1/24/2024 - TL;DW But I Read
More than half of Americans earning more than $100,000 a year say they’re living paycheck to paycheck. What's going on?
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DuckDuckGo On The Rise!
*Topic : Technology
*Length : 12m 33s
*View : 108K
Have you ever heard of a search engine called DuckDuckGo? Maybe you’ve heard of it in passing as some sort of private alternative to Google, but did you know that DuckDuckGo is one of the most popular websites in the world?
🤔 DuckDuckGo is the 6th most visited website in the US, pulling in 2.3 billion visits every single month.
📈 DuckDuckGo boasts a user base of 80 million people as of 2020, likely closer to 100 million today, making it one of the most popular websites in the world.
🌍 DuckDuckGo's humble beginnings in a small village in Pennsylvania led to its success in breaking into the competitive search engine market, challenging big companies.
📈 DuckDuckGo's growth has been driven by word of mouth, as people tell their friends about this private alternative to Google, try it, like it, and then tell more people about it.
📊 Google trackers are used by 75% of the top one million websites in the world, and Facebook trackers are present on 25% of the top websites, raising concerns about user privacy.
🧠 DuckDuckGo doesn't pander to your thoughts and beliefs like Google, providing search results that are not influenced by your personal biases.
🦆 DuckDuckGo offers a more private internet experience with fewer ads, better performance, and no bias, making it a popular choice for many users.
💰 DuckDuckGo's goal was to create a modest profitable private alternative to Google, not to compete with their $162 billion search ad revenue.
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The Homeless Business!
*Topic : Business
*Length : 13m 14s
*View : 132K
America has a homelessness crisis as record numbers of people are ending up on the streets of a few concentrated city centers. Cities are spending billions of dollars on failing projects to try and solve this problem which has attracted a growing list of companies happy to provide their services… for a price. Helping the homeless has become a lucrative business with multimillion-dollar government contracts awarded every day.
🏙️ Despite a 1300% increase in the annual budget for the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, the number of homeless people went up by 56%, highlighting the inefficiency and lack of results in addressing the issue.
🤔 The homeless industrial complex is a result of bad management structures, bad incentives, and bad market conditions.
🤑 Highly paid executives in the homeless industrial complex raise questions about where funding is truly going.
🏠 The homeless industrial complex involves multiple nonprofit organizations contracted for niche roles, leading to inefficiency and lack of coordination.
🏠 Housing First initiative gives people homes, but other services like addiction treatment and mental health support are handled separately, causing a major problem in addressing homelessness.
💸 Spending $17.5 billion on homelessness in California could have covered rent for every homeless person in the state with $4 billion left over.
🏠 A vast majority of surveyed respondents could have avoided homelessness with a subsidy of less than $300 a month, which is far cheaper than the cost of helping someone once they are already homeless.
🏠 The homeless issue is a political football, with politicians using it to discredit support efforts and score easy points.
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Americans Can’t Keep Their Paychecks. Seriously?
*Topic : Business
*Length : 9m 49s
*View : 325K
More than half of Americans earning more than $100,000 a year say they’re living paycheck to paycheck, according to a report from PYMNTS and LendingClub. This may be a result of a sneaky behavioral phenomenon called lifestyle creep, which is when a person’s spending habits expand as their income rises. The rise in the cost of living complicates matters, as incomes have not kept up with inflation. So what’s going on?
💸 "More than half of Americans with an income of $100,000 a year or higher say they're living paycheck to paycheck."
💸 A lot of people have this scarcity mindset around money, and they spend so much of their lives saving, saving, saving.
💰 The lack of traditional safety nets like pensions means young adults need to be more responsible for their own retirement, contributing to their own 401k for financial security.
💰 Lifestyle inflation can be divided into buying luxury items and neglecting everyday necessities like dental care and car maintenance when living paycheck to paycheck.
💳 Credit card rates are over 20%, leading to a spiral of debt for many individuals struggling to make ends meet.
💸 Marbrisa Flores describes herself as a recovering supersaver, highlighting the mindset of scarcity and fear of spending that affects financial well-being.
😔 Living in a scarcity mindset takes away joy from life and causes unnecessary anxiety.
🍰 The goal is to find a balance between enjoying life in the present and saving for the future.
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