They did not replace voice actors. They hired voice actors to train the TTS they use. Very different to say ripping someone's voice off and not paying them royalties, residuals or any form of compensation whatsoever.
If a child isn't covered by medicaid for income reasons, then CHIP is a program that kicks in to cover kids at higher income levels. These are all federally backed state run programs though so it's going to be hard to figure out exact details and surely someone is slipping through some cracks. Some states combine the programs, some have both. They can vary on the income levels. There is also some level of transition as the paperwork can be cumbersome, unclear and confusing, so kids may be kicked out of the programs while these processes play out, usually with retroactive statuses of eligibility.
Have you seen the prices of pre-owned Honda/Toyota sedans that are less than 5 years old? There are absolutely cars out there where trading in your new car after 3-4 years can make sense depending on the cost of the car, the depreciation curve, and whether you want to always be driving a relatively new car. Of course it's almost always going to be a better value proposition to drive the car for 10 years if you can, but that can still depend on depreciation.
Low mileage used cars don't come with a warranty, or probably have a more limited warranty if they're CPO.
Leases can be better, but again they are usually better choices in high depreciation scenarios (like luxury vehicles or EVs, as you point out), not low depreciation scenarios.
> Also electric cars get killed on the depreciation curve.
I have heard this a couple of times now, and I believe it. Is the cause battery wear or pure demand (buyers don't want used EVs for various non technical reasons)?
In California, at one point, you could get a few thousand rebate, if you were in the Central Valley, and additional few thousand rebate. Some local cities gave rebates on top of that, and the federal tax rebate on that. Buy a $45k Model 3 and get back $13k-$15k just for buying it. Rebates like that are going to play havoc with resale values. On top of that, new Tesla's went down in price over the past several years. I think as these incentives taper off we'll see more of a stable drop off.
If you're at a 24% marginal rate then you're at least approaching the point you stop paying Social Security taxes. Sounds like you just need to work a little more to keep 12% more of your money. It's funny how making more money reduces your tax rate. You just don't make enough to benefit.
If they're married and paying 24% federal tax rate on any of their income, they almost certainly aren't paying any social security taxes on their consulting income. That would mean their adjusted gross income is in the $200-400k range for their full-time day job which exceeds the Social Security cap by a good margin, it's $176k.
They'd still have to pay for Medicare, but it knocks 12.4% off their estimated taxes for consulting.
If they're single, then the math is different. 24% for single people starts at just over $100k and runs to about $200k so they may have to pay those taxes. It's always frustrating when people whine about taxes but giving insufficient information to evaluate their complaint.
It's interesting about the leukemia one. They're also more likely to survive it than children without Down Syndrome and less likely to get a second cancer.
Aside from that, it is actually hard to paint an accurate picture of today with historical data for people with Down Syndrome as the childhood Trisomy 21 strategies have improved and been implemented in the past 20-30 years. 60 years ago kids with Trisomy 21 were moved into institutions. Kids 30 years ago got some basic treatments to keep them alive. Now kids get all kinds of screenings for hearing, vision, thyroid, heart conditions before problems develop. Turns out it's very difficult to grow, learn and thrive when your thyroid doesn't work, or your cardiovascular system wasn't circulating enough oxygen.
There are more struggles for sure, including intellectual disabilities, but many more kids are doing significantly better than their past generations. It costs more, is more work, but like the parent poster said, my experience certainly isn't extreme. We go to more doctor's appointments, have IEP meetings, and she's in speech therapy. She's generally been pretty healthy, happy and very active.
It was scary when she was born. We were given a pamphlet with a list of things similar to your first link. The reality though is she's more likely to have those than the general population, but some of those things are very rare. 100x very rare is still rare. Having all of those issues would be even more rare. The greater point though is that any kid can have those issues too.
Many insurance policies also have deductibles as an added cost if you actually need to use it making it even less valuable for things you can afford to fix/replace.
I mean, I don't think I agree - like most things with AI, the scale is just unprecedented, because producing more content costs very very little. When previously you had an occasional budget production made without any care for it, whether it's an audio story or an illustrated book, nowadays I encourage you to just open Spotify and search for "kids stories" - I'd wager that 90% is AI generated, with the same kind of storylines, illustrations posted by accounts with no history or a real name - it's just slop designed to extract whatever money they can by absolutely flooding the platform with this. Budget productions always existed, this didn't(imho).
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