Do go giving away the secret of dollar cost averaging and diversification using low cost things like index funds. Everyone knows those are a fools tools and you now need to be exotic derivatives and the like. The better option according to how most people plan is to hope to win the lottery, inherit a pile of money from some long lost relative, or win a big lawsuit as those are purely American ways of financing your retirement (I wish I could find the article from years ago about this that says this is how far too many Americans thing they will retire).
Sounds like I am not the only one who learned the basics of personal finance at an early age. When my wife and I bought our house 3 years before the crash of 07 all of our friends thought we were nuts because we didn't buy the biggest house we could be approved for. Instead we got a modest that we could still afford if one of use lost our job and put 20% down. Go forward a few years and everything goes to shit. A bunch of our friends lost their house because they were out of a job temporarily or one of them had to take lower paying job. During that time my wife was out of a job for 3 months but unlike so many of our friends we didn't have a problem. Go forward to 2 years ago and when the opportunity presented itself we were able to pay cash for a recreational property and not have to worry. While we still have a mortgage on the house it will be paid off in 9 years as we went down to a 15 year mortgage as the monthly payment when we refied was only $18 more since rates had dropped so much. We are now saving over 30% of our post tax income and the only debt we have is for the house and what ever was freshly rung up on the credit card in the previous month (it gets paid in full every month).
When it comes to investing we have that nice diversified mix with various index funds that we keep pumping money into as well as work provided 401k and 403b plans at work. Mechanically we re-balance them a couple times a year and are they are up about 4x from the precrash values because there was a lot of buying at the bottom for a long time. If I was going to retire in 5 or 10 years I would be worried but for now I am hoping for another 2 good crashes and recoveries before I look into moving into safer investments.
I can back that up. I probably have created 2 dozen accounts there each year for close to 2 decades when ever some stupid site wants me to register so I can see or buy some stupid thing. Repeat the next time I want to see or buy something.
Same here, only looking at state +federal income taxes only. The problem is that the Ds call me the rich and raise my taxes while lowering taxes on those they call poor. All the while missing the actual rich, you know those who don't get the vast majority of their income reported on a W2. The Rs on the other hand will go ahead and cut taxes on the rich, the ones who actually don't get the majority of their income reported on a W2, while ignoring the poor but in an attempt to balance out those tax cuts they decrease the deductions that the wealthy can claim. Problem there is that the non W2 wealthy don't claim those deductions but it hits people like me. So I get oh guess what you don't get to claim your mortgage insurance deduction, you don't get to claim the child tax credit, all because your household make $120k-180k per year. I sure don't feel rich only middle class with some savings, living in my 40+ year old 1900sq. ft. house on.5 acres, driving a 15 year old car with just under 200,000 miles on it, with 2 young kids in school, and saving for retirement since I figure I'm not going to be getting anything from social security.
I don't mind paying taxes to support good schools but we spend more money on education without getting good value in return.
What you mean to tell me that every kid starting in 4th grad getting an iPad to use in class isn't a good value for education. Or each class room having a smart board isn't a good value. Or the huge amount of administration at modern schools isn't a good value./s
I have similar views in that I don't mind paying taxes but there is a lot of waste that seems to happen at the higher levels of government. My city seems to do a pretty good job of keeping to the essentials although they have had a few things I wish that they didn't fund because they were superfluous (the water park come to mind) yet they mostly stick to things like fire, police, water, roads. Even then I do understand that things like parks and community centers are a good thing and from the usage the water park gets in the summer I would assume it has likely paid for its self or will shortly.
Going up from there we have the school district and their love of the next technological gadget and ever growing administration. They do a good job of educating the students (one of the top 5 in the state) but it is very expensive and should probably cost less. When it comes to technology it seems that the smart boards are really just a digital overhead for how they are being used and the ever kid uses an iPad is every kid during computer time plays some dippy computer game of marginal educational value (Number Munchers had way more education value than these games) on their iPad.
Going up from there we have the county I'm not sure what the county does other than run a handful of parks, run the county sheriff's office, local courts, library system, and maintain the county roads yet they take a surprisingly large amount of my property taxes (about 20%) for what seems like very little actual work. One of their big wastes of money recently was a pedestrian bridge over one of the county roads for a bike trail that manage to cost over 2 million dollars for something that would have been better done as a stoplight with sensors and a walk button that worked.
One step again up is the regional met council which has outlived its charter purpose from what I can tell (to coordinate transit and sewer services across the metro area counties) but for some reason can tax me yet is all political appointees by the current and former governor. I have no idea what they actually do or what services they are delivering to me.
Now we move up to the state government which is a giant huge mess with its fingers in a bunch of things some of which basically everyone could agree are legitimate state functions others are more contentious. At this level there seems to be all sorts of silly business going on like building a bunch of sports stadiums that the vast majority of all residents of the state will never use.
Finally we reach the federal government which is a complete cluster fuck, we all have heard about the $200 hammer, $3000 toilet seat, $1500 nut for a bolt stories. At each level they do more but it becomes more opaque and the amount of waste seems to be going up.
I wouldn't take flight credit. Offer me cash (real cash in hand) and book me on the next flight and if necessary put me up in a hotel then we can talk. $400 cash looks a whole lot better than a $400 credit to ride on a packed plane.
To be fair there are some games that can be beaten but it requires a lot of time and effort to master and then you also can't go with your gut. For example "by the book" blackjack at a casino with good rules gives you about a 99.5% payback. Most people don't play by the book so the payback is actually closer to 80% because they think they know better or have a gut instinct. Instead if you go and do a bunch of machine learning and take into account card counting you can get about a 100.5% payback but once the computer is done figuring out how to play you then have to memorize what to do given the count, master counting cards, and then be able to do that with all of the distractions. It isn't easy and the pay isn't great but one can beat the casino although if you do it big time the casino will kick you out and tell you to never come back which is their right.
Played right the traditional table games offer a better payback than the old one armed bandits with blackjack and baccarat being the best, single 0 roulette (good luck finding one now), and craps not being too bad either. Again this is all assumes that you are making the proper bets and not going with your gut or playing your lucky numbers. Add in that these are social games and they can be a very cheap form of entertainment and a good time.
and drop a pre-defined amount of cash, it might actually be a rational decision.
This is where a lot of people fall down though. Back in college there was a group of us who would go regularly to the local casino and we did beat the house (we did the same thing as the MIT students were a few years previous at a much smaller scale). Inevitability someone one would want to go along because they thought they could win big. My first response was how much money are you willing to lose. They would always respond back with none and I would tell them that they shouldn't go to the casino then. If they still decided to go I would always hope they would lose not because I wanted to be a dick but because far too often if they would win a reasonable amount, for a college student, they would go crazy and think that is how things are.
FAKES APK can't provide links to actual good quotes so he makes up
Fakes APK --BLOWHARD--. Tell me moar about your FAKE hosts. Love you long time!!!!!
*Everyone knows APK unstable and bareley literate so fuck yours self with a compond miter saw
APK
P.S.=> Proves yous actually compent and yours faks hosts provides security instead of plecebo fuck shit stain hillary lover. Stop hiding behind fakes users or you fraid to might have man up
The truth is, your bosses know more than you think, that's why they are the boss and you are not.
My team lead yes. My current manager while he does know more he does not actually know more about my job than I do, in fact he knows very little about my job. What he actually realizes, unlike past shitty ones, is that it is possible for people to not be experts in everything and will trust my and my team lead's judgment. Then again most of the management here didn't become managers by getting an MBA and having no background knowledge on their industry. My manager spent years working in the industry both as a customer side and now on the supplier side. My worst manager was several years yonger than me and was hired right out of college after getting his MBA, his undergrad was in business as well.
My company is that same way but then if you do try to use it they whine and bitch but that hasn't stopped me or a number of others. The worst was several years ago with a manager who absolutely insisted that he had to be able to contact me of a 2 week vacation. Eventually I did provided him with instruction on how to contact me. It started with telling him what road I was going to park my car at the end of and suggesting that he hire a trained tracker and team of dogs. I also cautioned him that since it was deer season I would have my deer rifle with me. When I tell a manager that I will be out of contact I mean it as I can just disappear out into the wilderness and be just fine.
When ever I have had a manager suggest that they could cancel my vacation I also remind them that I can easily go and find a different job likely with one of their competitors or even in a different industry doing the same thing as there aren't many people with my knowledge, skill set, and experience. If I wanted I could start tomorrow at a new job.
I think I'd prefer a full-time professional who has their livelihood at stake in doing a good job, and the time and resources to do it.
While I would like that it sure seems that isn't being done now in any meaningful way. the problem is that costs money that companies could better spend on executive compensation packages, more advertising, and implementation of consumer data gathering technology. Even then the company would need to spend money on fixing any issues the find internally for it to be effective and again there are other priorities. So in absence of that I would settle for the hobby and just curious to do it. Even then my phone that is just over 2 years old won't be getting this patch and even if it did it wouldn't be for like 6 months because that would require Samsung do something about it and then T-Mobile also do something.
I would think with at least one of them they would because they took steps to include some methods to help with future translation. I am not affiliated with the project other than as someone who has contributed and finds that project interesting. Also unlike this one at the seed vault the MoM project is using fired clay tablets instead of film so what they store will be stable for much longer and they took the approach that things should be readable with nothing more than an magnifying glass. Provide things that aide in initial deciphering of one language and then provide a bunch of stuff to go from one language to others and then have tons of info stored in a human readable long lasting format.
The trust fund running out in and of its self isn't a problem. The problem is the lack of revenue to the program and has been for quite some time and over the last 17 years every president has paid lip service to the underlying problem but has done nothing. As time marches on the problem is only going to get harder to solve. I was not commenting on how good or bad it was only pointing out that it looks like it isn't going to be perpetual decreases in payouts. What should be more worrying is some of the proposals that people have for fixing it. The one that gets me is the means testing one which would basically prevent those who managed to plan because they ended up paying in but then don't get anything. The people who would be hit by it won't be the wealthy but instead would be the middle class who still managed to save for their retirement and/or who happen to be getting a pension. So for someone like me who makes a good living (not rich by any means but comfortable) manages to live cheaply and has saved quite a bit and who's wife is a teacher and would be getting a teacher pension it basically means the wife and I get fucked royally. I get to shovel money into SS and the like but with means testing I will likely get told to piss off when I go to collect.
That is better than the manager trainees we got at the gas station when I worked there in college. We got lots of them with a 4 year management degree who thought they were god's gift to management. One was particularly bad and I pull him aside and told him that he went to college to get a job that I turned down because I didn't want to a fucking gas station after college. Yes I was offered the new store this manager trainee was going to be sent to and I told my district manager that I didn't want it because I was going to college to be something other than a gas station manager.
After that I taught him one of the most important lessons in managing the gas station, make sure the high schoolers see you plunge a rancid mega turd down the toilet because then you can hold that over the head for years as the story will get passed on, and you can basically make them do anything at that point. He got to plunge that one.
Nope it will sit at about that 75% for ever because that is about what it takes in per year compared to what it pays out. Also the SS trust fund runs out in 2034 but stops taking in more than it receives around 2020 (although a few years ago it paid out more than it took it). You can read page 6 of the annual trustees report and find out the highlights.
I think I may have been among the last few who was able to put themselves through college working a shitty menial job. Finished my BS back in 2000 and paid for it all myself working at a gas station and later at U-Haul. At the gas station I started working there in high school and was an assistant manager while in college then switched over to U-Haul because it paid better, went from $13.50/hr to $15/hr,. the only reason I got more I could install hitches and fill propane and a lot of people lack the basic mechanical knowledge or the safety sense. Since then college costs have gone up close to 4x and I could probably make the same amount now working those jobs but in nominal, not inflation adjusted, dollars so I can understand people not being able to afford to put themselves through college.
That's a big factor. But you're also overlooking that in the last ~25 years, most states have slashed state funding to state universities.
Lets not make this bigger than it is. While I agree that there is some from this it isn't as big of a problem as people make it out to be. For example when I finished my undergrad in 2000 I paid just under $90/credit at a state university. At that time the state community and technical colleges were charging about $40/credit. Last fall I paid just under $180/credit at one of those same technical colleges for a class to expand my skill set. So over 17 years there was a 4x increase in tuition. Taking into account inflation that works out to be about 3x in inflation adjusted dollars. Since we are talking a state school back in 2000 the state paid just under 1/2 the tuition. So for tuition to have gone up 3x (inflation adjusted dollars) from funding cuts that college would now have to be paying the state and not receiving a dime which I know is not the case.
I would look more at the non-academic things schools waste money on, chief among them is sports and the related infrastructure and employees around that. Then I would look at administration and see who can be cut as large schools seem to have huge amounts of administration, some having their own multi story office building just to house them and they seem to be growing. Then I would look at waste like at the school I went to and their computer lab. Yes a big computer lab was needed and yes machines needed to be cycled out but the new machines they put in were always absolute top of the line boxes so that people could browse the internet (go go static pages), type out an e-mail, or write a paper. When it comes to these new dorms I don't know where I would fit them in but they cost a ton to build and are subsidized. Why can't kids today share a 12'x12' (maybe it was a 14'x14') room with poured concrete walls, loft beds, a chest of drawers each, a desk each, a sink, and shitty closet to hide your booze in.
Instead of microfilm why not use ceramic tiles and then coordinate with these guys. Also is silver halide film really good for 500 years because even if not quite then it would be competing with archival grade acid free cotton paper with quality pigment based inks (dyes fade and brake down much sooner)
They'll talk about, say, chemtrails, and when I don't believe it, they respond with something like "oh you don't think the government would do something like that? don't be so naive". No, the issue here is not that I trust the government (or whoever) not to be malicious. I know very well that they (government and otherwise) are malicious all the time. If it came to light that this outlandish thing you claim they're doing was actually happening,
Well the US government basically did do that in the 50s and 60s. Now that doesn't mean that I believe the current conspiracy theories about chemtrails, the lizard people, FEMA camps, or the like but given past performance of the US government with things like Operation LAC, the internment of various groups of people, and other actions I don't believe that my government should be entirely trusted either.
Accenture is basically a giant body shop of consultants and no skill cheap contractors. Their consultants will blow smoke up your ass harder than a fully loaded 2 stroke marine diesel and their contractors suck harder than a black hole with daddy issues. I have twice dealt with Accenture at customer sites and I have never met one who wasn't just wasting my valuable oxygen.
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Do go giving away the secret of dollar cost averaging and diversification using low cost things like index funds. Everyone knows those are a fools tools and you now need to be exotic derivatives and the like. The better option according to how most people plan is to hope to win the lottery, inherit a pile of money from some long lost relative, or win a big lawsuit as those are purely American ways of financing your retirement (I wish I could find the article from years ago about this that says this is how far too many Americans thing they will retire).
Sounds like I am not the only one who learned the basics of personal finance at an early age. When my wife and I bought our house 3 years before the crash of 07 all of our friends thought we were nuts because we didn't buy the biggest house we could be approved for. Instead we got a modest that we could still afford if one of use lost our job and put 20% down. Go forward a few years and everything goes to shit. A bunch of our friends lost their house because they were out of a job temporarily or one of them had to take lower paying job. During that time my wife was out of a job for 3 months but unlike so many of our friends we didn't have a problem. Go forward to 2 years ago and when the opportunity presented itself we were able to pay cash for a recreational property and not have to worry. While we still have a mortgage on the house it will be paid off in 9 years as we went down to a 15 year mortgage as the monthly payment when we refied was only $18 more since rates had dropped so much. We are now saving over 30% of our post tax income and the only debt we have is for the house and what ever was freshly rung up on the credit card in the previous month (it gets paid in full every month).
When it comes to investing we have that nice diversified mix with various index funds that we keep pumping money into as well as work provided 401k and 403b plans at work. Mechanically we re-balance them a couple times a year and are they are up about 4x from the precrash values because there was a lot of buying at the bottom for a long time. If I was going to retire in 5 or 10 years I would be worried but for now I am hoping for another 2 good crashes and recoveries before I look into moving into safer investments.
still has in excess of 400 million active users.
I can back that up. I probably have created 2 dozen accounts there each year for close to 2 decades when ever some stupid site wants me to register so I can see or buy some stupid thing. Repeat the next time I want to see or buy something.
Same here, only looking at state +federal income taxes only. The problem is that the Ds call me the rich and raise my taxes while lowering taxes on those they call poor. All the while missing the actual rich, you know those who don't get the vast majority of their income reported on a W2. The Rs on the other hand will go ahead and cut taxes on the rich, the ones who actually don't get the majority of their income reported on a W2, while ignoring the poor but in an attempt to balance out those tax cuts they decrease the deductions that the wealthy can claim. Problem there is that the non W2 wealthy don't claim those deductions but it hits people like me. So I get oh guess what you don't get to claim your mortgage insurance deduction, you don't get to claim the child tax credit, all because your household make $120k-180k per year. I sure don't feel rich only middle class with some savings, living in my 40+ year old 1900sq. ft. house on .5 acres, driving a 15 year old car with just under 200,000 miles on it, with 2 young kids in school, and saving for retirement since I figure I'm not going to be getting anything from social security.
I don't mind paying taxes to support good schools but we spend more money on education without getting good value in return.
What you mean to tell me that every kid starting in 4th grad getting an iPad to use in class isn't a good value for education. Or each class room having a smart board isn't a good value. Or the huge amount of administration at modern schools isn't a good value. /s
I have similar views in that I don't mind paying taxes but there is a lot of waste that seems to happen at the higher levels of government. My city seems to do a pretty good job of keeping to the essentials although they have had a few things I wish that they didn't fund because they were superfluous (the water park come to mind) yet they mostly stick to things like fire, police, water, roads. Even then I do understand that things like parks and community centers are a good thing and from the usage the water park gets in the summer I would assume it has likely paid for its self or will shortly.
Going up from there we have the school district and their love of the next technological gadget and ever growing administration. They do a good job of educating the students (one of the top 5 in the state) but it is very expensive and should probably cost less. When it comes to technology it seems that the smart boards are really just a digital overhead for how they are being used and the ever kid uses an iPad is every kid during computer time plays some dippy computer game of marginal educational value (Number Munchers had way more education value than these games) on their iPad.
Going up from there we have the county I'm not sure what the county does other than run a handful of parks, run the county sheriff's office, local courts, library system, and maintain the county roads yet they take a surprisingly large amount of my property taxes (about 20%) for what seems like very little actual work. One of their big wastes of money recently was a pedestrian bridge over one of the county roads for a bike trail that manage to cost over 2 million dollars for something that would have been better done as a stoplight with sensors and a walk button that worked.
One step again up is the regional met council which has outlived its charter purpose from what I can tell (to coordinate transit and sewer services across the metro area counties) but for some reason can tax me yet is all political appointees by the current and former governor. I have no idea what they actually do or what services they are delivering to me.
Now we move up to the state government which is a giant huge mess with its fingers in a bunch of things some of which basically everyone could agree are legitimate state functions others are more contentious. At this level there seems to be all sorts of silly business going on like building a bunch of sports stadiums that the vast majority of all residents of the state will never use.
Finally we reach the federal government which is a complete cluster fuck, we all have heard about the $200 hammer, $3000 toilet seat, $1500 nut for a bolt stories. At each level they do more but it becomes more opaque and the amount of waste seems to be going up.
To be fair that same supreme court ruling also ruled that the penalty was not a tax initially.
I wouldn't take flight credit. Offer me cash (real cash in hand) and book me on the next flight and if necessary put me up in a hotel then we can talk. $400 cash looks a whole lot better than a $400 credit to ride on a packed plane.
I just wonder how long it is until people start submitting "Ding fries are done" videos.
To be fair there are some games that can be beaten but it requires a lot of time and effort to master and then you also can't go with your gut. For example "by the book" blackjack at a casino with good rules gives you about a 99.5% payback. Most people don't play by the book so the payback is actually closer to 80% because they think they know better or have a gut instinct. Instead if you go and do a bunch of machine learning and take into account card counting you can get about a 100.5% payback but once the computer is done figuring out how to play you then have to memorize what to do given the count, master counting cards, and then be able to do that with all of the distractions. It isn't easy and the pay isn't great but one can beat the casino although if you do it big time the casino will kick you out and tell you to never come back which is their right.
Played right the traditional table games offer a better payback than the old one armed bandits with blackjack and baccarat being the best, single 0 roulette (good luck finding one now), and craps not being too bad either. Again this is all assumes that you are making the proper bets and not going with your gut or playing your lucky numbers. Add in that these are social games and they can be a very cheap form of entertainment and a good time.
and drop a pre-defined amount of cash, it might actually be a rational decision.
This is where a lot of people fall down though. Back in college there was a group of us who would go regularly to the local casino and we did beat the house (we did the same thing as the MIT students were a few years previous at a much smaller scale). Inevitability someone one would want to go along because they thought they could win big. My first response was how much money are you willing to lose. They would always respond back with none and I would tell them that they shouldn't go to the casino then. If they still decided to go I would always hope they would lose not because I wanted to be a dick but because far too often if they would win a reasonable amount, for a college student, they would go crazy and think that is how things are.
SEEZS FAKES
FAKES APK can't provide links to actual good quotes so he makes up
Fakes APK --BLOWHARD--. Tell me moar about your FAKE hosts. Love you long time!!!!!
*Everyone knows APK unstable and bareley literate so fuck yours self with a compond miter saw
APK
P.S.=> Proves yous actually compent and yours faks hosts provides security instead of plecebo fuck shit stain hillary lover. Stop hiding behind fakes users or you fraid to might have man up
The truth is, your bosses know more than you think, that's why they are the boss and you are not.
My team lead yes. My current manager while he does know more he does not actually know more about my job than I do, in fact he knows very little about my job. What he actually realizes, unlike past shitty ones, is that it is possible for people to not be experts in everything and will trust my and my team lead's judgment. Then again most of the management here didn't become managers by getting an MBA and having no background knowledge on their industry. My manager spent years working in the industry both as a customer side and now on the supplier side. My worst manager was several years yonger than me and was hired right out of college after getting his MBA, his undergrad was in business as well.
My company is that same way but then if you do try to use it they whine and bitch but that hasn't stopped me or a number of others. The worst was several years ago with a manager who absolutely insisted that he had to be able to contact me of a 2 week vacation. Eventually I did provided him with instruction on how to contact me. It started with telling him what road I was going to park my car at the end of and suggesting that he hire a trained tracker and team of dogs. I also cautioned him that since it was deer season I would have my deer rifle with me. When I tell a manager that I will be out of contact I mean it as I can just disappear out into the wilderness and be just fine.
When ever I have had a manager suggest that they could cancel my vacation I also remind them that I can easily go and find a different job likely with one of their competitors or even in a different industry doing the same thing as there aren't many people with my knowledge, skill set, and experience. If I wanted I could start tomorrow at a new job.
I think I'd prefer a full-time professional who has their livelihood at stake in doing a good job, and the time and resources to do it.
While I would like that it sure seems that isn't being done now in any meaningful way. the problem is that costs money that companies could better spend on executive compensation packages, more advertising, and implementation of consumer data gathering technology. Even then the company would need to spend money on fixing any issues the find internally for it to be effective and again there are other priorities. So in absence of that I would settle for the hobby and just curious to do it. Even then my phone that is just over 2 years old won't be getting this patch and even if it did it wouldn't be for like 6 months because that would require Samsung do something about it and then T-Mobile also do something.
Depends on if they created some long lasting items that tell them where to look for said vault that were widely distributed to people all over.
I would think with at least one of them they would because they took steps to include some methods to help with future translation. I am not affiliated with the project other than as someone who has contributed and finds that project interesting. Also unlike this one at the seed vault the MoM project is using fired clay tablets instead of film so what they store will be stable for much longer and they took the approach that things should be readable with nothing more than an magnifying glass. Provide things that aide in initial deciphering of one language and then provide a bunch of stuff to go from one language to others and then have tons of info stored in a human readable long lasting format.
The trust fund running out in and of its self isn't a problem. The problem is the lack of revenue to the program and has been for quite some time and over the last 17 years every president has paid lip service to the underlying problem but has done nothing. As time marches on the problem is only going to get harder to solve. I was not commenting on how good or bad it was only pointing out that it looks like it isn't going to be perpetual decreases in payouts. What should be more worrying is some of the proposals that people have for fixing it. The one that gets me is the means testing one which would basically prevent those who managed to plan because they ended up paying in but then don't get anything. The people who would be hit by it won't be the wealthy but instead would be the middle class who still managed to save for their retirement and/or who happen to be getting a pension. So for someone like me who makes a good living (not rich by any means but comfortable) manages to live cheaply and has saved quite a bit and who's wife is a teacher and would be getting a teacher pension it basically means the wife and I get fucked royally. I get to shovel money into SS and the like but with means testing I will likely get told to piss off when I go to collect.
That is better than the manager trainees we got at the gas station when I worked there in college. We got lots of them with a 4 year management degree who thought they were god's gift to management. One was particularly bad and I pull him aside and told him that he went to college to get a job that I turned down because I didn't want to a fucking gas station after college. Yes I was offered the new store this manager trainee was going to be sent to and I told my district manager that I didn't want it because I was going to college to be something other than a gas station manager.
After that I taught him one of the most important lessons in managing the gas station, make sure the high schoolers see you plunge a rancid mega turd down the toilet because then you can hold that over the head for years as the story will get passed on, and you can basically make them do anything at that point. He got to plunge that one.
Nope it will sit at about that 75% for ever because that is about what it takes in per year compared to what it pays out. Also the SS trust fund runs out in 2034 but stops taking in more than it receives around 2020 (although a few years ago it paid out more than it took it). You can read page 6 of the annual trustees report and find out the highlights.
I think it was stolen out of a museum in Germany last week.
I think I may have been among the last few who was able to put themselves through college working a shitty menial job. Finished my BS back in 2000 and paid for it all myself working at a gas station and later at U-Haul. At the gas station I started working there in high school and was an assistant manager while in college then switched over to U-Haul because it paid better, went from $13.50/hr to $15/hr,. the only reason I got more I could install hitches and fill propane and a lot of people lack the basic mechanical knowledge or the safety sense. Since then college costs have gone up close to 4x and I could probably make the same amount now working those jobs but in nominal, not inflation adjusted, dollars so I can understand people not being able to afford to put themselves through college.
That's a big factor. But you're also overlooking that in the last ~25 years, most states have slashed state funding to state universities.
Lets not make this bigger than it is. While I agree that there is some from this it isn't as big of a problem as people make it out to be. For example when I finished my undergrad in 2000 I paid just under $90/credit at a state university. At that time the state community and technical colleges were charging about $40/credit. Last fall I paid just under $180/credit at one of those same technical colleges for a class to expand my skill set. So over 17 years there was a 4x increase in tuition. Taking into account inflation that works out to be about 3x in inflation adjusted dollars. Since we are talking a state school back in 2000 the state paid just under 1/2 the tuition. So for tuition to have gone up 3x (inflation adjusted dollars) from funding cuts that college would now have to be paying the state and not receiving a dime which I know is not the case.
I would look more at the non-academic things schools waste money on, chief among them is sports and the related infrastructure and employees around that. Then I would look at administration and see who can be cut as large schools seem to have huge amounts of administration, some having their own multi story office building just to house them and they seem to be growing. Then I would look at waste like at the school I went to and their computer lab. Yes a big computer lab was needed and yes machines needed to be cycled out but the new machines they put in were always absolute top of the line boxes so that people could browse the internet (go go static pages), type out an e-mail, or write a paper. When it comes to these new dorms I don't know where I would fit them in but they cost a ton to build and are subsidized. Why can't kids today share a 12'x12' (maybe it was a 14'x14') room with poured concrete walls, loft beds, a chest of drawers each, a desk each, a sink, and shitty closet to hide your booze in.
Instead of microfilm why not use ceramic tiles and then coordinate with these guys. Also is silver halide film really good for 500 years because even if not quite then it would be competing with archival grade acid free cotton paper with quality pigment based inks (dyes fade and brake down much sooner)
They'll talk about, say, chemtrails, and when I don't believe it, they respond with something like "oh you don't think the government would do something like that? don't be so naive". No, the issue here is not that I trust the government (or whoever) not to be malicious. I know very well that they (government and otherwise) are malicious all the time. If it came to light that this outlandish thing you claim they're doing was actually happening,
Well the US government basically did do that in the 50s and 60s. Now that doesn't mean that I believe the current conspiracy theories about chemtrails, the lizard people, FEMA camps, or the like but given past performance of the US government with things like Operation LAC, the internment of various groups of people, and other actions I don't believe that my government should be entirely trusted either.
Accenture is basically a giant body shop of consultants and no skill cheap contractors. Their consultants will blow smoke up your ass harder than a fully loaded 2 stroke marine diesel and their contractors suck harder than a black hole with daddy issues. I have twice dealt with Accenture at customer sites and I have never met one who wasn't just wasting my valuable oxygen.