I recommend reading "The Millionaire Next Door", it goes it to more detail about the spending/saving/investing habits of the ~~average~~ most millionaires in America. Living in a culture that prioritizes spending it's not surprising those who do the best financially go against the grain, and are also frowned upon.
I'm pretty sure I'm not alone when I say this but Andrew Yang's message clicked with me almost immediately. It's no coincidence when a politician posts 100+ policies and a majority of them matches with your view.
I remember very early on Andrews bid for presidency was front page of /r/futurology. I think it is very important to maintain the effort to be inclusive and convert new voters. But I'm sure there are still a huge number of people that didn't need any convincing but just haven't heard of Andrew's campaign.
One thing that really struck me when hearing Andrew speak on Freakonomics was that this guy actually respects the academia aspect of Economics. Instead of the average politician that panders by regurgitating highschool level macroecon concepts, this guy seemed to actually understand what he's talking about. So I bought his book: https://www.amazon.com/War-Normal-People-Disappearing-Universal/dp/0316414247
And that was really what put me on 100% for Yang. If you guys haven't read this already, I highly recommend it. If Andrew was writing stuff like this when I was in school, it would've influenced all my research.
The strategy of pushing tiny snippets of Yang to the mainstream like his interviews or listing his top 10 views is great. But Yang is more than that. He has actual substance that most other candidates lack. So for the "research" phase of this post, one of the first steps should be to read this book!
I'm not sure how we can get this book into more hands? Are there political book clubs? Can we get this on more must read lists?
The Bell Curve should be required reading at every single university. Universities should lose federal funding if they don't require it and test to ensure people have read it.
I seriously don't have much hope that will happen. After reading Andrew Yang's War on Normal people. I believe that automation and it's cascading effects will devastate the workforce in America, in turn causing massive social upheaval. That is not taking into account problems beyond automation. Ultimately a systemic collapse will likely happen in my opinion at some point in the future.
Because despite what we're all told, there really isn't such a thing as an unskilled job. There was a bestseller ten years ago Nickel and Dimed where the author set aside her graduate degree, job history, and finances to try and start with nothing and get by.
One of her experiences was that even the most unskilled jobs take skill.
>>The jets and all that other crap seem like a better value renting. > >Huh? $3 million in total wealth isn't much, especially for that. Please, don't do that. I strongly recommend that you read The Millionaire Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of America's Wealthy.
Yeah, that bit made me laugh. $3m isn't even remotely close to private jet territory. Try $300m. Lol
Most people that receive a large windfall like this do not fare well OP. At all. Be extremely careful with this money and do not tell anybody. Check out the "Windfall" section in the /r/personalfinance wiki. Also check out /r/fire and /r/fatFIRE.
Holy crap its real:
>Are multi-national corporations laying the groundwork for international socialism?
>For the left and the right, major multinational companies are held up as the the ultimate expressions of free market competition. Their remarkable success vindicates the old idea that our modern societies are too large, too complex and difficult, to be subjected to a plan. And yet, as Leigh Phillips and Michal Rozworski argue, late capitalism already operates by central planning. The sheer economic weight of multinational, corporate giants means that the decision making of its owners decides the fate of virtually everyone else downstream of them, shaping the fortunes of much of the world. Not only is planning possible, we already have it. Except all the power is concentrated in the hands of a selfish few.
>Against the dictatorship of capital, The People's Republic of Walmart is a clarion call for a return to collective decision making in all matters economic. With the rise of new computational systems and new capacities for massive, collective enterprises, democratically organizing the economic in the interest of human need rather than in the interests of profit is as great as it ever has been.
>About the Author
>Leigh Philips is a science writer and EU affairs journalist. He is the author of Austerity Ecology & the Collapse-Porn Addicts.
>Michal Rozworski is a Toronto-based union researcher and writer. He blogs at Political Eh-conomy and has been published in Jacobin, Ricochet, The Toronto Star, and Briarpatch Magazine.
Doesn't look that bad.....
If you havent already read it I would recommend Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich. The book is a little dated, but it does a really good job of explaining why its so hard for poor Americans to escape poverty. The idea of the book is that Ehrenreich works a series of minimum wage jobs undercover to learn about the trials and tribulations of the working poor. Its a fantastic book and is a really good starting place for learning more about the working poor.
This question gets people RILED UP. Darling, in America we have no class system, you know that. :P
There's a very interesting book that's now pretty dated but gives a solid foundation on this topic called "Class" A guide through the American Status System by Paul Fussell. Read it for an eye opening look into how it is!
He points out that things like no white after Labor Day and similar strictures (I was raised to believe that patent leather is not worn by polite society, or that pierced ears on children are vulgar, for example) are part of a class system that places people with nothing but time to drift around the globe in search of sport and leisure at the top. So naturally you wouldn't wear white after Labor Day as you're now in moving on to Eden Roc and tennis season is over or whatever :P
However that's high WASP preppy. That's not the only kind of "wealthy" there is! Plenty of people who are genuinely mind bogglingly rich wear flashy clothes and have diamond encrusted watches and so on.
Fussell also points out that there's a class that's beyond class: artists and the children of movie stars, the hyper-wealthy service class people (like let's say "energy workers" who work with the stars) or trustafarian types. Those people wear ironic brands and pad around first class cabins in bare feet with no bra (the book was written in like 1983).
Fascinating read.
You should get your relative a copy of "the people's republic of Walmart", which dismisses the capitalist myth of the so-called "inefficiency" of centralised planned economies. It turns out not only can computers anticipate supply/demand curves, but already do it all the time and are the reason why corporate juggernauts like Walmart, a private economy unto itself that's about the size of Sweden's entire national economy, can function.
More than once on this sub, I've cited the book Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police. It's a bit lengthy, and covers the historical foundation of the Bill of Rights (great read if you're an American history student).
But the real takeaway is that SWAT teams bring their own exigency with them. "Exigency" is just a fancy word for urgent and unexpected circumstances that allow SWAT teams to improvise and shoot dogs and kick in doors and operate without a judge's oversight. But the book makes a compelling argument that SWAT teams create exigency, they create violence where none existed before, they create dangerous situations where none existed before.
What if there are hostages inside a bank during a botched robbery? Sure, send in SWAT. But a house where no one is in any danger? Or a house where no one is threatening anyone? Hey, what if someone is suspected of cock fighting? Just have a celebrity drive a SWAT tank into their house. WCGW?
He did extensive research before arriving at his current position. He lists anecdotes to make the problem more real and personal, but his policies are based on evidence on the ground. He makes a strong case for the problems we're undergoing in his book and cites all his sources in the bibliography.
You bring up a solid point, however you're falling into the just world fallacy. Not everyone that can't put together a 1000 dollars 'deserved' it. My guess is that at least 50% of that 63% number are hardworking americans working multiple jobs that simply can't break out of the paycheck to paycheck trap. The cost of living has been outpacing pay for 30 years.
I agree that some people simply don't budget properly or are miss appropriating or aren't using their time to get skills etc. but that's simply not the entire story at all
There's a good book on this called Nickeled and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich.
This is not coming from a bleeding heart liberal either. I'm a libertarian that wants to see welfare reduced but that doesn't mean there aren't some serious problems with the economy right now.
> and I'd be shocked if there's a US Attorney out there who's willingly going to go "yeah, you know what? I'm going to push for a weed conviction rather than going after heroin / coke / opiods / meth."
You're confusing the symptoms with the problem. The driving force behind the drug war isn't attorneys or even really politicians specifically, it's law enforcement agencies going after that sweet, sweet grant money. And MJ busts are quick, easy ways to make a buck. It has virtually zero impact on the actual crime rate but it looks good on paper. Radly Balko's book "The Rise of the Warrior Cop" is a really good breakdown on this subject.
Attorney's, politicians, and even the president himself can talk all the talk they want, the reality is until someone cuts the purse strings, this problem doesn't go away. And I have yet to hear even hint at limiting these grant programs.
There was an amazing book called Nickel and Dimed that discussed this. Basically a decently well-off woman took a bunch of minimum wage jobs to see what it was like to live off minimum wage. She wrote about how difficult it was to make ends meet and how hard she worked, but in the back of her mind she always knew this was temporary. She'd signed up for this "experience" and at then end of it she'd go back to her easier life. It helped her mentally push through a lot of the bullshit she had to deal with, and she said she couldn't imagine how terrifying and exhausting life would be for someone who didn't have her fallback.
I'm just gonna add some extra resources for this idea:
Short article
Yes, a Planned Economy Can Actually Work
Bigger book
Just be mindful that both are from Jacobin, it's a good source that can be a little problematic sometimes.
Not directly about Trump, but if you want insight read Fussel's book on Class. Still mostly accurate even though it came out in the 70s iirc. https://www.amazon.com/Class-Through-American-Status-System/dp/0671792253
Class in the US is only somewhat related to money. It mostly has to do with preferences and cultural attitudes that are very hard to shake once they're ingrained as the default for a person at a young age.
This book caused a lot of stir this year when it was released in June. It explains the culture of the areas like Leah's where the poverty is generational. I grew up in an area in rural PA. It was thriving farming community in the 80's but now is run down and trashy, nothing like when I was a kid. I imagine the kids are a lot like Leah and her cousins.
It stuck a huge chord with many because this is a group of people largely ignored in America. If anyone likes reading this kind of thing, I linked its Amazon.
https://www.amazon.com/Hillbilly-Elegy-Memoir-Family-Culture/dp/0062300547
I don’t think Americans spend anywhere near the amount of time thinking about class that the British do.
To the extent that we think about it at all, it’s more about cultural norms than income. A good book to read about this is Class by Paul Fussell .
Pumping millions of dollars into police departments across the nation and encouraging them to use military tactics on drug busts against blacks and hippies is tame compared to a guy with a Twitter fetish?
Nixon was the quintessential "tough on crime" Republican. He loved putting guns and money into cops' hands so they could fight a non-existent crime wave that wasn't sweeping the nation all so he could pander to his bases for reelection.
Nixon was truly paranoid and did so much to wreck our country all to please some demons in his head.
Trump is like that weird uncle at family gatherings that spouts off nonsense, and who gets drunk and posts on social media all the time. You know the guy is unhinged, but that is the key - everyone knows he is weird and unpredictable. You know you take everything he says with a grain of salt. Nixon at least sounded rational and sane. Plus, Trump is not responsible for ending nearly as many human lives as Nixon. The Vietnam was was a damn shame, killing so many people all for nothing. All Nixon had to do was pull out when he took office, but he didn't.
I highly recommend this book to learn about how law enforcement in the US has changed over the years. The author devotes quite a bit of space discussing how both Nixon and Reagan set the stage for how things are today: SWAT teams knocking down doors going after marijuana; record numbers of people in prison; billions of dollars in tax money spent on police at local, state, and federal levels; creating generations of felons who struggle being productive members of society due to "tough on crime" drug convictions over what should be minor or nonexistent offenses. Who started all of this? Nixon. As bad as he is, Trump has barely scratched the surface compared to Nixon.
Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces by Radley Balko may be interesting reading for you.
Athletes constitute a extreme minority, especially superstars like LeBron. While his example was a little extreme in how lucky the beginnings was, the story is by no means rare. The is a popular book called The Millionaire Next Door which goes to explain how most millionaires in the US got their wealth.
In the vast majority of cases, it's quite straightforward: spend less than you earn, and maximize tax-advantaged investing. Don't waste money on expensive cars or other forms of wasteful spending. Keep doing that for a couple of decades, and you'll be a millionaire.
Of course, the above path does come with assumptions. First is that you need to have an employable degree, and not be crippled by student debt in a way that makes you lose a big chunk of your early earnings. Second is that you need to be not unlucky and e.g. not have an expensive medical emergency. Having a spouse definitely helps (but is not required), and not having kids also helps (but they won't make anything impossible).
Bottom line is that the most millionaires in the US are not sportsmen, nor are they born to immense privilege.
By defund the police, people are referring to the militarization of cops, not literally not paying them anymore. At least, the rational ones are. Why does a Sheriff's office need a tank?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Militarization_of_police
https://www.amazon.ca/Rise-Warrior-Cop-Militarization-Americas/dp/1610394577
Still not quite right unfortunately.
J.D. Vance talks about it in Hillbilly Elegy. They are voting for their interests, their interests just aren't economic, its the social issues republicans have spent 50 years indoctrinating their base to believe as the most important.
Great book btw, still relevant today considering 70mil people voted for Trump.
The DCA or lump sum argument, IMO, is a pointless argument. You're trading one risk for another. DCA invites the risk of missing out on a rising bull market, lump sum invites the risk of investing everything right before a downturn. Since we cannot time the market, and any successful timing is just luck, I always opt for lump sum. Markets are constantly at an all-time high, that's what happens when markets are historically on the rise more than they're on the downturn. DCA won't really hurt you though. It's more important that you focus on saving as much as you can.
IMO the debate between VT and WTI/VXUS is also pretty negligible. At your age, it's far more important to focus on investing in the first place, meaning staying frugal and saving money to invest. Either the VT or VTI/VXUS combo will outperform the vast majority of people in the long run, as long as you can save money and invest in the first place.
The average 25 year-old isn't concerned whatsoever with investing or retirement. As long as you make a concentrated effort to invest 20-30% of every paycheck, you'll be very wealthy in the future, regardless of what strategy you take in regards to choosing between lump sum/DCA or between VT and VTI/VXUS.
At your age, I'd highly recommend this book. Saving 20-30% of any money that comes your way may seem daunting, but it's actually not all that challenging.
The most effective thing the rich has ever done is manipulate the middle class into thinking that poverty is the poor man’s fault. Meanwhile, people have actually lived, tested, and then lived it again.
Spoiler alert: The middle class are brainwashed as hell into thinking they know what happens to the poor.
From just reading the title made me think of this book.
https://www.amazon.com/Nickel-Dimed-Not-Getting-America/dp/0312626681
Summarizes a lot of the hardships and how the system makes things harder for lower income people that I've seen on posts here.
Like I said, you don't understand UBI proposals. You wouldn't print money to fund UBI it would be entirely funded by using it to replace other forms of cash relief (disability, unemployment, food stamps, etc.), through no longer having to pay for an expensive bureaucracy to staff these programs, and through a VAT tax. I'm not for UBI right now, but you should at least read up on it if you're going to have an opinion on it. Our debt is honestly overblown. Most of it is owned by either US citizens or the US government and our interest rate is either right at current inflation rates or below. This means we effectively have no interest, or our debt is making us money (but again UBI would have no affect on the national debt).
Here's a good book on it: https://www.amazon.com/War-Normal-People-Disappearing-Universal/dp/0316414247
You can probably get it on Libby for free if you have a library card.
Hey, I just want to mention in this thread the book:
Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces
It covers the history of how the police have changed over time and become what they are today. It's an interesting read of society, government, and how power is exerted and justified. Check your local library today to see if they have a copy. Or you could "borrow without asking" a digital copy from the internet. Or buy it if your into that sort of thing.
The militarization of the police force in the United States has been an ongoing issue for years, not really sure how you can pin that on Trump. If you are curious, Radley Balko released a book about this in 2014 (Amazon).