Triasha

That’s tragic when it happens. I know that it will happen. Free lunches attract flies.

That doesn’t mean you can’t help people. It means you cut them off when it’s clear they are being hurt and not helped.

Then you have a hard conversation.

I’ve been that person. I lived with my grandparents for a year. Rent free, nearly no job. My aunt and uncle sat me down and explained that they appreciated my work helping to care for my grandparents, but if I stayed with them I would only be qualified for a career as a home health aid.

I talked to my extended family and moved out. Other arrangements were made for my grandparents. I found a job and started a new career. It’s certainly possible to enable bad behavior, but it’s also possible to help someone that needs it.

Don’t have to worry about your friend’s motives if you honestly want to help them.

Travel a little bit. Spend most of your time at home, either enjoying the simple pleasures, or with friends and family.

So what if they are taking advantage of you? You are rich! What’s the downside?

Sure, you have to be vigilant against con artists, grifters, and addicts. You have to draw a line somewhere. Maybe don’t fund their casino trips, drug trips, or Candy Crush high score.

Extravagant birthday gifts? College tuition for your niblings? Why not?

If someone is lying to you, you will find out eventually. I’d rather have friends now and let future me deal with the fallout from the grifters.

Inns like that existed during the enlightenment up through the invention of the railroad. In the medieval era you slept in a church or maybe someone’s home.

I just figured the hole is that deep.

Growing up my family could pile into a van for a 2 week road trip or Disney vacation every summer. My grandparents were still working at that time, grandfather was a small business owner mechanic. Grandmother was a part time bookkeeper for a non profit.

To have that financial independence today, I would need triple my income, or my wife and I would need to double our income.

I figure a decade+ of real wage gains across the economy would approximate that. Maybe not for me personally, but for the average.

The article is real and “shit still sucks” can both be true.

My thought upon reading the headline was “gonna need another 12 years before people start thinking we have turned the corner for the better.”

I respectfully disagree.

This both sides narrative is FUD, and it’s dangerous for Americans, Ukrainians, even Palestinians.

Withholding your vote from Biden is peak virtue signalling. It does nothing for Palestinians, they are even more screwed with Trump than they are now. Trump already screwed them over moving the US embassy to Jerusalem and becoming the only nation to recognize Jerusalem as the Israeli Capital.

Protest, boycott, form a union or convince yours to strike, by all means, electoral politics is not the only or the most important political arena.

But complaining about Biden online to people that already don’t like him is worse than useless.

Heitterslly said he would be.

As always, it’s complicated.

And the courts are taking more and more power from the legislature, and the president picks the judges, so it’s still critical.