Dessa

I've only skimmed this so far (It's meaty), but it looks like it really touches on a lot of topics important to the left right now:

• The diamond trade is run mosty by pro-apartheid forces Israel and the DeBeers family from South Africa
• Russia has a ton of diamond reserves, but is struggling to break in due to sanctions and the dirtiest sort of competition
• A lot of diamonds come out of the Congo, which is notorious for their brutal slavery in mining
• The entire business has been hated for a long time by the left.

If anti-"Israeli" sentiment can be leveraged against thr Diamond industry in general, this could move things forward in a number of places. Is there an opportunity here to cause this terrible industry some trouble right now?

I don't really know much about him except that everyone seems to hate him too.

Unrelated ramble: This election reminds me of the leadup to the election that Ventura won in Minnesota with 2 guys everyone hated leaving it ripe for a weird third party to win. I don't suspect RFK could pull it off, because I think Ventura's celebrity and centrism was an important part of that formula.

Following up on the HSA post someone made earlier, FSAs (Flexible Spending Accounts) re an optional medical thing some employers offer. They are never a replacement for insurance, but are intended to be supplemental.

They're a temporary use-it-or-lose it fund you pay for (and your employer can but probably wont contribute to) with a current maximum contribution limit of 3200 (some funds alow limited rollover, but it's capped by law, and not required) that you can use to cover some medical expenses insurance wont cover. That's a bunch of stuff, but the big ones are these:

• Deductibles: The amount of money you have to pay out of pocket before insurance will spend a penny to help you.
• Copays: Flat fees you might have to pay out of pocket per medical proedure or bill .
• Coinsurance: A percentage of a medical bill that insurance requires you to cover (20% coinsureance means you pay 20% out of pocket and they pay 80%.
• Some prescription meds.
• Dental
• Not sure about vision

You can choose at the beginning of the year how much money you intend to put into your FSA, and then your employer deducts an amount from each paycheck to fill that fund. This money is non-taxable going in and out, which is the primary form of savings.

The catch? Twofold:

1. As mentioned, it is use-it-or-lose-it. The employer pockets what you can't rollover.
2. You have to guess how much you will spend by how much you're declaring at insurance re-up time. Under or overguessing leaves money on the table.
3. If you are terminated , whether you get fired, quit, or get laid off, the employer keeps everytjing you've put in. I lost 1200 dollars this way is how I know. I don't recall how this interacts with COBRA, but you can't afford COBRA anyway.

So how can you make this shit deal possibly wothwhile? You can use ALL of it up front. So if you just started and you've gotten one paycheck and have FSA and put in 5 bucks, you can INSTANTLY use the ENTIRE amount of your election. So if you elected for max FSA, you can get a 3200 dollar procedure done on day 1, and the employer pays it all, even if you haven't paid anytjing in yet. Once that's done, if you quit or get fired, they cannot come to you to cover what you haven't paid in yet. That's money they spent that they can never get back.

So if you have a covered procedure that you know you need done, you can fuck over an employer with this one cool trick. Capitalists HATE this. But mind that it will probably take some time to get your appt scheduled and your procedure done, so you might have to work until that happens.

The other cool thing about this: It covers dental expenses INCLUDING ORTHODONTICS. For those of you who havent been working long, insurance that covers ortho is unicorn territory. In an ideal scenario, you get hired, FSA kicks in, you call to get an appt and get in the next day for an ortho consult, buy the high end ortho they are offering (make sure to get them to bill it all up front), then quit and get ortho for free.

Is it worth it if you plan to stay at a company? That's complicated and highly individualized, but youre bound to need at least some small amount even if it's just for a physical, assuming you dont forsee getting fired. If you're young and healthy and wear a fucking n95 lile you should, you probably don't need to risk FSA at all. If you have rollover (ask HR of you do), that might be worth going up to if you're not sure, since you get 2 years of coverage then, assuming you stay employed.

I'm not saying that things were hunky-dory by any stretch, but looking at the horror stories from most of the world, Japan seems tonhave been considerably less fucked over. Why?

Are they cops?