The NAFTA highway will be built by a Mexican entity/Corporation. Our shipping ports are and have been privatized into the hands of foreign entities. This NAFTA highway has treaties from 1995 and is being denied by our leaders. But if you read about it in Mexico or the UK they know more about it than we do.

I would add to the reasons for America’s fall.

1) The people were lulled to sleep like frogs in warm water and when the heat was slowly turned up the frogs just went to sleep. The Americans thought their Government was caring for them and found out too late that the people were, in fact, caring for their Government’s plan to level their riches with the rest of the world’s.

2) Americans tolerated their own ignorance and didn’t realize that their home mortgages and other finances were strictly controlled and were owned by their own Government’s entities…and that all that interest was going to fund the machine of separating the American from his/her voice in freedom and widening the gap between upper and lower classes. They tolerated Europe having higher gas mileage cars while our government keeps them out of our own country forcing us to pay more and more at the pump.

Our Government has us busy ‘consuming’ and distracted by day to day concerns and we are not seeing the forest for the trees.

So, yes, we will live a good deal more like Calcutta and they will be thrilled to have any improvement at all. It will be like water seeking its own level. The highs will drop and the lows will fill in until it is all level.

Now to the religious portion. This was predicted in the Bible centuries ago. We are told not to let it take our Peace because it must happen before the true Peace can return.

Many of our higher paying jobs are overseas and 60% of our engineering PhD graduates are taking their beautiful minds back to their home countries. We are not only giving away our jobs to foreign workers both inside and outside our borders but we are training them to be taken and not given back.

The NAFTA

I always get a bit tired about the complaint that you need Linux knowledge to fix things. Well, of course! The same way you need Windows knowledge to fix things in a Windows machine. I have been a full time Linux user for 3 years now, but I was a full time Windows user for… 15 years? before that. And of course I had huge knowledge in Windows and very little in Linux when I decided to switch. But if you keep holding on to that reason, you will never switch, and it will keep costing you money and headaches. It’s a bit like investing ;) The sooner you start, the better. And it pays back very nicely, guaranteed. Once you have enough knowledge, you just know that, from now on, you will NEVER have to pay for your operating system again, unless you choose to. Freedom feels great.

I have a Roth with Scottrade, and am debating between scottrade and vanguard for the wife. I would want to buy mostly vanguard index funds with either, but if it was with Scottrade, I would probably start out with similar funds with a lower minimum.

From what I understand with scottrade it costs $17 everytime i buy/sell/add to a vanguard fund, so if i added money quarterly that would be $68 in fees a year. If I have the Roth with Vanguard, from what i understand, it costs $10 a year per fund plus another $10 a year if you have less than $5K in the fund.

Do those numbers seem right? Am I missing something? From this it seems that I should go with vanguard unless there’s something i’m leaving out. thanks for the advice.

I have no problem with parents trying to maximise their income, but my sister and I had several years of tax returns where we had no idea this was going on and so we didn’t declare this income. I am waiting anxiously for seven years to pass so that I don’t have to worry about being audited.

I suggest you find out what’s going on, and keep asking questions until you get to the bottom of it. Good luck!

I can’t believe you have (and pass on) such a bad description of Ubuntu (and Linux for that matter). Having to use apt-get in the command line is pretty much ancient history, and if you want to keep “your mom” happy and with a stable computer that actually works, it is definitely the way to go. Mac is a good option, don’t take me wrong, but the Linux/Ubuntu option is worth trying first, and in 99% of the cases, more than enough.

I am puzzled by your comment that all the applications you need have to be “downloaded later”…
In the latest Ubuntu (and the previous, what, 3, 4 versions?) you can very easily go to the menu option “Add/Remove…” and simply click on what you want. A few minutes of downloading, and it’s there, ready to be used. I haven’t had to “download later” in a very long time, I don’t see the problem you describe.

Finally: comparing a new Mac to running Ubuntu on an old upgraded machine is hardly a fair comparison, but to each his own. I would say you don’t really have the subconscious openness to give Ubuntu a fair chance, but that’s just the impression you give (to me).

I still really like your blog, though! :)

If American society does indeed decline, I think it will be due in large part to the arrogant attitude that so many of us have that we’re somehow *entitled* to a high standard of living, and that we don’t have to do much of anything at all to earn it.

Good luck. These are hard questions.

I’ve had a sharebuilder account for almost 8 years now and absolutely 100% recommend it!

Best for ppl who buy and hold. active traders should look elsewhere…. b/c selling fees are high.

danielle

Do I max out IRAs, and 401K, or don’t bother at all because I don’t think I’ll make it 20 years to retirement?

Through work I have 400K in life insurance for viatical for the final year, and a LTDisability of $1200/month which I signed up for in 1987.

-Tony

In which case the good folks in Calcutta have no chance. So what are we worried about?