Divemedic

Supply and Demand

People don’t understand how market forces work, and that is true on both the left AND the right. The price of anything: food, houses, cars, even your labor is set by market forces.

Michael Jordan got paid what he was paid for two reasons: no one else could play basketball at the level he played the game. The pool of talented basketball players was very small- there are less than 600 people in the entire country that can play basketball at an NBA level, and Jordan was the only person playing at the level he was playing at. So there is your supply- very limited.

The demand for him was huge- people wanted to watch the man do what he did, and they wanted to be like him so much that they bought millions of shoes simply because Nike put his name on them. That is your demand.

The same is true for houses, cars, food, or anything else for that matter. Right now, my wife wants to buy a car. She has her mind set on a specific car, and is very particular about what she wants. She wants a Lexus TX350 AWD with the Luxury trim package, a dark outside color, and any interior that isn’t white. Guess what? Demand for that vehicle is so high, the dealers are selling them sight unseen before they even arrive from the factory. You can’t special order them, because the factory is so busy trying to meet demand, that they don’t have the capacity to do custom orders. Because demand is so high, dealers charge sticker price, take it or leave it. If you don’t like it, go buy something else, but make no mistake, as long as the Lexus vehicles are selling so quickly, you won’t see deals or reductions in price.

Apply the same to houses- people want to buy houses, and the demand curve is being altered by large investors buying thousands of homes to use as rentals. Demand is high, so prices climb. Why are investors buying so many rentals? Because demand there is pushing rental rates to climb, because so many illegals have entered the country, and they all need places to live.

So more illegals= more renters. More renters=higher demand and increased rental prices. That equals more profits, which draws in more investors to meet that demand. Those investors are buying themselves rental property, which is causing a decrease in supply for homes, and here we are.

By Divemedic, ago

Assist

As a paramedic, I have opened dozens of cars for medical emergencies, pets, or even children locked in cars. A person who is in a car and isn’t responding is a medical emergency until proven otherwise. Our policy was to try and wake the person while knocking on the window. If no response, the person was showing signs of distress, or it was a child, we would then gain entry to the vehicle. If the temperature outside was less than 80 degrees Fahrenheit, we would take the time to open in without damaging the vehicle, if possible. We had tools for that, but they take a bit of time. If the temperature was more than 80 degrees, our policy was to immediately gain access using the fastest possible means.

The people commenting on this post have a problem with what the cops did. I don’t.

By Divemedic, ago

Housing Costs

Check this out, and I can prove that it is wrong:

  • A payment of $2665 corresponds to a house that costs $465,000, so that is realistic.
  • The 22% marginal rate isn’t applied to all of your income, it’s applied only to the portion of your taxable income that is over $81,050 for a married couple.
  • In order to qualify for this house, the payment can’t be more than 50% of pretax household income. To afford this house, a couple would need to make $5330 per month, which means they would have to make $64,000 per year combined.
  • Median household income in the US is $83,730. So an “average” couple would have no trouble affording an “average” house.

However, crying about how people making minimum wage can’t afford an average house ignores mathematical definitions. Average is more than minimum, and there is no way to change that.

This is leftists online trying to piss people off because most people don’t understand math well enough to know that this entire social media post is bullshit.

By Divemedic, ago

Funny

So there’s this crusty old Sergeant Major and he’s really tense and uptight.

One night he’s at a military ball and this beautiful young woman comes up to him and says “Sergeant Major, you look so tense. When was the last time you got laid?”

He replied, “I haven’t had sex since 1955.”

The woman was shocked. “1955?” She said, “That’s so long ago! Why don’t you come back here and I’ll help you loosen up?”

So she takes him into this dark back room. He knows all the angles, all the moves, he rocks her world. Afterward she’s laying on her back panting and she says “Wow, you haven’t forgotten anything since 1955, huh?”

He replies, “I sure hope not, it’s only 2130 now!”

By Divemedic, ago

Liberals Get Angry

Funny thing, leftists on the Internet keep calling me a boomer. I’m GenX, but since when do facts get in the way? Still, now leftists have moved on from their expertise in medicine, foreign relations, defense, and now are back to being use of force and legal experts. If you disagree, they call you names and then block you.

By Divemedic, ago

What It Will Look Like

An American civil war won’t be a clean battle between two sides. It’s going to be a messy affair involving dozens of factions.

By Divemedic, ago

No More Credit

Trump is claiming that he will support a rule change for credit cards that will cap interest rates at 10%. This is a horrendous idea that will cause real problems. The reason interest rates are where they are is a topic I have visited here before. People with bad credit are very likely to default.

With a ten percent interest rate, if more than 3% or 4% of people default, the bank will lose money covering the defaults.

Studies have shown that the lower your FICO score, the higher are your chances of default.

Credit Score% of the populationprobability of default
800 or more13%1%
750-79927%1%
700-74918%4.4%
650-69915%8.9%
600-64912%15.8%
550-5998%22.5%
500-5495%28.4%
less than 5002%41%

Credit Scores and Default Rates

With a ten percent default rate, anyone who has a credit score less than 700 is a money loser and won’t be able to get anything other than a secured credit card, and those with a credit score between 700-749 are right there on the border and will likely see cards with very low limits.

That isn’t to say credit scores are without fault. I detest how the FICO score works, but it is what the banks use, and for that reason, Trump’s actions will make sure Americans stop living beyond their means.

Maybe that’s his intent. If it isn’t, well, price controls never work as intended.

By Divemedic, ago

This is so Last Week

I know this is from last week and the left has since moved on, but below is a great video on the EF-18 Growler.

When I was in the Navy, we still had the EA-6B Prowler, affectionally called the “Queer.” The Growler has the same job, it’s just been modernized. There were 2 squadrons of these in the Venezuela theater: one was carrier based, the other was located in Puerto Rico.

There was a legend going around when I was in the service about a Prowler that had turned its jamming equipment on over Washington state and shut down everything: radars, radio, television, all of it for almost 15 minutes. Don’t know if it is true, but it certainly is within this plane’s capabilities. The jamming pod these aircraft carries is the AN/ALQ-99, which can jam all RF signals between 64 MHz and 20GHz.

In the run up to the Venezuela attacks, those Growlers would have shut down all radio and radar. No missiles, no tracking or seeing aircraft, and no issuing of orders to anti-aircraft batteries. All command, control, and communications (C3) would have been shut down. All radars inoperable. Anything that tried to shoot or track anyhow would have been eliminated by the F-35s that were operating over the country.

An entire nation’s air defense, shut down in a couple of minutes.

By Divemedic, ago

ONE TIME PAD

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By Divemedic, ago

Electric Bugaloo

EDITOR NOTE: I originally had this post scheduled for Friday morning, but Tim Walz has forced me to reschedule it to release this evening. He has just activated the Minnesota National Guard to assist local law enforcement. Read below, and see why I feel like there is a high probability that the support the NG will be offering is assisting local LEOs in doing something stupid like attacking or arresting ICE agents.

I believe that this is a serious development. END NOTE, ORIGINAL POST FOLLOWS

Tim Walz is threatening the United States with military force.

The guy who lost in the last presidential election says heā€™s ā€œat warā€ with the federal governmentā€¦that sounds like some third world wannabe dictator shit right there. He has issued prepatory orders to the National Guard to prepare for deployment.

Of course, most people don’t know that, like his staunch defender Swalwell, Walz was banging a Chinese spy while he was living in China, as well as being a fluent speaker of Mandarin Chinese.

I believe that the left is trying to get Trump to invoke the insurrection act, and has been since April of last year. That is the only thing that makes sense- they are trying to provoke him so they can say “See? We told you he was going to declare martial law, but you wouldn’t listen.”

JD Vance wrecked Tim Walz playing tough guy and calling for Civil War:

It’s very tough rhetoric from a guy who just quit because his fraudulent activities have been uncovered… Tim Walz is a joke.

The left is deliberately trying to provoke a civil war. The woman who is sparked this, this lefty Helen of Troy? She was a communist operative and trainer from Antifa. This carpet munching nutbag and her scissor partner moved from Kansas City to Canada in the wake of the election, then moved into the Minneapolis area a few months, where they immediately got involved as training cadre for anti law enforcement leftists.

By Divemedic, ago