I have 25 years of experience. I only work remotely from home now. I live somewhere far away with a low cost of living. I never interview in person anymore. It's a little harder to find a job. But my quality of life is much better. I make a little over half what I could if I went into an office every day. But I clear more because of the lower cost of living.

In 5 or 10 years, I expect to have the problem you're describing. When that happens, I plan to cut 10 to 15 years off my resume and look like I'm that much younger.

Treason is a capital offence in the US. And that's exactly what this is.

I assure you I'm no troll. I'm just paying attention.

Now maybe you should put me in prison like Bill Nye says, right?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OBjkn7a-fA

The wealthy don't pay taxes. Ever. Taxes are for you and me. Any tax that's imposed anywhere on the food chain will be passed down to us.

The wealth will own the carbon exchanges and make money off every transaction. It's yet another way to suck the life out of an economy at your and my expense.

Climate change is a lie designed to get you to pay carbon taxes while reversing the industrial revolution (for you).

Forget the 1%. The top 100 wealthiest families in the world are using crap like this to enslave you. They need to be shot.

They're just showing where the settlement boundaries are in Fallout 4.

I'm still looking for vacuum tube based hearing aids. The sound is so much warmer.

My wife's voice falls within the frequency range that I'm losing. I'd prefer not to lose this feature.

How is this different from buses with drivers? That hasn't solved the problem. (Not sure there really is a problem)

I'm amused by all the rose colored glasses I see here. Would it be a good thing if everyone had all the food and medical care they needed and a good place to live? Of course it would.

Do you honestly trust the US government not to abuse this idea? Look at what happened with Obamacare. What we were sold is a European style public health care system where capitalists could still keep their doctor and current plans. What did we get instead? You're forced to buy the coverage they tell you to.

This is where the world is going. ANYTHING given to you by the US government (and all other anglophone and western european governments should be suspect) will be given to you for the specific reason of controlling you and taking your freedom. How hard would it be for them to make your basic income contingent on keeping your mouth shut? And all we would need is an "emergency" to allow the government to round you up and make you work wherever they say. Other governments have done it throughout history. And so will the US.

From there, it would be trivial to create an economic crisis so that you can't work more to get ahead because the work doesn't exist. Good thing there's that government income to rely on, right? Oh look, you can't afford your mortgage or property taxes anymore. Good thing they have a nice 100sqft stack and pack closet for you downtown.

Want to eat? Want to keep your closet? Shut up and do as you're told, slave.

Didn't meet your quota? Well then we have a "fun" camp for you. Don't worry, we'll take care of your wife in a different camp and your children in a third. Want to send your wife an email? Better meet your quota.

Didn't meet your quota, we'll I hear the coal mining industry has jobs, and a convenient camp for you to stay at also. Too bad you can only send your wife an email once a month instead of once a week.

I wonder what happens if you don't meet your quota at the coal mine.

The accounts are in the US. I need to draw the money from there. I don't have a bank account here on purpose because of FACTA.

I'm a US citizen living outside the US. Let me tell you that these chip cards are a nightmare for us. They work about 50% of the time, with no rhyme or reason as to when they'll work or why. Trying the card a second time sometimes works. Sometimes the machines ask for PIN codes when there isn't one, other times not. When this happens, I can enter any random number and the transaction goes through. A card will work at a particular gas station one day, then not the next, then works again the following day. The cards will usually work in one store, or almost never work in another store.

Locals with the new machines have no idea what they're doing. Sometimes they swipe cards with no magnetic stripe. Sometimes they pull the card out before the transaction is done. Sometimes they argue with me telling me it's a debit card when it's a credit card.

And in all cases, whenever the card doesn't work at a purchase, the error message is "declined".

My chip Visa ATM cards work in almost no machines here, while the magnetic stripe cards did. Some give the wrong menu options on ATM machines, allowing "savings account" as the only option when I have only a checking account. Others work or don't at random. The error message is useless. Or sometimes I get different error messages depending on whether I select english or spanish at the ATM. In general, I have about a 1 in 5 chance of extracting some amount of money from a machine. When I call the customer support number on the back of the card, they swear up and down the card works just fine.

I'm slowly removing myself from a reliance on banks and even money in general. These idiotic chip cards are only encouraging me to hasten my exit.

I'm convinced this is about 10% pilot error at the point of sale, and 90% a technical problem on the bank servers in the US. The development was probably outsourced to the lowest bidding indian consulting firm.

I'm intrigued by your ideas and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

"Honestly, honey, the kids were jumping on the bed."

My vote is for active sabotage. Seriously. IT workers should get together and make an example of one of these companies. If enough of them did it, there would be no proof of who did what left to prosecute. Just like the guy who deleted all the websites the other day. One person "forgets" to unmount the backup directories, another makes a dangerous mod to a script. Maybe someone "accidentally" adds neodymium coin magnets to backup tapes. It would be a shame if that credit card database ended up on tor.

Seriously, stop bending over and taking it. Throw a wrench into the machines. Fight back. If you don't, you'll end up a slave.