DrewEckhardt

In 1982 people had been saving 10% of their income to cusion the blow. Since then we've actually gone negative and people have less to fall back on.

We are nowhere near a collapse. I'm no economist but even with a 10% unemployment rate that means that 90% of Americans are working right? No on both counts. Unemployment doesn't include underemployment where people who need full-time wages to pay their bills are only getting part-time work. It doesn't include under-employment where tradespeople and college graduates are working menial jobs for a fraction of what they need to support themselves once their savings run out. It doesn't include people who've become home-makers, retired early with a radical decrease in spending, or moved back in with their parents instead of continuing to look for work. It's also an indirect and lagging measure of the real problems which come from fundamental balances that must be preserved. Although individuals can't spend more than they make, a lot of the "economic growth" over the last couple of decades has come out of credit card and home equity spending, with the personal savings rate declining from over 8% to negative levels. Reversion to the savings rates needed to weather cyclical unemployment without foreclosure means we need to shed the jobs and production which were serving that unsustainable demand. Although homes can't cost more than people can spend and long term inflation adjusted prices have remained fairly stable, things have doubled lately with new development to feed the demand. A start towards the reversion to the mean means we've shut down the construction industry which ballooned to cash in on that. Goods and services get priced where supply meets demand. Where UAW workers at GM average $28/hour, Chinese workers get $150/month. Where the average software engineering salary in America is $80K/year it's only $10K in China and $7500 in India. The new supply of competent (Tsinghua and IIT graduates are good) workers in low-cost areas (Where "middle class" means having a third of your income left after taking care of basic needs like housing and food, $3K is enough to qualify in developing countries) has radically limited domestic job growth. Startups which would hire a staff of 20 people make do with 10 domestic engineers and 20 overseas (they're cheap). Wages and the number of people employed here will have to decrease until our salaries and costs of living are more in line with theirs. The economy has crashed because of these things; it's just going to take years to reach bottom with unemployment (whether or not it's reported as such) chasing all the way. There's also the stock market loosing half it's value, with older workers deferring retirement instead of making room for the bumper crop of people born around 1990 and retired people coming out of retirement because yields on safe investments are down. Lots of companies would rather hire a youthful 60-something person with 30 years of experience, no mortgage to pay, no family to raise, and no 401K to fund than some one with less experience and more expenses.

Although barter income is taxable, the IRS requires people to convert their cows and chickens into US currency for payment.

Lifeguard. Good: Sometimes saving people, looking at women in bikinis, and getting a great tan. Bad: Babysitting the neighborhood brats whose mothers wanted them out of the house.

When your doctor says you can run and play contact sports like rugby or football. Sometimes things heal quickly. Sometimes things don't heal like they should.

The police can run blood tests.

Unless you are BASE jumping with your canopy, may I ask you what difference does it make if the canopy opens offheading ? Most skydivers are made with other people. With shorter tracks and more people in the group good heading control makes needing to turn away from some one less

Don't mock Jesus Christ in His Second Coming.

Violence is the American way, suitable for children of most ages. It's only profanity and sex we need to watch out for. It's too bad; with boobies and bombs being the two reasons to see most new films we'll be missing out on half the fun.

Skysurfing was part of the X-games in 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, and 2000....

According to the FAA, it needs to have been packed within 120 days of use. There are annecdotal reports of new ZP canopies coming out as a brick which takes ten minutes to peel apart. And plenty of people have jumped pack jobs a lot older than six months.

It will make people less scared that their neighbors will use a black gun to kill them like four legged meat when the economy really tanks and we have food riots.

Sure you do. "I bet $20 he'll see an emergency within the next year" unless the guy isn't making a hundred jumps a year which means it'll take longer and is likely to be worse.

The cold, snowy part; Halfway between Denver and Boulder. Uh, oh; I hear scratching at the back door. I think that damned bear is trying to get in again. You're kiddding, right? Bears are big and usually just let themselves in. Sometimes mountain lions scratch at the door, but usually they just wait for people to come out and have a snack when the people head out for exercise on the snow shoes or cross-country skiis.

Eric the Ammo Man at http://www.ammoman.com for all your shopping needs. High demand _has_ depleted stocks.

_Little Dieter Needs to Fly_ After making eye contact with an allied pilot flying a few feet from his home on a strafing mission, little Dieter Dengler realized that he needed to fly. Dirt poor, he hitchiked accross europe to catch a boat to the US where he joined the air force. After years in the kitchen and later the motor pool he finally made it as a pilot. Then his A1 Skyraider was shot down over Laos. He was captured and eventually escaped. A most excellent documentary by Werner Herzog.

No, businesses have more rules to follow than people hiring household help. Anything over $600 to an independant contractor requires a 1099-misc. I don't think there are witholding exemptions for a minimum amount. 1099-misc recipients get a form W-9 on which to provide their legal entity's tax-id. As a contractor I provided the federal employer identification number assigned to my LLC which was filing taxes as an S-corp. No ID checks or citizenship verification was performed. The IRS tends to get upset when people hire employees but try to treat them as contractors.

Although unskilled labor isn't worth $10 an hour, it's hard to find white people who aren't student aged (they might be over on student visas that don't let them work, and I've personally known more Canadians, Australians, and Europeans who were working illegally than Mexicans) willing to do it on short notice without going through some one else who slaps their markup on top and more than doubles the price to you. I also haven't been satisfied with the white workers who sit around and do little when you're not watching them that just expect to get paid at the end of the day with one exception (The guy I hired with his own handyman service worked _hard_ 42 hours straight alongside my wife and I to finish a home for sale). So I hire those guys when I need manual labor. When my great grandparents came over everyone except the Chinese were welcome. I can't come up with good reasons why it should be different now apart from allowing in the Chinese now that we as a nation are allegedly less racist.

Not for the buyer. You don't have to report what you as an individual pay to independant contractors. If I see a bunch of guys with garden tools and a pickup, I can hire them to level my flagstone walk way at a time of their chosing. They determine when to work, how to do the work, and provide their tools so they're clearly independant contractors. You don't have to deal with FICA or medicare when total cash wages paid to a household employee are less than $1600 in a year and unemployment taxes for wages under $1000. The workers should be reporting their total wages to the IRS plus relevant sate and local tax authorities. They should pay appropriate self employment taxes too. None of that's my problem.

You have to get with the metric program. 20mm (like 20mm Lahti) is over 3/4". 40mm is over 1.5".

countrywide has good interest rates and service with ATM fee refunds. It's easy to move money in and out with their "savingslink" e*trade has good interest rates and is less likely to go out of business.

If you guys were married, engaged, lliving together, or even dating exclusively that would be egregious. If you were dating, that wouldn't be good. Where it's at "a girl that you like" and she's "not talking to you" rather than "my girl friend" who "won't even have dinner" it's not much.

Group health plans usually cover dangerous sports. Individual plans are spottier. A simple broken bone can run over $20,000 after the insurance discount and serious injury $200,000. Group disability insurance usually covers dangerous sports. Generally you get 60% of your income covered after the first week. If you pay for it with after-tax dollars the benefit is tax free. Some companies are stupid and make it a pre-tax deduction. Individual disability insurance is available but messier. Actually read the policies. For instance, my new death and dismemberment policy doesn't cover air travel where I'm pilot or crew or the insurance company owns the plane.

Surely she finds being permantly on vacation watching your big screen TV for 13 hours a day preferable to geting a job and paying rent elsewhere. Your feelings aren't too important compared to her having to work. My rule was that people are house guests for the first month and after that they were renters (now that I'm married, they're guests for a week and then gone). After a month I started charging my sister below market rent (by about a third) without utilities.She still wanted to plop down in front of my TV and stereo, objecting that she was watching something when I came home after a 12 hour day at the office and wanted something else. I told her that she could buy her own TV and pay an even share of the satellite bill and I think she read more books. My grandmother was _not_ happy that I'd charge my own sister rent, although I think it helped her along the path to becoming a responsible adult with a career path, health insurance, and savings. You need to encourage her to leave. Starting with below market rent would be a start.

$2500 deductible, no co-pays for office visits or RX after deductible. It's not disingenuous at all. That's what my out of pocket costs would be before I received any useful benefit from the insurance. The useful benefit is that you won't have to come up with $20,000 out of your own pocket for a broken bone; $200,000 for an accident with multiple serious injuries; or even $2,000,000 for a successful battle against cancer. I don't care about my insurance company picking up most of doctors visits that might cost a couple hundred dollars a year, or even the first few thousand dollars after the deductable. The totals aren't that significant and I've been better off putting the $300-$400 a month (up to $1000/month as a married guy) from my employer into a tax advantaged health savings account. Exhausting the savings which was once a home (and will be again), being unable to retire when I get old, or not being able to pass what I've accumulated on to a disabled wife and step children who've yet to join the working world would really upset me.