Pop music is so simple, yet so difficult to make a hit. For some artists the music can be mediocre or even fairly bad, and still be a massive hit because pop music is essentially theater and their persona and mystique carries the day.
Some bands were terrible touring artists and rarely put on concerts yet made great careers as studio acts. Steely Dan would be one that produced many hits yet rarely toured, mostly later in their career.
The fundamentals of pop are totally understood. Yet what makes a hit is so fickle and difficult, the bar is extremely high
As an American, this is a good thing. I don't want a world where Europe / UK are vassals to the hegemon. A European happy to live under America's boot rather than own their own destiny is a weak person indeed.
Other than the recent clown the US has elected, does the EU really feel like a "vassal"? Do people toil against their will, yield their culture to another power? In Australia we're even more so a "vassal" of England, but we're as Aussie as Aussie can be. Life wouldn't change a zack if we separated from the UK...we'd just be a Republic I suppose?
I can't imagine the EU should feel particularly different? (other than Ukraine and the recent shemozzle)
If you are invaded by China and won’t fight to the death, expecting America or someone else to save you, or would just roll over and take it, you are a vassal mentally. If some country invaded America I would fight to the death
If China invaded the vast majority of countries (eg populations <50mil) I'd expect the country to give up after a few weeks of fighting if the US or a large number of allies didn't step in. I don't see how having every man/woman (hopefully not every child!) gunned down is viable for a country.
I don't think relying on your allies makes you a vassal.
I don't think there is a country in the world that doesn't understand it will never be able to depend on the USA for security or trade. It
s not just that they elected Trump because we know that is temporary but the fact that they could elect another someone like Trump is a persistent threat.
As an American I encourage every country to decouple, and as I understand every country is working on it. Mark Carney of Canada said it best, it will never be the same, ever no matter what the future is because trust that has lasted 90 years has been broken. Canada will never have the same relationship with the USA.
For a continent with two world wars within a span of 30 years, Europe was ready for US hegemony in 1944. The Trump narrative is not really based on neither US nor European logic, but his own particular kind of gaslighting.
I hear this about everything. “Don’t cut this thing because it’s the most efficient and productive thing ever!” Food stamps, homeless funding, public transport, public schools. Supposedly every single thing is the most efficient thing ever and we can’t possibly cut a dollar
Exactly, if their goal was to actually look for fraud and waste, why are they starting with such small potatoes like science funding? You'd think they'd focus on areas that are spending many more zeros, where they could have much more impact...
It's like me saying I'm going to cut down my spending, and instead of moving houses to reduce my rent by $1000, I instead focus right away on cutting out my $5/mo VPS hosting service.
If someone has a low IQ and can’t do well on a standardized test, how in the world will they succeed at Harvard?
Even if you believe that such tests simply reflect privilege and reveal absolutely nothing regarding innate talent, what difference does it make? It can be a point-of-time snapshot but it still doesn’t mean letting in low-IQ poorly-equipped students to Harvard will help them or anyone else.
I’m rich and cars don’t cost me anything really. But I keep 1 sports car at a time which I buy new. Everything else I buy used because no one knows the quality of new cars and how long they will last. Daily driver has to be bullet proof. Why anyone other than wealthy people buy brand new cars is nonsensical to me.
At my company, as you go up the pay scale, the age of the car they drive also increases. Our president drives a 2013 Subaru with 220k miles. Our receptionist drives a $50k 2024 Honda Pilot black edition. The engineering director drives a stock 2020 Elantra and the lab shift manager a 2025 GMC Sierra.
It seems people who work more with money know how to value things better, and others just look at how much of a reach the lowest monthly payment is.
How much time would you estimate they spend in their cars? I have a '22 Subaru and basically never plan on trading it in. (Should be paid off in a year.) But I also drive when I want to, and that's not super frequently.
Ironically our president has a 1.5 hour commute he does daily. He is extremely value oriented when it comes to money though, and will not get rid of his car until it dies. Which might be a while as he is insane about care and maintenance.
Not the parent, but I have a 2016 Subie nearing 100k miles and going fine. My partner's is more than 200k. Its AC is dead but mechanically it's fine and much faster than my Crosstrek. Friends have similarly old Subies. They are super reliable except for head gasket issues around the late 2000s and early 2010s (not applicable to you).
My front bumper is falling off (due to multiple crashes) and my back one has a bunch of holes (from being rear ended) but I drive it all the time and it's still wonderful. I'll probably never get another car brand.
This is somewhat true but there is also a chasm where you earn good money but not enough to afford a mortgage. This chasm grows wider ever year in countries like Canada and Australia (and to a lesser degree America)
I'm sorry is the price of housing decreasing or increasing? You have to have a dual income household to afford a mortgage. You're really going to shit on young people because they dont have two incomes?
No I’m shitting on people who buy short term pleasure then bitch about long term poverty.
I’m a frugal person. Seriously. I have so much money I can do literally anything I want. I live in this insane palace that is the most beautiful piece of property you have ever seen. And I still pinch pennies, buy in bulk, have a deep freezer, drive used cars. It doesn’t make logical sense but I just have programmed in me to be efficient.
And I look around me and see endless complaints and no one is efficient. People waste so much money on bullshit. It has worn me down to be quite cynical and skeptical
How long you keep your car tends to matter a lot. If you buy a new car and drive it for 15 years, you’re doing pretty great. If you buy a used car and drive it for 15 years, you’re doing awesome, but you might never make it to 15 years with a used car.
New cars can have problems, too. Especially for an enthusiast, it's smarter to buy used rather than new. You can be sure to get a reliable vehicle, and you can put the money you save in the market. You'll come out ahead on both fronts.
Huh? Trump won the popular vote. Maybe make better arguments in the next election if you don't like the current leader, rather than a violent revolution to overturn a democratically elected leader
Taxing things makes them less likely to exist. That’s the fundamental nature of taxes, and why I am opposed to every single tax. Whatever we like in this world, the government imposes a tax, and then we get less of it, and more of the government. A shameful result caused by a shameful society
A shocking amount, and it’s well spent, because it literally underpins everything else. The stability it provides (or rather, provided in the past) is what made America so appealing to build and invest in in the first place.
According to ChatGPT. < 4% of federal budgets goes to these things and about 16% of state budgets.
That was also generous and includes all transportation - not just roads.
So yeah, I’m thinking defending current tax level or tax increases using these examples is not in good faith. You’re picking only
The most popular programs (do we like police now?) and ignoring the other 85%.
Aside from the quibbles over how much of government activity is useful and won't get done otherwise so we have to have less of something to have more of that stuff, there are also a good number of taxable things that most people don't like, or otherwise consider prosocial to have less of. Extreme wealth / income, pollution, alcohol/tobacco/gambling, etc.
We live in a democracy, and when you have conditioned society to assume everything is taxed, then yes, taxing vices like alcohol and tobacco are easier to stomach. I would be less opposed to it if every single dollar extracted from the vice was put to whatever society decided to do about the vice (police, treatment, etc.). But taxing the vice is a source of revenue for the ever-expanding state, and therefore society doesn’t actually want the vice to stop, rather they want it to grow in order to expand their revenue.
I don’t want the government to fund anything a citizen wouldn’t fund themselves. If it’s useful, then someone will make a business to provide it. If it’s desirable without the profit motive, then allow a charity to develop. I see charity funded by free citizens as a form of market solution.
What drives me crazy are giant government bureaucracies that are totally removed from the democratic process that fund things no one voted for, that we can never seem to defund.
> Taxing things makes them less likely to exist. That’s the fundamental nature of taxes, and why I am opposed to every single tax.
And government spending makes things more likely to exist in exactly the same proportion (on the margin) and for exactly the same reason.
And government spending without balanced (taxation + borrowing) leads to inflation, which is functionally a tax on holding cash.
(Thanks to the dollar being a reserve currency, the USA gets to cheat a bit with borrowing, compared to everyone else — but even that's not unlimited).
I'm interestingly in agreement with you. A learned understanding of our monetary system [1] makes it clear that taxes are primarily about freeing resources that the state can use to provision itself, not raising money. In such a system it is much easier to point out unintended consequences as well as understand what makes a tax effective or not, assuming one chooses to understand it.
The question then is only how much government you want, which is a political question.
Governments exist as a response to the tragedy of the commons.
Pragmatically, if you don't pay taxes to a government that has a military, then your neighbor will invade you and impose whatever taxes they deem fit or outright exterminate you, or historically directly enslave you.
Ok, but then you have some kind of state intelligence, because you need intelligence for a military to operate on, and then military capability is a function of technology. Then you need some form of law, and law implies police, and conflict implies a justice system, a justice system implies a prison system.
As your society suffers due to poor social programs, the one next door that believes in public education will have a better military due to better technology, maybe they decide they need breathing space...
Your position is one you can only hold due to privilege.
No the city I live in pays $35,000 per student and 80% of them graduate illiterate. Hard for me to imagine a worse situation of misused tax dollars than public education
I would find it near impossible that someone dumping a truckload of cadmium down a sewer or into the river is caught today, even with our insane taxes and panopticon state. In fact I know someone who makes a shitload of money in “waste disposal” who is regularly dumping illegally!
However if a factory was doing it as a matter of regular business, a law could ban this practice, and then citizens could sue just like they do now.
> I would find it near impossible that someone dumping a truckload of cadmium down a sewer or into the river is caught today
Oh, I won't do it covertly. I'll just build my solar panel producing factory and dump the waste stream in your water supply.
> However if a factory was doing it as a matter of regular business, a law could ban this practice, and then citizens could sue just like they do now.
How quaint. Now you need laws? That's a big-government talk right here.
And how would you find out that I'm dumping cadmium? Do you have proof? Of course, we won't let you just visit our property. And without an injury, you have no standing in a civil court.
Running organizations is more about people making decisions than it is rows in a database. Tasks just take longer. Leaders respond by doing fewer of them (high impact focus), or do more planning, etc.
Most of the federal budget is wealth transfers from income earners to the poor and elderly; these were not federal functions until the 20th century. The US federal government spends didn’t have a standing army until well after the founding.
The idea would be that different parts of the supply chain would build factories in the US to avoid tariffs. Money collected on tariffs would be redistributed in the form of tax cuts.
The end goal would be 0% corporate and income taxes, funded with high tariffs. Over time the US re-industrializes.
> The idea would be that different parts of the supply chain would build factories in the US to avoid tariffs.
Building a factory is a 3-5 year task, with a decade-long payback time. And at any point, tariffs can be removed, making all that investment futile.
And even then, there's no guarantee that the factory is going to help people. If it's a lights-out facility staffed with robots, then it'll just be producing more expensive goods, with all the profits staying in its owners' pockets.
Who would trust the US after this? Why would a company build a factory in a lawless state run by a moron like this who thinks blanket tariffs work and could replace taxes?
> The idea would be that different parts of the supply chain would build factories in the US to avoid tariffs.
Right, because the US doesn't have diamonds, vanilla, coffee beans or the many other things it needs? How do you avoid tariffs like this?
The US still needs fish from the penguins. What's the plan? To tell penguins to stop fishing and come to the US and work in factories?
> The end goal would be 0% corporate and income taxes, funded with high tariffs.
Well you have that right. When there's 0% of the people working no 1 will be paying corporate and income tax. It'll just crash.
> Over time the US re-industrializes.
Like it's gone? You do know the US is the 2nd largest global manufacturer right? That is even today. So do we need to blow that up 1st in order to re-industrialize?
I disagree. Trump has been threatening tariffs since 2016. Each step he gets closer to significant tariffs. This time he stepped back after they seemed real.
Now businesses know he really, super means it this time, so they get another reprieve. But next time it would be hard to claim Trump didn’t warn them.
I agree it's classic brinksmanship and the tariff views he has are genuine and long held. But his numerous signals to the Fed to ask to lower interest rates and the commitment to DOGE (which has the effect of lowering yields) is another strand in his thinking. The two are in conflict causing the flip-flop effect in short term policy.
Some bands were terrible touring artists and rarely put on concerts yet made great careers as studio acts. Steely Dan would be one that produced many hits yet rarely toured, mostly later in their career.
The fundamentals of pop are totally understood. Yet what makes a hit is so fickle and difficult, the bar is extremely high
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