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Re:Groupon by dcollins · 2011-03-18 08:32 · Score: 1 · on Groupon Could Challenge Google's Record IPO

Forbes article 6/24/2010, probably elsewhere, too: http://blogs.forbes.com/moneybuilder/2010/06/24/one-big-difference-between-chinese-and-american-households-debt/

It does include mortgage debt. Perhaps this will suit you better: U.S. household debt is 136% of income, in urban China it's 17%. Meanwhile, more urban Chinese own their own home (85% to 69%), and those who do are far more likely to do so outright (11% with mortgage vs. 70% in U.S.).

Billionairs by DarthVain · 2011-03-14 04:22 · Score: 3, Interesting · on Anonymous Leaks Internal Bank of America Emails

I thought it sort of interesting that if you look at the list of Billionaires:

http://www.forbes.com/wealth/billionaires#p_1_s_arank_-1__-1

and look at where they got their money from.

If you look at the USA, and ignore all the Walmart jerks, and software bubbles, a disproportionate amount got their money from "Hedge Funds". Now look around the world, how many others can you find? I think I found one.

These are the same Hedge Funds that bought up (and demanded, and got) all the US real estate debt, causing the whole economic problem. I wonder how many of those guys are hurting? Oh wait, none because they are all billionaires. Also if you look at the names... its the exact same people that came up with the bail out plan etc... talk about conflict of interest and self serving SOB's.

Imagine you live in Rome. by falconwolf · 2011-03-13 14:21 · Score: 1 · on Japan Battles Partial Nuclear Meltdown

Imagine you live in China, France, India, or Russia. Will the markets pay to build nuclear power plants? Or will it take government officials to decide what's built?

Falcon

nuclear power by falconwolf · 2011-03-13 13:26 · Score: 1 · on Japan Battles Partial Nuclear Meltdown

We can do much better now, but the anti-nuclear lobby has prevented us from getting anything built.

The anti-nuclear lobby has not prevented plants from getting built in China, France, India, or Russia. In the Forbes article Hooked on Subsidies it says "How do France (and India, China and Russia) build cost-effective nuclear power plants? They don't. Governmental officials in those countries, not private investors, decide what is built. Nuclear power appeals to state planners, not market actors."

Imagine if there was an anti-car lobby with as much power. We'd all (OK a very small number of us would) be driving around in incredibly expensive and patched-up Ford Anglias and Morris Minors today. Everyone else would be going by horse or foot.

Imagine if petroleum wasn't as cheap as it was when cars were first mass produced what we'd be driving today. Without cheap petroleum we wouldn't be driving internal combustion engine vehicles, we'd be driving electric cars. The first one was built in 1828, before the Otto cycle, four stroke engine was invented. Well we might be driving vehicles powered by Rudolf Diesel's Diesel engine. However Diesel made his fuel from hemp oil, peanut oil, and other vegetable oils.

Falcon

Re:Considering ..... by falconwolf · 2011-03-13 13:04 · Score: 1 · on Japan Battles Partial Nuclear Meltdown

The problem with you "alternative" energy types is that you have no sense of proportion. You could entirely cover the Sahara (according to a British study) in photovoltaic cells and still not cover Europe's energy needs.

Citation requested.

Here's my own: A Solar Grand Plan. Another one, Hooked on Subsidies. Yet, another one, The elusive negawatt. Still another: Renewable Energy Maps of Nevada. Also Renewable Energy for America.

That isn't to say we shouldn't move to more alternative fuels (we should), but to naively think that will be sufficient is just blind.

To say alternative energy can't be sufficient is just blind. Requiring people to pay the full cost of the energy they use, including but not only eliminating subsidies and paying for pollution, then people won't be as wasteful.

Falcon

Re:...and it was about to close by Anonymous Coward · 2011-03-13 07:01 · Score: 0 · on Japan Battles Partial Nuclear Meltdown

According to this report the permission to operate the reactor was extended for another 10 years in february of this year.

four problems in 50 years by falconwolf · 2011-03-13 06:06 · Score: 2 · on Japan Battles Partial Nuclear Meltdown

Four problems in 50 years? Wiki lists at least 56 Nuclear reactor accidents in the United States which caused at least one death or $50,000 in damage. Of course we've had articles on Slashdot about what happened at the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant, as well as guards being caught sleeping on the job.

is actually a POSITIVE thing

Ah, I agree it's good there hasn't been more accidents.

Also, modern designs wouldn't have these problems. Modern designs remove 90% of the criticisms that you, and other, lay at their feet.

But those designs don't solve one important problem, nuclear power is still Hooked on Subsidies. Without government subsidies Wall Street, no matter how evil people think it is, will not pay for nuclear power plants to be built.

Falcon

The expensive is driven mostly by lawyers. by falconwolf · 2011-03-13 05:09 · Score: 3, Informative · on Japan Battles Partial Nuclear Meltdown

Citation needed. On the other hand, here's a citation of my own: Nuclear power is Hooked on Subsidies. And China, France, India, and Russia do not have the US's lawyers or environmental laws.

Falcon

Re:Considering ..... by falconwolf · 2011-03-13 04:50 · Score: 1 · on Japan Battles Partial Nuclear Meltdown

Tens of thousands of people were probably killed by the quake and the resulting tsunami.

Unfortunately this is likely too true.

But anti-nuke activists will consider this the worse tragedy and use it at every chance to fight against the building of more modern and much, much safer designs.

Show a safe design that can withstand what happened in Japan? Fact is is that Nuclear Power is Hooked on Subsidies. And notice that that is not a page on an environmental but on a free market website, and the original article was printed by the business magazine Forbes. Also notice what the writer says about nuclear power in other nations: "How do France (and India, China and Russia) build cost-effective nuclear power plants? They don't. Governmental officials in those countries, not private investors, decide what is built. Nuclear power appeals to state planners, not market actors."

Falcon

Re:Which government subsidization? by stdarg · 2011-03-07 02:40 · Score: 1 · on Ariz. Team Seeks Fossil-Fuel Cost Parity, Using Solar Energy Concentrators

There are a few ways in which gasoline in subsidized in the US. First oil firms tend to pay a lower tax.

A lower tax than...? According to Business Week in 2008:

According to Securities & Exchange Commission filings, Exxon paid an effective tax rate of 34% to the U.S. government in 2007, or $5.12 billion. While cheaper than rates from some foreign governments, it's still a higher rate than many U.S. companies pay. A BusinessWeek collaboration with Capital IQ in December, 2007, found that the average percentage of earnings spent on taxes by companies that make up the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index was 26%

What do you mean by them paying lower taxes?

Some distort the truth by bringing up laws that have not existed in 20 years. Such subjects are useful to consider as the repeal of such tax was a increase in subsidy

Really, you're counting the repeal of a tax as an increase in subsidy? So since the high water mark for income tax is right after WWII when the highest tax rate was over 90%, according to you the entire population, along with every single company, is being heavily subsidized? And since we no longer pay any taxes to Britain, but we used to, we're being subsidized by them too?

The real subsidy is that fuel, not a critical item like food, is not subject to sales tax.

I don't understand. You already mentioned that there are state and federal taxes on gasoline. Sales tax is just a state-level tax. Why do you care that it's called a gasoline tax and not a general sales tax?

This means that while in most states people pay tax on food but not fuel. This makes no sense that we would make food more expensive but not fuel.

My state has separate sales tax rates for different types of food. Basic food items have low taxes, or even no tax.

I am not sure how Oil is overly taxed. Exxon paid no income taxes in 2009.

I was curious about this bold claim so I looked it up. I'm assuming you read the ABC, Forbes, or Mother Jones article that whined about Exxon paying $0 income tax to the US in 2009. And then you failed to read the followup from the original journalist who started it all by misunderstanding a financial statement.

Re:Can this be real? by Americano · 2011-02-28 15:22 · Score: 1 · on Man Pays $200,000 To Save Fake Online Girlfriend

I'll refer you again to this chart.

Assuming that everybody in the bottom ~53% of that chart (households making less than $47500/yr) makes the very lowest amount allowed for their bracket, the "bottom 50%" of earners makes about $1,353,870,000,000/yr - that's 1.35 trillion. The "top 400 earners" who you assert make more than the entire lower 50% would then need to have average salaries and income of 3.375 billion dollars per year.

If you look at the Forbes 400 - the list of the richest people in America - there are people who do not even have a NET WORTH of 3.375 billion dollars, much less a yearly income of 3+ billion dollars. According to this, the "average income" of the top 400 households in 2007 was roughly 345 million per year. That falls far short of 3.375 billion dollars.

I am not disputing that there's a vast differential between the earnings of Bill Gates or Warren Buffet, and a disabled mechanic or an unemployed daycare worker. But pretending that people making 250k per year are somehow "the working poor" is just deluded. If you want to argue that the super-rich have a disproportionate amount of power, I'll agree with that. But let's keep our numbers grounded in reality.

It's also worth noting that in that bottom quintile, "Educational attainment, alongside the amount of work done by individuals are among the main determinants of income. The vast majority of Americans derive their income from occupational tasks and the utilization of their expertise. The notable exception is the lower class, where the most common source of income was not occupational status, but government welfare." (Cannot find link to primary source, but name & info is available from footnote 50.) -- this suggests that the people at the bottom are already primarily supported by tax revenues, which raises the question of exactly how high a standard of living everybody has a "right" to, and what sort of terms & conditions that standard of living comes with.

Re:hmm by JustinOpinion · 2011-02-23 08:41 · Score: 1 · on MacBook Pro Specs Leaked, iPad Event March 2

I had never noticed "there being a subtle (but satisfying) 'click' when plugging-in a cable".

I was referring to the story about how for the original iPod launch, Steve Jobs was aghast that the prototypes didn't have a satisfying 'click' when you plug-in the headphones. So he forced the engineers to spend all night putting in better jacks into the prototypes. (See here, or here, or here.)

Just like all companies Apple makes compromises.

Absolutely. They make mistakes and compromises, as I was careful to point out in my previous post. But the perceived quality of their products is more than just "convincing" people--they put much more careful thought into their designs and design tradeoffs. Are their products perfect? Far from it. But their designs are far better in consistency and execution, than all of their competition. (If you want to argue that 'being best' is too low a bar, and that products are in general not sufficiently carefully designed, I largely agree...)

Re:Seriously don't care... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-17 11:09 · Score: 0 · on Steve Jobs Health Worries Escalate