How do they calculate the Life Expectancy? Is it an average? With lots of babies and kids dying pulling the average age down. It could be then that most adults would then live until about 50. I'd be interested in seeing an age distribution of the deceased in calculating this number.
The 1929 bubble and crash was caused in large part by people buying on margin because they could invest a small amount, and they would be loaned more, which would increase their ability to buy, but which also made prices increase (because their was more money buying the same (approximate) number of stocks. Well, when losses start, the brokerage can't and won't take the loss for the people who's money they hold (most of what they have is other people's money, and I wouldn't want my broker to take my funds to keep somebody else's account afloat because if the market doesn't recover, my funds are lost even if I'm in cash), so they are forced to sell (liquidate) to pay off the debt. These sales push prices down further, which triggers more margin calls, and then all of the increases due to debt in the system push the prices down to some low that destroys fortunes built on debt. Eventually, the wealthy who didn't play the game and possibly sold when assets were overpriced buy at cycle lows, and make a huge profit in the next recovery (Trump mentioned doing this). Returns from current stock market evaluations historically lead to negative or flat returns for the next decade. If you buy toward the bottom of the next crash, you will be set for great returns because you will have bought future dividends and growth at a huge discount compared to today's prices, plus you will have not suffered through the loses, and won't have to make them up to get back the losses from the highs. Of course, if you know how to time the market, you should stay in until the next crash starts, then sell. An easy system is selling when the market goes below the 50 day moving average. I see a lot of experts I trust expecting the fallout to start next year, but it could easily take several years more. Of course, Turkey, Spain, Italy, and others that are over leveraged and with no market power could spark a collapse that takes down the major banks like the Swiss, German, US, and British powerhouses, which by virtue of their size would lead to a cascading collapse of the debt system that may be too big to fix this next time around because of the size of the numbers.
Got a call about a home refinance last week from somebody at one of the largest mortgage lenders in the country. The sales man on the phone was telling me how many at his company are taking out their home equity to invest in the market. I'm shaking my head, because that's just stupid. A huge part of the problem are that this economy is built heavily on debt (government, business and consumer) which are all at record levels, several times higher than the level that caused the crisis of a decade ago.
Realize that housing, corporate stock prices via stock buybacks, government debt, consumer debt, student loans, pension obligations, social security, medicare and on and on are valued at hundreds of trillions of unfunded obligations for the next 2 or 3 generations. This cannot be sustained. Eventually it will all collapse because there will be insufficient payers to support the number of takers (unless the robot revolution makes such a surplus of everything that the cost of living goes down to nearly nothing, unfortunately, necessities are harder to make free than digital goods).
When this collapse happens, there will be insufficient property values and stock market values to support the current interest payments, other spending, and the governments will have to act like Greece a decade ago, except their will be nobody else to provide a bailout because everybody will be dwarfed by the size of the mountain of debt.
Eventually, the governments (ours and the rest of the top 20 nations) will be forced into a decision to honor these debts or to default through inflation. Honoring the debt will require the young (who aren't to blame for the problem which has been built over decades when they weren't alive or were minors) to pay a higher tax burden to benefit those who have little or nothing. If the governments choose to default instead, then we'll have a rapid rise in prices (see
Surely somebody can have different pay/don't pay opinions about different policies? I can be for paying for Fire Department, Police department, Libraries, roads, water and trash, and decide I don't want to pay for a publicly funded swimming pool, theater, restaurants, grocery stores, hospitals, churches.
Also, perhaps I might not like aspects of the public school system, so if I'm paying taxes, I should be able to say that I'd rather parents can choose to send their kids to private schools, and the money that would have gone to the public schools to support that child should go instead to the private school. After all, I'm not against education, I'm just against one size fits all, sub-par education, although perhaps our concern about schools should be that many children in them don't have the language skills and parental support more than the school itself.
Unfortunately, there are extreme bubbles elsewhere in the economy, and eventually, we are going to have another debt caused liquidity crisis. Google the everything bubble. Our debt levels are significantly higher than they were during the crisis in 2007-2009. Corporations have 50% more debt than 10 years ago when we were told that certain businesses were 'too big to fail', largely from taking on additional debt to buy stock to drive up the stock price. The federal debt has tripled.
The low mortgage rates have had a significantly inflationary impact on real estate values. Increasing the interest rates for 30 year mortgages from 3.5% to 5% and $1000 payment will drop the amount of loan you get from 222,000 to 186,000, a decrease of 36%). Since most people don't have that money in the bank to increase their down payment to buy the same house, housing prices are going to have to decrease again causing a second real estate mortgage problem.
The federal reserve pumped $3.5 trillion into the markets to keep things afloat, and is now attempting to withdraw those values from the market. I don't know how they can claim that the $3.5 trillion saved the market, but that withdrawing an even larger amount now will be done without causing the next crisis.
The stock market crash of 1929 (and all of the spectacular ones really) have been caused largely by margin calls forcing people who had borrowed money and bought securities to sell them at a loss, and the sell will drive the price down, forcing other speculators to down to where they were below water, then their brokerage would force them to sell, driving down the price further, causing a cascading collapse of stock prices to about a 90% decline. The amount of debt supporting this stock market is significantly higher than then. Look at the chart on this page. All that is supporting this market is debt. Stock markets at current valuations typically have negative returns over the following decade, because the price is too high and the cash flows are too low.
Once people stop having enough debt to maintain their life style, home and investing activities, health care costs, etc, something is going to have to give, and corporate revenue and profits will take a hit and the market will crash hard. Companies are going to go out of business. People will lose jobs. The economy will shrink as more and more people lose their jobs causing other closures from loss of customers, loss of tax revenues, etc.
Especially when touching every tab in between will make them all start loading and could bring your machine to a crawl depending on what those tabs are.
Baseball's replay has already significantly curtailed the controversies concerning calls that are reviewed, although it has raised a previously non issue where if the player touch a bag before being tagged, but then lost contact with the base due to how hard the player hit it (perhaps the leg or arm might lose contact by being pushed up and off for a split second. Previously, the umpire would be concerned with the initial contact, and making sure the player didn't completely overshoot the bag. Now, if video evidence shows that the player completely loses contact with the bag while being tagged, the player is out (technically the correct call, but overlooking what was the true point which was to touch the bag before being tagged). Sometimes the technology change how rules are enforced in unexpected ways.
Unfortunately, Because of investor psychology, inflation, fees and taxes, real life returns are closer to 2%. Even if you are investing in your 401k or IRA, all of the gains and principle must be reduced by your tax rate. In the Roth, you only pay taxes on what you put in, and all growth is tax free.
I just ran the math from 1970 until now, and accounting for taxes and inflation. After reducing the current value of the S&P back to 1970, and calculating taxes at 25% assuming you do well enough to be/stay in that bracket, and you are left with a real increase in value of 2.3%, and after reducing the fees by today's numbers which are the lowest in history, you'd have about a 2% gain. If you are a typical investor who isn't just a buy the market and hold through think and thin, you're probably losing purchasing power in the market.
Considering Roth v IRA/401k, think of this:
If I deposit 10000, and my employer deposits 5000 (you have to do a rollover to put this money in your Roth), I end up with $15,000 in my account, and I have to pay 25%, I pay almost 4000 in taxes on the money I put into my Roth. Assuming all values increase with inflation (meaning our numbers will give us a number that can give us a lifestyle estimate that we can use to compare to today's standard of living), you could end up paying $160,000 in taxes on the money put into my Roth in my lifetime. If you do this for a 40 year career, you end up with a 2.5% return, you end up with 956,000. The 25% taxes on that money comes out to 240,000, which in the IRA or 401k reduces your after tax balance to 716,000, but in the Roth, your balance is how much you actually have to use. Putting the money into the Roth and paying the taxes is actually an way to put extra money into your account, because really, after taxes, my 401k after the first year is really only $11,250 because I owe the government the 25% on the balance and all future growth. Also figure, you are protected against any future tax rate increases that may be made to try to pay the debt. An even bigger factor is you will come out hugely ahead because you will have paid taxes on dollar values that were much less than the dollars you will be paying taxes on in retirement. If we get another 85% eroding of the dollar by retirement, then your 160,000 dollars of taxes will be dwarfed by the 1.4 million you would have owed in taxes (970,000 real return times 6 times 25%) since the government doesn't give you a tax break for any taxes incurred on increases due to inflation.
Timing of investments is also a huge factor that is usually ignored by most people who advise. Historically, the market alternates between 17 years of flatness v 17 years of increases.So, I came into the market during 17 years of up and down that has given subpar returns, hopefully after the next downturn which will might put us near or below the DotCom Bubble top and make the since then a flat period, hopefully we will begin a 2 decade run up that might lead us to have a real opportunity to build wealth, but then we we be entering the next flat stage for my retirement, which will result in me having to live off my principle, possibly leaving little to live on unless Social Security is enough to get by without needed to touch much of the retirement funds. If course, I might decide to take the funds and invest in real estate during the next down turn, and then have the cash profits to reinvest for a while and build an income better than what I'm earning now.
Well, if it were spaced based, why would they do it to an embassy to overseas? If some foreign power had this and wanted to use this, they could get the capital building and White House in DC.
It seems to me that this may not be fair to Trump. If he wants to use it as a campaign account, and not the voice of the US government, he should be able to say who can and can't see or respond in that forum, because then it is about the message he is presenting for himself.
Also, don't forget that even though the White House, Supreme Court, and the Capital Building are public property of the very organization restricted by the same First Amendment, the government has the power to restrict my access to those buildings, possibly making it impossible for me to ever enter the buildings, which is a restriction on my free speech.
There are more women, but not necessarily more female babies. It's possible that more male children and young adults die than female, leaving us with more females.
He needs other companies to use his superchargers. If not, it's really difficult to justify building the recharge network needed. But with more cars on the road that need his charging system, the more money will roll in to build that network. And it's better that the stations be his than some non-compatible system that he's competing against. Also, it could be that his real end game is being in the charging business, and making cars is to move the market from fossils to electric, giving customers a reason to need his stations.
I think the energy equation will actually play out in favor of Hyperloop. On the road, you've got to constantly add energy to overcome friction of the tires and air resistance, plus you have to carry additional weight in fuel or batteries. In the Hyperloop, you've got minimal air resistance, and keeping the capsule elevated. You do have to use power to get up to speed, but you will reclaim the energy when you slow down. All in all, the net energy use should be close to even with a huge time advantage to the Hyperloop. It doesn't even take into account that the Hyperloop will have reduced weather and other delays, and if successful, they'll probably be able to build vertical to expand capacity as needed with no further land use issues once they clear the initial hurdles.
The US system will award the presidency to the candidate that wins the most votes in the Electoral College. Think of the electoral college as a temporary congress specifically for the purpose of electing the President. That is a body of people with the job of deciding one question, 'Who will be President?'
Now, the vote must result in a single candidate receiving 50%+1 vote to win. But the winner of the votes can win in states without a majority of the votes. So, if 3 or 4 candidates (or more) were in the election, all you would need to do is be the best in the right states, and you could win with a severe minority of the total vote. For instance, in an election with the smallest states all voting for the same candidate (Trump) by the smallest margin possible of 1 vote more than both of the other candidates (Hillary and Candidate X) in the smallest 40 states (and most powerful/voter), and the largest 10 states didn't register any votes for that candidate, and they voted popularly for one of the other candidates (Hillary). In this scenario, Hillary could have won the popular vote 94.5 million to 21.7 million for Trump and X, and because of how the Electoral College works, Trump would have won 270 to 268.
For a real world instance, in 1992 and 1996, Clinton ran in two three way elections between Clinton + Bush Sr + Perot and Clinton + Dole + Perot. In 1992, Clinton won 43% of the vote, and if either Bush or Perot had not been in the election, the other probably would have won with about 55% of the vote, and Bush would have won the Electoral College by a wide margin. Then in 1996, both Perot and Dole split the non-Clinton vote, and together they would have had about 120,000 votes less nationwide, but if one would have had all of the votes from the other, they would have had enough support in the Electoral College to win 288 to 250.
The Electoral College was created to give small states a disproportionately large vote in order to buy their willingness to join a union where states with larger populations would have more pull individually and especially in the House of Representatives by giving them the ability to override the group think of the larger states should they agree enough to all vote the same way. But if you add similar options to the ballot, and the ballot doesn't allow the voters to specify which options in which order, then you end up with a divided vote when those voters would like something similar, but can't compromise and they divide their vote, throwing victory to a third least preferred option. All of this is really an offshoot of the US being the first major democracy in modern times, and before the beginning of political science and game theory being invented.
In the end, this process has killed the option of a 3rd party having a real say in the American government because of this: In the US, the parties have a process that substitutes for a large election with many candidates by having a series of pre-elections called primaries where the different parties consider different candidates, and discard the ones that are less favorable, with the intent of gathering all of the support for their party under one candidate. The party has an informal agreement that everybody will support the primary winner in order to get the most votes to try to win as many states as possible to win the election over the other parties. If other smaller parties crop up and attempt to grow, they will probably steal support from one side or the other of the two existing parties, but in the end, both the new party and the party that has lost support will lose several elections in a row, and one will be cannibalized into the other to try to overcome the party that won all of the elections since the emergence of the 3rd party.
As for your question about Hillary running again, Bill and Hillary have many loyal friends in politics, and they control the Democratic party like a mafia, and many won't dream of doing anything against them because of their ruthlessness. Unfortunately for the Democrats, the party
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How do they calculate the Life Expectancy? Is it an average? With lots of babies and kids dying pulling the average age down. It could be then that most adults would then live until about 50. I'd be interested in seeing an age distribution of the deceased in calculating this number.
Or perhaps you should study what science has to say: https://fightthenewdrug.org/
Porn makes people stupid. Science FTW.
The 1929 bubble and crash was caused in large part by people buying on margin because they could invest a small amount, and they would be loaned more, which would increase their ability to buy, but which also made prices increase (because their was more money buying the same (approximate) number of stocks. Well, when losses start, the brokerage can't and won't take the loss for the people who's money they hold (most of what they have is other people's money, and I wouldn't want my broker to take my funds to keep somebody else's account afloat because if the market doesn't recover, my funds are lost even if I'm in cash), so they are forced to sell (liquidate) to pay off the debt. These sales push prices down further, which triggers more margin calls, and then all of the increases due to debt in the system push the prices down to some low that destroys fortunes built on debt. Eventually, the wealthy who didn't play the game and possibly sold when assets were overpriced buy at cycle lows, and make a huge profit in the next recovery (Trump mentioned doing this). Returns from current stock market evaluations historically lead to negative or flat returns for the next decade. If you buy toward the bottom of the next crash, you will be set for great returns because you will have bought future dividends and growth at a huge discount compared to today's prices, plus you will have not suffered through the loses, and won't have to make them up to get back the losses from the highs. Of course, if you know how to time the market, you should stay in until the next crash starts, then sell. An easy system is selling when the market goes below the 50 day moving average. I see a lot of experts I trust expecting the fallout to start next year, but it could easily take several years more. Of course, Turkey, Spain, Italy, and others that are over leveraged and with no market power could spark a collapse that takes down the major banks like the Swiss, German, US, and British powerhouses, which by virtue of their size would lead to a cascading collapse of the debt system that may be too big to fix this next time around because of the size of the numbers.
Got a call about a home refinance last week from somebody at one of the largest mortgage lenders in the country. The sales man on the phone was telling me how many at his company are taking out their home equity to invest in the market. I'm shaking my head, because that's just stupid. A huge part of the problem are that this economy is built heavily on debt (government, business and consumer) which are all at record levels, several times higher than the level that caused the crisis of a decade ago.
Realize that housing, corporate stock prices via stock buybacks, government debt, consumer debt, student loans, pension obligations, social security, medicare and on and on are valued at hundreds of trillions of unfunded obligations for the next 2 or 3 generations. This cannot be sustained. Eventually it will all collapse because there will be insufficient payers to support the number of takers (unless the robot revolution makes such a surplus of everything that the cost of living goes down to nearly nothing, unfortunately, necessities are harder to make free than digital goods).
When this collapse happens, there will be insufficient property values and stock market values to support the current interest payments, other spending, and the governments will have to act like Greece a decade ago, except their will be nobody else to provide a bailout because everybody will be dwarfed by the size of the mountain of debt.
Eventually, the governments (ours and the rest of the top 20 nations) will be forced into a decision to honor these debts or to default through inflation. Honoring the debt will require the young (who aren't to blame for the problem which has been built over decades when they weren't alive or were minors) to pay a higher tax burden to benefit those who have little or nothing. If the governments choose to default instead, then we'll have a rapid rise in prices (see
Surely somebody can have different pay/don't pay opinions about different policies? I can be for paying for Fire Department, Police department, Libraries, roads, water and trash, and decide I don't want to pay for a publicly funded swimming pool, theater, restaurants, grocery stores, hospitals, churches.
Also, perhaps I might not like aspects of the public school system, so if I'm paying taxes, I should be able to say that I'd rather parents can choose to send their kids to private schools, and the money that would have gone to the public schools to support that child should go instead to the private school. After all, I'm not against education, I'm just against one size fits all, sub-par education, although perhaps our concern about schools should be that many children in them don't have the language skills and parental support more than the school itself.
Unfortunately, there are extreme bubbles elsewhere in the economy, and eventually, we are going to have another debt caused liquidity crisis. Google the everything bubble. Our debt levels are significantly higher than they were during the crisis in 2007-2009. Corporations have 50% more debt than 10 years ago when we were told that certain businesses were 'too big to fail', largely from taking on additional debt to buy stock to drive up the stock price. The federal debt has tripled.
The low mortgage rates have had a significantly inflationary impact on real estate values. Increasing the interest rates for 30 year mortgages from 3.5% to 5% and $1000 payment will drop the amount of loan you get from 222,000 to 186,000, a decrease of 36%). Since most people don't have that money in the bank to increase their down payment to buy the same house, housing prices are going to have to decrease again causing a second real estate mortgage problem.
The federal reserve pumped $3.5 trillion into the markets to keep things afloat, and is now attempting to withdraw those values from the market. I don't know how they can claim that the $3.5 trillion saved the market, but that withdrawing an even larger amount now will be done without causing the next crisis.
The stock market crash of 1929 (and all of the spectacular ones really) have been caused largely by margin calls forcing people who had borrowed money and bought securities to sell them at a loss, and the sell will drive the price down, forcing other speculators to down to where they were below water, then their brokerage would force them to sell, driving down the price further, causing a cascading collapse of stock prices to about a 90% decline. The amount of debt supporting this stock market is significantly higher than then. Look at the chart on this page. All that is supporting this market is debt. Stock markets at current valuations typically have negative returns over the following decade, because the price is too high and the cash flows are too low.
Once people stop having enough debt to maintain their life style, home and investing activities, health care costs, etc, something is going to have to give, and corporate revenue and profits will take a hit and the market will crash hard. Companies are going to go out of business. People will lose jobs. The economy will shrink as more and more people lose their jobs causing other closures from loss of customers, loss of tax revenues, etc.
Surely the transaction was completed digitally before the pizza was delivered.
Especially when touching every tab in between will make them all start loading and could bring your machine to a crawl depending on what those tabs are.
I'd like an invisibility skin. That should make it easier to win.
I'll add that not only animal waste, but used diapers are also a great thing to use these for.
Baseball's replay has already significantly curtailed the controversies concerning calls that are reviewed, although it has raised a previously non issue where if the player touch a bag before being tagged, but then lost contact with the base due to how hard the player hit it (perhaps the leg or arm might lose contact by being pushed up and off for a split second. Previously, the umpire would be concerned with the initial contact, and making sure the player didn't completely overshoot the bag. Now, if video evidence shows that the player completely loses contact with the bag while being tagged, the player is out (technically the correct call, but overlooking what was the true point which was to touch the bag before being tagged). Sometimes the technology change how rules are enforced in unexpected ways.
Beer will save the world!
I'm sure they be able to do that for an extra fee.
You'll only get one chance before a new policy is in place.
Unfortunately, Because of investor psychology, inflation, fees and taxes, real life returns are closer to 2%. Even if you are investing in your 401k or IRA, all of the gains and principle must be reduced by your tax rate. In the Roth, you only pay taxes on what you put in, and all growth is tax free.
I just ran the math from 1970 until now, and accounting for taxes and inflation. After reducing the current value of the S&P back to 1970, and calculating taxes at 25% assuming you do well enough to be/stay in that bracket, and you are left with a real increase in value of 2.3%, and after reducing the fees by today's numbers which are the lowest in history, you'd have about a 2% gain. If you are a typical investor who isn't just a buy the market and hold through think and thin, you're probably losing purchasing power in the market.
Considering Roth v IRA/401k, think of this:
If I deposit 10000, and my employer deposits 5000 (you have to do a rollover to put this money in your Roth), I end up with $15,000 in my account, and I have to pay 25%, I pay almost 4000 in taxes on the money I put into my Roth. Assuming all values increase with inflation (meaning our numbers will give us a number that can give us a lifestyle estimate that we can use to compare to today's standard of living), you could end up paying $160,000 in taxes on the money put into my Roth in my lifetime. If you do this for a 40 year career, you end up with a 2.5% return, you end up with 956,000. The 25% taxes on that money comes out to 240,000, which in the IRA or 401k reduces your after tax balance to 716,000, but in the Roth, your balance is how much you actually have to use. Putting the money into the Roth and paying the taxes is actually an way to put extra money into your account, because really, after taxes, my 401k after the first year is really only $11,250 because I owe the government the 25% on the balance and all future growth. Also figure, you are protected against any future tax rate increases that may be made to try to pay the debt. An even bigger factor is you will come out hugely ahead because you will have paid taxes on dollar values that were much less than the dollars you will be paying taxes on in retirement. If we get another 85% eroding of the dollar by retirement, then your 160,000 dollars of taxes will be dwarfed by the 1.4 million you would have owed in taxes (970,000 real return times 6 times 25%) since the government doesn't give you a tax break for any taxes incurred on increases due to inflation.
Timing of investments is also a huge factor that is usually ignored by most people who advise. Historically, the market alternates between 17 years of flatness v 17 years of increases.So, I came into the market during 17 years of up and down that has given subpar returns, hopefully after the next downturn which will might put us near or below the DotCom Bubble top and make the since then a flat period, hopefully we will begin a 2 decade run up that might lead us to have a real opportunity to build wealth, but then we we be entering the next flat stage for my retirement, which will result in me having to live off my principle, possibly leaving little to live on unless Social Security is enough to get by without needed to touch much of the retirement funds. If course, I might decide to take the funds and invest in real estate during the next down turn, and then have the cash profits to reinvest for a while and build an income better than what I'm earning now.
This only works if you are tracking everything you spend, or can identify every charge on your statement.
Well, if it were spaced based, why would they do it to an embassy to overseas? If some foreign power had this and wanted to use this, they could get the capital building and White House in DC.
Check PagePlus Cellular. They are on Verizon's network, and you can probably get a similar plan for 40% less.
Why did Moon Jae-in say that Trump is the one to credit with getting Kim to agree to talks in the first place?
https://www.reuters.com/articl...
You can't win if your opponent doesn't think you're willing to stick with the status quo.
It seems to me that this may not be fair to Trump. If he wants to use it as a campaign account, and not the voice of the US government, he should be able to say who can and can't see or respond in that forum, because then it is about the message he is presenting for himself.
Also, don't forget that even though the White House, Supreme Court, and the Capital Building are public property of the very organization restricted by the same First Amendment, the government has the power to restrict my access to those buildings, possibly making it impossible for me to ever enter the buildings, which is a restriction on my free speech.
There are more women, but not necessarily more female babies. It's possible that more male children and young adults die than female, leaving us with more females.
He needs other companies to use his superchargers. If not, it's really difficult to justify building the recharge network needed. But with more cars on the road that need his charging system, the more money will roll in to build that network. And it's better that the stations be his than some non-compatible system that he's competing against. Also, it could be that his real end game is being in the charging business, and making cars is to move the market from fossils to electric, giving customers a reason to need his stations.
I think the energy equation will actually play out in favor of Hyperloop. On the road, you've got to constantly add energy to overcome friction of the tires and air resistance, plus you have to carry additional weight in fuel or batteries. In the Hyperloop, you've got minimal air resistance, and keeping the capsule elevated. You do have to use power to get up to speed, but you will reclaim the energy when you slow down. All in all, the net energy use should be close to even with a huge time advantage to the Hyperloop. It doesn't even take into account that the Hyperloop will have reduced weather and other delays, and if successful, they'll probably be able to build vertical to expand capacity as needed with no further land use issues once they clear the initial hurdles.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/m...
And where would we be in medical progress if the US was following the world's example?
The US system will award the presidency to the candidate that wins the most votes in the Electoral College. Think of the electoral college as a temporary congress specifically for the purpose of electing the President. That is a body of people with the job of deciding one question, 'Who will be President?'
Now, the vote must result in a single candidate receiving 50%+1 vote to win. But the winner of the votes can win in states without a majority of the votes. So, if 3 or 4 candidates (or more) were in the election, all you would need to do is be the best in the right states, and you could win with a severe minority of the total vote. For instance, in an election with the smallest states all voting for the same candidate (Trump) by the smallest margin possible of 1 vote more than both of the other candidates (Hillary and Candidate X) in the smallest 40 states (and most powerful/voter), and the largest 10 states didn't register any votes for that candidate, and they voted popularly for one of the other candidates (Hillary). In this scenario, Hillary could have won the popular vote 94.5 million to 21.7 million for Trump and X, and because of how the Electoral College works, Trump would have won 270 to 268.
For a real world instance, in 1992 and 1996, Clinton ran in two three way elections between Clinton + Bush Sr + Perot and Clinton + Dole + Perot. In 1992, Clinton won 43% of the vote, and if either Bush or Perot had not been in the election, the other probably would have won with about 55% of the vote, and Bush would have won the Electoral College by a wide margin. Then in 1996, both Perot and Dole split the non-Clinton vote, and together they would have had about 120,000 votes less nationwide, but if one would have had all of the votes from the other, they would have had enough support in the Electoral College to win 288 to 250.
The Electoral College was created to give small states a disproportionately large vote in order to buy their willingness to join a union where states with larger populations would have more pull individually and especially in the House of Representatives by giving them the ability to override the group think of the larger states should they agree enough to all vote the same way. But if you add similar options to the ballot, and the ballot doesn't allow the voters to specify which options in which order, then you end up with a divided vote when those voters would like something similar, but can't compromise and they divide their vote, throwing victory to a third least preferred option. All of this is really an offshoot of the US being the first major democracy in modern times, and before the beginning of political science and game theory being invented.
In the end, this process has killed the option of a 3rd party having a real say in the American government because of this: In the US, the parties have a process that substitutes for a large election with many candidates by having a series of pre-elections called primaries where the different parties consider different candidates, and discard the ones that are less favorable, with the intent of gathering all of the support for their party under one candidate. The party has an informal agreement that everybody will support the primary winner in order to get the most votes to try to win as many states as possible to win the election over the other parties. If other smaller parties crop up and attempt to grow, they will probably steal support from one side or the other of the two existing parties, but in the end, both the new party and the party that has lost support will lose several elections in a row, and one will be cannibalized into the other to try to overcome the party that won all of the elections since the emergence of the 3rd party.
As for your question about Hillary running again, Bill and Hillary have many loyal friends in politics, and they control the Democratic party like a mafia, and many won't dream of doing anything against them because of their ruthlessness. Unfortunately for the Democrats, the party