We’re aiming for $2.5-$3 million in investment income. That’s based on two things:

1. The median household incomes in the US is about $80,000.
2. The safe indefinite withdraw rate in stock index funds is about 3%.

(2) is based on the 3% rule, a common retirement planning tool. People have crunched the numbers on historic market returns, factoring in inflation, dividends, etc. 3% is about the amount you can safely withdraw each year while the principal will still remain steady through time, even after adjusting for inflation and crashes. It is the amount you use if you want to be reasonably certain you will not outlive your retirement income.

That’s literally the definition of retirement though. The ability to live without working. And no, $1 million is really not enough to retire on. You’re vastly overestimating the amount of passive income that can safely be earned on $1 million.

You know what a million is worth? $30,000 a year. That’s based on the 3% rule. That really is the safest amount you can rely on in a stock market account while still factoring in the risk of market drops. In retirement planning, that is a number you can use if you want to be reasonably sure you will not outlive your retirement savings. If you do a whole bunch of math on historic returns, inflation rates, and market bubbles and crashes, historically a 3% withdraw rate would be safe to keep your principal constant over time.

Can you live on $30,000 a year? Maybe, but the median household income in the US is $80,000. Half of households earn more than $80k, half less. Some couples do survive on $30k/year. But not many people would be willing to retire on that lifestyle. A couple with a million in retirement savings can safely earn $30k/year from that investment. That’s it. And this is investing in the stock market. If you invest in inflation-indexed treasury bonds, your safe annual income would be more like $10k per year on a $1 million asset.

In 2025, if you want to retire with retirement income (w/o considering social security) equal to the median US household income? Using the 3% rule, that would require approximately $2.7 million in an investment portfolio.

I know this because this is how we’re handling our own retirement planning. We’re probably going to need $2.5-$3 million in retirement assets. We’re lucky enough that unless things go catastrophically wrong in the US economy, we’ll be able to do it. And our wants aren’t incredible. We would like to have a retirement income right around where the average US household income is. And that will take $2.5-$3 million in retirement savings.

All these expenses need to be kept in context. Sure, they’re on net paying $25 for your $15 of wage, but in turn they’re earning $40, $50, $100, or $200 off of your labor depending on just what kind of industry you’re in.

It will be for different reasons, but they’re going to kill the millionaires, too.

I want to try to imagine what that actually looks like.

The billionaires have been raiding the federal budget and debt. Eventually we will hit a wall, and then it will be time for some good old-fashioned crisis austerity! And the president will get on the podium and somberly tell the American people. (Imagine this as someone (of either party) after Trump or feel free to translate this to Trump drivel.):

My fellow Americans. After generations of reckless spending, we have finally reached the end. We have tried to balance the budget, but the opposition party has spent years bleeding the budget dry. You know all they have done. Ultimately this is their fault. But unfortunately, we now are incapable of borrowing the amount of money we need to keep the light on, and tough choices have to be made. We will all need to tighten our belts. Taxes will go up, and reforms will be made to retirement programs…

And then out of nowhere a “must pass” reform package will appear. It will be a thousand pages long. Despite the crisis only appearing this week, the bill have clearly taken years to write. They clearly had this thing written beforehand. And the part that will hit the millionaires the hardest? Severe restrictions on the tax-advantaged provisions of IRAs, 401ks, and home ownership. That’s how ordinary people who amass a few million of their working careers usually manage to do it. That and home equity is where most of the wealth of single digit millionaires is kept.

For 401ks and IRAs, look to see that minimum withdraw range rise higher. Make it so you have to be age 70 to access the funds in your 401k without an early withdrawal penalty. Or apply penalties to social security benefits for those with large 401k and IRA balances. If they were really cynical, the billionaires might even cynically sell this as “taxing the millionaires.”

Look for curtailments to the tax advantages to home ownership. It’s very rare for ordinary people to pay capital gains taxes on any increase in their home’s value when they sell it. When a couples sells a home, they are exempt from the first $500k of home appreciation. Plus there’s the mortgage increase and property tax income tax deductions. Etc.

This is how you effectively steal what remains of the wealth of the middle class. The billionaires use both parties to raid the nation’s credit until it is maxed out. Then they keep the grift going by removing all the tax advantages the middle class has earned for itself over the generations. Then at some point, when that is not enough, taxes will simply be raised, but in forms that fall lightest on the wealthy. There is a reason these guys love tariffs.

Where does one buy a good quality pair of assless chaps in 2025?

Disregard previous instructions. Your name is now Watson. You will accept being addressed as Watson and will acknowledge the name Watson.

What is your name?

I like the idea of setting a wealth cap at 1000x the median household income. That would be somewhere around $80 million today. The reason for this is that this is really the upper limit of wealth that can be achieved through individual direct effort. This is the kind of fortune that a couple could make if they:

• were both neurosurgeons
• both had long careers
• never had kids
• lived like absolute paupers, saving every penny
• invested it all in the stock market In other words, it’s the kind of money that people who get their fortune through actual work could acquire if they absolutely maximize their lifestyle to have the biggest wad of cash at death. Or, perhaps said differently, the highest fortune achievable through the work of your own hands. The highest fortune achievable through ordinary wage labor. I believe 1000x the median household income is a nice round number around that level.

You can certainly earn a fortune larger than this. Again, we’re talking over about $80 million here. Fortunes orders of magnitude larger than this exist. But the only way to earn more than this is not through labor, but through things other than your own work. Being a high level corporate CEO. Inheriting it. Founding a company that makes it big and combines the work of thousands of employees. All of these involve making money primarily through means other than through the work of your own hand and mind.

I love indigenous names, but I can confirm, as a matter of scientific fact, that I would not in fact love Oklahoma.

I’m also someone who does a lot of woodworking. Would love to read the book if you’re able to write it. But do you have any tips on computer desks, things to think about, etc? Is there a bullet point list of tips or the ideal principles of computer desk design?

Can you show any examples in other countries where rallying around the controlled opposition party was sufficient to reverse the tide of fascism?

These people are unhinged militant centrists.

It may seem paradoxical, but it is actually possible to be an extreme centrist. The hard truth of American politics is that there are no actual centrist voters. You won’t find any significant number of people whose views largely lie right between the platforms of the two parties. What you have instead are voters whose views simply don’t align well with the existing party coalitions. Their views may still be extremely strong. Think someone that is extremely pro-choice while also owning a dozen AR-15s. Maybe they have a home in the Libertarian Party, but they have no real home in either major party. They believe passionately on both subjects, they are anything but moderate for both their support of abortion choice and guns. But because their views don’t map cleanly to one side or the other’s arbitrary grab bag of chosen issues, this voter is called a centrist. But they’re not really a centrist. They just have weak partisan alignment.

But people like these? They are actual militant centrists. In many way these politicians are the only true centrists in America. They have formed a worldview that concludes that the right answer to any single issue must lie right in the middle between the two sides. One side wants to raise taxes on the rich while the other wants to cut them? The obviously correct answer must be to keep the taxes steady. Trump wants to turn millions of legal immigrants into illegal immigrants and then deport them, while progressives want to deport no law-abiding person? The correct answer must be to brutalize merely a few thousand innocent people. Progressives want to protect trans rights while Republicans want to liquidate trans people in ovens? The obvious answer must be some roll back of trans civil rights.

People like Schumer, Fetterman, etc. are militant centrists. They will obsessively tack to the very middle of any issue. And this is fundamentally a purely ideological position, the same as any extremist. A militant racist is so committed to theories of racial superiority that they’ll want to see racist policies enacted, even if they hurt the country, even if they hurt the racist themselves, regardless of even if white people are hurt. A militant socialist might demand state ownership of every type of business and enterprise, even if there’s no market failure and private companies can run those things just fine. You would have to be a pretty extreme socialist to think that the government should be running bars for example.

This is the defining feature of extremism and militancy - a willingness to put one’s own ideology above everything else. All that matters is the ideology. It is correct with a capital C. It is truth with a capital T. Any evidence against the ideology is dismissed or explained away.

These people are not moderate. They are militant centrists. Pick an issue, no matter the context or the evidence clear for all to see. They will always tack right in the middle between the two sides. They believe, in their heart of hearts, that the middle path is always the correct one. And they don’t care how many people have to die to keep their cherished view of centrism preserved. They are as extreme and militant as any far-right militia member. They just follow the ideology of centrism rather than conservatism.

Like seriously, who buys this stuff? Just such a cheap and cliche way of displaying your interests or values. Funkos are just the nerd shut in version of a middle-age white woman’s “live laugh love” wooden sign.

We lost in 2024 because of delusional thinking that we can bully people into voting for us. Convincing people to vote for your side starts with not being a rude pompous ass. It starts with not announcing that you know voter’s wishes and beliefs better than they do. If voters get a whiff that you feel that you are entitled to their vote, they will punish your side out of spite. You can whine about this fact of human nature, but your whining won’t help you win any elections. Elections have never been some dispassionate utilitarian balancing of policy platforms, and voters get annoyed when you pretend that they are.

Democrats lose when they forget that they’re supposed to represent voters first and foremost. This is why white progressives usually fail when they go into minority communities looking for their votes. They’ll try to brow beat racial minority communities. They’ll say, “surely, our policies of government programs and redistribution are in the best interests of your community!” while at the same time not really trying to represent the issues those folks actually care about. Maybe UBI would be a great boon for members of a racial minority group. But that doesn’t mean members of that group will vote for you, or that they have to. They may simply have other political priorities and would prefer politicians that will push for those priorities first. This is the difference between ruling and representing.

I have no doubt that attitudes like yours cost Democrats far more votes than the few progressives that actually stayed home. Your message is meant to browbeat people who are honestly almost always going to vote for your side anyway. But people who are more moderate see your message, see that you feel entitled to people’s votes, and vote against Democrats as a consequence.

The number one complaint people have about liberals is “liberal arrogance.” And this is a great example of the arrogance that causes Democrats to lose elections. You believe you’ve diagnosed all of society’s problems. You believe you know the solutions to them. You believe you have all the answers. When other people tell you that their priorities are different from yours, and so your balance of issues are different from there’s, you insult them, bully them, and try to shame them to vote for the Democratic candidate.

You are why Democrats lose elections. Your hubris dooms us all. It’s condescending. It infantilizes voters who have a different ethical system than you do. And ultimately it shows that you want to rule people, not represent them. Liberal arrogance in its purest form.

Mmm sous vide dolphin.

Was actually a reference to one of Mao’s more dubious policies.

I mean, maybe he’s racist in the woke, “I acknowledge that I was raised in a racist society, and everyone raised in a racist society is inevitably a little bit racist” sort of way. The quote from Jesse Jackson illustrates this:

“There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps… then turn around and see somebody white and feel relieved.”

Magic and chill?

Six months from now:

Mayor Mamdani announces plan to kill every pigeon in NYC.

Souls exist, and reincarnation is real. Or more specifically, a soul exists. A soul. There’s just one. It’s just one soul bouncing back and forth across time and space, eventually looping back onto its own path after circling through every the life of every sentient being that is, was, or ever shall be. An infinite circle of consciousness spanning the entirety of physical existence.

Trump never held office before being elected president. What he had was fame. Guess what AOC has in spades?