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  • You need 30 republicans so they have enough cover each other. You are right the minimum number is 6, but it would be stupid for the 6 republicans to follow that plan - they will just be told to switch parties even though overall they better fit republicans (or so we can assume though this may be false). 30 is in fact small, but if you find 30 who go for it you can probably get 70 more. I doubt you would get all democrats to go for this, so that is more republicans you need.

  • People tend to spend what they earn. I have to be careful not to spend more than my paycheck every month. I know people who make less than half what I do who still do okay in life - they don't have as nice a house or as many toys, but they have food on the table and a warm roof. I know from experience that I could cut how much I spend every month by a lot - I just don't want to cut those extras from my life.

    Many people are working long hours now saving for retirement when they plan to travel, and thus they think their spending will be more in the future. I know some who did that for years, and got cancer and died before their planned retirement age. I know others who have been traveling the world carefree for a couple decades after retiring.

  • That will depend on your total savings and such. If you start a 401k at 25 and contribute the max until you retire at 72: you will have a lot of money and it is likely the Roth is better just because because you have so much more taxes to pay. OTOH, if you wait until 45 to start savings and never contribute the max, when you retire at 62 you will do okay (most of your income is from SS - better hope it is still there!) but your total income will be small and so you end up in a lower tax bracket. Odds are you will be somewhere between those two extremes.

    Roth and regular investment accounts often have the same annual contribution limits, but the Roth has effectively more growth just because you don't pay taxes: 100,000 in a regular account is worth $70,000 after taxes (exact number depends on your state and tax bracket - it might be $80,000 it might be $50,000), while in the Roth it is $100,000.

    There is also the gamble. Nobody knows what tax rates and deductions will be in the future. If things stay the same I can tell you what will happen, but I consider the odds of that zero - but the odds that things are close to today I think are good enough - but I have no way of know. They might make a withdrawals from a Roth taxable (this would go to court, but who knows how the court will look in 30 years). They might change the tax brackets - either up or down. They might make regular retirement withdrawals non-taxable (or taxed at a different rate). They might confiscate all retirement funds in some revolution. Or you might die before you retire. Again I think the safe bet is tax rules will be somewhat close to todays rules, and you will live to the statistical average lifespan plus a couple years - but I do not know.

  • Any medium or larger company will give everyone a 401k because it is good for the executives and 401k rules require you offer them to everyone not just the high wage earners (there are exceptions to this rule). Plus investment companies make is relatively easy to offer this type of thing to everyone.

  • It has always been that way. More millennials than any previous generation are able to fund a good retirement is a large take away.

    Many still are not funding a [good] retirement, but overall Millennials are better than their predecessors.

  • A lot of things are much better. It is easy to focus on the negative without realizing how bad the past really was, or for that matter how hard things were for those in the past. sure some things are worse today - work on fixing them - bit overall things are still very good.

  • They lose if they do. If they work with the moderate republicans they can get a moderate republican All democrats + 30 republicans is enough to elect a moderate speaker, while all republicans will only elect a speaker less moderate.

  • I hope they stand for the rule of law. Mind you they should tell us when the law is wrong and fight to get that fixed. However they don't get to ignore a bad law. There is often disagreement on what makes a good law, and sometimes you will lose that fight (or at least a battle in the fight).

  • It needs to pass an audit. The wall is stupid, but building a monument instead of a wall should fail audits and is a type of corruption worthy of impeachment.

  • Sure, but give any good local craftsman a picture and they can build one that looked so much like the picture that you wouldn't be able to tell from pictures it wasn't. The craftsman version would be much higher quality, but you would need an in person inspection to tell that. Of course the craftsman version could make something look nicer for the same price, or for more many can make something a lot nicer, but style often demand ugly.

  • If Ikea made this it would be a lot less than $500. However there isn't enough demand for Ikea to make one. With both this and Ikea you are paying for both materials and all the jigs needed to get the particle board cut to the correct size - there is a lot of engineering costs in that, and they have much less sales to spread those costs over.

  • A $100 mic (the SM57 the president uses) is enough better than a $10 mic that speakers and audiences should care. The $500 mic is slightly better but most people can't tell outside of AB tests in a controlled environment. As you go over $100 in price microphones get more special purpose and often are worse than cheaper ones outside of their special purpose - each human voice is different, so $500 is about the most you can spend on a general purpose microphone and be objectively better than something cheaper. While you can spend $2000 or even $4000 on a microphone, they tend to be very fragile - as in breath on them wrong and you break them - so they are only used in studios where you can ensure nobody breaths wrong around them.

    Remember, I'm trying to come up with the reasonable most you could pay for this. You really should be spending less. There is no reasonable justification for the 200x microphone. There is a reasonable justification for the 50x cost - if only just barely justifiable.

  • There is nothing wrong with a SM57 in this application, but you can get a better mic for more $$$. Generally people going for a better mic first head to a studio and have an engineer try them on each one until they find one that sounds good with their voice. But in the end the difference from the sound of a SM57 is tiny so few bother, even the best professionals often choose a SM57 for their best recordings after comparing to more expensive microphones.

  • 4 boxes yes. However instead of microphone jut buy/rent a good wireless lapel mic system. It is what nearly every presenter wants anyway.

  • This one isn't that fancy though. I've seen some hand carved that are clearly more than that, but this doesn't those expensive features.

  • The made in china version is $1000. Make it custom in the US with real hardwood and we are more like $5000. We can see that has a mic installed, which is $500 for a good mic (A $10 mic would work okay, but the $500 does sound better and isn't unreasonable), which we will pair with electronics to turn the audio into digital for another $500. While we are at it we will build in a computer with a presenters display all connected to the building video system - another $5000.

    I'm trying to be generous by using the highest reasonable costs and the most complex feature set. I still can only come up with $11k.

  • Rural areas have long faced the problem that old houses are worth much less than costs. However people with money build new anyway because if you expect to live there for a while a new house gets a lot of nice features (better insulation, nicer kitchen, and built to much high standards), while the used house is still a old thing that doesn't meet modern needs.

  • Sounds like illegal monopoly abuse to me.

  • It was 20 years ago, but then my training made sure to make it clear I was obliged to provide aid in the state I was in. I have no idea what the laws are.