There are actuarial tables that show life expectancy for people at different ages.

I'm not sure how one can give up sugar and drink red wine?

Yeah, say the Paleo diet adds 15 years to your life, you still have to take them at the end...

So, Metro City, the movie version.

That's silly, people lived well into their 40's, 50's, and 60's. Most 60 year old adults are not invalids. Life expectancy of a 20 year old was not vastly different from today, now life expectancy of an infant is another story.

We have at least a cultural instinct, possibly a genetic instinct, to think that people who work a lot deserve to have a lot of possessions and status, while people who work a little or don't work at all deserve nothing.

I disagree. We are trained to think that those who have a lot of possessions or a high status do more work then us. This is almost never true. They might not be doing nothing (might), but they aren't working harder then us.

Sometimes you can see this in new wealthy, or newly promoted. They think they should be working harder, so they make a bunch of decisions they don't know anything about and micromanage people around them. They usually learn better after awhile.

If only...
Power will always be attractive. If you are working, you are making decisions that affect people.

100k is well off anywhere in the country. It's enough money that you can choose to live in an expensive area and make do with less. I guarantee there are people in that same area getting by on $8 - $10 / hour.

When i say well off, I mean historically. I'm talking about someone who can afford to buy a new car, take a vacation, and come up with a couple grand if an emergency comes up.
That's out of reach for a wide swath of the "middle class".

Depends on the minivan. Mileage is not worse then CUV's, it's better in most cases. The ones I've been i are much roomier internally and way easier to get in and out of when you have multiple people. CUV's seem like getting a bunch of people in and out is an afterthought, not purpose designed...

I have one that handles like a car and one that handles more like a small truck, with an incredibly tight turn radius.

Well, three years is not a really long stretch of time. If you read the article you'll note that casualties from tornadoes have remained stable around 50 per year, down from the over 500 in 2011. So it sounds like there was increased activity in 2011, but we've had afew slow years.

It's moronic to equate that to, "so much for climate change..."

I was pondering this very topic during my morning shower. How easy it is for someone to say, skip lunch, don't get cable, live on beans and rice, walk to work, etc...

It's simple to make a temporary sacrifice, when you can see the light at the end of the tunnel and your probably coming off a pretty nice existence.
It's not so simple to make a sacrifice that leave's you treading water, in the same miserable existence. Human nature makes it seem better to enjoy yourself while you can.

Yeah, they'll be sure to satisfy them. They'll have personal service, with cops watching their house at all hours. Their level on police interaction will be so extensive they will definitely be too pleased to complain further.

at least around here, that's flipped. AT&T has made huge strides in customer service.

If only they would have better upstream.

If anyone from AT&T is reading this, we want faster upstream speeds!

That's not true, plenty of places pay the same salary and don't expect more then 40 hours. I know that's something I ask up front when I interview.

Your flat out wrong. If you had read the article, you would see that profits are up, as a percentage of GDP, almost the exact amount that wages are down, as a percentage of GDP. Your calculations are perfect if you are in a vacuum and they make sense to a functional moron (sorry to break it to you).

To put it in simple terms, your bosses are keeping more money and giving you less. Companies are hoarding cash they could easily be paying to employees, and corporations are paying shareholders, or propping up their share price, at the expense of employees.