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Anthony Bourdain on not having debt

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Re: Anthony Bourdain on not having debt

#201

Post by vlunkr »

brightball wrote: post #189
padobson wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the context of living a debt-free existence, I have to disagree. In the monetary policy environment we live in, having debt is the most sensible way to build wealth. Dollars are a terrible store of value. Dollars invested in a savings account are almost as bad. Securities, real estate, and inventory are much better. Dollars invested in education and advertising to multiply the value of securities, real estate and…

A lot of people get confused when talking about debt just because types of debt are different. Using debt to generate income = good. Using debt to buy stuff you can't afford = bad. The first pays itself back while the latter does not. When somebody like Dave Ramsey is talking about debt, he's talking about paying off credit card bills, car loans, student loans, mortgages - payments that you're making that leave you p…

As a regular Ramsey listener, I can tell you he is against ALL debt (except for a reasonable home loan). Basically if you are making some kind of investment, you should save up the cash for it.

Re: Anthony Bourdain on not having debt

#202

Post by AIMunchkin »

tcfunk wrote: post #199
dota168 wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you been outside the US? You are living in the USA bubble. Go to a 3rd world country and you'll understand what government corruption and waste is.

This is not a valid argument. If one thing is bad and another is worse, it does not make the bad thing good.

Well yes it is actually, by collecting more data, you are doing a better job marginalizing the distribution of government corruption and waste across the planet. And that can make a seemingly bad thing turn out to actually be relatively good and vice versa.

Or, to quote some famous dead dude: "The World Is a Book and Those Who Do Not Travel Read Only One Page" - St Augustine

Or, to quote Anthony Bourdain himself: “Travel changes you. As you move through this life and this world you change things slightly, you leave marks behind, however small. And in return, life—and travel—leaves marks on you.”

Re: Anthony Bourdain on not having debt

#203

Post by pc86 »

verbify wrote: post #81
d_t_w wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your sentiment, but it strikes me that there is safety and opportunity in behaving badly when the bulk of your peers are swept away in an orgy of debt fuelled spending. Ten years ago I bought a small flat in London to live in. I paid a respectable deposit and didn't over-leverage. We were at the end of decade long property boom, there were huge concerns about the level of borrowing and ability to repay,…

Just because you got unlucky by being responsible doesn't mean everyone does or will. I've known people in places where the property market collapsed and its ugly. And I know people think it can't happen in London, but 'it can't happen here' is about as myopic as it gets.

The property market collapsing (locally, not nationally) is only an issue when you want to sell. If you buy a house with an FHA mortgage (3.5% down), you will be underwater for many years no matter what. But it's a 30-year loan, why would you buy a house if you wanted to move in 3 years?

Re: Anthony Bourdain on not having debt

#204

Post by pc86 »

hueving wrote: post #72
usaphp wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

buying a house, car, going to school, university, having a baby also requires you to give a lot of personal information, it does not mean its a reason not to use those things...

>it does not mean its a reason not to use those things... It is for people really sensitive to privacy that are distrustful of institutions.

Not having a baby because of the privacy implications is not a choice a mentally well person makes.

Re: Anthony Bourdain on not having debt

#205

Post by mathgeek »

pc86 wrote: post #179
mathgeek wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question: were you alright in past years with your federal taxes going to the war in Iraq, as an example? Where do you draw your personal line for "this type of activity against foreign nationals is alright, but that type is where I draw the line?" Anyone can feel free to answer this one. I'm interested in where people are drawing their own lines.

You can't draw your own lines, which is precisely the argument in favor of a small, weak federal government and robust, largely sovereign state governments. The same people glad Trump is in office now were screaming about executive power two years ago, but were thrilled with the huge expansion of federal power with the TSA, etc. It's cyclical and everybody's memory seems to be maxed out at 12-18 months on a good day.

> You can't draw your own lines

This is true in terms of "where your tax dollars go," but you can certainly draw your own lines in regards to your opinion. The latter is what I'm discussing.

Re: Anthony Bourdain on not having debt

#206

Post by paulddraper »

soVeryTired wrote: post #87
d_t_w wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your sentiment, but it strikes me that there is safety and opportunity in behaving badly when the bulk of your peers are swept away in an orgy of debt fuelled spending. Ten years ago I bought a small flat in London to live in. I paid a respectable deposit and didn't over-leverage. We were at the end of decade long property boom, there were huge concerns about the level of borrowing and ability to repay,…

> In retrospect I should have taken all the cash the bank wanted to throw at me and bought the whole house. You made the correct decision with the information you had. In Ireland, people who made the opposite decision are still underwater after a decade. So it could easily have gone the other way.

Exactly. The future is frustratingly uncertain. If it wasn't, everyone would have invented Facebook at once.

Re: Anthony Bourdain on not having debt

#207

Post by digler999 »

rsync wrote: post #194
vinhboy wrote: post #17

> Nobody likes paying high taxes, but I don’t mind. How refreshing. I agree with him. Paying my taxes is a point of pride for me. It's a repayment for all those years I was poor and the government paid for me to live and go to school.

"Nobody likes paying high taxes, but I don’t mind." I think there's an important distinction to be made between two different sorts of "high taxes". One is a high absolute amount of taxes - you made millions of dollars in a year and therefore your absolute tax payment is relatively quite high. The other is a high percentage tax rate. I don't mind paying a high absolute rate of taxes - I think that is the scenario in…

I agree with you. The poor can be affected by this as well, in the case of fines. A $150 speeding ticket isn't more of an inconvenience to most of us, but a poor person could be ruined by it. Nobody should escape consequences entirely, but I think the poor should be given some exemption from the governments iron-fist policy with fines, penalty fees, and bench warrants when you dont pay them.

Re: Anthony Bourdain on not having debt

#208

Post by germinalphrase »

refurb wrote: post #21
vinhboy wrote: post #17

> Nobody likes paying high taxes, but I don’t mind. How refreshing. I agree with him. Paying my taxes is a point of pride for me. It's a repayment for all those years I was poor and the government paid for me to live and go to school.

Not sure if you're living in the US, but I do and I have the exact opposite viewpoint. The amount of waste, corruption and poor planning by the gov't makes me feel like I'm throwing money away. I'd rather give it a charity since then I'd know a majority of it had an impact. I think if the gov't was a bit more efficient and could be shown to be good stewards of money I'd probably hate paying taxes a lot less.

Jennifer Pahlka - the founder of Code for America - did a talk recently at the Long Now Foundation that digs into this idea from the perspective of government technology development and use.

The feeling I got after listening to her discuss the obviously broken system for creating of procuring government technology is that people are earnestly trying to produce quality tools, but are forced into ridiculously slow improvement schedules due to the procurement standards and laws.

It talk includes, of course, a call to arms for tech workers to invest in their government by doing a term of service, fixing government by improving its tools.

Re: Anthony Bourdain on not having debt

#209

Post by tinco »

rsync wrote: post #194
vinhboy wrote: post #17

> Nobody likes paying high taxes, but I don’t mind. How refreshing. I agree with him. Paying my taxes is a point of pride for me. It's a repayment for all those years I was poor and the government paid for me to live and go to school.

"Nobody likes paying high taxes, but I don’t mind." I think there's an important distinction to be made between two different sorts of "high taxes". One is a high absolute amount of taxes - you made millions of dollars in a year and therefore your absolute tax payment is relatively quite high. The other is a high percentage tax rate. I don't mind paying a high absolute rate of taxes - I think that is the scenario in…

every 60 minutes I work, ~30 minutes of that work product is appropriated by government

How about every 60 minutes you work, 30 minutes of that is spent establishing the world around you? From the opportunities you had as a young person, and those of your children, to the safety and security of your adult life.

Half of your product is yours to spend freely, the rest goes towards the idea that you don't even have to think about mashlovs piramid. Well in a perfect euro-socialist utopia maybe, perhaps not in the U.S., but that's the general idea of high taxes.

Re: Anthony Bourdain on not having debt

#210

Post by jasonkostempski »

ianai wrote: post #47

There was a point where financing the government was a patriotic act. People would give other people War Bonds as presents. But now the patriotic thing is to trash talk which ever party is in the administration and wax poetic about governmental corruption. You can't have it both ways. You can't say no to financing your government and scorn corruption. Either you're okay paying for your government, you're okay with so…

Can't you be OK with contributing to the system and still talk trash about the people working in the system? The system is a separate thing from the people involved in it.
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