lunatechian (lunatech-ian)

Billy: What the hell is wrong with freedom? That's what it's all about.

George Hanson: Oh, yeah, that's right.

That's what's it's all about, all right.

But talkin' about it and bein' it, that's two different things. I mean, it's real hard to be free when you are bought and sold in the marketplace.

Of course, don't ever tell anybody that they're not free, 'cause then they're gonna get real busy killin' and maimin' to prove to you that they are.

Oh, yeah, they're gonna talk to you, and talk to you, and talk to you about individual freedom. But they see a free individual, it's gonna scare 'em.

— Easy Rider

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

Not my original words, but I agree with them

the more 'ornamented' a person is today, that necessarily detracts from their energy (however insignificantly) to either improve themselves or contribute something new. Not as a rule, but in general the people who have tattoos did not get them to demarcate a significant emotional or symbolic event, but because they need to bolster an otherwise weak sense of identity. It's not just physical markings, either; it could be tattoos, humblebrag facebook statuses, endless numbers heavily filtered selfies on instagram, short-but-intense passion for some political cause, armchair activism, etc. Truly remarkable people tend not to care what others think of them, by virtue of the fact they are fulfilled by the fruits of their precious time and energy.

Tattoos used to mean, ‘get away from me.’ Now they mean, ‘Ask me about my tattoo`

You get what anybody gets - you get a lifetime.

Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 1

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

On hipsters

The difference between a hipster and a geek

This is the major difference between a hipster and a geek: When a hipster sees someone else grooving on the thing they love, their reaction is to say “Oh, crap, now the wrong people like the thing I love.” When a geek sees someone else grooving on the thing they love, their reaction is to say “ZOMG YOU LOVE WHAT I LOVE COME WITH ME AND LET US LOVE IT TOGETHER.”

Hipsters On Food Stamps, Part 1 has a line that precisely captures what I think about obsessively posting pictures of food

There's plenty of attention to style, to identity, and regression to our most primitive instinct: eating, fetishized.

On buying

An Interview With Craigslist's Notorious Google Glass Hater

I hate commodity fetishization. I don't mean that in the Marxist sense. I mean the process of deriving of pleasure from the purchase of commercial goods above and beyond the actual value or utility of the product.