Trainguyrom

I meant it in reference to the Hitler-wannabe. I don't expect him to be able to be capable of going full fascist but I'd much prefer to start over in another country than to try to avoid the Fourth Reich's camps if he somehow manages to go full fascist

Whenever I hear a running hit and miss engine it brings a smile to my face, similar with small stationary steam engines. There's a club in Baraboo WI that does a big meetup once a year where there's just tons of early tractors and stationary engines powered by all sorts of different types of combustion with all sorts of creative new engine designs that stopped being viable around the time of the first world war. I haven't been able to go most years but it's really incredible to see so many wonky engines wirring and popping and hissing and clanking around, all while struggling to reach the performance of a present day lawnmower (and not a good one at that)

They have a slim chance if they keep subsidizing VR headsets to hold a and luceative chunk of the VR market when that actually takes off. VR is genuinely cool enough that enough people will get hooked once they experience a headset on their face with a VR experience that jives with them

In my late night brain-to-keyboard dumping I forgot to specify it would be for a couple of years that I'd want to live somewhere like Puerto Rico or Alaska so that I can have that experience under my belt. It's a thought that's danced around my brain for a while as a "what if"

In short, money. My career is taking off and I might be in a difficult place to match my current income in the EU for example. When I've looked at listings for jobs similar to and a step above where I'm at and adjusted the income for the exchange rate it would be half or even less than I could expect to make in the States. It's not a good place to live if you're poor, but it's a great place to live if you're in the upper-middle class which my current career trajectory might well put us into by the end of the decade.

If there's a sudden boom in prison construction in the next few years I'll reconsider of course

I'm the third or fourth generation only child on my mom's side. I broke that cycle with two kids which I think is pretty cool

Family trees can be drawn both with ones self as the root that everything branches off of as well as starting back as far as one can go and tracing all of the branches including ones own

The thought crossed my mind as well as "what if I did something crazy and sold everything and moved as far away as I could without the logistical challenges of changing countries" and who knows, maybe I'll seriously consider doing that once my grandparents pass away. There's bound to be someone looking to hire an IT person in Puerto Rico for a year or two. On the other hand I'm sure there's a lot more heat and sun to deal with which I'm not a huge fan of...so Alaska maybe?

To build off of this, if you collect $1000 in taxes from a million people and you've just pulled in a billion dollars. With 300 million people in the country that's a lot of tax dollars.

Obviously if you can tax 1000 out of every million dollars in wealth and individual earns in a year you can easily collect far more in taxes given how many multimillionaires will see their wealth increase by tens or hundreds of millions in a year.

This is all super reductive for simplicity. It's worth looking at how the super rich are able to avoid paying taxes. Are they not paying taxes because they're doing things with their money that is directly incentivized and generally better for the country than if they simply hoarded the same money, such as running the money through charities, clean energy installtions, etc? I'm honestly asking because i really don't know and I dont have the time right now to pull at that thread and research the question

That's a lot of time to figure out an escape plan and execute it!

This was the premise of the Greek myth of Tithonus

In short, Eos fell in love with Tithonus, a mortal prince, and begged Zeus to grant immortality to him (but forget to specify eternal youth and eternal health) so she was forced to watch him age until he shrunk into a raisin and was eaten

Over a decade+ that's not horrendous. I've probably spent around $2000 on computers for gaming in that same period. I know people who've dropped far more than that in a single day for their hobbies so gaming really is a pretty cheap hobby