[dradernh]

Originally Posted by ezaircon4jc

I read a lot of jealously here. Who cares what John Doe CEO makes. It's really none of my/our business. You would probably be shocked to hear what my salary was when I was fired/retired; and were were capped. In retirement, on a gummint (CSRS) pension, I'm still in the lower six figures.

If you've got a government job that you really like, it pays well, and the pension is attractive, that can be the trifecta for a retiree.

I say this after seeing someone retire while earning a high five-figure salary after a long career at a CA city agency, never really leave as she's now consulting (i.e., doing the same job part-time for 75% of the salary (she's rated "indispensable")), her pension is indexed for inflation, and she and her husband are old enough to collect SS. For a variety of reasons, the husband never worked or earned much, so SS is his only contribution. The tldr of their situation is that their cash flow is almost 3X what it was when she was still an employee. The time she spends part-time doing the job is well under 20 hours a week, and it can be done anywhere there's an internet connection, including while waiting in line at Dunkin Donuts. Don't laugh, I'm not kidding.

I'm able to keep up with their income by making a fairly good guess as to their SS income and via this terrific site: https://transparentcalifornia.com/. There's a lot that the Golden State struggles to get right, but I think Transparent California is an example of the state offering its citizens a very informative and valuable source of public information.

[ezaircon4jc]

Originally Posted by dradernh

If you've got a government job that you really like, it pays well, and the pension is attractive, that can be the trifecta for a retiree.

I say this after seeing someone retire while earning a high five-figure salary after a long career at a CA city agency, never really leave as she's now consulting (i.e., doing the same job part-time for 75% of the salary (she's rated "indispensable")), her pension is indexed for inflation, and she and her husband are old enough to collect SS. For a variety of reasons, the husband never worked or earned much, so SS is his only contribution. The tldr of their situation is that their cash flow is almost 3X what it was when she was still an employee. The time she spends part-time doing the job is well under 20 hours a week, and it can be done anywhere there's an internet connection, including while waiting in line at Dunkin Donuts. Don't laugh, I'm not kidding.

I'm able to keep up with their income by making a fairly good guess as to their SS income and via this terrific site: https://transparentcalifornia.com/. There's a lot that the Golden State struggles to get right, but I think Transparent California is an example of the state offering its citizens a very informative and valuable source of public information.

The gummint gave me the option of staying with CSRS or switching to the new system (FERS); which was SS based. They tried to tell me what a great system it was and I was highly encouraged to switch. Well, I might have been born at night, but it wasn't last night! Them telling me just how wonderful FERS was just verified to me how bad it was! FERS is a decent system for the single, but CSRS is still better. I didn't/don't qualify for SS anyway.

I did have the trifecta for a career! There's nothing like the adrenalin rush of packing 10# of airplane in a 5# airport. I also got to work the busiest hour LAX had, or will ever have; 135 arrivals to 4 runways in an hour. There were two of us, I handled about 95 of those!

[RickFLM4]

Originally Posted by c1pher

One aspect of the cost of living rising that isn’t considered is the cost of technology woven into everything. From fast food to cars, technology adds to cost quite a bit. Technology certainly adds to our quality of life overall but it’s also more costly. Consider any car today. It has many safety and convenience feature not present in a car from the 70s. I am certain that if you made an exact car from that era, other than inflation, it would actually be cheaper due to manufacturing efficiencies rather than including all those doodads in your car. I think fast food is similar. From the cash registers, self service kiosks, screens to monitor order flow, safety requirements and many more on top of the grills they’ve always had.

Sometimes simpler is better.

While there is an impact from entertainment technology, a lot of the increased costs of cars is due to advances in safety and fuel efficiency, many of which are mandated by law and generally benefit society. Cars would be less expensive without these but I don’t think there is any denying some of the advances over the past 50 years or so have saved lives. So simpler is not really better in those cases.

Self ordering kiosks and self service beverage counters in a fast food restaurant are less expensive and result in less mistakes / waste than high turnover, expensive and disinterested employees to handle those tasks, especially as technologies advance and employee costs go up. Eventually it will also make sense to automate fast food preparation on a wide scale too.

That said, I think there are examples that align with your point. Personally, I prefer self checkouts in store because I can make sure the price scanned is what I expect concurrent with bagging the way I want everything. Unfortunately many thieves also seem to like them and retailers are scaling back on those, so that is an example of where the security of a regular checkout process beats the technology, at least for now.

[c1pher]

Originally Posted by RickFLM4

While there is an impact from entertainment technology, a lot of the increased costs of cars is due to advances in safety and fuel efficiency, many of which are mandated by law and generally benefit society. Cars would be less expensive without these but I don’t think there is any denying some of the advances over the past 50 years or so have saved lives. So simpler is not really better in those cases.

Self ordering kiosks and self service beverage counters in a fast food restaurant are less expensive and result in less mistakes / waste than high turnover, expensive and disinterested employees to handle those tasks, especially as technologies advance and employee costs go up. Eventually it will also make sense to automate fast food preparation on a wide scale too.

That said, I think there are examples that align with your point. Personally, I prefer self checkouts in store because I can make sure the price scanned is what I expect concurrent with bagging the way I want everything. Unfortunately many thieves also seem to like them and retailers are scaling back on those, so that is an example of where the security of a regular checkout process beats the technology, at least for now.

I think we agree on this.

[AmuroRay]

Odd, my response was deleted. Anyhow - Many African nations had less vaccination, and less infections overall. Wonder how all of that happened.

[Car-Addicted]

Some folks you can lead to the facts and some you just let then get all the mRNA vaccines they can get.

[AmuroRay]

Originally Posted by Car-Addicted

Some folks you can lead to the facts and some you just let then get all the mRNA vaccines the can.

My guy is on booster number five and wears 3 masks when leaving the house.

[2000cs]

Originally Posted by AmuroRay

Odd, my response was deleted. Anyhow - Many African nations had less vaccination, and less infections overall. Wonder how all of that happened.

I recall reading (can’t recall the source, sorry) that COVID was less infectious (lower R0 I suppose) in populations with high vitamin D. This includes most African nations as well as many SE Asian nations. Sun exposure and fish-heavy diets are both sources of Vitamin D and correlate with this. I don’t think causality was established, but it has been a while and perhaps more science has been done on this issue.