Shit That Just Makes Sense

     In an era that's defined by polarization, I think it's important to spell out my beliefs once in awhile so I'm not just constantly agreeing with "the Left" and disagreeing with "the Right." Also helps to serve as a lil reminder to you all that we shouldn't depend on politicians to generate good ideas and implement them, but rather generate the good ideas and vote in the politicians that agree with us (and/or pressure the ones currently in office). Looking back at some of my old posts, this is really just a continuation of "Backwards Planning Society" (parts 1 & 2). So anyways, here's a list of some real simple ass shit that I think a lot of people can get behind:

     1. Paid family leave. I think it's just intuitive (& pro-life, btw) that people ought to spend time with their newborn children. You can't really say society gives a shit about people if they are forced to give up their livelihoods in order to spend time caring for their children. Miss me with the "if you can't afford to have a kid, then don't"-type argument. That's basically saying only people with money are entitled to participate in what humans have been doing for our entire existence. Which, for the record, is a dumb idea.

     2. Age caps for politicians. If there's a minimum age to serve as a politician, there should be a maximum too. No one thinks it's a good idea for people over the age of 70 to drive - at best, we tolerate it. Why the heck do we accept that these old ass people dictate what society will look like when they won't even be around for as long as everyone else?

     3. Minimum wage needs to be higher and tied to inflation. While I've previously written that the work week should be shorter by now, I would also take this. Anyone who works 40 hours/week should be able to afford, at the very least: the basics + some change. Will this cause inflation? I won't pretend like I know the answer to that, but I do know that:

   - minimum wage hasn't changed for 12+ years and inflation still happened anyways 😂

   - minimum wage increased from 5.85 to 7.25 from 2007-2009 (source) and then just... stopped. Wth?

   - dog shit wages just aren't a good enough incentive to get people to work. Thank God for people a) finally realizing it and b) actively withdrawing their participation

   -  tying it to inflation means we don't have to have this conversation anymore. We set a bar, make sure the bar moves appropriately over time, and voila.

   There you have it - some real obvious ways this country could be better. Now when the heck will the American people start pushing their politicians to clear these (extremely low) bars??

Never Forget

      Every year, on 9/11, it's common to see this reminder: "Never forget." 20 years, 6 trillion dollars, and 900,000 lost lives later, it's worth asking: what do we remember since then?

• That George W. Bush was President at the time, wading into a conflict that would cost all the above and more. This would continue into the presidencies of Obama, Trump, and finally Biden.
  
• Not to let Congress off the hook, Rep. Barbara Lee was the only Congressperson (i.e. the only rep. across the House and Senate) to vote against Authorization for Use of Military Force in 2001. That is to say, almost every other member of Congress approved of this extremely costly and arguably completely ineffective "War on Terrorism"
• Not to let every Congress from 2001 off the hook, the US military budget has increased every year except for a brief decline from 2011-2015. That means in 75% of the years since then, the US military budget has grown. How much "winning" did it get us?
  
• Though many Americans felt a sense of unity, there was also a spike in Islamophobia. Imagine being so stupid that you held Muslim-Americans responsible  for 9/11. That's like blaming Japanese Americans for Pearl Harbor (...!). Not to mention the burden borne by those with brown skin and the endless "random" searches they are subjected to.
  
• That federal agents have snuck fake guns + explosives past TSA agents with a 95% success rate - is the feeling of security really worth it when it's provided by an agency that largely fails at security and mostly serves to obstruct our autonomy to travel with relative convenience? Is the "War on Terror" won when we spend ~8 billion a year on the feeling of security, or is it lost because we have succumbed to the fear?

     Those are just some things I think we should never forget. That when America was hurt, we went for ineffective vengeance. That we reacted in anger and fear, not confidence and courage. Instead of justice, we sought destruction. & for all of the death that we dealt, how offended we were just a few weeks ago when a minuscule measure of it was returned to us.

My Retirement Plan

     What would it take for me to quit teaching? That's a question I've wondered on and off, because that's essentially what retirement is. You quit your job because you don't depend on it anymore, and you're free to do whatever you want. & 29 might sound too young to be thinking of retirement, but the common idea seems to be that there's no such thing as too early to start planning (seriously, the most basic recommendation for retirement planning is to plan ASAP). So, what would it take? The answer is pretty simple, at least for me - & probably you too, so long as you don't have a boundless appetite for consumption. 

     I'm a pretty basic guy - I would need housing, food, enough money to travel & gamble,  and last but CERTAINLY not least - I would need some meaning in life. That's everything that teaching provides for me, at least the very major parts. The first 3 parts - housing, food, $ to travel and gamble - can really all just be boiled down to one thing: money. 

     For my lifetime, I would be surprised if I spent more than 3.5 million on all of that combined. About 2 million on a forever home + property taxes for 60 years, 660k for food ($10 meal for the next 60 years, which I think is on the high end), which leaves ... 840k for traveling and gambling - or about 28k/year, for the next 30 years. Again, I'm using high numbers ON PURPOSE - to contextualize how far money can go and to show that, if you mess around with the numbers FOR YOURSELF, you could actually come up with a real, tangible number that would work for you to retire on. 

     Another thing to consider is that my figure for housing doesn't even take Daisy into account - if we were to split that number right in half, my theoretical share of housing would only amount to 1 million and reduce my retirement figure to 2.5 million. There you have it - at a monetary level, I could retire if I somehow found 2.5 million, post-tax dollars. 

     What about the meaning in life? I like to think I'm a pretty customer-facing guy. I enjoy helping others and there's a slew of skills I would love to pick up, so a few occupations I could dive into are: card dealing, bartending, personal assistant, and concierge - those are just some of the many options I'd be open to, and to my knowledge I wouldn't have a particularly tough time getting into those. 

     So, there you have it. My plan is to find $2.5 million and slide into some other job where I get to work with people/get the satisfaction of helping others.

     If that doesn't work out, I can always teach 'til 65, retire to collect my pension (which works out to 96% of my working salary), and hang out until I kick the bucket  - but that's a worst-case scenario 😅.