If you’re making 150k and are living paycheck to paycheck you either live in a crazy expensive area or are a total fucking idiot when it comes to managing your money.
Hmmm you’re not going to be making 150k a year in a shit fly over state.
I moved from the Bay Area to the East side of Washington near Seattle, folks here don’t make as much as I do for sure, at least not on average. We both have good salaries so we can afford a lot of things. We essentially got to keep most of our bay area salaries.
But even then if we need a big repair we still have to sit down and plan out the money.
I can’t even imagine what it’s like for folks around here.
I’m a level 2 Engineer and I make close to what you’re making TC. Hopefully maybe more come next year. And I don’t work for the big 5. I work for a hospital group. Seniors make well close to double that in TC. Principals make slightly more.
Also there are more jobs for higher levels than in non tech hubs. Career wise you’ll probably be making more complex systems too.
You have it good for sure, but you’re the outlier my guy.
I know that, I was just refuting the claim that “your not going to make that kind of money in a flyover state”, it is possible, and you don’t have to work the big 5 here either, and the cost of living is way less.
Hi, this is pretty much me, and I concur. If you can’t live on $150k then you are definitely making some questionable decisions. That’s around $8k/m take home. Even if you are spending $4k on rent/mortgage, you should have plenty left over to live on.
Yeah, if you’re a single man who doesn’t have anyone to take care of and has no physical or mental health problems $150k is great. If you’re part of a house with two incomes you’re probably OK. If you’re on a single incoming supporting parents with disabilities, kids, partners with disabilities, or any combination of similar things, you can maybe get by on $150k as long as you never fuck up and everything goes perfectly in your life and you don’t care about or try to help anyone else.
Edit: and I say man, because men are less likely to take on caregiver roles that cost large amounts of money.
My wife is disabled FYI. I get what you are saying, but there is still a good amount of wiggle room in our budget. I also still don’t really like the idea of lumping kids, which are a choice with a very clear financial impact, in the same category as dealing with illness and disability. That doesn’t seem to be a good faith argument.
A society where having kids is an unsustainable financial decision is a society that can’t continue to exist, and a society where caregiving for someone with a disability or having one yourself makes life impossible is also a society that can’t continue to exist.
There are also a ton of other factors that can easily push someone over the edge. “We have lots of wiggle room” is great for you but lots of people don’t… And even if someone did make a mistake, why should some small mistake put someone in inescapable debt?
I just think the idea that $150k is fine and everyone who can’t make it is an idiot isn’t taking in to account the obvious data that shows the opposite.
It does always strike me as ridiculous when we live in a world where continuing the existence of the human race is considered bad financial planning. No wonder birth rates are declining massively when the incentives are all on personal productivity and streamlining your life rather than having/raising a family. I don’t plan to have children for a number of reasons, but the fact that society is filled with active disincentives certainly doesn’t help persuade me otherwise.
Yeah, if you’re a single man who doesn’t have anyone to take care of and has no physical or mental health problems $150k is great. If you’re part of a house with two incomes you’re probably OK
Why would it matter how many people it takes to make the 150k?
A lot of people like not commuting several hours a day, or having access to actual culture, or not being constantly robbed by meth heads, or not being murdered because of their Identity, or about a million other things that are difficult to impossible outside of cities…
But fuck all the queer and trans people who escaped to the safety of cities. If they can’t afford t, they shouldn’t be there, right? /s
We have to create that culture. You’re not alone. That’s the world that most people want to live in. The more we talk to each other and the more we’re able to connect, the more we can work together to make that happen.
There’s obviously enough for everyone, but we choose to pretend there isn’t. We choose to pretend that the people who artificially restrict access to things people need to survive are ligitmiate and have the right to restrict access to food and housing. We pretend the people who enact that violence on behalf of these borders are heros. We pretend the imaginary rules they enforce on us have power. We pretend paper and imaginary numbers should dictate who lives, who dies, and who has the right to dictate the actions of others.
We’re playing a game together with made up rules. We pretend that there isn’t enough so that people who have too much can take even more from people who don’t. This is a stupid game that we should stop playing. Just by being aware of this, we can start to change the rules.
Good for you. I bet you have to drive everywhere and you don’t even realize that the cost of the infrastructure to make your life convient is bankrupting your closest city.
Look, I’m glad you’re advocating for good things. People need to be doing that. I’m done with the US and I really have no hope for it so it really doesn’t matter anymore to me either way. I’m lucky enough that I never have to come back.
It fucking sucks getting gentrified out of places you lived when you’re making over $100k, and its absolutely absurd. I live in the Netherlands now. Because there’s a functional tax system my neighbors are bike mechanics and students, instead of literally everyone either being a boomer who bought their house in the 80’s or a tech bro on a single income. People should be able to live in cities, and cities should be high density. If people say they’re struggling on $150k/y then believe that what they’re saying is real, because it is. If people are struggling on $150k/y then theres a huge problem. But you know what’s nice? It’s not my problem anymore.
I really hope your volunteering works out because it’s needed.
I appreciate your abrupt change in tone and your effort to engage with me as a person. I feel like we share many of the same goals and ideals, and are not as far apart as pithy comments may make us seem.
I hope the Netherlands is as kickass as I’ve heard it is from friends
How were you able to move there? On paper I’m absolutely worthless… I’m stuck in a place I can’t afford to stay in, but too poor/undesirable to be welcomed into another country.
I’m really privileged and I sacrificed a lot. It’s not an option for most people and if I didn’t work for a big evil company I probably couldn’t do it. They paid for most of it and organized a lot of it, but it was still a ton of work that we couldn’t have done without a bunch of help from our family. Also being fueled by pure terror helped.
As much as I say I don’t care, I have so many friends who couldn’t do the same thing and are stuck like you. If I thought I could help by staying, I probably would have. I thought about leaving when Trump got elected, but decided to stay and try to make things better. Then I got shot by a Trump supporter. So this time my family and I figured out an exit plan and left. Well… My partner and kids got out, but everyone else is still in the US.
Everyone should have the opportunity to live in a place that makes sense. I wish I could make the US a place with living in. I wish that borders didn’t exist.
But if you want to escape to Europe, you want to figure out how to get citizenship in a place in the Schengen zone. The easiest to get in to legally are Spain and Portugal, which are a lot cheaper. It’s also easier and cheaper to move if you’re not taking anything and not supporting any kids or a partner.
In California, a new mortgage payment is 8-15k/month. Rent on an apartment is 3-4k/month. $150k salary isn’t enough for the mortgage and will struggle to cover that cost of rent.
LA is cheap compared to the Bay Area. Also, I’m quoting numbers for new mortgages and new rentals. If you got your mortgage even 3 years ago, the numbers will be different.
Rent in NYC where I live is insane. My partner and I recently toured a place where they broke up the basement of a building into 4 apartments, none of which had a real bedroom, and were asking for $3k each
This is a trend everywhere, I just recently moved to different apartment and I’d say 8/10 apartments I saw on Zillow and the other sites were these “open concept” or whatever 1 bedrooms and hallway kitchens. It’s depressing
These answers are always aimed at WFH “professionals” but blue collar schmucks like me always get the short end of that stick ever since the WFH trend kicked up. I have to live within range of a job that I have to physically be at (I’ve done the 1 1/2 hr drive one way) and any lcol area that I look in doesn’t have anything even remotely close that pays enough to not make it a relative repeat of my current situation just with lower numbers. It’s not that easy for everyone to just do.
Idk how to answer beyond that without specifics but my point is that changing jobs within your skillset and moving for opportunities is basically what the country was built on, and is not a new concept.
If you’re not willing to relocate or change roles for more money there’s not a lot anyone can do for you.
I began my career as a high school teacher. Had I remained one, I would make less than half what I make now. Had to change jobs and states to grow my wealth.
Ya, people should be forces to move away from their family and friends and home by insane cost of living and instead of sympathy we should just expect them to single handedly solve an entire fucked up economic system.
What are you talking about? I support spreading out so there are more developed areas that people want to live.
Passing a bunch of money around in major cities is what exacerbates the disparity in wealth. Why should city people who already have more wealth get even more before those who have less?
I really don’t think that’s how any of this works, dude
You need to invest in areas if you want them to be “developed” so people want to live in them. If you force poor people to leave places where there are more opportunities (e.g. economic, educational, occupational, etc.) for them, you’re basically dooming them and their following generations to poverty. This is why I said you support low social mobility and high income inequality.
Now just think of who the poorest people are in cities - it’s a lot of minorities, single parents, people in debt, etc. That should immediately tell you “city people” don’t have more wealth than most people elsewhere. As far as I can tell, the working class anywhere serve mainly to enrich the wealthy class.
I’ve always looked at it this way: should the people that scrub toilets in NY or SF or LA be paid enough to live in the same city? Everything I’ve seen tells me the average American answers this question with a resounding “No!” People in those areas have to make hour-long commutes to put food on the table for their family. I don’t see why we should accept essential workers being paid less than they deserve.
That’s exactly how it works. Why do you think it’s more expensive to live in major cities than outside of them? Supply and demand. There’s more demand and less supply. Why is there more demand? Because more people would prefer to live there.
Why should we invest in major cities that have already reached diminishing returns on their investments instead of spreading out to make more places attractive to more people? Entitlement. Life outside of major cities isn’t good enough for some, and they think people living in major cities should get more before everyone else who has less.
I’m torn on this one. I do think people should live near their friends and family but if the living situation was totally untenable I’m sure they wouldn’t want me to struggle. At the same time, they aren’t going to help me pay the bills so how much do they really care anyway?
Try making $150k in a “reasonably priced area.” It can be done, but is not the norm. The problem is that to make a good salary, you have to be in a place that pays those wages. Obviously, this attracts more people, so real estate is more expensive.
The trick is to make $150k in some kind of sweet spot where housing does not compensate. But it’s always a moving target and is extremely difficult. Then in you lose your job? Start all over again.
I started working remotely and then left America. Now I live in a very low cost of living city and haven’t owed more than 1-2% taxes in years… It blows my mind that more people don’t do this.
Qualifying for the FEIE (stay out of America for 330 days per year) means you don’t pay taxes on the first $120k you earn. Maxing out the 401k ($22,500) will reduce taxable income as well so it’s really like the first $142,500 is tax free.
Thanks, looking to emigrate with a remote job, so good to know. Do you know if the FEIE is for any country or only select ones? And how hard did you find the entire transition in general?
The FEIE is only concerned about your relationship with America. It doesn’t matter what country/countries you decide to live in.
As far as the transition, I didn’t know it was happening until much later. When I left America it was to travel full time. I wasn’t specifically going to one place so saying goodbye to friends and family was like, “I’ll be around. Catch you guys later.” 2-3 years later I was thinking to myself, “Oh shit… You’re like… really gone.”
For work, I hold myself pretty strictly to working on US east coast hours so there is as little friction as possible with the employers. I moved my phone to a virtual provider and updated all banking and W4 paperwork to use a mailbox service in Florida (no state level income tax in FL).
You do get very bored with tourist stuff though. I think I would rather die than set foot in another museum or see some old building or religious site or whatever… Now 100% of the travel I still do is to see people I care about.
Because in your world, mobile home trailer parks are free or even exist in urban areas. Come on. A studio apartment around here starts at $1600/mo. The average home sale price in this area in 2022 was $580k. At 10% down, 30 year fixed, at 6.5% interest, after taxes and fees, that’s a mortgage payment of about $4000/mo. Plus about $300-600/mo if you have an HOA/COA. Plus repairs as needed.
Your net take home pay at $150k, after taxes only, is about $9k, making your mortgage 45% of your income. That doesn’t include health insurance, retirement, or any other paycheck deductions.
It doesn’t include transportation: payments, gas, repairs, tolls, or insurance.
That doesn’t include utilities: gas, electric, water, trash, phone, or internet.
That doesn’t include food, supplies, clothing, or personal care.
And it sure as shit doesn’t include medical issues. God help you if you’re a diabetic.
And kids? What are you, fucking Rockefeller? Daycare, schooling (yes, even public schools cost money because of all the extras they ask you to provide like supplies, lunch, etc), and all their needs. At at least 16 years before they might be able to pay rent, that’s a long time for a free tenant sharing your resources.
Plus all of life’s extra costs.
And looking at Zillow, I can’t find any properties within 10 miles of me going for less than $600k. They got townhomes for 1.2 million just down the block. $580k for a house is gonna be hard to find, and probably not in the best condition. Doable, possibly, but not easy.
My salary is $160k in the most expensive region in the country. My total yearly expenses don’t exceed $50k, $20k of which is rent. The rest maxes out my 401k and goes towards a house down payment fund. I have a $30k emergency fund in case I lose my job which gives me 9 months of runway.
I’m not a nomad by any means. I have very nice things and I spend a grand a month on wants (eating out, my hobbies, whatever else I impulse order from Amazon), but I’m extremely aware of all my purchases and budget out every transaction at the end of every week. Hell, I just spent $2k on Christmas to get my family very nice gifts, but I’ve been spending less and sacrificing wants the past few months to offset that to prevent lifestyle creep.
This is a financial literacy problem, not a $150k is not a lot of money problem.
ETA: I split rent 50/50 with my partner in the California Bay area for a decent-sized 2b2.5b townhouse. My friends who do have 5 housemates, as so many of you seem to think I do, pay $1050 a month in rent, or $12.6k a year.
I live in the California bay area (not going to get more specific than that), and split rent of a townhouse 50/50 with my partner. I live in a stupid bougie area too, so I’m not doing myself any favors there pricewise.
You cannot get a SFH here for under $2 mil, and our townhouse we rent is worth well over $1 mil. I could easily afford the whole place by myself, but that would be financially irresponsible. I was very fortunate to be taught at a young age that being able to afford something does not make it a good or okay use of money.
If I weren’t living with my partner, I’d get a one bed or studio apartment for ~$2200 a month, or an extra $6400 a year. Unless someone took on a mortgage way larger than they could actually afford (again, a financial literacy issue), or has an extremely expensive medical condition, I have 0 idea how anyone could be paycheck to paycheck on $150k a year and unable to massively cut back. The world is expensive, but it ain’t THAT expensive.
To get a townhome in the bay at ~2k a month is a complete outlier with respect to rent. I live in a similar COL area and the cheapest you could rent that kind of space is for ~3.5k monthly in the present market.
I didn’t say I got a townhome for ~2k a month. The place I split with my partner is $3300 a month, and if I didn’t live with them I’d get a smaller, much cheaper apartment.
Edit: Alright everyone can go on believing you need a million dollars a year to scrape by in the bay area lmao. I’m done responding since everyone already has their minds made up about what it’s like here, and somehow saying I could get a studio or one bed for $2200 is the same as a whole ass townhouse.
I just hope more people can learn to be good with money, and we can stop this terrible capitalistic cycle of consumer over-spending and debt.
Yeah, my job went remote in 2020 and this year I moved out of the city and just bought my first house in my home state where the cost of living is almost 1/2 of my former city. I could’ve would’ve never bought a place where I was before. I’m sure someone would have loaned me the money but that felt like a death sentence for my small amount of disposable income.
I make $150k and learned to manage a very strict budget living in the city. Now I have some disposable income and my own house with a yard.
Household income not personal income? And gross not net, correct? After healthcare, taxes and retirement deductions my net is 50% of gross so let’s say that calculates to 6,250 a month. It is a lot of money! But for a household of 4, 2 paid off cars 3 drivers and one college student with no tuition costs, and one high schooler in a school that gives everyone lunch(so it could be much worse) here the average community monthly costs are:
2.5k mortgage with the tax & insurance in there, make that 3k if you are renting.
800/ month car insurance
600/month electric, water, internet
200/month family cell phone service
50/month streaming and donations to community radio
600/month average repair & maintenance on home and cars
Leaving 1700 for food for 4, gas, vet bills, credit card payments (because if someone is making bank now, they got there by making less for years). It’s certainly reasonable but here it’s about the least you can make household - wise and be solid, so if you are making 50k, you need three people working not two. And I can see how a family could get behind. That 2.5k plus $600 housing cost can be much more if you bought a house in the last year or so, and car loan or tuition could also blow this up, as could a medical emergency.
The fuck? Why are you water and electric bills so high? I live alone, but my water bill is always <$40 and my electric bill is $70-$150 depending on if I’m running the A/C or heater.
Internet for me is only $25/month because I use my phone for Internet and have unlimited data with Visible.
200/month family cell phone service
Switch to Visible, like I said. $25/month per line and you all have unlimited data so you can cut your cable Internet.
50/month streaming and donations to community radio
Complete waste of money. You don’t get to do these and then complain you don’t have enough.
600/month average repair & maintenance on home and cars
Lol, what? Are you constantly hitting your walls with hammers? Do you do offroading in a sedan? No way you’re spending $600 per month on home/car repairs (on average) unless you’re driving a Benz or BMW.
That said, thank you for listing out your expenses. It’s a way more fruitful discussion when we talk actual numbers instead of vague “I don’t have enoughs.”
Nope. 2 cars and 3 drivers here with one of them 18 years old. Highest cost car insurance market in the nation. But without that third driver our household income wouldn’t hit the $150k.
Electric, Water, Internet. That’s mostly electricity. Electric bill is higher since I’m working from home, and everything in the house is electric (no gas bill) we don’t eat out much, cook a lot. Very high in the summer. Big windows, high ceilings, old house. Water includes garbage and is usually $100 or so. Internet about $75 FIOS so I can work from home mostly (2 cars not 3 that way).
The $200 is a legacy t mobile plan covering 8 people so if needed I could get the grown kids to cover half of it, that one is high but not per line, we just pay it because if we cut them off it would still cost us $200 for 4 lines.
House is older and cars are too. Tenting for termites has to happen every 10 years and costs 10k, we’ve had to fix plumbing, electric, replace an old porch, need blinds to help with the electrical cost, and the cars won’t last forever - I honestly think the $600 may be underestimating the cost of maintenance, not overestimating.
And of course every month something happens. Vet bills, or some medical cost, or car repair eats the 600 AND the plumbing springs a leak, or I have to work weekends and we buy restaurant food - no month is just bills.
It’s easy to go cheap for awhile, I have done that plenty. We have dry beans, rice, a garden. But things fall apart. I am putting here the cost of maintenance because if we don’t accrue this $600ish, it will end up costing even more. It’s a real cost.
Oh, and I know this isn’t poor, lol. In my 20s lived with 3 families in one house and dumpster dived to make ends meet. Then raised 4 kids with a guy who, halfway through, decided he couldn’t work. 6 people living on what I could make, we are paying that deficit now too. Even so, this is is an awesome life, I am not complaining at all. Just saying that the bills do take most of the netpay if the real cost of housing and transportation is included.
I’m driving a 26 year old car and don’t even spend $600 on maintenance in a year. $600/month ($7200/year) sounds crazy high. That’s like replacing an engine or transmission every year.
Correct, it’s mostly house. For a year, cars are about $400 in oil changes plus $300 in regular maintenance (brakes, etc.) and usually one repair or tires purchase of high cost, $600-1200. Its staying way below the cost of a new one.
Ah, I didn’t realize you were lumping home and vehicle maintenance together. My water heater recently died after 19 years of solid use and that was more than a $2k project. I’m dreading the day the furnace goes out. Homes aren’t cheap.
Or you only consider your expenses after savings and think that you are “living paycheck to paycheck” because you use up all your non-invested money by the end of the month.
I’m sorely tempted to start circulating claims about what Chauvin had in his system at the time.
EDIT - Also, this shit:
Chauvin’s stabbing comes as the federal Bureau of Prisons has faced increased scrutiny in recent years following wealthy financier Jeffrey Epstein’s jail suicide in 2019. It’s another example of the agency’s inability to keep even its highest profile prisoners safe after Nassar’s stabbing and “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski’s suicide at a federal medical center in June.
Oh it’s a problem all of a sudden. Can’t imagine why.
I’m a volunteer firefighter. When i first met my neighbour(an american who was previously in their army no less) he said “thank you for your service” upon learning this. I can confirm that I also felt awkward as fuck hearing that phrase.
“A lot of the top earners want to be part of the solution,” Clooney told Hollywood publication Deadline
Look, this is a super swell offer but George Clooney shouldn’t be bailing major studios out of their obligations. They can afford to settle the strike all on their own they just choose not to. Frankly, I think George should stop trying to score points for his generosity and grab a picket sign and make himself useful. He isn’t the problem but he’s not the fucking solution either.
The “top stars” are also hurting. They are more likely to be invested in films, or expecting big paydays to pay their big mortgages. So George and company may be willing to kick in some pocket change to clear the logjam.
Yeah, while most big actors have put on an outward show of solidarity with the strikes, let’s not pretend they’re not basically in the same position as the studio execs
Big actors are also producers/executive producers of everything they work on (unless is something like marvel I guess) and pretty sure the real money come from that. They have a conflict of interest on the strike.
Just because you personally benefit from the existing system doesn’t mean that you should accept it as OK the way it is, or that it is not capable of being changed to something better, and rejecting the existing system is always a choice. (I thought we went over this in the movie already!)
So, having a production company (I just want more of me on the credits OK?) doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t to march and picket and fight for what’s right.
It'd be a beautiful thing if the top Hollywood stars showed some real solidarity and started/used their own production companies to give SAG-AFTRA a fair deal and make some creative, original films. It'd probably scare big studios knowing there was money being made that they weren't getting their cut of.
That was kind of what I thought. While it’s nice he is doing this, he should have done it after the strike. This only serves to let the studios off the hook.
Miranda had never considered abortion for herself, and didn’t have much of an opinion on the issue. Levi’s family, though, was more religious, and conservative, with a big “Trump 2024” flag looming over their one-story house on six acres backing up to a quiet river.
But Angela, Levi’s mom, had been in the room with the doctor. She knew the odds. And she knew the sacrifice it would take to carry a futile pregnancy to term. The family would support Miranda’s decision, whatever it was.
“I’m not for it,” Angela recalls telling her. “But —”
“But I wouldn’t be shamed if I did it,” Miranda filled in.
Which put the decision right back into Miranda’s hands.
You either fight for your rights, or you help those who will take them away. But I doubt these people learned anything from their experience.
Yeah… This was a really rough read. I feel awful for everyone involved but the author was really struggling to paint a lot of things about them in a positive light
No, actually they’re not. One paragraph about the in-laws, particularly the mother-in-law, does not characterize the whole situation or the birth mother. What does, though, is the mother-in-law stating that she’ll support the birth mother’s decision no matter what. Did you miss that bit?
I’m really not sure what point you’re trying to make here. I’m talking about things like, the doctors told her how messed up the pregnancy was and she thought “maybe it’ll magically fix itself” and that she “decided not to decide” and the such. It sounds like she was given information that at least could’ve opened up options had she not ignored it for so long. It’s great that the step mother is going to “support her no matter what”, but I have to wonder if their " traditional values" helped contribute to the fear she had in finding a way to get an abortion.
Miranda definitely learned some kind of lesson, maybe even Levi. The thing is, that lesson won’t necessarily change their votes, at least not right away. That’s a lot of brainwashing and grief they have to struggle with now.
For people who are already extremely religious, the experience of losing a child will only strengthen their spirituality. “Part of God’s plan” is their coping mechanism.
Only after they burn out in their 60hr jobs paying for their medical debt and kids will the lessons start to be learned. But it sounds like they lucked out with wealthy families who were able to step in and help.
No one should be buying anything from Tyson. Pure evil company, not only with deliberately squeezing money from the cash-strapped like this, but the way they treat their animals absolutely should be illegal.
Id like to inform everyone that the cruel way they treat animals is how every single animal agriculture company treat their animals. 99% of animals in farms on earth are farmed in a way that meets the “factory farmed” description. Those “certified human” stickers on your grocery store meat is a label made by a board composed entirely of the CEOs of those exact companies theyre supposed to be regulating.
Everything on the Internet is predictable or boring to someone. Downvote and move on if it’s important to you. My pet peeve is, “tell me you’re X without saying you’re X”
I can’t downvote without downvoting chihuahuas. My hands are tied. But you’re right I’ve devoted over twice the effort I should have with this comment.
You can downvote my comment if you want. I won’t be offended. Authentic conversations are more interesting to me than Internet points. It’s easy to feel good when you’re upvoted a lot and easy to feel bad when you’re downvoted. It’s better to choose to not have an opinion on it either way.
It’s just the pig pile mentality. At first there were upvotes, then someone said they were sick of seeing that style joke, and I told him it’s fine to just downvote and move on. After that people took my advice. Upvotes and downvotes don’t mean anything so it really isn’t a big deal.
Well over 1,000 CEOs have left their companies this year, according to a Challenger, Gray & Christmas report. That’s 33% more than last year and the highest total in the first seven months of the year since the staffing research company began tracking exits in 2002.
Germany doesn’t save face: It lies between Oklahoma and Maine
Then shame on the USA, not Europe. So even with such a lower GDP European nations are providing high quality social services and security to their citizens, why these US states citizens fall father behind.
And I think the only reason some of the US states even compare to some European countries is more or less the US economically brute-forcing a higher QoL versus actually planning and spending money wisely which seems more common in Europe and the UK.
The former can’t last forever and will hit a wall once something gets costly enough, the latter should be able to scale decently well as population grows.
Used to work contract security. my client was next to a MLB ball field- their parking lot literally was next to the service entrance, so the various staff that weren’t special (concessions, security, etc,) would park there. A lot of their ball game security are moonlighting cops or retired cops… they liked to tail gate after the game… but the city would revoke the license for running a parking lot if we allowed alcohol.
Getting drunken cops to leave your property when the other cops tried to be like “what’s the harm,” etc is no good.
it’s really not that simple. First, if you keep nuisance complaints, they’ll fine you (or in my case, fine my clients. which would have me fired.)
secondly, you annoy the cops enough, they’ll freeze you out regardless of what their policies/rules say, and as a security guard, you’re reliant on them to come save you if you ever have an active shooter or, more likely, just an aggressive asshole who doesn’t like being told they can’t do whatever it is they’re trying to do.
you’re reliant on them to come save you if you ever have an active shooter
This is not a good plan, you need to be responsible for your own safety because you can’t count on the imaginary good guy cops to save you from anything. It may be 30 minutes before they show up, or they may not even show up at all.
That really is a tough one. The only chance you have is to escalate and demand the duty sergeant come down and deal with the problem of his unruly officers or make an extremely public complaint to the media and mayor that will force a response.
Or find a parking/fire violation that the fire department would care about. I’ve seen them put cops in there place a few times. Even pushed a cruiser down the street in Boston when it was double parked in there way.
I wish I’d had a camera phone back then, I’m pretty sure they don’t report those kind of things into logs that end up in the paper.
Fun story time… a couple of friends of mine were walking home after a night of drinking and some cops pull over and get out and say, “two white men in dark clothes just robbed the gas station down the road and you fit that description.” One friend said, “you’re two white men in dark clothes so you fit that description too. I’m going to have to make a citizen’s arrest.” My other friend said the cuffs got put on them at light speed. They got charged with public intoxication. We don’t know if the two white men in dark clothes were ever caught.
Sadly, he passed away. And only in his 20s. And yes, we lost a great comic mind. I say this as someone who has been paid to do stand-up and write comedy: he was far funnier than I will ever be. I still miss him 20 years later.
I’m sorry too, but that’s life. And the older you get, the more friends you lose along the way. I’m just glad we were friends for the time he was alive.
Every time I see any discussion about a 4 day work week, it’s always the same. Discussion is focused around what changes/sacrifices the workers are willing to make to accomplish this. Fuck that noise, nothing should be sacrificed. Your pay shouldn’t change, your leaves shouldn’t change, nothing should change. Fucking capitalist mentality bullshit.
I have worked in service/retail, and this argument doesn’t make a lot of sense. Most service/retail is actually 7-day weeks, but the workers average out to 5-day weeks with rotating shifts etc.
All that would have to happen is the workers now average out to 4-day weeks, with a similar level of pay (which is what the 4-day week advocates are asking for).
The 4-day week isn’t about office workers, it’s about everyone.
All that would have to happen is the workers now average out to 4-day weeks, with a similar level of pay (which is what the 4-day week advocates are asking for).
You’re forgetting that retail and most service workers aren’t salaried in the US. They’re paid hourly. And most are living paycheck to paycheck-or very close to it.
In order for to not loose on pay, either the company has to increase their rates (lol. Not gonna happen,) or they have to work more hours across the four days to make up for the lost day.
And many retail workers are already do 12’s and 16’s to eek out overtime.
Edit: To put this another way, OT starts at 40 hrs. Most retail/service managers do everything they can to keep their employees at less than 40/week. OT is a very big sink, it’s cheaper to hire more employees than, if one can, than it is to pay staff OT.
If you reduce the threshold to 32, that’s still going to be true- on the 5/2 week day-weekend rotation it only helps the weeked- moving hours to them. It doesn’t matter to managment whose working that shift- only that it gets worked.
So, now, you’ve got an entire sector’s worth (and the largest economic sector at that) of people who are being shorted hours- and we all know that corpos are not going to be increasing wages to match: that would be a 25%increase in wages- and not just for the full time employee. Most large companies will dictate the wages for everyone at a given position.
Alternatively, they can just pay time and a half for the last 8, which might be only a 10% loss.
Regardless, retail/service sectors won’t really see any changes. This is probably true because many are working 20+ hours of overtime at low wages anyhow. Those companies have already decided paying adequate wages, and attracting employees is “too expensive”
I think most of us realise that corporations will not do this out of the kindness of their hearts. Doesn’t mean we should just say “Fuck it, never going to happen”. We should demand better.
No…. My point is that your “ideal” world doesn’t exist. The real world includes Walmart, Kroger, Cargill, Amazon and a thousand other companies owned and ran by assholes who only really care about profits.
OT is a very big sink, it’s cheaper to hire more employees than, if one can, than it is to pay staff OT.
That isn’t necessarily true. Assuming OT is paid out at a time and a half rate, if you have one employee working 50 hours a week at $10 an hour, you would pay $1040 + $1510 = $550 per week, plus the cost of benefits per employee, which is $75 per week. Total: $625
If you hire an additional employee, each working 25 hours for $10 an hour, you pay $500, but the cost of benefits has doubled to $150. Total: $650
This is a extremely simple example. I am ignoring the fact that you would probably pay someone new to the job at a lower rate, the associated training costs of hiring an employee, payroll taxes, most businesses employ a higher number of people, does the business do 401K matching, whether these people work on the same shift and probably a hundred other things.
I can’t deny the truth of this, it’s true that only a relatively small group of jobs could realistically implement this. You can’t make a delivery truck go 20% faster, or get 20% more customers in your store at a given time. Many such jobs scale productivity with time by their nature (to some extent). While I absolutely think those workers deserve the same pay for less work at the very least, the reality is that no company will do it. There’s no benefit for them.
Yet we still have corporate-backed talking heads doing everything they can to convince us to the contrary, and there’s a significant amount bootlicking morons that lap it up like the pet dogs they are, which ducks it up for the rest of us. “You see Steve? He works 60 hours a week for minimum wage with a smile, you all should be more like Steve,” nevermind Steve has the IQ of a grapefruit and has zero life outside of work.
InB4 “WhY DiDn’t hE Do iT WhEn hE HaD ThE MaJoRiTy?” Because he’s calling for constitutional amendments that require a 2/3rds support in Congress and the SCOTUS may finally be disliked enough to get some GOP members to support reform, especially if it comes with limiting Biden’s own immunity.
Extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures. Sometimes reasonable men must do unreasonable things.
Removing threats to democracy because that democracy is so flawed that it gave you the power to do so legally, and then using that power to eliminate the ability for it to be used again, is heroic.
Imagine if he straight up held the court hostage. “Every week that you don’t rule to restrict presidential immunity I kill another justice as an official act.”
“Two things actually - you gotta do that and restore Roe. Fuck it, three things - you gotta restore the Voting Rights Act too.”
“Shit. Four things. Citizens United. Reverse it. Yeah do all that or I’ll keep killing and replacing justices until you do. Officially.”
I mean the critique behind “why didn’t he do it when he had the majority” still applies: calling for a constitutional amendment is ineffectual. There’s no way a constitutional amendment is going to happen in today’s political environment.
Also the court reform he’s proposing isn’t a constitutional amendment, but since he waited until he didn’t have a majority, that can’t happen either.
Had he done that, it would have been before this blatant level of corruption had surfaced. So it would have been met with with “there is no evidence to merit something this drastic”.
…and 3/4 of the states. Not only will it take years to accomplish, the uneducated people of the country won’t stand for any amendment that a “librul” came up with. And then everyone will forget or stop caring.
There won’t be another amendment in the next fifty years, as long as MAGA morons exist.
This requirement is what stalls almost all constitutional changes. The last three to pass were 25th 1971 about voting rights for 18 year olds (100 days to pass) the 26th in 1967 about presidential succession (just under 3 years to pass) The last last one (27th) was added 1992 after almost 203 years of meeting the other requirements (It has to do with sitting Congress not being able to raise their own salaries, increases are delayed to the next term. )
There are 6 amendments still sitting out there awaiting ratification by the states.
If we do end up descending into a Draconian hellhole of an autocratic dictatorship at least the election run-up is going to be exponentially more entertaining than it was going to be with Joe.
I say that dictatorship part because don’t think for a second that the GOP is gonna just roll over and die. Expect hard-line challenges to vote counts in every single swing state.
I say that dictatorship part because don’t think for a second that the GOP is gonna just roll over and die. Expect hard-line challenges to vote counts in every single swing state.
I’ve been saying this since Sunday. We just blew up the Death Star, but the Empire is still a threat. The fight ain’t over, yet.
I disagree. Biden pulled a master political move that isn’t the Death Star blowing up, but it’s still a deft maneuver for the republic.
Consider that Trump was shot at and just two weeks later we aren’t talking about it. The RNC happened and it’s not in the news. The only thing in the news is Trump dropped out to run away from Kamala. It’s an insanely smart political move. The republicans are so upset they’re filing impeachment papers, yelling about democracy, and threatening with the law. They’re so scared that they’re scrambling to do anything.
And Trump being shot at didn’t get him anything in the polls. That’s how crazy this all is
That’s just not true. Maybe you weren’t, but this country is full of neo-libs.
Also, maybe you forget, but Kamala ran in the 2020 primary. A LOT fewer people were excited about her than they were about Clinton. By orders of magnitude. You can literally measure it if you wanted.
The current “excitement” is not due to the person, it’s due to the situation. The same fucking thing would be happening if Biden had chosen fucking Gabrielle Giffords (or literally anyone else under the age of 70 without an ‘R’ next to their name) way back then.
He could have chosen three Colombia University pro-Palestine protestors stacked up under a trenchcoat, and people would be “excited” right now about them taking Biden’s place.
This is more like Obiwan being cut down by Vader as Leia escapes with Han & Luke. Obiwan sacrificed himself to distract Vader long enough for the others to make their escape. We’re just getting started.
Don’t worry… Plenty of time still to blow up the Death Star. And then the Empire strikes back.
And then it’ll turn out that the new Republic and Jedi Order that were set up after the fall of the Empire were so ineffectual that they might as well not have bothered. Thanks, Disney.
Donald Trump could very well roll over and die and I would be ok with that. The only downside is not getting to know that he is in prison being miserable
Which is why they got trump to pick Vance for VP, who is young and all in on project 2025, to be their chosen figurehead for the future. They don’t care about or like trump; they’re just using him as their vehicle to get in power and that’s it. After that they’re fine with/hoping for him to drop dead ASAP after the inauguration so they can usher in their full agenda. Meantime trump is only the symbolic figurehead and if by chance he doesn’t go along with their plans (unlikely), they can always use the 25th Amendment to get rid of him.
There’s a “simple” solution to prevent their civil war plans. You got to crush them at the voting stations so hard that every question about foul play gets destroyed in its roots.
Expect hard-line challenges to vote counts in every single swing state.
Exactly like they did last time? Remember Rudy Giuliani doing all these shenanigans last time? Cyber ninjas?
Only difference is that I find it doubtful Joe Biden will try to disrupt proceedings on January 6, 2025. I think it would be awkward for him to ask his VP to not certify the results if Kamala Harris wins.
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