Some people predict that asset prices will only go up compared to wages so if you buy a house today you'll be rich by the time you get old. There's a whole cult built around "SP500 grows 10% YoY".
And I don't buy into it. When I sold my late fathers home, about 30 years after he had originally built it, I sold it for a bit less than he had paid for having it built.
So no: Asset prices not necessarily always go up. It depends significantly on where you build/own and how that area develops over your lifetime.
But - this deferred gratification - paying a morgage now to pay less rent in the future is clearly a bet towards a future in retirement where one has less disposable income, so it makes - from my vantage point at least - sense to invest now to have more freedom later.
Others have freedom now - and need to potentially scale down later. Both are valid positions imho.
> your politicians hate independent people so they are not gonna encourage it
Your politicians are actually subsidising the rural lifestyle with direct and indirect transfers. Eg in Europe, you can buy land, leave it more or less abandoned and cash in agricultural subsidies.
The problem with this is that private health insurance is very cheap because there is an NHS that takes care of emergencies and does more than 50% of the rest. So your taxes keep your health insurance premia low.
Otherwise a comprehensive health insurance wouldn’t cost 200£ a month per person (I just requested a quote from AXA, as a 45 year old with no health problems, adding all packages, unlimited specialist visits and no excess)
Yeah, there's a reason why it's a standard perk for tech employees - they're dirt cheap to insure.
I'm a bit older than you, and the taxable value of my PHI is £140/month. I've not looked into what that covers, or what the excess etc is, and have never even considered making use of it.
And why would I? When I needed treatment in a hurry, I was blue lighted to Barts and spent two weeks in their ITU getting world-class care free of charge, with not a single thought given to cost or having to call my insurer to ask permission for particular treatments or whatever. Thank fuck for the NHS!
> A modern server can be power cycled remotely, can be reinstalled remotely over networked media, can have its console streamed remotely, can have fans etc. checked remotely without access to the OS it's running etc. It's not very different from managing a cloud - any reasonable server hardware has management boards. Even if you rent space in a colo, most of the time you don't need to set foot there other than for an initial setup (and you can rent people to do that too).
All of this was already possible 20 years ago, with iLO and DRAC cards.
Yes, that's true, but 20 years ago a large proportion of lower end servers people were familiar with didn't have anything like it, and so a whole lot even of developers who remember "pre-cloud" servers have never experienced servers with them.
We have a similar law in Italy, but, not having much advanced technology foreigners are willing to buy, the government uses it to prevent foreigners from buying washing machine manufacturers.
The reality is that these letters are written in a kind of pseudolegalistic language, where a phrase like “the employee was punctual” means they were usually late. If they were actually punctual, you'd see something more like “the employee consistently demonstrated exceptional punctuality”.
You usually need the reference letter to be reviewed by the works council or by an employment lawyer.
German here. Absolutely true, and has been for many years now. Some examples:
- grade D, poor performance: "We were satisfied with his performance"
- grade C, meh: "We were entirely satisfied with his performance"
- true grade A+: "We were always satisfied to the utmost degree with his performance" plus highly positive and extensive in the rest of the reference letter.
- "was sociable": alcoholic
- "was always striving for a good relationship with colleagues": was gossiping instead of working
- "sociability was appreciated": had sex with colleague
- "was very empathic": had sex with customer
Assuming these numbers are relevant and correct, there is a reason why qualified migrants prefer other countries.
If you were a French or a German doctor or an engineer, would you spend 3 months fighting with the Home Office for the questionable privilege of earning £50K per annum in a country where a half decent flat costs £2500 a month?
Asset prices inflated so much that income is not completely irrelevant, but it is at best only half of the picture.
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