The average US household spends around 4000 a month. The fund BND pays 0.2% monthly in terms of dividends. That words out to 20 dollars a month.

Because that is 1 month worth of buffer that you can invest and earn some interest. For most people, it will only be around 5-20 dollars a month of extra interest, but hey, free money.

I think this is the slashdot equivalent of "what's the matter with kansas". Here you have a hated bill whose main backers are the unions and the small businesses and the main opposition is some of the biggest companies in the country, and it is proof that big companies are the problem. Apparently.

Liberalization sounds easy, but it is a painfully hard thing to do in real life. Sun Yat-sen tried to do it in China, but his ideals meant that he was pushed out of power before he could actually do much, and the replacement government was quite the disaster. The man who did bring democracy successfully to the Republic of China was Chiang Ching-kuo, whose reign was known as the "white terror".

Point is, governing well is HARD, and good intentions are not always the same results.

Housing is 42% of the CPI, education is 6.4%, and medical care is 6.4%. While medical care is a bit underweighted due to the fact that insurance picks up the tab for a lot of people, the average wage information doesn't include insurance benefits either, so that is a bit of a wash.

Median wages are static after adjusting for inflation. In other words, it is only static after you factor in all of the rising costs

As Verizon Wireless is legally a separate company, they report finances independently.

Half the population doesn't have a below median number of legs.

(hint... the median is 2)

Why can't you just tape the demo to the judge? Afterwards, just give the recording to everyone.

On the other hand, a random subset of 99 stocks have a VERY good chance of beating the market....