That is all. No hot take OP

Edit: there was supposed to be a pole. That failed

I am because of my own doing.

I'm making less money, stuck at home, unable to travel, and my prospects for better jobs have practically disappeared.

Does that answer your question?

nope

If the Australian context counts, yes but nothing to do with the performance of the government.

Yes.

I'm about the same financially. Comfortable but no frills.
Mentally......way worse.

Not building, Cant travel but do have savings so doing better than most. here in Canada.

I have no kids so the stress of weather to send them back to school is something I do not have to deal with

Renovation revenue is up about 300% since 2016.

Rich people are now stuck at home and looking to spend even more. The bottleneck is qualified people to oversee and get it all done. We'd double our team today if we could find the right people.

Ask me in another few months how the rental division is doing though, that could be ready to implode. We normally carry <1% vacancy rate, but I'm at 4% right now and given the time of year, that's likely to stay the same through winter. With one exception, all the vacant units are 3 or 4 bedroom "college" units near campus. Parents are refusing to co-sign leases with all the uncertainty.

As for rents, it's August 12th now and out of 400ish tenants, only one person still has rent due. She's been late 20 times since Oct 2016 when we bought her building, so this is not surprising. If people do start skipping out on rent, we'll recover the funds from existing co-signers after evictions, but refilling them is no doubt going to be difficult.

I have very few commercial units though, and the people I've talked to who have a large amount of commercial in downtown Milwaukee are frankly screwed. Say goodbye to small neighborhood restaurants or retailers. I order delivery every so often and a Chinese order that used to run me $14 after delivery charge and tip is now closer to $19 this week. Even a bowl of broccoli soup from Panera is more than 6 bucks right now, and it used to be under 5. I know that might not seem crazy to you people on the coasts, but here in Milwaukee spending $20/day on lunch is not very sustainable for your average Joe.

We're down to one kid left in school. She's a freshman this year and really doesn't want to do it from home. Our district has been sending what seems like daily e-mails with constantly changing powerpoint presentations and various options for the year. I opted for the thing closest to normalcy, which is 3 days in school and 2 days from home. I anticipate that lasting about a week before one kid gets sick and they send everyone home for good.

I think the school thing will be the most impactful part of all this 2020 nonsense. My daughter isn't excited about it, but she'll do the work. A massive number of kids are going to see this as an 18 month summer vacation, and the schools will be pressured to let them pass no matter how little actual learning gets done. If this stretches into 2021 and beyond, I can't even imagine what kind of damage will be done.

A friend of mine is recently divorced and fell on hard financial times. His ex is the WOAT and he was granted full custody of the kids. His mom is helping out as much as possible, but he can't earn a living in his trade if the kids can't go to school. I worry most about him and those in that same situation. If you've got a few kids under the age of 10 and there's no parent available to stay home and play teacher, what the hell do you do?

Welcome to my life and the life of most of the people I know. And between the state government being cautious and very strong teachers union also inclined to caution, there is pretty much no end to this in sight.

All the wealthy progressive elites here are either sending their kids to very expensive private schools (that are running as usual) or hiring teachers to run classrooms out of their garages.

And the rest of us plebes are just SOL. Stuck at home with no prospect to work for the foreseeable future. When the smoke clears from all of this the chasm between the have and have-nots (which was already giant) will increase substantially.

If there's one guiding principle to conservative thought--it's striving to make that a reality. It's the foundation the rest is built on

Those unions though......

Kelhus is like our poster child for the twitter account “accidentally left”.

Let’s get rid of private education completely.
More money for public education.
Housing as a human right.
Jobs guarantee.
Billionaires are a policy failure.
more progressive taxation structure.

Damn kelhus that is a pretty ****ing great platform you just recommended

/\
I'm sort of feeling for him and at the same time rather confused.
I guess Kel is a good example of what I have argued in the past.
People affiliate with one party or the other because of cultural identity.
Sure, the economy matters, but first and foremost out days group identity is what matters most to most people.
If the economy really mattered, like people pretend, Trump should have been forced out of office by now, not enjoy 40% support.

What are the wealthy conservative elites in your area doing?

As for me:
- financially, much better off
- quality of life, uh, yeah COVID has a lot to say about that

same situation but i have savings now so "sort of"
i could deal with being made redundant thanks to covid (pretty sure i won't be)
but i'd be panicking the whole pandemic if it happened 4 years ago in case i was

It is what is called in political terms a social conservative.

+1

Although my non-covid related stress levels are far lower now. If the real estate market takes a dump in the next year, I'm in a good place to capitalize on that, and ideally I'll never have to worry about "job prospects" again.

Sent from my Pixel 4 using Tapatalk

Depends on how you define better off. Financially, yes. Everything else, give me 2016 back in a heartbeat

Well seems like the consensus generally is everyone appears to be better off than 4 years ago which has to be a significant factor in voting for Trump.

lmao, this is your brain on conservatism

Sorry didn't realise there was a poll attached to this thread as using tapatalk and just going by what was said including your comments.

If you're a poker player/gambler, you ought to know that the few answers here are no sample size.

Shocked, SHOCKED that a group of mostly affluent white men of above-average intelligence haven't faced significant hardships in a Republican regime.