Tuesday, October 7, 2014

"DOG DAYS OF YULIN"

"Stolen pets and strays making their way to the dinner table."

As Philip Mountbatten says, "If it has four legs and is not a chair, has wings and is not an aeroplane, or swims and is not a submarine, the Cantonese will eat it."

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

They murder babies so it's no big surprise that they would eat dogs.

All Chinese should be kicked out of western countries.

Nathan said...

OT:

Buffett Says ‘No-Brainer’ to Get a Mortgage to Short Rates

Buffett really does seem to be betting on mean reversion in household formation, but I don't see why there should be any "pent up" demand. AFAICT Millennials have already made a "hedonic adjustment" to their lifestyles and no longer aspire to live like their parents.

In general, there seems to be an unshakable confidence that it's just a matter of time before young people grow up, get married, make babies and buy cars and real estate like all good Americans. I don't think young people perceive those things to be a good value anymore.

Anonymous said...

Millennials have already made a "hedonic adjustment" to their lifestyles and no longer aspire to live like their parents.

I think it's less a matter of choice than necessity. If millennials want to get decent jobs, they have to waste their prime years getting useless degrees and then paying down enormous student loans... this forces them to defer marriage, and if they can't pay down the loans then they become unmarriable. The boomers never had to deal with this kind of runaway credentialism.

Anonymous said...

There are other reasons for a falling marriage rate-- global labor arbitrage, social atomization, welfare programs that wreck the family, growing awareness of divorce rape, etc-- but as with education, I think it's less about millennials aspiring to different things than reacting to how society has changed.

Nathan said...

Agreed, in many cases it's no longer a matter of preference - certain things are now prohibitively difficult or expensive for many people.

By "aspire" I was mainly thinking about what happens when millennials adopt a freeter mentality. In some sense it doesn't matter whether someone is a hedonistic (voluntary) freeter or a sour grapes (involuntary) freeter, the economic impact is the same.

Anonymous said...

Buffett's strategy can be written in a fortune cookie: buy the dips (mean reversion) in an inexorable upward trend. (And be sure to use tons of implicit and explicit leverage.)

His childlike understanding creates a Theseus' paradox: what is America? Is it just the land within North America? Any country with a bicameral legislature even if the current population is replaced with people who spread Ebola because they can't understand what a virus is?

Anonymous said...

By "aspire" I was mainly thinking about what happens when millennials adopt a freeter mentality. In some sense it doesn't matter whether someone is a hedonistic (voluntary) freeter or a sour grapes (involuntary) freeter, the economic impact is the same.

ah okay, it sounds like we agree. that's a good point about the lack of practical distinction.