OT: Hee! Hee!

Are you putting in Obamacare as an exemption? I would suggest that those getting the largest subsidies aren't paying any federal income taxes.

The cost of medical care run that way is less than American health care

- about half the price in the UK, where it is a bit Spartan, and about two thirds of the price in places like France, Germany and the Netherlands, where it isn't.

Where is the line when you are rich? How about the top 20%? That's about $125,000 a year. They paid 87% of the Federal taxes in 2016. I'd say that is MOST of the cost and way more than most.

"On average, those in the bottom 40 percent of the income spectrum end up getting money from the government. Meanwhile, the richest 20 percent of Americans, by far, pay the most in income taxes, forking over nearly 87 percent of all the income tax collected by Uncle Sam.

The top 1% pay 43.6% of Federal income taxes.

I'm surprised you are not aware of this, you normally have decent arguments, you fell flat this time. Mikek

It depends on the engineer's goals. If he or she wants to always be involved in a wide variety of projects there are only two career paths, app engineer or independent consultant. For me only the latter works because, for example, the way some big manufacturers treat customers these days would p... me off to no end and I wouldn't want to have any part of that.

One of my first contacts into LTC is a really good engineer whom you probably also know. He was the living proof of great customer support and for two decades. Now that they were bought by AD, support is another story.

Employed work is ok and I did it twice. However, I get bored when exposed to only one market all the time, I need the sizzle of variety.

--
Regards, Joerg 

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

So ask them what Keith also doesn't seem to understand: Where would they get that $6000 from if they opted to non-insure and pay the penalty instead?

The deductible only needs to be paid when one gets sick. And that's what Bush signed the HSA legislation for. We immediately got in on that.

I still drive my 1997 Mitsubishi SUV and my wife her 1996 Toyota Corolla. Our car expensies are miniscule and we never had any car payments.

Attaboy :-)

He will probably be a one-percenter. Those 1% who have enough savings and no debt once they are your age. He'd also likley be hated by leftists.

--
Regards, Joerg 

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

Yeah, right, and then they try their utmost to get into our country, legally or not.

Huh? It is first and foremost dependent on how the residents _inside_ the country feel about it. What do I care if commies hate us? They'll always hate us because they can never get what we've got.

It sure can help a lot though. Policies set by the upper caste on the hill can make a huge difference about the greatness of a country. Just imagine for a millisecond how great and happy our population would feel if our presidents had been Chavez, Maduro, Castro or Mugabe.

As for me, on this last day of 2017 (and the other days) I am thankful to live in a free and fairly happy country.

--
Regards, Joerg 

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

I've been lucky to spend most of my career with outfits (including my own) with incoherent marketing, people who stumbled around and would try anything. That keeps it fun.

It's like consulting across multiple sciences and industries, but keeping the resulting IP and manufacturing stuff. The only downside is maybe the long-term accumulation of support requirements, which a consultant is not obligated to do.

I'm looking for someone to offload our NMR product line onto, for support. Agilent acquired Varian and killed the NMR and FTMS product lines, so we still support the units in the field, at a rate that is between profitable and annoying. I'd hate to just tell people that "we don't support that any more" and have their million-dollar superconductive magnet become useless.

--

John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics

Obamacare was sold as "bending the cost curve down" but it did the opposite. The real probem with US health care is its outrageous cost.

No politician is brave or foolish enough to address that.

--

John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics

' I meant to say my '97' Toyota T-100. Still a nice looking truck. One-percenter, maybe, maybe not, but a 5 percenter is not that difficult, even on a middleclass income. If, you are a saver. I guess the leftists hate the rich for paying most of this countries bills. Mikek

Your business is an exception, hard to find. When you work in a business concentrated on one market, for example in med tech, there is very little or sometimes no out-of-the-box-thinking in marketing. Yet those guys are trying to control the business. That is one of the reasons why I am not unhappy to have left that field as an employee.

Consultants are. I often get calls from companies I only vaguely remember as clients. Wait a minute, oh, yeah, nineteen-sumpthin ...

The topper was a company where I improved the EMC performance of a machine they had OEM'ed from another company. More than a decade later the phone rang. "Well, we have a huge problem at a site and once upon a time you had helped us. Unfortunately we .. ahem .. how shall I say ... don't have any of the documentation. Do you happen to still have it and could help us again?". When I said that I did the guy almost gave me a bear hug through the phone.

Sounds like a perfect job for a retired engineer who enjoys traveling. Some married people discover after retirement that they go on each other's nerves and it's either that or the marriage hits the skids. They are not used to being together 24/7. I once worked alongside a guy who was nearing 80. "Why are you still working?" ... "Because else my wife and I would no longer be married. She said so".

--
Regards, Joerg 

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

Phhht. This is _now_ and they broke yet another waiting list record, not a positive one:

With all your Thatcher-phobia you forgot that she ain't queen no more since a long, long time :-)

--
Regards, Joerg 

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

Of course. I was just pointing out that the use of the word "right" misses the point entirely and makes the entire argument invalid. Health care *CAN'T* be a "right", any more than a new BMW every year can be a "right".

On the contrary, a "right" is a constraint on other people and doesn't have any significance until there are other people in position to do something to constrain your rights.

Do tell us about the bit of the genome that encodes "rights".

What krw might be thinking about, if we dignify what he posts by imagining that it might be generated by thought, as opposed to knee-jerk reflex, could be

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

Being endowed with something by your Creator - also known as the intelligent designer who crafted your DNA - doesn't make that something "natural".

The point about health care, that also eludes people - like James Arthur - who have quite a lot more sense than krw, is that it is primarily aimed at preventing plague, which is to say run-away episodes of infectious disease.

Your "right" to get sick and wander around infecting other people interferes with other people's right to stay healthy.

Krw's grasp of what might be "correct" is decidedly imperfect.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

ns

t, and all the other citizens in the same country, or at least those with e nough money to pay taxes (which is most of them).

Obamacare is an improvement in America's catastrophically bad system of pay ing for health care. Since I was talking about non-American systems, it doe sn't come into it.

y federal income taxes.

Probably true. Since health care is more about preventing plagues of infect ious disease, "subsidy" is not the right word. Non-tax payers don't pay for military defence either, but nobody calls the protection they get without having paid for it a "subsidy". It one of those benefits that tax-payers bu y that has to benefit non-tax-payers as well if it is going to work for the tax payer.

t pay most of the cost, or anything like it.

The line where you are rich in the US cuts off the top 1% of the income dis tribution, and has been since Reagan came to power.

Since then essentially all the growth of the US economy has ended up in the pockets of that group, and the remaining 99% haven't seen any improvement in their situation.

About half the US population doesn't pay any tax at all - too young, too ol d or too busy with child-rearing.

The fact that the top 20% pays 87% of the tax collected, while the less suc cessful 30% that does pay some tax only pays 13% is a reflection of the fac t that the US is a grossly unequal society (which creates it's own problems ).

most_Always_Do_Better

come-tax/

Since I was explicitly talking about non-US societies US statistics are ent irely irrelevant.

You seem to be degenerating into a clone of krw, addressing the question yo u would have liked me to raise, rather than addressing the point I was rais ing, which is that every non-US advanced industrial country has universal h ealth care, and pays for it out of their own citizen's pockets.

The better-off pay out more than the less well-off exactly as happens with defense, and for exactly the same reason - if the well-off want health or d efense, it has to be paid for, and only they have enough money to pay for s omething that can work.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

I saved more than was paid while I was in the Army, in the '70s. I repaired stereos and TVs for other GIs.

"On average, those in the bottom 40 percent of the income spectrum end up getting money from the government. Meanwhile, the richest 20 percent of Americans, by far, pay the most in income taxes, forking over nearly 87 percent of all the income tax collected by Uncle Sam.

The top 1% pay 43.6% of Federal income taxes.

You snipped the part about the lower 40% of wage earners end up getting money from the government, err I mean the hardworking taxpayers. I put it back in for you.

I don't know what you were trying to convey in the line above. Please restate the line above. Are you saying you're not rich until you make $717,000 a year? That's what the top 1% earn. The top 20% earn 2.25 times more than the mean US income of $56,000. However, most earning $125,000 would not think they are rich. But they are. Mikek

in

ions

it, and all the other citizens in the same country, or at least those with enough money to pay taxes (which is most of them).

paying for health care. Since I was talking about non-American systems, it doesn't come into it.

any federal income taxes.

fectious disease, "subsidy" is not the right word. Non-tax payers don't pay for military defence either, but nobody calls the protection they get with out having paid for it a "subsidy". It one of those benefits that tax-payer s buy that has to benefit non-tax-payers as well if it is going to work for the tax payer.

e

n't pay most of the cost, or anything like it.

come-tax/

Largely because they have got their claws into a spectacularly large chunk of the money flowing around the US economy. Trump seems dedicated to lettin g them pay less tax on what they cream off, but he is a member of that 1%.

You didn't need to. I had my own line, which I'll re-post below.

"The better-off pay out more than the less well-off exactly as happens with defense, and for exactly the same reason - if the well-off want health or defense, it has to be paid for, and only they have enough money to pay for something that can work."

It covers the point, if not from your point of view.

distribution, and has been since Reagan came to power.

The operational definition of "the rich" is that "the rich get richer". In the US at the moment you have to be in the top 1% of the income distributio n, earning $717,000 per year more, to be likely to be in that happy state.

Anybody earning less is not likely to get richer, and will probably get poo rer.

Other countries keep the more rapacious under better control, and you don't have to earn as much to have a reasonable prospect of eventually getting a larger slice of the pie.

So what. You've made an arbitrary choice of cut-off , and have totally fail ed to justify your choice. My choice of the top 1% of the US income distrib ution as "the rich" was perfectly rational, and explicitly justified - tho ugh you don't seem to be willing to follow the logic.

Nobody thinks that they are "rich". They can almost always see people who h ave more money than they do.

You have to set an explicit boundary, and setting it on the basis that the rich get richer strikes me a eminently sensible.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney

Definitely does not apply to those that make an effort to get ahead. Effort is living on less than you earn. Many people do not try that. We have been doing well earning about $75k. I got richer during the Obama years with doubling my net worth. I hope the Trump years do as well. 2017 was spectacular. Check out MrMoneyMustache for a different mindset about spending.

and the forum, with people living the frugal lifestyle.

It all depends on their spending, if you save, many good things happen.

But I got richer on $75k and much less than that for many many years, we only started doing well in the last 15 years. But managed to save money even when not as doing well. I had one year when we saved 41% of our income. Just haven't kept track of that other years. This year my NW increased many times my earned income, but by your definition, I'm not rich. And far from the 1%.

The key is living on less than you earn and not having lifestyle inflation as your income increases. Invest in the total stock market, having invested at the right time period helps immensely. Can't help you with that. There are just to many whiners, it's to hard cause the rich are taking it all. The rich are the problem, wah, wah, wah. Just stop spending, you have needs and wants, wants are not needs! Shut up and go visit MrMoneyMustache, while I figure out if I qualify for the 20% pass through deduction. Heck they might even give me back some of your money. :-)

Mikek

me distribution, and has been since Reagan came to power.

In the US at the moment you have to be in the top 1% of the income distrib ution, earning $717,000 per year more, to be likely to be in that happy sta te.

e/

poorer.

A favourite bit of US mythology, but not a useful observation.

wrote "Capital in the 21st Century" to document the thesis that if you have more money to start with you are at a competitive advantage. If you have a lot more money, you can hire people to invest more aggressively for you, a nd his example was US university endowment funds. Those worth less than $10

0 million got a return on capital of 6.2% and those worth more than a billi on got 8.8%.

The current US statistics shown that if you aren't in the top 1% of the US income distribution, your income is unlikely to go up, while if you are tha t happy group it is very likely to increase.

on't have to earn as much to have a reasonable prospect of eventually getti ng a larger slice of the pie.

failed to justify your choice. My choice of the top 1% of the US income dis tribution as "the rich" was perfectly rational, and explicitly justified - though you don't seem to be willing to follow the logic.

ho have more money than they do.

the rich get richer strikes me a eminently sensible.

But if you had had more money to start with you would have done much better .

n we saved 41% of our income. Just haven't kept track of that other years. This year my NW increased many times my earned income, but by your definiti on, I'm not rich. And far from the 1%.

It is a statistical assertion, and as such allows exceptions, though not al l that many of them.

All good advice, but if you start off with a lot of money it is a lot easie r to live on less than you earn, and the difference you have to accumulate grows a lot faster.

The problem in the US is that the advantage you get from having money does seem to trump application and natural ability. The US has a relatively low rate of intergenerational social mobility, and a lot of the people who have enough money to influence society do so because their parents and grandpar ents accumulated that money, and aren't making choices that influence socie ty in a way that is going to make life more difficult for their kids.

Since I don't pay US taxes, there's no way you are going to get any of my m oney.

US companies that trade in Australia pay remarkably little tax to the Austr alian government, so you may end up getting money that should have been pai d to my government, but that's another story.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney