I've noticed I have very vivid dreams when going back to sleep in the morning after some time awake (~1hr) - often a split like 6hrs / 1.5 hrs when my partner heads out
> They do it by capitalizing on a law intended to protect patients from surprise billing by providers not in their insurance plan. Under the law, those providers can file for arbitration, where they are able to make a case for much higher payments than they could otherwise receive from health plans.
They don't have an infinite budget, how could they stop worrying about money? You can pick a few categories to splurge on but demands are unlimited and you could blow through many multiples of that before you run out of thing to buy. My focus when making a similar salary was adding to retirement/savings and giving myself more optionality. What would they do without savings if their job (field for that matter) went away? Any spending above my baseline went towards health (cooking ingredients, kitchen appliances and cookware, bike).
I borrow my Criterions from the library or a local movie rental place run by a film fan. I used to use SwapACD for music but activity there has really died off - regret declining titles offered to me after I started streaming music as they were rare one-offs.
from your first line, i think we are in agreement - they want to preserve stability hence they remain childfree, also to not provide fodder to the machine
The biggest drops in fertility around 2007 were among teenage moms, hence fewer unwanted children / poverty. How is it immaterial regardless of pct or raw numbers? My point is that there's not a robust mechanism moving people out of working class to middle/upper.
The madcap, kneejerk rush out of fear of redundancy / messianic visions - no good decisions are being made in such an atmosphere, if thinking is occurring at all.
When you've seen social movements fizzle out and understand that wealth outweighs turnout (the aged have both), how can you motivate people in that sort of environment? It feels rigged at that point
i see lower voting rates for young people as a nihilistic reaction to gerontocracy. i.e. if they are blocked from upward mobility, they see power protects assets and have no clear path to this, isn't it a natural reaction? let's say they all organized and had higher voter turnout - they'd still lose on the wealth front, which is what counts. the aged would defend their power vociferously and probably win through PACs, lobbying, etc.
Average life expectancy is driven by early age mortality though, guessing that if you get past that gauntlet, aging happens at roughly the same rate as now (less advanced medicine but perhaps better nutrition?)
They tend to because typically people in the same stage of life tend to have similar interests to defend but like you say, it could theoretically come from politicians of any age. Younger cohorts are much more diverse and less likely to espouse these ideas, seeing them as extractive. This is where the stereotype of getting more conservative with age comes from - it's defensive wealth preservation.
Older people as a bloc vote at reliably high rate compared to middle aged or young cohort and are vocal about their interests - politicians see this and react/plan accordingly. That's why SS is called the third rail of politics.
how about: the funding cuts imminent to SS affecting younger participants; howard jarvis, prop 13, and the '70s tax decrease in CA; homeowner resistance to upzoning and building housing; muted action on climate change due to limited personal impact?