What book is that, anyway? A true story or what?
Ah, so it’s about this very town mentioned above. Thanks for the link. Should be a fun read/listen.
Hey y’all, I was doing my taxes today and it turns out that even for people taking the standard deduction, for 2020 you can still deduct up to 300 bucks of charitable donations over and above that. Not too shabby.
This is the best thing I’ve seen today.
Interesting look at the long term impact of recent (40 year) economic policies:
https://eand.co/how-our-economy-turned-a-decent-life-into-a-luxury-f6c55210da3
How Our Economy Turned a Decent Life Into a Luxury
The Game Really is Rigged — And In a Casino Economy, Only the House Wins
Yup, when Wall Street + effective monopolies run everything unchallenged, it’s not surprising we’ve ended up where we are.
This part resonated with me,
Now, you can have a decent life. But there’s a catch. The only way that you can live a decent life anymore is to join the house. To become not a player in the casino economy — but part of the casino itself. Go work at a Google, Facebook, Amazon, Uber, or on Wall St, maybe in lobbying, and so on.
I’m sitting here in my early 40s, divorced, with no home and no savings. She got it all, for various reasons. If I do my honest work and budget and save, it will take my 8 years to save up for a down payment on a new house. And I’m doing really well! Only way I’m ever going to get something of my own again is to start gambling on stocks. If I gamble on options, I either go broke or make a killing. It adds nothing of value to society, but it’s the only way to get anything of your own anymore.
Having children is the worst financial decision you can make. Getting married is probably the 2nd worst decision you can make. We’ve structured a society where our natural biology, the things that give us joy and fulfillment as living beings, is disincentivized. It’s no wonder everyone low key wants to kill themselves. Haha those suicide memes sure are funny! Because we all relate to them.
At some point, when you can’t make money by making things anymore, and the only way to make money is to speculate, what even is our economy anymore?
Menzo
1797
No joke: if you think everyone wants to kill themselves you should really, really, really get some help. It’s not true. I hope you’re OK, but please talk to someone if you’re having thoughts of suicide.
I can’t because my kids depend on me. And I do talk about it with a medical practitioner.
However!
I’m not alone in this. People are depressed, and see life as a pointless struggle. Lonely, Burned Out, Depressed: the State of Millennials' Mental Health
There’s a reason these memes hit the front page of Reddit all the time https://www.reddit.com/r/2meirl4meirl/
Timex
1799
Get out away from the coast, and suddenly you don’t need nearly as much money to live.
And with today’s economy, especially after covid, it’s increasingly feasible for lots of white collar folks.
Covid compressed 10 years of change into one year in terms of how business is done.
And once you move out of the concentrated rat races, a lot of stuff is just way more chill.
Nesrie
1800
People living on 60k here would be… fine. I know. I was one of them not that long ago. This bleak outlook is a little bit too narrow and not… I mean there are houses all over the country you can buy and do fine in on 60k.
I know that my objection is a petty nitpick but I hate the rhetorical style of that article. I don’t really disagree with the main point but he’s playing fast and loose with some numbers and exaggerating his point by talking about averages.
Enidigm
1802
I mean I think both perspectives are right - there’s a kind of “hollowing” out thanks to a large confluence of economic patterns. Being a 60k a year nobody lawyer in small town USA… sure. But the problem isn’t that you can’t make it out there, the problem is that you are trapped out there. Just like there are degrees and there are degrees, there are “skilled jobs” and there are “real jobs”; ie tapping into globalized finance and economic systems, and then the dependencies from there. Like an artisanal soap maker in San Francisco might be a decent little gig, but the same job Omaha NE probably doesn’t make enough money to buy a house. The knock on consequences of that winnowing out go to accumulated / inherited wealth, affordability of higher education, ect.
The problem today is that wealth accumulation is going to be some ways tapping into resources from Wall Street and precious little else. I guess perhaps land development and or resource extraction are the two big non-Wall Street middle America possibilities.
Nesrie
1803
I would say the problem today is there are too many attempts to approach a complex problem with snappy headlines and broad statements that makes people nod or shake their head. It took us decades to get this point. It will take years to get us out of it, but it’s not going to do anyone good to try and distill it to something like life sucks today, and it’s everyone at Google’s fault! Value these people and not these people, and demonize those people and praise this group.
MikeJ
1805
This set off my bullshit detector:
But the truth is that the game is impossible to win, on average.The next statistic worth considering is that the average American dies in debt. How much debt? About $70K — higher now, probably, due to Covid. To an economist, that means they never effectively own, save, or earn anything. Not a single penny. They don’t just die broke — they die less than broke.
So first they round up $61k in the link to $70k, then say this means that people on average die less than broke. But the linked article says that most of the $61k is mortgage debt. This is a little clue that actually people die with assets. Having debt is not the same as being less than broke.
It’s not a big thing by itself, but when I read this, I know I can’t trust any statistic this person is quoting.
RichVR
1806
That’s what children are for. Pass on the debt. When you get old and frail, max your credit cards. This is how we are remembered.
Menzo
1807
People and companies that make money actively managing rich peoples’ investments get angry that people aren’t paying them as much any more. News at 11.
