I used to put it on my resume and the kind of offers I would get…where VERY bad. Or had some huge red flags.

In what way, someone looking for people to hack old banking systems?

2040: A group of Neo-Bolsheviks seize control of Russia, fully intending to literally make fully automated luxury gay space communism real. Imagine a publicly owned vast automated supply chain that produced goods at scale with little human effort. Go full tilt on automation of all kinds, but direct all profits to the general welfare. Maybe do away with money entirely. It would start with a genuine utopian dream.

2060: Neo-Stalin rules over what was once Russia. Its human population, long since more trouble than they were worth, were largely done away with. The population of the country is approximately 2300. Yet the combined industrial output of the automated leviathan that sprawls over what was once the Moscow-St. Petersburg corridor now exceeds that of the PRC. And a frightening fraction of that is directed towards military purposes. Their population reduced to a handful of oligarchs still controls the first, second, or third most powerful military in the world, depending on form of measure.

Be careful what you wish for. We might end up with Soviet Union Two: Electric Boogaloo.

There are none. That doesn’t stop bigots from pretending trans women on estrogen have any advantage.

Go die in a fire.

We’re aiming for $2.5-$3 million in investment income. That’s based on two things:

1. The median household incomes in the US is about $80,000.
2. The safe indefinite withdraw rate in stock index funds is about 3%.

(2) is based on the 3% rule, a common retirement planning tool. People have crunched the numbers on historic market returns, factoring in inflation, dividends, etc. 3% is about the amount you can safely withdraw each year while the principal will still remain steady through time, even after adjusting for inflation and crashes. It is the amount you use if you want to be reasonably certain you will not outlive your retirement income.

That’s literally the definition of retirement though. The ability to live without working. And no, $1 million is really not enough to retire on. You’re vastly overestimating the amount of passive income that can safely be earned on $1 million.

You know what a million is worth? $30,000 a year. That’s based on the 3% rule. That really is the safest amount you can rely on in a stock market account while still factoring in the risk of market drops. In retirement planning, that is a number you can use if you want to be reasonably sure you will not outlive your retirement savings. If you do a whole bunch of math on historic returns, inflation rates, and market bubbles and crashes, historically a 3% withdraw rate would be safe to keep your principal constant over time.

Can you live on $30,000 a year? Maybe, but the median household income in the US is $80,000. Half of households earn more than $80k, half less. Some couples do survive on $30k/year. But not many people would be willing to retire on that lifestyle. A couple with a million in retirement savings can safely earn $30k/year from that investment. That’s it. And this is investing in the stock market. If you invest in inflation-indexed treasury bonds, your safe annual income would be more like $10k per year on a $1 million asset.

In 2025, if you want to retire with retirement income (w/o considering social security) equal to the median US household income? Using the 3% rule, that would require approximately $2.7 million in an investment portfolio.

I know this because this is how we’re handling our own retirement planning. We’re probably going to need $2.5-$3 million in retirement assets. We’re lucky enough that unless things go catastrophically wrong in the US economy, we’ll be able to do it. And our wants aren’t incredible. We would like to have a retirement income right around where the average US household income is. And that will take $2.5-$3 million in retirement savings.

It will be for different reasons, but they’re going to kill the millionaires, too.

I want to try to imagine what that actually looks like.

The billionaires have been raiding the federal budget and debt. Eventually we will hit a wall, and then it will be time for some good old-fashioned crisis austerity! And the president will get on the podium and somberly tell the American people. (Imagine this as someone (of either party) after Trump or feel free to translate this to Trump drivel.):

My fellow Americans. After generations of reckless spending, we have finally reached the end. We have tried to balance the budget, but the opposition party has spent years bleeding the budget dry. You know all they have done. Ultimately this is their fault. But unfortunately, we now are incapable of borrowing the amount of money we need to keep the light on, and tough choices have to be made. We will all need to tighten our belts. Taxes will go up, and reforms will be made to retirement programs…

And then out of nowhere a “must pass” reform package will appear. It will be a thousand pages long. Despite the crisis only appearing this week, the bill have clearly taken years to write. They clearly had this thing written beforehand. And the part that will hit the millionaires the hardest? Severe restrictions on the tax-advantaged provisions of IRAs, 401ks, and home ownership. That’s how ordinary people who amass a few million of their working careers usually manage to do it. That and home equity is where most of the wealth of single digit millionaires is kept.

For 401ks and IRAs, look to see that minimum withdraw range rise higher. Make it so you have to be age 70 to access the funds in your 401k without an early withdrawal penalty. Or apply penalties to social security benefits for those with large 401k and IRA balances. If they were really cynical, the billionaires might even cynically sell this as “taxing the millionaires.”

Look for curtailments to the tax advantages to home ownership. It’s very rare for ordinary people to pay capital gains taxes on any increase in their home’s value when they sell it. When a couples sells a home, they are exempt from the first $500k of home appreciation. Plus there’s the mortgage increase and property tax income tax deductions. Etc.

This is how you effectively steal what remains of the wealth of the middle class. The billionaires use both parties to raid the nation’s credit until it is maxed out. Then they keep the grift going by removing all the tax advantages the middle class has earned for itself over the generations. Then at some point, when that is not enough, taxes will simply be raised, but in forms that fall lightest on the wealthy. There is a reason these guys love tariffs.

I like the idea of setting a wealth cap at 1000x the median household income. That would be somewhere around $80 million today. The reason for this is that this is really the upper limit of wealth that can be achieved through individual direct effort. This is the kind of fortune that a couple could make if they:

• were both neurosurgeons
• both had long careers
• never had kids
• lived like absolute paupers, saving every penny
• invested it all in the stock market In other words, it’s the kind of money that people who get their fortune through actual work could acquire if they absolutely maximize their lifestyle to have the biggest wad of cash at death. Or, perhaps said differently, the highest fortune achievable through the work of your own hands. The highest fortune achievable through ordinary wage labor. I believe 1000x the median household income is a nice round number around that level.

You can certainly earn a fortune larger than this. Again, we’re talking over about $80 million here. Fortunes orders of magnitude larger than this exist. But the only way to earn more than this is not through labor, but through things other than your own work. Being a high level corporate CEO. Inheriting it. Founding a company that makes it big and combines the work of thousands of employees. All of these involve making money primarily through means other than through the work of your own hand and mind.

Can you show any examples in other countries where rallying around the controlled opposition party was sufficient to reverse the tide of fascism?

Mmm sous vide dolphin.

I use the k cups and brewer with a reusable washable pod. You put little paper filters in them.

I’m surprised they haven’t just started building 5g chips right into the tvs. That’s the end goal here. Just make it so the devices don’t even need your cooperation to phone home.

It’s already a huge problem as people DO put contaminated water into these drains, probably due to widespread ignorance.

You talk of ecosystems, but we’re talking about a beverage made entirely of natural biodegradable ingredients. It’s bean water. You may as well complain about the runoff coming out of a nature preserve.

Finally a good use for cryptocurrency.

The idea of a Palestinian state is downright laughable at this point. The only people keeping that myth alive are Israeli propagandists. Keeping the myth of such a state around is a useful distraction from real peace efforts.

Seriously, anyone still clinging to the idea in 2025 is hopelessly out of touch.

Capitalist and commerce are not synonyms.

Martin Luther King considered you his greatest barrier to racial and social justice.

Certainly fatter than those of the starving people you’re complaining about someone trying to help.

More than your fat ass has done lately.