Economics

A Few Dollars Makes The Difference

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In the Bay Area, rent and housing prices are an important topic of discussion since that’s where no small amount of your paycheck goes.  I was out recently with friends, when the subject came up, and someone mentioned a person they knew who took an insane commute so they could avoid insane rents.  They had few options.

In The Bay Area, there seem to be these weird cutoff points in rental options.  Make X amount of money and you can live in this area, but X plus even a few hundred more a month opens up new options.  As one gets more and more options, you end up almost being able to save money – because you can, say, afford an expensive apartment on public transport and ditch a car.  Or one can live near work and cut commute time – and use that to do a part-time job or run a startup.

It’s not just that you have to spend money to make money.  When you have money, sometimes you can save time and money or make more time and money.

A boss of mine once ditched her car, lived in a small studio near public transport in the expensive area of San Francisco – and came out ahead financially.  She had all of San Francisco as her playground, a great job, and plenty of options.  But ironically, to save that money she needed to make enough to live in a place where she needed less.

Respectfully,

– Steven Savage
http://www.musehack.com/
http://www.informotron.com/
http://www.seventhsanctum.com/

 

Mental Health In The US Is More Mental Than Health

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USA Today is going to do a multipart series on the lack of mental health care in the US.  I’d recommend reading this and following it.

My background is actually in Psychology, all the way back to my college years.  Thus issues like this are ones I was and am concerned about, and it’s been frankly obvious but not talked about that the mental health care in the US is pretty bad – basically it’s prison, emergency wards, and the streets.  And the morgue.

It’s wrong on many levels.  It’s frustrating as it’s been bad for awhile.  It’s painful that in our age of snarky gotcha politics no one is going to actually do something unless a lot of us push for it.  That’s a hint, by the way.

So I’m hoping this gets some damn attention.  As a guy who gladly votes to raise his taxes, I’d like to get some better social services, please.

Because something like this means the system, such as it is, is going to break spectacularly.  More.

– Steven Savage

 

Welcome To The Cycle, You’ll See The Bottom Of The Wheel Eventually

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Destrative Crestruction Dept.

Those who worship power and strength inevitably cast evolution and natural forces (like, say, market forces!) as being on their side. They’re never willing to entertain the possibility that one day it might be someone else’s boot on their neck — because if they did, then that would mean they weren’t worthy of calling themselves the baddest mothers in the room anymore.

Serdar was talking about people’s reactions to Detroit’s bankrupcy, and that some realized that the love of “creative destruction” meant the creative destroyers never realized they’d get their turn on the block.

I myself have watched the various pundits jump onto the detroit issues, and most of those brushing it off or laughing about it have that peculiar self-confidence of people who figure that nothing bad ever happens to them or theirs.  In fact, among the various pundits enjoying a laugh, there were no solutions, but plenty of dragging-out-the-same explanations.  They were preaching to the choir, not solving problems, with the confidence nothing would happen to them.

And there were doubtlessly people laughing along at what happened to “those people” in Detroit.  It’s always “those people” – until you become one of them.  Then you wonder why people aren’t there to help you . . .

This is why I think sustainability is an appropriate and unappreciated value.  Sustainability means that you have some surety.  Sustainability means some predictability.

However it’s not popular.  Sustainability means hard work.  Sustainability means that if you “win” you have to make sure the whole game doesn’t fall apart.  Sustainability means not always getting your way.  Sustainability isn’t a chance to do your victory dance about how you’ve won forever and are awesome.

That’s not exactly popular – especially among entitled politicians and pundits.

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.musehack.com/, nerd and geek culture at http://www.nerdcaliber.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.