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poopinmymouth posted:Maybe in America. Here in iceland we are two healthy middle age tech professionals, and the amount of services we receive for the taxes we pay easily outweigh the costs. Just comparing childcare costs with our peers in the USA is practically enough to make up the difference (not to mention intangibles that are still tax related like school shootings not even existing here), let alone what our son's eventual university will cost, the higher likelihood both our pensions will exist by retirement, and our healthcare not connected to employment. The young tech professionals in the US just aren't having kids in high tax areas. If you don't have kids to have childcare or university costs, would you still think you're getting more out then you're putting in?
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Jan 23, 2017 16:03
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JeffersonClay posted:Standard of living calculations are tough because while a TV is still a TV, the TV we have now is a lot better than what they had in the 50's. I'm struggling to think of a class of goods that are not substantially better now than they were in the 50's, although there must be some. I'd say furniture but I really like my memory foam mattress. Education. College now is not that dramatically a superior good than it was in the 50s, and it costs more than 10x as much inflation adjusted. No other common expense has increased in price as quickly. I'd also argue healthcare, what we've gained in expensive condition-specific drugs and medical devices, we've lost in house calls and longer hospital stays for cheap.
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Feb 14, 2017 00:39
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call to action posted:Except it's incredibly hard to afford "quality materials and labor" unless you're going for a full custom house. I've seen the $500k+ homes go up around Denver and, let me tell ya, they're not using good materials. I still think the average house built in the 1940s is, on a per-dollar basis, of a higher quality than most modern housing. They're $500k because of land value, not because they're nice houses. A $500k new house can still be really lovely and cut-rate. I'm living in a $160k 2013-built house, and it's fine. Code has made basically all new homes really energy efficient because of way better insulation / radiant barrier in the roof / modern windows / high SEER A/C units, and nobody's really doing low-end finishes anymore so I have ceramic tile floors and granite countertops and poo poo. I've been considering moving, and I'm learning that in most of the US lovely new construction tract homes are $300k+, but it's just because land is expensive. If you put outright construction cost vs construction cost, new homes are definitely better. A lot of the old houses that people hold up as "how they built 'em back then" were really expensive to build inflation adjusted, or have been significantly improved over the years. Especially wiring and plumbing.
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Feb 20, 2017 22:50
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Ol Standard Retard posted:I haven't seen anything about the CBO scoring the Republican healthcare replacement plan, but I cannot imagine it will be good for either consumers or for the insurance and medical provider industries at all. It's a huge, huge portion of the United States' economy, if it passes I can only imagine the repercussions that will resonate through the market, even if whatever lovely provisions don't go into effect until 2018 or whenever they feel like abdicating responsibility. There's no way that what was revealed today will get enacted. It sets up a time bomb on a very, very short fuse because the correct strategy becomes to ditch health insurance, pocket the tax credit, and then only get health insurance when you need it and just pay the 30% premium, but pre-existing conditions will be covered. This strategy will create a situation in which only the extremely sick have health insurance, so costs will rapidly spiral to the extreme.
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Mar 7, 2017 20:08
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mitztronic posted:On the other side here, I wasn't financially secure enough to start investing money until maybe 6 months ago, and was initially holding off to see how the election goes. Now I'm just letting my savings account build up until everything falls to pieces and then get in when it's low (I don't care about being at the absolute low, just not at this high/unprecedented growth we're at). At least, that's the plan. I hope it's a good one but who knows Market timing has been a losing strategy throughout all of modern history. Unless you have insider information that's illegal to act on, or are an incredibly successful / lucky researcher like the guy who popped lumber liquidators, you're better off assuming that the market will be higher in 30 years than it is now and just tossing your long-term investment money in.
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Mar 7, 2017 23:37
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Mozi posted:Well, my problem is that I don't believe that to be true. If you don't think that equities will have a positive return on a 30 year timescale, where are you putting your money? Real estate? Dried food? Asbestos mines?
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Mar 8, 2017 05:44
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Grouchio posted:Stocks are continuing to drop today. Are we seeing the start of the crash or is it too soon to tell? I hope you've been selling on the way up (via asset rebalancing). Feel free to buy on the way down once a quarter or so, also via asset rebalancing.
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Mar 22, 2017 16:01
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Rated PG-34 posted:what are the odds that if ford is toppled by risky lending, they'll get bailed out They're not going to get toppled, because cash is available for the company to do corporate debt. The automakers got in trouble before because of a liquidity crunch, and right now corporate lending is still easy.
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Mar 22, 2017 22:10
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anonumos posted:For years I've been told that leasing is a Bad Idea(tm). Are these terms actually worthwhile? Leasing is a fine way to constantly drive a new car if you want to drive a new car. If you qualify for targeted offers, leasing can also be an unbelievably cheap way to drive a new car. Watch here: https://leasehackr.com/
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Mar 23, 2017 22:20
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Cicero posted:Regardless of how smart it is to start a new business, it's still true that immigrants seem to be less risk-averse than native-born Americans. That's not terribly surprising considering that we're talking about a group that moved to a new country, which is obviously a fairly large risk. It's also a combination of them having lower living standard expectations, so they know how to run lean, and them having lower access to the kind of comfortable, white collar, high-paying jobs that Americans would be loath to leave to try starting their own thing.
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Apr 13, 2017 15:44
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call to action posted:Yeah, where do you live? I'm guessing he's comparing that to VAT, which is a bit of a different animal than sales tax. For example, you don't pay VAT on used goods.
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Jun 30, 2017 15:14
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