Inflation depends on the resource people are chasing after and the timeline of the cash infusion. Most resources can be provisioned at greater quantity without price increases if given enough time (years to decades). If everyone poof had double their normal income, and immediately tried to spend it all, there would be supply chain constraints and inflation, sure. Any UI scheme would need to have a gradual rollout to avoid that.

Not everywhere. Shockingly to many, cities with higher rates of apartment construction have falling rents.

https://www.redfin.com/news/rental-tracker-may-2025/

“Apartment construction in America has been hovering near a 50-year high, and even though renter demand is strong, it’s not keeping pace with supply,” said Redfin Senior Economist Sheharyar Bokhari. “Many units are sitting vacant for months, which means renters have power to negotiate concessions and landlords have less leeway to keep rents high.”

Overall job loss is not what happened the last thirty-odd times the federal minimum wage was raised, or any of the times individual states raised minimum wage, but go ahead and believe it will happen the next time for sure.

What has happened is the newly higher-paid employees spend that money, and the new demand creates new jobs, enough to offset the losses from the old employers deciding to manage with a smaller staff. As long as the size of the increase is in the same range as all the previous ones, there’s every reason to believe the effect would be the same.

I wish the federal congress would just do several years of catch-up increases, then tie it to inflation so we can stop arguing about it.

The stock holders are the owners. The owners can in theory direct the board of people representing their interests to do whatever, but generally stock owners want the board to do things they believe will make the value of the stock go up. Like any average owner of a private company, just we all get to watch since it’s a public company.

Do you think he might like the warmth? Parrot feet don’t have the feather insulation owl feet have, and I believe their circulation actually restricts to barely keep feet above freezing and save most warmth for their torso. Sounds uncomfortable.

I think I saw a clip of an Australian doing that with a chicken.

Military (who can’t refuse orders), retiree scabs (presumably lucratively paid), and those who can’t afford to go without a paycheck to support the strike (was ~10% of the controllers in 1981).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1981_Professional_Air_Traffic_Controllers_Organization_strike

On Monday, August 3rd, 1981, over 13,000 ATCs went on strike. By the morning, the strike had stopped over 50% of flights; this number rose to 70% later in that day… ATC towers were staffed by non-striking ATCs, along with military personnel and retired ATCs who agreed to return to work. Ultimately, the government action was effective at defeating the union. Only 1,300 of the striking workers were able to retain their jobs, and none of them attained their demands.

Not the Americans, no. The bases employ a lot of German civilians, and Germany is covering (as a loan to the US) the paychecks owed to the German employees.

Interesting, I hadn’t heard about that elsewhere. It looks like it’s not for US military personnel, only the civilian local employees at the base. https://www.stripes.com/theaters/europe/2025-10-22/germany-covers-federal-worker-paychecks-19507712.html

State officials said they had urged the German finance ministry to step in and ensure payment of the wages owed to Germans employed at the assorted U.S. military bases within its territory…

The ministry is preparing approximately $50 million in emergency funding to ensure workers are paid on time, German news outlet Tagesschau reported Wednesday.

…A union statement Monday said that the current shutdown, which began Oct. 1, differs from previous ones, when German staffers employed by the U.S. received pay in accordance with German labor law and the NATO Status of Forces Agreement.

“What is new is that the current U.S. administration is apparently unwilling to comply with German laws,” the Ver.di statement said. Rheinland-Pfalz officials said Germany expects to be reimbursed once the U.S. government reopens.

Debt is less risky to a country than a person in the sense of “if you owe the bank a million dollars, you have a problem; if you owe the bank a billion dollars, the bank has a problem”. Smaller countries with less attractive debt definitely have problems associated with excessive national debt. US debt is especially resilient because the next-most-attractive national debt is much less attractive, so it can fall a long ways before switching investments makes sense. But it can’t fall forever - there is competition - and the complexities of the market mean we can’t predict exactly what actions would be the final straw to trigger that shift, so even flirting in that direction is hugely risky.

Even short of the US falling out of most-attractive-debt status, there are bad things that happen as it becomes seen as more risky, tied to the way that risk perception drives up interest rates on Treasury bonds. Higher long-term interest rates make the national debt go up faster, accelerating the risk of full-on loss of most attractive status. They also benchmark all other interest rates in the economy, making all kinds of business investments less viable and thus stifling the innovation needed to keep the economy delivering for its people.

Voter enthusiasm is correlated with turnout. Less enthused Republican or independent Hispanics are more likely to stay home on election day.

Agree those who voted for Trump last election are unlikely to switch to voting Democrat, but if they stay home that makes the path to a Democrat victory more viable. And for that, polls like this are a helpful data point.

The current iteration of agentic AI technology used by Logitech is little more than a glorified note-taking bot capable of summarizing meetings and “generating” the occasional idea.

Given that most humans hate note-taking and avoid it, but it has a lot of value as a meeting output, getting a machine to do it makes sense.

I also heard a podcast where a consulting company couldn’t get their client contact to make any decisions because he wanted his CEO to review, but she had a busy schedule and was never available. The consultants trained an AI on this CEOs writings, and presented it to their client contact. The model was convincing enough the client felt comfortable making decisions. I thought that was interesting, and this article refers to something similar with models of stakeholders.

It’s not about the driver experience, it’s about the road inspection. If the patient has a pre-cancerous polyp the inspector sees, they will cut it out, problem averted. If the patient has a pre-cancerous polyp obscured by stool, it gets missed and then in a few years turns to cancer. And survival rates for colon cancer are depressingly low.

Guessing the question wasn’t clear, since Lays is both the name of the original product (potato chips) and the brand (which without looking it up I would guess includes other types of chips such as corn). But results from a well-formulated survey would have less clickbait value, so the shock results get reported.

It dropped to 30%, which is still painful but larger businesses (which make of the vast majority of the stock excahnges) can manage without too much stress. The 100% shock number lasted less than a week, if I remember correctly. Until now. TBD how long this go round lasts.

Deposits of rare earths aren’t rare, and the US has them, too. It’s the processing of ore into usable metal that China really has a lock on, and the processors have promoted development of the nearby deposits because that makes logistical sense. Sure, other countries could catch up if motivated and organized about it, but building the expertise and infrastructure would take years to decades. If we want to have access to new electronics two years from now, we will capitulate to China.