It is also completely unsurprising that the internet's most viewed websites is unchanging as the industry has matured, following the pattern of every industry since the industrial revolution.

And the structure of US elections completely discourages third parties, and this is not a new thing. In Europe things are much more dynamic -- France's current president founded his own party and then won the presidency and legislature like a year later. It's also probably good that people are living closer together, ideally as densely as possible, from an environmental perspective.

For example Tesla has a market value greater than every European carmaker combined, having gone from approximately 0 annual car deliveries to over a million in just a few years while revolutionizing electric travel. Or with space x developing reusable rockets that have utterly transformed the industry. These companies will contribute to economic dynamism and wealth creation for years and decades.

Macron said of American space companies, “Unfortunately they’re not European, but they took a bet”. Perhaps at a certain level you need people with lots of money who are willing to risk it

Just to give some examples, in the last week they published lengthy articles all with charts on topics as varied as a European private equity company's IPO, Ben & Jerry's activism, and tech companies shredding old memory disks.

There used to be strict leverage restrictions on funds that raised money from investors, as well as limits on who/what entities could invest in the funds. The article really goes into more detail but lawmakers and the Clinton administration eliminated these laws and birthed the modern private equity industry which is pretty much the definition of short term focus.

Porsche sells hundreds of thousands of vehicles per year with something like $20k profit per car on a $90k average selling price. There could be big demand for an innovative Tesla equivalent that didn't have so many build quality issues.

And Foxconn is desperate to get an Apple car contract. Car companies really screwed themselves by outsourcing everything to suppliers (who have much higher profit margins than the car manufacturers at this point) except the internal combustion engine which is losing importance fast. What I am seeing here for Apple is big demand, low barrier to entry, and high profits.

For example, a fair market rent for a two-bedroom apartment in the San Francisco area is considered to be $3,121 (£2,340) per month - nearly twice the 2008 figure of $1,592 (£1,190). In Cincinnati, Ohio, the figure is $845 (£632). This difference (270%) is much larger than the difference in median family incomes (50%).

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-44725026

It seems like the takeaway is only two percent of Americans say vague positive things when talking about what gives them life satisfaction, with many more saying specific positive things

“In the quarter to August used cars, hotel rooms and airfares made up less than 5% of America’s consumer-price index, but together accounted for the majority of overall inflation”

If we’re having inflation due to a tiny number of goods having large price spikes, it might be too early to predict disaster

https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2021/11/06/a-handfu...

New York for example benefits tremendously from its large financial industry that pays a lot in taxes. But arguably the industry is so concentrated in New York today because of federal laws that force the federal reserve to conduct its financial activities only in New York, among other hard coded advantages that the state has lobbied for. In addition, retirees who receive billions in benefits each year from the federal government commonly leave the state in favor of places like Florida, further distorting the picture. Unlike more fiscally prudent states, New York also has billions in tax exempt bonds outstanding that deprive the federal government of revenue but are not counted by the Rockefeller study.

https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/new-york-is-no-donor-state-...

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28319169

Points: 29

# Comments: 20

Most importantly, "the WIV housed numerous laboratories that worked on coronaviruses. Only one of them has the highest biosafety protocol: BSL-4, in which researchers must wear full-body pressurized suits with independent oxygen. Others are designated BSL-3 and even BSL-2, roughly as secure as an American dentist’s office."

"Shi Zhengli herself had publicly acknowledged that, until the pandemic, all of her team’s coronavirus research—some involving live SARS-like viruses—had been conducted in less secure BSL-3 and even BSL-2 laboratories."

There is apparently a history of SARS escaping from Chinese labs on multiple occasions, and the bat coronavirus from the mine that was human transmissible was the "only one whose genome closely resembled SARS". And according to the Wuhan lab itself, the coronavirus is "96.2%" similar to this sample, though they tried to hide this.

One thing I did not realize is that US researchers who conducted gain of function research tried to downplay and discredit the possibility of the virus originating from the wuhan lab. There was an anti-lab theory Lancet statement signed by scientists, and "Daszak had not only signed but organized the influential Lancet statement, with the intention of concealing his role and creating the impression of scientific unanimity."

Plus there's all the stuff about the miners shoveling bat poop for weeks and then dying of coronaviruses, and the Wuhan institute collecting and doing gain of function research on these similar-to-SARS samples. And then several of the lab's gain of function researchers became ill in late 2019. And there's the weird renaming of samples to hide the unmatched closeness of the mine samples and covid. This is just the absolute surface of the article. There's too much to list here

Edit: here's another amazement for the list: "Shi Zhengli herself had publicly acknowledged that, until the pandemic, all of her team’s coronavirus research — some involving live SARS-like viruses — had been conducted in less secure BSL-3 and even BSL-2 laboratories." And the article says "BSL-2 [is] roughly as secure as an American dentist’s office."

https://taxfoundation.org/taxes-on-the-rich-1950s-not-high/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27103498

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/jobs-report-growth-unem...