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Originally Posted by pondering_it_all
You know, there's no reason to go nuts on the self-reliance path. No reason to buy land where you can graze cattle and grow wheat. But it would be smart to get out of HOA-land suburbia so you can plant a vegetable garden, have some chickens, and put in some solar panels. I think a few big dogs are better than having guns and ammo. Better to scare off burglars than to have to shoot them. The legal hassles are insane, if you do.

Better to have both options wink. If people want to flee because they hear dogs barking, that's obviously preferable. If they are armed themselves... dog's will mostly just announce their arrival and then slow them down.

But, yeah, we are thinking Chickens, a good vegetable garden, a goat, enough woods to perhaps do some light trapping/hunting, some solar, and a well.


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Just making a few wise decisions and sticking to them is really all you need to do for financial security. Learn to get by with what you can afford, instead of every shiny new googaw on TV. Same for college for kids. Don't spend your retirement savings on some expensive school, when there are much cheaper options. With the right degree from a state school, they can do fine.

Truth. There are basically two and a half levels of college in America

1. The Ivy Leagues for particular job fields (Harvard Law is different than Harvard Social Studies)
2. Everyone else, except perhaps Phoenix University
2a. Phoenix University

Where you fall in the second category doesn't really determine your job prospects all that much.

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As for inheritance, there are some huge tax loopholes in there: Inheritance of capital assets can be never-taxed, which is nothing but welfare for the rich. Bring back the inheritance tax or tax it for capital gains at death. That would make a huge difference in the wealth imbalance in America.

Inheritance is way overplayed as a source of wealth in America and as a source of wealth inequality. You could have taxed 100% of everything Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffet inherited and made not a difference at all to wealth inequality.

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Originally Posted by CPWILL
Inheritance is way overplayed as a source of wealth in America and as a source of wealth inequality. You could have taxed 100% of everything Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffet inherited and made not a difference at all to wealth inequality.
Real economists disagree with you armchair economist types. smile


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Originally Posted by pdx rick
Originally Posted by CPWILL
Inheritance is way overplayed as a source of wealth in America and as a source of wealth inequality. You could have taxed 100% of everything Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffet inherited and made not a difference at all to wealth inequality.
Real economists disagree with you armchair economist types. smile

smile What percentage of American Millionaires offhand (no looking) would you say inherited their wealth?

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What percentage of American Millionaires offhand (no looking) would you say inherited their wealth?

Donald Trump.


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Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffet are the extremely rare exceptions because how ever much they inherited is dwarfed by what they have built. I am thinking much more of rich families with trust funds for all, that ensure they never have to do anything useful in their lives.

We are mostly conditioned to think of a million dollar inheritance as a big deal. But that's not 1%. That's not even 5%. These inheritances are in the hundreds of millions. If you want to exempt estates under 5 million, that's fine. A few years back the real owners of the Republican Party were willing to trade the 10 million dollar exemption for a 5 million dollar exemption with a slightly lower rate. If you did the math, that would benefit heirs of 100 million dollar estates, not the 10 million dollar farmers and small business owners Republicans claimed to represent.

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rich families with trust funds for all, that ensure they never have to do anything useful in their lives
That's what my oldest daughter married into.

I don't know that there are an awful lot of those folks. God bless 'em for having rich parents, we should all be so lucky! And so should our kids.

But right now, there is too much wealth concentrated at the top and it needs to find a safety valve to get it back into circulation, a legislated trickle down, so to speak.


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Originally Posted by Greger
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What percentage of American Millionaires offhand (no looking) would you say inherited their wealth?

Donald Trump.

Yup.

Originally Posted by pondering_it_all
Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffet are the extremely rare exceptions because how ever much they inherited is dwarfed by what they have built. I am thinking much more of rich families with trust funds for all, that ensure they never have to do anything useful in their lives.

As of last year, there were about 7.5 million "Millionaire Households"; about 79% of them did not inherit any money, and only 3% became a millionaire by inheritance.

Last edited by CPWILL; 04/29/20 03:39 AM.
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Your statistics pretty much prove my point: A millionaire household is just a working couple or even a single salary with a good job, and some prudent saving and investment. Those are NOT the trust fund families I'm talking about.

A household that earns a million per year is something altogether different.

This is why I say set the inheritance tax exemption at 5 or even 10 million, and you get rid of obscene wealth that corrupts governments into making themselves even richer.

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Apparently Trump is totally freaked out and screaming at his campaign people when they tell him he is losing in the polls. They finally convinced him his daily press bitch sessions were hurting a lot more than helping. I think he's going to stage a big rally soon somewhere, and get a lot of his supporters dead. Or just have a stroke.

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Originally Posted by pondering_it_all
Apparently Trump is totally freaked out and screaming at his campaign people when they tell him he is losing in the polls. They finally convinced him his daily press bitch sessions were hurting a lot more than helping. I think he's going to stage a big rally soon somewhere, and get a lot of his supporters dead. Or just have a stroke.

He's also gone back to flatly stating that the virus will "just go away... it will be eradicated, without a vaccine."

Quote
"If you don't have the vaccine, if the virus is gone, we're like we were before, but having a vaccine would be a great thing."


There is a lot to unpack in that statement.
Not a lot of different things, just one really REALLY BIG THING.
The fact that Trump says he believe the virus will go away without a vaccine indicates that Donald Trump isn't the least bit interested in developing one, and in fact he may even try to manipulate the effort to benefit his own agenda, even if to do so would destroy the effort altogether.

As with anything Trump, expect the unexpected. Far as he's concerned, vaccines are some unknowable unobtanium thing that to him costs too much, and takes too long, and he just doesn't give two sh!ts about them.

Don't be surprised if he decides to target ANY federal help in the vaccine effort.







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