> The Big Mac Index is a price index published since 1986 by The Economist as an informal way of measuring the purchasing power parity (PPP) between two currencies and providing a test of the extent to which market exchange rates result in goods costing the same in different countries. It "seeks to make exchange-rate theory a bit more digestible."[1] The index compares the relative price worldwide to purchase the Big Mac, the flagship hamburger sold at McDonald's restaurants.
In recent years Japan has been cheap due to the weakness of the yen, which has been trending 160/1 USD. Just 10 years ago it was nearly twice as strong. When I visited a couple years ago (2 weeks in Tokyo/Osaka/Kyoto), everything seemed to be surprisingly cheap.
- Yes food, as well as alcohol, was quite cheap. Had very few meals that came out to more than $10, alcohol (about $3-4/drink) included.
- I purchased a couple pairs of running shoes that were about 30% cheaper than they were offered for sale in the US.
- I purchased an umbrella for $45 that sells in the US for $75.
- An all-access pass at their premier amusement park, Fuji-Q Highland, was only about $40 - when entry to comparable parks in the US can easily be twice as much.
- I recall the subway came out to around $1.50 a ride, roughly half what the NYC subway costs and the 1 and 3 day passes made it ridiculously cheap (IIRC something like $5/$10).
- I only used capsule hotels, but those were only $15 to up to $38 for a luxury one, almost all in desirable/touristy areas.
- I also took a look at apartments, and in decent areas in Tokyo you can find small apartments for about $1500 that would cost ~$3500 in Manhattan, or maybe $2000 in medium sized US city centers.
Is that in comparison to the US? Because US food was cheaper than dirt in the past before all the food processing conglomerates decided to leverage their dominant market position to increase margins.
If you want to pay a lot for food you still can. I imagine this is the case anywhere. If you care to look, you can find an amazing meal on the cheap. If you don't, you may end up paying a few bucks for a single apple.
Printing does not of its own cause inflation. In Japan it seems that efforts to inject money into the economy end up immediately stuck in low interest savings accounts.
Folks are not paid terribly high wages in Japan. I saw McDonalds "we're hiring" signs when I was eating there and I don't recall the wage but it was below 1000¥.
(That being said I tried to calculate the ratio of hourly wage to McChicken sandwich and Japanese workers came out with a better deal than Canadian ones)
"Evidence does not support the use of vitamin D supplementation for the prevention of cancer, respiratory infections or rheumatoid arthritis. Similarly, evidence does not support vitamin D supplementation for the treatment of multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis or for improving depression/mental well-being."
The thing that resonated the most with me was the idea that slow processors need to focus on strategic thinking. I am a 60 year old and now retired software developer. I keep myself busy by actively continuing to code every day. I definitely have experienced a slowing of thinking in the last ten years. I have read that this could be because I have more information to sift and sort but being honest with myself, the machinery is not as well tuned as it once was.
I am fine with all this. I love coding and I doubt I will ever stop doing it for pleasure. I have had to become more methodical and intentional with my time on the laptop but reflecting on this piece, being more strategic would be a wise thing for me to contemplate on.
Those policies, if they include means testing, need rational means testing.
For example, it can't be all or nothing. You shouldn't be kicked out/lose all support by getting a job or a raise. Assistance can be reduced, but it should be something like pulling back $.5 for every dollar earned over since level.
Whatever limit should also be index to inflation.
An example of how to do everything wrong is what we did with SSI and Medicare for people with disabilities. Means test set in the 70s, no inflation adjustment, and all or nothing.
This is functionally equivalent to voting to reduce the value of investor property portfolios. Building enough housing for everybody = building new supply = reducing the value of existing homes.
Since American political parties are utterly financially reliant upon donations from investors with property portfolios, you're rarely if ever able to vote against their interests as a group.
If the US were democratic like Finland rather than being an oligarchy then it might be possible, but at the moment, 60-70% of US voters craving single payer healthcare isn't enough to make that happen and that would only hit a specific group of investors. A finland style "housing for everybody program" is a political pipe dream given the damage it would do to donor portfolios.
The financialization of housing has been an unmitigated disaster and must be rolled back at all costs. The responsible individuals are unfortunately long dead and we will never be able to hold them to account - the next best thing we can do is to reverse it.
The currently in-vogue answer is "give them houses", but your answer is more attainable. When someone asks me for money I take it as a reminder to donate to organizations that help the homeless and near-homeless.
The best homeless shelters have programs targeted at helping people graduate into apartments. They have social workers and counselors that try to help people overcome addictions. They partner with charities that collect donated home goods and turn them into a "free store" so that when someone graduates into an apartment they are able to furnish it. This is how the shelters in my area operate, but many shelters do not have the resources to offer this many resources.
The best food banks do not question your level of need, but offer food and hygiene supplies to anyone who asks. If someone owns a car and home but has run across hard times, these no-questions-asked resources help them make do without losing their car or their home.
Giving to homeless shelters and food banks helps us to have better homeless shelters and food banks. Shelters that have more resources are able to offer more to those in need, including helping people graduate to stable living conditions.
It's also just institutionalizing homelessness rather than trying to address the cause of the problem: refusing to give (or subsidize sufficiently) people who need houses.
> The best homeless shelters have programs targeted at helping people graduate into apartments.
The capacity and cost of this is a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of the problem with homelessness we face today. It's nice, it's good that there are some resources available, but it's not going to lessen the overall problem of homelessness.
I don't believe that is the root cause of homelessness. Rather, the root cause is actually lower-level and is a fundamental flaw of capitalism.
For all of time, there will always be a subset of people unable to work. Homeless people aren't just homeless, they're jobless, many permanently so. Due to mental illness, disabilities, drugs, etc.
Ultimately giving these people houses does not solve the problem, because they will still be very unsuccessful in a capitalist system. You need a job to survive. What happens if you don't have work?
We don't have a solution for this. Typically, we do bandaids. Retirement funds for those who can't work, medicare, social security. That helps a bit for those people who did work but no longer can.
SOME homeless people can be "trained" to be ideal capitalistic laborers. Most can't, and never will be, because of physical limitations of their person. We don't know what to do with them. Previously, we just institutionalized them. Disqualified them from society. That was awful, so now we let them participate. But they fail, and always will fail.
Ultimately, there is no way around it regardless of the solution you choose. There will always be a subset of people that cannot work and will never work.
If I give to a charity, I get a tax deduction. If I give directly to a homeless person, I don't.
Let's say my marginal tax rate is 50%. That means I could give $10 to a homeless person, or $20 to a homeless shelter, both costing me the same amount.
If someone has highly appreciated stock that is going to be sold, can donate it (e.g. through a DAF), and has the highest possible marginal tax rate in California, that person has the choice to donate $10 to a homeless person or ~$80 to a homeless shelter, both costing the same amount.
I'd believe that people were serious about this if every time they said "well, they'll just spend it on booze" then also went home and donated an equivalent amount to such programs.
I think the author agrees but is dismayed that these organizations don't "solve" homelessness. I'll offer the suggestion that it might be _even better_ to donate that money towards somehow providing housing.
I don't mean temporary shelter. But I agree there is a subset of the homeless population that have more problems than just homelessness. It may be impossible to solve their homelessness without solving other problems first.
Many homeless shelters are worse than sleeping rough because the security situation is so dire. At worst you can be locked in (yes, some lock you in for the night) with violent and rapey men but an averagely bad night might still mean having your phone stolen.
Too add further stress to overwhelming anxiety, many people who work in homeless shelters are also, unfortunately, narcissistic bullies on a power trip.
Nobody gives a fuck about the security situation of homeless people though and their reluctance to use shelters is usually chalked up to them being drug addicts unwilling to deal with the no drug mandates.
It was the books in my Dad's library that first got me to read for pleasure. I remember him suggesting The Lord of the Rings but it would be several years before I read it. 50 years later I can't actually remember what I read first but over the course of my late childhood, the one that sticks out the most is:
The Magus by John Fowles
I was maybe 14 at the time. You just never know because kids are weird.
If you look at sports, it used to be that people looked at basic stats for hiring. Then came the age of money-ball where people started looking at group success. Turns out that those people are often quite valuable even though their metrics might not be as sexy.
An unfortunate consequence of the highly metric driven world we live in is that the big picture people seem to only have a big picture with respect to the metrics.
I worked in Apple retail way back when, and had a co-worker who was the absolute best "customer service" person I have ever worked with. They had an unnatural ability to make anyone both calm and if not happy, then at least open to talking. Our store was 45 feet from front to back and on multiple occasions I watched them intercept an angry customer who had practically torn the door from its hinges walking in and by the time they'd reached the back where the "Genius Bar" was, they'd gotten the customer cooled down and in many cases actually smiling and laughing. As the retail management became more and more metric focused, they were constantly in the lower rankings for metrics, and yet I argued to anyone I could that they were an essential part of what made our store work and we needed to keep them around regardless of their metrics. Eventually I left because of the ever increasing focus on metrics, and a few months later I heard from them that they'd also been let go for failing to meet metric targets. The few occasions I've been back to my old store, the lack of happy or at least content people waiting around for their turn for service has been noticeable (at least to me in comparison).
I've seen things similar to this play out multiple times over my career. Too strong a focus on numbers and "objective" measurements, and not enough focus on soft skills and overall cohesion and how people fit into their teams. A team of 3 10x developers that don't mesh well on their own with a 1x developer who keeps them all working together smoothly by being a "glue" person is worth more than a team of 4 10x developers that only mesh ok. Everyone I've ever talked to in life understands this concept, and can easily think of examples from their own life. Yet somehow the lesson flies out the window anytime it comes to making hiring / promotion / firing decisions. I think people are afraid to make decisions like that which they can't back up with cold hard numbers, and while there's good reasons to want objective numbers for these decisions and avoid appearances of bias and favoritism, we lose a lot if we only ever focus on the tiny slivers of things which we are currently objectively measuring.
Like other posters, I read the whole thing and couldn't think of a reason for this device. I have experienced the many people cell issue but I am old enough to remember a time before cell phones at concerts.
This seems very much like a solution in search of a problem.
> This seems very much like a solution in search of a problem.
My friends and I independently came up with this exact idea at the most recent regional burn event, specifically to better coordinate meeting back up after wandering, and then discovered this device, so it's very much a real problem in need of solving.
Concerts are usually pretty easy to find your friends after splitting up. They are usually at the bar, restrooms, or a handful of viewing spots or seats. Big raves, music festies, burns, and other large gatherings are spread over a much wider area.
I get what you're saying, however, after attending Austin City limits Music Festival, where at any given time there can he 70K or more people in attendance, trying to find my wife, who was watching a different band at a different stage then me, can be a struggle to meet back up. (Especially after the band is finished and people start shuffling to the next stage for another band.)
It's also very confusing for a person who isn't very direction savvy. For this reason alone, I'm definitely going to look into these compasses.
Think of it as "Find My" but without having to rely on random people's iPhones to detect your tracker. There are pros & cons to each. In general, I think it boils down to this:
1. Find My networks are great when you're trying to find a thing
2. Totem-style GPS-based devices are great when you're trying to find a person who might be able to react to a ping
The problem I think Totem has is that the use case is pretty limited and the cost per unit is probably pretty high. It's basically the inverse product of Yondr[1], which also has a pretty high cost for what it does. As a parent of three, and also as a dad who regularly travels with tween/teen soccer teams, have an easy way to interactively track kids would be very helpful sometimes. I see Totem as a highly feature-reduced Garmin InReach but with a much more intuitive UX for the singular use case it serves.
