Potentially the longest thread in history...

Is it the i7 or i5?
It doesn't say.

● Magnesium Alloy Chassis weighing only 970g (2.14lbs)
● 512GB PCIe Gen4 SSD - XPG GAMMIX S50 LITE
● 16GB of XPG 3200MHz DDR4 Premium Memory
● 11th Gen Intel® Processor with Intel® Iris® Xe Graphics
● Super-Narrow 2mm Bezel with 92% Screen to Body Ratio
● Up to 10 Hours of Battery Life and Fast Charging
 
Apparently reading comprehension is hard when you slip into that SS age.



In all seriousness to be absolutely clear I stand on both sides of the fence.
On one side, I know for damn sure I need to set myself up now to not wind up being a strain later because the government is definitely not going to help. I know too many retired folks struggling out there. To me it and medicare is theft at the highest level off my checks along with federal taxation. Why? Because they take all that money from us yet we (as civs) get trickles downstream. None of it is used for what it's intended for, and to me that's bullshit.

On the other side, it was sold as a liveable income for retirement and if they actually used it as such I would be ok with it. But as is with most things the government is not your friend, not for you, and it is not what they claim it is. You get scraps out of the billions taken from the working class.

It should be wild, but it isn't because the US government isn't for it's people and most all of us know it.

It's a bit of a sidenote but I always hear americans don't like the idea of paying the gov for healthcare. Never really understood it, you have to pay for insurance anyway which is basically paying for vastly overinflated healthcare costs of others until you need it yourself, and lining the pockets of C level execs at big pharma companies. May as well pay a lesser fee to the federal government in my eyes. And there are good, cheap and efficienct healthcare models such as Germany and Israel where you are technically still treated by and pay into a private company if the idea of state healthcare really is that scary.
 
It's a bit of a sidenote but I always hear americans don't like the idea of paying the gov for healthcare. Never really understood it, you have to pay for insurance anyway which is basically paying for vastly overinflated healthcare costs of others until you need it yourself, and lining the pockets of C level execs at big pharma companies. May as well pay a lesser fee to the federal government in my eyes. And there are good, cheap and efficienct healthcare models such as Germany and Israel where you are technically still treated by and pay into a private company if the idea of state healthcare really is that scary.
TBH it is because government can't do a damn thing correct, much less well. Any organization that awards contracts to the lowest bidder and yet wastes the unimaginable amounts of money that our government does... no one in their right mind would trust their very life to it. If the powers that be stayed fairly consistent it might be an outside possibility but our current two party system is too far separated for anything like that. The current administration is too busy trying to enforce the pronouns of choice, make sure any idiot can pretend to be whatever with the full government backing, and shoring up domestic terrorists like Antifa and BLM to be worried about the actual health and welfare of all we peons who actually pay the taxes to fund all their stupidity.

But I digress...
 
It's a bit of a sidenote but I always hear americans don't like the idea of paying the gov for healthcare. Never really understood it, you have to pay for insurance anyway which is basically paying for vastly overinflated healthcare costs of others until you need it yourself, and lining the pockets of C level execs at big pharma companies. May as well pay a lesser fee to the federal government in my eyes. And there are good, cheap and efficienct healthcare models such as Germany and Israel where you are technically still treated by and pay into a private company if the idea of state healthcare really is that scary.
Medicare is like social security where it's controlled by the government and provides health benefits above a certain age. Like social security, and as it is, other health services controlled by the government (like VA), it is shit. Due to how tightly lobbied health and pharma is here in the US there will never be a system like what we see outside of the US. We don't like the idea of our government taking our money to spend it as they see fit, because like all other systems controlled by our government it's used to line the pockets of politicians rather than go to we the people.

Lower and middle class Americans are taxed out the ass to the point that we really only want higher wages just so we can actually pocket the wages we feel we deserve. The last thing we want is them taking even more money from us to not benefit us. If I made 120k right now my actual in pocket take home would be closer to 70-80k. What do I get for that? Substandard insurance services that are forced on me, Social Security that (as you could see in the prior convos) is NOT going to really benefit me after I decide to retire making me do the work anyways, the ability of using Medicare which again is another substandard service that won't take care of me, and the other things promised that we don't actually get. Like, tens of thousands of dollars in new equipment left behind by the US armed forced to be picked up and sold by the Taliban.

We're then taxed more on top of that in the form of sales/state income, and property taxes for more services to be used and abused by the cities, counties, and states we live in. In the house I owned my property taxes came in the form of 2 counties between 7,000 and 12,000 dollars a year. Why? Because our schools were part of a school district that stretched from North Fort Worth, all the way to Roanoke which is in Denton County. So even though I lived in Tarrant County in the city of Fort Worth, to use 3 schools 30 miles from the county line, I'd get a tax bill in the mail every year for a county I was 30 miles from. Meanwhile in the town of Haslet across the street from us their property taxes (again across the street) were closer to 5,000 for the exact same kind of neighborhood and quality of living. We shared the same police stations, fire stations, and roads that were under construction being paid by both cities in the same county. And that's why I sold. We then have other things most consider more "taxing" like state inspection and registration. If your vehicle is legal gotta pay about $100 a year to use it, and have at least insurance which could be high or low depending on your zip code, driving history, and who you go with. If you got a road or something causing issues that the city needs to take care of with that money everybody pays yearly you report it and it's up to them if they decide to handle it or not anyways. Let's not forget about the police we pay for that make it a priority to sit on the side of the road to generate city revenue in the form of speeding tickets that does absolutely nothing for us because they refuse to admit it's a "form of income" for them.

Let's talk about the insurance scam in this country. You have 3 options. Private insurance, company provided insurance, or "Obamacare". Let's say you don't qualify for Obamacare for whatever reason. If you go private, it's expensive and for a lot you're limited to what facilities you can go to that accepts your insurance. For company provided insurance, if you work for a decent company they pay a good deal of the premiums so your monthly cost is cheap but they still pick what insurance company it is and what services are offered. That also comes with "In network" or "out of network" services, or who you can go to that accepts your insurance. If you don't work for a decent company they get to pick whoever they want which is usually shit with almost no premiums paid costing you an arm and a leg with a high ass deductible meaning you are paying a lot of money to essentially get no help. It's fraud, and was forced upon us by the Obama admin in the name of "healthcare". No insurance, get fined when you file taxes.

Doctors in this country are paid a high amount to do what they do and a standardized government controlled health insurance system means they would have a high drop in their salaries. It would also mean that the insurance fraud by the mental health industry would collapse which we all know they don't want. It would mean that prices for things that some people actually need to live like insulin would need to be dropped because the government won't want to pay those insane prices causing pharma companies to throw a hissy fit. You read that right, if you're diabetic it pretty much means you need to pay a shit ton of money to live in this country in the form of insurance or the high ass cost of insulin. Yet materials and medicine to help heroin addicts is free. Sounds backwards? If it does, all of this tells you why it won't work and why we don't trust them with this kind of stuff.
 
Some drugs are cheaper to just pay the cash outright than it is to go through your insurance because your local pharmacist will bill your insurance co. several hundred dollars and you'll pay a deductible and co-insurance of about $100. out of pocket. This is true for insulin. My MIL goes to wally world, buys it over the counter for cash and only has to pay $25. for a bottle. I've purchased drugs myself which cost less for cash than it does if I were to use my insurance.... Ever since the govt took over health care, it has become totally asinine.
“The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.’ ”

Ronald Reagan
 
Back
Top Bottom