Last year, I spent the most on ...
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Mortgage (Score:2)
After all, there are only so many video games one person can buy....
Re: (Score:2)
Really? Is that a tax problem or a we bought a really expensive piece of property problem?
Just asking b/c our property tax is less than 15% of what we pay in mortgage but a little greater than 10% the value of land+property.
Anyway, ~3500 on 5000 sq f of land & 1600 sq f property.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
I don't know about this NY person, but you're totally wrong to assume this. It can also be an "I live in New Jersey where average property taxes on even a modest 3-bedroom home are in the 10 grand range" problem. Try adding an extra $800 to $1000 on top of your monthly mortgage bills and then you can come back and talk about this. And I'm talking about 3-bedroom crappy, old, small houses that will get you that rate. Those of us who happen to live in this waste of a state will undoubtedly have to choose the
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
Everyone here seems to miss one point: Long island (NY) taxes. Many people on long island in Nassau and Suffolk county pay exorbitant taxes. My friend just bought a house w/in ground pool on a 50*100 lot in a modest neighborhood called West Babylon in Suffolk County. He pays 9000 a year in property taxes. His parents in Island Park over in Nassau county pay 10,000 a year for a smaller lot, no pool but the neighborhood is a bit nicer, though not any where near up-scale (there are a few mc-mansions on the wat
Re: (Score:3)
Hmm, your numbers don't make sense. (3500*1/0.10=35000, and 3500/0.15=23000). You are either saying you are paying over half of the cost of your property per yer in mortage, or you meant 1% tax instead of 10%?
Anyway, I pay about 3x of what you do on property taxes (my property is maybe 30% larger than yours - and by that I mean land, as the structures are practically insignificant to property costs around here), but my neighbor pays about what you do even though his house is worth about the same as mine.
Re: (Score:3)
I actually have no idea how much I spend on things...I mean, I get the bills in, and click on the bank site and click 'pay'...and that's about it.
I do fill in the amount, but honestly, I've never really paid attention to it for years. I've not tried to balance my checking account in over a couple of decades....when buying food, I just swipe the credit card, or generally hand them a blank check to let the register fill it out...but I rarely look at the tota
Re:Mortgage (Score:5, Insightful)
when buying food, I just swipe the credit card, or generally hand them a blank check to let the register fill it out...but I rarely look at the totals.
Damn, wish I A) was a less scrupulous person, and B) ran the check-out at your local green grocer. All those times you'd have handed me a blank check, I'd have added at least $5 to your total each visit, since you don't bother to check. Nice little supplemental income you've been giving someone.
Does everyone on this list track all their expenses so carefully and down to the cent?
Those of us who don't have more money then sense do, yes.
Re:Mortgage (Score:4, Interesting)
I did set up the other day, a rule to start putting $200 a week out of checking into savings....but even with that, I still have money left over at the end of the month.
I got totally out of debts a few months back, all CC's paid off...car paid off, etc.
I actually find it nice to go grocery shopping....or filling up my car, and not having to worry how much I'm spending. I remember having to count pennies when I was a college student...it is nice NOT to have to bother with that any more.
I bargain shop, sure...each week I usually look to see what's on sale at the stores around town, and base my menus off that...but when I want to to Sam's...I load the basket up with whatever strikes my fancy....I know I'm never going to get close to breaking the bank just by food shopping,so, I just don't even look at the total....
With gas, well, that's just a necessity of life, I have to drive to get around....so, I don't even look at the pump. I honestly could not tell you what a gallon of gas costs these days....I don't care, and if I did, it still wouldn't matter as that I need it daily to get around.
Re:Mortgage (Score:5, Insightful)
I can recommend this way of living. When you stop thinking about money, you can start living your life.
Re:Mortgage (Score:5, Insightful)
Fortunately, most people our honest, and not ass wipes.
Not wasting time worrying over ever penny make s more sense the counting every penny every months; assuming you value time.
Re: (Score:2)
You know..I put down housing,but was just a guess.
I actually have no idea how much I spend on things...I mean, I get the bills in, and click on the bank site and click 'pay'...and that's about it.
I do fill in the amount, but honestly, I've never really paid attention to it for years. I've not tried to balance my checking account in over a couple of decades....when buying food, I just swipe the credit card, or generally hand them a blank check to let the register fill it out...but I rarely look at the totals.
Same for gas, I just put in the card and fill'er up and leave when I'm done.
Does everyone on this list track all their expenses so carefully and down to the cent?
I spend like you do, but I also track all of my expenses down to the cent. I have a general idea of how much money I have in my bank account & available on my 1(yes, I only have 1) credit card at all times. I have my accounts linked so that if I go over on the one I spend from, there's another to cover the difference. But even that is very rare.
I got tired of trying to guess how much money I had & how much I'd need to pay all my bills. And as I never wanted to be late or miss a bill, I use my ac
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe not down to the cent, but yes, I have a fairly good idea of where my money is going each week. You really should start paying attention. You'll probably realise that you're spending a lot of money on things you don't really care about, and not enough on the things that really matter to you.
Re: (Score:2)
I guessed I use the most on travel since I travel quite a bit for work and pay some of the bills myself, not sure that is true though because I get a lot of it back on the tax bill, complicated stuff and I got better things to use my energy on than worry to much about these things. I don't want to know how much I am using on food as that is one place I don't ever want to cut back.
Like you I don't keep close track of my expenses, I look at the total on my bank account, if the total is going up I am doing goo
Food was up there too (Score:2)
I bought a house (Score:2, Flamebait)
In 2011, we bought a house. For $482K cash.
Re:I bought a house (Score:5, Funny)
In 2011, we bought a house. For $482K cash.
Dude, I hate to be a grammar Nazi, but you force me to be. That post needs to be properly punctuated at the end with "BITCHES!" as follows.
In 2011, we bought a house. For $482K cash.
BITCHES!
FTFY
Re: (Score:2)
We built a custom house. Put $600K cash and mortgaged the remaining $300K.
Getting the mortgage was almost as hard as dealing with the builder, and the builder was an ass.
Right. (Score:3, Funny)
We built a custom house. Put $600K cash and mortgaged the remaining $300K.
FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
I was happier then and I had nothin'. We used to live in this tiny old house with great big holes in the roof.
SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
House! You were lucky to live in a house! We used to live in one room, all twenty-six of us, no furniture, 'alf the floor was missing, and we were all 'uddled together in one corner for fear of falling.
THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
Re: (Score:2)
Now, see, THAT is for the original poster to know, for you not to know, and is what necessitates the suffix of "BITCHES!", as shown. Therefore, this is out of the scope of a grammar lesson.
Re:I bought a house (Score:5, Insightful)
Well that was pretty foolish of you. Mortgage rates are crazy low right now. With that sort of money on hand, I have to assume that you have good credit. If you have good credit, you could have gotten a mortgage with a fixed rate around 3%. Maybe even lower, if you shopped around. You surely could have found an investment that gave better than 3% returns - heck, my credit union pays 2% on my checking account. If you could make even 8% (a fairly conservative number), then over the fifteen year term, you just threw away over half a million dollars.
So, uh, congrats...?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Money on hand DOES NOT correlate with having good credit... if anything, it's the opposite.
I 'bought' my house at age 23, cosigned by my father and with a down payment provided by my uncle. I've made the payments myself. And 5.5 years later, I still can't get a credit card because I _only_ have one line of credit.
My uncle paid cash for his house and cars, and had something like half a million dollars in his bank account when he died. He deposited money (which earned interest!) with the DMV instead of paying
Re:I bought a house (Score:4, Informative)
" It rewards irresponsible spending."
A common misconception. It rewards long term evidence they people, pay off debt they incur.
Now, without proof you can't do that, then yeah your rate will be higher.
I'm not sure why you can' get a card. You have a home, at the very least you should be able to get a 250 card from your bank.
Us it to pay a bill you would pay anyways, and pay the card company immediately afterwords.
Yeah, parts of it are screwed up, and I could go into a lot of detail.
I actually created some of the formulas for TRW.
Re: (Score:3)
1. Property taxes are $1700 USD per year. Not $5K.
2. Yes, we could have borrowed at 4% and invested the money, but for us, a house is a place to live and not an investment. I like waking up in the morning knowing that we have no mortgage. Whether or not that is an economically rational thought is irrelevant.
Re: (Score:3)
What? That is just downright stupid.
It doesn't matter whether or not the house was an investment -- over a period of 15 years (assuming you took a 15 year mortgage), you would easily come out on top with the returns on just TIPS and muni bonds. Hell, even tracking to an index will get you out on top. You could let that mo
Re: (Score:3)
You have to think long term in such cases. No matter how much cash you have sitting around, using it unwisely is foolishness, especially when you can have viable investment alternatives.
People justify far too many stupid things in the name of irrational sentiments, and if you keep at it long enough, you'll soon find your wealth dwindling pretty damn fast.
Even large corporations with billions of dollars in capital are perfectly happy borrowing money when it's made available to them at a low interest rate, es
Re: (Score:2)
Now he only needs to spend 5+k a year tax just so they won't kick him out of his own house.
Medical expenses? What's that? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
The bill for my medical expenses was easily more than I spent on housing last year. Fortunately only a minority of that came out of my pocket. The majority was paid for my insurance... which I also spent a substantial amount of money on.
Re: (Score:3)
Check your lifetime maximum (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Soon, though, you won't have to worry about it. One of the major provisions of PPACA (that's Obamacare to haters) is the elimination of lifetime caps on coverage.
Re:Check your lifetime maximum (Score:4, Insightful)
Clearly your insurance company has misunderstood the meaning of the word insurance. The whole idea is that you pay for everything out of your own pocket, but you have an insurance policy which covers you in case something horribly expensive happens. That is what insurance is.
Re: (Score:3)
They certainly have. But so have the people demanding coverage for "pre-existing conditions". That would not be "insurance" either, would it?
Unfortunately, when given the opportunity, insurance companies will count everything they possibly can as a pre-existing condition. Ever had chest pain? Heart attack is due to pre-existing condition. Ever had a headache? Brain embolism is due to a pre-existing condition. Ever had a stomachache? Colon cancer is a pre-existing condition.
Also, insurance companies can drop your ass when they find this "pre-existing condition." Good luck finding another when you now do have a pre-existing condition. No rational
Re: (Score:2)
In which case the category that's likely to be your largest expense is "taxes". That's not to say that the health care situation* in the USA is worth emulating. We would probably spend a lot less to get equal or better care if we had a centralized, government managed system, but that would still have to be paid for by taxes.
*I refuse to call the way we handle healthcare in the USA a system. We don't have a healthcare system here, we have a whole bunch of overlapping ways of providing care and payment t
Re: (Score:3)
Actually, I come from a country (Australia) where we have what you Americans call socialised medical care.
I am on the high pay bracket, so I pay a lot of tax, but that is only about 35%ish. My contribution to health is an additional 3.5% (plus I have private health insurance in case I want to go private which is on $900ish a year).
So, assuming I earn $100000 (easier to work number, but I don't earn anywhere near that)
I would pay $38000 tax, so my take home is $62000
I have a $220000 mortgage, with a loan rep
Re: (Score:3)
Ummm...you might want to go and read about how marginal tax rates work and come back and re-calculate all that!
You don't pay $38k in tax (even counting medicare levy and other health-related contributions). Not even close to it.
At $100k income, you might be in the '38% bracket' (it's actually 37%, but I digress), but you aren't paying that on your entire income! You are only paying that rate on the portion of your income above the previous bracket (which is currently $80k).
To make it easy: http://www.ato.go [ato.gov.au]
Re:Medical expenses? What's that? (Score:5, Informative)
In which case the category that's likely to be your largest expense is "taxes".
That depends how much one earns.
Minimum wage in the UK works out to about £12,500 a year.
A teacher starts work earning about £24,000 a year.
Someone earning £100,000 is doing well -- a lawyer or doctor etc.
And let's have a footballer earning £2,000,000 a year for comparison. (It's apparently difficult for them to fiddle their taxes and pretend it's offshore income, or whatever people do.)
£12,500 a year person pays 13% tax on their income, £1640. They almost certainly spend more on housing, and perhaps food.
£24,000 pays 22%. £5320 in tax. If they live somewhere expensive (London), or are paying for a lot of house (e.g. for non-earning dependants i.e. children) they're probably spending more on housing.
£100,000 pays 35%. Now we're probably at the point where the largest expense is tax.
£2,000,000 pays 51% (wow!).
All of these people pay 20% VAT on most things and services they buy, although basic food doesn't have this tax -- and the poorer people spend (proportionally) more on food. There's also a local tax, between around £500-£2500 a year per house, depending on the size of your house.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
If that person on minimum wage in the UK has a couple of children, their actual take home is likely to be about £25-£30k once tax credits are factored in.
The absurdity of our country at the moment is people who do not work and have never worked still get the tax credits - hence it being easy to pass £26000 in benefits (the proposed cap). Add to that the reduced council tax, free / subsdised other public services and the fact none of this is taxed and you have a ridiculous sitution where s
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Rand Paul is delusional.
Re: (Score:2)
Enslaving doctors and forcing them to work day and night giving away healthcare for free is civilized?
-Rand Paul
You're only a resident 3 years or so.
Re: (Score:2)
Depends on the specialty. Some are 5, and to get a good position requires you to do a fellowship (another year+). If you're not Doogie Howser, you'll be 30+ by the time you get your first real position. And sitting on $250k in school debt that has accrued massive amounts of interests while you defer the loan over that period ... yes, the alternative is that you live as college student does for well over a decade attempting to stay current on a home-loan-sized student loan payment. That's fixed at 6.1% (
Re: (Score:2)
The doctor is rarely the biggest cost in your medical bill - the hospital, "negotiated" rates, and the like are really the issue.
This.
I had gallbladder surgery a few years ago. Of the $12,000+ I was billed for, only $1,500 went to the surgeon who actually performed the procedure. The majority of the rest was the result of, for lack of a better term, price gouging.
Re:Medical expenses? What's that? (Score:5, Informative)
One of my doctors explained it to me as the doctors trying to get what they can from the insurance company. Because the negotiated rate and the amount the insurance company will eventually pay is so vastly smaller than the initial "charge," the doctor is forced to charge an obscene amount because they know that in the end they will not receive anything close to that.
Of course, the next logical question is "What if I don't have insurance?" Fortunately, most sane doctors realize that this is no way to treat the patient and so they will typically work with you and only ask that you pay the "cash" price which is something far closer to reasonable.
The problems arise because the insurance companies don't like this dual pricing and doctors aren't allowed to do it. They do it anyway, by virtue of necessity, but if you press the issue odds are your doctor will tell you how it all works. This lower "cash" price has to be kept secret from the insurance company otherwise they would want that rate as well (and then negotiate it down, of course).
It's just a huge mess. The insurance company is out to screw both doctor and patient. The doctor is trying to get as much compensation as he or she can without (hopefully) gouging their own patients. All parties know what the others are doing because it's not *really* a secret, everybody is unhappy, and the dance goes on...
I should point out that this involves the insurance payouts to a private practice doctor or a doctor who works for a small group. I don't doubt that the dynamics are quite different for hospital-insurance company interactions.
Re:Medical expenses? What's that? (Score:5, Insightful)
Enslaving doctors and forcing them to work day and night giving away healthcare for free is civilized?
How exactly is this different than what we do to soldiers? Or policemen? Or representatives?
Re:Medical expenses? What's that? (Score:5, Interesting)
Hmm I dunno about that. I've lived in both Australia and the US. My wife is a dual citizen of both countries, and I will be shortly. Taxes paid in both places are comparable (Australian income tax is the same, maybe a little more than US federal + state income tax, depending on which US state you're talking about).
Australia has a universal single-payer health care system, the US does not. But even if you add in the 1.5% Medicare levy paid by higher income workers in Australia to fund that public health system, it's still considerably less than I would have been spending on medical expenses in the US. No matter how you look at it (even considering that health care costs are shoved into another category of expenditure), there is something wrong with a system if 'medical expenses' can possibly be a bigger expense for people than housing or transport or other expenses. That literally cannot happen in most OECD countries. I pay the same 1.5% levy regardless of my employment status or health, or whether I'm healthy or suddenly require a super-expensive drug or operation. And if I was unemployed or made less than a certain income, I wouldn't even have to pay that levy, but I'd still get the same access to treatment.
Of course, given that I make a decent income, I can afford to pay that levy. In fact, I can afford private insurance, which takes some of the burden off the public system. And the government gives me a tax incentive to get private insurance (i.e. I pay less Medicare levy because I also have private insurance). That private insurance is not like the insurance you get in America though that is tied to your employment and restricts you to certain providers etc. It's just like buying car insurance ... I pick a company, call and get a quote, and pay my premiums (which incidentally, even for top private insurance, are way, way less than in the US - $200 a month covers a family of four well).
What I'm trying to say is that, even IF you account for the fact that healthcare expenses are included in other categories, you still pay far, far less on medical expenses in such countries than you do in the US. Mostly because a single-payer system is efficient - it's an economy of scale. There is much less wastage and padding in such a system than what you observe in American health care. Of course that doesn't mean Obama's medical plan is a good thing ... it's not single-payer and it's not universal. The US needs an overhaul of the entire system, starting from scratch instead, not just fiddling around the edges like Obama has done to make the existing (crappy) insurance system accessible to a few more people.
Re: (Score:3)
What I'm trying to say is that, even IF you account for the fact that healthcare expenses are included in other categories, you still pay far, far less on medical expenses in such countries than you do in the US. Mostly because a single-payer system is efficient - it's an economy of scale. There is much less wastage and padding in such a system than what you observe in American health care. Of course that doesn't mean Obama's medical plan is a good thing ... it's not single-payer and it's not universal. The US needs an overhaul of the entire system, starting from scratch instead, not just fiddling around the edges like Obama has done to make the existing (crappy) insurance system accessible to a few more people.
Generally, Democrats completely agree with you. Unfortunately, the realty is that Obama could barely get the current law passed (and Republicans constantly try to undermine and repeal it). He could never have gotten universal coverage through.
Re: (Score:3)
What I'm trying to say is that, even IF you account for the fact that healthcare expenses are included in other categories, you still pay far, far less on medical expenses in such countries than you do in the US. Mostly because a single-payer system is efficient - it's an economy of scale. There is much less wastage and padding in such a system than what you observe in American health care.
Someone boasted that with some clever shopping around, he was now only spending some $60 a month on copays for his proton pump inhibitor prescriptions, meaning his insurance was covering the other $540 a month. This is not a life saving experimental cancer drug, but something to prevent heart burn. Cross any border, and you would have been paying 1/10th of that or less, which the insurance wouldn't mind covering 100%. I don't know what caused health care in the US to become so expensive, but it's clear that
Re:Medical expenses? What's that? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm a US citizen and I needed medical care in Coober Pedy, South Australia. The hospital was closed for the night so they called in a doctor for me. He looked me over, gave me some painkillers and anti-inflammatories, slapped on an ice-pack, billed me $46, and sent me on my way. No government or insurance was involved.
Had this been the United States, they would've billed me $400 for opening the door, $150 for the first drug, $220 for the second, $190 for the ice-pack, $30 in clerical fees, and made me sign a bunch of paperwork. I don't understand why medicine is so expensive in our country.
Re:Medical expenses? What's that? (Score:4, Interesting)
For comparison: I'm an Australian that required an emergency hospitalisation in the US a few years ago.
I was technically checked into the hospital for 31 minutes (arrival time to discharge). It cost me $1620.
Luckily I had travel insurance - you are crazy to travel to the US without it - which reimbursed me all of that bar a $100 deductible. BTW Coober Pedy is a pretty freaking remote place, even by Australian standards, so I'm quite surprised you managed to find anyone ;)
Taxes! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
If you read the comments, a lot of people consider property taxes to be part of housing expenses, so you can't count that. It kind of makes sense because the amount of property tax is something you can control by getting a cheaper house or none at all. Also sales tax is likely included in the expense of any purchased item.
Income taxes is certainly the largest for almost anybody who has a job. I'm guessing that most people, myself included, thought that the word "spent" in "I spent the most..." somehow exclu
Student Loans (Score:3, Interesting)
Children (Score:3, Interesting)
Care, feeding and education of. They have been my largest single expense since they were born. Fortunately I can think I am starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel as their undergraduate courses are nearly finished.
Medical Expenses. (Score:2)
I was born with multiple disabilities and I have many problems. For example, I pay over 600 bucks for Kaiser, still have not gotten my new analog bone conduction hearing aid reimbursements from November 2011 (they keep messing up), etc. :(
Offspring (Score:3)
'nuff said.
Coping Mechanism (Score:3)
BOOZE
Re: (Score:2)
Spent mine on cars. It'll be a sad day when medical science finally recognizes it as an unhealthy addiction.
metals (Score:2)
Food (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
"You're doing it wrong". Would you care to explain why?
I really think it's a problem in our western society that we consider eating as an activity that's irrelevant and only takes times from other supposedly more important activities.
Screw that! I want my family and I to enjoy good meals. Ingredients that taste good, are healthy, are grown locally, possibly organic, are season-dependant, with not too much fat, not too much sugar, not too much salt.
I want meat from "happy animals", and only once or twice a w
Re: (Score:2)
Gas (Score:2)
Gas was my biggest expense.
Re: (Score:2)
He meant simethicone, for relief of gas symptoms. It must be terrible.
Housing Includes Many Things (Score:2)
My housing budget covers far more than merely paying off the loans on my house. It includes property taxes, home-owner's insurance, maintenance and repairs, and utilities. Actually, those combined cost more than my loan payments; and loan payments include principle, which means they increase my equity.
More Roommates wanted... (Score:3)
.... so I can spend less on Housing and more on having fun whether it is travel or electronics, toys, or just saving some damn money.
Student Loans (Score:3)
Would be what I spent the most on last year. Not complaining, it was worth more than I could ever pay and made me a better person; but damn expensive!
They really need to up the deduction amount on your income tax for qualified student loan interest, $2500 for a whole year is a little outdated imo.
Re: (Score:3)
I have a bachelors degree, but when i gradu
Smoking (Score:2)
Education (Score:2)
Education: mine, my kids and my wife. Spent about half my income on education (live in Brazil).
Investment in real estate (Score:2)
Housing in my area is low relative to rent, so these properties are cash flow positive by a lot. My payments (mortgage, tax, insurance) are less than half the rent I get. I figure rents will go up about the same as inflation while my payments stay relatively fixed. In 30 years the mortgage goes away and I'll be able to retire.
Taxes (Score:2)
Student loans (Score:3)
Pension provision (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Credit cards: For when the devil turns down your loan application.
Re: (Score:2)
As long as I was 1. Unemployed and looking for work, 2. Unemployed, looking for work, and going to school (thanks to grandparents' college fund they created when I was born), 3. Employed part-time and going to school, or 4. Employed (part- or full-time) and not going to school, then I wasn't charged for rent or food. It sucked having to move back home, but since it was only me, it wasn't too hard on m
Re:Housing! (Score:5, Insightful)
Food and fuel easily outpaced everything else.
I've been living like a pauper for the last three years, paying off all my debt from when I was young and stupid... about a year left and I'm 100% debt free.
Austerity is hard, and I understand why the Greek people don't want to take their medicine, but sometimes you really have to, and knowing there is an end after which you are free is a wonderful feeling.
-nB
Re:Housing! (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Housing! (Score:5, Funny)
Good thing he didn't include kill. that would be weird.
Re: (Score:3)
Good thing he didn't include kill. that would be weird.
I'm more worried that he was still asleep when he dumped.
Re:Housing! (Score:5, Insightful)
Austerity is hard, and I understand why the Greek people don't want to take their medicine, but sometimes you really have to...
Money is merely a convenient fiction of accounting, especially when you're dealing with it on a national level. The principle of austerity itself isn't what the masses object to, it's the specific services that get the shaft, and the ideology (most often from the wealthy elite) that dictates what gets cut and who gets off scot-free.
Re:Housing! (Score:5, Insightful)
Austerity is a diet.
When you get used to a certain level of a consumption, trying to scale back becomes a miserable prospect. Human nature is generally greedy and undisciplined. Both of those make any reduction in consumption a difficult prospect.
Doesn't matter if it's Money, Bling, or Twinkies.
Re:Housing! (Score:5, Insightful)
Its hard for us US citizens to grasp the numbers that the Greeks are being asked to swallow as we don't have a great frame of reference. One story on NPR threw out some interesting numbers. The minimum wage measure will cut the Greek minimum wage to less than half of what it is in the US. The percentage in government job cuts would be the same as the US government cutting 300,000 jobs. I'm not saying whether or not the measures are needed. This just helps to put a pretty sobering perspective on the issue.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Housing! (Score:5, Insightful)
Traditionally this is true, but is it still true? I understand that great sports players are paid more because only they can do what they do, and you need the absolute best talent. It used to be that great actors and musicians were paid more since they had a special talent. But is that still true? You can be a completely mediocre singer these days, but a record company can polish you up, autotune your singing, give you dance lessons, slap on some makeup, and make you a millionaire. It is not about the person's ability in that case, it is about the brand (with their name being a brand).
Can you justify the salary of investment bankers by saying that only a small amount of people have the ability or the desire to do it? I would say no. Or how about CEOs of large companies? Certainly there is no shortage of people who want the CEO salary, and have the desire to be CEO. Yet some CEOs go from company to company, completely ruining the company with bad management and then move to the next company (usually with a pay raise!).
Many job markets are distorted. The "bad yet highly paid CEO" problem baffles me completely, but it is easy to see how ability and hard working can only take you so far in many positions. No matter how hard I work, I will never be the president of the company I work for. The deck is stacked against most of us.
Re:Housing! (Score:5, Interesting)
Austerity works fine for individuals. Like you, I went through such a period to you shortly after graduating college and managed to pay off my $70k debt in three years. It sucked, but it was worth it.
But for nations, it doesn't work. Think about the cycle that keeps recessions going: people are laid off or scared of being laid off, so they spend less, so businesses lose money, so they lay off more people. Having the government lay off even more people isn't going to help.
Counter-cyclical spending is key to breaking out of recessions. Borrow money and give it to people (ideally through unemployment benefits and make work programs so that it only goes to people who need it) and they will start spending, businesses get back in the black, hire more people, and the recession ends. Just remember to cut back on spending once you're back into prosperous times, so that you can pay back that money you borrowed. We tend to forget that step.
The US did the counter-cyclical approach, and things are undeniably improving. This graph [nytimes.com] (click through to the fourth one -- I can't figure out a way to link directly) makes it perfectly clear that as soon as the stimulus began, things started getting better, and have improved constantly ever since.
Europe, on the other hand, took the austerity approach, and is still struggling. These [bbc.co.uk] two [bbc.co.uk] articles, just for example, show how unemployment in the UK is still steadily climbing, despite all of their austerity measures.
Re:Housing! (Score:5, Informative)
The US got thru its 1920 recession, which was almost as deep as the 1929 one, in 18 months by the austerity route: balanced budget, less spending.
Keynes himself said stimulus spending should be short, targeted, and temporary. None of the 1929 depression or the current stimulus spending has been anything of the sort. Shovel-ready wasn't.
At some point, you run out of money. The Greeks certainly have. The US is about to. A $15T debt so far, project to grow another 2.2T in the next two budgets, is ridiculous. We are spending more per capita now than ever before. Revenue since WW II has never been more than 20% of GDP, even with the 90+% tax brackets of the 1950s, and was in fact highest, 20%, when the highest bracket was lower than today in the last few Clinton years.
When interest payments become one of the biggest budget categories, you need to stop borrowing.
Re:Housing! (Score:5, Insightful)
"Revenue in the US since WW II has NEVER exceeded 20% of GDP"
Which in no way means it can't be.
And when talking about the rich; just removed the temporary tax cuts. That's all. No one wants the rich to pay 100% of their income.
Although taxing monies over a billion at 100% is an interesting hypothetical. Not one I am proposing, cause it would never happen.
Re: (Score:3)
A bunch of speculation?!? Go look up the budget figures for the past 65 years -- revenue has NEVER been more than 20% of GDP. This is not speculation, this is historical fact. Your idea that you can someone turn around 65 years of practical evidence and get more than 20% revenue is the speculative fiction here.
Just because it never has been more than 20%, does not mean that it cannot be. Your claim that it cannot be IS speculation. Also, note that you did not address the simple methods of increasing revenue I pointed out.
Re: (Score:3)
Norway's national budget is at ~40% of GDP (rough estimate based on taking the 2010 GDP estimate vs 4x the 2011Q1 budget, and using today's USD vs NOK conversion rate.)
Norway is also 2nd in the world ranking for quality of life (with a raw rate of 0.921), compared to the US at 31st place (with a raw rate of 0.806), based on the number from http://nationranking.wordpress.com/2011/03/06/2011-qli/ [wordpress.com] (first result from Google for "quality of life 2011"), so it is possible to have higher state revenue with at leas
Re: (Score:3)
You're right. I looked up comparable numbers for the US; it's about 41%. This is using http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/budget_gs.php [usgovernmentspending.com] vs the US GDP from the top entry on Google for "us gdp" (an extract from Google Publicdata.) 41% is at the same level as the top European countries. That's probably useful for you to quote when you're discussing it; at least for me, that's way more convincing than that there's been 65 years where it's not been above ~20%.
Eivind.
Re: (Score:3)
Yes those still are expenses, and to some extent mandate continued employment. The difference is if I lost my job *today* I'm hosed and will have trouble feeding my kids. If I lose my job in two years (a year after paid off debt), I will have a rainy day savings fund such that I can meet all general obligations and such for about a year (mind you, no eating out or other fun), or if it looks like the job loss will be protracted I can switch DSL to the minimum, switch off the Satellite TV, quit buying pre-p
Re: (Score:2)
I put taxes into their own category. And overall, taxes finished a close second to mortgage payments (principle and interest). Following that were food, childcare, and utilities.
And as soon as I finish paying the second mortage later this year, taxes will be my single largest expense.
Re: (Score:3)
I've heard you, and I beg to differ...
Re: (Score:2)
Soooo jealousss T_T
Re:Leeches (Score:5, Funny)
If I didn't have family, my expenses would be a lot lower. Grown kids, mother-in-law. Wife who doesn't realize how much I subsidize her business.
Yeh, I'm posting as Anonymous Coward.
So we can all hear about it when our wives assume we're the one's who wrote it? Gee, thanks, dude.
Hear that, honey? It wasn't me! I love your mother!
Re: (Score:2)
Doesn't count. Most people improperly add up taxes from property taxes, car tabs, sales tax, state and local income taxes - when they actually deduct them from their federal taxes.
You have to only count the total amount literally paid, not the amount paid BEFORE you got a refund.
My tax rate is 28 percent but in actual fact I pay between 8 and 9 percent.
Re: (Score:2)
Beer and hookers? You're doing it wrong. It's supposed to be hookers and blow.
Re: (Score:3)
given the current state of air travel hassles in the US, do people even travel for recreation anymore?
Yes. I don't start, end, or travel though the US though.