has Gold peaked?

I've not talked about my Fidelity hobby in a while. To re-hash, I feared the FISCAL CLIFF in 2012, and hedged with Gold heavy mutual fund. The fund surged and was up 25% at one point, so when it dipped below my initial investment, I bought more. It dipped a lot, and I bought a lot more. I am not an economics person, so gold seemed a safe hedge to bounce back. I didn't exceed break even until BREXIT did wonders for the fund. It never got back to the price I bought initially, but I hedged it could, so I sold off  25% of the shares. Its peak in 2016 occurred, but I held on after fears Trump wouldn't succeed in navigating the economy. Gold plummeted. It bottomed out to pre-BREXIT over the summer, so I hedged and bought back the 25% I sold at a significant discount. Gold surged a bit and I had a feeling it could go higher, but I hedged last week and sold roughly half of the 25% I acquired since summer. No idea if I timed the market well, but I'm ahead from where I was in the summer, at least.  

RPOS vs hamburgers

I'm not sure what jobs unskilled people have anymore. Amazon hasn't completely destroyed traditional commerce of decentralized shopping by making e-commerce centralized warehouse worker centric. The likes of Sears, Kmart, Toys R Us, et cetera makes food service industry more important. Traditional food joints are fast food and cow based. What does eating less hamburgers mean to the fast food industry and its unskilled work force who hope to make $15 to flip burgers?

RPOS responds with "working for tips" as her "working class" chops

Ms. Trump has a degree in economics from an Ivy League school... not surprisingly, the same school as her father. Sure she's the daughter of a rich and famous man, thus probably an entitled brat, but she was evidently working as a teenager. Perhaps modeling isn't a real job, but it's not like she was interning for a known sexual predator who gave her daddy money for his presidential campaign.
Donald Trump may be a lot of things but pimping out his children seems to be beneath him. Yes, his older three and their spouses all went out and about during the campaign, but they were already celebrities in their own right given the success of the Apprentice.
Donald Trump may not be a great boss or father, but he gave his children actual jobs and expected them to perform for an audience to critique. If they weren't capable, then the show would have been a farce and subsequent failure.

Ivana Trump vs RPOS

Until today, I knew little to nothing about Ivanka Trump, but I read her comments about guaranteed minimum life wages. Nothing really struck me, but it's interesting that Ivana (she's a grown woman, worthy of her given name) would espouse family friendly initiatives which don't exactly skirt being full-fledged socialism yet claim a guaranteed minimum living suppresses the desire to want more. She claims more Americans yearn for more than being average and desire the ability to be economically mobile.
I could be misconstruing the sentiment, but I know how hard is it to raise a family. I have 3 children. They're expensive. Feeding and clothing them is one thing, but having to pay someone to watch them so you can pay the bills is a catch-22.  When your kids spend less time with you than they do in daycare, it's not just the cost of paying for the service but the cost of things that one can't put a price upon.
Children grow so quickly. Advocating for paid leave seems to make sense though factoring the toll on children hasn't been showcased as a reason, so much as other industrialized world nations have such policies, "why not the US?"
Regardless, having a universal minimum wages is dumb when considering the cost of living varies greatly from the coastal cities to those in "fly over country."
With Ivana being pro-family, the contrast to the fear mongering of Climate Change as a reason to promote an anti-child agenda is humorous. What's the point of pushing a "Green New Deal" for future of humanity if humans shouldn't reproduce?

Amazon and the RPOS spat

Corporate wealth fare is what was being said of NY's tax incentives to lure Bezos. I am not sure, but I don't see it as the same as when Professional Sports Team threatens to leave a city unless they get a new stadium paid by taxpayers through some bond measure.

Amazon is creating year-round jobs that ripple throughout the city into the state's coffers from the increased tax revenue. Tax payers have been leaving New York. The brunt of the Tax Reform law probably hasn't been felt yet, but a dollar doesn't go as far in New York as it does in Texas or Florida.

I'm not sure what sort of jobs are being created by Amazon... or were going to be made, but to say NY could divert the "taxes" it was not taking in from Amazon and use those dollars for existing New Yorkers is plain bizarre.

I have heard using analogies is a dumb way to make a point, but there was a time when I got a credit card offer that said I would get a free Dell desktop computer valued at $600 if I accepted the card and spent so much...

I forget the rest of details, but the idea was that the charges on the card wouldn't be paid back in-full thus allowing the credit card company earn back the cost of "free" computer in the form of high interest charges and late fees.

The idea seems insane to me for I don't pay federal taxes and I make more in cashback from credit cards than they get from in me in terms of interest or fees. 

Why the credit card didn't just give out the computers without strings attached is the same reason NY doesn't give away tax revenue it won't recoup.

Bad analogy... cause there's no money coming. Tax breaks aren't stealing from the poor if those receiving the tax breaks are introducing and spending new money that flows. The taxes not being collected are more than offset by the taxes collected by the new money being spent. It's not the same as trickle down economics for that's when existing taxes are cut disproportionately benefiting upper tax bracket types with the hope they'll be more free with their money rather than sitting on it and collecting interest.
I'm not a fan of taxes. I avoid paying taxes by not making money, much like the mythical Nero Wolfe who was taxed at 90% after he made so much and didn't feel his detective work was worthwhile at the 10% return.
I'm a fan of THE FAIRTAX. It's probably too complicated to be implemented, but the calculus of eliminating all embedded taxes and replacing it by the taxing the end product seems brilliant.

words

The government didn't shutdown again, and people are still peeved by the measure the President took regarding the wall.

Probably the best scenario for Trump unfolded. He ironically played that Stones song at his rallies about not always getting what you want.