Yes it’s very remunerative. But have you stopped to consider it could be even more so? /s

Great idea!

Just make sure it’s not anywhere near me.

/s

Yeah, breaks your heart, don’t it?

You’re not misunderstanding at all. Opportunity cost is that simple.

If I can get 5% guaranteed on a government bond, and my buddy needs some help to get out of a jam (and I’m as sure as I can be he’ll pay me back) and he offers me 3%, if I give him the money I’m not doing a nice thing and making 3%, I’m an idiot that’s losing 2%.

At least according to the people that can only think of more more more.

It doesn’t always have to be greedy though. If you’ve got money you don’t need anytime soon sitting in your checking account doing nothing what your missing out on by not at least putting it in an interest bearing account is opportunity cost.

First of all, fuck landlords and double fuck people that buy up single family homes to rent out. This is not an endorsement, just a basic explanation of opportunity cost for anyone interested.

Fuck landlords, in case you missed the first one.

Now that that’s out of the way, opportunity cost is what you lose by not doing something else with your capital.

For example:

You assume you could make an average of 10% a year in the stock market.

You have 100k equity in a rental property.

You collect rent, after paying the mortgage, taxes, maintenance, and any other expenses you make 10k in a year.

That’s 10% of your 100k in equity, the same you estimate you’d make in the market, no opportunity cost.

Some number of years later between paying more of your mortgage and increase in the value of the property you have 500k in equity.

You only increased rent enough to cover increases in taxes, maintenance, and other expenses so you still only make 10k a year.

That is now 2% of your 500k in equity.

The 8% difference between the 10% you think you could make in the stock market if you sold the place and the 2% you’re getting without jacking up the rent, is the opportunity cost.

Of course there are more things to take into account, this is just to give you a basic idea.

Fuck landlords.

There is almost no gold in it. 18k gold is 75% gold by weight, not volume. Apple created an alloy that, in addition to the normal metals, is mostly lightweight ceramic.

At the time I was surprised there wasn’t a class action suit. They were charging an amount that was in line with real gold watches and yeah the “gold” part was 75% gold by weight but it was such a departure from anything else ever called 18k gold it just seemed like a straight up scam to me.

For me personally, my wife and I are probably going to stay in this house until it’s time for the old folks home so it’s just numbers that’ll never actually mean anything. If it crashes by half or more I’ll actually get a reduction to my property tax.

Let it crash, this is unsustainable. Having a secure, long-term roof over your head shouldn’t be so fucking hard.

No it’s not. It’s very easy. I used to do it all the time, when necessary. It’s just not for me anymore because it’s no longer necessary.

Nonsense. I decide what I want to watch, I search for it, 99% of the time it’s available on something I have.

Apples and oranges. The person that has all the streaming services, like me, would want all the premium channels. HBO, Cinemax, showtime, the movie channel are all 10 each. So now you’re at $133 and that is before all the add-on charges, taxes, and any other packages.

I don’t know what the pricing is now, but I moved around a bit in college and after and in the late 90s and early aughts I had service from the each of big 3 and DirecTV at one point or another and paid 90-120 not inflation adjusted and that is just TV, this is pre-broadband.

You’re also not taking into account streaming discounts.

With tmobile the highest tier of Netflix is $7.

Annually and with a $25 statement credit from Amex HBO is $125/year, $10.42/month. (Legacy ad free so 4k)

Amazon I don’t count, I have prime for shipping, TV is a bonus, even if you don’t buy that putting the entire amount to video streaming is pretty disingenuous with everything else you get. Maybe call it $5/month.

My Disney trio gets me a $7/month AMEX statement credit so $18.

Paramount+with showtime is $120/year so $10/month. I also get a statement credit from AMEX for that but I can’t be bothered to look it up.

Starz is $70/year so $5.83/month. And it’s another one with an Amex statement credit I can’t be bothered to look up.

Additionally, all my streaming services get a 6% cash back from Amex on top of the statement credits.

So the ones you listed (I have more, I just did the ones you mentioned, Apple TV+ is free with tmobile for example) would be $65.52-the statement credits I can’t be bothered to look up.(6% off doesn’t apply to Netflix because it’s paid through T-Mobile)

So about 50% cheaper with all the benefits of streaming over appointment commercial TV. (Although, to be faaaaaiir, once you add in my others, peacock, britbox, crunchyroll, Viki, maybe something I’m forgetting, it’s back to the ~1/3 I mentioned before.)(But to be fair the other way, a lot of that stuff isn’t available on cable/satellite at any price period.)

Those arguments are exactly what I’m disputing. The prices are lower and value proposition is higher.

It seems like prices are going up because services are coming out a bit at a time and each of them are taking a little while to mature. Cheap initial offerings followed by price increases when they get their shit together.

Imagine if you could go back 15-20 years and flip a switch and have all the streaming services as they exist today all at once. You could tell those same struggling Americans “I can reduce your tv bill 40-60%, increase available content, and you can access that content anytime and anywhere you want commercial free, also unlike cable/satellite you can pick and choose or rotate services to save even more and if your cool with some (still less than cable) ads you can save even more.”

Streaming is a massive value increase over cable/satellite, and a major price cut with options to tailor the price and content to work best for you.

I just subscribe to everything. Even a few niche services like britbox.

After taking into account credit card kickbacks, discounts from T-Mobile, and discounts from annual plans, I pay about 1/3 less than I did for cable with all the movie stations and DVR service back in the early aughts. And I’m even counting adding basic cable to my Internet (I use an app to stream that so no extra box). And I’m not even accounting for 20 years of inflation, with that it’s about a 60% reduction.

So I pay 60% less after inflation for almost every movie and TV show ever made commercial free on demand on any device I own anywhere in the world (some programming changes apply) and live news and sports with the cable app (I don’t think I’ve tried the cable app overseas though).

It used to be appointment TV with non-premium stations having 30-35% commercial time. Even when TiVo came out you had to buy it and pay a sub, and when cable started offering DVR you paid for a more expensive box rental on top of paying monthly for the ability to DVR, double-dipping fuckers.

I really don’t understand complaints about streaming. Compared to what it’s replacing it’s an amazing upgrade in price, quality, and convenience. When do you ever get that? How hard is it to figure out what service something is on? Most boxes have a universial search and if your using a mobile device Google is right there. Yeah prices get higher on occasion, but inflation is a thing and now that content producers see the profit in streaming they’re putting money into new content, which makes me think of another thing: content produced for streaming is vastly superior, even on streaming services from the old major networks. Stuff that wouldn’t have gotten by the advertisers, let alone the censors for commercial broadcast, and no editing for time. A particular episode needs an extra couple/several minutes to be told correctly, no big deal.

As someone who loves the silver screen, and the small screen, for art and entertainment that can’t be called art with a straight face, I love streaming. I can’t understand how anyone who paid for cable/satellite in the past couldn’t.

Sorry for the ramble, can’t be bothered to edit for clarity or readability.

I am not conflating Nazis and communists. I am comparing you to a Holocaust denier because of your conspiracy theories about the existence of these places established to educate people about the well documented atrocities of the communist states. I didn’t say they were as bad as the Nazis overall, I pointed out they happily used the cramped cells, torture implements, and kill rooms left behind.

It is very much not the exception in communism. I have been to almost every former Warsaw pact country and a few countries that were part of the USSR and these museums are universal.

Your do a great disservice to the tens-of-thousands of victims of the communist states. I spent a lot of time in these places, looking at mugshots and intake forms and reading about what happened to them.

What do you think when you hear about a fascist antisemite standing in front of a pile of children’s shoes in a Holocaust museum saying “it didn’t happen”? Because that’s what I think about you right now.

And I never said concentration camps (edit: although these museums do tell the stories of the tens-of-thousands “deported” to camps in Siberia and other places), I was taking about buildings used for the imprisonment, torture, and murder of mostly political prisoners, but also others that upset the Nazis/communists in some way. Here is one example of many. https://www.terrorhaza.hu/en

So they just built all those museums dedicated to the hardship and terror of those years as a little joke to mess with westerners like me as I traveled through their countries?

Interesting side fact, in places that were occupied by both sides in WW2, some museums could do double duty. The places the Gestapo used to imprison, torture, and murder were often the same places the communists used for the same purposes.