Seeing as I don't actually know you, I still don't know anybody who owns one. All I know is that the only place I see it talked about is here. You know, a place where geeks and early adopters hang out.
I didn't say "the government should mandate this", I said that if the government doesn't mandate it, most people won't bother. Personally, I won't bother. I would be surprised if I would actually make use of it even if it was government mandated. I just don't spend enough on electricity to put out the necessary effort to figure out how to optimize my electricity usage.
Really, "A lot of people"? I do not personally know anyone who does. I would say that the accurate statement would be that a lot of early adopters/geeks are using Kill-A-Watt, but not many others.
These will only become common if the government mandates it. I do not believe that the average end user will get enough benefit out of a device like this for them to be interested in putting the effort and money out to deploy and use these.
I don't use an accountant and I file my taxes electronically. My tax return has not been physically signed in at least 5 years. Your accountant probably wants your physical signature so that you can't claim that you never saw the return (the e-signature that the IRS uses is based on infor that your accountant would know).
I just checked and no, there are no states with zero property tax. Louisiana has the lowest property tax as a percentage of property value (and, apparently, as a percentage of income, but I didn't research that thoroughly so I may have missed a state that is lower as a percentage of income). New Jersey has the highest property tax as a percentage of property value (and as a percentage of income with the same caveat).
You obviously have no experience with SC. The odds of someone from South Carolina with the name Alvin Greene being black are significantly high, on the other hand the odds of someone from South Carolina with the name Vic Rawls being black are infinitesimal.
Actually, the time period coincides with the decision of the federal government to "make college affordable". Every time the government makes more money available to pay for higher education, the cost of higher education rapidly increases so that it is just as, or more, unaffordable than it was before the new government money was available.
The high cost of textbooks is largely a factor of large inefficiencies in the market. The problem is two fold. Part one, for any given class, a particular publisher has close to a monopoly on the book for that class (it doesn't matter what the book costs, the students need a copy of that particular book).
Part two, most college and university classes start within a very narrow window through out the entire country. Each college bookstore needs to have enough copies of the textbook for each student who wants to buy one. This is not an exact science and even when the bookstore gets it right they often end up needing additional copies (some students buy books for a class and then drop it but don't return the books for a few days to weeks and other factors that lead to there being books sold and later returned to the bookstore). The bookstore returns the extra books it has on hand to the publisher for a full refund (however, the bookstore needs to sell at least one copy of a book for each copy it returns to break even on shipping and labor). This means that the publisher now has a large number of copies of the book in question which it has essentially no market for for another 3 months or more.
There are other inefficiencies in the process as well, most of them inherent in the entire enterprise, that drive up the costs of textbooks. If you look at the numbers you will discover that textbook publishers are not making all that much profit as a percent of revenue.
In my campus bookstore, they are selling some books at 5% or 10% over list price... plus they make sure you don't get the booklist until three days before classes start.
There are two possible reasons for the bookstore selling some books at more than the price printed on the book that are more likely than simply greed on the part of the bookstore. The first one is that the publisher printed a large number of the book with one price on them, then when stock got low, they printed more at a higher price and sold the bookstore some of their old stock at the new price. The seocnd one is that many college bookstores are run by outside companies that have a contract with the college/university to run the bookstore. This contract often specifies by how much the bookstore will mark up books over cost (based on the fact that most textbooks are sold net priced and thus have no "list" price), the publisher of the books in question will not give the college bookstore a large enough discount off of the price listed on the book to meet the contractually mandated profit margin. The school specifies this margin because they get a percentage of gross sales from the bookstore.
but there is nothing else suspicious. this just sounds like bullshit to me.
Nothing else suspicious?! The "winner" of the primary is unemployed, is facing a felony charge, and made no campaign appearances! Does any of that sound suspicious?
In a poll taken approximately a week before the election, only 4% of the potential voters recognized the name of the "loser". So, no, none of that sounds suspicious.
Clue # 1 was that the Party "annointed" candidate lost. So we are supposed to be suspicious every time that the people didn't vote for the candidate that the Party bosses selected?
That poll is suspect considering that a poll about a week before the primary showed that only 4% of potential voters in the Democratic primary even recognized Rawls' name.
The problem is that it is not at all suspicious that Alvin Geene won. The further inverstigation is the only reason to suspect a problem. This election was between two unknowns, one black, the other white in a majority black district. In this situation, based on historical voting patterns, one would expect the black candidate to win.
The white candidate was supported by the Party machinery, so an investigation was launched when he lost. This investigation discovered statistical discrepancies in the counted votes, but the reasoning behind launching the investigation is specious. In a poll taken in late May, only 4% of the electorate recognized Rawls name.
I see three likely explanations for the results. One, someone wanted to cast doubt on the results of this election and fiddled with the numbers in order to do so (I can think of several reasons someone might want to do so). Two, the voting machineswere buggy and threw out a bunch of semi-random results. Three, this is a case where the normal statistical rules didn't apply (when you analyze results by statistical analysis, every now and again--very rarely--you get a set of legitimate numbers that do not follow the statistical pattern).
The thing is that while the guy who won apparently didn't do any campaigning and was a complete unknown, the other guy (the supposedly well-known one) in a poll in late May had only a 4% name recognition among potential voters. That means that the Democratic voters in SC had no idea who either of these guys was and so they picked one at random. That would actually explain why the candidate who lost did so much better on the absentee ballots than on the election day ballots, on average people who vote by absentee ballot are likely to be better informed than those that vote on election day.
That being said, there are some other irregularities in the votes that suggest there might be a problem. The Dems really pushed for e-voting after 2000 (when they discovered that their voters were too stupid to figure out how to vote using ballots that the Dems had designed). E-voting is a bad idea, even if a good system is developed, it is impossible for the average person to audit the vote to determine with confidence that no fraud has occured. In the paper voting system, it is at least theoretically possible for the average person to monitor the process to ensure that no fraud occured in his/her local precinct.
Hmm your soooo right it is sooo much more expensive to have it all done in house, with no actual printing, that tuition will skyrocket.
I was not saying that they would raise tuition because of the increased cost, I was saying that if the students didn't have to spend the money on textbooks, colleges and universities would raise their tuition and other fees to absorb the extra money the students now have available. I haven't checked it in a couple of years, but the last time I checked, college tuition costs have risen faster than textbook prices, which have risen faster than inflation.
The way it works is this. Each student has a certain amount of money that they can spend on a semester of college (between parent's income, government aid, scholarships, and student loans). A certain amount of that goes to cover the costs of textbooks, the rest of it goes to the college or university in tuition and other fees. If the cost of textbooks goes down, the amount the university can charge in tuition and other fees goes up, so tuition and fees will go up to absorb this extra money.
That would be a great solution, because then the schools could increase their tuition by the amount students currently pay for books and get that much more money. The best part about this is that nobody would notice the slight increase in the already large amount the schools were going to raise tuition anyway.
Wow, you missed the much more imprtant lesson....those who run colleges and universities are greedy bastards.
Ove the last 30 years textbook prices have risen at a rate faster than inflation, over the same time period college tuition has risen faster than textbook prices.
More to the point, they no longer have any chance at becoming a healthy democracy now that the incentives for corruption are so huge.
Actually now they have a chance to become a functioning, healthy democracy. Now that they have a source of national income besides opium derivatives, there is a chance for a stable government to develop. This is still a long shot, but now it is possible. In a country where the only real source of income is drug smuggling there is no chance of a stable government.
What do you mean? Macs have been used in every work environment that the people who run the school have ever been in.
Of course the fact that none of them have ever worked in any non-academic environment may have something to do with that.
The railways got their monopoly status because of government action in their favor (usually state and local government).
Once the company owns the factory, and the store, and the farms, it is pretty hard to displace them. Unfettered "capitalism" naturally tends in this direction.
If "capitalism" naturally tends in that direction, how did Europe end up not being that way? What you described is known as Feudalism, which was displaced by Capitalism. So, no, unfettered Capitalism does not tend in that direction.
Socialists are merely Communists who don't have the courage of their convictions (or who are trying to fool people into thinking they aren't). On a political spectrum socialism is just to the right of fascism which is just to the right of communism. All of which penalize productive members of society in order to reward the unproductive.
Slashdot Mirror
Seeing as I don't actually know you, I still don't know anybody who owns one. All I know is that the only place I see it talked about is here. You know, a place where geeks and early adopters hang out.
I didn't say "the government should mandate this", I said that if the government doesn't mandate it, most people won't bother. Personally, I won't bother. I would be surprised if I would actually make use of it even if it was government mandated. I just don't spend enough on electricity to put out the necessary effort to figure out how to optimize my electricity usage.
Really, "A lot of people"? I do not personally know anyone who does. I would say that the accurate statement would be that a lot of early adopters/geeks are using Kill-A-Watt, but not many others.
These will only become common if the government mandates it. I do not believe that the average end user will get enough benefit out of a device like this for them to be interested in putting the effort and money out to deploy and use these.
I don't use an accountant and I file my taxes electronically. My tax return has not been physically signed in at least 5 years. Your accountant probably wants your physical signature so that you can't claim that you never saw the return (the e-signature that the IRS uses is based on infor that your accountant would know).
I just checked and no, there are no states with zero property tax. Louisiana has the lowest property tax as a percentage of property value (and, apparently, as a percentage of income, but I didn't research that thoroughly so I may have missed a state that is lower as a percentage of income). New Jersey has the highest property tax as a percentage of property value (and as a percentage of income with the same caveat).
You obviously have no experience with SC. The odds of someone from South Carolina with the name Alvin Greene being black are significantly high, on the other hand the odds of someone from South Carolina with the name Vic Rawls being black are infinitesimal.
Actually, the time period coincides with the decision of the federal government to "make college affordable". Every time the government makes more money available to pay for higher education, the cost of higher education rapidly increases so that it is just as, or more, unaffordable than it was before the new government money was available.
The high cost of textbooks is largely a factor of large inefficiencies in the market. The problem is two fold. Part one, for any given class, a particular publisher has close to a monopoly on the book for that class (it doesn't matter what the book costs, the students need a copy of that particular book).
Part two, most college and university classes start within a very narrow window through out the entire country. Each college bookstore needs to have enough copies of the textbook for each student who wants to buy one. This is not an exact science and even when the bookstore gets it right they often end up needing additional copies (some students buy books for a class and then drop it but don't return the books for a few days to weeks and other factors that lead to there being books sold and later returned to the bookstore). The bookstore returns the extra books it has on hand to the publisher for a full refund (however, the bookstore needs to sell at least one copy of a book for each copy it returns to break even on shipping and labor). This means that the publisher now has a large number of copies of the book in question which it has essentially no market for for another 3 months or more.
There are other inefficiencies in the process as well, most of them inherent in the entire enterprise, that drive up the costs of textbooks. If you look at the numbers you will discover that textbook publishers are not making all that much profit as a percent of revenue.
In my campus bookstore, they are selling some books at 5% or 10% over list price... plus they make sure you don't get the booklist until three days before classes start.
There are two possible reasons for the bookstore selling some books at more than the price printed on the book that are more likely than simply greed on the part of the bookstore. The first one is that the publisher printed a large number of the book with one price on them, then when stock got low, they printed more at a higher price and sold the bookstore some of their old stock at the new price. The seocnd one is that many college bookstores are run by outside companies that have a contract with the college/university to run the bookstore. This contract often specifies by how much the bookstore will mark up books over cost (based on the fact that most textbooks are sold net priced and thus have no "list" price), the publisher of the books in question will not give the college bookstore a large enough discount off of the price listed on the book to meet the contractually mandated profit margin. The school specifies this margin because they get a percentage of gross sales from the bookstore.
Rawl at least had some name recognition.
According to a poll in late May. he apparently had a 4% name recognition. I don't think that is enough to matter.
but there is nothing else suspicious. this just sounds like bullshit to me.
Nothing else suspicious?! The "winner" of the primary is unemployed, is facing a felony charge, and made no campaign appearances! Does any of that sound suspicious?
In a poll taken approximately a week before the election, only 4% of the potential voters recognized the name of the "loser". So, no, none of that sounds suspicious.
Clue # 1 was that the Party "annointed" candidate lost. So we are supposed to be suspicious every time that the people didn't vote for the candidate that the Party bosses selected?
That poll is suspect considering that a poll about a week before the primary showed that only 4% of potential voters in the Democratic primary even recognized Rawls' name.
The problem is that it is not at all suspicious that Alvin Geene won. The further inverstigation is the only reason to suspect a problem. This election was between two unknowns, one black, the other white in a majority black district. In this situation, based on historical voting patterns, one would expect the black candidate to win.
The white candidate was supported by the Party machinery, so an investigation was launched when he lost. This investigation discovered statistical discrepancies in the counted votes, but the reasoning behind launching the investigation is specious. In a poll taken in late May, only 4% of the electorate recognized Rawls name.
I see three likely explanations for the results. One, someone wanted to cast doubt on the results of this election and fiddled with the numbers in order to do so (I can think of several reasons someone might want to do so). Two, the voting machineswere buggy and threw out a bunch of semi-random results. Three, this is a case where the normal statistical rules didn't apply (when you analyze results by statistical analysis, every now and again--very rarely--you get a set of legitimate numbers that do not follow the statistical pattern).
The thing is that while the guy who won apparently didn't do any campaigning and was a complete unknown, the other guy (the supposedly well-known one) in a poll in late May had only a 4% name recognition among potential voters. That means that the Democratic voters in SC had no idea who either of these guys was and so they picked one at random. That would actually explain why the candidate who lost did so much better on the absentee ballots than on the election day ballots, on average people who vote by absentee ballot are likely to be better informed than those that vote on election day.
That being said, there are some other irregularities in the votes that suggest there might be a problem. The Dems really pushed for e-voting after 2000 (when they discovered that their voters were too stupid to figure out how to vote using ballots that the Dems had designed). E-voting is a bad idea, even if a good system is developed, it is impossible for the average person to audit the vote to determine with confidence that no fraud has occured. In the paper voting system, it is at least theoretically possible for the average person to monitor the process to ensure that no fraud occured in his/her local precinct.
I am not suggesting that the schools do anything, I am predicting that they will do so, based on past behavior.
Hmm your soooo right it is sooo much more expensive to have it all done in house, with no actual printing, that tuition will skyrocket.
I was not saying that they would raise tuition because of the increased cost, I was saying that if the students didn't have to spend the money on textbooks, colleges and universities would raise their tuition and other fees to absorb the extra money the students now have available. I haven't checked it in a couple of years, but the last time I checked, college tuition costs have risen faster than textbook prices, which have risen faster than inflation.
The way it works is this. Each student has a certain amount of money that they can spend on a semester of college (between parent's income, government aid, scholarships, and student loans). A certain amount of that goes to cover the costs of textbooks, the rest of it goes to the college or university in tuition and other fees. If the cost of textbooks goes down, the amount the university can charge in tuition and other fees goes up, so tuition and fees will go up to absorb this extra money.
That would be a great solution, because then the schools could increase their tuition by the amount students currently pay for books and get that much more money. The best part about this is that nobody would notice the slight increase in the already large amount the schools were going to raise tuition anyway.
Wow, you missed the much more imprtant lesson....those who run colleges and universities are greedy bastards.
Ove the last 30 years textbook prices have risen at a rate faster than inflation, over the same time period college tuition has risen faster than textbook prices.
More to the point, they no longer have any chance at becoming a healthy democracy now that the incentives for corruption are so huge.
Actually now they have a chance to become a functioning, healthy democracy. Now that they have a source of national income besides opium derivatives, there is a chance for a stable government to develop. This is still a long shot, but now it is possible. In a country where the only real source of income is drug smuggling there is no chance of a stable government.
Much of the Old Testament does, yes.
What do you mean? Macs have been used in every work environment that the people who run the school have ever been in.
Of course the fact that none of them have ever worked in any non-academic environment may have something to do with that.
Once the company owns the factory, and the store, and the farms, it is pretty hard to displace them. Unfettered "capitalism" naturally tends in this direction.
If "capitalism" naturally tends in that direction, how did Europe end up not being that way? What you described is known as Feudalism, which was displaced by Capitalism. So, no, unfettered Capitalism does not tend in that direction.
I'm sorry to reply twice, but I posted my reply and then went to another aggregation site and came across this story. http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/06/11/naacp-urges-hallmark-pull-racist-card-shelves/
Socialists are merely Communists who don't have the courage of their convictions (or who are trying to fool people into thinking they aren't). On a political spectrum socialism is just to the right of fascism which is just to the right of communism. All of which penalize productive members of society in order to reward the unproductive.