There are existing answers to these questions. It's not a grand mystery.
Instead of merely repeating the questions, you should explain why the answers to those questions are wrong.
I think you're overly consumed with the political dramas of the present and haven't really thought through questions about what a good system of governance looks like.
Here's my proposal for tweaking the USA's current government so that it better represents the will of a majority of Americans: 1) abolish the Senate 2) end the electoral college 3) end gerrymandering 4) reform campaign financing.
Because it's harder to corrupt a "pure" democracy. If you have a policy that is bad for the population at large, but good for your own interests, in a "pure" democracy then you will have to convince a majority of the voters to vote against their own interests.
It appears relatively easy to get a majority to vote against their best interest. Case in point: Trump getting elected. If all that's needed to win a vote is populism and ad money, then you can be damn sure that people will vote not just against unalienable rights of minorities but will also against sell out their best long-term interests to short-term ones or to "principles" that sound good because they've been constantly repeated on Fox News or CNN.
Even without demographics taken into account, a country that's not accountable to a base set of unchangeable rules is a scary thing.
I'm proposing that the concept of states is obsolete now and we need to move to what I'd call a "unified America" policy, where we get as close as possible to a majority rule system of democracy. The best way I can think of to achieve that is to abolish the Senate and the electoral college.
If you think our current system of governance is working well, then please say so. If you think our system isn't working well, then please let me know how you propose to fix it.
Capitalism is a tool that expands where money finds "life" (like in Conway's game of Life) but money lacks direction for short term and long term benefit to the planet, humanity, and all the species on it. Money is not necessarily oriented toward harm and creating inequality, money can be oriented a different way, and peace can be profitable.
your submissions so far:
1.
Ask HN: What are the strongest arguments against Net Neutrality?
6 points by leifaffles 4 days ago | flag | past | web | 3 comments
2.
Tim Ferris: “Silicon Valley also has an insidious infection... McCarthyism” (reddit.com)
10 points by leifaffles 8 days ago | flag | past | web | 1 comment
3.
CloudFlare CEO Plots to Slow Service for Political Opponents (twitter.com)
5 points by leifaffles 9 days ago | flag | past | web | 1 comment
We've banned that other account for trolling, but what you did here and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15831807 also breaks the site rules in several ways. Please don't do that. If another comment is bad for HN you can flag it or, in egregious cases, email us at hn@ycombinator.com.
Behavior determines successful outcomes far more than circumstances.
Saving $5.5k in an IRA every year for 40 years earning 7% ARR is a retirement nest egg of $1.1M dollars.
Median family income is $60k, making this 9% of the budget. Even if you earned say... $25k/yr ($12 per hour) for your entire life, you can afford to save $5.5k per year.
There is zero excuse for most people not emerging a millionaire at retirement.
According to [1], 25k/year is about 21k take home wages per year, or ~$1755 per month. $5.5k/year is ~$460/month, so you budget is essentially $1300/month for everything: living expenses, food, transportation, everything else. In other words, you’re living on what is pretty close to minimum wage.
I’ll leave it up to you to make your own decisions about that, but I question the practical utility of having a million dollar retirement fund when you’ve spent your life living a minimum wage lifestyle, even if you have the fortitude to save that much at those wages.
I feel like you haven't lived on $25k/yr, at least not without the help of student loans or family.
You take FICA out, some federal/state taxes, you've got less than $2k a month. That doesn't stretch too far in some places.
Also, since you're lower working class, you're not going to be buying in bulk. You're not going to be avoiding late fees. You're not going to have economies of scale available to you on a $100k annual income.
So, the ability to save $5.5k is much different for someone earning $25k vs $100k. I'm not saying it's outright impossible, but it will have measurable impact on lifestyle for the lower income worker, whereas not so much for the higher income worker, since each marginal dollar you earn provides less and less utility. But the first $25k you earn really is your lifeline to meet basic necessities in life.
So you earn 18k, save 5.5k, and live off 12.5k? Do you have any assets, such as paid off home, that would significantly reduce your monthly expenses? Context would be key here.
Is this employer-provided health care? Sounds like you're receiving is subsidized. Living on $18k a year would be rough. Are you splitting an apartment? How much would you be paying if you had kids and needed another bedroom? Again, context is key. For a single person in their 20s, who will have the lowest level of responsibility and statistically the best health situation of their life, it's possible. But for other people, $1.5k/mo in a HCOL would not cut it.
>Behavior determines successful outcomes far more than circumstances.
Well it sure does for the kind of people who go to Stanford and emerge with no debt. For everyone else circumstance is a heavy weight.
>Even if you earned say... $25k/yr ($12 per hour) for your entire life, you can afford to save $5.5k per year.
...How many people over the age of 30 do you actually know making $12/hr? If you have kids on that kind of wage there is absolutely no room for any saving.
I finished grad school in 2000 and started saving then. We haven't had 7% returns for 2000-2017, even with the recent increase in the market.
40 years is a long time, and I'm talking about a notably bad start and end date (though remember how it looked between 2000-2010, almost a lost decade from the perspective of investment growth for retirement planning).
But while I still support saving and investing, a lot of people are reasonably starting to wonder, at what point should we stop assuming these kinds of returns in our planning?
Bingo. Hopefully, this course talked about inflation adjusted ARR, that a nest egg must keep up with inflation, etc. I'm assuming it would, but it goes to show there are a lot of details that are easy to skip over.
You could probably fire up a YouTube channel of your experience and strategies and tradeoffs and garner a reasonable following maybe possibly growing to a sizable subscribership and possibly making some side cash. I'd watch some videos detailing these sorts of things.
You might have learned that by now if you weren't so busy spreading dumb conspiracy theories on the internet.