vania-janet/multiturn-rag-retrieval-data huggingface dataset:
"&gt; You are giving poor and uneducated people a lot more agency than they really have.  I mean that's sort of the social contract isn't it?  At some point we all agree that humans reach the ""age of reason"" and are responsible for their decisions.  What are the implications to say that uneducated don't have agency?  Should we use government force to ensure they make good decisions?  If they don't have agency should they be allowed to make their own reproductive decisions?  I'm not really sure how to take the implications of your argument.  &gt;Also teen pregnancy are at historical lows        I'm referring to early 20's as well.  I'm not sure how you can view the pregnancy (and birth) rates of those in poverty over time but it would be interested to see.  I've seen some statistics that indicate that women in poverty have 15% more children than the rest of us, which by itself would create a perpetually growing under class."
This has nothing to due with class warfare and you'd have to be a complete fucking moron to infer that what works for a family has any correlation as to how a country can operate financially.  It's about making long-term financial decisions to try and increase your quality of life.  If you take your blinders off, you'll realize that multi-generational households are a common phenomenon worldwide.  It has gone through waves of popularity throughout U.S. history as well, usually with immigrants.  The Italian side of my family did it back when they immigrated and it's becoming a trend yet again.  **Families that are experienced with poverty know it's the best way to survive - that's the only statement I made.**   I stayed with my parents until this year (age 28) and left against their advice.  They wanted me to stay longer and save as much as I could before leaving, but I felt it was time to leave. I have a stable job (self-employed), I downsized my car for financial purposes, and have paid off all of my debt before purchasing my apartment.  It would have taken me much longer to save enough money to be a homeowner if I didn't depend on my family.  I'm glad you hate people for making smart financial decisions.  It really shows the type of person you are.
&gt; There is only so much to go around and as the top 1% pulls more and more of it off, it leaves less for the rest  That is incorrect. The more we produce, the bigger the pie gets for everyone, as long as people are allowed to freely trade for the goods and services that they want.  The people that become very wealthy don't get that way by stockpiling their money. They get that way by investing. People are given an opportunity to create new ventures because of investors.  What I would like is for more people to be empowered through economic knowledge. I was never taught basic principles growing up and after learning on my own, I must admit, I'm a little vindictive about that. If people can learn the value of saving and investing their money and not making stupid financial decisions, they will be much better off.
Run the numbers in advance. Understand what are the current rates for an additional 2nd mortgage, what are the rates for a brand new mortgage that will cover the additional funds. Understand what they are for another lender.  Estimate the amount of paperwork involved in each option (new first, new 2nd, and new lender). Ask the what are the options they can offer you. Because you have estimated the costs in money and time for the different options, you can evaluate the offer they make. What they offer you can range from everything you want to nothing you would accept. What they offer will depend on several factors: Do they care to keep you as a customer?; Do they expect you to walk away?; are they trying to get rid of mortgages like the one you have?; Can they make more money with the plan they are offering you? You will be interested in the upfront costs, the monthly costs, and the amount of time required for the process to be completed.
"If the country went to a sustainable minimum wage like 15 dollars an hour we would benefit more. Anyone who thinks the walmart strikes are stupid and they should be fired clearly doesnt understand how the economy should work.  Oh?  You do know that all basic goods and services would increase  in price, right?  Raising the minimum wage will not raise minimum value.  ""If you are pro for under 15 dollars an hour, you are pro slavery.""  Haha. Slaves are forced.  You aren't forced to work for minimum wage.  It's a result of many poor life decisions that led you there.  The fact that I'm not working a minimum wage job is because I worked my ass off to learn the skills I needed to make a good living.  ""The only people making these facts up are the ones who own the businesses because their wealth will go down and be spread among employees more.""  Not really.  As a business owner, I would just increase the costs of my goods or services.  Most retail businesses have slim profit margins (restaurants are even worse).  They would not be able to survive long if their workforce cost suddenly doubled and their revenue stayed the same.  You don't know much about business. I'm glad people like you aren't making decision in government."
DRiPs come to mind as something that may be worth examining. If you take the Microsoft example, consider what would happen if you bought additional shares each year by re-investing the dividends and the stock also went up over the years. A combination of capital appreciation in the share price plus the additional shares purchased over time can produce a good income stream over time. The key is to consider how long are you contributing, how much are you contributing and what end result are you expecting as some companies can have larger dividends if you look at REITs for example.
So are you saying neither the older generation or our generation (assuming you're under 35) are prepared for actually making decisions and being responsible?  Because couldn't one argue that corporations evolve with the environment around them? The same reason we have things like banks sponsoring gay rights parades. Which, I'm not saying is a bad thing for anything. Just the fact that we've made it acceptable for CEOs to do this stuff in the same way that, all things equal, would never have happened in 1995.
In the case of 'Death Benefit' insurance, You will never see the benefit, at the end, however, while the policy is in force (The Term), it IS an Asset, that would be considered in any 'Estate Planning' exercise. First, you have to consider, your Occupation, and the incidence of death due to occupational hazards. Generally this is considered in your employment negotiations, and is either reflected in the salary, or if it is a state sponsored Employer funded, it is determined by your occupational risk, and assessed to the employer, and forms part of the 'Cost-of-doing-business', in that this component or 'Occupational Insurance' is covered by that program. The problem, is 'disability' and what is deemed the same by the experience of the particular 'Underwriter', in your location. For Death Benefits, Where there is an Accident, for Motor Vehicle Accidents (and 50,000 People in the US die annually) these are covered by Motor Vehicle Policy contracts, and vary from State to State. Check the Registrar of State Insurance Co's for your state to see who are the market leaders and the claim /payout ratios, compared to insurance in force. Depending on the particular, 'Underwiriter' there may be significant differences, and different results in premium, depending on your employer. (Warren Buffet did not Invest in GEICO, because of his benevolence to those who purchase Insurance Policies with GEICO). The original Poster mentions some paramaters such as Age, Smoking, and other 'Risk factors'.... , but does not mention the 'Soft Factors' that are not mentioned. They are, 'Risk Factors' such, as Incidence of Murder, in the region you live, the Zip Code, you live at, and the endeavours that you enjoy when you are not in your occupation. From the Time you get up in the morning, till the time you fall asleep (And then some), you are 'AT Risk' , not from a event standpoint, but from a 'Fianancial risk' standpoint. This is the reason that all of the insurance contracts, stipulate exclusions, and limits on when they will pay out. This is what is meant by the 'Soft Risk Factors', and need to be ascertained.
Another thing to consider, however, is the deductibility of business expenses.  Let's assume that the employer can legitimately hire you as a 1099 contractor.  (Would you be able to telecommute? Would you have a high degree of control over when you worked and when you didn't?  These factors also affect whether you're a true independent 1099 contractor or not.)  As a legit 1099 contractor, you're able to deduct certain business expenses directly from your income. (You can find a list of the rules at irs.gov.)  As a W2 employee, by contrast, can deduct only business expenses that exceed 2% of the your AGI (adjusted gross income).  So, you also have to consider your personal circumstances in making the calculus and comparing whether a legitimate 1099 contractor job is or is not good for you.  It's not just a comparison of what they'd pay W2 employees versus what they'd pay 1099 contractors.
Yeah, me too, as I said. Actually what I'd really prefer is single payer, but failing that, getting health insurance separated from employment would be a big step forward. If people really knew how much they are paying for health insurance, things would change.  I've never worked for an employer that didn't renegotiate health insurance every year, often changing insurance providers every year. To the extent that HR departments are competent in finding the best value, the current environment is pretty dynamic and competitive. Are individuals going to be as competent and well informed as HR departments? I don't know, but I do know that simply making a market free doesn't guarantee lower prices if consumers are ill-informed and bad at making decisions.  As for wages, currently companies are not required to carry health insurance, and many have dropped it already without increasing wages, so I don't see an upward pressure on wages from greater employee mobility.  But it's true that if there were a single large pool for insurance to be based off of, large businesses would no longer get the pool advantage of health insurance over small businesses. Hence my preference for single-payer, or single-group/multi-payer.
There are a host of programs in the US to help low/no-income seniors: Many states discount property taxes for the elderly as well. Not a dream retirement, but plenty of people are provided for without having prepared for retirement whether due to poor decisions or unfortunate circumstances.
How can banks be expected to make good decisions when they are not responsible for creating their own reserve? Do you think that the banking system could run without FDIC? And why? And what is your opinion on local banking vs. big corp banking?
In my area, motor fuel taxes pay for road maintenance. The state of Illinois takes a share and send the rest to my local government. They are required to use the money only for roads. It is never enough to pay for all needed repairs, so roads are repaired based on state use estimates, road commissioner decisions and local board directions.
"I consider myself a fairly successful person, and I think that I've made a lot of good decisions to help me get there. What strikes me is how often, in retrospect, I was making those good decisions based on incorrect or insufficient information. Further, I really had *no way* of knowing at the time that my reasoning was lacking.   It would be attribution error to ignore these instances and pretend like I have overwhelmingly good judgment. I've seen other people act on the basis of similarly poor information - when it doesn't work out, the typical reaction is something like ""I feel no sympathy since you made a terrible decision. You should have known better."" Please see any thread on the current student debt crisis, and you will see examples of what I mean.   We are all, even the geniuses among us (I do not count myself as one, but I do believe I know a few), fallible. Lewis isn't suggesting we should feel guilty about success, or feel like somehow we don't deserve prosperity. His point is rather that we will never have earned the right to be greedy, that we always have a duty to those less fortunate."
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$260k mortgage is pretty high for $80k salary alone -- if you have expensive tastes, be prepared to tune them down. The make or break for you will be taxes and other recurring fees. If property taxes are trending higher than inflation in your area, you'll have trouble down the line. Decisions like this are really market driven, and I don't know much about Salt Lake City. In general, condo values get punished relative to single-family homes during bad market conditions. So if this is a really nice condo in a good building in a desirable part of the city you're probably going to see the value of the property increase as the general economy improves. If the property is good, go for it.
"I think it's an argument for Keynesian economic policy, basically an abridged version of this paragraph from the Wikipedia article: Keynesian economists often argue that private sector decisions sometimes lead to inefficient macroeconomic outcomes which require active policy responses by the public sector, in particular, monetary policy actions by the central bank and fiscal policy actions by the government, in order to stabilize output over the business cycle. ""private sector decisions"" are bottom-up: millions of businesses and individuals make economic decisions and ""the economy"" is the sum of what they do. ""monetary policy actions by the central bank and fiscal policy actions by the government"" are top-down: central institutions implement measures that are intended to have a positive effect (such as reducing unemployment) on millions of individuals."
You are making close to 200 K a year which is great. The aggressive payments on loans takes out around 30K which is good. The fact that you are not able to save is bad. Rather than pushing off your savings to later, scale down the lifestyle and push the upgrade to lifestyle for later
"&gt; From what I understand, the prices of futures are decided after the parties ""discover"" the price they think is appropriate for the underlying asset after some time.   What do you mean by that? The price you buy a futures contract at in the market is the price you get.  The concept of price discovery doesn't always apply as directly to derivatives as it does to equities. When you buy a futures contract not only are you aiding price discovery for the underlying asset, you're also signaling the value of tangible things like storage, weather, and transportation costs as well as intangibles such as future macroeconomic events, global policy decisions, etc.  Also consider that derivatives markets have significant percentages of market participants who are hedgers. The classic example is a farmer who's going to be harvesting his corn in Oct/Nov but wants to ""lock in"" the price of his corn right now. So he can sell futures contracts (for delivery any time after Nov) at whatever they happen to be priced at currently in the market. Maybe he sells Dec contracts for 400 (400 cents per bushel, 5k bushels per contract assuming he's based in the US and trading these at [CME](http://www.cmegroup.com/trading/agricultural/grain-and-oilseed/corn_contract_specifications.html)). Whatever happens to the price of corn between now and December, he knows he can deliver his corn for $4/bushel."
"She didn't know that having sex can lead to kids? I mean, you'd think she might have at least pieced it together after the first one.  At what point do people's bad decisions stop being society's burden to bear?  If I decide to take on insurmountable debt because I don't know any better, should everyone else be forced to pick up the tab?  That may sound heartless, but it's not. A $15/hr minimum wage would ruin our economy and cause a lot more suffering and homelessness.  Just because we want to help people (and I do feel bad for her), if we put policies in place that will ruin everyone, we don't get off the hook just by blaming it on other factors or because ""we didn't see it coming"".   In a way, making bad policy decisions that will fuck up our entire country is kind of a large scale version of what Fran and many others have done to their own life."
Let's change up the factors in this equation.  Bruce is a board member of a company providing seed for corn and other crops to farmers all over the nation. John is a candidate, and one of his platforms is to eliminate all agricultural subsidies. Bruce campaigns very vocally for John, and John wins the election.  Should Bruce get a bad grade as a board member because of this? To be clear... we are not talking about a removing him from the board at this point. Just a grade. I don't really see how you don't factor Bruce's support for John into this equation when making the grade.
I think that the minimum wage is too low. That said the people in this article are making shitty decisions and their plight is not the reason to change the minimum wage. Perhaps if she had always worked minimum wage jobs she shouldn't have had 2 kids. There is no discussion about the father contribution. Perhaps if he can't contribute to kids, she shouldn't  have had kids with him. Perhaps if she felt  the need to quit one of her jobs (to be fair I understand that need given the ridiculous hours she was working), she should have quit the lower paying one. Instead she kept the 9.50 an our one and quit the 11 dollar one. That is almost 500 bucks a month difference for a 40 hr week. And her friends, while good example of poor people being super kind to others, are not a good case either. Like seriously 4 kids on minimum wage???  Minimum wage should change but not because of these people's poor choices.
"The answer to this question will vary considerably by state and how utilities are regulated in your area. In New York, ESCOs (Energy Supply Companies) are almost always a ripoff for consumers versus the old-style regulated utility (in NY the utility supply markups are tightly regulated, but ESCOs are less regulated).  You also need to really understand the marketplace rules for ""locking in"" a price. If you can lock in the July price for natural gas for a year, that rocks. There are other factors as well. But even then its a real bet, since weather and supply factors can have a dramatic effect on gas prices in the winter. IMO, the best bet is to run with the market rates and bank the efficiency improvements that you build into your home over time. Some utilities offer ""budget plans"" that smooth out your payments without interest -- I'd recommend that route if predictable bills are your goal."
"the education bubble is similar to the mortgage bubble...you have people with no stake in the game, making huge financial decisions  the customers aren't the ones paying, so it makes perfect sense for them to charge through the ass for an ""education"".   What needs to happen is that college loans should be suspended for subpar colleges...we as tax payers, shouldn't be on the hook for $100,000 for a worthless degree.(and it does add up to $25K/yr for most of these shitty schools)   Simply create grading tiers. Something like Harvard gets an A, something like Rutgers gets a B, something like a county community college gets a C, and University of Phoenix etc get an F.  Then simply withdraw public loans from any school graded an F. If someone wants to go to a shitty school, make them make the decision where it's their money that's at stake.  When you do that, you'll suddenly notice people skipping the degree mills and just going to small local schools that actually give a degree worth something"
"There's little to make short flights suck less, but that 90 minute flight from Buffalo/Rochester to JFK (common for some civil servants here) won't totally wreck a person.  That said, in a lot of those cases, the perks are comped because courting regular government business is good business for the airline.  Longer flights with layovers, that nice lounge to spend the layover in, a nicer meal than a stale sandwich and bag of peanuts, and possibly even enough room to catch a little more shuteye, those are perks.  So is being able to offer more time at home with family, etc.  Also, if you're in travel status, you're getting paid per diems plus in some cases additional wages outright for the time you spend outside your normal working hours traveling.  It's not as much of a cost savings as all that when compared to other factors.  People see ""ooooh look at that extravagant public servant, ripping off the taxpayer by taking more than they need"" and don't consider the whole picture.  Which is why most people should never be executives or even middle managers."
Congratulations on saving up $75,000. That requires discipline and tenacity. There are a lot of factors that would go into making your decision. First and foremost is the security of the income stream you have now. Being leveraged during times of hardship is not a pleasant experience. Unexpected job losses can and do happen. Only you can determine how secure your and your spouse's situation is. Second, I would consider the job market in the location that you live. If you live in a small town it will be hard to find income levels like you have now. Rental properties are additional ties to an area. Are you happy in the area in which you live? If you were laid off are there opportunities in the same area. Being a long distance landlord is again not a pleasant experience. I can throw being forced to sell to relocate at a reduced price into this same bucket. Third, you need to have 3 to 6 months of expenses saved for emergencies. This is in addition to having no consumer debt (credit cards, car loans, student loans). $75,000 feels like a lot. Life can throw you curve balls. You need to be prepared for them because of the fundamental nature of Murphy's Law. If you were to be a landlord you should err closer to the six month end of the scale. I own two rentals and can speak to people being late a given month, heating and air problems, plumbing issues, washers and dryers breaking, weather related issues, and even a tenant leaving behind for truckloads of trash. Over 20 years I guess I have seen it all. A rental agency will only act as a minor buffer. Fourth, your family situation is important. I personally save 10% of my income for my child's education. If you haven't started doing so or have different feelings on what you might contribute think about it before any financial move. Fifth, any mortgage payment you are making should be 25% or less than your take home pay for a 15 year fixed rate mortgage. Anything less than 20% down and you start burning up money on PMI insurance. 'House Poor' is a term for people that make high incomes but have too much being spent for housing.
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