Pro tip: If you are going to copy someone's business model, it's helpful to first check if the last step includes things such as "wake up dead in your prison cell."

To be fair, he had the whole wealthy and well-connected thing down before allegedly (yeah, I'm gonna put that there, because I don't want to fall out a window tomorrow) hooking up with underage girls. If you do the hooking up with underage girls part without the wealthy and well-connected part, you'll just end up on the news next to Florida Man.

Okay, fine, let's see some consistency then. If we've established legal precedent that gambling is a-okay, then break out the black jack and hookers (well, legalizing the hookers can be step #2).

The problem I have with this is they've somehow shoehorned prediction markets into some other legal definition where it isn't gambling. That'd be like successfully arguing in court that torrenting Hollywood films isn't actually violating copyright laws, because it's just like loaning your copy of your Blu-Ray to a friend, but over the internet. It's obvious that the only real consistency here, is that the entities with the most money got a ruling in their favor.

South Park did it first.

That would be the original trans panic.

Income classes are based on your earnings relative to the rest of the labor market, not what you're able to buy with your earnings. It wasn't long ago that you'd have to be fairly well off to have a flat screen television in every room - now you can do that even if you're living in poverty.

Having to rent because you can't afford to buy doesn't mean your income is no longer "middle class", it means the housing market has gone nutty foo foo.

A few stories back we had several folks argue that $133k/yr really isn't that good of a living. If they think that's bad, wait until they see what the stipend from a "robot tax" would be when AI takes yer jerb.

I also really doubt the government would just hand you money simply for existing. It's more likely we'd end up with some sort of government jobs program where you pick up trash/dig ditches/etc. - things AI can't do (yet).

If you divided it by three people and expected each of them to live on about $44k/yr, yeah, I'm pretty sure that'd qualify as poverty. But that's not how a family budget actually works. Plus, usually the 3rd person is a dependent child, which confers tax benefits (and health insurance for a dependent child is usually employer subsidized).

That's nothing. I'm so poor I can't afford a new serpentine belt for my Bolt.

Actually, it's more about perspective than math. If you only got 51% of the answers on a test correct, that's pretty bad. If you had a 51% chance of waking up dead tomorrow, you'd probably not be feeling so great about those odds.

If you're making at least $133k a year and can't afford your bills and health insurance, you've overextended yourself. That'd be a genuine case where the proverbial "stop eating so much avocado toast" advice actually applies.

There's no amount of high-end income that is immune to bad budgeting. It would take some extraordinarily bad spending, but even Elon Musk could waste his entire fortune if he really put his mind to it.

With a mobile app and some QR codes on the cattle, now you've got everything you need for dockless cow rentals!

Here in central Florida that's a pretty decent living if you bought your house before the market went crazy. As with a lot of things relating to wealth, there's always the "fuck you, I got mine" factor in play.

A lot of people don't realize how well off they are. Take the median income for example - if you earn more than that, half the US population earns less than you.

It's probably also a bit of a contributing factor to why so many folks on here underestimated how popular the MacBook Neo would be. A cheap computer is a lot easier to dismiss when you've got the budget for something better.

The tech bros previously were investing in fake meat. It went through something of a boom and bust cycle as people eventually realized it wasn't all that healthy and still doesn't taste exactly like real beef. Beyond Meat is close to bankruptcy.

It kind of makes sense, when you think about that most Americans are collectively fine with driving around in a machine that literally pollutes the air as part of its normal operation - from a big obvious tailpipe sticking out the back, no less. The idea that cow farts are somehow causing problems is even more abstract.