It is really amazing how much costs of living for basic stuff (groceries, rent, car / rail pass, etc.) varies across the country. I am making about as much now, living in Boston, as Rugen and I made together when we lived in San Antonio. And the cost of living in TX for two people and three pets was less than my current cost of living in Boston with one person and two pets.

I'm actually losing money every month living here. My friends from school who stayed in TX and are working Big 4 make 10K - 15K less than I do, but there's all much better off in terms of purchasing power.

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Hope is the new black.

I almost took a job in Warwick, NY, north of NYC... quite rural. The property taxes were almost 10 times what I pay here in suburbia, GA. Literally, my property taxes were going to be the same as my mortgage, if we had bought the house we were looking at. And unfortunately, I was not going to be doubling my pay.

city-data.com is a great site if you want to do comparisons.

damn, I have a 2-story 4 bedroom house in the suburbs of Dallas and my electric bill rarely gets into the $200 range during the summer. We did install a completely new AC and Heating system and re-did the insulation in the attic and my house is very comfortable during the hot Texas summers.

Also, my wife is the champion of coupon clippers. She is able to get $300 worth of groceries for $100. So our family of four grocery bill is just around $150 a week (counting eating out maybe once or twice a week)

In a way, the bailout stuff is even worse than food stamps, though Tarot's analogy is mostly right on.

With the bailout money and the CEO's just expecting wheelbarrows of money to come rolling into their pockets from Uncle Sam....these are people who failed at their jobs, who's businesses SHOULD have went under, who - in part - failed their stockholders, employees, etc.

And now they want - no, they EXPECT - us taxpayers to just throw money at them so they can afford their yachts and limos and mansions? Why? Any other citizen in that kind of position would be told to piss off or get into significant trouble for their actions, but because they're corporate big wigs it's all good.

The money isn't there to make the CEO's happy and comfy. The money is there to get the business back on its feet, to save the jobs of the employees, to help the economy.

Whining that your free $500,000 from the taxpayers is just not enough after you fucked your business up? Fuck off, man. Seriously, just fuck off. Jump in a lake.

the problem isn't wholly that their salary is capped (that is another argument), the problem is that they expected and received bail-out money. The first bail-out was a failure and any additional bail out monies will continue and prolong the problem. If this bill passes won't that be somewhere in the neighborhood of two and a half to three trillion dollars in bailout/stimulus money that the government just created? The inflation monster that this is creating is going to make the Carter Malaise Years seem like a picnic. Unemployment is going up, credit has dried up, the only thing that we haven't really been hit with is rapid inflation.

That is NOT what the government is doing here.

These are people coming to the government asking for money to save their business and the government saying, "Ok, but actually use it to save the business, not pad your pockets with money from a business that you claim is at risk of failing."

I don't live in Atlanta, therefore my reality differs from yours. What I've described is dead on for Southern Arizona. Job market here is booming, too. Guess we just don't have the shit end of the stick like everyone else appears to lately.

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As an aside, most single adults don't live in a 4 bedroom house.

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*first post here in many many many months*

Any business that is going to take money from the tax payers because their business is failing... Should be put under SO MANY regulations and salary caps and etc. that it makes them choke.

*said by a conservative* *gasp*

This isn't about the government taking over all private industry it's about setting rules and regulations for business that want to live off the government tit.

If they don't want this type of regulations then don't take the money and solve your own problems.

I was and am totally against bailing out these industries to begin with but if they want this money then they have to live with the strings.

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"My doctor says that I have a malformed public-duty gland and a natural deficiency in moral fibre and that I am therefore excused from saving universes."

My last apartment was 700 square feet, I ran the AC at 72 during winter, and the heat (electric, which made me cry a little since it's not nearly as efficient as gas) at 68 during winter, and my electric bill was around $100-120/mo depending on various factors such as how much I cooked at home and if there was anything good on tv

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World of Warcraft: Kallaystra, Gweila, Steakumn, Tarathia [ Feathermoon/Horde ]

A single person making between min wage and 8 dollars an hour just can't live a viable life without roommates. (not one that I want to live)

I remember back about probably 10 years ago I worked as a security guard for 40 hours a week at 8.50 an hour (if memory serves)

My take home pay was $502 every 2 weeks. That is 1k a month.

I lived in Colorado Springs at the time - pretty normal cost of living. Try living on that. Even if you can, you can never save up any money for anything like a car repair or a deposit for an apartment.

When I went to college I lived on 1200 a month - with roommates. That was doable, but how often do roommate situations last for any length of time?

Sad fact is, a huge % of our population are making between 5-8 bucks an hour - just nobody wants to admit it. Think, every store, every restaurant, and every other shitty job you can think of - If you are lucky you can get a sweet position and make 12 bucks an hour.

I dunno, I have lived that life, and it is had. Damn hard. What is the alternative though? Every society needs a slave class.

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Maybe you could have saved some money had you not run the AC when your house was 72 in the winter and the heat when it got to 68 in the winter, Just running one of the two per season would be the best... I know what you meant but I could not pass up making a smart ass comment.

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Devil

Build a man a fire, and he's warm for the night.
Set a man on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.

Government programs already exist for those cases. Career minimum wage earners and the uninsured can be covered under Medicaid/Medicare. There's just no reason in my mind to throw everyone into a government run program when one currently in place can be expanded to cover those who cannot afford health care for 1/10th the price of the bailout. Unless it's a sizable segment of the population that requires assistance, and this is not the case.

National health care will further isolate those who can afford quality, because government is interested in mass utility not individual quality. If we're all paying in, then private insurance will fall to those who can double pay. Medicare, which can be taken as a semi-direct example, is no less litigious regarding coverage than an insurance company.

The problem is health 'insurance" isn't really insurance, it is pooled cost-sharing. In order for private health care to be affordable, it has to be done on a large-group basis. For a large employer, it is fairly easy to keep costs affordable, because the healthy 20-somethings who go to the doc for their annual physical and not much else subsidize the costs incurred by families with children, people on maintenance medications, etc.

So in order for a large employer to keep coverage affordable for all of its employees, it needs to keep those healthy people in the pool. But healthy people are the first ones to drop out of the pool once costs rise. And having them leave the pool leaves fewer premiums to cover maintenance meds, shots for small children, etc., which makes the costs rise even more when the premium is negotiated the following year, which makes more people opt out, etc.

And the smaller the group, the more premium pressure there is, to where private individual health insurance tends to be not only extremely hard to get, but extremely expensive. I had friend who was self-employed and an amateur body builder in perfect health, but because he was 5'10" and about 215 lbs of muscle, he couldn't get insured because his BMI labelled him "overweight".

I really forsee a point where so many people have had to drop private coverage that Medicaid / Medcaire becomes all but de facto for the middle class, from a combination of employers' premiums becoming untenable and employers dropping plans all together. Frankly, I'd rather see the government adopt a nationalized plan ahead of time in a deliberate fashion then keep adding people in piecemeal.

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Hope is the new black.

Bearne, you are a lot more right than you are wrong, but I will toss this in - health insurance can actually be "insurance". Medical Savings Accounts and other types of insurance where you cover your day-to-day but catastrophic costs are covered by insurance.

We need a system where people own their health care and only have catastrophic costs covered. Below a certain income, people are given an allowance for coverage = MSAs dammit. It's so easy. Make me king prz.

ANyhoo, just my 32 cents.

I remember when stamps were only 32 cents... ahh, the good old days. lol

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MSAs are fine but they need to be restructured so you don't lose your money at the end of each year. If they found a way to do that more people would participate.

I live in the UK and work for the NHS (National Health Service) and find your fear of a "If you are sick we will try to help you, no questions asked" system utterly baffling. It's not like you can't still go private if you can afford it.

Try taking away the NHS from the British these days, fuck right to chose, EVERYONE deserves decent health care in any developed country.

I'm stunned that people still try to argue against it.

Anti-government sentiments are pretty commonplace and - well, I almost want to say trendy - in the US.

A lot of people aren't even sure why they're railing against something, they just know that "government" got attached to it and it's now a bad thing for some reason.

Yes! You are so right here.

The MSA's that I had in the past allowed for roll-over of unspent funds.

After a year here, any my experiences with the NHS, let's just say I am a big fan of "you get what you pay for" and can't wait to be home (where I've had to keep my medical care based while living abroad for various simple reasons such as the thryoid medication I am on is apparently not NHS approved and I couldn't get a single doctor to write a script for it).

I am not exactly going to argue against it, as I do believe everyone should be entitled to at least some basic care/emergency care...but I certainly won't be embracing it for myself. I think a middle ground needs to be reached where that basic/emergency care is there, but the private system currently in place can continue forward. Giving service to all shouldn't = shittier service for everyone, and that has been my experience in the UK thus far. :p I am not a fan of "make it as difficult as possible for someone to see a medical professional until the situation becomes an emergency"...it does not account for proactive healthcare at all, just reactive.

Admittedly, I did not have the chance to utilize the work based private insurance offered, but it was my understanding that you had to "exhaust" the NHS before it could be used, and I personally found flying 12+ hours home to see my doctor far less annoying than what I got at the NHS, so I just tossed it aside because I knew I was going back soon anyway.

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Well different trusts work differently of course and I'd like to think that the trust I work for is one of the better ones (I know it is, we received an "excellent" from the latest review). Certainly at a GP level I think the NHS falls behind and things are a long way from perfect. Have you been taken to hospital rather than a GP at any stage while you've been here? Doctors can be a frustrating experience sometimes I agree.

My argument isn't that you couldn't get better healthcare elsewhere but more if my grandmother falls in the street and breaks her hip, her first thought shouldn't be "I can't afford this."

My father was diagnosed with cancer 3 and a half years ago, the drugs, operations and subsequent care were all covered by the NHS. He's now 3 years cancer free and he didn't have to spend his life savings to receive the treatment. I'm glad I live somewhere where that would be the case for anyone who walked through the hospital door. I can't imagine living any other way now.

You are confusing MSAs (also called Health Savings Accounts) with FLEXIBLE SPENDING ACCOUNTS.

No wonder the public is so damn confused!

Flex accounts are a different animal (although it is the same GENERAL idea).
In a flex account you commit to fixed amount over the course of the year and that money is available to you immediately and you pay it back over the course of the year. What you don't spend at the end of the year is lost. Frankly, I think these are sorta shitty. The only way I would ever use one is if I knew for a fact I was going to incur significant medical expense in the upcoming year.

MSA/HSAs are different - the money you put in is YOURS. It actualy works almost identically to a traditional IRA except for 3 primary reasons:
1. You can withdrawl for qualified medical expenses at any time and the withdrawl is tax free.
2. You can only invest dollars in the stock market above a given "safe level", such as $2000 or something. That is, if I have $6000 in my account, I can only invest the $4000 - I have to keep $2000 in cash.
3. Different deposit limits

Not that it makes much difference in the discussion but minimum wage is $6.55 nation wide adding an extra 3k to that example persons pocket a year and it goes to $7.25 on july 24.

if they still have a job...

Actually they could probably already retire on whatever they have already made. They maintain a certain lifestyle because it is what people expect from them. If they don't project success then potential business partners might be turned off and not what to do business with them causing their companies to make less money. CEO and other executives pay/lifestyle is in part a PR expense.

aka what's wrong with us in the first place.

From Time's blog:

You ain't just whistlin' dixie!

Raising the minimum wage at this point will force strapped employers to lay off even more employees. I believe it should be raised but not in the middle of a recession, that is economic suicide.

Yeah, and frankly everytime I am out shopping lately, it seems like I either have to ring up my own purchase (ikea, groceries, home depot) or wait in line for 20 minutes.

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I'll say again that I'm really surprised that these guys have the balls to stand up in front of the American populace - many of which are out of jobs completely and struggling, panicking, etc - and say that 500,000/year isn't enough for them.

I mean, we all know that they'll find ways around it, find ways to cheat us out of the bailout money and buy another yacht, they're already doing it. (Check out how much Merril Lynch just gave their execs.) but to actually get up and complain to us about it? Wow.

I'm seriously starting to wonder if we're not going to see some real rioting going on around the nation. It seems like so many people are starting to really feel slapped in the face and trampled on while the "elite" and shit are burning fifty-dollar-bills to light their cigars...while bitching that they need us to give them some hundreds to do it with.

The whole thing is difficult for me.

I think people who take risks and build SOMETHING should be allowed to become unimagineably wealthy. But, at a certain point enough is enough. Also, lots of executives really haven't BUILT anything. They've played a game and worked their way to the top, but ultimately they aren't creators, and in many cases aren't that good.

So on one hand, limiting income seems un-American, but on the other it seems very American.

I am fairly active in the stock market and unfortunately one of the things I have to look at when purchasing is how trustworthy management is. That is, do I expect them to be honest in dealing options and paying themselves. Unfortunately, lots of companies aren't. Hell, I just had a company drop to 10% of its value. Really sucks balls.

That's the dirty secret of these corporations - the stock holders are the ones who really get fucked. Yeah, employees may get cheated on wages, but people like me are the ones who really get hosed due to a piece of shit SEC.

I totally agree there, UNTIL they're taking money from the taxpayers and the government to keep their business afloat. It's at that point that I move from an, "Alls fair in love, war and business." mentality to a, "Hey, that's our money you're rolling in, bitch." one.

Especially when businesses are cutting jobs, taking taxpayer money, and making executives rich. That's absolutely terrible.

Yeah, the difference is between limiting earned income and subsidized income. The affected executives are worth well more than $500k annually to these companies, for the rolodex if nothing else, but when it's public money they're getting and not money they have earned, they need to be limited.

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I'm late to the party here (been away from the boards for a while), but the way CEO's will get around this is with deferred payment contracts. You can earn more than $500k as long as you don't owe the government money, so they put in the contract that the company will pay them retroactively once the government assistance is paid off. Better than nothing since it helps get us out of the hole right now, but in the long run it isn't very effective.

I'm sure there will be other clever ways around this, but deferred packages are what seen so far. Hopefully all these companies going out of business will create a glut of executives available and the bad ones (hacks) can just be demoted back to the positions they held before they turned to shit. There is a theory that everyone gets promoted to the point of incompetency, since if you do good, you get promoted until you reach a position you can no longer excel at and therefore stop getting promotions. The end result is everyone eventually ends up in a position they suck at. We need more former CEOs back doing what used to do, whatever that was.

I shouldn't post so much late at night...I'm rambling. Good to be back reading the board though, missed this place.

Drajeck, I'd view a clause like that as a good thing. I see little problem with rewarding CEO's for getting off the taxpayer's dime and back into the black.