“Sixty-three percent of adults said they would cover a hypothetical $400 emergency expense exclusively using cash or its equivalent, unchanged from 2022 and 2023 but down from a high of 68 percent in 2021.”
Hardly anyone in the US pays full price for the iPhone up front. They either use 0% carrier financing - usually with offsetting credits - or through Apple.
I don’t understand what that survey question is supposed to be indicating. I have lots of disposable income, and by default I spend using a credit card.
US net worth at the 25th percentile is >$20k, it’s not the case that 32% of people literally don’t have the wealth to afford a $400 expense.
Suppose that you have an emergency expense that costs $400. Based on your current financial situation, how would you pay for this expense?
If you would use more than one method to cover this expense, please select all that apply.
a. Put it on my credit card and pay it off in full at the next statement
b. Put it on my credit card and pay it off over time
c. With the money currently in my checking/savings account or with cash
d. Using money from a bank loan or line of credit
e. By borrowing from a friend or family member
f. Using a payday loan, deposit advance, or overdraft
g. By selling something
h. I wouldn’t be able to pay for the expense right now
There sure are a lot of comments in this thread pulling out all sorts of random and arbitrary statistics that have no connection with what is actually being discussed here. I’m finding that very strange, frankly.
The people monthly payment plans target are not able to afford the thing because they bought 30 other things on monthly payment plans in the past year and can't keep track of all the monthly payments they're owing until it's too late. That's the intent and why they're so popular now. It's why DoorDash is getting in on the action, so people will buy a Taco Bell delivery with a tempting price tag of only $4 at the time of purchase, multiple times a week for months until you owe hundreds of dollars.
Regardless of who they target, I'm taking free financing any day of the week. It's like credit cards which I've received huge value from, and I've never carried a balance in over 30 years of use.
What I wonder about sea level rise is what happens to all of the development that gets swallowed by the sea? I’m not optimistic that there will be proper cleanup of the stuff that was built up over time.
If I recall from the LA fires last year, the burnt down homes left some toxic stuff behind that require proper disposal. The same stuff in those homes presumably exists in the buildings and infrastructure that will be taken by the sea.
How much pollution is going to be introduced into the environment? And what long term consequences will result from that?
In my city, there is a relatively large, man-made lake not too terribly far from the downtown area. Apparently, there are still buildings, cars, etc. at the bottom of the lake. Instead of clearing out the area, the city just decided to flood the entire area over. In times of drought, some of the building foundations can still be seen from an arial view.
I doubt the environmental impact was positive, but the point I am trying to make is that I wouldn't be surprised if current infrastructure was just left to be swallowed by the sea.
Sure, but we’re talking about hundreds of miles of coast line all being affected, within various regions as the article points out, at relatively the same time. Thousands of coastline if we want consider a worst case rate of increase.
The leaching of whatever is soaking into the water will likely occur in localized areas at similar rates. It seems reasonable to me it’ll introduce shock to the ecosystem if considered in geological timescales.
I am in complete agreement with you, and I wish the environmental aspect would be considered more.
However, based on what I understand of the human race, I think nothing will be done to prevent the issue. I guess the closest thing I can think of off the top of my head would be tsunami damage. Though that is probably not a good comparison still. I am curious what environmental changes can be observed in pre/post tsunami ecosystems. I suppose I will have to look into this when I have more free time...
Honestly, I am rather jaded when it comes to climate change. Humans are very reactive and less... proactive. I would argue that much of these environmental concerns could and should have been addressed decades ago. Thus, by the time cities are swallowed by the sea, I believe it will be too late for us to do anything. As in, whatever ecosystem that could be affected will probably already be affected by other downstream issues, if not completely destroyed already.
Though, I once had an environmental science professor that had a tongue in cheek saying, "Dilution is the solution to pollution." While unlikely as it may be, I am going to have my fingers crossed that hopefully any ramifications will be diluted enough. (I know they probably won't be.)
It is probably far less material than what gets deposited from that plus slightly inland property from hurricanes and other major homeshredding storms.
We still have decaying nuclear material off the west coast and Tijuana has been flooding the border with polluted water for years now so anything more will just cause additional strain and more beach closures / illness.
The tijuana situation is pretty untenable when you view it less along internatial border lines and more along metro region lines with SD and TJ being part of one megacity. They very much are a megacity in practice.
Now imagine the flack that would happen if you say took the Bronx and subject it to border security checkpoints and let the people have materially significantly worse sewer and other living conditions. People would call it a travesty and a dark mark on nyc as a whole for allowing such a thing to happen to its own people.
Yet over in SD that very situation happens with all the commuters and trade that goes on between there and TJ. And people don’t bat an eye to it, if only to blame TJ for the sewer situation.
The US gov has allocated money and resources to help build infrastructure on the Mexico side. King Groceries is obviously delaying it though.
People do view this as a major issue but comparing it to the Bronx when it’s in another country drastically oversimplifies the issue. I’m sure many people would be unhappy for the US gov to spend money on Mexico…
Noone said "SD is broke", can we have a good-faith discussion please?
It's not a question of the Fed "helping", it is a federal issue, just as much as TX, FL, AZ etc. spending federal money on any other transborder matter. The sewage is caused by Mexico (not SD) and affects as far up as LA, and it's a federal and foreign-policy issue as much as a local issue for the SoCal counties.
I don't know much about SoCal water treatment, here's a useful explanation [0] + infographic [1] from EPA.
As to arguing that a couple of hundred million in federal funding to do something useful that improves both SD and TJ (quality-of-life, tourism, watersports, etc.) is unthinkable, compare to the waste in the ICE budget for FY 2025: $10.5 billion, several billions of which is being spent on privatized prisons for unnecessarily holding people up to 18 mths (when Congress could simply e.g. expand H-2A/B visas for the agricultural/manufacturing/services workers which the US is dependent on). TJ is essentially the outsource manufacturing hub on the US's doorstep, and will be increasingly so when some manufacturing moves back to N America (e.g. from China), we might as well constructively engage with reality. Really this decision should be non-partisan and a no-brainer.
But without annexing TJ, you can’t force that money to be spent correctly or for anti-pollution laws to be enforced. Mexico has more than enough money to solve this issue, the problem is that they don’t want to.
(Yes, and the US is delinquent on clearing landmines in Cambodia which the US supplied half a century ago; Bourdain had some very strong words on the matter. The US has more than enough money to solve this issue, the problem is that they don’t want to. Tu quoque. Also, the northeastern US sends air pollution into Canada, and there's a transborder program on that, with Canada.)
Anyway, the US has fairly successfully managed to conduct foreign assistance on water purification and sanitation for decades (historically, through USAID's Global Water Strategy and other programs, for developing countries, and specific ad-hoc legislation for Mexico) without sending in Chuck Norris to oversee it, or militarily annexing the region involved. In the context of NAFTA+USMCA, SD-TJ is a 21st-century mega-region that straddles national borders (pop 5.46m (2020), 72nd largest in the world and 11th largest in North America), as does the Tijuana water basin. Officially it becomes a mega-city when it hits 10m, projected for the 2030s, or only 1/2 presidencies from now.
Given USAID is currently being dissolved and folded back into the State Dept, the onus is now on the current admin to figure out their approach with Mexico/BCN/TJ to a solution and implement it. Transborder cooperation is possible. Yes there are some obvious structural challenges in dealing with Mexico and implementing assistance.
SoCal water policy is already under a major spotlight in the context of the 2025 LA fires and private agribusiness ownership of water rights in adjacent watersheds; that's a two-century-old story.
I would guess it should be more about cooperation on the problems and maybe some money needing to flow from the richer side to the poorer, and the poorer side agreeing to some policies.
Annexing wouldn't work because a new city would pop up along the new border. The border is the attraction.
That 25% turns out to over 77 million people. Reducing voting results to percentages is a bit silly in my opinion. We both major parties, including minority parties, are composed of autonomous individuals with individual worldviews that are shaped by their unique life experiences that are capable of sharing their ideas with others while simultaneously consuming new ideas, including those from faceless actors who may have a vested interest in seeing a particular group rise to power, then act on them.
I have yet to see either major party present some message where some level of respect is required to even acknowledge that someone thinks differently than another, irrespective of the validity of their ideas, even if it’s completely illogical. The mainstream discourse I read typically descends into insults, which doesn’t help anything.
However, I feel we’re past a point in which this is even possible given the polarization of viewpoints. That snowball has been rolling for over two decades it seems.
It is if war is in the future. And I’m not saying this as hyperbole but based on statements made by NATO secretary general (both Rutte, previously Stoltenberg and former General Bauer) about Russia’s military production outproducing NATO, or Finish President Stubb speaking on the powers of the world shifting and the need to ramp production which were echo’d recently by Macron, or the Arctic region soon to become a contested region with China and Russia attempting to stake their influence in the area which is obviously at conflict with the personal interests of the other countries in the region.
It seems obvious to me that the world is a bit hotter than before 2022, with the likelihood of some conflict between powers of the world coming to pass being greater.
If production of raw materials to usable materials is all contained within countries that are deemed to be unfriendly by the one lacking this production capability, it’s a clearly in their vested interested to not be in that situation.
Only problem is there is a seemingly idiotic US administration attempting to address these deficiencies, unless there’s some weird 4D chess play going on, but I’m not convinced it’s that.
It’d be foolish to rule it out completely even if it looks benign at face value. It’s entirely plausible for someone to be recruited on behalf of another state, seeing how it’s currently happening now:
What I find funny about their sign that says “your photo will be deleted”, it fails to specify how many memcpy’s of the bits making up the photo have been made and if they made any detours along to the way to various other software systems that may save those bits across various disks.
Does “your photo will be deleted” mean ALL bits making up the photo across any systems are wiped from all records? I doubt it. I also doubt if a database lookup is done on premise on closed networked systems with no possible ways to connect to the outside world.
Recent events suggest dismissing sabotage as a likely cause would be foolish.
10:13 presents details involving sabotage throughout Europe as well as states choosing to not disclose to their public about the nature of what is happening to avoid spooking their citizens
https://youtu.be/6KVnJqaBsnk?t=613&si=8lgB4A7x2fSmJC4N
Yes but he's not a lawyer. We're not talking about military strategy. Sabotage is not necessarily an act of war. Sabotage can also be simple crime. Crime is not excluded from insurance payouts.
Think about the MV Dali that crashed into the bridge in Baltimore. Was that an act of war by Singapore against the United states? Six people actually died in that case.
I like how the generated response after a “stop” is “You will not receive any more messages from this number.”
Where they turn around and send you a message from a different number.
How about a “take me out of your database” option?
https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/2025-economic-we...
$999 is a lot of money.