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Anthony Bourdain on not having debt

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Re: Anthony Bourdain on not having debt

#341

Post by rajacombinator »

tinco wrote: post #338
lap42 wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wrong. If he pays 50% because he wants, OK. But he is FORCED to pay. This is confiscatory payment, it's theft. Opportunities as a young person costs 50% of what he makes?! Please don't pretend to be naive. I thought it was common sense by now that this tax money goes to highly payed politicians, corruption, bad public administration, bad public programs, lazy people, etc. A 10% tax should be the maximum a citizen sho…

Wrong, they should be happy it's not 90% or 100% of what he makes. Don't be naieve, why would you deserve anything when there are people who could wipe your life away with the stroke of a pen. Don't pretend you've deserved anything you've worked for. It has been granted to you by those in power as they have seen fit. Your petty idealism has no place in the real world.

I think this post was meant in sarcasm but sadly it is a more accurate reflection of the world...

Re: Anthony Bourdain on not having debt

#342

Post by plandis »

jMyles wrote: post #300
plandis wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes, a world led by 4chan. What a utopia that would be!

This seems to be nothing more than a strawman; I'm not sure what you are expecting as a response.

I don't think it's a straw man at all. Some people are wonderful at manipulation and organization on the internet. Certain places on 4chan are wonderful when it comes to organizing people.

The causes they take up are mostly morally questionable. If people are going to organize on the internet places like 4chan will lead the way, for whatever that means.

Re: Anthony Bourdain on not having debt

#343

Post by Confusion »

refurb wrote: post #128
Confusion wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Proudly paying your taxes doesn't mean you don't recognize that the government may not be the most efficient organisation around. It doesn't mean that you agree with the decisions being made. It only means you agree that something between X and Y% of taxes needs to be paid to operate a country smoothly. And I've delegated the decision of what exactly to spend it on to others, so I accept that I can't always be 100% h…

Companies do the exact same thing. Yeah, but companies waste their own money. Not mine. Unless I'm a shareholder, I could care less if they flushed cash down the toilet.

They waste your money by charging you higher prices. And their competitors do the same thing. You don't pay the lowest possible price for everything. Free markets are a utopia: they don't actually exist.

Re: Anthony Bourdain on not having debt

#344

Post by tinco »

rajacombinator wrote: post #341
tinco wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wrong, they should be happy it's not 90% or 100% of what he makes. Don't be naieve, why would you deserve anything when there are people who could wipe your life away with the stroke of a pen. Don't pretend you've deserved anything you've worked for. It has been granted to you by those in power as they have seen fit. Your petty idealism has no place in the real world.

I think this post was meant in sarcasm but sadly it is a more accurate reflection of the world...

I meant it as hyperrealism. It's not really constructive, just venting a little frustration with people calling me naieve.

Re: Anthony Bourdain on not having debt

#345

Post by Draiken »

mattcantstop wrote: post #314
Draiken wrote: post #238

This is an interesting story and all that, but honestly, he only got to the "debt free nirvana" after becoming rich and famous. I pay my credit card, pay my taxes and my mortgage, but that takes almost all my money away. So if I look at it my net worth it is basically negative. Only way I'll get to the debt free nirvana is if I get rich somehow. It's not a real choice. So the entire premise of the article is pretty w…

> Only way I'll get to the debt free nirvana is if I get rich somehow. It's not a real choice. So the entire premise of the article is pretty weak. No, that certainly is not the case. Slow and steady saving and investing is the way to become wealthy. Check out www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance or www.mrmoneymustache.com as examples of this.

I've seen the Mustache site before, but let's be honest here: this only works if you live a frugal life style.

It might work if you are alone with no attachments or your SO has the same views, but not for anyone else.

I'm trying to become less attached to things and have gone a long way, but telling your wife and kid to not want to eat out, for instance, is almost impossible...

Re: Anthony Bourdain on not having debt

#346

Post by appleiigs »

paganel wrote: post #83
appleiigs wrote: post #45

Debt conversations always have these weird grandpa rules of thumb and words of wisdom, as you can see in the other comments. The proper use of debt is to match the debt with the asset. If you are buying a house, a 25-year mortgage matches the value of the house. If you are buying a car, a 5-year loan matches the value of the car. If you are buying a sandwich with a credit card, well... you should pay off your credit…

> If you are buying a house, a 25-year mortgage matches the value of the house The exchange price of the house does not have any intrinsic value, while generally speaking the cash money you owe to some external entity like a bank tends to keep its value in most of the cases (the Venezuela- and Zimbabwe-like cases are few and far between). In other words, you're betting that a real-estate crash won't happen before you…

You have that same risk if you paid it for the house lumpsum at the beginning. You bought it at a set price and its value fluctuates.

You still have the option to continue to pay the mortgage payments and pay off the loan, regardless of the current value of the house.

I'm not in US, but I believe they can reduce their own risk by using debt to buy a house. They can put, say 10%, in equity. If the real estate market crashes, the lose that 10% and walk away, leaving the bank with the house.

Re: Anthony Bourdain on not having debt

#347

Post by tcfunk »

AIMunchkin wrote: post #202
tcfunk wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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: “Tr…

But I'm not talking about relative goodness or badness.

If I say "boy I'm tired today, I only slept 4 hours" and you say "you're tired? I didn't sleep at all!", your being more tired doesn't make me any less tired.

In the same regard, other governments doing a much worse job than the US government doesn't mean that the US government is doing the best job that it can.

Re: Anthony Bourdain on not having debt

#348

Post by zymhan »

lap42 wrote: post #335
zymhan wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but I believe in a progressive tax structure, so allowing wealthier folk to contribute even more to their retirement isn't anywhere near my top concern. The amount of money you need to live on decreases relative to your income, as your income goes up. A wealthy person doesn't contribute 30%+ of their monthly income to housing, typically, nor could they come anywhere near spending that amount on food. But a poor…

You believe in theft. You believe in getting other people money in a forced manner and put in what YOU believe is better.

No, I don't make the decision on what to spend it on, the democratically elected legislature does. And if money is misspent, take it up with your elected officials.

Do you honestly believe that taxation is theft? It's existed as a fundamental requirement of civilization for millennia.

Utopian libertarianism is utterly unrealistic. For a philosophy that is wholly meritocratic, you would think the fact that no civilization adopted it as a fundamental principle would make it obvious how infeasible the concept is.

Re: Anthony Bourdain on not having debt

#349

Post by zymhan »

lap42 wrote: post #334
zymhan wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially at an income level where you will be paying 50%, you should be able to save enough for the future/rainy day AND live quite comfortably.

That's the problem. You should never be responsible to judge how he spends his money, that's his problem. You never know. You don't know if it was only 10%, he could use those 40% much better than the "government", oh hell, be damn sure he would. He could create companies, could fund companies, could put this money in funds, those funds would have to fund companies to earn money, these would generate jobs, education,…

Man, why does everyone assume that rich people just take their money and start companies? Do you realize how risky it is to start a business? You are highly likely to lose EVERYTHING you invest, as well as ruin your reputation, if you start a business from scratch and it fails to take off.

Almost all wealthy people just invest their money in stocks, hedge funds, VCs, and other intangible assets that don't immediately produce a noticeable economic impact, aside from a rise in the stock market.

Re: Anthony Bourdain on not having debt

#350

Post by bbctol »

lap42 wrote: post #333
jchrisa wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the American right propaganda sinking in. Times of higher tax burden have been economically more productive. It's already the government's money. Redistributive taxation is parsimonious use of funds. Great chart in here about USA tax burden being below average: https://taxfoundation.org/comparison-tax-burden-labor-oecd-2...

Right propaganda or freedom propaganda? You are entitled of what you've done, period. Anything above 10% is theft. "Times of higher tax burden have been economically more productive" -> this is just false, a falacy. Prove it somehow. Sweden was a very rich nation before high taxes, now it's just rich, net jobs after high taxation in 50 years is ZERO. They are just letting go now, cutting taxes more and more. I wonder…

Well, the government has defended you from foreign threats, protected the monetary system that lets you earn in the first place, provided for your public education, established your infrastructure, and been a check against your home burning down or being robbed. If everyone's entitled to what they've done, what are they entitled to?

Capitalism is a system, like any other, created by humans and not found in nature. "Ownership" is not some property of matter; what it means to own something is that there is a legal system that supports that deed and an armed police and military to enforce it. There is no concept of ownership except for a truly anarchic "everything I own is in a box that I have the key to" idea that does not require other people to guarantee your property rights.

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