Is it the start of the American apocalypse?

From The Intercept's article "Donald Trump Will Be President. This is What We Do Next.", this section captures the most dominant thought I have:

Be not downhearted.

Don't give up. As bone-chilling as this moment is, it also proves that no one's in charge and just about everything in America's up for grabs. After all, Bernie Sanders looks like he's appearing in a role where the casting notice read: "Male, 70s, white, must look exactly like the caricature of a socialist from 1980s right-wing agitprop." Yet from a standing start he almost beat Hillary Clinton.

Young Americans are extremely progressive, so much so that Frank Luntz, the GOP's top pollster, says it should "frighten every business and political leader." To some degree we just need to engage in a holding action until they're running things.

Despite having no resources other than lots of cell phones with the Twitter app, Black Lives Matter has done more to blunt police brutality than anyone in the past 40 years. There should be classes taught around the world about how they're doing it.

However, there is a section of people who might be harmed by the administration. There is no easy way to predict what the targets would be and how they will be targeted.

Your spending power is less than what you think

Your income is not as much as you think it is.  Let me show you why  using the numbers from the US Census Bureau for Santa Clara county

Median household income (in 2013 dollars) is $91,702 .However, note that this is not the amount that comes into the bank.  The employer deducts the  federal tax from this. A rough estimate of the income tax would be 27% (standard deductions, no dependents). This leaves $66942.46 .

After the Federal government takes its cut, the state government levies the state tax on the income. For California this would be 8%. This leaves $61587.06 .

Now let us calculate how many hours someone needs to work to get $61587.06 into the bank. A workday is 8 hours. Mean travel time to work in(minutes), is 25 minutes. Let us assume that he/she gets 21 days of vacation. This means that including the commute hours, subtracting vacation hours and assuming 5 days a week, he/she work 2069.55 hours annually.

So, your hourly earning rate is 61587.06/2069.55 = $29.75. Read that again: the median hourly earning rate is $29.75 . If you do not account for the tax cut and the time you spend in commute, you will believe that your hourly earning rate is 46.65 . However, that is not what an employee earns.

Next, let us see how this converts to buying power. Suppose someone with median income wants to buy shoes with a sticker price $100. The sales tax in California is 8%. What this means is that he/she end up spending $108 on the shoes. To earn $108 , this person needs to work for 3.6 hours.

I have made a spreadsheet to make this calculation easier. . If you want to figure out your spending power, create a copy of the spreadsheet and fill in the cells with numbers that apply to you.

Some ballpark numbers (for California):

• if your annual income is $50,000 , you need to work 6.7 hours to spend $100
• if your annual income is $100,000, you need to work 3.3 hours to spend $100
Defined tags for this entry: ideas, My take on life, work

QOTD

You get what anybody gets - you get a lifetime.

Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 1

gaslighting

In 1938, a London stage play told the story of a husband who drove his wife insane. In order to convince the wife that her own brain had become an unreliable narrator, the husband dimmed the gaslights in their home and told the wife she imagined the change. The play gave rise to the term “gaslighting,” : "a form of psychological abuse in which false information is presented to the victim with the intent of making him/her doubt his/her own memory and perception". The name of the play was Gas Light