It’s mostly because of stock awards as part of compensation packages.

If you get $50,000 in equity each year and the shares are worth $20 when you were awarded them, then they balloon to $160, you just earned $400,000 for each year you held on to them. These numbers are all made up and just for reference, but this is what some of these hardware company employees experienced.

I hope you know I’m agreeing with you. I want to see change too and it’s why I advocate for people to reach out to their representatives right now. We are already hearing reporting of hundreds if not thousands of calls per day asking reps to not back current Dem leaders.

Change can’t happen if we refuse to acknowledge the the systems in play and how different parts of the government function, which is where I started with all this.

More than anything I want engaged people to continue to be engaged but meaningfully and with purpose. Simply being upset over lack of progress or the speed of it happening aren’t enough, despite our desire for that to be true.

There are millions of dollars and hundreds of legal experts involved in plans to dismantle the parts of government they don’t agree with and they talk about it loudly. They celebrate their wins, regardless of how small or even true they are, loudly, and the uninformed notice. By refusing to acknowledge the small wins or even the path to this being realistic, you build no message of support to chase bigger wins. It actually does the opposite - you crush interest in change and in action, both because it builds a perception that there is no political win large enough to satisfy and because others will also hear this lack of celebration as a lack of outcome.

This is why I’ve spent all this time replying. We agree on it not being enough and that something must be done. We agree that this group of leaders hasn’t earned trust. Where we disagree is in how it is being framed. Change of this magnitude needs to snowball. Win people over with quick wins within their political control and continue to press forward for more, with renewed support from the electorate.

Change of this magnitude will require sustained support over time to be successful and it doesn’t happen if we won’t even acknowledge when things did go right, however small it may be to start.

Not having trust is warranted, I’ve said elsewhere that they’ve not done anything to earn it.

However you seem to be ignoring that investigations did happen during both of those Presidencies and there were criminal charges brought as a result. There is proof of people involved being held accountable that you could go and read about if you cared to. Corruption scandals involving Halliburton and Blackwater during the Bush era also did result in prosecution, as did various investigations during Biden’s term. Both Epstein and Maxwell were arrested, with the latter being tried and convicted.

I’ll concede that I can’t be certain that an investigation will actually take place and shouldn’t have said that, however history has shown that these investigations do routinely happen by this committee.

I’ll also concede that minor politicians, staffers, and private sector participants were primarily the ones that had charges brought against them, not Presidents. But you’re exaggerating when you say there is never accountability and that AGs during Democratic Presidencies don’t prosecute criminal charges around corruption.

I know you were. Doesn’t change what I said.

You seemed to agree with me that prosecution in this environment isn’t realistic and that you wanted investigations for when it can be. I shared a website highlighting that there is a commitment by the incoming head of the oversight committee to perform those investigations. It’s going to happen.

I don’t see why you’re concerned with a politician politicking and trying to give soundbytes saying that he wants to focus on something with broader appeal across both parties to the media. This guy wants to be speaker and needs both parties to support him right now. Has no bearing on what the oversight committee will do.

The incoming head of the oversight committee told them to start finding lawyers and made a statement about how there will be investigations. That doesn’t seem like steering away from accountability at all.

You seem to be mixing two topics. One appears to be a complaint about purchasing power between tourists and locals, and the other about US domestic purchasing power on minimum wage.

You’ve got lots of great answers by others on the latter and how it is unsustainable as a living wage. Why Americans (and likely other Western tourists in general) consider certain countries “cheaper” is because of exchange rates. That would be a whole post on it’s own.

A single US Dollar (USD) can be used to buy about 93 Indian Rupees (INR), as an example. The average monthly wage is something like 25,000 INR, so even minimum US federal wage would be 5x more monthly buying power (but as explained by others, minimum wage earners are not the ones traveling). “Cheap” is used to compare against a similar purchase in their home country and what it would have cost there. It is not an insult but a way to describe the difference in cost relative to income.

Whether it is referred to the DOJ or not is not my point. What I describe is how this process works. Congress having a simple majority of one party with an adversarial president is unlikely to result in prosecution or impeachment/removal by the Senate because of the systems in play.

For the president, what you say is true. But there are others who are not the president and have participated in illegal activities. This is also being blocked currently by the DOJ or by pardons.

Democrats alone do not have the ability for removal via impeachment. They’d need Republicans to cross the aisle on it and recent history has shown that this is unlikely.

Voters want accountability but there are more obstacles to overcome within our existing legal framework before that is realistically possible. This is why there may be a focus on other more easily altered areas in the short term.

As much as I agree that criminals and corrupt politicians have no business being in government, prosecution is unlikely to be successful in the next 2 years. Congress only has the authority to investigate then makes a referral to the DOJ, but the president controls the DOJ.

The recourse after a referral like that falls flat would be to impeach and remove (until someone is in place that will honor an independent DOJ) but they’d need the opposing party to cooperate and reach the 2/3 threshold needed for removal. Prosecution may need to wait for the next president to unblock the DOJ and empower them to do their job.

Some of the ideas being floated might be more attainable in the short term, especially in the cases of regaining control over responsibilities enumerated in the Constitution as belonging to Congress, such as passing budgets and declarations of war.

It must be 1926. We have a prosperous decade leading up to a market inflated by stock market speculation, stock prices that are unlikely to match anticipated future earnings, the fed increasing interest rates to curb spending which is impacting construction investment, the overproduction of certain commodities, reduction in foreign trade and lending, and retaliatory tariffs and protectionist policies going into effect.

Oh wait, it’s 100 years later and it just rhymes with the lead up to the Great Depression? Cool.

The one that basically started it all!

Hugely subjective and you’re right on cultural differences coming into play, as well as access to/existence of common areas. Are bathrooms communal? Are patios/balconies/outdoor spaces? Are there areas to congregate/socialize/eat nearby? This affects how much internal space is needed.

It becomes more of an urban planning, zoning, and building code exercise than one to be solved by developers, who will try to maximize revenue on any given plot when given the chance. The problem for developers (and accessible housing) is margin: unless gov heavily subsidizes low end residential, they will prefer to build more lucrative luxury apartments.

For contentedness, area per occupant would be the best bet. I’d expect an attempt to target median family sizes and working from there. Global household average is around 3.5 people.

Somewhere in the 20-55 square meter range per occupant is likely the sweet spot, depending on the above factors. You can get away with less space with more amenities nearby.

Mexico has “mini-casas” of ~325 square feet to provide housing for their working poor which residents had challenges with. Paris and Hong Kong have tiny apartments around 10 square meters, where residents spend a significant amount of time outside the home. But these were developer limitations, mostly, to cram as many units into a footprint as possible - not taking occupant satisfaction into account…