easy jobs

[bitrex]

On 2/20/20 5:15 PM, John Larkin wrote:

On Thu, 20 Feb 2020 16:57:22 -0500, bitrex <user@example.net> wrote:

On 2/20/20 4:52 PM, John Larkin wrote:
On Thu, 20 Feb 2020 10:51:29 -0800 (PST), dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com
wrote:

On Thursday, February 20, 2020 at 12:01:06 AM UTC-5, bitrex wrote:
On 2/19/20 10:11 PM, Bill Sloman wrote:

The idea that you have a *right* to another man's labor and that
the legitimate purpose of government is to take it for you, is a
dangerous, destructive, inherently evil philosophy, and it's
an unstable design for a society / government as well.

Except that James Arthur is perfectly to see the government take it to spend on the police, the judicial system and the army.

He endorse that "dangerous, destructive, inherently evil philosophy" just as long as the money is spent on projects of which he approves.

He benefits from the protection that that money buys. Stuff that he doesn't see as benefiting him directly is out. He doesn't understand that universal health care protects him from epidemics (like the one currently brewing up in China, if the their universal health system doesn't get it under control).

More complicated ideas about making the population as a whole healthier, better educated and eventually more productive have even less traction.


Most of the guys I've known who prattle on about "right to another man's
labor" are the last people who have any idea what a "hard day's work"
actually is other than going to the bank to write a check from their
trust fund.

I think you make up most of those generalizations, generally
speaking.


Generalizations don't mean much.

- J Larkin



Yeah and also if anyone thinks liberal women are all unattractive,
overweight ivory-tower spiteful university academic feminists who thumb
their nose at the "blue collar" men who look like truck drivers etc.
well....got news for ya....

Where did that come from? I don't recall saying that.

You are obsessed with women.

I can think of worse things to be enamored of.

> You really should get yourself one.

Men who can't get laid tend to stockpile firearms and open fire in yoga
studios in extreme cases just from observation of recent history, they
don't tend to get on the Internet and speak positively of working-class
feminist sexual egalitarianism.

 

[John Larkin]

On Thu, 20 Feb 2020 17:28:53 -0500, bitrex <user@example.net> wrote:

On 2/20/20 5:15 PM, John Larkin wrote:
On Thu, 20 Feb 2020 16:57:22 -0500, bitrex <user@example.net> wrote:

On 2/20/20 4:52 PM, John Larkin wrote:
On Thu, 20 Feb 2020 10:51:29 -0800 (PST), dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com
wrote:

On Thursday, February 20, 2020 at 12:01:06 AM UTC-5, bitrex wrote:
On 2/19/20 10:11 PM, Bill Sloman wrote:

The idea that you have a *right* to another man's labor and that
the legitimate purpose of government is to take it for you, is a
dangerous, destructive, inherently evil philosophy, and it's
an unstable design for a society / government as well.

Except that James Arthur is perfectly to see the government take it to spend on the police, the judicial system and the army.

He endorse that "dangerous, destructive, inherently evil philosophy" just as long as the money is spent on projects of which he approves.

He benefits from the protection that that money buys. Stuff that he doesn't see as benefiting him directly is out. He doesn't understand that universal health care protects him from epidemics (like the one currently brewing up in China, if the their universal health system doesn't get it under control).

More complicated ideas about making the population as a whole healthier, better educated and eventually more productive have even less traction.


Most of the guys I've known who prattle on about "right to another man's
labor" are the last people who have any idea what a "hard day's work"
actually is other than going to the bank to write a check from their
trust fund.

I think you make up most of those generalizations, generally
speaking.


Generalizations don't mean much.

- J Larkin



Yeah and also if anyone thinks liberal women are all unattractive,
overweight ivory-tower spiteful university academic feminists who thumb
their nose at the "blue collar" men who look like truck drivers etc.
well....got news for ya....

Where did that come from? I don't recall saying that.

You are obsessed with women.

I can think of worse things to be enamored of.

I said obsessed. That's different. It's impressive how many guys want
women but don't like them.

You really should get yourself one.

Men who can't get laid tend to stockpile firearms and open fire in yoga
studios in extreme cases just from observation of recent history,

Yeah, I do that when my wife is out of town.

--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc
picosecond timing precision measurement

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

 

[bitrex]

On 2/20/20 4:52 PM, John Larkin wrote:

On Thu, 20 Feb 2020 10:51:29 -0800 (PST), dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com
wrote:

On Thursday, February 20, 2020 at 12:01:06 AM UTC-5, bitrex wrote:
On 2/19/20 10:11 PM, Bill Sloman wrote:

The idea that you have a *right* to another man's labor and that
the legitimate purpose of government is to take it for you, is a
dangerous, destructive, inherently evil philosophy, and it's
an unstable design for a society / government as well.

Except that James Arthur is perfectly to see the government take it to spend on the police, the judicial system and the army.

He endorse that "dangerous, destructive, inherently evil philosophy" just as long as the money is spent on projects of which he approves.

He benefits from the protection that that money buys. Stuff that he doesn't see as benefiting him directly is out. He doesn't understand that universal health care protects him from epidemics (like the one currently brewing up in China, if the their universal health system doesn't get it under control).

More complicated ideas about making the population as a whole healthier, better educated and eventually more productive have even less traction.


Most of the guys I've known who prattle on about "right to another man's
labor" are the last people who have any idea what a "hard day's work"
actually is other than going to the bank to write a check from their
trust fund.

I think you make up most of those generalizations, generally
speaking.


Generalizations don't mean much.

- J Larkin

Yeah and also if anyone thinks liberal women are all unattractive,
overweight ivory-tower spiteful university academic feminists who thumb
their nose at the "blue collar" men who look like truck drivers etc.
well....got news for ya....

 

[John Larkin]

On Thu, 20 Feb 2020 16:57:22 -0500, bitrex <user@example.net> wrote:

On 2/20/20 4:52 PM, John Larkin wrote:
On Thu, 20 Feb 2020 10:51:29 -0800 (PST), dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com
wrote:

On Thursday, February 20, 2020 at 12:01:06 AM UTC-5, bitrex wrote:
On 2/19/20 10:11 PM, Bill Sloman wrote:

The idea that you have a *right* to another man's labor and that
the legitimate purpose of government is to take it for you, is a
dangerous, destructive, inherently evil philosophy, and it's
an unstable design for a society / government as well.

Except that James Arthur is perfectly to see the government take it to spend on the police, the judicial system and the army.

He endorse that "dangerous, destructive, inherently evil philosophy" just as long as the money is spent on projects of which he approves.

He benefits from the protection that that money buys. Stuff that he doesn't see as benefiting him directly is out. He doesn't understand that universal health care protects him from epidemics (like the one currently brewing up in China, if the their universal health system doesn't get it under control).

More complicated ideas about making the population as a whole healthier, better educated and eventually more productive have even less traction.


Most of the guys I've known who prattle on about "right to another man's
labor" are the last people who have any idea what a "hard day's work"
actually is other than going to the bank to write a check from their
trust fund.

I think you make up most of those generalizations, generally
speaking.


Generalizations don't mean much.

- J Larkin



Yeah and also if anyone thinks liberal women are all unattractive,
overweight ivory-tower spiteful university academic feminists who thumb
their nose at the "blue collar" men who look like truck drivers etc.
well....got news for ya....

Where did that come from? I don't recall saying that.

You are obsessed with women. You really should get yourself one.

--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc
picosecond timing precision measurement

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

 

[bitrex]

On 2/20/20 5:38 PM, John Larkin wrote:

Yeah and also if anyone thinks liberal women are all unattractive,
overweight ivory-tower spiteful university academic feminists who thumb
their nose at the "blue collar" men who look like truck drivers etc.
well....got news for ya....

Where did that come from? I don't recall saying that.

You are obsessed with women.

I can think of worse things to be enamored of.

I said obsessed. That's different. It's impressive how many guys want
women but don't like them.

Women aren't a monolithic group it makes about as much sense to say "I
like women" as "I hate women"; I certainly don't "like" every woman in
the world, thankfully there is no law of God nor man that says I must,
not even some feminist-rule.

You really should get yourself one.

Men who can't get laid tend to stockpile firearms and open fire in yoga
studios in extreme cases just from observation of recent history,

Yeah, I do that when my wife is out of town.

 

[John Larkin]

On Thu, 20 Feb 2020 10:51:29 -0800 (PST), dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com
wrote:

On Thursday, February 20, 2020 at 12:01:06 AM UTC-5, bitrex wrote:
On 2/19/20 10:11 PM, Bill Sloman wrote:

The idea that you have a *right* to another man's labor and that
the legitimate purpose of government is to take it for you, is a
dangerous, destructive, inherently evil philosophy, and it's
an unstable design for a society / government as well.

Except that James Arthur is perfectly to see the government take it to spend on the police, the judicial system and the army.

He endorse that "dangerous, destructive, inherently evil philosophy" just as long as the money is spent on projects of which he approves.

He benefits from the protection that that money buys. Stuff that he doesn't see as benefiting him directly is out. He doesn't understand that universal health care protects him from epidemics (like the one currently brewing up in China, if the their universal health system doesn't get it under control).

More complicated ideas about making the population as a whole healthier, better educated and eventually more productive have even less traction.


Most of the guys I've known who prattle on about "right to another man's
labor" are the last people who have any idea what a "hard day's work"
actually is other than going to the bank to write a check from their
trust fund.

I think you make up most of those generalizations, generally
speaking.

Generalizations don't mean much.

- J Larkin


--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc
picosecond timing precision measurement

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

 

[bitrex]

On 2/20/20 5:38 PM, John Larkin wrote:

Yeah and also if anyone thinks liberal women are all unattractive,
overweight ivory-tower spiteful university academic feminists who thumb
their nose at the "blue collar" men who look like truck drivers etc.
well....got news for ya....

Where did that come from? I don't recall saying that.

You are obsessed with women.

I can think of worse things to be enamored of.

I said obsessed. That's different. It's impressive how many guys want
women but don't like them.

I'm a left-libertarian, men wanting women is their perfect right in a
free society! They can want women all day. Want women all day all night
till Hell freezes over if they like!

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Friday, February 21, 2020 at 8:52:44 AM UTC+11, John Larkin wrote:

On Thu, 20 Feb 2020 10:51:29 -0800 (PST), dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com
wrote:

On Thursday, February 20, 2020 at 12:01:06 AM UTC-5, bitrex wrote:
On 2/19/20 10:11 PM, Bill Sloman wrote:

The idea that you have a *right* to another man's labor and that
the legitimate purpose of government is to take it for you, is a
dangerous, destructive, inherently evil philosophy, and it's
an unstable design for a society / government as well.

Except that James Arthur is perfectly to see the government take it to spend on the police, the judicial system and the army.

He endorse that "dangerous, destructive, inherently evil philosophy" just as long as the money is spent on projects of which he approves.

He benefits from the protection that that money buys. Stuff that he doesn't see as benefiting him directly is out. He doesn't understand that universal health care protects him from epidemics (like the one currently brewing up in China, if the their universal health system doesn't get it under control).

More complicated ideas about making the population as a whole healthier, better educated and eventually more productive have even less traction..


Most of the guys I've known who prattle on about "right to another man's
labor" are the last people who have any idea what a "hard day's work"
actually is other than going to the bank to write a check from their
trust fund.

I think you make up most of those generalizations, generally
speaking.


Generalizations don't mean much.

That's a specific example of a generalisation.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Friday, February 21, 2020 at 7:48:45 AM UTC+11, bitrex wrote:

On 2/20/20 2:41 PM, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:
On Wednesday, February 19, 2020 at 11:27:01 PM UTC-5, bitrex wrote:
On 2/19/20 8:33 PM, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:

Or even better, they should be permitted to work, have jobs, and
not be poor! If you finish high school, get any kind of job, and
don't have kids until married, your chances of being poor in the
U.S. are vanishingly small.

By contrast, the government redistributing money to 'correct' poverty
is awful, brutish, and cruel.

It happens in Scandinavia. In Sweden the children of single patents do just as well as the children of couples. The fact that the US doesn't redistribute enough in social security to achieve this is awful, brutish and cruel.

It also cost the country money, in terms of the lower productivity of those children when they get to an age when they could have earned money if they'd been properly fed and taught.

All the "socialist" countries that spend adequately on social security have higher social mobility than the US (where income is as heritable as height).

Their median incomes tend to be higher too.

I calculated that if a person earning minimum wage had
put his Social Security tax into an S&P500 index fund earning 3%
*less* than the actual S&P500 return, he'd retire with $43,000 in
*investment income* and half a million dollars in assets that he
can pass to his children. That's for MINIMUM WAGE.

To retire with even a ~35k compound-interest generated income at age 65,
assuming a 5% ROI after retirement at age 65, into something like a Roth
IRA, you need an contribution-ending balance of about 700k. Assuming a
7% ROI during the compounding period you'd need to contribute minimum
$2500/year each year from age 20-65.

I calculated my figures as an update to a 30-Oct-1996 article in the
Los Angeles Times, "Even a Bad Investor Can Beat Social Security,"
by Christine Murphy.

http://articles.latimes.com/1996-10-30/local/me-59230_1_social-security

Lots of things have happened since then, so I wanted to see how the
scenarios played out.

I looked up the actual S&P500 return from 1982 to 2017, which was 11.1%
as an annual rate. That includes multiple crashes and recessions.

I used the actual federal minimum wage as the income basis, and
diverted the actual amount deducted from a minimum wage person's check
by the federal government to this hypothetical account, and compounded
it at 8%, which is 3.1% less than the *actual* S&P500 return.

8% is mad.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/robisbitts2/2018/11/19/the-sp-500s-long-term-return-is-mediocre-really/#60657dca5b1e


(I assumed only 40 hours a week, although I've never worked that little
in my entire life. I personally started off saving for college working
two full-time minimum wage jobs.)

Since I was adapting Christine Murphy's scenario, I started at 1982.
In 1982, for example, the federal minimum wage was $3.10/hr. A full-time
worker would gross $6,200 a year, and pay $868 in personal and employer
Social Security taxes.

Minimum wage is $7.25/hr that works out to under $2500/month. If you
think someone making minimum wage can afford to put $2500, over one
month of their income, into an investment account every year which they
then can't touch without taking serious penalties, with cost of living
expenses what they are anywhere in the country in the year 2020, then I
gotta say you're maybe not strictly "nuts" but deeply out of touch with
what kind of expenses people at that level actually have.

It's trivial to subsist on minimum wage-level income. I've done it
most of my life.

The logic of relying on someone who claims to have lived at minimum-wage
level income most of their life, for wealth-management advice, eludes me.

James Arthur is famously mean. What he meant was that despite the fact that he'd earned a lot more than minimum-wage level income, he hadn't spent much of it.

The fact that he can do that is his evidence that everybody else can do the same. He hasn't figured in the fact that he's borderline insane, and most other people aren't.

<snip>

That is to say, how much did your Mom n Dad put in on your behalf in
your 20s?

I got zero. I left Europe at seventeen on money I saved selling
furniture in my second (and last) year of high school. I had enough
for plane fare and a Honda motorcycle. I got two full-time minimum
wage jobs, and worked my way up from there.

Rather like the claim that CO2 injected into the atmosphere causes
average planetary temperatures to increase to dangerous levels,
statements of this type are clearly unverifiable. I'm something of a
skeptic, myself.

James Arthur's view of reality leaves a lot to be sceptical about.

He thinks that the founding tax evaders were "stable genius" types, capable of anticipating century's worth of advances in knowledge that nobody else at the time had an inkling of.

One of his more telling quotes - aimed at the risks of letting the population vote on how to spend other people's money - was from an early US president who was worried that voters might go in for state supported universal education.

That did become practical after the agricultural revolution had played out, and the US is now the one place in the advanced industrial world where primary education is paid for on a school district by school district basis, which is to say poor kids get much cheaper education than their richer neighbours.

This is visible at the state level, where kids in New York State get the benefit of an average expenditure per head of about $22,000 per year and in Utah have to make do with $7,000 per year.

https://www.governing.com/gov-data/education-data/state-education-spending-per-pupil-data.html

Since the spending is set by individual school districts, this hides a lot more actual variation. I've dug a bit deeper, and that $7,000 per year does seem to be close to the rock bottom spending, and is likely to be close to the median spending right across the country.

James Arthur doesn't like medians. He much prefers the mean, where the few who do really well make the average look a lot better.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[bitrex]

On 2/20/20 9:24 PM, Bill Sloman wrote:

The logic of relying on someone who claims to have lived at minimum-wage
level income most of their life, for wealth-management advice, eludes me.

James Arthur is famously mean. What he meant was that despite the fact that he'd earned a lot more than minimum-wage level income, he hadn't spent much of it.

The fact that he can do that is his evidence that everybody else can do the same. He hasn't figured in the fact that he's borderline insane, and most other people aren't.

snip

The personally-charitable but socially-uncaring conservative is an odd
duck. Performing these acts of generosity like driving errands for ill
neighbors I assume at no cost to them, while one must surely be
conscious that there are thousands of other people in a similar position
who have nobody to help them. Nobody to help with their own as-difficult
situation or "help them help themselves" as the saying goes.

Will James Arthur do all the work for them himself, too? If he won't
take on the responsibility for all of them then who; all the generally
deeply-caring Americans out there? Or do his daily good works, kick back
and vote Republican, and tell himself everything would fix itself if
only liberalism didn't exist, "I've done my part." But
they're not suffering 40 years from now it's happening right this minute.

I'm OK with the government handling the difficult cases and providing
for them. I don't have a martyr complex.

 

[Robert Baer]

George Herold wrote:

On Monday, February 17, 2020 at 3:30:32 PM UTC-5, John Larkin wrote:
On Mon, 17 Feb 2020 11:59:33 -0800 (PST), George Herold
ggherold@gmail.com> wrote:

On Monday, February 17, 2020 at 1:55:11 PM UTC-5, John Larkin wrote:
https://www.breitbart.com/2020-election/2020/02/17/mike-bloomberg-belittled-farm-and-manufacturing-jobs-for-not-requiring-brain-power/

https://gizmodo.com/biden-to-coal-miners-learn-to-code-1840735758


--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc
picosecond timing precision measurement

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

I'm pulling for Amy K.
George H.

I hope she has not said anything that stupid. That woman from Hawaii
seems rational too.
Yeah Tulsi G. She's hated by much of the left. (Kinda like Joe
Rogan, some narrative develops and you can't go against the narrative
or you become an outsider too.)

I've known some farmers and plumbers and machinists and liked them all
so far. Ignorant or stupid ones don't last long.

"Anybody can learn to code" is a common belief, especially among
people who have never written, or even read, any code.

A sizable fraction of the population is insulated from the things and
people and technology that keep them alive. There is one very-very
expensive private college-prep high school near here where machining
and electronics are required courses.

Next door to my office is the elevator-repair-person union. They seem
cool too. But they have barbeques right below my window and I need to
find out how to get invited.
Hmm well get some nice sausage or such and next time they fire
up the barby ask if you can put some meat on it.
Or offer something else to share...
* Trump meat.

George H.

--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc
picosecond timing precision measurement

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

 

Will James Arthur do all the work for them himself, too?



You are sounding like sloman.

 

[bitrex]

On 2/21/20 4:54 PM, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:

On Thursday, February 20, 2020 at 3:48:45 PM UTC-5, bitrex wrote:
On 2/20/20 2:41 PM, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:
On Wednesday, February 19, 2020 at 11:27:01 PM UTC-5, bitrex wrote:
On 2/19/20 8:33 PM, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:

Or even better, they should be permitted to work, have jobs, and
not be poor! If you finish high school, get any kind of job, and
don't have kids until married, your chances of being poor in the
U.S. are vanishingly small.

By contrast, the government redistributing money to 'correct' poverty
is awful, brutish, and cruel.

I calculated that if a person earning minimum wage had
put his Social Security tax into an S&P500 index fund earning 3%
*less* than the actual S&P500 return, he'd retire with $43,000 in
*investment income* and half a million dollars in assets that he
can pass to his children. That's for MINIMUM WAGE.

To retire with even a ~35k compound-interest generated income at age 65,
assuming a 5% ROI after retirement at age 65, into something like a Roth
IRA, you need an contribution-ending balance of about 700k. Assuming a
7% ROI during the compounding period you'd need to contribute minimum
$2500/year each year from age 20-65.

I calculated my figures as an update to a 30-Oct-1996 article in the
Los Angeles Times, "Even a Bad Investor Can Beat Social Security,"
by Christine Murphy.

http://articles.latimes.com/1996-10-30/local/me-59230_1_social-security

Lots of things have happened since then, so I wanted to see how the
scenarios played out.

I looked up the actual S&P500 return from 1982 to 2017, which was 11.1%
as an annual rate. That includes multiple crashes and recessions.

I used the actual federal minimum wage as the income basis, and
diverted the actual amount deducted from a minimum wage person's check
by the federal government to this hypothetical account, and compounded
it at 8%, which is 3.1% less than the *actual* S&P500 return.

8% is mad.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/robisbitts2/2018/11/19/the-sp-500s-long-term-return-is-mediocre-really/#60657dca5b1e

Let's update the figures.

$9,105.08 invested in 1982 was worth $502,417.21 in 2019.
http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/New_Home_Page/datafile/histretSP.html

That's a 55.17-fold increase in 37 years, an annualized return of
11.4% requiring zero investing expertise. I used 8% over that time
frame instead, a substantial understatement.

Compare that investment to the feds taking your money and immediately
giving essentially all of it to retired people, losing more than
three-quarters of your money per annum instead.


You can easily duplicate my estimate.

Here's the model I used for estimating the retirement benefits
someone could accumulate if they were permitted to keep and invest
their mandatory SS tax monies, with the preposterously pessimistic
assumptions that this person would work for minimum wage their
whole life, never get a raise, never set aside any extra, never
work overtime, get 3.4% less than the actual S&P500 returns, and
work only forty hours a week that whole time:

Assumptions:
Annual gross wages increase = 2% (For convenience I approximated
minimum wage over time using a starting value and an annual
increase factor. 2% produces a predicted wage of $6.20 by 2017,
well below the actual federal minimum wage which has been $7.25
since 2009)

Investment return rate = 8% (actual S&P500 return from 1982-2017 was
11.4%, as an annualized rate)

Hours worked: 40 hours week, 50 weeks / year


Initial conditions (put each in a separate spreadsheet column):
Year = 1982 Age = 18 Gross wages = $6,200 Social Security tax = 14%
Investment balance (at year-end) = $868 Investment income = 0.

Subsequent years:
Year = Year+1 Age = Age+1 Gross wages = Gross Wages * 1.02
SS tax = 14% of gross
Investment balance = Year-end investment balance + SS tax
Investment income = investment balance * investment return rate


(I assumed only 40 hours a week, although I've never worked that little
in my entire life. I personally started off saving for college working
two full-time minimum wage jobs.)

Since I was adapting Christine Murphy's scenario, I started at 1982.
In 1982, for example, the federal minimum wage was $3.10/hr. A full-time
worker would gross $6,200 a year, and pay $868 in personal and employer
Social Security taxes.

Minimum wage is $7.25/hr that works out to under $2500/month. If you
think someone making minimum wage can afford to put $2500, over one
month of their income, into an investment account every year which they
then can't touch without taking serious penalties, with cost of living
expenses what they are anywhere in the country in the year 2020, then I
gotta say you're maybe not strictly "nuts" but deeply out of touch with
what kind of expenses people at that level actually have.

It's trivial to subsist on minimum wage-level income. I've done it
most of my life.

The logic of relying on someone who claims to have lived at minimum-wage
level income most of their life, for wealth-management advice, eludes me.

The logic of listening to someone who easily, comfortably, and
successfully saves and invests most of their income over decades,
for investing advice, eludes you?


...

It's easy to find senior-citizen winners who construct post hoc analysis
of unverifiable accuracy of how they "won." You can always hit the
target and paint the bulls-eye afterwards.

Much harder to find someone who was living on minimum wage at 20, who
constructed a financial plan of the type suggested and followed it to
the letter, and kept accurate records and documentation of how it played
out over time.

Why spin something so simple into impossibility?

All you have to do is a) earn money, b) don't spend it, c) put it
some place it'll grow.

This stuff used to be taught in junior high school. Common sense.

It's a lot better than spending all your money then hoping the
federal government will confiscate enough of some young kid's
earnings to support you, when you're retired and poor.

That sucks for them because compound interest works best if you put
money in early. Very difficult to shovel enough money at the process
later and expect the exponential "blow up" to occur within your lifetime.

As we know from the behavior of exponential processes the "magic" that
allows you to retire on 35k/year interest-only vs. about diddly-squat
happens in the last few compounding periods; the net growth over most of
your investment time into index funds sucks with realistic yearly
contributions, and if that hits or not before you're required to start
making withdrawals and/or die of old age is sensitive to initial
conditions.

That is to say, how much did your Mom n Dad put in on your behalf in
your 20s?

I got zero. I left Europe at seventeen on money I saved selling
furniture in my second (and last) year of high school. I had enough
for plane fare and a Honda motorcycle. I got two full-time minimum
wage jobs, and worked my way up from there.

Rather like the claim that CO2 injected into the atmosphere causes
average planetary temperatures to increase to dangerous levels,
statements of this type are clearly unverifiable. I'm something of a
skeptic, myself.

As a matter of fact I could very likely prove every bit of it, since
I still have nearly all my records.

But it's not about me. Whether or not it befuddles you doesn't matter
to your more basic error: if a person in society isn't able to produce
and save enough for himself, government taking his labor from him in
his youth can't fix that. Government forcing him to support retired
people while he himself is young, doesn't fix that. Government taking
from one man who earned it and giving it to another man who didn't,
can't fix that either. The math doesn't work.

Government taking from some and handing out to others doesn't create
prosperity, more production for everyone to share. It creates less,
which means less for everyone.

It creates poverty.

Cheers,
James Arthur

Also I think trans women are 100% "real women", too!

<https://youtu.be/LbCPePvJqX4?t=67>

"They think....that these Utopian ideals of..."

<fart noises>

"...That these Utopian ideals of..."

FARTS

 

On Thursday, February 20, 2020 at 10:48:07 PM UTC-5, bitrex wrote:

The personally-charitable but socially-uncaring conservative is an odd
duck. Performing these acts of generosity like driving errands for ill
neighbors I assume at no cost to them, while one must surely be
conscious that there are thousands of other people in a similar position
who have nobody to help them. Nobody to help with their own as-difficult
situation or "help them help themselves" as the saying goes.

Again, you're rationalizing and over-complicating the situation.

Someone needed help, so I helped them. If we all pitch in, we can
help everyone.

Will James Arthur do all the work for them himself, too? If he won't
take on the responsibility for all of them then who; all the generally
deeply-caring Americans out there? Or do his daily good works, kick back
and vote Republican, and tell himself everything would fix itself if
only liberalism didn't exist, "I've done my part." But
they're not suffering 40 years from now it's happening right this minute.

I'm OK with the government handling the difficult cases and providing
for them. I don't have a martyr complex.

But doesn't that boil down to you wanting other people to do it, and
pay for it too?

If you want to help someone, don't consign them to some bureaucrat,
just help them. If you see some trash, pick it up. If the storm
drain's clogged, unclog it.

That's common in my neighborhood, and I dearly love it.

Cheers,
James Arthur

 

On Thursday, February 20, 2020 at 3:48:45 PM UTC-5, bitrex wrote:

On 2/20/20 2:41 PM, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:
On Wednesday, February 19, 2020 at 11:27:01 PM UTC-5, bitrex wrote:
On 2/19/20 8:33 PM, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:

Or even better, they should be permitted to work, have jobs, and
not be poor! If you finish high school, get any kind of job, and
don't have kids until married, your chances of being poor in the
U.S. are vanishingly small.

By contrast, the government redistributing money to 'correct' poverty
is awful, brutish, and cruel.

I calculated that if a person earning minimum wage had
put his Social Security tax into an S&P500 index fund earning 3%
*less* than the actual S&P500 return, he'd retire with $43,000 in
*investment income* and half a million dollars in assets that he
can pass to his children. That's for MINIMUM WAGE.

To retire with even a ~35k compound-interest generated income at age 65,
assuming a 5% ROI after retirement at age 65, into something like a Roth
IRA, you need an contribution-ending balance of about 700k. Assuming a
7% ROI during the compounding period you'd need to contribute minimum
$2500/year each year from age 20-65.

I calculated my figures as an update to a 30-Oct-1996 article in the
Los Angeles Times, "Even a Bad Investor Can Beat Social Security,"
by Christine Murphy.

http://articles.latimes.com/1996-10-30/local/me-59230_1_social-security

Lots of things have happened since then, so I wanted to see how the
scenarios played out.

I looked up the actual S&P500 return from 1982 to 2017, which was 11.1%
as an annual rate. That includes multiple crashes and recessions.

I used the actual federal minimum wage as the income basis, and
diverted the actual amount deducted from a minimum wage person's check
by the federal government to this hypothetical account, and compounded
it at 8%, which is 3.1% less than the *actual* S&P500 return.

8% is mad.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/robisbitts2/2018/11/19/the-sp-500s-long-term-return-is-mediocre-really/#60657dca5b1e

Let's update the figures.

$9,105.08 invested in 1982 was worth $502,417.21 in 2019.
http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/New_Home_Page/datafile/histretSP.html

That's a 55.17-fold increase in 37 years, an annualized return of
11.4% requiring zero investing expertise. I used 8% over that time
frame instead, a substantial understatement.

Compare that investment to the feds taking your money and immediately
giving essentially all of it to retired people, losing more than
three-quarters of your money per annum instead.


You can easily duplicate my estimate.

Here's the model I used for estimating the retirement benefits
someone could accumulate if they were permitted to keep and invest
their mandatory SS tax monies, with the preposterously pessimistic
assumptions that this person would work for minimum wage their
whole life, never get a raise, never set aside any extra, never
work overtime, get 3.4% less than the actual S&P500 returns, and
work only forty hours a week that whole time:

Assumptions:
Annual gross wages increase = 2% (For convenience I approximated
minimum wage over time using a starting value and an annual
increase factor. 2% produces a predicted wage of $6.20 by 2017,
well below the actual federal minimum wage which has been $7.25
since 2009)

Investment return rate = 8% (actual S&P500 return from 1982-2017 was
11.4%, as an annualized rate)

Hours worked: 40 hours week, 50 weeks / year


Initial conditions (put each in a separate spreadsheet column):
Year = 1982 Age = 18 Gross wages = $6,200 Social Security tax = 14%
Investment balance (at year-end) = $868 Investment income = 0.

Subsequent years:
Year = Year+1 Age = Age+1 Gross wages = Gross Wages * 1.02
SS tax = 14% of gross
Investment balance = Year-end investment balance + SS tax
Investment income = investment balance * investment return rate

(I assumed only 40 hours a week, although I've never worked that little
in my entire life. I personally started off saving for college working
two full-time minimum wage jobs.)

Since I was adapting Christine Murphy's scenario, I started at 1982.
In 1982, for example, the federal minimum wage was $3.10/hr. A full-time
worker would gross $6,200 a year, and pay $868 in personal and employer
Social Security taxes.

Minimum wage is $7.25/hr that works out to under $2500/month. If you
think someone making minimum wage can afford to put $2500, over one
month of their income, into an investment account every year which they
then can't touch without taking serious penalties, with cost of living
expenses what they are anywhere in the country in the year 2020, then I
gotta say you're maybe not strictly "nuts" but deeply out of touch with
what kind of expenses people at that level actually have.

It's trivial to subsist on minimum wage-level income. I've done it
most of my life.

The logic of relying on someone who claims to have lived at minimum-wage
level income most of their life, for wealth-management advice, eludes me.

The logic of listening to someone who easily, comfortably, and
successfully saves and invests most of their income over decades,
for investing advice, eludes you?


....

It's easy to find senior-citizen winners who construct post hoc analysis
of unverifiable accuracy of how they "won." You can always hit the
target and paint the bulls-eye afterwards.

Much harder to find someone who was living on minimum wage at 20, who
constructed a financial plan of the type suggested and followed it to
the letter, and kept accurate records and documentation of how it played
out over time.

Why spin something so simple into impossibility?

All you have to do is a) earn money, b) don't spend it, c) put it
some place it'll grow.

This stuff used to be taught in junior high school. Common sense.

It's a lot better than spending all your money then hoping the
federal government will confiscate enough of some young kid's
earnings to support you, when you're retired and poor.

That sucks for them because compound interest works best if you put
money in early. Very difficult to shovel enough money at the process
later and expect the exponential "blow up" to occur within your lifetime.

As we know from the behavior of exponential processes the "magic" that
allows you to retire on 35k/year interest-only vs. about diddly-squat
happens in the last few compounding periods; the net growth over most of
your investment time into index funds sucks with realistic yearly
contributions, and if that hits or not before you're required to start
making withdrawals and/or die of old age is sensitive to initial
conditions.

That is to say, how much did your Mom n Dad put in on your behalf in
your 20s?

I got zero. I left Europe at seventeen on money I saved selling
furniture in my second (and last) year of high school. I had enough
for plane fare and a Honda motorcycle. I got two full-time minimum
wage jobs, and worked my way up from there.

Rather like the claim that CO2 injected into the atmosphere causes
average planetary temperatures to increase to dangerous levels,
statements of this type are clearly unverifiable. I'm something of a
skeptic, myself.

As a matter of fact I could very likely prove every bit of it, since
I still have nearly all my records.

But it's not about me. Whether or not it befuddles you doesn't matter
to your more basic error: if a person in society isn't able to produce
and save enough for himself, government taking his labor from him in
his youth can't fix that. Government forcing him to support retired
people while he himself is young, doesn't fix that. Government taking
from one man who earned it and giving it to another man who didn't,
can't fix that either. The math doesn't work.

Government taking from some and handing out to others doesn't create
prosperity, more production for everyone to share. It creates less,
which means less for everyone.

It creates poverty.

Cheers,
James Arthur

 

[bitrex]

On 2/21/20 2:23 PM, bulegoge@columbus.rr.com wrote:

Will James Arthur do all the work for them himself, too?



You are sounding like sloman.

Sloman sock puppet is a good hypothesis but fahkin' get a lodah this
kehd heah. He's all fahkin'...lookin' fah fahkin' commies n bullshit
constantly under tha fahkin' bed like a wicked smaht kehd except bombed
outta his gouard ranting like a fahkin' loonatic in tha Dunkies pahkin'
lot like Sully last Friday.

Doubt he knows the local patois that well...

 

[bitrex]

On 2/21/20 5:17 PM, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:

On Thursday, February 20, 2020 at 10:48:07 PM UTC-5, bitrex wrote:
The personally-charitable but socially-uncaring conservative is an odd
duck. Performing these acts of generosity like driving errands for ill
neighbors I assume at no cost to them, while one must surely be
conscious that there are thousands of other people in a similar position
who have nobody to help them. Nobody to help with their own as-difficult
situation or "help them help themselves" as the saying goes.

Again, you're rationalizing and over-complicating the situation.

Someone needed help, so I helped them. If we all pitch in, we can
help everyone.

Will James Arthur do all the work for them himself, too? If he won't
take on the responsibility for all of them then who; all the generally
deeply-caring Americans out there? Or do his daily good works, kick back
and vote Republican, and tell himself everything would fix itself if
only liberalism didn't exist, "I've done my part." But
they're not suffering 40 years from now it's happening right this minute.

I'm OK with the government handling the difficult cases and providing
for them. I don't have a martyr complex.

But doesn't that boil down to you wanting other people to do it, and
pay for it too?

If you want to help someone, don't consign them to some bureaucrat,
just help them. If you see some trash, pick it up. If the storm
drain's clogged, unclog it.

That's common in my neighborhood, and I dearly love it.

Cheers,
James Arthur

It's a nice sentiment. Problem is I believe US conservatives are
habitual manipulators and pathological liars, who will say anything to
get the kind of government they like best, which is one where the
government exterminates their enemies for them.

 

On Friday, February 21, 2020 at 6:21:44 PM UTC-5, bitrex wrote:

It's a nice sentiment. Problem is I believe US conservatives are
habitual manipulators and pathological liars, who will say anything to
get the kind of government they like best, which is one where the
government exterminates their enemies for them.

I have read this 5 times trying to understand it. I will now down a couple of shots of whiskey and try again. (trying to get into the same mindset as the writer)

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Saturday, February 22, 2020 at 9:17:14 AM UTC+11, dagmarg...@yahoo.com wrote:

On Thursday, February 20, 2020 at 10:48:07 PM UTC-5, bitrex wrote:
The personally-charitable but socially-uncaring conservative is an odd
duck. Performing these acts of generosity like driving errands for ill
neighbors I assume at no cost to them, while one must surely be
conscious that there are thousands of other people in a similar position
who have nobody to help them. Nobody to help with their own as-difficult
situation or "help them help themselves" as the saying goes.

Again, you're rationalizing and over-complicating the situation.

Rational examination of James Arthur's propositions does expose the bits he leaves out. From his point of view that's over-rationalisation.

Someone needed help, so I helped them. If we all pitch in, we can
help everyone.

That's the basis of socialism. Getting everybody to pitch in requires more organisation than helping the neighbour who visibly needs help, and stretches the idea of a neighbour beyond your immediate vicinity.

Will James Arthur do all the work for them himself, too? If he won't
take on the responsibility for all of them then who; all the generally
deeply-caring Americans out there? Or do his daily good works, kick back
and vote Republican, and tell himself everything would fix itself if
only liberalism didn't exist, "I've done my part." But
they're not suffering 40 years from now it's happening right this minute.

I'm OK with the government handling the difficult cases and providing
for them. I don't have a martyr complex.

But doesn't that boil down to you wanting other people to do it, and
pay for it too?

We all pay taxes. James Arthur seems to have more money than most and resents paying out more in tax than his less well-off neighbours.

He seems to be happy to pay out for the police, the army and the judicial system, all of which make it easier for him to hang onto his money.

When asked to invest in making socieyt as whole more productive, he gets restive.

If you want to help someone, don't consign them to some bureaucrat,
just help them. If you see some trash, pick it up. If the storm
drain's clogged, unclog it.

That's common in my neighborhood, and I dearly love it.

And there isn't enough of it to take up much of his time.

People who need more help remain conveniently invisible.

Bureaucracy is a consequence of doing things on a larger scale. Sweden and Germany do have a welfare bureaucracy - and Australia too.

I have a nephew who works for Google and his wife (a very bright lady) is part of the Australian welfare bureaucracy (though a rather hand-on part). Somehow I think that she does a lot more good than James Arthur, even if she is spending other people's money (some of it mine, though more of it will come from my brother - her father-in-law).

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Saturday, February 22, 2020 at 2:45:56 PM UTC+11, dca...@krl.org wrote:

On Friday, February 21, 2020 at 6:21:44 PM UTC-5, bitrex wrote:

It's a nice sentiment. Problem is I believe US conservatives are
habitual manipulators and pathological liars, who will say anything to
get the kind of government they like best, which is one where the
government exterminates their enemies for them.

Just because you believe it does not make it true. I happen to believe that US conservatives think anything the government does is done poorly and at higher cost than what it should cost.

That certainly is a popular misconception. Odd that these conservatives have never contemplated dismantling the US armed forces and replacing them with hired-in mercenaries, or replacing municipal police by commercial security firms.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney