vania-janet/multiturn-rag-retrieval-data huggingface dataset:
"Victor addressed the card issue with an excellent answer, I'd like to take a stab at the budget and income side.  Your question clearly stated ""I am left with no extra money"" each month. Whenever I read such an assertion, I ask the person, ""but surely, X% of people in your country get by on a salary that's 95% of yours."" In other words, there's the juggling of the debt itself, which as Victor's math shows, is one piece of the puzzle. The next piece is to sift through your budget and find $100/mo you spend that could be better spent reducing your debt. Turn down the temperature in the winter, up in the summer, etc. Take lunch to work. No Lattes. Really look at the budget and do something.  On the income side. There are countless ways to earn a bit of extra money. I knew a blogger who started a site called ""Deliver away Debt."" He told a story of delivering pizza every Friday and Saturday night. The guy had a great day job, in high tech, but it didn't lend itself to overtime, and he had the time available those two evenings to make money to kill off the debt he and his wife had. Our minimum wage is currently just over $7, but I happened to see a sign in a pizza shop window offering this exact position. $10/hr plus gas money. They wanted about 8 hours a weekend and said in general, tips pushed the rate to well over $15/hr. (They assumed I was asking for the job, and I said I was asking for a friend). This is just one idea.  Next, and last. I knew a gal with a three bedroom small house. Tight budget. I suggested she find a roommate. She got so many responses, she took in two people, and the rents paid her mortgage bill in full. Out of debt in just over a year, instead of 4+. And in her case, no extra hours at all.  There are sites with literally 100's of ideas. It takes one to match your time, interest, and skill. When you are at $0 extra, even finding $250/mo will change your life."
"&gt;tax cuts for the rich cause economic harm to the public..  and  &gt;the Republicans constantly use the stimulus of deficit spending as cover for them.  Cracking open a thesaurus and finding synonyms for the word ""bad"" doesn't address the issue.  Whether you say tax cuts are bad or harmful, it is the same statement.   I agree ""tax cuts are bad"" and your next statement which amounts to ""Republicans are bad"" are different conclusions.  They are not necessarily related any more than a bad carpenter choosing a bad hammer explains why each is bad.   Fair point if slightly... irrelevant.  It is irrelevant because it does nothing to address the problems with a one-sided narrative or to shift focus from evaluation into fact-based analysis."
"I'm surprised people don't bring this up more often....if you add together, not just our sovereign debt, but public and private debt, plus our contingent liabilities, meaning FHA, student loans, fannie mae, freddie mac, AIG, etc.  that totals over $100 TRILLION dollars, more than we could ever pay back, meaning literally there is no amount of growth and taxes that could ever pay this money back. (cite my sources do a google search of James Rickards Hopkins lecture it's in the first few minutes)  The reason you need to add all that together is because the economy can't grow if nobody has any money for investment, etc. (there isn't much home equity left after the housing crisis, retirement plans aren't holding as much, etc.) there wouldn't be an easy way to grow this economy, that's why we have ""currency wars"" competitive devaluations....to me we're already over the cliff I don't see us heading back, but I'm not saying that means we're going to collapse, just we'll need to go back to some sort of standard where our currency is backed by something (i.e. commodities or gold or something) and there are going to be A LOT of losses in the near term....meaning I want OUT of dollars....  combined with our lazy/entitled generation (don't tell me creating some website where you can order artistic candy on a stick is going to save our economy...we need to produce and innovate again to lower our trade deficit and so people actually bring their capital here), and dwindling resources I'd say it's already game over, the pieces just need to move into place"
&gt; “**It is important that we get our economy growing again through savings and investment, not more debt and deficit spending**. But we can’t turn the economy around until we fix the root of the problem: an unaccountable Federal Reserve. A complete and thorough audit of the Fed will finally allow the American people to know exactly how their money is being spent by Washington.”   Why don't the US people get this simple fact is beyond me &gt;&lt;
&gt; No, there is not a finite amount of work to be done, people have unlimited wants. Say we do fully automate all physical work, everyone could simply expand our human understanding, create art, play spectator sports, jobs that I can't even think of because there are not very important to us now but when more important concerns are met, these less important concerns, like art, become the most important.  And with no jobs, how are people going to pay for all this?  Oh, and it’s not France who outlawed overtime, it’s Belgium.
But after your mortgage payment you should still have about $3900. Even with $300 for credit card debt, $500 for car, and $400 for student loans (guessing), that leaves $2700 for essentials (utilities, food), lifestyle (cellphone, entertainment), and savings. You might find a friend who is good at budgeting who would be willing to help you craft a budget and be your ""responsibility partner"" to help you stick to the budget. Here is a sample plan (your mileage may vary), Essentials (50%, $2100): $2180 Financial (30%, 1230): $1250 Lifestyle (20%, 840): $500 (pick up slack here, as you have high debt load)"
I would give him some credit for not screwing up and over spending too much. He has run up his secret service costs so they need more money that hasn't shown up but that is really a drop in the bucket against the budget. He hasn't passed any legislation that effects the budget yet.  And mid year really doesn't matter they should have a pretty good prediction for the debt this year that would be a more telling number.
when you consider the cost of living and the restrictions on working it is nearly the same. I'm able to work part time in the US and go to a state school so my total debt is only around 40k. The biggest problem is that for the degree plans i looked at in public administration and education are not recognized. Of course, I will gladly read any sources you are willing to share that report otherwise.
I'd breath a bit. You actually aren't in that much of a pickle as you think. Your credit card debt is your number one priority. After that is paid off you need to think about what your financial goals are. You mentioned you wanted to start a family. I'm assuming you are in a solid relationship that would be conducive for this. You need to start planning out how much it's going to cost and then tack on another 50% because babies are expensive. I wouldn't worry about being debt free but you do need to get that car loan down to where you owe less than the car is worth. Honestly though your debt seems highly manageable if you just create and stick to a budget.
"&gt; AMERICA is growing, Western Europe is stagnant, China and most of East Asia is expanding relatively quickly  So staring into the face of evidence from his own intro context that generally the more active fiscal intervention since the GFC, the better economies have fared, the author proceeds to prognosticate about impending doom for the Chinese if they don't conclusively switch &amp; stick to austerity and ignore growth to focus on hidden inflation monsters. For the US somehow everything comes down to fed monetary policy, despite the fact that 4 years of the fed's alphabet soup programs without any fiscal assistance from congress hasn't kicked the US back into preferred growth and GDP is seeming to slow back down toward recession/stagnation. And finally the eurozone is apparently most plagued by ""overblown public debt"" and government spending somehow ""crowding out"" investment that just wishes it had the chance to invest if those pesky profligate politicians would get out of the way, and maybe the countries should fork over their economic sovereignty to the ECB so they can be structurally reformed (bloodletting/grave robbing).  Just my opinion, this whole article seems like shitty oldschool/backward economic views coming out of academic economics, likely angling to be a ['very serious person' in ECB bureaucratic/advisory politics](http://www.geopolitical-info.com/en/expert/professor-enrico-colombatto). The lack of being able to comprehend &amp; adjust to real world results is just sad."
&gt; You're right about the accuracy of axioms being important though. If you can disprove an axiom you can disprove the theory, that's why the fewer axioms taken, and the simpler those axioms are, the stronger the resultant argument becomes. That is true philosophical argument and is however quite a bit removed from the original point of this discussion. Your point, which I rebutted several times over the course of this thread - is that lowering taxes will lead to increased growth, compensating for the revenue deficit. You are basing this on the Laffer curve - which states that there is a particular taxation point where the total collected taxes are maximized. The curve itself seems fairly common sense at a first glance, but are we to the right of the curve? Several papers have argued that we are on the left^[1](http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/261018),[2](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S105353579690013X),[3](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0304393295012249). Additionally, the curve itself is doubtful - as it has not been observed in a real world setting. Austerity measures almost wrecked European economies in the early part of this decade, while the Kansas experiment was a utter bust. &gt; We can make certain simple assumptions about human nature, such as that all else being equal, people will chose to take actions that aligns with their wants/needs over ones that do not. And this is an incomplete statement. People will take actions in a boundary of possibility. That boundary is much higher for somebody whose wealth puts them at 99.9% of the scale rather than being at 20%. And taking the point further, the wants/needs are also very different for somebody at different social stratums. Given that, there is no evidence (and rather there is a wealth of contradictory evidence) that giving a tax cut to the highest income earners would boost the economy.
"&gt;a totally unsustainable level  I get what you're saying, but this isn't the whole story. For most of the history of civilization, clothes were really, really expensive, so most people had only a few well-made outfits that they repaired and took good care of. It would be unsustainable for our modern lifestyle, but given the scope of human history up until around 80 years ago, totally normal. In fact, you could say that the way the modern clothing industry works is probable ""totally unsustainable,"" since land is being ruined through cotton production, and in all likelihood we *won't* be able to grow as much cotton as we do now, 50 years from now."
We have a ton of student loan debt (mostly mine) and right now, I'm on a strict 'replace' only budget.  I have some shirts I put elbow holes in that I'm only keeping around as a reminder to replace them.  I wait until there is a deal of some sort (50% off or BOGO Free) unless I really need it - a white dress shirt for job interviews for instance. Outside of that, make it a line item in your budget and decide when you will spend it. For example, budget $60/mo for it, but only spend it when it reaches $180 or $300 or either of those amounts AND a sale (memorial day is the next big shopping sale after Easter).  It is totally up to you. Waiting to replace two shirts (gray and green) and a pair of black dress pants.
That seems unrealistic given his history of supporting corruption and ethics breaches. He was warned about corruption, ethical, and loyalty concerns for a bunch of his cabinet and he brought them on anyway.  These people did not get outed by trump, they abandoned him because he is a petulent, poorly performing, and all around unstable executive.  He cant even respond to domestic terrorism in any acceptable way.
Okay, so you can set personal boundaries between you and this clown, but you cannot stop him. But if he plans on targeting people and organizations in your community, you can warn them about him and his behavior and this scam. Chances are other people will know right away it’s a scam, but honestly if you feel the need to help others, that’s the most reasonable thing you can do to help them. But whatever you do, don’t take any of this emotional crap personally. If anything, maybe you can learn some reverse salesman techniques to get this “friend” to disengage. Such as only meeting with them in public and if they say something really vile to you, repeating what they said back to them as a question… Maybe even louder so everyone can hear. Remember a harsh reality of life: Public shaming can work to change someone’s behavior but you never want to do something like that unless you have utterly no choice. That last bit of advice is pretty harsh, but the reality is at some point you need to do something to “smack” reality into the situation.
If you spoke in front of a group of people in 2001 about the possibility of be lowered, you would be written off as a kook. Now S&P is talking about a negative credit outlook -- scary stuff. It's scary because a base assumption in any risk model is that US Treasury debt is utterly reliable and comes with zero default risk. So publicly banding about the notion that US Treasury debt may be less the AAA in two years is a shock to the system and changes the way many people assess risk. It's also scary because Treasury debt is auctioned... will a spooked market still accept a measely 2.9% return for a 7 year T-Bill? But while the prospect of a credit downgrade is truly a bad thing, you also need to take the S&P statements with a grain of salt -- since being a named a villain during the mortgage implosion (these were the guys who declared junk mortgage securities as AAA), they now err on the side of doom and gloom. So while things are bad, they've been bad since the Bush administration was forced to put Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac on the government balance sheet to stave off a bank panic. The scary stuff about default in July due to the debt ceiling debate is not very credible at all. Unless the Republican House plans on dramatically slashing spending on Medicare, Defense or Social Security and have the votes to stick to that strategy, the debt ceiling will be raised after much ado. Politicians talk tough, but have a proven track record of creating financial problems tomorrow to fix electoral problems today.
Oh I grant you the success of finally fooling the world into thinking that the value of paper money is what ever the fuck you feel like, but the federal reserve is about to be gutted and the world realizes that Jews in control of money and the economy is not only unsustainable, but just down right suicidal.  The Germans realized that after the Jews screwed over their entire way of life and hence the rise of the Nazi Party.  In fact thats why Jesus was on about, so everybody has hated the Jews pretty much since the beginning.  Now America is economically gutted, Jews sit in control of the Fed and the Treasury, of the Major banks and have infiltrated the white house and even entered the Presidents lilly white daughter, while America is on food stamps wondering where the fuck did it all go.  The hilarious part is you are all broke, all this debt and balance sheet tricks is all bullshit and everybody now knows it, this funny money stock market and these large banks are all a matter of perception and suspension of disbelief.  Mark to Market bitches  The whole world is just nauseated by you perpetual caterwauling about the holocaust and Iran and Muslims and Christians and soon reaching the point they will give some one a nuclear bomb to drop on you just for some fucking peace and quite.  Bad news for you, is America is waking up and the mere fact that we are still having this conversation and  I am able to tell you the truth is a good warning for you  Time is fast running out
"Given his history it seems silly to give the benefit of the doubt. At the very least we should understand how poor form it is to make a joke like that as a public figure regardless. But its just one piece of evidence to support my argument.  Personally I think pushing for the prosecution of cannabis again, and all of the terribly detrimental programs of the 80s is a far more compelling line of evidence. I also think the person I was responding to would not accept ""acting in ways that knowingly harm POC in a tremendously disproportionate manner from non-POC"" as evidence of racism."
Since you make $62K/year, you may be close to the median income, and the BAPCPA (Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005) has a presumption of abuse for filing Ch7 when you have above median income (for your state, check the law). As you may be pushed into Ch13 debt repayment anyway, examine what you could do to repay the debt (over 5 years, 60 months, as that would be a Ch13 repayment duration). Since you have $8K of revolving (unsecured?) debt, that would be repaid in Ch13 over 60 months at about $133/month (no interest), but you would also be paying 10% to the trustee. There might be some portion of your auto debt which is unsecured, and also be repaid unsecured, suppose that is $3000. That would add another $50/month to the plan. The car could be repaid over 60 months (including interest), so you might be repaying $300/month for the car (estimate), although the payment could be higher or lower depending upon how much of the value of the car is unsecured. The trustee might object that the car is too expensive (depends upon the value, and the trustee), and require be liquidated. Since BK excludes relief for student loans, you might find yourself paying the student loans at the same payment. Your $62K income suggests that you have about $4200/month (guess, after taxes). The mortgage payment is higher than 25% ($1050-1100 would be ideal for your income). But after your mortgage payment you should still have about $3900. Even with $300 for credit card debt, $500 for car, and $400 for student loans (guessing), that leaves $2700 for essentials (utilities, food), lifestyle (cellphone, entertainment), and savings. You might find a friend who is good at budgeting who would be willing to help you craft a budget and be your ""responsibility partner"" to help you stick to the budget.
I'll chime in and say that my wife and I thought this was a really dumb idea, until we tried it. I was keeping track of everything in my checkbook ledger, but having the physical money in the envelopes really does work! We thought it would be more hassle than it's worth, and there were hiccups the first month or two, but in the end we both agree this is what started our movement towards responsible money management and debt reduction. We have the following Categories:  Obviously, ymmv, but the point is to take any categories in your budget that are hard to budget for, as they vary from month to month, and just set aside an amount form your paycheck, in cash, for each one of those categories in an envelope.  What I've noticed is that by putting the money aside up front, it's MUCH easier to stick to the budget. We'll often shuffle money around in the envelopes if priorities change for a particular month as well, so rather than taking money away from an extra payment on a debt or our planned savings transfer, which would have been our default action pre-envelopes, we can just move $XX from Date Night into Groceries if we have to, hence, planning out how we'll spend our money, budgeting, has gotten a LOT easier since adopting this system.
"So, I know people are kindof put off by the fact that this article doesn't really give good examples of ""the root of inequality.""  So, I found an example of where this applies.  [The $31 Billion Hole in GE’s Balance Sheet That Keeps Growing](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-16/ge-s-31-billion-hangover-immelt-leaves-behind-big-unfunded-tab)  *""At $31 billion, GE’s pension shortfall is the biggest among S&amp;P 500 companies and 50 percent greater than any other corporation in the U.S. It’s a deficit that has swelled in recent years as Immelt spent more than $45 billion on share buybacks to win over Wall Street and pacify activists like Nelson Peltz.""*  So, here's a pretty clear and brazen example.  Management took corporate earnings and, before making its own workers whole on their retirement obligations, passed that money on to shareholders."
nope. They say, by now they can live with ultra low oil price ...forever...  (China currency agreement, export-import realignment, internal cost adjustment.)  Russia has industry and warming relationship with China. Saudi does not. China oil demand is nearly infinity as far as russians are concern.  This is reflected from Russia trade and budgetary situation. (they are back to huge current account surplus, and quickly shrinking deficit.)  And they are not even back into global debt market yet. In time of wall st. bubble explosion.
"And what evidence do you have for that statement? History tells us to expect a very different outcome.   When factory jobs were initially outsourced to Asia where costs were a fraction of domestic production, the ""savings"" went directly into the pockets of CEOs. Not only is there little to no evidence that any substantial cost reductions were being passed along to consumers, pricing and [cumulative inflation trends from 1970 - 2010](https://inflationdata.com/Inflation/Inflation/Cumulative_Inflation_by_Decade.asp) consistently increased precisely when the outsourcing of manufacturing/factory jobs was at its height and the differential savings were the greatest.  I highly doubt that anyone is thinking about lowering burger prices as a result of this innovation."
&gt;It shouldn't have had to go to court.  The plaintiff brought the case to court to end the ongoing extortion for others, not because he needed to fight the claim. It is obviously in the public domain and the judgement even said so, but it is still cheaper for small time authors to pay the licensing fee than to defend from a false claim which is why the Doyle estate kept trying this stunt.
&gt;Many of you might think that’s not a budget issue because individuals pay the premiums. But keep in mind, we are subsidizing, either partially or completely, 25 million people under the Affordable Care Act. And rising premiums for those people will indeed mean an increase in the deficit. Within a few years that could add $200 billion to the deficit unless we figure out how to control healthcare costs.  https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnmauldin/2016/11/02/thanks-to-obamacare-government-debt-is-worse-than-you-think/  That was the initial thought, it's turning out to seriously not be the case... More people than the initial CBO prediction are being subsidized, and much more heavily...   It's no wonder that the insurance company's enjoy ACA, it's free money for them, they can raise rates, but their customers don't receive higher bills... Just the government pays more...
duh, coz the first year was full of stimulus and bailouts and QE.  unfortunately, it went to the banks, and not enough to federal works program.   US govt needs to run a larger budget deficit from taxing the working class less and maybe spend more on works programs and helping out ailing states with more social spending.