How would they ever own a 75,000 dollar car though? That's the flip side of moving where the salaries are lower, major ticket items are priced for those expensive regions and can easily go over your year income. Cars in particular. Making 'good money' in my area is less than the cost of all, but the cheapest new cars. It's why 'used cars' dominate my region. Other goods though that are like that: PCs, electronics in general, clothes, etc. They just don't usually go above the average salary in cost, instead they can be a big chunk of a salary.
Seriously? "bringing more people into an already overcrowded world" is a joke., You most likely don't live in India or China. Instead you likely live in Europe or the US who have near neutral birth rates. Complaining about an 'overcrowded world' in places that really are not overcrowded is just stupid.
As someone who wears glasses... 3D annoys me a lot. You have to wear these crappy glasses over your glasses and because they weren't ever meant to be worn over other glasses they don't fit right. It annoys me in theaters, I don't even want to think about that at home. Some TVs did tricks to do 3D without the glasses, but those tend to have very limited viewing angles.
That probably still wouldn't get my parent to give up their 15-20 year old first gen HDTV (720p) CRT TV. The own a LCD TV, but that's not the one in the living room that they use 12 hours a day.
It also doesn't take into account that some people, like myself, are introverts. We tend to want small groups of good friends over dozens or hundreds of people we 'know' as 'friends' like facebook deals in. Much like a lot of medical and diet research this assumes everyone is perfectly identical and there are no differences.
In the meantime no one can remember all these passwords and writes them down, making it super easy for anyone to know the persons password. I have worked at a college with a 90 day password change policy (and long complex passwords) and 75% of people had a sticky note somewhere around their desk with their current password on it because almost no one could remember them all. At the time I worked support and when going onsite I could easily have collected almost everyones passwords if I wanted. Most of IT didn't really remember the (multiple) sets of passwords either and so made use of password keychain programs to remember for them.
I always found concepts like ITSM silly. Very little of it has any proof backing up their 'scores', but yet so much of the industry just accepts it.
Having once worked in retail, that's a sign that they have had theft issues. The whole "Are you finding everything ok?" is not about helping customers, but instead it is about keeping an eye out for thieves. I used to argue that the whole thing was silly and would just piss me off if I was the legitimate customer, but the higher ups seemed to think it was the best thing since sliced bread.
I've never experienced any slower response then I would with any other web browser using it... and heck you don't need the client to buy things as you can use the web site if you want. You do need the client to download the games (& play them), but that interface is pretty simple and not slow (it's all on your PC).
However I've been using steam for... 9 or 10 years...? So I've had issues at times in there, but also found it much better than buying from a store. And among all possible stores, it usually has what I want to buy. GoG still has a limited library (though it is improving), Origin is still mostly EA, Uplay is only Ubisoft, and the Windows Store has what... basic apps and mobile games?
I think MS forgot that some of us (like myself) have hundreds of games in Steam. Unless MS plan to do what GoG did and let me have my games on whichever service I use, then I'll keep using Steam because that's where my games are. I have seen nothing in the windows store I want to buy and so I don't own any games there. Maybe they should keep looking at making compelling products that make me want to buy them and not making the largest competing service, where I do own stuff, worse?
I live in PA. Which is pretty firmly east coast (though ironically OH gets considered midwest at times), but we farm here as well (upstate NY does as well). I've personally never been midwest or west at all really (never left my timezone), so I have no idea what other places are like.
Ironically Chrome runs just fine for me on Windows 10, however Edge does not. It regularly 'comes up' and then doesn't load correctly. This gives me a useless window that won't connect to sites on the internet. Ever. I open and close it enough it it may eventually open correctly. Chrome? Chrome always opens. Firefox did as well when I had it installed. Opera works fine and all the time as well. No idea why Edge can't work right, but it's the one I won't be using.
Your view of farmers and mine seem a bit different. Then again farmers where i live rarely have farm hands... Well a few do, but they aren't immigrants, instead it's typically local teens. Though most of them also probably have ~100 acres of farmland at most in the first place, so maybe the ones you know work on a different scale.
That said, the farmers I knew still were not 'poor'. Farm kids when I went to high school where the ones whose parents bought them brand new cars to drive when they turned 16 and who could go to Florida every year for a few weeks during summer. They were also big supporters of the schools (most notably the sports teams like baseball and football, and their kids usually played on those teams) and made some fairly large donations so school libraries, football fields, and gyms were often named after farmers (at least 20 or so years ago).
I found them to be much like other people: some were kind and generous, some were in between, others were mean and rotten, and lastly were those tightfisted greedy ones. They were however all business people, but that didn't always mean 'greedy and selfish'. It just meant they ran a business and had to take a broader view than most.
What you don't realize is that tractors are very long term purchases for farmers. Older tractors may go 20, 30, or even 40 years before being replaced. I know a few local farms with tractors older than me. So someone may buy a tractor with no idea how different a newer one is than their old one was. At least in non-physical ways. No, they will hype things like A/C and guidance systems or the raw power of a particular tractor and gloss over the fine print.
On top of this John Deere may have been the tractor brand of choice for 2, 3, or 4 generations of farmers. If your grandfather and father both used John Deere, why would you go elsewhere? Brand loyalty is a strong thing when it can cross generations. Heck I see John Deere mail boxes going down roads, and every county or local fair has John Deere showing off tractors and handing out toys, stickers, booklets, etc. I think someone in my childhood toys my parents still have boxed up you may find toy die cast John Deere tractor models from when I was little and they would take me to the fairs.
Living in a small town... I can say your wrong. Though more likely the repo guys would call the local police or state police (the state police act as local police where I live), since the county Sheriff doesn't deal much with anything outside prisoner transport and serving civil papers. And the state police wouldn't really care as they don't really 'live or work' in the community (their office is about 10 miles from the town itself and most actually live in the largest city in the area and commute to work each day).
It may be different in other places, but there are a lot of small farmers still here who aren't part of large agribusiness (though there is a local 'co-op' which has grown to become big agribusiness as well). We even have a John Deere dealership in town (other manufacturers have ones 10-20 miles away), so I see a lot of John Deere equipment in a typical day if I'm out and about.
While I believe John Deere is being stupid, I know the county and state would never go against John Deere since they do a lot of business in my region. It would be more likely to get traction against John Deere if the local agri co-ops had issues with it as they have far more power and money than individual farmers.
My primary machine is a I5 6600k, 16 GB of DDR4 ram, Asus Z170A mb, Radeon R9 390 gpu, EVGA 850W psu, Samsung 950 Pro M.2 SSD, 5 sata HDDs, a Blueray/DVD-RW drive... It runs windows 10, because I support windows systems more than anything else. Chrome with Ghostery and Adblock for the browser, though as Edge runs like hot shit on this system (for strange unknown reasons), Opera is my backup. LibreOffice, Notepad++, and google docs as editors depending on what I'm working with.
Not even that, but if the part of the population who couldn't afford products now can... That means more people buying things, more demand for products and services, more jobs required to create these products and services, etc. I've argued for years that the obsession to get 'rid' of the middle class by the rich is ultimately self-defeating as it simply robs them of people to buy the products from the companies they own and run. For years normal inflation has caused them to have less and less to spend, as it has increased faster than wages by several percent.
Heck since this is basically pocket change to the upper part of the economy... I don't see it having any significant increase on inflation (i'd be surprised to see more than half a percent change if we had a federal UBI). While demand for some things would go up, it's mostly in the more 'basic' items. People aren't exactly going to run out and buy a new car on UBI, though if they were borderline before that may become an option now.
Well the first place to start would be to exempt UBI from taxation. This will be a much larger portion of a persons income the less wealth they have and a much smaller part of the richer persons. Of course since it's paid out from taxation, it also makes sense to not tax it as well. After that even a flat percentage tax wouldn't be a bad thing, since again the less you make the smaller the portion taxed after UBI. While this is combining two different hotly contested concepts, it's a solid way of doing it.
"He suggests instead focussing on the neediest people first, possibly by subsidizing jobs programs and making housing more affordable."
Or in other words, doing the same shitty things we have since before I was born and hope to hell it does something _this time_? Most people that get these benefits have had to jump through so many hoops that they abuse the system. Everyone else is just left to rot and nothing changes. Our 'support systems' have failed. It's change or watch the system fail and possibly bring the whole thing to an end within another couple decades.
No one I personally know is even 'middle class' in the US anymore because that's somewhere over 150k/year last I checked and here in northwestern PA the number of people in that category is crazy small. Poverty in a very real sense is growing year over year and the state in general keeps taking away support for those in the most need while cutting nice fat checks for their own pet projects. Heck, 'obamacare' had minimum levels before it even kicked in and my state did raise their coverage minimums to include people between the federal minimum and theirs. This left hundreds of thousands without coverage and with no means of getting it (the federal site would give the raw rates to us, so even basic plans were over $500/month for people who don't even make $500/month). It has nothing to do with 'political parties' and everything to do with the way politics has come to work in this country.
How exactly do you expect a rural carrier to deliver mail out the right side window from the left seat? Besides that buying a right hand vehicle in the US is a challenge, with most foreign cars needing to be over 25 years old to even bring into the country. Kits to create a second set of pedals and a wheel exist, but are both expensive and don't include nifty things like turn signals, wiper blade controls, headlights, etc. So most rural carriers are left driving their own vehicles as needed. The exception are carriers who are provided LLVs (long life vehicles) for their routes, though they aren't so great on back roads.
Taking your hands off the wheel in a normal car doesn't have to mean a crash is imminent... I'm a USPS Rural Carrier who drives a left hand drive car form the right. Among other things this means I drive exclusively with my left hand and certain controls, like turn signals, require me to take my hand off the wheel to hit the control. So on a regular basis during my almost 100 mile daily drive I have no hands on the wheel and I don't hit anything.
Of course I'm not saying this is safe driving. Heck I also can't wear a seatbelt and to finish a 100 mile route delivering mail and packages in a timely fashion I also have to drive over the 'speedlimit' (which is a bit vague on most dirt roads anyways). Though this is actually legal as rural carriers are 'professional' drivers on the same level as EMTs, firefighters, and police.
Btw what I find even funnier is Nintendo just send me an email ad stating 'Nintendo is the place to be for summer!' and not once did they even hint to the seeming popularity of Pokemon Go... Or even recognize it's existence. It reminds me how disconnected they really seem from their 'fans'.
While I'm not a big pokemon person, the series and games both came out when I was in high school/college so I missed the original 'craze', I decided to take a look by installing it on my tablet... Only to be told my tablet wasn't supported. So while I've seen pics and gone 'eh', I can't actually see for myself. I'm even less motivated to take a peek now.
Getting 60+ fps on ultra settings in PC gaming doesn't even take that. An fast I5, Radeon R9 390, 16 GB of ram, and an HDD can get you that. I should know that's pretty much my PC. The CPU and Ram are both about $100-150, the GPU is down to around $250 with the coming of the RX480 (which is slightly slower), and even with a good case and power supply the whole thing comes to ~600-700. Price not including monitor since most modern tvs can even be a monitor (all things old are new again).
That works up until someone actually goes and contacts a former employer. I also never wielded the power of a 'CIO' as everything I did as the defacto head of the department was filtered through others... I'd create a budget or proposal for something we'd need and my on paper 'manager' who was the head of the business unit would look it over and forward it on under her name. Though I also directly reported to the CEO, especially if 'something went wrong'. It was in lots of ways a very horrible job with all the responsibility and none of the power or pay to go with it.
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How would they ever own a 75,000 dollar car though? That's the flip side of moving where the salaries are lower, major ticket items are priced for those expensive regions and can easily go over your year income. Cars in particular. Making 'good money' in my area is less than the cost of all, but the cheapest new cars. It's why 'used cars' dominate my region. Other goods though that are like that: PCs, electronics in general, clothes, etc. They just don't usually go above the average salary in cost, instead they can be a big chunk of a salary.
Seriously? "bringing more people into an already overcrowded world" is a joke., You most likely don't live in India or China. Instead you likely live in Europe or the US who have near neutral birth rates. Complaining about an 'overcrowded world' in places that really are not overcrowded is just stupid.
As someone who wears glasses... 3D annoys me a lot. You have to wear these crappy glasses over your glasses and because they weren't ever meant to be worn over other glasses they don't fit right. It annoys me in theaters, I don't even want to think about that at home. Some TVs did tricks to do 3D without the glasses, but those tend to have very limited viewing angles.
That probably still wouldn't get my parent to give up their 15-20 year old first gen HDTV (720p) CRT TV. The own a LCD TV, but that's not the one in the living room that they use 12 hours a day.
It also doesn't take into account that some people, like myself, are introverts. We tend to want small groups of good friends over dozens or hundreds of people we 'know' as 'friends' like facebook deals in. Much like a lot of medical and diet research this assumes everyone is perfectly identical and there are no differences.
In the meantime no one can remember all these passwords and writes them down, making it super easy for anyone to know the persons password. I have worked at a college with a 90 day password change policy (and long complex passwords) and 75% of people had a sticky note somewhere around their desk with their current password on it because almost no one could remember them all. At the time I worked support and when going onsite I could easily have collected almost everyones passwords if I wanted. Most of IT didn't really remember the (multiple) sets of passwords either and so made use of password keychain programs to remember for them.
I always found concepts like ITSM silly. Very little of it has any proof backing up their 'scores', but yet so much of the industry just accepts it.
Having once worked in retail, that's a sign that they have had theft issues. The whole "Are you finding everything ok?" is not about helping customers, but instead it is about keeping an eye out for thieves. I used to argue that the whole thing was silly and would just piss me off if I was the legitimate customer, but the higher ups seemed to think it was the best thing since sliced bread.
I've never experienced any slower response then I would with any other web browser using it... and heck you don't need the client to buy things as you can use the web site if you want. You do need the client to download the games (& play them), but that interface is pretty simple and not slow (it's all on your PC).
However I've been using steam for... 9 or 10 years...? So I've had issues at times in there, but also found it much better than buying from a store. And among all possible stores, it usually has what I want to buy. GoG still has a limited library (though it is improving), Origin is still mostly EA, Uplay is only Ubisoft, and the Windows Store has what... basic apps and mobile games?
I think MS forgot that some of us (like myself) have hundreds of games in Steam. Unless MS plan to do what GoG did and let me have my games on whichever service I use, then I'll keep using Steam because that's where my games are. I have seen nothing in the windows store I want to buy and so I don't own any games there. Maybe they should keep looking at making compelling products that make me want to buy them and not making the largest competing service, where I do own stuff, worse?
I live in PA. Which is pretty firmly east coast (though ironically OH gets considered midwest at times), but we farm here as well (upstate NY does as well). I've personally never been midwest or west at all really (never left my timezone), so I have no idea what other places are like.
Ironically Chrome runs just fine for me on Windows 10, however Edge does not. It regularly 'comes up' and then doesn't load correctly. This gives me a useless window that won't connect to sites on the internet. Ever. I open and close it enough it it may eventually open correctly. Chrome? Chrome always opens. Firefox did as well when I had it installed. Opera works fine and all the time as well. No idea why Edge can't work right, but it's the one I won't be using.
Your view of farmers and mine seem a bit different. Then again farmers where i live rarely have farm hands... Well a few do, but they aren't immigrants, instead it's typically local teens. Though most of them also probably have ~100 acres of farmland at most in the first place, so maybe the ones you know work on a different scale.
That said, the farmers I knew still were not 'poor'. Farm kids when I went to high school where the ones whose parents bought them brand new cars to drive when they turned 16 and who could go to Florida every year for a few weeks during summer. They were also big supporters of the schools (most notably the sports teams like baseball and football, and their kids usually played on those teams) and made some fairly large donations so school libraries, football fields, and gyms were often named after farmers (at least 20 or so years ago).
I found them to be much like other people: some were kind and generous, some were in between, others were mean and rotten, and lastly were those tightfisted greedy ones. They were however all business people, but that didn't always mean 'greedy and selfish'. It just meant they ran a business and had to take a broader view than most.
What you don't realize is that tractors are very long term purchases for farmers. Older tractors may go 20, 30, or even 40 years before being replaced. I know a few local farms with tractors older than me. So someone may buy a tractor with no idea how different a newer one is than their old one was. At least in non-physical ways. No, they will hype things like A/C and guidance systems or the raw power of a particular tractor and gloss over the fine print.
On top of this John Deere may have been the tractor brand of choice for 2, 3, or 4 generations of farmers. If your grandfather and father both used John Deere, why would you go elsewhere? Brand loyalty is a strong thing when it can cross generations. Heck I see John Deere mail boxes going down roads, and every county or local fair has John Deere showing off tractors and handing out toys, stickers, booklets, etc. I think someone in my childhood toys my parents still have boxed up you may find toy die cast John Deere tractor models from when I was little and they would take me to the fairs.
Living in a small town... I can say your wrong. Though more likely the repo guys would call the local police or state police (the state police act as local police where I live), since the county Sheriff doesn't deal much with anything outside prisoner transport and serving civil papers. And the state police wouldn't really care as they don't really 'live or work' in the community (their office is about 10 miles from the town itself and most actually live in the largest city in the area and commute to work each day).
It may be different in other places, but there are a lot of small farmers still here who aren't part of large agribusiness (though there is a local 'co-op' which has grown to become big agribusiness as well). We even have a John Deere dealership in town (other manufacturers have ones 10-20 miles away), so I see a lot of John Deere equipment in a typical day if I'm out and about.
While I believe John Deere is being stupid, I know the county and state would never go against John Deere since they do a lot of business in my region. It would be more likely to get traction against John Deere if the local agri co-ops had issues with it as they have far more power and money than individual farmers.
My primary machine is a I5 6600k, 16 GB of DDR4 ram, Asus Z170A mb, Radeon R9 390 gpu, EVGA 850W psu, Samsung 950 Pro M.2 SSD, 5 sata HDDs, a Blueray/DVD-RW drive... It runs windows 10, because I support windows systems more than anything else. Chrome with Ghostery and Adblock for the browser, though as Edge runs like hot shit on this system (for strange unknown reasons), Opera is my backup. LibreOffice, Notepad++, and google docs as editors depending on what I'm working with.
Not even that, but if the part of the population who couldn't afford products now can... That means more people buying things, more demand for products and services, more jobs required to create these products and services, etc. I've argued for years that the obsession to get 'rid' of the middle class by the rich is ultimately self-defeating as it simply robs them of people to buy the products from the companies they own and run. For years normal inflation has caused them to have less and less to spend, as it has increased faster than wages by several percent.
Heck since this is basically pocket change to the upper part of the economy... I don't see it having any significant increase on inflation (i'd be surprised to see more than half a percent change if we had a federal UBI). While demand for some things would go up, it's mostly in the more 'basic' items. People aren't exactly going to run out and buy a new car on UBI, though if they were borderline before that may become an option now.
Well the first place to start would be to exempt UBI from taxation. This will be a much larger portion of a persons income the less wealth they have and a much smaller part of the richer persons. Of course since it's paid out from taxation, it also makes sense to not tax it as well. After that even a flat percentage tax wouldn't be a bad thing, since again the less you make the smaller the portion taxed after UBI. While this is combining two different hotly contested concepts, it's a solid way of doing it.
"He suggests instead focussing on the neediest people first, possibly by subsidizing jobs programs and making housing more affordable."
Or in other words, doing the same shitty things we have since before I was born and hope to hell it does something _this time_? Most people that get these benefits have had to jump through so many hoops that they abuse the system. Everyone else is just left to rot and nothing changes. Our 'support systems' have failed. It's change or watch the system fail and possibly bring the whole thing to an end within another couple decades.
No one I personally know is even 'middle class' in the US anymore because that's somewhere over 150k/year last I checked and here in northwestern PA the number of people in that category is crazy small. Poverty in a very real sense is growing year over year and the state in general keeps taking away support for those in the most need while cutting nice fat checks for their own pet projects. Heck, 'obamacare' had minimum levels before it even kicked in and my state did raise their coverage minimums to include people between the federal minimum and theirs. This left hundreds of thousands without coverage and with no means of getting it (the federal site would give the raw rates to us, so even basic plans were over $500/month for people who don't even make $500/month). It has nothing to do with 'political parties' and everything to do with the way politics has come to work in this country.
How exactly do you expect a rural carrier to deliver mail out the right side window from the left seat? Besides that buying a right hand vehicle in the US is a challenge, with most foreign cars needing to be over 25 years old to even bring into the country. Kits to create a second set of pedals and a wheel exist, but are both expensive and don't include nifty things like turn signals, wiper blade controls, headlights, etc. So most rural carriers are left driving their own vehicles as needed. The exception are carriers who are provided LLVs (long life vehicles) for their routes, though they aren't so great on back roads.
Taking your hands off the wheel in a normal car doesn't have to mean a crash is imminent... I'm a USPS Rural Carrier who drives a left hand drive car form the right. Among other things this means I drive exclusively with my left hand and certain controls, like turn signals, require me to take my hand off the wheel to hit the control. So on a regular basis during my almost 100 mile daily drive I have no hands on the wheel and I don't hit anything.
Of course I'm not saying this is safe driving. Heck I also can't wear a seatbelt and to finish a 100 mile route delivering mail and packages in a timely fashion I also have to drive over the 'speedlimit' (which is a bit vague on most dirt roads anyways). Though this is actually legal as rural carriers are 'professional' drivers on the same level as EMTs, firefighters, and police.
Btw what I find even funnier is Nintendo just send me an email ad stating 'Nintendo is the place to be for summer!' and not once did they even hint to the seeming popularity of Pokemon Go... Or even recognize it's existence. It reminds me how disconnected they really seem from their 'fans'.
While I'm not a big pokemon person, the series and games both came out when I was in high school/college so I missed the original 'craze', I decided to take a look by installing it on my tablet... Only to be told my tablet wasn't supported. So while I've seen pics and gone 'eh', I can't actually see for myself. I'm even less motivated to take a peek now.
Even her husband wouldn't do that...
Getting 60+ fps on ultra settings in PC gaming doesn't even take that. An fast I5, Radeon R9 390, 16 GB of ram, and an HDD can get you that. I should know that's pretty much my PC. The CPU and Ram are both about $100-150, the GPU is down to around $250 with the coming of the RX480 (which is slightly slower), and even with a good case and power supply the whole thing comes to ~600-700. Price not including monitor since most modern tvs can even be a monitor (all things old are new again).
That works up until someone actually goes and contacts a former employer. I also never wielded the power of a 'CIO' as everything I did as the defacto head of the department was filtered through others... I'd create a budget or proposal for something we'd need and my on paper 'manager' who was the head of the business unit would look it over and forward it on under her name. Though I also directly reported to the CEO, especially if 'something went wrong'. It was in lots of ways a very horrible job with all the responsibility and none of the power or pay to go with it.