If a landlord has a mortgage on the property and can't afford to pay it without the tenant's money, they can't afford to be a landlord. Otherwise, they're doing arbitrage and there's no reason this shouldn't come with risk.
Why do we treat landlords as a business type that simply isn't allowed to take a loss?
That doesn't make sense. Renting is a business transaction and not charity. Why should a tenant get to pay late just because the other party is an individual and not a corporation? If you own a home and are late to pay the mortgage, you don't get to say sorry, I will pay when I want.
If you're relying on the tenant to pay the mortgage, you can't afford to be a landlord and you should sell the unit to free up housing stock.
The housing market is broken because in most markets there's a company helping landlords price fix the market. Landlords in most of the US have considerably more power than the tenant and this is especially true in the south eastern part of the US where most major cities allow evictions without cause with sufficient notice (usually 2-3 month notice) and extremely fast evictions with cause (~10-15 day notice). Rent control is effectively non-existent.
I sympathize a bit with small landlords in California or New York, but things are rigged in your favor most other places.
Where do you draw the line around what voices need to be included? Conservative politics have moved so far to the right that centric liberal politics is what old conservative politics used to be (because democrats are big tent, and the republicans have been shedding voters due to extremism).
Balance isn't positive or useful when it shifts things further one direction, especially when there's such a massive shift.
Indeed. While you might dislike Neo-liberalism, Reagan-ism, or Bush's "Compassionate Conservatism," as Walter Sobchak said: at least it's an ethos.
Trumpism believes in nothing but suborning yourself to Trump's will and needs. Sure there's some vague isolationism and xenophobia, and some pandering to Christian nationalism, but the only consistent policy position is fielty to Trump. That's why there aren't any interesting Trumpist pundits. The House is twisting itself in knots right now because they can't decide what he wants or will tolerate regarding Ukraine funding. A real party with a policy would have an articulatable agenda, probably with some dissenters on this or that, but all the current Republican party can agree on is how great dear leader is, and Democrats are bad.
Yes and: what ever their pre Trump "conservative" bonafidas, neither French or Douthat land any where near today's mainstream movement conservatives (MAGA).
They have conservative bonafides, no scare quotes necessary. The Republican party mainstream (MAGA) is not attempting conservatism, it is right wing populism. The word "conservative" does not have a new definition, the change has been that it no longer applies to the political party it once did (at least more so).
I live here and don't have this experience at all. I rarely get bad service, and effectively never get rude service.
Maybe this is a difference in the places we're going. I avoid most tourist areas, and also tend to avoid restaurants that are for tourists. Even with that, I'd be surprised, because tourist places are that way because they cater to tourists, and why would you be rude to the people you're targeting?
Are you maybe expecting that people feel this way and projecting these thoughts onto them?
It's worth noting that tourism levels are still lower than pre-covid, so again, it would be a bit surprising that people would be at their boiling points.
Long-term investors are buying more stocks at a lower price, with the idea that at some point the company may eventually pay dividends that justify the price of the stock, at which point they get more share of the dividend profits. Folks who purchase these stocks after this point would base the value on the value of the dividends.
Day traders are gamblers.
Cryptocurrencies will _never_ pay dividends, because they are based purely on speculation. These things are absolutely not the same. Cryptocurrencies only provide gambling.
That's because they're running the validators, and they're sharing some of the gas fees with you. If you're getting a high APR it's because the protocol is extremely expensive for users. Imagine if your stock trades, purchases, or bank transfers cost 5% (which is a low estimate, because if you're getting 5.1%, then Coinbase is also taking a cut).
You're locking up your crypto for this for some period of time, which means you lose liquidity to get gains. During that period of time the coin can crash and you're out of that money.
For stocks, you don't need to lose liquidity to get dividends. For companies generating profit, they don't necessarily need to be parasitic to generate those profits. It's possible to generate profits while also providing value for users.
Take for instance Venmo and the ability to get funds from your wallet into your bank instantly. Venmo is taking risk by doing so, the banks are taking risk to do so. They charge you a fee for this risk. You want your money faster, and they want their risk covered. They're going to eat some amount of fraud by providing this service, but the cost of providing it should cover the fraud cost and offer a small profit. It's mutually beneficial and optional (regular bank transfers are slower, but free).
Lots of SaaS products are similar. They offer a product businesses need, at a lower cost than the businesses would have to pay to build/run it themselves.
Those are profitable things that are just services, like crypto, but businesses also build things that have physical value, like houses, undersea communication cables, etc.
If people stop trading crypto, all value is immediately gone.
He's a full grown adult, who was trusted with billions of dollars, and worked with other full grown adults, who aided in his crimes.
Calling him a kid implies that he wasn't fully in control of his actions and shouldn't be held accountable to the same level as an adult would, and that's ridiculous.
> I don't have any insight into how they use the data, but why would they offer free things (restaurants offer appetizers, grocery stores offer discounts, etc) unless the value they received was more than the cost of the incentive?
Ignoring selling the data to brokers, it's not hard to think of some ways to use the data that's beneficial to both you and them:
- Inventory management: You buy something low demand, but you do it consistently. If they can match up all the purchases of that item to specific folks, and they know the general frequency at which people buy that item, they can ensure it's stocked when you need it, without the need to greatly overstock it. If you stop coming, they also know they may be able to reduce that stock safely.
- Price sensitivity: They do a price increase. Which customers have stopped purchasing the product? Do they need to do a sale on the item for you to purchase it again? Do they need to drop the price? This is more of a benefit on their side than yours, but knowing the most frequent purchasers stopped purchasing it due to an increase could lead to a decrease, where this is harder to determine without good data.
- How effective are their sales? Are they targeting them correctly?
The discount they offer isn't really a discount. It's a price hike for folks without the loyalty program.
> Otherwise, what infrastructure do you think I'm getting subsidized?
The city you drive into is subsidizing your ability to drive into the city, the space to park in the city (which could be used for more housing), paying the cost of your emissions and noise, so that you can live a cheaper life in an area that's generally more expensive to sustain per-capita.
> I don't have muni water or sewer, and the power and telco utilities certainly pass along their costs to me.
The power and telcos generally do not pass these costs onto you. The costs are spread across the entire user-base, and it's more expensive to support you because it's more infrastructure for less people. Streets/roads/highways are also generally subsidized.
Suburbs and extreme white-flight areas are heavily subsidized by cities, especially if you're commuting into them for work. If the costs of sustaining your living situation were truly passed onto you, you wouldn't be able to afford to live there.
I think it heavily depends on the company you're going to work for.
More modern Japanese tech companies may pay up to 20-25m, depending on the position. The top paying company is almost certainly Woven Planet, but Mercari, PayPay, and a few other companies may also be willing to pay that (I worked for PayPay as a point of reference here, and also was in negotiation with Woven).
If it's Rakuten or Line, you're probably going to be get offers on the lower end (maybe 12-13m). If it's Rakuten, I highly recommend asking folks outside of the company that aren't a recruiter about it before accepting.
It's worth noting that people will probably tell you that it's not appropriate to negotiate in Japan, but they are wrong. You should negotiate, and you should ideally start with a high asking, if you're going to go first (you should try avoiding going first). I recommend having your recruiter give you the rough range they are thinking, then tell the recruiter roughly what you're expecting. If you have offers from other companies, your negotiations will go considerably better, especially since you can play the "if you offer x I'll stop negotiations with everyone and sign right now" card. I was able to increase my initial offer by 60% during negotiation.
If you're unhappy with your salary (or company) after arriving, I'd recommend looking around after you get your visa, and after your probation period. Ideally you'll get a 5 year working visa. It's generally not tied to your company (though some of the visas that get you permanent residency faster are tied to your employer). I recommend looking at western companies with offices in Japan (Meta, Google, etc). They can often pay 2x what Japanese companies will pay, especially for senior engineers as the local market doesn't have a lot of senior engineers to hire.
Why do we treat landlords as a business type that simply isn't allowed to take a loss?
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