To increase revenue, private insurance companies want more covered users, preferably of low risk. To reduce risk, they enter into contracts with the health care providers ("In-Network") to supply services at a pre-negotiated cost. That is to say a doctor's visit is $384, but you pay $10 and your insurer pays $64; the total doctor's visit is $74, not the $384 an uninsured person pays. This allows them to push their prices downward, attracting more customers. It also saturates their risk tolerance, and so they take on further risk by supplying insurance to somewhat higher risk portions of the population (the poor and/or the more sick), at increased--but still reduced by controlled costs--premiums.
Car insurance companies are even more amusing because they pay out $1.02-$1.05 per $1 they collect in premiums. They operate entirely on their investment capital (i.e. Wall-Streeting it), garnering huge tax breaks and reduced premiums by this skillful manipulation of economics.
Insurance companies are rather interesting. Certainly, they've helped to keep health care prices low more than the sue-happy lawyers that advertise the service of turning symptoms and circumstances into winning cases and cash flows.
My point was that if you want to discuss the impacts of a certain substance present in a population by examining the population, there will be a lot of confounding. Aspartame? Mercury? Fluoridated water? You're testing the population to decide if these things have an impact. These people with high level intake... those people with high level intake.. versus this population... but, they all have high levels of intake of this stuff, and that stuff. The subset of populations that provide a high level of X but a low level of Y for comparison are statistically small, and don't give much if any confidence.
It may be impossible in a sick system; it is clearly possible to do so, as it has been done in the past. Many rich people can't live without multi-million-dollar incomes because they're too leveraged and have no idea how to live on a $250k salary; that doesn't mean you can't, it just means they don't know how. They're sick.
Current research and analysis says colleges only charge huge tuition because the students will pay it (with loans). They charge because they can, not because they need.
Our economy has a lot of rent-seekers that overcharge just because money is available. Look at housing: renting an apartment costs $600 in an area, until the middle class moves in and the landlords start raising rent to $900-$1200 for the same apartments because there's just more money (the cost to administrate the apartments doesn't increase, save by $50/year in property taxes).
Now consider: money is available. Students are going to get loans and give the money to you, taking all the risk and all the debt. Banks have a permanent bail-out under the program: any money coming from banks is guaranteed by the government, one way or another, without becoming invalid due to bankruptcy claim. How much do you take?
Answer: Whatever amount produces the maximum overall revenue.
College tuition has increased much faster than inflation. Why? For that matter, why are books so expensive? Why has teacher salary not increased so much? Colleges charge increased tuition because they can; look it up, this was major news (on CNN and Fox both) a month and a half ago, when they covered multiple findings that college tuition is ludicrous for no real reason.
It would certainly require very high-quality research to support a claim that sounds so obviously ridiculous on its face, and that is not consistent with a large body of research and biological knowledge. But a lot of it would not be technically difficult. What is the evidence that the dipeptide is not broken down rapidly after oral administration? What specific biological targets does it bind to at concentrations comparable to those present in the body after it is administered orally? How, specifically, does it act on that target to produce neurotoxicity?
The way to introduce accountability is to push the loans onto the commercial space, where people are in it to make money, and for one person to make money another loses. Another who can't just jack up taxes and doesn't live on politics.
The universities only win if they get money. The banks only win if the students pay. And the students only win if they can afford the loan. Currently, the banks can't lose; thus, the banks and the universities both win if the student takes loans, and the student is naive and easily manipulated.
In reality, when it becomes impossible for students to afford college, and too damn risky to give them loans, the universities will collapse. Don't want to collapse? Lower your prices.
Actually, career biochemists tell me the dipeptide is particularly neurotoxic if not ingested as part of a more complete amino acid chain. Consider this much in the same conceptual model where sodium chloride is essential, but sodium and chlorine are highly toxic.
More to the point, while I dislike aspartame for scientific and rational reasons, and I dislike injecting mercury into my blood for scientific and rational reasons, to claim any of these causes some specific effect requires some epic level wizardry. Studying a population is hard. Studying a population for a neurological disease trigger is even harder when you know 47 things we consume in significant quantity are potentially neurotoxic. That something is a poison regularly present in the body doesn't automatically create a link between its effects and a population's condition.
You are flatly insane. Unless you go into full communism, this doesn't work. The government must dictate the total price or else the university will get $x from the government where it got $x+50 from the student, and then charge ((2/3)*x + $50) to the student anyway, less than non-subsidized tuition but more overall income.
I actually advocated this to a coworker friday. Do we have a half-intelligent politician or a lucky retard? Even a broken clock is right once in a while, whether it's stopped or spinning backwards...
Student debt spins out of control because there's no accountability. The Federal Loan Program is an automatic bank bail-out, but for the universities. Without a student loan program, the universities have three choices:
Find a bank to supply loans
Operate as a bank themselves
Demand students find their own financing
In the second case, the university must take on risk itself; in the first and last, they offload the risk to the student or a bank (the student can pay out of pocket or find a bank and get their own loan in the third case). In any case involving a loan, someone takes a risk of a default and a bankruptcy declaration, meaning student loan offerings will become more stringent. Tuition may decrease due to lack of liquidity--no access to free money means you can't sell as much crap.
The current situation leaves a case where universities have their greatest interest in getting students spending money freely. If those students default, who cares? There's no bank that cares, and the university doesn't care. This means they're best off encouraging students to get into debt they can't handle, and that they can charge ungodly high tuition levels and people will just pay it because the money is there.
Shove all that shit on the bankers and suddenly there will be some explaining to do if you want money handed to you. Another recession caused by excess borrowing WILL put a stop to this shit, and when the banks cry and the students complain they just can't afford college because bank loans aren't easy to get for $250,000 when you're a jobless starving artist, tuition will come down.
I like MSG, but in more artful application through certain forms of kelp and the like. Konbu is excellent for this; I recommended adding it to the rice while steaming/simmering when making sushi, and a coworker reported a 1000% increase in tastiness (because it provides a glutimate salt your brain specifically reacts to with a small orgasm).
That's not how immunity works. Your immune system genetically re-engineers itself to contain genes to produce chemicals that suppress and control certain pathogens based on their chemical activity, and that detect their activity. Antibodies and identifiers. You can't just dump antibodies in the body and expect that to work; that kind of serum is for suppressing an existing infection, not providing immunity.
I got that flu, too. I was down for two days, third day I was... recovered, somewhat. Eh. It was pretty weak, if you ask me; sure it put me down hard, but I pretty much slept it off.
The toxicity of ethylmercury IS well studied. It's a preservative, it's highly toxic and kills shit. What's unclear is the toxicity of ethylmercury in the given concentration for the given period of persistence. You piss it out after 3 days, does it do damage within 3 days? Is it completely harmless in those low concentrations (expanding from 2mL to the 10,000mL in your blood is significant), or slightly harmful? I'm pretty sure you don't want a 2mL solution of saturated ethylmercury solution (is this stuff a liquid to begin with?) injected into you--it will do damage. This is obvious because it does damage to everything else. How much damage is the question.
Yes but he said you don't have to be a Computer Scientist to use a Windows phone. I doubt your average non-CS could program one, even if he "knows how to program." Most programmers are retarded and very bad at designing software (and bad at programming and debugging).
When it is a "bona-fide occupational qualification", it is often legal to discriminate.
So wait, I could refuse to hire anyone black (except one person) for the cast of Othello? Or really, anyone black at all if I want an Asian guy with full East Asian customs shoved into, say, Russia...
I can make $1 million vanish very quickly. I can also retire now and still have funds when I'm 70, easily. It's both a lot and very little money: you won't last long if you buy a house and sports cars and a private jet.
exactly how little a million dollars (or whatever is left in her pocket) actually is. Certainly not enough to retire on at age 40.
If I had a million dollars at age 18 I could damn near retire (it would be rough, I'm not that good). If I had 2 million dollars and paid taxes on it, leaving about 1.4 million, I COULD RETIRE. I'd at least make it until age 70, then my conservative projections run out of funds.
My conservative projections are turning out incorrect, as it seems I can break 9% in a week if I don't make any faults, and certainly can crack 10% in a month by a wide margin even at my I've-been-doing-this-for-a-week-and-a-half level. More conservative play would get me 25% gain per year easily (within "statistically guaranteed" probability).
The age 70 projection was based on long-term CDs and IRAs that paid 2%-5%, which itself is an investment risk game as you try desperately to track the bond market and get in when it's peaking (it's just like trading stocks, really).
My expenses are mild. I live alone in an apartment. Two large rooms with closets (bedrooms, but it's called a 1 bedroom), a non-dining-room kitchen, and a bathroom. I also rent a garage for storage. I live in fair luxury on good food, good beer, good wine (at $30/bottle or so), good beer (between $20/5gal and $12/bottle, depending on whether I'm interested in a British pub ale or a Belgian with the seal of the Catholic church on it), good furniture, a $1700 bicycle (with several hundred dollars of upgrades and biking clothes/equipment) and a car with an upgraded engine, leather seats, stick shift, sun roof, upgraded radio, sports suspension, GPS built in... fully loaded. On about $1500/mo, but once I nuke my car loan it'll be close to $1200/mo.
Life of luxury, man. I have all the good stuff, lots of expensive stuff I've gathered over the years, lots of cheap stuff that just is near the absolute top end... you know. I'm a wealth builder, and gargantuan houses and boats and fleets of sports cars are not wealth--the expense and the stress of managing all that shit is a huge tax and precludes living in comfort.
The working classes gets 20-30 percent of their paychecks taken away, and they typically make 30-60k
Unfortunately the middle class can't afford to save in this economy, nor in this system that absurdly favors the wealthy.
I'm sorry, my net pay outstrips my expenses. I pay $725/mo for an apartment (I could get a better one for $680/mo), $60/mo for electric but $100/mo in the hottest summer months, $50/mo for cell phone, $200/mo for food. My big expenses are the $720/6mo for insurance and my $375/mo car payment.
In the end, I have around $1400/mo in expenses and $1800/mo in savings, after paying all my benefits and paying into my 401(k). I live in a modest sized apartment that I've furnished well for around $5000. I prepare my own breakfast and lunch using luxurious high-end lunch meats (including some genuine German-made product that's fucking delicious), sushi made from raw tuna or smoked salmon... fairly regularly, lamb falls into my diet... lots and lots of shiitake and portabella mushrooms... the good stuff. I shop at Lands' End for all my clothes, which... well, they have some very nice $70 pants and $30-$40 shirts, not to mention boxers at $15/pair.
I'm living the high life, but I'm careful with what I buy and what I spend. I commute on a $600 bicycle that I'm replacing with a $1700 bicycle, which I'll upgrade with a $150 leather seat and $80 clipless pedals. I spend $50 per article on wool clothing--Minus 33 stuff, 100% superfine Merino wool--for the winter, and I currently have two sets of baselayers (light and medium weight) and will need an Expedition weight set to handle December and January most likely... that's $300 total, but I'll use all that stuff again next year.
For the 7 mile commute, it takes me 5-10 minutes longer to get to and from work. I'm healthier, my commute is more fun, and I've been forced to learn to deal with the heat and cold. Cold is fatal to me, but... well, I've never been able to handle it so well, now that I know how to dress for it effectively. As for the heat? I ignored it mostly; biked around with my 3L camelbak, shorts, long sleeve Zensah compression shirt and a moisture wicking high visibility jersey on top, 106 degrees outside and I'm fine. Had a coworker wind up in the hospital with saline IV and long-term sickness because of walking outside too much, even with plenty of water (with no electrolytes added--that was the problem, that and a fashion statement that made the sweating mechanism ineffective at cooling the body).
On top of it, I pay less for car insurance, less for gas (I haven't put gas in my car in 2 months... I have half a tank, most of it went to elective driving because I didn't feel like biking), less maintenance, and my car lasts longer. I do drive the car once a week or two, occasionally on the highway, to keep the parts moving and make sure it gets to temperature. One day I'll buy a motorcycle for those days or distances I don't want to bike, but don't need the hauling capacity for--it's cheaper (to insure, to maintain, to replace after it's dead, and to fuel).
I am currently behind. Given all my bicycling expenses, I'm about... huh, actually about $500 away from breaking even just considering fuel and insurance. Next year of course I'll still have... well, more money sunk into bicycles, but that's becoming elective.
So you see, $60k is plenty enough to save, so is $45k. And for your information, I pay around 30% for my investments because I am a shorter term swing trader: anything held for less than a year is "income" and taxed as such, rather than "Capital Gains." I also understand the tax law enough to turn that into a maximum of 16% by using my IRA as a loophole, but if I don't withdraw the money then the actual value starts cutting down because no tax is assessed until I actually withdraw. There's no income or capital gains tax, but a 6% penalty for overcontributi
Investing money is kind of hard work. I started last week and have been making money hand over fist, but this week I'm in gold and cash because I saw the stock market starting to peak and had stop losses set that all triggered. I only made 9.02% in one week.
Yes, but I've also noticed that "nutrition scientists" seem to base their conclusions on this ideal that the definition of "Healthy" follows the baseline of society, even if that society is nothing of the sort. In other words, we know that it's not healthy to be completely sedentary; but all of "nutrition" seems based on the idea that you're mainly sedentary. Even when you're moderately active, people claim that sugar and fat are simply bad for you.
More importantly, there is no indication of baseline for nutrition science, and so all this is given and taken as the absolute healthy baseline: a "healthy adult" should vehemently avoid sugar and fat, so they say. I don't think their definition of "healthy adult" is correct, and I think their conclusions are compromised because of it. Sugar and fat intake aren't bad for you, except in gross excess of what's in fruit juice and meat--a person like me (I'm not an athlete, I get 14 miles of biking in a day and use the stairs instead of the elevators) can eat a mainly meat diet fine, and I'm not on a low-carb diet by any stretch. An athlete will need far more than I do.
Of course I could overeat and become unhealthy. I could eat junk like donuts all day and it would have an effect on me. I can cram donuts down every day, though, and if I'm not eating a whole cake or a dozen donuts every day or something I'm still going to be fine. One or two won't do anything bad to me: the energy supply will reduce my need for base food energy, but two donuts isn't enough food and I'll still be taking down other foods that supply the proper nutrient load. Sugars get consumed; fats get consumed or stored in muscle cells (fast energy, rather than storing into fat cells), and the efficient consumption and storage of fats prevents certain types of cholesterol from floating in the arteries (the body uses the "bad stuff" first, i.e. it's self-balancing when in good working order).
That's not how nutritionists see it. The science they put out says, "Holy crap, donuts? That's bad for you. Totally bad for you. You'd be way better off if you avoided that entirely." They'll scream all day that I'd be healthier if I ate just rabbit food. Bad science.
The scientific rationale for fruit juice being better than fruit is that it concentrates all the nutrients and antioxidents and other useful stuff. A fist-sized apple won't make a fist-sized glass of juice; it takes 4-6 of them. A couple decades later, the same science lead to an alarmist reaction about the huge amount of sugar--fruit contains sugar, and fruit juice contains more sugar because all the non-sugar parts are removed.
It's science. It's both the best stuff in the world and the most horrible for you. I think any science that says sugar consumption is automatically bad (yeah even at levels of like 5 tablespoons in an 8 ounce glass) is wrong. I use that energy.
There is no insulin released while I'm on my bike... though there is when I consume bread, grains, and fruit juice. Bread is proclaimed to be the thing you should eat the most of... and it causes a massive insulin spike, the GI of white bread is higher than the GI of glucose (it's like 140) and the GI of whole wheat is still 95-110. So pure sugar is less bad for you than this shit, allegedly.
I'll be fine. Simple sugars are in high demand rather frequently.
Lettuce contains too much fiber. Too much iceberg lettuce will QUICKLY create severe constipation. Other kinds of lettuce are rather high in Vitamin A, which is poisonous.
There is science that claims fruit juice is FAR better for you than fruit, and science that claims fruit juice is horribly bad for you. Fresh squeezed orange juice is one of the worst things for you, says recent science. It's about on par with soda.
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How so because of private insurance?
To increase revenue, private insurance companies want more covered users, preferably of low risk. To reduce risk, they enter into contracts with the health care providers ("In-Network") to supply services at a pre-negotiated cost. That is to say a doctor's visit is $384, but you pay $10 and your insurer pays $64; the total doctor's visit is $74, not the $384 an uninsured person pays. This allows them to push their prices downward, attracting more customers. It also saturates their risk tolerance, and so they take on further risk by supplying insurance to somewhat higher risk portions of the population (the poor and/or the more sick), at increased--but still reduced by controlled costs--premiums.
Car insurance companies are even more amusing because they pay out $1.02-$1.05 per $1 they collect in premiums. They operate entirely on their investment capital (i.e. Wall-Streeting it), garnering huge tax breaks and reduced premiums by this skillful manipulation of economics.
Insurance companies are rather interesting. Certainly, they've helped to keep health care prices low more than the sue-happy lawyers that advertise the service of turning symptoms and circumstances into winning cases and cash flows.
My point was that if you want to discuss the impacts of a certain substance present in a population by examining the population, there will be a lot of confounding. Aspartame? Mercury? Fluoridated water? You're testing the population to decide if these things have an impact. These people with high level intake ... those people with high level intake.. versus this population ... but, they all have high levels of intake of this stuff, and that stuff. The subset of populations that provide a high level of X but a low level of Y for comparison are statistically small, and don't give much if any confidence.
Good luck with that.
It may be impossible in a sick system; it is clearly possible to do so, as it has been done in the past. Many rich people can't live without multi-million-dollar incomes because they're too leveraged and have no idea how to live on a $250k salary; that doesn't mean you can't, it just means they don't know how. They're sick.
Current research and analysis says colleges only charge huge tuition because the students will pay it (with loans). They charge because they can, not because they need.
Our economy has a lot of rent-seekers that overcharge just because money is available. Look at housing: renting an apartment costs $600 in an area, until the middle class moves in and the landlords start raising rent to $900-$1200 for the same apartments because there's just more money (the cost to administrate the apartments doesn't increase, save by $50/year in property taxes).
Now consider: money is available. Students are going to get loans and give the money to you, taking all the risk and all the debt. Banks have a permanent bail-out under the program: any money coming from banks is guaranteed by the government, one way or another, without becoming invalid due to bankruptcy claim. How much do you take?
Answer: Whatever amount produces the maximum overall revenue.
Straw man. Medical insurance is not education.
College tuition has increased much faster than inflation. Why? For that matter, why are books so expensive? Why has teacher salary not increased so much? Colleges charge increased tuition because they can; look it up, this was major news (on CNN and Fox both) a month and a half ago, when they covered multiple findings that college tuition is ludicrous for no real reason.
It would certainly require very high-quality research to support a claim that sounds so obviously ridiculous on its face, and that is not consistent with a large body of research and biological knowledge. But a lot of it would not be technically difficult. What is the evidence that the dipeptide is not broken down rapidly after oral administration? What specific biological targets does it bind to at concentrations comparable to those present in the body after it is administered orally? How, specifically, does it act on that target to produce neurotoxicity?
You are obviously not a statistician.
The way to introduce accountability is to push the loans onto the commercial space, where people are in it to make money, and for one person to make money another loses. Another who can't just jack up taxes and doesn't live on politics.
The universities only win if they get money. The banks only win if the students pay. And the students only win if they can afford the loan. Currently, the banks can't lose; thus, the banks and the universities both win if the student takes loans, and the student is naive and easily manipulated.
In reality, when it becomes impossible for students to afford college, and too damn risky to give them loans, the universities will collapse. Don't want to collapse? Lower your prices.
It has to hurt if it's to heal.
Actually, career biochemists tell me the dipeptide is particularly neurotoxic if not ingested as part of a more complete amino acid chain. Consider this much in the same conceptual model where sodium chloride is essential, but sodium and chlorine are highly toxic.
More to the point, while I dislike aspartame for scientific and rational reasons, and I dislike injecting mercury into my blood for scientific and rational reasons, to claim any of these causes some specific effect requires some epic level wizardry. Studying a population is hard. Studying a population for a neurological disease trigger is even harder when you know 47 things we consume in significant quantity are potentially neurotoxic. That something is a poison regularly present in the body doesn't automatically create a link between its effects and a population's condition.
You are flatly insane. Unless you go into full communism, this doesn't work. The government must dictate the total price or else the university will get $x from the government where it got $x+50 from the student, and then charge ((2/3)*x + $50) to the student anyway, less than non-subsidized tuition but more overall income.
I actually advocated this to a coworker friday. Do we have a half-intelligent politician or a lucky retard? Even a broken clock is right once in a while, whether it's stopped or spinning backwards...
Student debt spins out of control because there's no accountability. The Federal Loan Program is an automatic bank bail-out, but for the universities. Without a student loan program, the universities have three choices:
In the second case, the university must take on risk itself; in the first and last, they offload the risk to the student or a bank (the student can pay out of pocket or find a bank and get their own loan in the third case). In any case involving a loan, someone takes a risk of a default and a bankruptcy declaration, meaning student loan offerings will become more stringent. Tuition may decrease due to lack of liquidity--no access to free money means you can't sell as much crap.
The current situation leaves a case where universities have their greatest interest in getting students spending money freely. If those students default, who cares? There's no bank that cares, and the university doesn't care. This means they're best off encouraging students to get into debt they can't handle, and that they can charge ungodly high tuition levels and people will just pay it because the money is there.
Shove all that shit on the bankers and suddenly there will be some explaining to do if you want money handed to you. Another recession caused by excess borrowing WILL put a stop to this shit, and when the banks cry and the students complain they just can't afford college because bank loans aren't easy to get for $250,000 when you're a jobless starving artist, tuition will come down.
I like MSG, but in more artful application through certain forms of kelp and the like. Konbu is excellent for this; I recommended adding it to the rice while steaming/simmering when making sushi, and a coworker reported a 1000% increase in tastiness (because it provides a glutimate salt your brain specifically reacts to with a small orgasm).
That's not how immunity works. Your immune system genetically re-engineers itself to contain genes to produce chemicals that suppress and control certain pathogens based on their chemical activity, and that detect their activity. Antibodies and identifiers. You can't just dump antibodies in the body and expect that to work; that kind of serum is for suppressing an existing infection, not providing immunity.
It's the diet sodas that cause autism and ADHD. Aspartame is toxic.
I got that flu, too. I was down for two days, third day I was ... recovered, somewhat. Eh. It was pretty weak, if you ask me; sure it put me down hard, but I pretty much slept it off.
The toxicity of ethylmercury IS well studied. It's a preservative, it's highly toxic and kills shit. What's unclear is the toxicity of ethylmercury in the given concentration for the given period of persistence. You piss it out after 3 days, does it do damage within 3 days? Is it completely harmless in those low concentrations (expanding from 2mL to the 10,000mL in your blood is significant), or slightly harmful? I'm pretty sure you don't want a 2mL solution of saturated ethylmercury solution (is this stuff a liquid to begin with?) injected into you--it will do damage. This is obvious because it does damage to everything else. How much damage is the question.
Yes but he said you don't have to be a Computer Scientist to use a Windows phone. I doubt your average non-CS could program one, even if he "knows how to program." Most programmers are retarded and very bad at designing software (and bad at programming and debugging).
When it is a "bona-fide occupational qualification", it is often legal to discriminate.
So wait, I could refuse to hire anyone black (except one person) for the cast of Othello? Or really, anyone black at all if I want an Asian guy with full East Asian customs shoved into, say, Russia ...
I can make $1 million vanish very quickly. I can also retire now and still have funds when I'm 70, easily. It's both a lot and very little money: you won't last long if you buy a house and sports cars and a private jet.
exactly how little a million dollars (or whatever is left in her pocket) actually is. Certainly not enough to retire on at age 40.
If I had a million dollars at age 18 I could damn near retire (it would be rough, I'm not that good). If I had 2 million dollars and paid taxes on it, leaving about 1.4 million, I COULD RETIRE. I'd at least make it until age 70, then my conservative projections run out of funds.
My conservative projections are turning out incorrect, as it seems I can break 9% in a week if I don't make any faults, and certainly can crack 10% in a month by a wide margin even at my I've-been-doing-this-for-a-week-and-a-half level. More conservative play would get me 25% gain per year easily (within "statistically guaranteed" probability).
The age 70 projection was based on long-term CDs and IRAs that paid 2%-5%, which itself is an investment risk game as you try desperately to track the bond market and get in when it's peaking (it's just like trading stocks, really).
My expenses are mild. I live alone in an apartment. Two large rooms with closets (bedrooms, but it's called a 1 bedroom), a non-dining-room kitchen, and a bathroom. I also rent a garage for storage. I live in fair luxury on good food, good beer, good wine (at $30/bottle or so), good beer (between $20/5gal and $12/bottle, depending on whether I'm interested in a British pub ale or a Belgian with the seal of the Catholic church on it), good furniture, a $1700 bicycle (with several hundred dollars of upgrades and biking clothes/equipment) and a car with an upgraded engine, leather seats, stick shift, sun roof, upgraded radio, sports suspension, GPS built in ... fully loaded. On about $1500/mo, but once I nuke my car loan it'll be close to $1200/mo.
Life of luxury, man. I have all the good stuff, lots of expensive stuff I've gathered over the years, lots of cheap stuff that just is near the absolute top end ... you know. I'm a wealth builder, and gargantuan houses and boats and fleets of sports cars are not wealth--the expense and the stress of managing all that shit is a huge tax and precludes living in comfort.
The working classes gets 20-30 percent of their paychecks taken away, and they typically make 30-60k
Unfortunately the middle class can't afford to save in this economy, nor in this system that absurdly favors the wealthy.
I'm sorry, my net pay outstrips my expenses. I pay $725/mo for an apartment (I could get a better one for $680/mo), $60/mo for electric but $100/mo in the hottest summer months, $50/mo for cell phone, $200/mo for food. My big expenses are the $720/6mo for insurance and my $375/mo car payment.
In the end, I have around $1400/mo in expenses and $1800/mo in savings, after paying all my benefits and paying into my 401(k). I live in a modest sized apartment that I've furnished well for around $5000. I prepare my own breakfast and lunch using luxurious high-end lunch meats (including some genuine German-made product that's fucking delicious), sushi made from raw tuna or smoked salmon... fairly regularly, lamb falls into my diet... lots and lots of shiitake and portabella mushrooms... the good stuff. I shop at Lands' End for all my clothes, which ... well, they have some very nice $70 pants and $30-$40 shirts, not to mention boxers at $15/pair.
I'm living the high life, but I'm careful with what I buy and what I spend. I commute on a $600 bicycle that I'm replacing with a $1700 bicycle, which I'll upgrade with a $150 leather seat and $80 clipless pedals. I spend $50 per article on wool clothing--Minus 33 stuff, 100% superfine Merino wool--for the winter, and I currently have two sets of baselayers (light and medium weight) and will need an Expedition weight set to handle December and January most likely... that's $300 total, but I'll use all that stuff again next year.
For the 7 mile commute, it takes me 5-10 minutes longer to get to and from work. I'm healthier, my commute is more fun, and I've been forced to learn to deal with the heat and cold. Cold is fatal to me, but ... well, I've never been able to handle it so well, now that I know how to dress for it effectively. As for the heat? I ignored it mostly; biked around with my 3L camelbak, shorts, long sleeve Zensah compression shirt and a moisture wicking high visibility jersey on top, 106 degrees outside and I'm fine. Had a coworker wind up in the hospital with saline IV and long-term sickness because of walking outside too much, even with plenty of water (with no electrolytes added--that was the problem, that and a fashion statement that made the sweating mechanism ineffective at cooling the body).
On top of it, I pay less for car insurance, less for gas (I haven't put gas in my car in 2 months... I have half a tank, most of it went to elective driving because I didn't feel like biking), less maintenance, and my car lasts longer. I do drive the car once a week or two, occasionally on the highway, to keep the parts moving and make sure it gets to temperature. One day I'll buy a motorcycle for those days or distances I don't want to bike, but don't need the hauling capacity for--it's cheaper (to insure, to maintain, to replace after it's dead, and to fuel).
I am currently behind. Given all my bicycling expenses, I'm about ... huh, actually about $500 away from breaking even just considering fuel and insurance. Next year of course I'll still have... well, more money sunk into bicycles, but that's becoming elective.
So you see, $60k is plenty enough to save, so is $45k. And for your information, I pay around 30% for my investments because I am a shorter term swing trader: anything held for less than a year is "income" and taxed as such, rather than "Capital Gains." I also understand the tax law enough to turn that into a maximum of 16% by using my IRA as a loophole, but if I don't withdraw the money then the actual value starts cutting down because no tax is assessed until I actually withdraw. There's no income or capital gains tax, but a 6% penalty for overcontributi
Investing money is kind of hard work. I started last week and have been making money hand over fist, but this week I'm in gold and cash because I saw the stock market starting to peak and had stop losses set that all triggered. I only made 9.02% in one week.
Where does the average person get disposable income?
Yes, but I've also noticed that "nutrition scientists" seem to base their conclusions on this ideal that the definition of "Healthy" follows the baseline of society, even if that society is nothing of the sort. In other words, we know that it's not healthy to be completely sedentary; but all of "nutrition" seems based on the idea that you're mainly sedentary. Even when you're moderately active, people claim that sugar and fat are simply bad for you.
More importantly, there is no indication of baseline for nutrition science, and so all this is given and taken as the absolute healthy baseline: a "healthy adult" should vehemently avoid sugar and fat, so they say. I don't think their definition of "healthy adult" is correct, and I think their conclusions are compromised because of it. Sugar and fat intake aren't bad for you, except in gross excess of what's in fruit juice and meat--a person like me (I'm not an athlete, I get 14 miles of biking in a day and use the stairs instead of the elevators) can eat a mainly meat diet fine, and I'm not on a low-carb diet by any stretch. An athlete will need far more than I do.
Of course I could overeat and become unhealthy. I could eat junk like donuts all day and it would have an effect on me. I can cram donuts down every day, though, and if I'm not eating a whole cake or a dozen donuts every day or something I'm still going to be fine. One or two won't do anything bad to me: the energy supply will reduce my need for base food energy, but two donuts isn't enough food and I'll still be taking down other foods that supply the proper nutrient load. Sugars get consumed; fats get consumed or stored in muscle cells (fast energy, rather than storing into fat cells), and the efficient consumption and storage of fats prevents certain types of cholesterol from floating in the arteries (the body uses the "bad stuff" first, i.e. it's self-balancing when in good working order).
That's not how nutritionists see it. The science they put out says, "Holy crap, donuts? That's bad for you. Totally bad for you. You'd be way better off if you avoided that entirely." They'll scream all day that I'd be healthier if I ate just rabbit food. Bad science.
The scientific rationale for fruit juice being better than fruit is that it concentrates all the nutrients and antioxidents and other useful stuff. A fist-sized apple won't make a fist-sized glass of juice; it takes 4-6 of them. A couple decades later, the same science lead to an alarmist reaction about the huge amount of sugar--fruit contains sugar, and fruit juice contains more sugar because all the non-sugar parts are removed.
It's science. It's both the best stuff in the world and the most horrible for you. I think any science that says sugar consumption is automatically bad (yeah even at levels of like 5 tablespoons in an 8 ounce glass) is wrong. I use that energy.
There is no insulin released while I'm on my bike ... though there is when I consume bread, grains, and fruit juice. Bread is proclaimed to be the thing you should eat the most of ... and it causes a massive insulin spike, the GI of white bread is higher than the GI of glucose (it's like 140) and the GI of whole wheat is still 95-110. So pure sugar is less bad for you than this shit, allegedly.
I'll be fine. Simple sugars are in high demand rather frequently.
Lettuce contains too much fiber. Too much iceberg lettuce will QUICKLY create severe constipation. Other kinds of lettuce are rather high in Vitamin A, which is poisonous.
There is science that claims fruit juice is FAR better for you than fruit, and science that claims fruit juice is horribly bad for you. Fresh squeezed orange juice is one of the worst things for you, says recent science. It's about on par with soda.