switching tabs in safari. I miss it on my iPad keyboard.
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by GatorD42 9y ago
The Ehrlichman quote is controversial for more than the reason you cite. Baum claims Ehrlichman said that in 1994 while he was researching for a book he published in 1996 about the drug war. He didn't include the quote in that book, bu
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by GatorD42 9y ago
I see many of these discussions that focus on federal sentencing laws without considering that state laws and enforcement practices are far more important. State laws are varied and complicated - some states are far harsher than others. Yes
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by GatorD42 9y ago
It's very unpopular to say this but I think it's important not to make assumptions about bankers' actions before the crisis. Many people and bankers expected house prices to continue appreciating and made decisions based on t
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by GatorD42 9y ago
The rate the central bank sets is effectively a floor below which banks will not lend. The effective Federal Funds Rate in the U.S. is around 1.16% The one year Treasury rate is around 1.24%. People and banks are lending money to the govern
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by GatorD42 9y ago
It's not necessarily artificial to keep rates low. I would argue it's artificial to set rates anywhere, and likely market rates without intervention would be close to zero. Your theory of bank lending and asset bubbles is not cons
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by GatorD42 9y ago
The CPI in the U.S. does count shelter in its index. It is not very accurate because of issues measuring the prices of consumer electronics which are getting better and cheaper. See https://medium.com/@vince.pavlish/u