In all fairness, owning land or a business in California is the surest way to make someone more right wing. Move to a very rural area for the opposite effect.

Considering the heat in this fire is twice most blowtorches, I fail to see how that means anything. Please understand these fires are hot enough to melt structural steel. They are also hotter than the kiln where those clay tiles would have been made.

One, stone isn't a great building material. Sure its still standing, but you wouldn't want to live in it. Second, there are tons of building regulations in the US and especially in a place like this. There isn't much that can withstand the kind of heat a forest fire makes. It isn't like the fires in a city, they are much bigger and more intense. There are several causes of this fire, one is climate change, another is not putting in the effort to clear brush. Building out of stone wouldn't have made much of a difference. The remaining structure isn't livable even if it is still standing.

The insurance companies pulled out of this neighborhood about 6 months ago. All policies were cancelled. They said the state wouldn't let them raise the premiums to a level required to offset the risk. Before you say, greedy insurance companies, 1) they were right, and 2) if they did write these policies, the rest of us end up subsidizing their much more expensive homes. Just though everyone should know this before piling on about insurance.

He is in the UK. Sound financial decisions are not made by government officials in the UK. Its politics all the way down to the poorhouse. Its the UK way.

The insurance companies are already leaving before this was announced. So reality and actions of those involved would seem to indicate that the insurance companies will just leave. Just try to buy a house with a mortgage in CA and you will learn some things.

That's not Godwin's law. Godwin's law is when you call one side of the argument (or whoever you are arguing with) Hitler. This is using that as an example of something silly. But thank you for showing everyone that you don't actually understand Godwin's law. Now turn in your Internet pass at the door as you leave.

Its also shifting blame in a really disingenuous way. The idea that big tech companies are doing something comparable to tobacco companies is pretty rich. Well, this person who wrote this article breaths air. Hitler breathed air. Therefore this author is responsible for the holocaust. See how silly that is. This is an ideologically temper tantrum from someone who is mad about the outcome of an election. Are all the folks who work in big tech angels, no of course not. But does getting folks to argue on the Internet, really cause the same harm as AGW or tobacco companies? That's a really hard argument to make. Especially since those Internet discussions really only impact the chattering class and not normies nor actual public policy.

Its also ex-post facto. Why is that important. Because after I pass my air tax, you own me your lifetime earnings. Also, everything is illegal because at the time you do something, you don't know if I'm going to ban it in the future. So everything is illegal. That's why we don't allow ex-post facto laws.

So no food then either, since we used nitrate fertilizers to grow that food.

How is the mass of the CO2 more than the mass of the coal? Is that extra mass O2 being captured from the air?

They also shutdown their own nuclear plant. So the pollution in reality is the fault of those same politicians. And policies like this only impact the cost of living for everyone. They don't get people to conserve. Especially in NYC where the heating comes from a central steam system and not from individual heaters in buildings. Remember, never let a crisis go to waste. And especially don't do anything to solve said crisis as then you don't get to gouge the population for more taxes and power.

They did. That probably isn't true today but it doesn't depend on a whole range of factors. If you are coming out of a humanities program at one of these schools, the VCs want nothing to do with you and your job prospects probably aren't very good. A few years ago, at least you could have gotten a meeting with a VC and your job prospects were probably excellent. For those with technical degrees, the situation probably hasn't changed that much. But you are still probably standing in line behind the CMU and MIT grads who were always the first picks. It just depends on both the real and imagined values of those degrees which are not the same as they were 10 years ago. I mean, think about the change in the image of UC Berkeley. 20 years ago it was a top 5 school. Today its seen as a place where the rich from other countries send their mediocre kids. It barely top 5 in CA (Cal Tech, UCLA, Stanford, UCSD, then probably UC Berkeley). You can destroy a school's reputation and it does happen. When it happens, its the recent grads who suffer. And I assure you, they will care what we think when they interview with us for jobs.

That's a good mindset. However, you probably want to avoid the mutual funds as their cost basis is far higher than the index funds. In many cases your return after several years will only be a fraction of what it could be if you choose manged funds instead of indexed ones. Please don't confuse mutual funds and indexed funds as they are very different animals. Also, never chase the highest returning funds, especially if they are mutual funds. That's almost certain to return less than just picking funds at random.