Howard Stern
Active member
Yes there is no point to free steaks if people are looting and breaking into cars. I do not want to see it come to that. It is still very safe but I don't want hyperinflation to set in and things to get desperate for people. I would rather pay more and have all the l locals benefit too.
Yes StatusNomadicus - I have traveled all over the world and in many places $500 a month is a lot. Times ARE tough here in Argentina the past few years. What I like is the locals are so friendly and I always feel like my tourism is welcomed and appreciated. I don't find that is the case in many countries. Even when I go to Paris, the locals aren't that friendly and some resent American tourists when they don't realize without tourism their country would most likely tailspin. We drive restaurants, hotels, shopping and many facets of society.@Howard Stern U$S 500 definitely seems low, but i used to work with dozens of Ugandans/Kenyans where most people can only earn $28-60/month. it's really all relative, though, because those co-workers would ask me (in their fabulous British English proper accent) how Americans could make so much money. i had to spoil the moment by explaining that for the average person in the USA making $30,000/year, virtually everything is taxed, depending on your state/county/city/town. i broke-down my taxes as someone making decent money at the time: 28% to Federal, 3% to State, property taxes of $2,000/year, gasoline tax and high prices, a gallon of milk costs $4.65, hiring any type of skilled labor like plumber/electrician is $135/hour in an average city (with poor results in the past 4 years), etc. those co-workers had no idea; in Uganda they would bring home USD from their Expat job, and that was the end of it; there was no property tax, federal income tax, state/county/city tax, etc. (just the usual government-imposed tariffs that caused electronics and other goods to be crazy expensive to get, like here in Argentina). so, i think the grass is certainly greener in some respects, but also the crime and ever-decreasing personal liberties are a factor in quality of life (along with the sh*t processed foods with hormones/chemicals/preservatives) to cause normal Americans to look for other places to live like Eastern Europe and South America. here's an article in Spanish about why a PS4 was $350 in the USA but got crazy expensive after import fees up to 80% for some items (ARS peso valuations from the article are are irrelevant now, of course, with hyperinflation).
Porqué la PS4 es tan cara en Argentina
Si alguna vez te preguntaste cómo puede ser que una consola cuesta 3 veces més en Argentina que en Estados Unidos tenés que leer nuestra "investigación".tecnovortex.com
@earlyretirement seems like people would contribute a few bucks for a good cause. a proposal: how about you get your BuySellBA twitter/X profile approved for Subscriptions, then offer a $5/month subscription for premium content (or even just for nothing other than a pool of money to do something cool...i'd subscribe). you could do a weekly or monthly random drawing or a vote for how to use the money. maybe in Dec2023 there's only $40 so we all vote on which forum member to buy a nice dinner. maybe Jan2024 there's $100 and you choose a local business or normal working person to gift as a sort of random act of kindness. something like that? i find the X/twitter subscription model to be really great (we just need to use the browser to subscribe, since using the iOS/iPhone app lets Apple skim off the top with a big % taken, FYI). requirements:
Subscriptions policy | X Help
help.twitter.com
@Che Vos i disagree completely with you politically, from your profile avatar, username, voting for Massa, etc., but as Voltaire said, i'd defend your right to speechthe most-accurate description of politics i've been able to find in my short life is that politicians and 'leaders' will use controversial topics to pit regular people against each other; look at the Trump/Biden/Hillary nonsense in the USA the past 5 years. regular people are trained to hate each other vehemently, and it distracts from the fact that our tax dollars are used to enrich General Dynamics and Boeing and Lockheed Martin while they make bombs to drone-strike people in faraway countries, in undeclare wars that we don't really understand or want. in the end, most people on Earth are peaceful and want to just raise families and enjoy this weird ride we call life, before we succumb to the one guarantee: death. if we had more good food, complex friendships, pursuit of art/music/hobbies/skills, giving hugs to dogs, tasty beer/wine, and international travel, less people would be so dead-set on hating other ethnicities/citizens that they actually have no idea about, any way
i believe the cliche of 'if you aren't a liberal when you're young, you have no heart; if you aren't a conservative when you have kids and a house, you have no brain' is fairly accurate. i remember thinking we should abolish the police because 'they all are corrupt and evil' and then i became a cop for a little and saw that 99% of them are just regular people who had a story that caused them to want to be peacekeepers. i remember wanting to abolish the 'patriarchy' because something-something-glass-ceiling, and then i looked-into economics via Thomas Sowell and realized that so much of what we are instructed to believe isn't true; from women making 70%, to Black people needing reparations. #1:and #2:
@Cupid's Daughter nice video, @Darksider415 i might have some questions for you down the road, if you feel like sharing your citizenship journey on this forum (there's going to be a ton of demand for this info since it's real-world stuff, and not just a lawyer website claiming they can do it in 2 years for $3,000). good luck!
Porteños seem happy to have us in their country and they themselves are a melting pot mostly from Europe. I agree with your idea of a subscription donation service. I agree with earlyretirement we don't need something like this to do good things but imagine if we collectively as a group can see some collective donation going to work. It would be cool to see.
