We Americans are a country of temporarily embarrassed millionaires - we all want to be rich and even if we never will be, we will still behave as though we are, and that means two things: voting for giving rich people tax cuts, and driving sedans. Because driving something as proletarian as a hatchback would just be…

Burial societies were pretty common in general at that time. Immigrant groups (Jews, Italians, Poles, etc) would often organize de facto insurance pools since if the male head of household died, the stay-at-home wife and kids were already pretty screwed without worrying about paying for the funeral and burial.…