Chris Rush

Comments:

• Read the article or don't. It appears obviously relevant in my view to the way you framed your post. No more from me on this.

  Post: In defense of billionaires

  Link to comment from October 2, 2024

• Curious that just posting the headlines of a NY Times story gets so many down votes.

  Post: In defense of billionaires

  Link to comment from October 1, 2024

• The individual billionaire who owns the problematic social media outlet. It's hard to get more on point.

  Post: In defense of billionaires

  Link to comment from October 1, 2024

• You ask in your article "What exactly is the problem?" I simply provide an example.

  Post: In defense of billionaires

  Link to comment from September 30, 2024

• Here's the headline and sub-headline on a story by Stuart A. Thompson in the NY Times last Friday (Sept 27): "5 Days With Elon Musk on X: Deepfakes, Falsehoods and Lots of Memes" "Almost a third of 171 posts last week from the X owner were false, misleading or missing vital context."

  Post: In defense of billionaires

  Link to comment from September 29, 2024

• An annuity for those without pensions can help ensure (along with SS) that the money is there for basic expenses, allowing one to take on more risk in the equity portion of their portfolio to deal with inflation. This is a Fidelity strategy that I think makes good sense. Fidelity holds that no more than 50% of retirement funds should be put into an annuity. I'm at 20% (or only 10% if lumping my retirement savings in with my wife's).

  Post: Sequence of Return Risk

  Link to comment from September 29, 2024

• Hard to beat paying off the mortgage for peace of mind. But if one has a large, fixed-rate mortgage (so no housing inflation worries) and the cash to pay it off, actually using the cash to do so is not necessarily the best financial move. There is also peace of mind holding that cash (especially recently, with savings rates 200 to 300 basis points above the mortgage). One might also take more risk by putting some of the cash into equities. In my situation, right now online calculators advise keeping the mortgage (a 30-50k advantage over time). So, one can factor opportunity cost into the equation. All of this assumes looking at one's total financial picture and having adequate resources to deal with all known expenses going forward.

  Post: Hedging your bet in retirement-dealing with inflation. What’s your strategy? R Quinn

  Link to comment from September 29, 2024

• My main point is well captured in your paragraph about billionaires behaving badly as do the rest of us. My intention was not to single out billionaires, but to object to Richard's white-washing of the whole lot of them, as though there are not glaring problems. Re: tobacco, yes, "now" there are warnings, but remember how long the coverup of scientific data by Philip Morris and the rest went on. Only legal action changed their focus on the bottom line alone. Those warnings did not appear as a voluntary action.

  Post: In defense of billionaires

  Link to comment from September 28, 2024

• Amen.

  Post: In defense of billionaires

  Link to comment from September 28, 2024

• "History" is the key word, so racism and all of its multi-generational injustices are now in the past?

  Post: In defense of billionaires

  Link to comment from September 26, 2024