Still, you want a paid for house by the time you reach retirement. Rent goes up much faster than property taxes and repair costs (esp with a home warranty).

The key is when you retire.

Rent goes up faster than retirement income.

I use a home warranty service. As long as you don't try to sign up and then get a repair higher than your annual premium right away they are pretty reasonable. And their repair people are REPAIR people which is nice. A feeling of comfort knowing my max bill will be $65 too. No phony recommendations "well this is so old, better we replace it for several thousand dollars!

And predictable costs which is good when retired.

And homes are tremendously overpriced due to low interest rates. Even when rates just return to 2% (and home loans to 6%), you could see homes lose 16% (or more) of their value.

On the flip side of this, there are many stations which have no conveniences and which have no operator 8 to 12 hours per day. I expect these are much more profitable than traditional stations.

They have controls in place that require executive approval of all changes. Any unapproved changes are a firing expense. So the little tuning changes we always used to do for "free" can't be done. Likewise, the changes won't be approved since by management point of view, there is no value to the activity since it is not a feature (this is true at small companies too- had a developer bend my ear on this issue literally today a few hours ago).

Be a man, in response to revealing our massively illegal behavior which you had no legal way to address and protecting most the citizens of this country (slightly) from our invasinos, we'll put him in a solitary cell for the rest of his life.

Just to make sure no one else ever makes the mistake of trying to protect the country from our illegal behavior.

There is no such thing as an idiot proof flat tax.

Businesses by their nature have very complicated taxes. We'll let them write off a $45,000 truck to deliver product but not a $45,000 mercedes (unless you are in the limo business in which case, you might be able to after all).

Wealthy people, by their nature, have very complicated taxes. Is this a business trip or a holiday? Is this a business lunch or a personal lunch?

We can reduce the loopholes (temporarily) but corporate bought representatives will put them right back in. The flat tax by it's nature is either regressive OR has a massive deduction for everyone which means many of the poorest won't be paying taxes (just like now).

Each share of the national spending last year was $10,000 for every baby, child, senior, and working person. It's about $20,000 if you restrict it to adults who have earnings. That means- unless people can earn well over $20,000 there is not point in working under a totally flat tax. Which means it must be progressive (you have to take money from those who have money to pay).

AND it ignores state and local taxes which are currently higher on the poor than the middle class and higher on the middle class than on the wealthy in every single state. In some states, it's 12.9% for the poorest but under 1% for the wealthiest.

It's pretty simple. Do you want to vote for corporate sock puppet #1 or #2?

But the republican sock puppets are very much against my self interest. The party has drifted a long way from when I voted for three republican presidents in a row.

While the right calls Obama a socialist, he's really a capitalist corporate servant.

To be fair, the system has been so rigged at this point, that unless you are an independently wealthy socialist, you are going to have to sell out to capitalistic corporate interests to be elected.

And that's why we vote. To come to a democratic, collective decision.

And each of us tolerates the decisions we were in the minority on.

I don't like subsidizing sports stadiums but they got 51% of the vote.

I voted republican for Reagan and Bush Sr. and then the republicans went bat shit crazy (measurably so on 528.com) with reagan republicans having a '32" conservative ranking while Ted Cruz has a over 60 ( I think it's "68"). Democrats have stayed about the same in the 20's.

So now, I vote democratic. I don't like all they stand for but no way I'm voting for the extreme right wing conservative party the republicans have become. But... if 51% of the country elects a republican candidate then I'll tolerate it for 4 years because that's the collective decision of our democratic republic.

Aye, and if you count the two trillion dollars we spent to protect oil fields, the subsidies are much higher than people realize for oil.

Imagine ... if we didn't do that. And oil went to $300 a barrel. We would have automatically gone to less expensive cars, solar would have surged into demand along with other alternative energies. We might have even worked on smaller, safer self contained- no human intervention nuclear power.

But since we engage in massive subsidies for sports stadiums, oil companies, banking companies-- I think the benefit (much lower cost solar panels) of subsidizing the early expensive iterations of solar panels will be a good bang for the buck. And reduce our need to spend two trillion dollars again in the future.

Things are so much better since we cut taxes for the wealthy.

The infrastructure is crumbling and college tuition which was free or nearly free now costs more than a luxury car at state universities.

We should have more of this dog eat dog stuff until we can share the glorious french experience of 1789 to 1799.

math error... $4200 for the three cars or $600 per person vs $1400 for the single driver.

They wandered off for a while but...They are putting out a huge number of science fiction and fantasy series.

I hope folks watch
Ascension
Defiance
Killjoys
12 Monkeys
Bitten
Dark Matter
Continuum (returns fall)
Haven (returns fall)
Helix (returns fall)
Z-nation (September)
Childhood's End (December)
Lost Girl (2016)

Not SciFi but related...
Face Off

Plus various one off movies... and of course Sharknado.

Hmm. on second thought... ;-)

http://www.syfy.com/shows

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Can't see anything good coming from this merger.
Cable and internet rates are insane right now.

700 watt Microwave ovens cost $300 twenty years ago.

You can get one for $70 now. you can get a 1200 watt Microwave oven.

Somethings do seem to be going up (like cable TV for now- it's insane).

But where you have competition between different companies, they do sell on price.

Customers have price options all the time.