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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 6th, 2023

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  • There are some workable solutions inside the nation as well, as the federal system is dismantled. If WA, OR, CA, HI, the tribal counsels, and maybe AZ and NM (if they can play nice) got together, we could do a number of things to shore up the left part of the US.

    First, states are not subject to patent. Each could choose a critical, expensive medication and produce it, sharing supply around the compact. Tribes could easily make epi-pens for their share.

    Second, tie this into a compact equivalent of a multi-state healthcare that creates a floor healthcare for all citizens. Hawaii could lead this effort, they essentially already have it in their state. Get to the point you can cover people with income up to $70,000/yr california equivalent (based on living expenses) and let healthcare companies create supplemental plans like for medicare.

    Third, as trump wrecks FEMA, form compacts for emergency response with mexico and canada and among these states. This is not currently legal but if FEMA is gone, why not just do it and who cares.

    Fourth, create cooperative food sharing among states for excess crops. Federal programs just got destroyed, and california has a lot of excess supply. Let the compact members have a market where they can, as states, buy excess for their food programs. Let the program deal as an entity with non-compact states, which isn’t controlling interstate commerce, feds, it’s just the free market at work using the power of liberty to make red states either meet the price or we look outside the US.

    A lot of this just recreates existing structures that are being destroyed, but leaves the red states that destroyed them to fend for themselves.











  • oh that’s right we don’t have a credit card or travel Lemmy yet. Okay, take down a few notes.

    First you haven’t done anything terrible. Probably you’ve knocked your credit score down about 10 or 15 points. Not because of the opening and closing, but because multiple hard inquiries of your credit can cause the score to drop. That will repair itself over the next six months.

    Something good to know is that American Express cards will only give you their sign-up bonus once per lifetime per person per card. I know that Chase will let you reapply two years after you drop a card and will give you the bonus, and I believe that’s the standard for other Visa cards or MasterCard.

    I strongly recommend that you look at cards based on the rewards plan that they’ll provide you and the amount of spending required for you to be able to get the reward. I own several businesses so a $4000 or a $6000 spend is not a big deal for me over three months, But when I didn’t have that, I would need to figure out if I could make that spend over the required time period and go one card at a time. so back in my early days I was getting one card every three or four months, and then canceling cards about a year or two in, and then reapplying for them two years later.

    I know that sounds complicated, but when you wanna fly to Australia, free and business class, and you don’t have a lot of money, that’s how you work the system.

    Something good to know is there are essentially three tiers of credit cards. There are basic cards that will give you a lower reward, have a low spending requirement, and are generally with no annual fee. Then there is a second tier of cards, which will usually have a $95 per year fee, which is waived for the first year, and they have more rewards and perks. Then there is a third tier of cards that will have much higher spends (sometimes $6000-$10,000 in 3 to 6 months), but they will have much larger rewards along with about a $500 fee. I recommend staying away from the higher to your cards unless you can play that game and it’s not an issue.

    OK, that is our Lemmy primer for everyone interested in credit card points.

    Edit: I also strongly recommend you get one of the lower tier cards now, and keep that one with no anual fee from now on. Part of credit history is card longevity; I am a charter cardmember of a card from years ago for that reason.