Phat Unplugged

Managing a household seems like a real job to me.

And the conspiracy theorists all post selfies on Facebook every time they blow their nose, and all the other exciting events in their lives! Those guys sure aren't living off grid.

Well, except for the fact that he supports the politicians who are voting to do away with Social Security and Medicare because they don't know the difference between socialism and social programs, and because they are just fucking assholes!

I took my Social Security at 62, but I kept working, so I could only collect partial SS, I think it was 4 or 5 months per year that they sent checks. Since I was still paying in it caused my retirement date to advance as if I had actually waited later than 62 to retire. Then I think I did also get some kind of larger payout when I finally did quit working at 70.

Yep.We have been able to avoid those GOP tax scams.Our Family Finance Officer (FFO), my wife, sees to it that we over pay, so no surprises. And she has always invested our tax refunds. She has to file quarterly tax returns and payments because we now have payouts from multiple deferred comp accounts (401K & IRA). Back when we set them up we really didn't have an idea of how much annual income they would generate, it all seemed like pie in the sky back then.

We have 3 pensions that have automatic taxes withheld but I don't think she has the 401Ks and IRAs set up that way. We have other income that has no withholding also.

Yeah, our FFO would never agree to that. Finances, investing, taxes etc. is her hobby, she works on her spreadsheets every day. We have never seen taxes as a burden, but rather as the price of civilization. We have always thought of it as our way of telling Ronald Reagan to "Go Fuck Himself!"

Paying off those big debts early was our strategy too, mortgage, vehicles, and student loans were the biggies, but we built up some credit card debt in the '80s. Once the mortgage was paid off the rest went pretty fast. I shudder when I hear how few boomers have enough savings (or any) to support more than subsistence living. I see them working minimum wage jobs into their 80s. America is a pretty crappy place to live if you are poor and elderly, or physically cannot work.

Watching Phat over the past few years seems like a classic case of self-radicalization based on selfishness, ignorance (fueled by a firehose of disinformation) and an almost total lack of empathy. Now he is lost forever to this bizarre cult and while they make up only about 25% of our population they can still permanently damage our civilization. Every time he shows up he seems more radicalized to me.

I worked in a large rare metal refinery (in the 1970s, ~3000 employees) and employee thievery was a major problem there. Everything from gloves to things as large as diesel engines and some of the metals and alloys we produced had high value too (zirconium, hafnium titanium, tantalum and niobium and all sorts of alloys), but were difficult sell. I remember when a pure copper ingot (not a normal product, made from scrapped copper melting pots), about 15000 pounds, disappeared without a trace and $30000 worth of platinum crucibles and foil disappeared from the analytical lab where I worked. Neither ever showed up in known markets in North America as far as I know. They could have probably been identified by their specific impurity profile that could be matched to our prior analysis.The plant was high security because we had lots of government contracts and there was a single gate with gate guards and there were periodic random checks of vehicles and if big items went missing sometimes the was a long line waiting to leave because they were searching every car. Allowing searches was a condition of employment. Lots of stuff walked off despite the security. I reported thefts every time I witnessed them.ABE: Oh I forgot, we also had a funny thing happen where a ~$30000 roll of platinum foil disappeared enroute from our vendor and the bill was being disputed when one of our supervisors heard a story on Paul Harvey during lunch about an airline employee who was somehow found with a roll of platinum foil (maybe trying to sell it or something...I can't remember) and no one could figure out where it came from. And we managed to get it back. It turned out the vendor shipped it in a flimsy carboard box. ( I wonder if anyone got fired over that screwup?)

Yep, it's obvious. The value is stamped right there on every atom of gold.Please tell us the value of an ounce of gold.

So your confidence isn't strong enough to explain what gives gold value? It is interesting that everyone who gives gold a value number, the number is always listed in a fiat currency.Gold has a number of characteristics that make it a very useful, but you are claiming that there is something absolutely unique and UNDESCRIBABLE about a gold bar stacked in a vault that gives it value?Once again, WHAT GIVES GOLD INTRINSIC VALUE?

WHAT?