Real wages have risen over the last 50 years.

It's about purchasing power; not just real wages.

>despite some ups and downs over the past several decades, today’s real average wage (that is, the wage after accounting for inflation) has about the same purchasing power it did 40 years ago. And what wage gains there have been have mostly flowed to the highest-paid tier of workers.

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2018/08/07/for-most-...

> It's about purchasing power; not just real wages.

Real wage means purchasing power parity, or it should. These two statements cannot be true, if they are using the same definition of inflation:

- Real wages have risen over the past 50 years

- Today's real average wage has about the same purchasing power it did 40 years ago

The methodology must be different.

Aren't bicycles more deadly per passenger mile?

In terms of being killed by other vehicles on the road yes

I too agree with the banning of cars from areas where pedestrians and cyclists are likely to be, for example, all city centres and residential areas.

You don't need to go quite so far. Dutch levels of separation are probably enough.

The roads belonged to pedestrians, horses, and bicycles a long time before the car infestation took over

Let's take fentanyl for example. It kills so many people that there isn't any good reason for it to be a legal drug off prescription.

The difference between fentanyl and other drugs is a matter of degree.

But the only reason fentanyl is a prevalent recreational drug is prohibition.

Heavy users vastly prefer heroin, casual users much prefer oxy or similar. Fentanyl is just cheaper to obtain and easier to traffick.

Furthermore a lot of fentanyl deaths are caused by mislabeling and misidentification of the drugs which would not happen without prohibition. Fake painkiller pills with fent in them, fentanyl poorly mixed into heroin or filter, etc.

Seems like the rich are able to save more for retirement than the poor, and will use the most effective means to do so.

Contribution limits to retirement plans mean that for a billionaire, their 401k or IRA balance is very unlikely to be a significant portion of their portfolio. The typical case I can imagine for this would be putting their roughly $20,000 worth of 401k contributions into company stock every year and then seeing their company go 100x.

See this case study:

https://www.propublica.org/article/lord-of-the-roths-how-tec...

Peter Thiel managed to get a $5 billion IRA.

I'm still not sure how buying stock in your own company isn't a Prohibited Transaction.

> [1]Prohibited transactions in a qualified plan

> 4. Any of the following acts between the plan and a disqualified person:

> [1] Disqualified person. You are a disqualified person if you are any of the following.

> 8. An officer, a director (or an individual having powers or responsibilities similar to those of officers or directors), a 10% or more shareholder, or a highly compensated employee (earning 10%-or-more of the yearly wages of an employer) of a person described in (3), (4), (5), or (7).

[1]: https://www.irs.gov/publications/p560#en_US_2022_publink1000...

It is, but as we have witnessed for decades, and intensely more so in recent years, the application of the law is inversely proportional to the wealth of the defendant.

A $5 Billion Roth IRA! Implying tax free withdrawals.

That trick may be illegal though.

In some industries low worker mobility is very desirable for the company. Offering long time horizon benefits is a good way to reduce turnover. I would prefer my local nuclear plant operator to have employees that stick around and get to know the equipment very well.

Then pay them significantly more than they can get at their next job.

A pension would be a form of that.

(posting from cell w/ other account)

You haven't given any indication that you have considered any of my points in any meaningful way. I'm just gonna accept the fact that you want to continue your linguistic mission and disengage. Judging by your comment history you have a habit of winning wars of attrition.

Please at least consider the idea that being the censorious force in the world can worsen the quality of discussion.

> You haven't given any indication that you have considered any of my points in any meaningful way.

You are right. I need to work on not being so dismissive.

I think this correspondence would have been more appropriate and fruitful as an 'essay'/'counter-essay' instead of this social media format which tends to drive me to look for a decisive, pithy 'win'.

Sorry for railroading you and thank you for being courteous.

Thanks for taking the time to stand up to this kind of arguing. As a non-native speaker, I definitely dont have the stamina to enter a real discussion with this type of person.

Why don't you ask them what they think about your behavior in this conversation?

What about powered electric wheelchairs?

Also allowed by city governments to go places motorized vehicles are prohibited in general, like emergency vehicles.

What "bill to make it safe" are you referring to? Do track tech inspections usually have a speed limit requirement?

I worked on a project where we tried to get the packing seal in the stem of a valve to pass a test certifying that it had a low leakage rate (fugitive emissions testing) for natural gas applications.

We used the highest grade seal and followed all design recommendations from the seal manufacturer. Still never passed.

Leakage like this was never a consideration before the price of oil skyrocketed in the 1970's.

The valves you were working on were designed back then using more advanced technology than ever.

Once the price of oil shot up and stayed, the loss of still-relatively-cheap gas didn't seem so bad after all. They were raking in the bucks on the oil itself like never before.

So will not fix.

I worked on a project where we tried to get the packing seal in the stem of a valve to pass a test certifying that it had a low leakage rate (fugitive emissions testing).

We used the highest grade seal and followed all design recommendations from the seal manufacturer. Still never passed.