I don't make 6 digits, or even close, but I bought a house I could afford, and plowed every penny I had in to it until it was paid off. I've never had any debt beyond that mortgage, and I paid it off in 8 years. Since that time I put all my money in to RRSPs and TFSAs (Canadian tax sheltered investments) until I maxed those out. and then I saved some more...
Then I stopped and had a bit of a life altering realization. Without debt from the mortgage (or anything else), and with my relatively frugal lifestyle, I was saving money at a fantastic pace, and could probably retire incredibly young, and then.... and then what? You can only enjoy doing nothing for so long, there's only so much travel, etc. (plus, for each bit of that you want to do, you have to save even more). And am I going to regret not having any fun while I'm young enough to enjoy it?
I've now struck a balance. I still max out my tax sheltered investments, and combining those with my company's pension plan I'm confident I'll be fine in retirement. I've decided that anything left over after that is my "play" money. I'll probably retire at 55, maybe a bit earlier, but in the meantime I'll enjoy "now" a bit as well.
So now I drive a fancy car (paid in full), and have bought a few other toys, but the key is that I look at the money I have first, and the thing I want to buy second. My lifestyle is still overall pretty frugal (I eat out for lunch probably twice a month or less, supper about the same, I buy toys, but only ones that I've really thought about, and I always shop around before I buy)
With a 6 digit salary, there's no reason you can't have a lot of those toys, you just have to prioritize and decide which things you really want, and in what order. Remember that anything you finance will cost significantly more than the sticker price in the long run.
Depends on the company. Around here there are 2 ways to handle vacation, one is to pay you normally while you are on vacation, but the other way is that all your other paychues are topped up by a certain percentage to be equivalent, and then you take the time off "unpaid" (it was actually paid, just not during the time you're off) Both are perfectly legal, and the end dollar result is the same, but for people who aren't good at budgeting they can have very different effects on their lives.
This is exactly it I'm sure. Even as a salaried employee I see quite a bit of variability. As a ploy to pay me less, my employer moved a large portion of my regular pay to a "performance bonus" that is payed out once a year, contingent on the company meeting specific metrics (which it conveniently never does, no matter how successful). That bonus is a big spike once a year that roughly triples one of my paycheques (though the official math says it should more than quadruple it)
Additionally, in my country, employment insurance, and the government pension plan are deducted from paycheques, but have a cap that I hit about 3/4 of the way through the year, after the cap is reached, my paycheque goes up by the amount of the deductions (roughly 15-20% increase)
I'm not sure how they calculated the twice yearly 3 paycheque months, but most people are paid bi-weekly, rather than monthly, so that adds variability to each month as well.
Now all of that is just for a salaried employee. They quoted "full time", not "salary", a full time hourly employee is likely to have overtime pay that varies by a large margin depending on various factors. There are also specific industries that have different variabilities (for example teachers often don't get paycheques during the summer break, but the pay they would have gotten then is spread out over the rest of the year instead. Nurses, police, and paramedics are often paid shift premiums for night time or weekend shifts, and don't work the same number of those on any given paycheue, sales people often get a commission on top of their base pay, serving staff, hair stylists, and taxi drivers often have tips). Additionally some companies don't pay vacation time, but instead top up the rest of the paycheques by an equivalent amount and then give the vacation time as unpaid.
There are all sorts of ways that full time employees end up with variable salaries.
So you now pay "x" for internet, your proposal is to continue to pay "x" but have "x" regulated by the government at that price, and then add a surcharge "y" from a different company that provides no service other than administration.
I'm not sure how this is supposed to improve anything. If anything, it causes the company actually providing the service to stop caring about it's quality, after all, you're stuck with them, no matter who you move to for your billing (arguably no different than now, but at least you only pay the one company instead of paying 2)
What advantage do you get from the extra layer of administration over your gas and electricity providers? There's only one set of wires/pipes. so "deregulation" is a farce. They've convinced you to pay twice for the same service, once to the company actually providing it (the one who actually reads your meter, fixes the pipes or wires, etc) and another one who does nothing but add a layer of extra administration for no benefit.
You can't solve a natural monopoly by adding a competitive layer on top of it, that just means you pay twice for the same service. Either have real competition (doesn't make sense for utilities as nobody wants 30 different wires running to each house) or realize that there's no way to make it a competitive market and start treating it as such by regulating it.
They would happily fly the plane empty if customers had paid for all the seats, it would be a great profit maker. But most people want to occupy the seat they pay for.
You're assuming that nobody paid for the seat they're flying empty, but that's not the case here, in this case a customer paid for the seat, the airline has already made the profit, in the worst case for the airline they have to also carry the weight of the passenger to the destination, in the best case for the airline they don't have to. In neither case does the airline ever refund the money.
Except that I wasn't even thinking about the USA in this case as I don't live there. You seem to assume that outside the USA everything is peachy keen, but it isn't. Sure Europe has managed to make air travel less horrible. But Europe isn't the whole world.
Time: 300km, at speed of 120km/hr takes 2.5 hours. Airline says to get to the airport a minimum of 90 minutes ahead for domestic flights, plus you have to get to the airport (for me that takes 20 minutes, but likely more for most people as I live very close) you're at almost 2 hours and you haven't even left the gate yet. Add the time of the flight (52 minutes), plus getting from the airport to your real destination at the other end, and driving is now faster by at least half an hour.
Cost: Driving 300km at the normal estimate of $0.5/km (considered to account for all costs of owning and operating a motor vehicle) is $150 Picking the cheapest fare for a single person to a city that's conveniently about 300km away from me, I find $407.66 round trip, so that's $203.83 each way per person, and with no checked baggage, so it's already more than $50 more expensive than driving, even if you're alone and bringing nothing. Each extra person you carry in your car saves you another $200 over flying.
And that's just the money and time, we haven't even talked about being allowed to bring your water bottle with you, having actual knee room, or not being groped and irradiated in the name of "security".
So no, it's not faster, and it's not cheaper. Not here anyway. Maybe in another place, but around here driving has a clear edge over flying.
The niche only applies when you get to control what you hear. "mainstream stuff" is what you're exposed to any time you're in a mall, at a bar, or forced to deal with your own offspring....
This has been a trend even longer than that. go listen to music from the 60s it's VERY slow by the standards of even the 90s, but still fast by comparison to the stuff from even earlier.
I do shudder a bit to think where it will all lead eventually, but the change has been going on for an incredibly long time (likely over a century) so to attribute it to services and companies that have only existed for a decade or two is rather nonsensical.
That's only half of it. The base fare is far less on international routes than domestic ones too. It's about competition, there's none domestically, and if any appears the existing carriers offer service matching the competing route at a loss until the new carrier folds and then bump it right back up to sky high. (or in some cases, add a route to compete, and remove it again once the competing airline is driven out of business)
Though I fully agree that the extra fees on top of our tickets are insane and way out of line with any form of reason or common sense. Airports may be "non-profit" but that doesn't mean they aren't big spenders.
I have a 1000km trip I do regularly. I prefer to drive, but sometimes don't have the full day on each end available to do so. I'm about 50/50 on whether I drive or fly. 20 years ago it would have been a no-brainer to fly, but it now takes more than twice as long to get there (due to the airport garbage), the prices aren't any cheaper (likely more once you decide you want to bring a suitcase and add on all the taxes and mandatory fees), and the experience is far less pleasant.
then the customer who missed their connection should be compensated appropriately, and put in the next empty seat to their destination. Even if that empty seat is on another carrier.
Exactly, empty seats actually SAVE an airline money. A lighter plane is more efficient, you didn't have to handle any luggage, or waste time trying to get extra stuff in to the overhead bins, etc. Now it would cost money if the airline didn't keep the money from the passenger who no-shows, but that's exactly what they do.
If I buy a non-refundable ticket, I want that to work both ways. They get my money, regardless of what happens, and I get their transportation services, regardless of what happens. If they have ways to get out of their obligations, I should equally have the ability to get out of mine.
Just be glad you aren't in Canada. We have 2 carriers, not 4, and we have even less rail than you do. Flights in the US are usually about half the cost of similar ones in Canada.
I can often fly half way around the world cheaper than I can fly to the other end of my own country.
Maybe you should realize that not all of the world is Europe.
Around here we have a government mandated duopoly on air travel. There are 2 airlines, with identical service and identical prices on all routes. The cost for a one hour flight is several hundred dollars, and includes no amenities, no luggage, and no knee room. The only other option is for the same flight to cost several thousand dollars for "business class".
As for trains... yeah... not even an option, there simply aren't any around here for anything other than freight.
With all the increased airport nonsense it's now faster to drive than fly for any trip less than about 300km. Any trip less than 500km is still an easy decision, I'll drive every single time, it's cheaper, and far more pleasant, and you have your car with you at your destination instead of trying to figure out how to get around. 1000km depends on the situation, it's a whole day drive, or a half day to fly. Cost is roughly a wash (though with a family it's starting to be cheaper to drive). Really the only time it makes any sense to fly now is internationally, and that's because the government was forced to allow foreign carriers to fly foreign routes, I can often fly to the other side of the globe cheaper than the other end of my own country.
The laws here were made to benefit a few hundred taxi drivers, at the expense of over a million citizens. It was due entirely to greed and lobbying by taxi companies.
We don't owe taxi drivers a living. If somebody is willing to do the job for less money, let them. If there are enough customers to allow more taxis to make money, let them. This is something that will sort itself out very quickly, and reach an equilibrium. In fact, Uber is proving that right now. The taxis are so hard to come by, and so expensive, that the public is screaming for Uber to succeed, despite all Uber's issues.
The limit will enforce itself. If there are no fares, there will be no taxis. Nobody's going to drive around empty for long. Conversely, if you have to wait 4 hours for a taxi (not at all uncommon around the holidays here) someone will put a car on the road to get those frustrated customers.
Limiting the number of taxis is patently absurd. Unless of course you're a taxi driver trying to avoid having to compete....
Unless you propose limiting how many people can drive at any one time in general (why focus only on taxis?) then there's simply no point.
The price here was both a maximum and a minimum. It was illegal to charge any other price period. That was one of the things that Uber successfully changed when they came to town. Originally they got in trouble from the government for charging too little, they fought it, and the law was changed to specify only a maximum, and no minimum. Ever since then the Taxi companies have started reducing their fares to compete.
And no, you don't need minimum pricing. If it's not profitable to drive a taxi, don't drive a taxi! if nobody can make a living at a certain price point, the price point will naturally increase until people can. This is one place where the free market would sort things out quite well, if the government would let it. The only pricing rules you need are around transparent pricing.
The limit will enforce itself. If there are no fares, there will be no taxis. Nobody's going to drive around empty for long. Conversely, if you have to wait 4 hours for a taxi (not at all uncommon around the holidays here) someone will put a car on the road to get those frustrated customers.
Limiting the number of taxis is patently absurd. Unless of course you're a taxi driver trying to avoid having to compete....
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It's all about balance.
I don't make 6 digits, or even close, but I bought a house I could afford, and plowed every penny I had in to it until it was paid off. I've never had any debt beyond that mortgage, and I paid it off in 8 years. Since that time I put all my money in to RRSPs and TFSAs (Canadian tax sheltered investments) until I maxed those out. and then I saved some more...
Then I stopped and had a bit of a life altering realization. Without debt from the mortgage (or anything else), and with my relatively frugal lifestyle, I was saving money at a fantastic pace, and could probably retire incredibly young, and then.... and then what? You can only enjoy doing nothing for so long, there's only so much travel, etc. (plus, for each bit of that you want to do, you have to save even more). And am I going to regret not having any fun while I'm young enough to enjoy it?
I've now struck a balance. I still max out my tax sheltered investments, and combining those with my company's pension plan I'm confident I'll be fine in retirement. I've decided that anything left over after that is my "play" money. I'll probably retire at 55, maybe a bit earlier, but in the meantime I'll enjoy "now" a bit as well.
So now I drive a fancy car (paid in full), and have bought a few other toys, but the key is that I look at the money I have first, and the thing I want to buy second. My lifestyle is still overall pretty frugal (I eat out for lunch probably twice a month or less, supper about the same, I buy toys, but only ones that I've really thought about, and I always shop around before I buy)
With a 6 digit salary, there's no reason you can't have a lot of those toys, you just have to prioritize and decide which things you really want, and in what order. Remember that anything you finance will cost significantly more than the sticker price in the long run.
Depends on the company. Around here there are 2 ways to handle vacation, one is to pay you normally while you are on vacation, but the other way is that all your other paychues are topped up by a certain percentage to be equivalent, and then you take the time off "unpaid" (it was actually paid, just not during the time you're off)
Both are perfectly legal, and the end dollar result is the same, but for people who aren't good at budgeting they can have very different effects on their lives.
This is exactly it I'm sure. Even as a salaried employee I see quite a bit of variability.
As a ploy to pay me less, my employer moved a large portion of my regular pay to a "performance bonus" that is payed out once a year, contingent on the company meeting specific metrics (which it conveniently never does, no matter how successful).
That bonus is a big spike once a year that roughly triples one of my paycheques (though the official math says it should more than quadruple it)
Additionally, in my country, employment insurance, and the government pension plan are deducted from paycheques, but have a cap that I hit about 3/4 of the way through the year, after the cap is reached, my paycheque goes up by the amount of the deductions (roughly 15-20% increase)
I'm not sure how they calculated the twice yearly 3 paycheque months, but most people are paid bi-weekly, rather than monthly, so that adds variability to each month as well.
Now all of that is just for a salaried employee. They quoted "full time", not "salary", a full time hourly employee is likely to have overtime pay that varies by a large margin depending on various factors. There are also specific industries that have different variabilities (for example teachers often don't get paycheques during the summer break, but the pay they would have gotten then is spread out over the rest of the year instead. Nurses, police, and paramedics are often paid shift premiums for night time or weekend shifts, and don't work the same number of those on any given paycheue, sales people often get a commission on top of their base pay, serving staff, hair stylists, and taxi drivers often have tips). Additionally some companies don't pay vacation time, but instead top up the rest of the paycheques by an equivalent amount and then give the vacation time as unpaid.
There are all sorts of ways that full time employees end up with variable salaries.
So you now pay "x" for internet, your proposal is to continue to pay "x" but have "x" regulated by the government at that price, and then add a surcharge "y" from a different company that provides no service other than administration.
I'm not sure how this is supposed to improve anything. If anything, it causes the company actually providing the service to stop caring about it's quality, after all, you're stuck with them, no matter who you move to for your billing (arguably no different than now, but at least you only pay the one company instead of paying 2)
What advantage do you get from the extra layer of administration over your gas and electricity providers? There's only one set of wires/pipes. so "deregulation" is a farce. They've convinced you to pay twice for the same service, once to the company actually providing it (the one who actually reads your meter, fixes the pipes or wires, etc) and another one who does nothing but add a layer of extra administration for no benefit.
You can't solve a natural monopoly by adding a competitive layer on top of it, that just means you pay twice for the same service. Either have real competition (doesn't make sense for utilities as nobody wants 30 different wires running to each house) or realize that there's no way to make it a competitive market and start treating it as such by regulating it.
They would happily fly the plane empty if customers had paid for all the seats, it would be a great profit maker.
But most people want to occupy the seat they pay for.
You're assuming that nobody paid for the seat they're flying empty, but that's not the case here, in this case a customer paid for the seat, the airline has already made the profit, in the worst case for the airline they have to also carry the weight of the passenger to the destination, in the best case for the airline they don't have to. In neither case does the airline ever refund the money.
Except that I wasn't even thinking about the USA in this case as I don't live there. You seem to assume that outside the USA everything is peachy keen, but it isn't. Sure Europe has managed to make air travel less horrible. But Europe isn't the whole world.
And yet you just did...
But they also won't refund the ticket price to my estate, so no, that's them being greedy again.
And yet I can fly over that end, cross an ocean, and land on another continent for cheaper than just going to that end...
Let's take a look at your assertion.
Time:
300km, at speed of 120km/hr takes 2.5 hours. Airline says to get to the airport a minimum of 90 minutes ahead for domestic flights, plus you have to get to the airport (for me that takes 20 minutes, but likely more for most people as I live very close) you're at almost 2 hours and you haven't even left the gate yet. Add the time of the flight (52 minutes), plus getting from the airport to your real destination at the other end, and driving is now faster by at least half an hour.
Cost:
Driving 300km at the normal estimate of $0.5/km (considered to account for all costs of owning and operating a motor vehicle) is $150 Picking the cheapest fare for a single person to a city that's conveniently about 300km away from me, I find $407.66 round trip, so that's $203.83 each way per person, and with no checked baggage, so it's already more than $50 more expensive than driving, even if you're alone and bringing nothing. Each extra person you carry in your car saves you another $200 over flying.
And that's just the money and time, we haven't even talked about being allowed to bring your water bottle with you, having actual knee room, or not being groped and irradiated in the name of "security".
So no, it's not faster, and it's not cheaper. Not here anyway. Maybe in another place, but around here driving has a clear edge over flying.
The niche only applies when you get to control what you hear. "mainstream stuff" is what you're exposed to any time you're in a mall, at a bar, or forced to deal with your own offspring....
Bingo!
This has been a trend even longer than that. go listen to music from the 60s it's VERY slow by the standards of even the 90s, but still fast by comparison to the stuff from even earlier.
I do shudder a bit to think where it will all lead eventually, but the change has been going on for an incredibly long time (likely over a century) so to attribute it to services and companies that have only existed for a decade or two is rather nonsensical.
That's only half of it. The base fare is far less on international routes than domestic ones too. It's about competition, there's none domestically, and if any appears the existing carriers offer service matching the competing route at a loss until the new carrier folds and then bump it right back up to sky high. (or in some cases, add a route to compete, and remove it again once the competing airline is driven out of business)
Though I fully agree that the extra fees on top of our tickets are insane and way out of line with any form of reason or common sense. Airports may be "non-profit" but that doesn't mean they aren't big spenders.
I have a 1000km trip I do regularly. I prefer to drive, but sometimes don't have the full day on each end available to do so. I'm about 50/50 on whether I drive or fly. 20 years ago it would have been a no-brainer to fly, but it now takes more than twice as long to get there (due to the airport garbage), the prices aren't any cheaper (likely more once you decide you want to bring a suitcase and add on all the taxes and mandatory fees), and the experience is far less pleasant.
then the customer who missed their connection should be compensated appropriately, and put in the next empty seat to their destination. Even if that empty seat is on another carrier.
Exactly, empty seats actually SAVE an airline money. A lighter plane is more efficient, you didn't have to handle any luggage, or waste time trying to get extra stuff in to the overhead bins, etc.
Now it would cost money if the airline didn't keep the money from the passenger who no-shows, but that's exactly what they do.
If I buy a non-refundable ticket, I want that to work both ways. They get my money, regardless of what happens, and I get their transportation services, regardless of what happens. If they have ways to get out of their obligations, I should equally have the ability to get out of mine.
Just be glad you aren't in Canada. We have 2 carriers, not 4, and we have even less rail than you do. Flights in the US are usually about half the cost of similar ones in Canada.
I can often fly half way around the world cheaper than I can fly to the other end of my own country.
Maybe you should realize that not all of the world is Europe.
Around here we have a government mandated duopoly on air travel. There are 2 airlines, with identical service and identical prices on all routes. The cost for a one hour flight is several hundred dollars, and includes no amenities, no luggage, and no knee room. The only other option is for the same flight to cost several thousand dollars for "business class".
As for trains... yeah... not even an option, there simply aren't any around here for anything other than freight.
With all the increased airport nonsense it's now faster to drive than fly for any trip less than about 300km. Any trip less than 500km is still an easy decision, I'll drive every single time, it's cheaper, and far more pleasant, and you have your car with you at your destination instead of trying to figure out how to get around. 1000km depends on the situation, it's a whole day drive, or a half day to fly. Cost is roughly a wash (though with a family it's starting to be cheaper to drive). Really the only time it makes any sense to fly now is internationally, and that's because the government was forced to allow foreign carriers to fly foreign routes, I can often fly to the other side of the globe cheaper than the other end of my own country.
The GPL also allows criticism, so if you don't like criticism "pipe down and enjoy your slice of GPL freedom"
The laws here were made to benefit a few hundred taxi drivers, at the expense of over a million citizens. It was due entirely to greed and lobbying by taxi companies.
We don't owe taxi drivers a living. If somebody is willing to do the job for less money, let them. If there are enough customers to allow more taxis to make money, let them. This is something that will sort itself out very quickly, and reach an equilibrium. In fact, Uber is proving that right now. The taxis are so hard to come by, and so expensive, that the public is screaming for Uber to succeed, despite all Uber's issues.
The limit will enforce itself. If there are no fares, there will be no taxis. Nobody's going to drive around empty for long.
Conversely, if you have to wait 4 hours for a taxi (not at all uncommon around the holidays here) someone will put a car on the road to get those frustrated customers.
Limiting the number of taxis is patently absurd. Unless of course you're a taxi driver trying to avoid having to compete....
Unless you propose limiting how many people can drive at any one time in general (why focus only on taxis?) then there's simply no point.
The price here was both a maximum and a minimum. It was illegal to charge any other price period. That was one of the things that Uber successfully changed when they came to town. Originally they got in trouble from the government for charging too little, they fought it, and the law was changed to specify only a maximum, and no minimum. Ever since then the Taxi companies have started reducing their fares to compete.
And no, you don't need minimum pricing. If it's not profitable to drive a taxi, don't drive a taxi! if nobody can make a living at a certain price point, the price point will naturally increase until people can. This is one place where the free market would sort things out quite well, if the government would let it. The only pricing rules you need are around transparent pricing.
The limit will enforce itself. If there are no fares, there will be no taxis. Nobody's going to drive around empty for long.
Conversely, if you have to wait 4 hours for a taxi (not at all uncommon around the holidays here) someone will put a car on the road to get those frustrated customers.
Limiting the number of taxis is patently absurd. Unless of course you're a taxi driver trying to avoid having to compete....
No, I didn't leave out monopolies, that was covered on the limit to the number of taxis. Without that limit, there'd be competition.
Already since Uber came to town the taxi companies around here are making major changes, they've never had to compete before.