Nick M

Comments:

• I would think that's perfectly fine. Gas stoves and open fireplaces are the main concern.

  Post: Our Good Fortune

  Link to comment from May 19, 2024

• I made a single point about a scientific fact. At no point did I claim that this fact negates all technological advantages.

  Post: Our Good Fortune

  Link to comment from May 19, 2024

• Wow, this is a shockingly negative response to a single point of scientific fact.

  Post: Our Good Fortune

  Link to comment from May 19, 2024

• You should probably turn off that gas fireplace. The particulate matter from natural gas combustion is very bad for your health. For example, may cases of asthma in children have been directly linked to gas appliances, and that's just the start of the long list of health impacts. People used to think that since you don't see the smoke it was okay, but as with radon, we now know that invisible gas can do significant harm. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-health-risks-of-gas-stoves-explained/

  Post: Our Good Fortune

  Link to comment from May 18, 2024

• A few counterpoints: #3 While remote roles allow working from anywhere, hybrid roles certainly do not, and in the past year most remote roles have been replaced with hybrid. So the "one big advantage" you reference mostly doesn't exist anymore. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1356325/hybrid-vs-remote-work-us/ #5 HSA plans require you to have terrible high deductible insurance, and no other (i.e. no better) health coverage. The ability to pay less tax on investments is not a substitute for insurance. Confusion around this fact causes many people to throw their money away on variable annuities. See also the counterpoint for#10. https://www.irs.gov/publications/p969 #7 Home prices have tripled since the year 2000, and quadrupled since 1990. Owning a smaller home and less stuff is not an environmental choice, and saying it is was a complete non sequitur. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CSUSHPINSA #8 Nobody should care much about GDP per capita when that increase has gone almost entirely to the wealthiest 5% of households over the past 45 years. https://www.cbpp.org/income-gains-widely-shared-in-early-postwar-decades-but-not-since-then-3 #10 The US has the worst health outcomes of any developed nation. "The US has the highest rates of deaths from avoidable or treatable causes and the highest maternal and infant death rates." https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/31/health/us-health-care-spending-global-perspective/index.html

  Post: Youth May Triumph

  Link to comment from May 18, 2024

• That explanation doesn't align with the timing of the increased rate of change to tuition. We've had student loans since 1958 and Pell grants since 1973, but the rate of change (slope of the line) significantly increase after 2002. In addition, tuition tracked with normal inflation until 1984, and I know of no significant changes to student loan or grant programs during that time. And per your own link "Even if the Bennett hypothesis is true, the lack of a strong correlation suggests that it depicts at best a weak relationship." See the first graph here: https://medium.com/@noamaltzman/keeping-up-with-modern-society-rising-cost-of-higher-education-ce451f052428

  Post: A Man With a Plan

  Link to comment from May 13, 2024

• The 529 plan was in place in 30 states by the year 2000. If you look at a graph of average college costs, the line gets significant steeper starting around 2002. Good thing we had the 529 in place, right? Wrong. This is the classic law of unintended consequences. Colleges realized people now pile up savings in these plans to pay for college, so they were free to increase amenities to attract more of that money. And it's primarily the amenities that make college more expensive. Now after 20+ years, we can see the situation has gone from bad to absurd. That's the problem with the "change B to address problem A" mentality, it invites unintended consequences. A college degree drives income inequality, more than any other factor. As a capitalist I'm fine with that. However, I also believe in equality of opportunity, and the 529 plan is antithetical to that type of equality. Households with money get a tax advantage to make college costs lower, and households without money do not. It's a similar problem to forgiving student loan debt. Those with college experience have higher lifetime earnings. Using tax dollars to pay for that loan forgiveness means those with lower lifetime earnings, those without college degrees; have to pay the bill for those with higher lifetime earnings, those with college degrees. Suburban taxes also do something similar. Suburban infrastructure for water, sewer, gas, electric, and roads require far longer runs, both between neighborhoods and within neighborhoods, than more urban areas. And yet, the property tax paid per unit of that ongoing cost is much smaller in the suburban areas, because it's based on assessed value only. This completely ignores what should be the basis for taxes, the assessed cost of the infrastructure required to maintain a property. So I have zero praise for 529 plans. On the contrary, look forward to the day when people finally wake up and eliminate all of these regressive taxes.

  Post: A Man With a Plan

  Link to comment from May 11, 2024

• People shouldn't care too much about penalties from I Bonds. If someone holds 0% fixed rate I Bonds and plans to hold long term, it would be better to sell them now and rebuy at the current 1.3% fixed rate. Assuming 3% average inflation, a $10k I Bond would grow to $24k at 0% fixed for 30 years, vs growing to $35k at 1.3% fixed over the same period. TIPS may not have a penalty, but they are also a very different financial instrument. $10k in I Bonds purchased January 2020 are worth $12,096 as of April 1, compared to $10,670 for intermediate TIPS. These don't seem interchangeable at all, especially if purchased just to avoid paying a penalty that is in your economic self-interest to pay. My own rule is if the fixed rate is at least 1% higher than an older I bond, I will sell the older one and reinvest at the current rate. The growth difference will more than make up for the taxes and penalty required to do so.

  Post: Ask the Question

  Link to comment from April 24, 2024

• My father took social security at 62 simply because he wanted an excuse to not take any more job offers. Around that time he purchase a variable annuity with many false promises and "features," only to wonder years later why the cash value was never increasing. He also had a portfolio full of high fee funds and dozens of individual stocks, under the management of a high fee advisor. When I first learned of his "portfolio" he was so proud of his annual returns; until I told him the return of a vanilla total stock market index. Considering the fact that his portfolio had no bonds (just a pile of cash used for market timing stocks) and only domestic stocks, his underperformance was significant. I tried to explain better options for both annuities and investments, but after several months it became obvious that he didn't want to hear it. I've since then had one similar experience on my wife's side of the family, with someone who put all of their retirement money into whole life insurance. I learn this when she declared that "everyone should just buy life insurance." I asked a few follow up questions, and she quickly became defensive. People just want to be proud of their decisions, no matter how bad. And even if it's technically possible to change course, doing so would mean admitting how much of a fool they had been up until that point. I've finally learned my lesson. For many people, it's better to die a self-deceiving fool, than to acknowledge having been one in the past.

  Post: Fully Committed

  Link to comment from April 20, 2024

• "It’s in the employer’s best interest to have a viable retirement system to help attract and retain workers." This is not at all my real world experience. It's in the employer's best interest to cut costs and increase shareholder value. That often means offering the minimum viable option for all benefits, including the retirement plan. Prospective employees don't receive full benefit plan details until after they are hired, and that means there is no chance to compare apples to apples. In American we love to say how capitalist we are, all the while creating barriers to actual competition. Medical and 401k plans are acute examples of this false competition in action.

  Post: Could Be Better

  Link to comment from April 20, 2024