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Good for the governor for getting government out the way. When my then-teenaged daughter wanted to get a summer job I had to take time off work to go to the local public school (which she did not attend) to have them issue working papers. What benefit did this serve? If a 14 year old is allowed to work in an office, have the business verify her age the same way they verified her eligibility to work in the US.
And by the way, appropriate child labor is great for the child. They learn responsibility and develop confidence, and once they see how little they bring home from their minimum wage job they discover that education, learning a skilled trade, or becoming an entrepreneur will take them where they want to go in life.
This sounds like the shidduch meetings women hold in many communities, updated to take advantage of technology so they can potentially branch out to other communities instead of staying local.
I didn’t read the original post but I have to bring up a very important point that …
As cookies, and we don’t have any issues because they don’t last long enough to be a problem.
Nice is a funny word. Reliable, clean, good condition – OK. But what does $60,000 get you that you can’t buy for $30,000 or even less, other than status? In theory I agree with CT Lawyer about buying a late model used car but it seems that those cars are barely cheaper than new and not worth it if you hold onto your cars for a long time.
I’m a huge fan of buying new Hondas and keeping them for a very long time. My first Honda is now 18 years old and bli ayin hara still going strong. Several years ago I bought a new car and gave the original to one of the kids, and in a few years I plan to give the replacement to another child and buy myself something else. Pay for it over 5 years (at very very low manufacturer’s financing if you qualify) and drive it for many more years.
People say “I can’t be worried about my car” but if you take good care of your car there is no reason you should have to worry. There are many excellent, reasonably priced cars on the market. Look, if you want to drive a new car every 3 years or you like fancy cars, that’s fine if you can afford it. But if what you’re really looking for is an economical, reliable vehicle that looks decent and performs well, you do not have to get trapped in either a lease or a luxury car.
I realize that not everybody can afford a $30,000 car and for those who can’t afford it you do the best you can with what you have. Sometimes that means buying a car with issues, whether they are cosmetic or mechanical. No, it’s not fun. It is never fun to not be able to afford what you want and what “everyone else has!” If your budget is truly too tight to afford the car you want, live within your means. If you can swing it, figure out where your priorities lie and if it makes sense at this stage of your life. But don’t talk yourself into “needing” something extravagant. Why should you make yourself miserable, either by not being happy with what you have or by suffering financially because you bought it?
BatHH – you sound very grounded and in touch with yourself. The point of dressing for shidduchim is to find the man who is right for you. Obviously you want to present the best “you” (clean and neat, not dirty and sloppy, for example) but you still have to be yourself. If your style is low key, that’s going to be something that your soul mate appreciates. If you dress in a more flashy style you may grab someone’s attention, but its more likely to be the wrong someone because if you’re not flashy, you don’t want a husband who is looking for flashy.
DY – Are we talking specifically about Best Buy or about price gouging in general?
I’m willing to believe that Best Buy made a mistake. It’s not like they always sell bottled water and suddenly raised the price.
As far as price gouging in general, you’re probably right that fear of bad PR would prevent some businesses from raising prices to cover the temporarily higher costs. That should be a business decision, though, not a government decision. It doesn’t help anybody get bottled water or other supplies when politicians go on and on about how awful it is if prices go up. I think we need to change the way we talk about prices during times of shortage, as we are on this thread 🙂 “Gouging” is a very judgmental word.
Allowing people to buy (however many) at the old price means that any supplier who restocks at a higher price (say, by paying someone to drive much further to buy additional products to sell) will lose money on the first (however many) he sells to each customer. It’s not worth paying more to buy stock that will have to be sold for less than the seller pays.
Re Best Buy: If the only times the employee has ever bought a bottle of water is for $2 or $3 at the mall, sure a case price of $42 makes sense!
Keeping prices “artificially” low leads to two outcomes: Hoarding and failure to restock. You can prevent hoarding with rationing (assuming of course you can pull it off – people don’t keep coming back for more, etc.) but stores won’t restock if it’s not worth it.
Let’s say the local water distributor is out of stock. A store owner might be willing to hire a trucker to bring in a load of water from further away, but that will cost more than his usual stock. If he can’t recoup his higher costs, he won’t do it.
The moral argument is that price gouging prevents poor people from being able to afford necessities, but not allowing prices to rise to the market level means that there won’t be any of the necessities available for any price. Nobody will have bottled water if it’s not worth it for businesses to incur the extra costs to bring it in.
Hey, who are you calling an elephant?!
The Mooch and The Donald are perfect for each other!
Sean Spicer’s problem is that he’s basically a normal human being so he had trouble keeping up with the ever-changing stories. I think Scaramucci will have no problem whatsoever with “We never spoke to the Russians ” immediately followed by “Of course we met with the Russians” and then “I don’t even know any Russians,” with a “You want to talk about interference? How about Hillary and the Ukrainians?” thrown in for good measure.
DY – When people are covered through their employers they aren’t buying insurance on the open market. For example, my company offers a couple of different plans through one insurance company. These may or may not be the plans or company I would choose if everything else was equal, but the fact that my employer subsidizes these plans is a big incentive for me to choose one of them over paying full price on the open market.
If instead of paying me with insurance my compensation included “health care money” that I could use to buy insurance of my choosing or put into an HSA (health savings account), I would be shopping on the open market. This would put more people into the general pool because people who are currently covered through their employers would (a) be in the pool (b) with money to pay for insurance.
Obviously there are A LOT of details that need to be addressed and this isn’t the place for a full policy paper, but at a high level, I believe getting people out of employer plans and into the general market is the key to making health insurance work for all Americans.
Economics – that just the way insurance works: by spreading costs among more people. If only sick people buy insurance then the insurance plan will have to pay a lot, so each participant will have to pay a lot. If many people, including young, healthy people, buy a plan, the plan won’t have to pay as much per participant but all participants still get something of value. The people who get sick get their bills paid, while the people who don’t get sick have the peace of mind of knowing that in case they get sick, they will have their bills paid. Because the overall costs are borne by a larger group, the cost per participant is lower so people who are less likely to need health care are still likely to buy insurance.
You are absolutely correct that when someone needs a major surgery, they need it. My point is that medical providers would not get away with their pricing nonsense if prices were transparent.
To address Joseph’s original question, he’s right in theory. The reality is that our safety net grows (mutates?) based on which lobby has the upper hand at any given time and we live in an imperfect world, so the question is what to do about it. It is politically difficult to roll back benefits that have been granted, so we have to be very careful about expanding government benefits.
On health insurance v. health care …
Insurance is designed to protect against an unlikely event. Every year I give my auto and homeowner’s insurance company money and in good years, they don’t pay me a penny. I’ve had life insurance for many years and BH it hasn’t paid out yet. After 120 years, my kids will get some money. That’s insurance.
For many people, health insurance pretty much works the same way. They get an annual physical and that’s it. For many other people, though, what we mean by insurance is really a way to pay for anticipated health care. Calling it insurance isn’t really accurate but that boat has sailed. My other post touches on the cost of care and here I want to share some thoughts about the cost of insurance.
Most nonelderly Americans get health insurance through their employers, although health insurance is not inherently related to work and the only reason we have such a system is World War 2-era wage controls that exempted fringe benefits. Tying insurance to a job introduced several distortions, one of which is that it removed a huge chunk of people from the pool of potential insurance buyers.
Insurance works by spreading costs over a large group of buyers. When there are fewer people willing to buy insurance, because they are already getting tax-advantaged insurance at work, insurance prices go up. Obamacare tried to address this problem with the individual mandate, but the economics don’t work because uninsured sick people were thrilled to have insurance but for young, healthy people who don’t expect to need medical care, it’s cheaper to pay the penalty than to pay for someone else’s health care.
I believe that a much better way of driving down insurance costs is to increase the number of people buying insurance, and the way to do this is to change the tax code so that it is better for companies to give their employees more money that the employees can then use to buy the insurance policy that fits their needs. This also requires that government drop some of the coverage mandates. For many people, a catastrophic plan is a smart move, and face it, with the high deductibles some Obamacare plans have now, plenty of people effectively have only catastrophic coverage anyway.
The idea is to make insurance coverage attractive so it is something people want to buy, not have to buy, and this can be done by (a) allowing insurance companies to craft policies people want and (b) increasing the number of buyers by breaking the distortionate link between insurance and work, which will bring costs down by spreading them over a larger pool.
The biggest reason healthcare is so unaffordable is that there is no price transparency, largely because there is a disconnect between the people using healthcare and the people paying for it.
I had a procedure done at my local in-network hospital, for which they billed the insurance company $17,000. The network negotiated rate is about 10 percent of that and the hospital wrote off over $15,000. Without insurance they would have come after me for that money.
If they are willing to accept $1,700, why not just charge everyone $1,700? You could say that they won’t collect $1,700 from everyone who has this procedure. Probably true. But why should uninsured people bear the hospital’s costs? If the procedure is truly worth $1,700 then that it what they should charge, and we should have a better system for socializing the unrecoverable costs.
I’ve had similar situations with lab work where the insurance company pays pennies on the dollar, but the lab won’t accept anything less than payment in full for tests that are not covered by insurance.
Contrast the price structure of procedures where most people have insurance with those that are not usually covered, such as cosmetic surgery. Cosmetic surgery is a standard marketplace with actual prices and some negotiating. Insured procedures are billed at exorbitant rates and preferred customers get massive discounts while poor folks are taken to the cleaners.
Thank you for telling us about family members’ military service. We live in a time and place of such incredible opportunity for frum Jews and it’s so important to remember that freedom isn’t free.
Zman updated the ad so it now links to zmanplay rather than coming back to YWN. They are staging a production at the end of December.
The suggestions above are much more interesting than the reality …
The restaurant is under the supervision of Rabbi Zushe Blech, a Monsey rabbi who is widely known in kashrus circles. I guess they describe it as a “private hashgacha” to distinguish it from a national hashgacha like the OU or a regional one like RCBC.
Suffern is basically Monsey, just like Airmont, Spring Valley, Wesley Hills, etc. Different local government or ZIP code but it’s all the same community.
Chashuve rabbonim and dayanim publicize their actions because that is the only way people know that Rabbi X of chassidus Y or shul Z said to not do something.
Furthermore, chashuve rabbonim and dayanim don’t make threats, and that’s the way this situation has been described. A full page ad in the Community Connections? Absolutely. But threatening to close down a business (and not just by telling their followers not to eat there, if you know what I mean) is not how chashuve rabbonim and dayanim act.
So, please share with us the names and affiliations of the chashuve rabbonim and dayanim. The public has every right to know who is deciding how we must all behave.
Joseph – who is “the recognized beis din of the community”? The greater Monsey area includes many distinct fine frum kehillos and the beis din of one does not speak for all of us.
The question here isn’t about a boycott but about intimidation. Some of us appreciate an option between Kosher Castle and Fireside, even if it comes with TVs and a bar area. Those who are not interested in such an establishment are welcome to not frequent BH, but they have no right to impose their beliefs on the rest of us.
You’re right. We should not live where we are not wanted. So there go Ramapo, Brooklyn, Lakewood, … Last I heard the neighbors were not so happy about KJ either. The rallying call used to be “Jews to Palestine” (meaning, get out of Europe) then it became “Jews out of Palestine” (completely denying the historical fact of our relationship with the land) so where should we go? Some of our cousins suggest the Mediterranean.
Add independence and self determination. Y’know, those sovereign sorts of rights that real countries have. Britain has a long and proud history (this is a general statement and I am not getting into certain specific acts or omissions) while the EU has a moralistic busybody need to tell everybody how to run their lives.
Leave to maintain some dignity and self respect.
The OU has lots of info on their website about various communities. Google Orthodox Union community fair.
Check out the OU Jewish Communities fair – they have loads of useful information about quite a few communities, including contact info.
https://www.ou.org/fair/communities/
Mods – if OK please include the link.
From what I hear, Bruriah is big enough that it has separate, more advanced classes.
We have been with Ateres almost since the school started and BH we are very happy. It’s not perfect, but then nobody is. Ateres has been the right school for our daughters, ranging from elementary to high school to coming back as a teacher.
Ateres is really about helping each girl develop her unique relationship with Hashem. Questions are encouraged because the Torah has all of the answers. Lovelyme – it is interesting that you picked up on “fun” as simchas hacahim is a crucial value.
Ateres has a dress code, not a uniform. I love seeing how the girls express their personalities through their clothes and accessories.
Where to start:
Which elementary school is your daughter currently attending?
Which high schools do girls from this school usually attend?
What does the elementary school administration recommend, knowing your daughter? They will take her academic, social and hashkafic needs into account.
Do any of your daughter’s friends know where they would like to go?
In addition to the more traditional Bais Yaakovs listed above, there’s also Ateres (which my daughters have attended for many years), as well as schools outside of Monsey. I know Monsey girls travel to Bruriah, Manhattan and Machon Ora (Passaic).
Click the button under “support a farmer” to enter any amount.
Bartenura is a girly “wine” in the first place so cute makes perfect sense.
Some ideas: invite a neighbor for coffee; if you have similarly aged kids, schedule a play date; invite some neighborhood women for a pirkei avos shiur and/or shalosh seudos; etc. Be proactive, not reactive!
I guess it’s personal and different people react differently, but to me, being treated like a nebach or treating someone else like a nebach is worse than asking for help.
Yes, you are right, people are oblivious. So maybe you can ask for what you need instead of hoping someone will read your mind? (And by the way, this advice is not limited to divorcees.)
What do I think? I think you might be sending your kids to the wrong school.
If you agree with the rules but much of the parent body does not then it is probably not the kind of crowd you want your child to be with. Children are very strongly influenced by their peers. It also sounds like the school administration is out of touch and those are not people I would want to be mechanech my children.
If you do not agree with the rules but are signing anyway you may as well save your tuition money and send the kids to public school. Whatever Torah they might learn will be outweighed by the parental message that you have no respect for the school and that it’s OK to lie when it’s convenient.
I would be thrilled if someone came over to me while I was slaving away at the stove and offered me a roll piled high with olive dip (good) but it turned out to be jalapeno (way better)!
How do you make your jalapeno dip?
Which airline? When?
R’ Blumenkrantz’s app lists Crest whitening systems & kits as OK.
Truce 🙂
Mesorah is what Hashem gave us through Moshe at Har Sinai. A dish that became popular a few hundred years ago in some parts of Europe is not at the same level and it is wrong to denigrate someone’s level of observance because they choose to celebrate Shabbos with different foods than you are used to.
Way to go Tzaddiq! That’s a recipe not just for an enjoyable Shabbos seudah but for shalom bayis as well!
OK, in which case I stand by my original comment: what passes for tradition is itself a recent innovation.
My point about what Moshe Rabeinu did or did not eat or wear is that there are many styles (culinary and sartorial) that are perfectly fine for frum yidden. I don’t think Moshe Rabeinu ate sushi any more than I think he ate gefilte fish but I’m not saying that anyone should or should not eat gefilte fish or sushi regardless of what Moshe Rabeinu ate.
Our mesorah includes gathering the family for a festive seudah, although the menu has changed numerous times over the millennia. I’m pretty sure Moshe Rabeinu never had gefilte fish or cholent. I’m also pretty sure Moshe Rabeinu didn’t wear a streimel either, while we’re at it.