• 0 Posts
  • 9 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: June 11th, 2023

help-circle





  • One fallacy of this argument is that it’s only valid as long as the value of your home increases more quickly than the cost of work put into it. Absent inflation or swelling demand for homes (I.e. population growth I.e. immigration), flipping homes risks gaining you nothing more than a higher property tax base. Maybe it works in Florida, but not everywhere.

    Also: if people insist on treating their primary home as an investment, then we can take away all of these tax advantages the article crows over and we’ll find that suddenly, the deal isn’t so good.

    What a grift: converting a public good (supportive housing policy) into personal gain. This attitude will be another nail in the coffin of the “American dream“ of universal home ownership.




  • My pet hypothesis is that Putin and Prigozhin were engaging in a bit of play acting to stage Wagner troops for an action against Ukraine (Prigozhin benefits) and illustrate the legal and financial measures that Putin will take against powerful dissenters (Putin benefits).

    With 25k troops, there’s simply no way Wagner could have succeeded in a coup. The regular army is better equipped and could have severed their supply lines with minimal effort, starving the coup with minimal bloodshed. They could have done this in their own interests, and not necessarily in defense of Putin.

    Considering how swiftly Wagner’s offices were raided and their assets seized, this affair makes more sense as a morality tale to caution antsy oligarchs than as a military action.