111–120 of 147 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It would indeed be interesting to see the corresponding charts for female employment, and whether there are any correlations between the two. I'll bet there are, and further that any discussion of their possible significance would make someone deeply uncomfortable.
Why do you think that the presence of a correlation would be uncomfortable?
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"...it's considered anti-feminist to believe that women want to find a man to marry or have kids." Where is this said? Straw man runs wild.
Let's test this. Tweet something like: "I believe most women want to find a man to marry and have kids" and please share your responses.
I am not currently working, I guess that leaves some space for women or under-represented people to work the job I would hold.
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I'm not going to disagree, since your advice is good. If you're having trouble financially, don't go crazy on Christmas gifts, eat out all the time, or buy expensive clothes. But keep in mind, in SF, a 3br house or apartment south of 280 (a bit blighted in spots, but far safer than its reputation) starts at 800K, and really, unless you're at the outskirts and buying a property in need of considerable work, you're pro…
In Northern Virginia, you can get a pretty nice house in Fairfax for $500k - the SF and Silicon Valley market is special for its terribleness (NY too).
For some reason I thought houses up there had gotten crazy expensive. Not too far from Reston and Tyson's and some of the best schools in the country. Can't beat that.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not going to disagree, since your advice is good. If you're having trouble financially, don't go crazy on Christmas gifts, eat out all the time, or buy expensive clothes. But keep in mind, in SF, a 3br house or apartment south of 280 (a bit blighted in spots, but far safer than its reputation) starts at 800K, and really, unless you're at the outskirts and buying a property in need of considerable work, you're pro…
In Northern Virginia, you can get a pretty nice house in Fairfax for $500k - the SF and Silicon Valley market is special for its terribleness (NY too).
This is an aside, but when silicon valley companies say there is a desperate shortage of software engineers, Obama[1] nods gravely in agreement. Why doesn't he at least ask why they don't let people work from places like Fairfax? I understand that there are benefits to being in the valley, but if the shortage is that desperate, wouldn't they at least try?
As for the original point, even if things get easier outside SF, I'd still say that you'd need to be taking some pretty serious shopping trips for kids clothes to approach the chunk of the budget that goes to health care, housing, and child care/education, even in a less brutal housing market like Fairfax. As for good public schools, well of course that's a relief once they get out of day care age, but you still shell out - I have two kids in public school, and just paying for the local YMCA run after care (so my wife or I can pick them up after work) is $6k per kid per year (so $12k total for me). We cancelled cable, which saved us about $1k a year.
[1] not to pick on Obama, this is common reaction from politicians.
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There's a subreddit dedicated to this idea, although I warn you it's largely terrible. http://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence Basically the only reason most people struggle financially in the US is due to their own financial illiteracy and living above their means. If you manage not to fall victim to either of those then you can save a substantial portion of your income towards a very early retirement should y…
Basically the only reason most people struggle financially in the US is due to their own financial illiteracy and living above their means We've also chosen, collectively and as a society, to make a lot of high-productivity places artificially expensive: http://www.amazon.com/Rent-Too-Damn-High-Matters-ebook/dp/B0...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"...it's considered anti-feminist to believe that women want to find a man to marry or have kids." Where is this said? Straw man runs wild.
Let's test this. Tweet something like: "I believe most women want to find a man to marry and have kids" and please share your responses.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In my experience, a typical person under median income has never owned a pet or an iPhone or had cable or gym membership, or they have already cut those things, just to keep afloat. It's poor form for a rich person to say "just stop doing [luxury that I consider a social norm]" when a person on median income most probably doesn't do [luxury] to begin with. You are really saying that poor people are not welcome to tho…
I specifically said "to stabilize and build a little savings" and nothing about retirement. It's great that you've cut unnecessary things. But I'm not talking about you, I'm talking about the overall trends and data: According to Mintel[1][2], 57% of those making less than $35k own pets. Further, 34% of people without a high school diploma and 31% of those with only a high school diploma smoke[3]. Odds are those two…
For others, that pet may be the only creature on Earth that ever acts happy to see them. It may also be entirely dependent on them for survival. That has an important--and possibly even necessary--psychological benefit.
If you're single, and don't have a pet, I certainly don't begrudge you the expense in acquiring one. It is certainly cheaper than dates or typical group entertainment activities with your friends.
And if I may pat nerd culture on the back for a moment, tabletop board games, role playing games, and certain card games are very often cheaper than bowling, professional sports tickets, dance clubs, movies, concerts, amusement parks, or even pay-per-view television events.
But I'm still not going to fault anyone for attending a pro baseball game for $30 per attendee for nosebleed seats, rather than play a tabletop RPG at $5 for some PDF downloads, paper, and a communal bag of pretzels. In the same way, I don't fault anyone for living in a tiny studio apartment rather than in a van down by the river.
The theoretical possibility that I could survive entirely on dandelions and fresh roadkill does not establish the lower bound for anyone's standard of living. Everyone at that income level has already made more economic substitutions than most people realize. And in a lot of cases, novel substitutions are criminalized or otherwise prohibited by people for whom such substitutions are violations of social norms.
For instance, if you substitute a grass lawn for food-bearing plants in your front yard, some HOA busybody may fine you for it, then convince the cops to force you to destroy it and replant grass seed. And good luck trying to raise rabbits or chickens in your back yard. Or maybe you don't even have a yard in which to make the attempt, and your landlord won't allow windowboxes.
So that "social norm" sword swings both ways. If you find the unaesthetic economic substitutions made by povs to be unacceptable, you cannot reasonably also complain about the expenses incurred in not making those substitutions. I see owning pets as a substitution for more expensive human relationships, and smoking as a substitution for having any sort of hope for a better life in the future or having pride in a lasting accomplishment. If those things were less costly and more widely available, the inferior substitute goods would be less prevalent.
It seems a lot more possible these days, both socially and economically, to go into "partial retirement" at around age 30. Developers can pull this off without much effort. 2-20X the pay for our work, little expectation of company loyalty nor stigma for resume gaps or job hopping, crazy skewed market to ensure that a new contract is only a Facebook/LinkedIn/Twitter update away. Why would anybody spend their 30s not t…
If you get a good job and continue to live the "student lifestyle", that is fairly frugal and single, you can probably save boatloads of money and take time off. If you want to raise a family or like spending money, that wont work for you.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Let's test this. Tweet something like: "I believe most women want to find a man to marry and have kids" and please share your responses.
If you say it like it is the ONLY thing women want but saying part of most women's life plan is to find a man to marry and have kids, very few people will disagree.
go on! i dare you!