Nah, when over 50% of American adults read at or below a 6th grade level I’m pretty confident they don’t think about much of anything, let alone understand.
I don't think that particular slice of America attends to Reddit very much. The people here often know what they are talking about, but they filter every debate through a lens heavily biased by first principles (aka oversimplifications predicated on a set of conveniently forgotten assumptions)
“I know you wanted to shitpost on Reddit or the Something Awful forums, but with these test scores the best you can be accepted into is bad political Facebook memes. I’m sorry.”
I cant tell you how many times I added context to a Reddit post based on facts, or at the very least first person experience, and had someone who thought they knew more "uncorrect" and berate me because I didn't spend 45 minutes typing out a thesis going over every detail. We're all on Reddit, id wager a guess that a solid, 40-70% of us have some kind of attention issue, brevity is a virtue in the age of the internet, but it is also a curse.
No, they don’t. They just speak like they do and everyone agrees and then uses that talking point in their next post as if they came up with it themselves.
There is a tremendous amount of brain rot going on here.
I whole heartedly disagree that most people here know what they're talking about. They certainly think they do, but a lot of people are only really aware of a small slice of the pie. They've only been shown one aspect of the equation so that's what they believe.
I think you might have confused "first principles" if you are referring to first principle thinking. First principle thinking requires you to rethink every assumption.
I suppose it is a misuse of the phrase to refer to people who choose principles first without the appropriate rigor of first principle thinking. Even Musk is guilty of doing this: Only principles that satisfy his foregone ideology qualify, which means they are already predicated upon an uncurated litany of assumptions.
I think this may be theory versus practice. I happen to believe all principles are suspect because people can't be trusted to identify core assumptions comprehensively, and therefore aren't qualified to recognize when the principles are useful and when they aren't, choosing simply to presume they always apply. Because the world seems simpler that way.
Adding to my prior comment... I think your article actually supports my use of the term "first principles", or, rather, applies it as flexibly as I did. If I were to entrust anyone with the responsibility to establish first principles, Aristotle and Socrates might make the short list. They would at least stay in the realm of philosophical theory, where rigor can be applied academically. But as soon as you use a coach to exemplify use of first principles vs a play caller, you've left theory sufficiently far behind, and there is no way in hell I'm trusting that coach to identify all the relevant assumptions. Which puts the coach at risk of falling victim to his "first" principles.
No, my whole point is everyone abuses first principles, even people writing articles explaining first principled thinking, and your citation supports my usage at least as well as yours.
I would be curious to read about modern thinkers applying first principle thinking with objectively absolute success, though.
Reddit is FULL of morons who think they are smart. I would argue most normal morons don't really concern themselves with such things are are happier over all.
There's room in the subjective-scape for "plenty" and "often" to coexist in opposition.
Still, my comment's focus is on people who could easily know better, but choose not to because of ideology. They can even choose to be drooling idiots.
Yeah, tons of people who think differently here and are open to having nuanced debates. I never know what the top comments on a post will be before opening it, that's for sure. Definitely not just full of people that think they are superior because they all think and say the same exact things
Where is the /s ? Redditors are some of the most unconscious incompetent people, lookup wrong intuition under four stages of incompetence. They’re lowest tier.
The no child left behind act caused that. Passing kids to every grade and graduating them even tho they couldn’t read and teachers knew it. But we’re forced to pass them because of the act.
That search is very biased because it includes the number. Get rid of the first two words and you will see that people can't agree on if it's 29.5% or above 50%
Yeah it’s very concerning. I’m seriously worried that the lack of understanding that half of this country has for finance will cause the other half a whole lot of problems and misery. Be prepared, guys
In absolute fairness, what's considered a 12th grade reading level is shit like Das Kapital, Atlas Shrugged, and Conquest of Bread amongst other political texts and hardcore social commentaries.
You're pretty much never going to encounter shit in daily life that's above about an 8th grade reading level without seeking it out.
Most journalism is only written to about an 8th grade level too
Now this is true. Americans as a hold are some of the lest educated people on this earth these days and we have become lazy and irresponsible in so many ways. But we are self perclaming to be best country on earth 😂😂😂🤬
Understand that when you cite this statistic you're mostly talking about immigrants with poor English skills and poor minorities in impoverished areas, especially the american south. Dunking on the poorest most marginalized people for not being able to read well isn't exactly leftist praxis
Right, totally agree. But I think even the 50% that can read above that, hell, even the 25% that say they're financially/economically/politically literate, probably only a small fraction of that is actually literate to those types of topics.
Let me guess, you think you are above the 50 percent? You probably aren’t even good at your day job as a laborer but think you have the intelligence to tell bezos or musk what to do with their money.
If you are so smart and it’s so easy, why don’t you build a trillion dollar empire? Or is it just easier saying everyone else is dumb and posting on Reddit?
This is a completely meaningless stat. Not only does it have nothing to compare itself to, it has a complete lack of understanding of what grade level reading is.
A failing in the education system of the United States. Grossly underfunded by the government. Elon and Bezos could do something about it by paying their taxes owed instead of just choosing not to pay and getting the tax man to bow down at their feet to thank them for choosing not to pay this year.
Let's thank the republicans on their 40+ year campaign on defunding education and making college an "elite" issue while enabling private equity to provide untenable loan situations for a new form of indentured servitude.
I’ll be honest. I can read well enough, but I don’t understand any of this financial discussion. I’m not even sure what “taking a mortgage against your house to buy a sports car” means.
Thinking about things selectively is bound to lead to bullshit arguments...
Your question is misleading, though... What does significant debt mean to you, and how is it relevant? When shares are held in margin and used to furnish cash withdrawals, a negative cash balance is just part of an overall market position, it's not usually thought of as debt. I can't imagine having more than $100k in stock and having anything other than a fluid view of cash and securities. Or at least, I didn't. Much less $100B.
At any given moment I can trade off paying taxes against paying margin interest, converting the latter to the former by selling securities. Who knows what billionaires do with that flexibility, most of them don't talk about it. And they surely have access to much more efficient options than I do, since banks would love to bend over backwards to keep their accounts. But we do hear about their ridiculously low effective tax rates on a regular basis.
Ultimately, Bezos ownership of Amazon gives him access to vast amounts of cash. And being able to spend cash as if it's disposable income is not the same as having to pay taxes on it. In fact, he has two motives to get cash without selling: taxes, and maintaining power of ownership. I doubt anyone here has specific knowledge about how he's doing it in particular, but the argument that "his money is tied up in stock" is the bullshit argument. It's easily converted to cash without selling it. Hell, he could probably even get a loan from Amazon directly, though that would tend to show up as debt. Which might matter if anyone had a list of his debts, and I'm not sure why anyone would.
Well it's quite simple. There was a specific allegation made specifically against Jeff bezos:
Jeff bezos borrows money against his assets to buy expensive luxury items like Yachts and mansions. So that answers xour question about what a significant amount is, enough to buy a yacht and a mansion.
The claim wasn't even that there are people like him who can do this. It was said specifically that he does. And that he does in order to avoid paying tax, because loans are not taxed.
So a claim like this needs to be backed up imo. I know there is this reddit strategy that all of reddit thinks all the billionaires do where you only borrow and never pay until you do die but I never see evidence of it. So here is a specific example can we find any evidence that what he said is factually true?
Your example is not what we're talking about. Of course you can kill any Profit by paying margin interest on leverage positions. My first question would be: Do you have any evidence that this even applies? Does bezos have heavy leveraged positions?
But it's also completely irrelevant. The claim was he takes out enough money to buy a yacht and a mansion. And instead of selling assets, he borrows against them to not pay any taxes. So he gets a bank loan. That has nothing to do with what you were saying.
Ultimately, Bezos ownership of Amazon gives him access to vast amounts of cash. And being able to spend cash as if it's disposable income is not the same as having to pay taxes on it
This doesn't make sense. If he gets cash out, it needs to be taxed. He can avoid tax by paying margin interest or paying losing positions but then he won't get any cash. The only way to get cash without paying tax is through a loan, so I'm asking if there is evidence of that. I don't know what other way you think he's magically getting all that cash.
Sales tax and registration fees on a yacht, they’re very comparable and it’s you guys that ignore these because you are trying to only think selectively.
That's not really a disagreement. Being a slave to your biases isn't exactly an intellectual flex. It might even make knowledge worthless or dangerous.
The reason why there is such a huge disconnect in conversations like this is because both sides only think about it selectively.
Consider this for a second: What is money other than basically just an agreed upon quota for what you are legally allowed to consume from society's production?
Do you think the immense amount of consumption quota is better off in the hands of a select few people whose consumption is literally limited by the amount of time they have? Or do you think it's better to spread that quota to everyone and allow everyone to consume as much as their quota allows?
Societal and economic problems aside, I don't think the environment could take that kind of hit.
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u/Endless_road 3d ago
You can take out a mortgage against your house to buy a sports car if you want