Grand Parkway to Real Estate and Life Issues

[kalvado]

On the effect of toll island neighborhoods on birthrates, with emphasis on whether such neighborhoods may impact working population and tax revenues on regional and larger scales

I can envision someone living at a toll island as being the instigating reason a for break up.

And just think of someone living on a private toll island

[kalvado]

Take care of insulating yourself then if you are so worried about your retirement years.  I've spent an entire career and most of my adult life setting up the financial pieces that I have lined up now.  Really all that is left for me is to let the next decade play out with staying on track with maximum pension vestment and finishing paying off the mortgage.  I can't control what others haven't done to prepare themselves, so I don't see a point in being concerned.
 

Financial cushion may be great, but it's only a part of the story. Good luck with your green bills when there is noone to change your diaper and move you to a wheelchair. Or bring and cook your food. 

Ah, you assume that I have much incentive to live to point where those are actual problems.  After seeing how both my parents slowed were consumed by disease I can assure you that I have no desire to have the same happen to me.   What they both went through wasn't life, or at least not what it should have been.

As an aside, my wife's grandmother recently passed away.  She had eight sons and seven them were fairly local to where she lived.  More or less, it was just the eldest son (my father in-law) and a paid caretaker who took care of her day-to-day needs.  My father-in-law is partially retired which is the only reason he was able to be so readily available.

Before the thread is split...
I believe we had this conversation before, and I am actually with you.
But let me repeat same thing in a less harsh manner: you may have money , but there is no stockpile of shirts, bread, or cars - so someone would have to make those.. I suspect it will be you and me working until we  fall.

[Max Rockatansky]

Take care of insulating yourself then if you are so worried about your retirement years.  I've spent an entire career and most of my adult life setting up the financial pieces that I have lined up now.  Really all that is left for me is to let the next decade play out with staying on track with maximum pension vestment and finishing paying off the mortgage.  I can't control what others haven't done to prepare themselves, so I don't see a point in being concerned.
 

Financial cushion may be great, but it's only a part of the story. Good luck with your green bills when there is noone to change your diaper and move you to a wheelchair. Or bring and cook your food. 

Ah, you assume that I have much incentive to live to point where those are actual problems.  After seeing how both my parents slowed were consumed by disease I can assure you that I have no desire to have the same happen to me.   What they both went through wasn't life, or at least not what it should have been.

As an aside, my wife's grandmother recently passed away.  She had eight sons and seven them were fairly local to where she lived.  More or less, it was just the eldest son (my father in-law) and a paid caretaker who took care of her day-to-day needs.  My father-in-law is partially retired which is the only reason he was able to be so readily available.

Before the thread is split...
I believe we had this conversation before, and I am actually with you.
But let me repeat same thing in a less harsh manner: you may have money , but there is no stockpile of shirts, bread, or cars - so someone would have to make those.. I suspect it will be you and me working until we  fall.

You might be ultimately right, but at present moment things are tracking in the way they need for me.  I'm two years from keeping my medical benefits and seven away from being fully vested in my pension.  My wife is ten years from being fully vested into her pension.

Right my wife and I are halfway into our mortgage.  The main goal for me now is not to have things derail for the next decade.  The mortgage at least can be paid off if somehow we both lost our jobs.  My pension wouldn't go away if I lost my job, it just wouldn't be maximized. 

But all I just mentioned took about a decade of my career to setup.  Most of my early jobs in my career field had crap benefits and generally were the turn-n-burn variety of jobs.

[Rothman]

Take care of insulating yourself then if you are so worried about your retirement years.  I've spent an entire career and most of my adult life setting up the financial pieces that I have lined up now.  Really all that is left for me is to let the next decade play out with staying on track with maximum pension vestment and finishing paying off the mortgage.  I can't control what others haven't done to prepare themselves, so I don't see a point in being concerned.
 

Financial cushion may be great, but it's only a part of the story. Good luck with your green bills when there is noone to change your diaper and move you to a wheelchair. Or bring and cook your food. 

Ah, you assume that I have much incentive to live to point where those are actual problems.  After seeing how both my parents slowed were consumed by disease I can assure you that I have no desire to have the same happen to me.   What they both went through wasn't life, or at least not what it should have been.

As an aside, my wife's grandmother recently passed away.  She had eight sons and seven them were fairly local to where she lived.  More or less, it was just the eldest son (my father in-law) and a paid caretaker who took care of her day-to-day needs.  My father-in-law is partially retired which is the only reason he was able to be so readily available.

Before the thread is split...
I believe we had this conversation before, and I am actually with you.
But let me repeat same thing in a less harsh manner: you may have money , but there is no stockpile of shirts, bread, or cars - so someone would have to make those.. I suspect it will be you and me working until we  fall.

You might be ultimately right, but at present moment things are tracking in the way they need for me.  I'm two years from keeping my medical benefits and seven away from being fully vested in my pension.  My wife is ten years from being fully vested into her pension.

Right my wife and I are halfway into our mortgage.  The main goal for me now is not to have things derail for the next decade.  The mortgage at least can be paid off if somehow we both lost our jobs.  My pension wouldn't go away if I lost my job, it just wouldn't be maximized. 

But all I just mentioned took about a decade of my career to setup.  Most of my early jobs in my career field had crap benefits and generally were the turn-n-burn variety of jobs.

Word to the wise: It's incredible and annoying what curveballs life can throw at you, no matter the preparations made.

[Max Rockatansky]

Take care of insulating yourself then if you are so worried about your retirement years.  I've spent an entire career and most of my adult life setting up the financial pieces that I have lined up now.  Really all that is left for me is to let the next decade play out with staying on track with maximum pension vestment and finishing paying off the mortgage.  I can't control what others haven't done to prepare themselves, so I don't see a point in being concerned.
 

Financial cushion may be great, but it's only a part of the story. Good luck with your green bills when there is noone to change your diaper and move you to a wheelchair. Or bring and cook your food. 

Ah, you assume that I have much incentive to live to point where those are actual problems.  After seeing how both my parents slowed were consumed by disease I can assure you that I have no desire to have the same happen to me.   What they both went through wasn't life, or at least not what it should have been.

As an aside, my wife's grandmother recently passed away.  She had eight sons and seven them were fairly local to where she lived.  More or less, it was just the eldest son (my father in-law) and a paid caretaker who took care of her day-to-day needs.  My father-in-law is partially retired which is the only reason he was able to be so readily available.

Before the thread is split...
I believe we had this conversation before, and I am actually with you.
But let me repeat same thing in a less harsh manner: you may have money , but there is no stockpile of shirts, bread, or cars - so someone would have to make those.. I suspect it will be you and me working until we  fall.

You might be ultimately right, but at present moment things are tracking in the way they need for me.  I'm two years from keeping my medical benefits and seven away from being fully vested in my pension.  My wife is ten years from being fully vested into her pension.

Right my wife and I are halfway into our mortgage.  The main goal for me now is not to have things derail for the next decade.  The mortgage at least can be paid off if somehow we both lost our jobs.  My pension wouldn't go away if I lost my job, it just wouldn't be maximized. 

But all I just mentioned took about a decade of my career to setup.  Most of my early jobs in my career field had crap benefits and generally were the turn-n-burn variety of jobs.

Word to the wise: It's incredible and annoying what curveballs life can throw at you, no matter the preparations made.

The big one for me is getting past the next seven years.  If I make it then pretty much what I do for a living becomes optional.  I'm in something of a career high right now, but there has been some absolutely awful low points.  The next low might always be around the next corner. 

[wxfree]

On the effect of toll island neighborhoods on birthrates, with emphasis on whether such neighborhoods may impact working population and tax revenues on regional and larger scales

Channeling the ghost of Jonathan Swift?

I don't know who that is.  I just looked it up.  I was channeling the titles of old scientific papers, from about 100 years ago.  A common format is "On this phenomenon."  I looked through a bunch of titles in the bibliographies of old science textbooks.  I made it long, adding a "with emphasis" clause, to increase the absurdity.

[Bobby5280]

Take care of insulating yourself then if you are so worried about your retirement years.

I have a decent amount of money in a Roth IRA. Plus I have a pretty good rainy day fund in my bank account. There is a growing risk those assets are going to get de-valued. The stock market is clearly in a bubble. Our government is doing stupid things to threaten the value of the dollar and value of treasury bills. I have a strong feeling by the time I reach retirement age the combination of those savings and what Social Security can pay out (assuming it still exists) won't be enough. I'll have to keep working.

Which brings me to another thing I've been doing: living as healthy as possible. I work out around 5 or 6 times per week. That includes some heavy weight lifting. I don't smoke. I limit my alcohol intake. When it reach the late 60's and go into my 70's I want the odds in my favor I'll still be healthy, strong and able-bodied. If I still have to work and can't afford to retire I'll need to be able to do so.

And there is a simple metric - workforce participation rate, which can translate into how many "dependents" a working adult has. Right now US is at ~62%, for 0.61 "dependent" per worker. Common wisdom would be that if participation drops, remaining workers would have to work harder for a smaller reward to keep things going. Automation may (and does) change that, though.

Automation is continuing to improve. And then we have the looming threat of AI. The companies developing large language models, AI agents, etc are racing as fast as they can toward goals like achieving Artificial General Intelligence. Meanwhile they seem very little concerned at all about the potential of these tools eliminating tens of millions of white collar jobs. Maybe they've done a calculation that says their sales and the US economy in general can do fine without the bottom 80% of income earners. Still, if there is widespread unemployment among educated/skilled workers it's going to turn into a societal powder keg. These AI-based tools are just getting started and there is already strong backlash happening just over people seeing their utility bills spike. Their fury will be far worse if they're losing their jobs.

[bwana39]

Question, why does this matter to you so much?

When the consequences of this demographic downturn finally hit I, and so many other people who are reaching retirement age in the next 15-20 years, may be affected by it pretty badly.

We're going to have too small of a working age tax base to fund programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. The lopsided imbalance of too many retired age people and not enough working age people is going to cause all kinds of problems. The notion of retirement may become a thing of the past for many Americans. They'll have to work til they die, or get medically incapacitated shortly before they die.

I'll probably feel a bit of schadenfreude at one of the problems: people trying to downsize out of their pricey McMansions in the 2030's and 2040's and find a severe shortage of buyers. They'll be stuck. Good. They're the same assholes who showed up at city council meetings to make them vote down permits for multi-unit housing or anything deemed "affordable." They did all they could to put a floor under high housing prices to protect their investment. In 15-20 years those folks will see most of that equity evaporate due to a glut of unsold homes on the market. The Japanese coined a term "Akiya" for vacant homes (mostly in rural areas). Japan has over 9 million of those. They're abandoned homes no one wants to claim. We may see a lot of that problem take hold here.

I'm more scared about the prospect of our military not having shit for manpower in 20 years. None of the branches of our military are hitting recruiting targets now. The Army has lowered its academic and physical fitness standards. An increasingly "multi-polar" geo-political world will be at greater risk for war. I like scaring bigots about how much of the world's youth lives in Africa and that the continent could either turn into a economic powerhouse or military powder keg. World War III could be started due to Africa.

Still, if we make it easier to care for and raise children and also better incentivize the production of babies, there will be more babies.

European countries have been trying all sorts of steps. None of them seem to be reversing the trends of their demographic downturns. At best, they're only slowing the drop.

Japan is pretty deep in it as we speak.

And there is a simple metric - workforce participation rate, which can translate into how many "dependents" a working adult has. Right now US is at ~62%, for 0.61 "dependent" per worker. Common wisdom would be that if participation drops, remaining workers would have to work harder for a smaller reward to keep things going. Automation may (and does) change that, though.

And.. US has a demographic reserve. 12 years of school and 30% of college enrollment may be cut, so people start working earlier. Increase of retirement age is another knob which is being turned.

This topic is WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY off topic, but...

Participation rate is the metric that relates DIRECTLY to the social security and medicare deposits.  The problem is lots of people make LOTS of money that is never subject to FISA or even federal income taxes. Forcing those people into the pool of people who pay into these accounts would solve a whole lot of the problem.

[Bobby5280]

Participation rate is the metric that relates DIRECTLY to the social security and medicare deposits.  The problem is lots of people make LOTS of money that is never subject to FISA or even federal income taxes. Forcing those people into the pool of people who pay into these accounts would solve a whole lot of the problem.

Considering the widespread amount of grift taking place in the federal government now, making more of high income earners' pay subject to payments into Social Security just isn't going to happen.

I suspect the people at the top of the income scale want Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid to collapse. That way America can return to a late 1800's style "gilded age" where only a small percentage of upper class people are living very well and everyone else is struggling. It's Make America a Developing Nation Again.

[74/171FAN]

If you see a post that you think you be in the original thread, please let me know.

[Scott5114]

Automation is continuing to improve. And then we have the looming threat of AI. The companies developing large language models, AI agents, etc are racing as fast as they can toward goals like achieving Artificial General Intelligence. Meanwhile they seem very little concerned at all about the potential of these tools eliminating tens of millions of white collar jobs. Maybe they've done a calculation that says their sales and the US economy in general can do fine without the bottom 80% of income earners. Still, if there is widespread unemployment among educated/skilled workers it's going to turn into a societal powder keg. These AI-based tools are just getting started and there is already strong backlash happening just over people seeing their utility bills spike. Their fury will be far worse if they're losing their jobs.

Yeah, none of this is happening. AI is so catastrophically expensive to operate that nobody can make a profit at it (it loses money with every query), it's actually becoming more expensive the more they tinker with it, and if they did charge the rates needed to recoup the costs then nobody would pay them because it would be cheaper to pay a human to do it.

Add to the that fact that the amount of electricity that would be needed for them to become profitable straight up doesn't exist on planet Earth, the companies involved have an incestuous relationship with each other where they're all in debt to each other up to their eyeballs, and they're all on a deadline to become profitable before any of this can realistically be resolved...

The AI industry ran off the edge of the cliff, Looney Tunes style, months ago. The rest of us are just waiting for Sam Altman and Satya Nadella to actually fucking look down already, which they appear to be annoyingly resistant to doing.

[Rothman]

Meh, I think the truth is definitely between "AI will inherit the Earth" and "AI is doomed."

[kalvado]

Meh, I think the truth is definitely between "AI will inherit the Earth" and "AI is doomed."

Just think about poor Scott who would have to amend the thread title once again!

[74/171FAN]

I mean, AI taking jobs is a life issue right?   

[vdeane]

Automation is continuing to improve. And then we have the looming threat of AI. The companies developing large language models, AI agents, etc are racing as fast as they can toward goals like achieving Artificial General Intelligence. Meanwhile they seem very little concerned at all about the potential of these tools eliminating tens of millions of white collar jobs. Maybe they've done a calculation that says their sales and the US economy in general can do fine without the bottom 80% of income earners. Still, if there is widespread unemployment among educated/skilled workers it's going to turn into a societal powder keg. These AI-based tools are just getting started and there is already strong backlash happening just over people seeing their utility bills spike. Their fury will be far worse if they're losing their jobs.

Yeah, none of this is happening. AI is so catastrophically expensive to operate that nobody can make a profit at it (it loses money with every query), it's actually becoming more expensive the more they tinker with it, and if they did charge the rates needed to recoup the costs then nobody would pay them because it would be cheaper to pay a human to do it.

Add to the that fact that the amount of electricity that would be needed for them to become profitable straight up doesn't exist on planet Earth, the companies involved have an incestuous relationship with each other where they're all in debt to each other up to their eyeballs, and they're all on a deadline to become profitable before any of this can realistically be resolved...

The AI industry ran off the edge of the cliff, Looney Tunes style, months ago. The rest of us are just waiting for Sam Altman and Satya Nadella to actually fucking look down already, which they appear to be annoyingly resistant to doing.

Honestly, with everything we're seeing with AI, I can't help but wonder if we're in the middle of an AI takeover already.  A video I saw on the subject said the AI would try to be super helpful (so we don't turn it off) while making mistakes (so we underestimate its capabilities) and quietly work to gather more an more resources (see: all the data centers being built) and get hooked into more systems (see: the push to put AI in everything) while gathering more and more information and turning humanity against itself through increasing political polarization.  All things that we're seeing in the real world.

[GaryV]

AI will inherit the Earth

No way. None of those companies can be called "meek".

[Scott5114]

Automation is continuing to improve. And then we have the looming threat of AI. The companies developing large language models, AI agents, etc are racing as fast as they can toward goals like achieving Artificial General Intelligence. Meanwhile they seem very little concerned at all about the potential of these tools eliminating tens of millions of white collar jobs. Maybe they've done a calculation that says their sales and the US economy in general can do fine without the bottom 80% of income earners. Still, if there is widespread unemployment among educated/skilled workers it's going to turn into a societal powder keg. These AI-based tools are just getting started and there is already strong backlash happening just over people seeing their utility bills spike. Their fury will be far worse if they're losing their jobs.

Yeah, none of this is happening. AI is so catastrophically expensive to operate that nobody can make a profit at it (it loses money with every query), it's actually becoming more expensive the more they tinker with it, and if they did charge the rates needed to recoup the costs then nobody would pay them because it would be cheaper to pay a human to do it.

Add to the that fact that the amount of electricity that would be needed for them to become profitable straight up doesn't exist on planet Earth, the companies involved have an incestuous relationship with each other where they're all in debt to each other up to their eyeballs, and they're all on a deadline to become profitable before any of this can realistically be resolved...

The AI industry ran off the edge of the cliff, Looney Tunes style, months ago. The rest of us are just waiting for Sam Altman and Satya Nadella to actually fucking look down already, which they appear to be annoyingly resistant to doing.

Honestly, with everything we're seeing with AI, I can't help but wonder if we're in the middle of an AI takeover already.  A video I saw on the subject said the AI would try to be super helpful (so we don't turn it off) while making mistakes (so we underestimate its capabilities) and quietly work to gather more an more resources (see: all the data centers being built) and get hooked into more systems (see: the push to put AI in everything) while gathering more and more information and turning humanity against itself through increasing political polarization.  All things that we're seeing in the real world.

What? No.

For AI to want to take over, it would have to have the capacity to know what "want" and "take over" mean. It doesn't. It's a computer program that takes an input and returns an output, just like every other computer program in the world does. Just because the path from input to output is so obfuscated that the people that made it can't figure out how it works doesn't mean it's sentient or has motivations.

We may as well worry about the fucking Plinko board taking over the world. The guts are incredibly similar.

What you should be worried about taking over the world isn't the AI itself, it's Larry Ellison.

[Max Rockatansky]

Would it help if I began referring to AI as "branded algorithms" again?

[Scott5114]

I don't think "algorithms" is the right word, either, since algorithms have a defined function and you can measure their efficiency with O-notation, which I don't think is true about generative AI.

Generative AI is more like if a roulette wheel tried to be a people pleaser.

[Max Rockatansky]

I don't think "algorithms" is the right word, either, since algorithms have a defined function and you can measure their efficiency with O-notation, which I don't think is true about generative AI.

Generative AI is more like if a roulette wheel tried to be a people pleaser.

They certainly aren't conscious intelligence.  Terming them as "AI" makes people think of things like Sky Net (hence the conspiracy stuff),

[PColumbus73]

Francis Scott Key Bridge thread... is that you?

[Max Rockatansky]

Francis Scott Key Bridge thread... is that you?

Living on a toll island and being afraid to venture into the outside world due to fear of dolphins sounds like a miserable existence.  Imagine the fear being so bad that your spouse divorces you over it (and your choice to live on a toll island)?

[kalvado]

Francis Scott Key Bridge thread... is that you?

Living on a toll island and being afraid to venture into the outside world due to fear of dolphins sounds like a miserable existence.  Imagine the fear being so bad that your spouse divorces you over it (and your choice to live on a toll island)?

A dolphin on a toll bridge.. should it be considered as toll island?

[kphoger]

I suspect the people at the top of the income scale want Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid to collapse. That way America can return to a late 1800's style "gilded age" where only a small percentage of upper class people are living very well and everyone else is struggling.

I suspect the people at the top of the income scale don't actually care very much what happens to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

Yeah, none of this is happening. AI is so catastrophically expensive to operate that nobody can make a profit at it (it loses money with every query), it's actually becoming more expensive the more they tinker with it, and if they did charge the rates needed to recoup the costs then nobody would pay them because it would be cheaper to pay a human to do it ... The AI industry ran off the edge of the cliff, Looney Tunes style, months ago.

Oh, dear.  Does that mean it won't get substantially better than it is right now?  "Yeah, it kind of sucks right now, but just wait till it gets better" is really just "Yeah, it kind of sucks, and it always will"?

I don't think "algorithms" is the right word, either, since algorithms have a defined function and you can measure their efficiency with O-notation, which I don't think is true about generative AI.

Generative AI is more like if a roulette wheel tried to be a people pleaser.

Do you have a good term to encompass all that A.I. is without including the word "intelligent"?

[wxfree]

Do you have a good term to encompass all that A.I. is without including the word "intelligent"?

I am in no manner an expert on this topic, or even competently informed, but I call it artificial stupidity.  That isn't particularly helpful, so I might call it simulated thought through content mixing.  It finds patterns in words or visual information, without knowing what any of it means, and recombines that content based on other patterns it's observed.  Sometimes it goes sideways and makes stuff up, so you can't rely on it at all, but if you know enough about the topic to recognize a good answer, then you might see a good answer you recognize.  It's basically a substitute for asking someone who knows the answer, but if that someone isn't insane and reliably doesn't start rambling absurdities or mixing in self-destructive suggestions with otherwise good information, that someone is a better option.

I know someone who's impressed with its ability to answer questions.  If most of the answers on the Internet are correct, then that's the source of the correct answers the machine gives.  That, not any understanding of the question, or even what the words mean.  I'd compare it, reminding that I have no subject matter expertise, to the old problem of using Google to get the correct spelling of a word (I remember an article about that decades ago).  Google would not give you the correct spelling, but the most common one.  If the web was full of misspellings of a word, then there's bad source material.  Google only cared about what's common, not what was correct.  These days the site works differently and it may give you a dictionary spelling.

I see artificial stupidity, I mean whatever content mixing I called it, as another way to withdraw from the world, from other people, and from awareness of your own thoughts.  Rather than asking someone, or thinking about it, or being aware of the world so you can learn things yourself, you can ask a machine, just like you can draw up games, videos, and other entertainment.  It's another step toward endless distraction and the excision of the last vestiges of any real meaning in life.  That is my Al doomsday theory (I spell and pronounce it as AL, like Al Bundy, because I refuse to recognize the "i"), not force but surrender, not taking over the world not by overpowering us, but by making us stop wanting control of our lives.  That doesn't require any actual intelligence or will, just endless distraction.  It takes over only because we need something to run things, not because it took control from us.