Το εύδαιμον το ελεύθερον, το δ’ ελεύθερον το εύψυχον.
– Ευτυχισμένοι είναι οι ελεύθεροι και ελεύθεροι είναι οι γενναίοι. //
// Happy are the free and free are the brave.
Justin Trudeau spends billions and billions of your tax dollars on nonsense.
But just a few years ago, he spent 9 million dollars on a cricket farm... Crickets... for you to eat.
This is part of their wacko environmental agenda. The press release talked about how this would provide low-cost food for Canadians... by making you eat bugs.
So let me get this straight: he's imposing a carbon tax and a fertilizer ban, both of which make meat more expensive, and then using those tax dollars he's taken from you to pay for a cricket farm for human consumption?
This is absurd.
Watch to the very end, because there is a bit of ASMR that you'll love.
When Trump is finally sworn in, this will be the end for the Deep State criminals and they know it and many are now fleeing the United States.
While WW3 is being the next likely scenario to prevent Trump from being sworn in, this will not succeed and justice will be done.
Elon Musk: "15 Products You'll Stop Buying After You Know What They're Made Of"
Elon Musk has seen the truth behind some foods we consume every day, and he’s warning us to think twice before we buy them again. From foods we eat to items we use daily, the ingredients and processes behind these products might surprise you. So, what kind of foods fall into this category ? Join us as we reveal fifteen foods Musk thinks we should avoid after knowing what they are made of.
The soaring costs of home ownership are changing the metrics of unaffordability in important ways.
We all know that buying a house is now unaffordable, but owning a house is increasingly unaffordable, too. Gordon Long and I have laid out the sobering explosion of the costs of homeownership, a rise that shows no signs of slowing, much less reversing.
It would be nice to attribute it all to one source or one villain, but alas, it isn’t that easy. Costs are rising across the board for many reasons, none of which are reversible by enacting a policy tweak or two.
For context, let’s start with inflation since 2020 and the cost of buying a house.Truflation pegs the aggregate inflation (a.k.a. loss of the purchasing power of the US dollar in our domestic economy) at 26% since January 2020. All else being equal, we would expect the cost of housing to have risen by about 25%.
But according to the Case-Shiller national housing index, which tracks the purchase prices paid for each house over time, housing costs rose an eye-watering 45% since January 2020, as the index soared from 220 to 320.
Traditionally, the primary cost of home ownership everyone tracks is the mortgage payment, the famous monthly nut of principal and interest, which of course goes up with the purchase price and the interest rate of the mortgage.
As we all know, both the purchase price and the interest rate have gone up significantly, pushing the mortgage payment as a percentage of median household income up to levels that exceed the previous peak in Housing Bubble #1 circa 2006-08.
If inflationary pressures remain elevated and the bond market isn’t buying the “inflation is fading” story, then mortgage rates might not drop even if the Federal Reserve cuts the Fed Funds Rate.
But the mortgage payment isn’t the only cost of owning a home. All the other costs that were relatively affordable in decades past are now skyrocketing. Gordon listed the six basic categories of home ownership expenses: mortgage, property taxes, insurance, utilities, maintenance and repair and home-related services.
Anecdotally, we’re hearing accounts of basic home insurance jumping from $3,000 to $13,000 annually in high-risk regions. We’re also hearing of insurers abandoning high-risk areas and entire states, leaving homeowners with few options for insurance. In response, some homeowners are “self-insuring,” i.e. they have dropped insurance coverage.
The problem with this option is that should the worst-case scenario come to pass, as a general rule the federal disaster relief agencies will pony up a maximum of $40,000 to the uninsured–far from enough to rebuild or repair a severely damaged house.
Insurers are not in the charity business. Once their losses run into the billions of dollars, they jack up rates to restore profitability. Recall that insurance is a global enterprise, and so the cost of our insurance is partly based on the cost of the reinsurance the big carriers purchase globally. If reinsurance rates rise, everyone’s rates rise accordingly.
Unsurprisingly, homeowners are responding by raising the deductibles in their policy to lower the annual cost. This is a hybrid of “self-insurance,” as homeowners with high deductibles have to have the cash in hand to fund the cost of repairs up to the deductible ceiling.
If you think the rise in the price of groceries is eye-popping, check out property tax increases, which are pushing 30% nationally. Since local governments depend on property taxes for a significant percentage of their revenues, we can expect these taxes to remain “sticky” even if housing valuations decline.
The costs of maintenance and repair are soaring as well as the costs of construction materials and labor have increased, along with the other costs of doing business. Just as the cost of a sandwich or burger seems to be about $15 everywhere, the cost of any home project other than fixing a leaky faucet seems to be $10,000 or more now: tree pruning: $10K, roof repair, $10K, and so on.
The soaring costs of home ownership are changing the metrics of unaffordability in important ways. It’s not just the initial purchase price that defines what’s affordable and what isn’t; so too do the costs of owning the house after our name is on the property tax rolls.
Many electric vehicle (EV) owners are reconsidering their choices and switching back to gas-powered cars. But why? In this video, we explore the real reasons behind this surprising shift. From charging anxiety and high operating costs to issues with range, reliability, and rapid depreciation, the truth about EVs might not be what you expect. Join us as we break down the six major reasons why EV owners are returning to traditional combustion engines. Are electric vehicles really as green and cost-effective as we thought? Watch to find out!
Το εύδαιμον το ελεύθερον, το δ’ ελεύθερον το εύψυχον.
– Ευτυχισμένοι είναι οι ελεύθεροι και ελεύθεροι είναι οι γενναίοι. //
// Happy are the free and free are the brave.