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User ID: 3534
Public subsidy is a funny charge. Typically after all fuel taxes from every level of government are accounted for, it adds up to a quarter of the budget for road construction and maintenance in America. Tolls, registration and other fees only provide another 10 percent. 65% of funding is unrelated to usage. Which, this is typically how subsidy is defined when applied to rail networks.
“Same place” is one heck of a strawman. It really depends on the transit network. The rail lines that reach out into the suburbs around Munich, that lots of people in my wife’s extended family use to commute, as an example, are great. And Munich, with comparatively less of its streets dedicated to cars, is pretty great, too.
Mass transit is so much more efficient at moving people through dense areas. There is certainly demand for transit, but in a healthier society it does not have to be by car. The original plans for federal interstates accounted for this and were supposed to be bypass routes. You are correct about a potential lack of reduction in congestion, only because public transit in NYC is so off-putting an experience. There are no strangers having dissociative episodes in one’s car. Europe and Asia’s more successful mass transit systems absolutely have resulted in less urban congestion than our car culture.
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1d ago
This is leaves out its genuine major benefit. Most urban planning studies show that people will adapt to whatever transit conditions are present, and the impact of induced demand is quite real. Freeway lane expansion in the long term, counterintuitively, doesn’t much reduce congestion and usually slightly increases vehicle miles traveled. Congestion pricing could* be a wonderful tool to help steer more people to mass transit, which is more than sensible in the single-most population dense city in America.
*The problem with this in NYC (and other Democrat-run large cities) is that a number of liberal policies spanning decades, from the courts banning involuntary commitment in all but the most severe cases, to more-recently a pronounced aversion to policing quality of life violations in public spaces, has made public transit deeply unpleasant.
Wherever the hub for an industry is, is the place to be, for networking, available talent pool, etc. JPMC has 300,000 employees and it’s absolutely fine that they don’t keep their mortgage division on the isle of Manhattan. But as long as NYC is America’s financial hub, they’ll miss out on talent and all sorts of other opportunities that are downstream of networking if they move their investment banking out of the city while Goldman, BoA ML, MS, etc. don’t. It doesn’t matter that it is NYC specifically, but it is NYC, practically.
Maybe TXSE takes off, maybe ICE moving some operations to Texas is part of that same migration. But it’s a huge risk to pull out of NYC too soon. If the financial industry ever actually picks a new hub, it’ll be a gradual shift.
There are all sorts of smaller businesses around the financial industry that have significant presences in NYC as well. How many of you are familiar with what Topan Merrill and RRD’s financial print divisions do? When Latham is working on a company’s IPO or merger they can set up shop in one of the former’s conference rooms, etc.
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1d ago
As an aside, William F. Buckley Jr. ran a spoiler campaign against George Lindsey for NYC mayor. Post-Goldwater’s defeat, WFB was worried about the Conservative wing of the Republican Party not being seen as a contender to its Liberal wing, with Lindsey being of the latter. Most of Buckley’s support came from the outer boroughs. And among his positions were the construction of dedicated bike lanes, reduced public transit fares based on income, and congestion pricing.
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2d ago
Do you make any distinctions between Germany, Austria, the 17 Germanophone Swiss cantons, the Alto Adige, etc.?
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2d ago
The left has won for a century pushing things that nobody wanted, because they've discovered an entire strategy based around an ideological vanguard pushing insane things on the masses.
Like an end to segregation? The pro-segregationists oft spoke of outside agitators.
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2d ago
All-male solidarity sounds hella-gay; there’s no problem with it because why would anyone want it?
Mencken preemptively dismissed the incels and feminists when he noted there would never be a winner in the battle of the sexes, as there’s too much fraternizing with the enemy.
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14d ago
Why is the assumption that these DOGE cuts are intelligent? From what I’ve seen the better argument is that it’s a shoot-first-and-let-God-sort-them-out blitz on the bureaucracy?
Clinton, and before him Reagan, both cut back parts of the bureaucracy, but worked with experienced administrators who better knew what they were looking for and via a more considered process. Musk is employing 20-something sperges who can run SQL queries, if I’m not missing much more?
My favorite two examples of the latter are canceling government contracts because the payees were Politico and a Thomson Reuters, thinking the federal government was subsidizing journalism that wasn’t sufficiently MAGA.
Rather, Politico owns and operates Politico Pro, and Thomson Reuters does the same for Westlaw. Politico Pro is used to track the progress of legislation. Even Republicans commonly use it. Depending on your subscription, the $7,000 or $11,000 annual fee is going to do the job much better and cheaper than a staffer hired at minimum wage ever could.
And asking regulators and government lawyers to do without Westlaw access is even more stupid. Any lawyers they would be facing as counter-parties will be using it.
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16d ago
Well, even among those examples, drill-baby-drill was about energy-independence and autarky. Cheap Canadian fossil fuels delivered efficiently by pipeline wasn’t harming our economy.
Wine I know a fair amount about and at the highest end it doesn’t matter that much. Mouton Rothschild won’t have any trouble selling their next vintage, they’ll just send more of it to the rest of the EU, Asia (and very, very quietly as always) the gulf oil states. Neither will any luxury brand selling conspicuous consumption from Champagne, Burgundy, Bordeaux, Tuscany or the Piedmont. The American rich here will pivot a bit and pick up some of the slack on the decreased sales that will hit Nappa and the Willamette downstream of the trade war. RIP the middle class prices for Eola-Amity Pinot Noir, as the vineyards are younger and word hasn’t reached foreign markets.
You mentioned cutlery. We’re upper middle class. We already have Wüsthof for our kitchen and Zwilling for our table, and we’re done for life. No tariff on dropping them off for sharpening. The same for our Le Crueset and Staub cookware. Clean any carbon deposits on the enamel with baking soda, keep the cast iron properly seasoned, and we’re set until we die.
Tariffs are a consumption tax, pain is relative, retail consumption accounts for a larger percentage of working and middle class income, and the working class buys cheap crap they need to replace on the regular.
There’s no tariff on first and second mortgages; country club, dining club and town club memberships; summer homes; private school tuition; season tickets to sports and the arts; and vacations.
And all of this is moot since as of yet none of the tariffs are targeted.
Rolex doesn’t sell that many watches, on purpose (and in their specific case deliberately under supplies their most in demand models). The largest retailers in America are all low-margin, high volume.
Low-margin wins because you don’t deposit percentages in the bank, you deposit money. Costco is the largest and most-profitable wine seller in America because of their inexpensive white label offerings. “Yeah, we made a dollar a bottle on our $7 Argentinan Malbec. But we sold two million bottles last year.” Kermit Lynch doesn’t have similar income. The scale of low-margin business is tremendous.
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17d ago
One wrinkle that I wonder about, regarding its applicability… If you look at what customer service jobs have been outsourced, they’re jobs that interface with the general public. I’ve worked in finserv for a couple decades now, and there are still niche customer service jobs around provided the customer base is wealthy. This may be either for high net worth individuals, or for business to business customer service. The wealthy have made it be known to their service providers they do not want to talk to John unless John’s legal name is John, and not if it is actually Ramesh.
I speculate that we will see similar for AI. The masses will get chat bots named John. The wealthy will pay to speak to a meatspace John.
I can't figure out to what extent Americans realize how off-putting their rhetoric is for people on the outside. Too drunk on power to care, or actually believe themselves to be victimized, justified in belligerence? Either way, very effective at making people root for US humiliation. If not reflected at the top of US hierarchy, I'd think it an astroturfing campaign ran by US adversaries.
A couple thoughts: America-bashing has been de rigueur in much of Europe, as an example, and its intensity varies by country, but coexists with interest and appreciation. We have the same, here, in the inverse.
Nothing is monocausal in the national politics of a huge country with 340 million people. One valuable framework to pair with others would be an understanding of different regional cultures given America’s great size. I think Woodard’s American Nations is an improvement over Hackett Fisher’s Albion’s Seed. Some regional cultures are comparatively insular, and some more cosmopolitan. Our presidential elections to an extent involve voting blocks of regional cultures, with some historically wedded to one party, and others not. Note, these regions are not defined by state lines. Woodard’s Left Coast is designated west of the coastal ranges. Portland and Seattle are similar. The eastern two-thirds of Washington and Oregon are similar to Idaho and Wyoming.
Education level has much to do with whether or not Americans are aware of the sentiment inspired by Trump’s trade war. Which Americans you’re talking about informs how much sensitivity they have to the mood of our allies abroad. The inland American West has sparse population due to little water, has been treated as a kind of internal colony largely because of this, and has thus developed a very independent culture. They’re standoffish towards New York and D.C. so you can guess their level of concern for London and Tokyo.
One final thought about the pot calling the kettle black… My family are mostly college-educated, upper middle class white collar Republicans, who have quietly voted for Libertarians or relatively moderate Democrats, when they can be found, which is not easy given where we live, since Trump and MAGA have asserted broad control over Republican primaries. We’re not Trump supporters. But I can’t help note some hypocrisy from our European allies. Many Germans were shocked at Vance’s speech and his statements that were taken to be intervening in their politics. Ask the same what are their views are on Merkel receiving Obama in Germany while he was only the first-term junior senator from Illinois, and a presidential candidate — not even the president-elect — which was clearly designed to boost Obama’s foreign relations bonafides to U.S. voters ahead of the election, and you get shrugs. Obviously the impact of Trump’s trade war is far more serious than either Merkel’s actions or Vance’s speech. But I wouldn’t classify the populations of our allies abroad as always concerned with how their actions are perceived here, either.
I think some of the alternate explanations given below make the most sense. Trump is notably narcissistic, even for a politician(!), and since he’s been publicly opining on politics, has been comfortable flip flopping on a great many issues based on what response he expects to receive.
However, two things he has always been consistent on have been his dislike for immigration and free trade, going back to his presidential exploratory committee as a Reform Party candidate, and even further, with his publicly espoused hostility to Japanese investment in America in the 1980s. He’s a rather narrow-minded zero-sum fellow. And not that great of a real estate developer, which is why he had to exit the business and move into licensing and television (most of the buildings that still have his name attached were developed by others, the general public is dumb in that way). I think getting pushed out of that industry due to his own incompetence (he opened a casino that went bankrupt), hardened his flawed view that absolutely nothing is mutually beneficial in business.
Maybe Ackman missed one of the two political views Trump has held for decades? Couldn’t say.
A lot of the great books lists are (or were) designed for students in the West to understand how Western intellectual traditions have evolved. They were designed to be somewhat narrow, which is required if you’re trying to trace a common thread from Ancient Greece through to the modern day.
If keeping with the original mission above, if you wanted to introduce Confucius, then you would need to tie it into his influence on Leibniz, and Leibniz’s subsequent influence on later Western thought. Then you have to ask how influential Leibniz was and if you want to devote the bandwidth to him and Confucius.
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17d ago
Wine is really sensitive and dynamic. Different weather in various years can change how different vintages of the same wine taste, as an example.
Terroir is really significant with regards to wine and the restrictions imposed on labeling are still incredibly helpful to consumers as they inform customers about where a wine’s grapes were grown.
The global standard is that a certain percentage of grapes have to be from whatever appellation is listed on the wine. Most countries set that threshold at 85%. In America it’s 75%.
Using U.S. appellations as examples and drilling down to a single vineyard in the Russian River Valley.
American Wine: Grapes come from multiple states with no state accounting for 75%.
California Wine: Grapes come from multiple counties with no county accounting for 75%.
Sonoma County: At least 75% of the grapes come from this county. Vineyards may not be located in a recognized or highly regarded subregion.
Russian River Valley: 75% of grapes come from this noted AVA subregion of Sonoma County that has excellent growing conditions for specific grape varietals.
Single Vineyard: This will be listed in addition to the appellation. Sold as a premium offering among the vintner’s product range. 100% of grapes will come from a single vineyard within the producer’s estate to maximize the expression of particular soil and climate conditions.
I think people are most commonly aware of the restrictions around what can be called Champagne, and a meme exists around it. But it isn’t snobbishness. Crémant is French white sparkling wine made in the same method, and the same restrictions apply. If you’re making Crémant du Jura, Crémant d’Alsace, Crémant du Bourgogne, etc. then your grapes need to come from the applicable region.
They don’t make too much else in Champagne other than sparkling white wine, so there isn’t really the same need for a Crémant designation. Whereas the regions that use the Crémant designation also make many more flat wines.
Since we stick to a quarter bottle, each, on the supermajority of evenings, it still does deliver a light buzz. Technically, industry standard is five glasses of wine in the standard 750 ml bottle, so we’re drinking 187.5 ml versus 150 ml.
On the sparkling wine front, there has been a lot of terrible German Sekt produced over the decades but things have improved in recent, so there is now good value to be had as it still has a bit of stigma from the old days in export markets. We recently purchased a very nice bottle and are waiting to open it; we quite like all of our neighbors except one, and their home was just listed. Going to pop the cork once we learn it’s been sold.
And here is a famous sommelier, relative to the wine world, reviewing a bunch of the aforementioned Costco Kirkland Signature wines. The $10 seasonal Old Vine Zinfandel isn’t mentioned but is a favorite of ours.
My wife and I are oenophiles. But unless we’re in a social setting stick strictly to 1/4 of a bottle each, a night, drinking with dinner. We usually cook dinner to cover two nights, eating leftovers on the second, so one bottle of wine chosen to pair with dinner also covers two nights.
I love white Bordeaux, red Burgundy, and top Riesling from the Rheingau, those are for rare, special occasions given cost.
Among my favorite wines I would not feel irresponsible drinking at home on a weekend evening:
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Pinot Noir from the Willamette Valley (and in particular its Eola-Amity Hills AVA) in Oregon
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Chenin Blanc from Jasnières
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Muscadet from the better producers
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Tannat from Uruguay
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Crémant du Jura (cc: sparkling wine for @mrvanillasky)
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Badisch Spätburgunder
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Riesling from the Pfalz
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Barberra from the Piedmont
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Assyrtiko from Santorini
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Alsatian Gewürztraminer
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Austrian Grüner Veltliner
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Pinot Blanco from the Alto-Adige*
*Used to be part of Austria, so many of these Italian producers have names like Tiefenbrunner.
On weeknights, Costco bats about .500 on its Kirkland Signature offerings relative to price. On the very low end, their $5 Italian Pinot Grigio is drinkable when served very cold in the summer, which given its price, is all anyone tethered to reality could ask. We’ve tried most of their offerings and usually stick to the better half of their mass produced white label wines.
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20d ago
It's certainly not mono-causal. The point is the low-information voter, and not just in America, now has anti-incumbency bias.
This is correct, but going further, social media rewired the masses. Low-information voters in the era of analog media possessed incumbency bias. Low-information voters in the era of digital media now have anti-incumbency bias.
In the 20th Century, the list of incumbent presidents that lost the White House is: Taft (faced a third-party run from Roosevelt that split the Republican vote), Hoover (the Great Depression), Carter (stagflation and the Iran Hostage Crisis), Bush the Elder (significant third-party run from Perot). Now we've gone back-to-back in incumbent losses while third-party candidates garnered nowhere near Roosevelt or Perot's support.
Social media stumbled into boosting negative content. They weren't optimizing for it, but rage bait travels faster and farther than other kinds of content, and as they were opting for engagement above all else, their algorithms boosted rage bait. There are certainly echo chambers, but still that rage gets directed at whomever is in power.
Martin Gurri's 2018 book The Revolt of the Public tracked this through events like the Arab Spring, arguing that the center can't hold, and whomever replaces an incumbent becomes the new center, which still can't hold. The Financial Times picked up on the gist in looking at how most incumbent parties in Europe, regardless of if they were right or left, lost in 2024.
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20d ago
If global warming opens new shipping lanes in the arctic (likely), that is a potential source of conflict. I suspect someone in the Trump administration has this notion, as well. It’s the best case for wanting to acquire Greenland.
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21d ago
I don’t think the aim is to impress anyone. And the Trump administration certainly has an interest in being very aggressive, on the other side of things. To the point made elsewhere, there has been additional evidence about involvement with disruptive protests, etc. for the other students picked up by ICE for deportation (i.e. Mahmoud Khalil) and I have not seen any surface in this case.
What’s the practical difference between a significant advantage and a requirement in a lucrative and competitive industry? Sure, we can go back up thread and parse “have to”. I fully concede there is no law mandating it.
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