Total number of active cases world wide has moved lower, now at 11,590,947. Total deaths are at 3,877,643 (i.e 98% survival rate – which of course don’t paint a complete picture without those people who experience long term effects months afterwards). In Australia, we have 30 active cases in Victoria, 7 in NSW, and 6 in QLD. Brett Sutton the Chief Health Officer is in trouble for flying to Canberra to attend a awards night while lockdown was in effect. Because that creates one set of rule for the people in charge, and one set of rules for all the peasants. “Life is normal in Australia” – Unless you’re someone separated from your family by closed borders. Unless you’re someone who is robbed of their income over and over and over again, denied any compensation and then told to shut up by fellow Australians and the Government.
Linus Torvalds said shut the hell up and get vaccinated. There are some rare side effect where some people get anaphylaxis, a life-threatening allergic reaction. No one has died from it, it’s something that doctors need to be aware of and deal with. Vaccine Passport is coming to Canada as told by their prime minister, while Texas has banned any business from requiring a vaccine passport.
Some lady with a background in experimental psychology is advising the British government. She wants the gov to force people to wear mask forever. Good luck grandma. Businesses are apologising to mask-less customer after they made human rights complaints. People will need to remember that some people suffer from breathing issues, or mental problems which makes them unable to wear a mask. I’m really lost for words when they start putting a mask on giant Buddhist statues.
In the years to come, lock down will be viewed as the most harmful thing in history. Metropolitan hotel in Melbourne is the latest victim of lock down. Facebook will allow employees to work remotely, full time.
Finance and Economics
Property prices are now breaking 32 year high, which shouldn’t be an issue if wages were rising at the same rate. Once upon a time my parents bought a house for 2 times dad’s factory worker salary. Today the office workers are the factory workers of the current era, and I would say it’s impossible to buy a house that’s 2 times an office worker’s yearly salary. There is a report that says rising house prices is a tripe threat to the economy in that it creates inequality, undermining growth and threatening stability.
Got to love the ScoMo gov – under international law it’s illegal to send back refugees if their lives will be in danger, so they passed a law to make it possible for them to put them in detention indefinitely – to deter people and stop the boats. They got rid of the ASIC chairman because he was going after the banks, and then they put a guy who was from Deutsche Bank in charge of ASIC. Additionally got rid of AusPost CEO for trying to turn AusPost into a Bank, trying to make cash illegal with jail term of 2 years so that people are forced to use banks. Tried to have veto power over what super funds can invest in. The moral of the story is that the government works for the banks, and they are possibly doing everything possible to prop up the economy – i.e. prop up the housing bubble. Cause the minster of defense – Peter Dutton owns 6 properties through negative gearing. “Blind belief in authority is the greatest enemy of truth.” — Albert Einstein
Inflation caused by currency printing should just be called debasement of the currency. It makes your savings worth less. The French president has let slip that the large plan is to get rid of central banks world wide, and let everything be controlled via the IMF. Which for a European country is exactly what has happen when the control when from the individual country central bank to the European Central bank. But for other countries outside of the EU it will be a foreign concept.
The unfortunate thing for the IMF is the the El Salvador law that makes bitcoin legal tender puts a huge spanner in the works for the IMF and sparked the IMF to call an emergency meeting with the president of El Salvador saying they see legal and economic issues with this. El Salvador have basically given themselves 90 days for implementation, and have brought it a whole lot of experts from the bitcoin space to help. The World Bank has refused to help with implementation citing “climate concerns“, while at the same time the World Bank has also been criticized for funding coal gas and oil. Any merchant in El Salvador will legally have to accept bitcoin if they are offered bitcoin, however that doesn’t mean they need to hold bitcoin, they can straight away have direct conversion to USD. The thing to remember about El Salvador is that they don’t have a national currency, and they’ve been using USD as their currency. However they have not been too happy that the Fed has been printing like crazy, so they are looking for more stability in their country.
It feels like déjà vu of pre internet days. Once upon a time all the telephone companies said they wouldn’t do internet and they were all marching in the same direction, then one day one of the smaller phone companies said “hmm maybe we should do internet…”, and we all know how history has ended up, the whole phone infrastructure is now built on top of the internet. The same is now happening to money. There are talks that a number of other central American, and south American countries that are looking make bitcoin legal tender. It was once upon a time a risk to have a bitcoin in your portfolio, but as time goes on it looks increasingly like it’s a risk to not have bitcoin in your portfolio. “If you want to be wrong then follow the masses” — Socrates
Billionaire Marc Lasry say “I should have brought a lot more.“. Paul Tudor Jones says – “I like Bitcoin. Bitcoin is math. Math has been around for thousands of years. 2 + 2 is gonna equal 4 and it will for the next 2,000 years. I like the idea of investing in something that’s reliable, consistent, honest, and 100% certain”. Nobel Prize–winning economist Paul Krugman’s 10 year history of being wrong about Bitcoin, but this is the guy who said the Internet will be nothing more than a more advance fax machine. Bitcoin is currently trading at around $34,500 USD or $46,300 AUD.
The tax office is after your cryptocurrency profit this year. The trap is if you changed from one crypto to another crypto, it counts as a sell, and you are liable for capital gains tax in Australia, so make sure you declare your tax liability.
Super Funds
Super funds seems to be a topic recently with the recent changes to super. Super is about to increase to 10% in the coming weeks, so expect to have reduced take home pay if super is part of your total package. This has been confirmed at some major companies. For some lower wage earners or people living on the financial edge, the amount that ends up in your pocket is important. From a whole economy system point of view, it means wage growth will slow further and not keep up with inflation, which means people have less money to spend. How much money you need to retire depends on if you own your own home or not.
Best performing super fund over 5 years? Here’s are some list based on various metrics. I’m not sure how useful it is, but it’s still good to know. Balance Fund performance – AustralianSuper (9.93 per cent) comes out on top, followed by Hostplus (9.76), UniSuper Accumulation (9.5), Aware Super (9.43) and BT Panorama Full Menu – BT Wholesale Multi-Manager Balanced Fund (9.42).
Lowest in terms of fees? Vision Personal ($238), Superestate ($292), Bendigo SmartStart Super – Personal Division ($323), ANZ Smart Choice – Personal ($325) and Kogan Super ($335).
Cheapest insurance – here’s the list. UniSuper Accumulation Super, Equip – MyFuture, NGS Super – Industry Plan, AvSuper – Accumulation and Catholic Super.
Other Stuff
Joe Biden thinks you should buy a shotgun. Tell that to the guy whose pants fell off. (Note – no targets were hurt in the making of those videos.)
There is actually a huge amount of countries that have Nuclear power. Unfortunately, we need to burn coal in Australia because we seem to have trouble distinguishing between a power plant and a weapon.
Paul Graham has this really good article about Identity. Here’s some useful tidbits – “As a rule, any mention of religion on an online forum degenerates into a religious argument. Why? Why does this happen with religion and not with Javascript or baking or other topics people talk about on forums?
What makes politics and religion such minefields is that they engage so many people’s identities.
Most people reading this will already be fairly tolerant. But there is a step beyond thinking of yourself as x but tolerating y: not even to consider yourself an x. The more labels you have for yourself, the dumber they make you.”
How to think clearly to improve understanding and communication.
This guy was swallowed by a humpback whale and it then spat him out. Jess thinks he should have thought of Pinocchio and light a fire next time.
For a long time I’ve been trying to work out how to get the kitchen knife sharper, but have not been having the greatest success. Here’s an article about whetstone, which inspired me to get 2 new whetstones from Amazon (1000,3000,6000,8000 grade stones). Still need more practice..
Inspired by a local dumpling place that makes dumplings in a chili sauce / oil. I made this chili oil, and it is absolutely delicious! Not as spicy as I had expected. You can find Sichuan peppers in the Asian groceries, it might be labelled as Chinese prickly ash. The Korean chili flakes comes in a very large packet. The rest are pretty standard ingredients. .
Crazy Japanese guy has a giant pet turtle that he takes for walks. Also this sparrow thinks he is a dog.
I’ll leave you with the following. Have a great week all!