Its truly sad when they get hardwired into problem behaviors like that. You just reminded me of that other fact that even when relocated they will almost always make it all the way back. The last few problem bears they relocated from here came all the way back again, across 3 mountain ranges.

Really relocating them just prolongs the suffering of the bear. Hopefully scientists could someday create some kind of bear amnesia medicine that would get them to forget the bad behavior pattern without messing them up

I live in a town where black bears are everywhere. I had a lot of misconceptions about black bears that I think many people have before coming here.

Black bears should really never need to be put down unless they are “problem bears” (the technical term, as funny as it sounds). They arent inherently aggressive 99% of the time. What can make them develop problem behaviors like you said is having access to garbage, which then develops a pattern of behavior, which when unsuccessful leads them to try and break into peoples houses or (very rarely) get aggressive with people.

They will return to any spot they previously found food, or even just smells of garbage they cant reach. They are so honed in on that behavior pattern that they cant even be distracted by a new source of food sometimes.

I once was walking home at night with two pounds of chicken wings that I could definitely smell with my human nose. A bear crossed the street in front of me and beelined for a trashcan that I see them knock over all the time. Like he could have easily just come for my wings but he was too honed in on the trash can. Thats how pattern based black bears are. Theyre a lot an aloof dog most of the time, attitude-wise. But if they get into bad habits they can turn sour and aggressive. Especially if they ever become accustomed to humans feeding them intentionally.

I think the biggest thing I didnt know is that black bears arent all black. Ive seen ones that are cinnamon colored a couple times

Trump has to order out mcdonalds like once a week id guess. Imagine what a pain in the ass it must be for that McDonalds to be security cleared on par with the white house chef

In all fairness, its better than advertising that you exclusively offer unarmed security

Where I live they have not hit any hotels, but they have taken people that were riding the buses on long commutes. On average the hotels where I live are mostly staffed by people who live 1.5-2 hours away by a few buses.

Transportation is probably where they will go next. If they hit that hard then no one will feel safe taking transportation, which would have the same effect on the economy as hitting actual workplaces themselves

Either way, the average American worker who is salaried even earns less than $35/hr.

Countries with similar or slightly lower wage parity with us tend to work 30 hour weeks, have more vacation time, have universal healthcare, childcare, etc. in lieu of paying people such high wages. So they can still survive. In the US we have no supports like that reducing costs, and we also dont get paid well enough to make up for that

No, these are using the cost of living numbers for an individual. Cost of living for a family of four is over 2x higher by their same calculations.

So for two individuals making $35 an hour they would be close to affording comfortable cost of living in the cheapest state. Or it we were to make it equivalent to one individual’s income being enough for a family, they would need to be earning like 80 an hour

As I showed in my longer comment, this would make the modern minimum needed to afford average COL raising a family equivalent to a top tier income in 1958. Basically unless someone was a 1%er in 1958 they wouldnt be able to live comfortably today. That is how unsustainably far down our wages have stagnated. 47% of households make less than what it costs for one individual to live comfortably. The median income today might be at a roughly equivalent point when adjusting for inflation, but it is brutally low in comparison to what one can actually buy with what that same value of money bought someone in 1958

How would more money flowing out of the US and into the rest of the world, rather than sitting in billionaire accounts, not improve the lives of people around the world? How would US wages being appropriately high not drive up wages around the world, considering Americans are generally paid well above any other workers?

Your argument of exploitation makes no sense. Sustainability is a fairer angle, but an issue that could be solved by having plenty of government money researching innovation. Money that would come from people spending money and paying taxes, from their higher wages. Rather than money being parked in billionaire bank accounts…

If anything, the current system by which we Americans get paid shit relative to what value we create is generating exploitation around the world

Yea, to afford a comfortable cost of living, as in 50% expenses, 30% discretionary, and 20% used for savings (emergency and retirement) and to pay down debts

E: Not sure why Im getting downvoted when I did not define these parameters whatsoever. This is just a reasonable calculation they did extrapolating from MIT’s barebones living wage calculations

TL;DR: skip to the graphs at the end for the meat and potatoes

SmartAsset’s calculations for cost of living in 2025 are based on a healthy financial breakdown of 50/30/20 for expenses, discretionary, and savings/debt payment percentages. Which is a level of fiscal security everyone should be entitled to IMO

Their cost of living calculations are not based on “what is the bare minimum one can survive on” where your percentages look more like 66/33/0 or 90/10/0

Really the larger thing these maps show is how all of the money has been drained away from working people over the past 70+ years. The cost of everything has accelerated, for example $35 an hour is about the amount one must make to afford the median rent or median mortgage prices in 2025, but we get screwed out of the value that our labor creates as it gets siphoned upwards. Most Americans survive on credit, which they wouldnt have to do if wages had kept up with inflation the same way that rent did since an era before neoliberal economic policy wrecked everything. If they had, then people would be making about $35 an hour. Considering we produce such massive value with our labor, it makes perfect sense. But allowing wages to stagnate is obviously beneficial to those with concentrated wealth, be it companies or individuals

If in 1958, a salary of $6,514 a year could cover the cost for a family of four then that should show you how ridiculously expensive everything has become. Modern families have two income earners and still cannot afford comfortable cost of living, which is over double what it costs for a single individual. If both of those income earners were paid at minimum $35 an hour, then families would actually be much closer to affording COL for a family of four. But they would still need additional income to reach the level of 50/30/20 comfort.

People struggle to understand just how far off the modern American worker is from the financial security that was had by the average male worker or median household in 1958. If we were to draw a direct comparison to that situation and say everyone should get paid enough to support a family of four individually, like you could back then, then everybody would have to be making like $80 an hour due to the massive inflation in costs that wages have not remotely kept up with.

Households in the 1950s had practically zero debt, in comparison to modern households which are absolutely drowning in it. Americans right now hold, collectively, over 1 trillion dollars in just credit card debt. On average each American holds over $6k in credit card debt, which would be over 10% of the average salary earner’s income ($61k). Again, just on credit card debt and nothing else. In 1950, all debt owned by the average household equated to only 2% of their income. Two percent. And people were way worse off financially in 1950 than they were by 1958

Even if the federal minimum wage were $35 per hour, on average people working for that wage would still be unable to afford to live comfortably at 50/30/20 without working a second job. Meanwhile, real actual minimum wages in nearly 10 states are still at $7.25 an hour. Let that sink in for a second. There are people close to getting paid literally 5 times less than what it costs to live anywhere near a base level of comfort. That doesnt even go into agriculture, where the federal minimum wage is even lower

Our economy is massively fucked. Were long past a crossroads point where, in order to reach a point of sustainability, we either have to pay people more or have legitimate social services like universal healthcare and childcare. Continuing down the same path is doomed to fail just based on simple logic. All of the people’s money has disappeared into the pockets of the 1%, who provide nothing with their hoarding. They create something of value by spending, but their hoarding massively outweighs their spending and will only continue to do so without intervention

47% of households, not individuals, are below the amount of income for one individual to live comfortably.

In 1958, about that same percentage of households were below an inflationary equivalent income, but the difference was that at $5k-$6k a year they were affording COL for their entire household. Being below the median of income was not such a crushing situation as it is today.

Only 1 in 44 American households made over the equivalent of $170k today, in the ultra wealthy category. Thats 2% of them. Probably 20% of households today make an excess of $170k, with a handful of them hoarding an insane amount well beyond what a household that makes $170k a year could ever feasibly hope to earn.

$170k is still $7k shy of comfortable cost of living for a family of four in Mississippi, and about half of what it costs in Hawai’i, Cali, Mass…

Therefore, most people making the equivalent of a top tier bracket income in 1958 would not be able to afford the average cost of living at basic financial security in 2025. You would have to practically have been a 1%er back then just to be comfortable today

Even the richest guy in 1958, J Paul Getty, was worth only $1B. The equivalent of a “meager” $12B or so today. Elon Musk has $433B and hes not even lonely up there.

If we capped net wealth at $12B and took away everything else above that point, there would still be 812 more billionaires than in 1958, and the US would immediately have $5T to begin rectifying the massive dysfunction in our economy

deleted by creator

Just one example:

A 2023 Pew Research Center survey of 24 countries asked respondents how many countries they had traveled to outside of their own. Surprisingly, the U.S. isn’t even in the top 10 list of the most-traveled countries; it comes in at No. 13, with roughly three-quarters of Americans responding that they had traveled to at least one other country.

It says “surprisingly” but its not surprising to me at all, considering I can hardly afford to travel domestically like twice a year, let alone internationally on top of that. By contrast,

According to the survey, Swedish residents are the most traveled nationality in the world. Over half have traveled to 10 or more countries. Indeed, for Swedes, not traveling abroad is rare, with over 99% of them reporting having visited another country.

Okay? 🤷‍♂️

I accepted your criticism as far as it was reasonable to me. Im not a professional, nor do I think my chart needs to meet your conception of a professional standard. As I said it is clearly legible to myself and many other people. The middle map yeah its not accessible to someone with colorblindness issues, I get that. I agreed with you. The other two are accessible and legible perfectly fine in grayscale for anyone with vision issues.

The idea of it not having more than 5 classes is something I even personally already did when it was feasible on the orange map, without knowing anything of what is apparently a standard. I intentionally did not break down the scales any further just for that clarity. That was not an option for the red map, as finer bands made far more sense in that case considering the width of the scale that was caused by massive fluctuations in state minimum wages

I dont see how this an issue with me as opposed to you being a nitpick since you do this as a day job. Im doing it for fun and for my own visualization. And it appears most people dont seem to have any problem understanding them. Maybe you oughtta lighten up a bit

deleted by creator

If you consider that in 1958 the average household family of four was funded 95+% by one male, then you can see clearly that the answer to that is no.

If in 1958, a salary of $6,514 a year could cover the cost for a family of four then that should show you how ridiculously expensive everything has become. Modern families have two income earners and still cannot afford comfortable cost of living, which is about double what it costs for a single individual.

If both of those income earners were paid at minimum $35 an hour, then families would actually be much closer to affording COL for a family of four. But they would still need additional income to reach the level of 50/30/20 comfort.

It seems some people are struggling to understand just how far off the modern American worker is from the financial security that was had by the average male worker in 1958. If we were to draw a direct comparison to that situation and say everyone should get paid enough to support a family of four individually, like you could back then, then everybody would have to be making like $80 an hour due to the massive inflation in costs that wages have not remotely kept up with. Another point is that households in the 1950s had practically zero debt, in comparison to modern households which are absolutely drowning in it

Do you get what Im saying?

I think youre misunderstanding that I am referring to the same 20% the entire time. Yes, two different destinations for money in savings (emergency and retirement separately). Their calculations also assume that that 20% is also going towards paying down any debts. My response to him in particular was pointing out that you wouldnt be able to fully fund an emergency account within 1 year and pay down debt and save for retirement. Whereas his point was 20% is a ridiculous amount. I think if you ignore the debt part maybe that would be slightly more reasonable, but even still, if you cant do it in 1 year on $35 an hour how the fuck is anyone gonna do anything remotely close to it at 1/4th or 1/5th of that? They wont. And in reality, by the numbers, even at $35 an hour no one could afford to live at 50/30/20. AKA living truly comfortably and without being in a financially precarious position, which it should be obvious involves having a healthy amount of savings and also not having to work yourself to death after retirement age

The reason I made these isnt even to argue for a certain wage of any kind. The point is to see just how far off all working class Americans are from any level of comfort. Where did all the money go, if people were being paid the equivalent of $35 an hour today 75 years ago? Its no surprise we are all fucked outside of a handful of people

I suppose that is a fair criticism of the multi faceted map with red and green, but the other two are simple light-dark scale and I dont see how your criticism makes sense. You can literally read those two perfectly clearly in grayscale if you wanted to. So I dont see the criticism there, sounds more like a personal issue

Lmfao “your position is privileged” bro I grew up poorer than shit, was poor as shit my first 10 working years of my life making $12 an hour at two full time jobs, and now finally make like $52k a year, which is nowhere near enough to live 50/30/20. Both of my parents were making the inflationary equivalent of way more money than what my $52k is worth at the time I was born, and again I grew up well below average in a bad neighborhood. I make $25 an hour and the only reason that is remotely comfortable for me is because my rent is well below 1/3rd of my income, which comes with its own costs. I never truly leave work, since I live here.

Not to mention, genuinely do you not understand that I personally did not define cost of living? Or choose 50/30/20? Im working with the information I have available from an arguably reasonable source. If you take issue with their methods then fucking bother them about it. Im not the mastermind of their cost of living calculations as I told you 4 goddamn messages ago