Not European, but also western/ white majority society: i don’t think what’s happening in the USA could happen in Australia with the same speed because we don’t have anyone authorised to give anything like the “executive orders” that your president is. We could and are definitely on a slow slide sideways. My state got a huge majority government in lower and upper houses by one party, which happened to be the centre-right party, and they’ve been pushing through laws technically unopposed, so it just needs a slightly different setup to occur. Our voting system ID better set up to have a mix of smaller parties take up seats each year because we have preferential voting.
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Europe has a bunch of different government structures but most of them don’t put all the power in the hands of one person, from what I understand. Anywhere can have a terrible right wing government but most places the power isn’t so concentrated.
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In THEORY, we also have a fancy system of checks and balances. There’s a whole song about it and everything
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Yeah a parliamentary system would have helped, probably. I sincerely hope it doesn’t get this bad anywhere else.
I didn’t mean to exclude non European countries from the discussion! I just phrased it that way since we were discussing the Netherlands program.
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The only difference/check I see Canada having that the US doesn’t is that we don’t have executive orders. BUT if they declare a state of emergency they can effectively pull all kinds of stuff without voting it.
And for getting rid of someone their peers can do a vote of non confidence or something - it gets threatened a lot to make the leading party play nice.
I am completely sure that if Trump had stayed a little less crazy for a little longer we’d have the same kind of conservatives in.
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I see this too. The backlash to the last few weeks is we are much less likely to elect his vile little Canadian buddy.
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Historically, the US president hasn’t had so much power. The right has spent 20 years gerrymandering elections and positioning judges to make this happen. It hasn’t been a sudden thing.
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Unfortunately this is not true for Germany. Elections in two weeks with a tendency for the right wing parties plus an idiot top rank for the more middle “Christian” fraction who accepts votes from the far right for his own purpose. It might not go as fast as the US but some of our checks and balances can be changed if you have enough votes/support.
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Yes, i was thinking about “from now” how soon could we get there.
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I’m debating reducing the amount I contribute to my 457 plan. I’ve been maxing out my 457 and my Roth for several years. Most of my net worth is in retirement accounts.
Outside of retirement accounts I have an emergency fund that would cover ~5 months of expenses at my current spending level, plus COBRA payments. Then I also have what I call my “options” savings account that has about $50,000 in it. I’m basically thinking of that as a down payment on a house in case I decide to leave Howie. I want to keep that very liquid. That probably sounds callous as hell, but that’s where I am.
On one hand, that is more money than I’ve ever had available to me. On the other hand, if shit hits the fan, I could see it hitting on multiple fronts all at once (professionally, personally, etc.) and I might want more money readily available. On the third hand, would I ever feel like I had enough cash? On the fourth hand, if we truly end up living in a dystopian hellscape, will I really be worried about early withdrawal penalties on my retirement accounts?
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I think the recommendations on emergency fund are to go up or down depending on personal volatility and comfort level. Given what you’ve shared about things potentially hitting the fan all at once, 12 months is not unreasonable. If you keep it in a high yield savings account, that offsets the lost gains a bit. It’s worth calculating the tax burden of taking this money as net income rather than tax-free retirement savings, too.
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Can’t you cash out a 457 if you leave your job?
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Yes, but it has weird social security implications for me so financially it is the retirement account I should delay drawing from the longest. (It is considered a “pension” and so could reduce my eventual social security payments)
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Polliviere was considered a shoo-in as of a few weeks ago, I agree that Trump and the tariff threats specifically have led to a swelling of nationalism that has people turning to Carney as better positioned to deal with. I think PP being a moron is quite generally known, but the anti-Trudeau sentiment means that people think an ultra right wing douche bag who has never had a job outside of being a full time douche bag is somehow the better choice to lead the country.
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Oh nooo I don’t understand this about mine even after I Googled it. Blech.
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I went down a rabbit hole on this a while ago! My current position is the only one I’ve had that doesn’t pay into social security, so I may avoid the whole “windfall elimination” thing depending on how long I stay here and how many years of social security earnings I have from other jobs. But yeah, it’s really annoying and confusing, especially if you’ve worked for multiple employers with different systems.
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I haven’t followed super closely since it doesn’t apply to me, but my understanding is that the windfall elimination provision was recently (by Biden right before leaving office) repealed if you haven’t looked into it recently.
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Ahhh my job does appear to pay into Social Security (even though we also have a defined benefit pension, for which they take 10% of our paychecks) so I’m probably in a different category. My 457(b) represents my dream of early retirement, although it is very small.
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Holy shit I did NOT know that! Thank you! I’m not going to count on it 100% but that is really good to know.
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Another version of the reminder “the stock market is not the economy” and to think about other ways of building economic security: https://ko-fi.com/post/Meet-the-Informal-Economy-V7V11AKSLZ
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