The inflation piece is confusing to me to, but I think it does talk about investment. It says retirement is 1.6 million based on expected annual withdraw rate. So I’m guessing that is not the contribution amount but final amount including return on investment. So does that 4.4 million number actually somehow translate into a sub 4 million dollar contribution value? Same with college. If you start investing in college funds at child birth that have 18 years of growth, is that child cost the cost basis, or accrued value at time of spend? On the other hand the home cost includes mortgage interest, but the value of the house will hopefully exceed the cost you put into it.

I disagree. Workers in trades like electricians will make that much. I think entry level electricians make like 55k. So after 5 years in that work, you will likely be earning above median salary. But for professions like teachers in school districts that don’t pay well… It sucks. Not ideal, but not as dire as some might think. And when you throw in the number of people these days choosing not to have kids, that shaves 1 million dollars off the cost of the American Dream life (but hard to say how much of that decision is based on expected income vs lifestyle values).

Tech workers I assume are making starting around 75k and getting into 100k fairly easily depending on geographic location. And depending on company and trajectory you could be getting into 200 to 300k territory in tech.

I think people underestimate lifetime earnings. Let’s assume 35 years of salary work to retire at 65 (it takes a while to get a career going an maybe a layoff and parental leave…) That would be about 125k a year. Make that a dual income family and that’s 2 people making 63k a year. It’s a bit hard to understand pre and post tax though because some of the calculations like retirement are pretax. And then factor in gains from investment…

So isn’t this calculation saying a 2 family income making median salaries can live the dream? That’s not great for 50% of Americans and probably means a lesser proportion of Americans can attain the dream than before. But that number 4.4 million actually is not crazy high. In a more just work though, dual income families making above the lowest 25 to 30% salaries should be able to afford the American Dream with some caveats around used cars instead of new, and maybe more frugal wedding and college expense due to financial aid and what not.

“is” or “strives to be” a monopoly? I think the value of monopoly criticism gets diluted when used to liberally to not actually describe them. I would not say every “decent sized company” out there is a monopoly…

Isn’t the point of directtv kind of anti monopoly. Satellite has no specific footprint like cable where geographic monopolies are carved out… But the real monopoly is when it’s all exclusively on ESPN or whatever Disney’s streaming service is. Like apple TV with mls being the 1 global streamer.

Cool. Sorry, I’m accustomed to being flamed on this thread for not being as liberal as the base here. Sorry if I came off super defensive. I can’t tell if the superintendent is just posturing or not. Without any curriculum definition, what does “teaching the bible” even mean. I agree his objective is probably hoping to teach christian fundametalism, but you can’t make that happen with some batshit memo by itself. I actually wish schools could teach religion in a balanced way. In a pluralistic multicultural society, it probably helps to have some background to understand basics of other religions.

Well I think the Unions and government need to push back on this (the AG already is). I 100% believe that this should be reveresed. But reading the article it states that losing your teaching license is possible punishment. It’s really easy to be high and mighty when it’s not your livelihood and job on the line. If you need to wait it out while the courts settle it what do teachers need to do to protect their jobs, stay in compliance, and avoid retaliation until this gets settled? How many teachers already are in compliance just by teaching regular US history curriculum that says “yeah, protestants read the bible and disputes on interpretation of the bible with catholics is part of the history of America.” I think it’s important to note that the Gutenberg press published the first printed bible. With the increase of education and literacy lay people no longer had to get teachings directly from the literate Orthodoxy. This allowed to different interpretation and rise of different religions which led to conflict, etc…

What’s the difference here between teaching the bible and teaching history? I recall getting through Hon and AP US History and Civics with and understanding of protestantism conflicts, Calvinism, and Deism. The law and mandate is bullshit, but what is the actual curriculum requirements. If you are teaching the historical content of the Bible that means you can also teach about atheists that took issue with it. Is there a lot of room for malicious compliance?

Lol. There is nothing in existence which has a choice of its being thrown into existence. Is all existence immoral?

Is this a black and white issue. Did and do hydro electric dams had/have a positive impact in global warming? Does the economic impact to native American tribes outweigh that? I feel like there’s a lot of complexity here.

People who think this doesn’t or won’t do anything are completely overlooking the advertising revenue impact. If social media must carry these warning labels, that devalues the ad space they sell. Does coca cola, Ford, etc. really want their ads to show up on content with these warning labels? Will they be getting a discount on ad space because it’s better to deliver ads to users on platforms that don’t have this warning?

That I’m pro this. That is the point. I can be pro something that is already the law and be pro things that increase the automation of it.

I’m for this. Don’t vote for war mongers when you or your kids or grandkids could be drafted for war.

I love the comments in these discussions that are like “Fuck hedge funds, fuck investing, fuck the stock market, fuck 401ks. Bring back pensions.” And then I have to explain that pensions are investing in the stock market and actually own like 20% of common traded mid and large size company stock. Apparently folks want the benefit of being in the stock market without the personal responsibility to do it themselves, but in the process get to hide their guilt of personally investing in the market themselves. But that’s okay, and that’s why I think we probably should have mandatory minimum retirement savings and investment programs.

I think the personal responsibility experiment of 401k’s is proving to be a failure. Yes, responsible people with sufficient incomes are somewhat at fault for not using the available retirement vehicles. But if individuals can’t be trusted to tend to their own future, we should probably be mandating retirement savings. And with that increasing minimum wage and considering UBI’s to make it reasonable for people save and have money in retirement.

But thanks for the sympathy for the downvote brigade. Merely suggesting personal responsibility seems to bring on the hate in lemm personal finance discussions. I have coworkers and friend’s with 6 figure incomes, top 75% of USA household incomes. They hardly use their 401k’s and use Roth IRAs when they have the means to be maxing those out.

This really comes down to who has and hasn’t saved. If you are a millennial that regularly saves into a retirement account you are probably looking good because the market has been good. But not a lot of millennials save for retirement which is the problem. Some of that is low wage, but some of that is bad spending habits.

Housing on the other hand is totally fucked for millennials regardless of what you are saving. If you got a starter home you are unable to sell and upgrade with decent rates. If you are first time buyer there is no inventory for starter homes because folks can’t afford to leave them even if they want to.

Weird choice of quotes and headlines:

From the OP article:

“He has been “uncharacteristically vocal” about his support during press calls for his new film, Unfrosted, The New York Times reported.”

From the NYT link in the quote:

“As Mr. Seinfeld, who has recently been vocal about his support for Israel, received an honorary degree, dozens of students walked out and chanted, “Free, free Palestine,” while the comedian looked on and smiled tensely”

But when you go to the link to the NY Times article that references Mr. Seinfeld as being recently vocal about his support of Israel, one of the concluding comments in the article is:

Surely, Mr. Seinfeld sees it differently. His public comments have largely avoided geopolitical specifics, dwelling little on the choices of the Netanyahu government or prospective conditions for a cease-fire.

And he can still sound hesitant even in recent discussions about the Jewishness of “Seinfeld” — which an NBC executive once described as “too New York, too Jewish.”

Nothing about this makes me think Seinfield is a a strong supported of the war. Support for Israel after the attack can be a lot of things and does not mean pro Netanyahu war machine.

Yeah, but it’s weird when you 2 adults are tried for basically parental negligence of a minor, but that minor was tried as an adult. So if the minor is being tried as an adult, how can the parents be tried for not taking care of their minor? If the kid was tried as a kid this would make more sense to me.

Then how do you charge the kid as an adult? If you treat the kid as a child it makes sense to me to look at the parents for negligence. But if you think the kid is legally responsible to be tried as an adult, how do the prosecutors also go after the parents?

I believe the article. My junior coworkers that are young fresh out of college grads landing 100k salary feel behind. Median us household income is like 78k. The article is about the psychological impact. Although I don’t doubt that there’s people struggling and inflation and wage stagnation are real, I think we shouldn’t doubt that what this article describes as money dysmorphia isn’t also real.