It's a year later and Jim, you have been proven 100% correct. Yet another lie from our Commander-in-Blather Trump. The trolls were wrong, you were right. The world still turns. And it's round.
PS I like the Ally Miller job opp a little. You can't be held accountable for not warning someone who's not listening that she's once again about to put her foot in her mouth or walk off a cliff.
On the other hand, it would mean a lot of curtseying to self-anointed Foothills nobility, the rather gauche and self-absorbed elite who keep Miller "employed" and off the streets. And you must be prepared to be fired on a whim. "Him? Gone! Next?"
Replacing Sarah Huckabee Sanders is sounding pretty good right now. You could help the Orange Man "peel his rind" -- come across as human, no small accomplishment -- and even get a book out of it.
Yeah, that's the ticket! Do it quick, though, certainly before 2018 when he's probably gonna be gone. Mike Pence won't be half the fun.
Danehy, don't count on Social Security to provide much of a backstop for whatever else you do -- and you will have to do it, whatever it is. Social Security is no windfall. I paid quite a lot into the system during my more lucrative periods of employment, so I qualified for almost-adequate benefits if I waited to take normal retirement (age 66). But faced with the choice of finding a decent-paying job in my sixties -- probability, zero -- or creating my own business to employ me, when I was 62 I took what SSA calls "early retirement." It's a lot less than had I waited to turn 66, but I didn't have the leisure to wait.
I used my lower SS payouts to cover my bare-bone costs of living and once more became an entrepreneur. You're not supposed to do this, work while you're collecting if it exceeds a certain amount, but when the alternative is penury until you drop, you break some rules. (Hey, it's money I paid in!)
Fortunately, my new company worked out, sufficiently so that I don't have to completely rely on my continuing early-retirement checks -- which would be totally inadequate if I had to rely on them to pay personal and property taxes, utilities, premiums on supplemental health insurance (Medicare is fine, but it doesn't pay for everything), cable Internet, cellphone service, auto insurance, and occasional travel and nights out, etc., etc.
The rather stupid commenters above deride Social Security as some sort of government gravy train. It's not. It's a small monthly stipend for basic survival. Unless there are reforms in the future that help workers when they're past "productive age" -- whatever the 1% decides that is -- Americans (unlike citizens in most of Europe and Canada) will need other income, whether investments, exceptional jobs, or their own inheritance to get by. Screw the "rugged individualism" sloganeering. It's braggadocio, a hoax. The rugged ones die first.
Also per those fools: SS is no "Ponzi scheme." It helps a hundred million Americans save a little so they don't have to rely on the kindness of strangers (in the same predicament), payday and conventional loan sharks, or eating a lot of ramen to keep their heads above water. With good fortune and planning, it's also enough to allay the stress that brings on sickness, heart attacks, and early death. You have to be pretty damn cruel to wish an early demise on anyone, just so that you can some utter alt-right crapola like that above. Or hide your own fear at growing old and meager. Suck it up, it's your fate, too.
We in Tucson may see a whole lot of immigrants from Phoenix long before more Latin Americans arrive in 2050. The heat-fatality bell curve up north is getting increasingly broad. Before, only Maricopa County's kids and old folks -- people with little political clout, and often without access to air-conditioning -- died from extreme heat. Now that Maricopa's heat is regularly rising into the higher (often fatal) three digits, and because running A/C (which, incidentally, releases more heat and climate-change gases into the air) is becoming more expensive, people in the middle ranks of society (by age and income) will begin suffering heat-related symptoms including fatal heatstroke. A whole lot of people -- possibly in the millions, certainly in the hundreds of thousands -- will be high-tailing it to our relatively cooler climes in Pima and Santa Cruz Counties. There'll be no border guards or a wall to protect us from this internal migration, unless we deploy a Grapes of Wrath strategy completely alien to our Borderlands culture. What are We going to do with all of Them? Where will they live? How will they earn livings? How do we accommodate yet more traffic? And how do we protect our Borderlands culture from awful, intolerant religious and racist influences that many of the immigrants will bring with them, influences that resulted in Sheriff Joe's lengthy tenure, that sustain the reactionary Goldwater Institute and related kook lobbies, and that pay the lion's share of Republican campaign expenses in Arizona? We have some planning to do, and soon!
That's a pretty weird comment, KitWarden, given that just a few comments before, CW13 opines that Donald Trump is in charge and ain't goin' nowhere. You must have your trolling instructions held upside down.
Wow, the trolls come out to feast. Meanwhile, the basic tenets of the CNN article remain unchallenged. And the national polls now show fewer than a fifth of Americans -- precisely, 17% -- approve of the GOP healthcare plan. As for MAGA, if your answer to what exactly Trump has done to better life in this country (other than promise huge tax decreases for the rich and less regulation of corporate America) is more than "nothing," you're a sucker and a fool.
Fortunately, the message that Trump is truly out only for the wealthy is getting across. Let's not lose sight of the bigger picture just because a ragtag bunch of Trump wolves now howl at the moon.
Tom, the truth hurts many who cannot abide it. You stung them this time. Badly. And goodly.
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On the other hand, it would mean a lot of curtseying to self-anointed Foothills nobility, the rather gauche and self-absorbed elite who keep Miller "employed" and off the streets. And you must be prepared to be fired on a whim. "Him? Gone! Next?"
Replacing Sarah Huckabee Sanders is sounding pretty good right now. You could help the Orange Man "peel his rind" -- come across as human, no small accomplishment -- and even get a book out of it.
Yeah, that's the ticket! Do it quick, though, certainly before 2018 when he's probably gonna be gone. Mike Pence won't be half the fun.
I used my lower SS payouts to cover my bare-bone costs of living and once more became an entrepreneur. You're not supposed to do this, work while you're collecting if it exceeds a certain amount, but when the alternative is penury until you drop, you break some rules. (Hey, it's money I paid in!)
Fortunately, my new company worked out, sufficiently so that I don't have to completely rely on my continuing early-retirement checks -- which would be totally inadequate if I had to rely on them to pay personal and property taxes, utilities, premiums on supplemental health insurance (Medicare is fine, but it doesn't pay for everything), cable Internet, cellphone service, auto insurance, and occasional travel and nights out, etc., etc.
The rather stupid commenters above deride Social Security as some sort of government gravy train. It's not. It's a small monthly stipend for basic survival. Unless there are reforms in the future that help workers when they're past "productive age" -- whatever the 1% decides that is -- Americans (unlike citizens in most of Europe and Canada) will need other income, whether investments, exceptional jobs, or their own inheritance to get by. Screw the "rugged individualism" sloganeering. It's braggadocio, a hoax. The rugged ones die first.
Also per those fools: SS is no "Ponzi scheme." It helps a hundred million Americans save a little so they don't have to rely on the kindness of strangers (in the same predicament), payday and conventional loan sharks, or eating a lot of ramen to keep their heads above water. With good fortune and planning, it's also enough to allay the stress that brings on sickness, heart attacks, and early death. You have to be pretty damn cruel to wish an early demise on anyone, just so that you can some utter alt-right crapola like that above. Or hide your own fear at growing old and meager. Suck it up, it's your fate, too.
Fortunately, the message that Trump is truly out only for the wealthy is getting across. Let's not lose sight of the bigger picture just because a ragtag bunch of Trump wolves now howl at the moon.
Tom, the truth hurts many who cannot abide it. You stung them this time. Badly. And goodly.