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They need her to buy them a house. That's not needing a little.


Buy a house, or rent for 10-15 years of the rest of their lives?


> My husband and I never really discussed the fact that I’d be supporting my parents. It was just a given

> He doesn’t mind the way I want to live — he just goes along with it.

> I once had a conversation with my husband about how if I died, he’d have to keep taking care of my parents. It’s a dark topic, I know, and he wasn’t thrilled about the idea. But he wouldn’t kick them out.

> My dad is now retired, and when my mom retires she’ll move in with us too. The plan is to give them this house eventually, and get our own nearby.

She says her parents aren't pleasant people. Imagine how her husband feels about dedicating all his future earnings towards their happiness. She thinks this is normal.


Its getting a bit off topic, but in the US at least its still fairly common for children to take care of their parents in their last years. Particularly if ones parents aren't well off enough to afford some kind of senior living arrangement. Despite what you might think of medicare "Medicare doesn't cover custodial care, if it's the only care you need. Most nursing home care is Custodial care" https://www.medicare.gov/coverage/nursing-home-care

Getting married basically means that if you haven't already discussed this there is a strong possibility that might end up living with your spouses parents during their last few years simply because its more convenient driving them to the doctor and generally taking care of them as they go downhill. About the only way you get out of this is if some other sibling is better off or has more free time, lives closer or any number of other situations.


> Commerce would continue, with state-backed currencies swapped for crypto alternatives that float freely on an open market.

I'm assuming this means a stable coin?

Has anyone figured out how to verify the backing on a blockchain? If that was possible Tether's fraud would have been exposed sooner.

Also, why is Facebook's new currency rumored to be backed by multiple currencies? That seems like it would add volatility instead of lessening it.


> Has anyone figured out how to verify the backing on a blockchain? If that was possible Tether's fraud would have been exposed sooner.

And this is always the problem with block chain. You can't cryptographically verify real life things that people care about like how much money is in someone's bank account.


> real life things that people care about like how much money is in someone's bank account

How is a ledger entry in a bank's computer more "real" than a ledger entry in a public blockchain.

Funny how blockchain discussions proceed in endless circles when people believe without evidence that familiar money is in any way "real" instead of an imaginary social construct, while blockchain money is somehow fake, fraudulent or unreal.

Let's guess the next argument in the endless circle: (a) money is backed by the military, (b) money is backed by tax payments, (c) money is backed by debt, or (d) tulips.


I'm not arguing it's more real, I'm arguing you can't cryptographically guarantee how many dollars some entity owns. In this context real life mean off block chain information. Basically the block chain can only verify whats on the blockchain. It can't make any guarantees about off block chain things except that someone with a possession of a certain private key said something at some time.


Sure, a blockchain provides cryptographic consensus about assets on the blockchain, but it can't control things that are not on the blockchain.

Things like legal contracts in a filing cabinet, bank databases, gold bars in a vault, or how many coins I say are in my pocket.

For all those things, the blockchain can act as a database, but you need to trust someone that the entries in the database correspond to these other things that the database is supposedly tracking.


Which is the entire issue the op asked about, can you verify a party has enough dollars to back a stablecoin on the blockchain.


>And this is always the problem with block chain. You can't cryptographically verify real life things that people care about like how much money is in someone's bank account.

There are a lot of problems with applying blockchain to solve real problems. This one is not one of the problems. What this is is people using the blockchain for things it was not designed to do.


I'm not necessarily pro-crypto, but a regulated and audited blockchain would be fine in the banking context. That's mostly because the bank itself is regulated and audited. The "trustchain" goes all the way back to the government.

With Tether, the trustchain ends at Tether. And even if you could audit Tether somehow, there's nothing stopping them from creating another stable coin and use the same currency they have in both coins.


Stablecoins aren't supposed to float freely, they're pegged. So I assume it doesn't mean that.


What's the argument against Alibaba?


Buffett and Munger have said that they are having difficulty investing cash because they have so much of it. In this case it seems irresponsible to take loans. I don't see the point unless it's a tax dodge.


For apple it was a tax dodge. A lot of the cash they had on hand was owned by offshore subsidiaries and if they moved it to U.S. company to pay out dividends or do a buyback that would trigger corporate taxation. So instead they borrowed against that cash hoping that the corporate tax rate would drop in the future and they could move the money and pay off the debt then.


I hear everyone saying this. It seems like 12-years of global QE is gonna cause a massive spike in inflation. Everyone's valuing things as if there's been hardly any inflation since 2007.

The reality is, there's 120% MORE narrow money (M1) today than there was in 2007. There's also 74% more board money (M3).

Has there ever been a long period (12 years, in this case) where we've had only ~25% inflation with ~120% growth in the money supply?

Naively, it seems like there's either too much money (not sure how you solve that) or everything is too cheap.


Well the main issue is all of this money is going to the wealthy. And while I don't have hard data to back this up, it feels like 'inflation' is rampant in the things that wealthy people throw money at, e.g. stock market, real estate, art, etc...


High end real estate in greater NYC area is deflating.


"Too Much Money" means that promises have been made that can't be kept.

A strong burst of inflation could (somewhat) reconcile these promises with reality.


Everything except securities? Been a bull market for a long time now - that money is going somewhere!


Buffett's subsidiaries still borrow money to build things like power stations and railways. He prefers to keep some cash so he can put it in high return ventures if they come up.


It's fiscally irresponsible for a company to not take advantage of a legal tax-dodge, unfortunate as it may be.


It's more than that. They received money from "investors" without giving away any equity.


Good point, I didn’t address that.


Does HN use machine learning to flag posts?


No.


I don't find NetFlix compelling because after I watch great movie X the service cannot recommend me another movie that is of the same caliber.

Also, there are a lot of independent movies and TV shows on NetFlix. And they suck. Horrible acting and plot but the cover is sometimes good enough to trick you into wasting time taking a look.


> after I watch great movie X the service cannot recommend me another movie that is of the same caliber

Statistically, after viewing a great movie the next one will be rated as less satisfying. We build up our expectations to a level that is not in sync with reality. This psychological insight was used at one of the early Netflix challenges by one of the top contestants.


Is this sort of compliance testing needed in countries with authoritarian leaders?


It's mostly about western world regulations, especially those from EU.


I wouldn't be so sure. Juries can be convinced of anything if you look at past judgements against Monsanto.

I'm not saying that I think Google is innocent but often the evidence is very difficult for the lay person to interpret (especially when it is absent).


>Juries can be convinced of anything...

Which is exactly why they'd get off.


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