Perhaps terrorists don't use those smartphones for exactly that reason. Or perhaps they simply turn them off while they drive, you're assuming they are targeting innocents nerds for no reason.
The problem was the instruments of energy we chose to achieve that without a clear vision or plan in mind to maintain it.
Problem? We have been using gas for 100 years, and the only time there was a problem was when price controls were implemented. I keep hearing about problem that will arise.
Growth in the Medical field should lead to lower prices, just like growth in any other field leads to lower prices and higher quality in that field, be it energy production, electronics, farming, mining, internet access and services, or whatever. Just measure prices in inflation adjusted prices.
Prices are high because Medical insurance is screwed up. You get tax breaks on it if you employer pays, which leads to many problems. First, people try to get more of their income in benefits, since it's the tax code encourages it. Since it's from the employer, you lose it when you leave your job, and you get things like preconditions barring you from switching insurances.
Just make it like any other insurance, like house or car, and some problems will go away. First, once you get insurance, you'll just stay on the same plan, reducing pre-condition problems. Second, since there is no tax incentive, it now makes sense to only get insurance for major medical, and all doctor visits and flu shots and all 'maintenance' will be paid out of pocket. This finally puts free market forces into price control and quantity control.
It's similar to the way government guaranteed students loans that remove free market forces from price control in University tuition leads to runaway tuition costs.
This isn't to say government charities like Medicaid should be done away with, or government funding of Universities should be done away with, but clearly there is a lack of free market forces on prices in those areas right now.
So increase prices now by taxing imports, which is a tax on Americans at the pump, which will spur production, eventually (takes at least 5-10 years to come online) leading to slightly lower prices.
I'd much rather see a tax break on the energy companies and their workers salaries domestically. Instead of the money for gasoline going abroad, it goes to domestic workers. So by not taxing them at all the government doesn't lose revenue, Americans don't pay more, and their profit margins would be similar to your plan. Your plan's goal of higher profit margins to spur growth is good, except in your plan massive amounts of money are funneled to the US government from every American buying gas.
If it's not profitable now, don't subsidize it with my money, into something YOU think is the correct investment path in future energy production, let the market work. Even tax breaks across all energy production doesn't interfere with market forces and keeps a balanced playing field.
Of course maintenance has to be done. You factor that into rents. I think you're overestimating how much leverage can boost your gains. Also, with less leverage in the game, asset prices will stay lower and more stable.
Say you can build 1 house and make 1% profit with rents. Now say you can borrow money, leverage up 20:1 and build 20 houses. That's 1% profit on each house, or 20% profit now. All that money spent building new houses increases supply and reduces prices.
The cost of insuring against falling prices will be lower, because volatility will be lower.
This cost is the down payment, but you wanted no leverage, or 100% down payment, so there is no insurance cost involved.
The precious metals ETFs are non-leveraged, produce no income, and have an expense -- 0.4% for GLD. That doesn't prevent them from being a worthwhile part of an investment plan. They also have very liquid options markets.
Houses bought to use are not meant to be investments. There are plenty of leveraged ETFs, but you're right, they aren't investments, it's speculation or gambling that the price of a particular commodity will increase. Investments pay dividends or interest. Buying precious metals is hedge against inflation, but if we had the gold standard people would just put money in the bank and earn interest on their gold.
I don't know why you think houses are some special asset that should be treated differently than any other product I could buy or rent or lease.
I'm getting it, put savings into stocks in the physical item you want to purchase. Of course this assumes you won't change your mind, and aren't concerned in price fluctuations due to technological advancement and other factors. It doesn't matter what instrument you use to purchase a house, both the asset and the equity are priced in dollars.
I think you are also forgetting house prices usually follow inflation IF maintenance is done. This means the physical asset loses value in real terms.
Highly liquid, diversified, non-leveraged REITs would be far too low yielding to be profitable. Unless leverage is used, the dividend payouts would be ridiculously small. Basically, if it's leveraged 20:1, the profits are 20 times higher - interest payments.
Furthermore, it's no different than car loans. If the people can't pay back the loan, and the car drops a lot in value, the lender loses money. That's all the happening with houses.
All the big banks are insolvent, because they loaned to people that can't pay back the loans. Unless you were speculating in houses, it makes no difference to you that your house lost value, you bought it thinking it was worth the money. Unless you plan on selling it now, which means you're a speculator, the current price doesn't matter.
The solution is to let them all go bankrupt, and let all the firms that didn't make these horrible loans come in and buy up the pieces. Let Capitalism work.
Oh, so you just mean make the down payment requirement 100%. The only point of requiring your savings to be in REIT shares, as opposed to any other savings method, would be to artificially skyrocket the price of houses, which would then make them unaffordable.
So it has nothing to do with people buying a house to live in, it's for people buying houses to rent out. Rent would be lower if house prices were allowed to fall and foreclosures were foreclosed on. So how is this a solution? Unless you concern is that the inflation isn't going into houses fast enough. By tying houses to dollars, then when you print dollars, house prices go up immediately.
The gold standard worked just fine, Germany just didn't have any gold, so they were forced to use real estate, land, and other goods.
REITs are for rental properties or income producing properties. It's impossible to receive dividends on money you owe unless there's a negative interest rate. Buying a house is no different than buying anything else.
And 5 years ago it was subsidies for SUVs, which helped increase the gas price. Now that's it's high, let's subsidize technology that isn't ready yet. They certainly are good at wasting money.
So we should waste money that could be used for research to stockpile old technology, with the hope that new technology doesn't replace it before we can sell it and turn a profit? If this was in anyway a good idea, there would be plenty of private companies offering these services.
The gas prices are high, artificially high from all the inflation. Have you not noticed the billions upon billions invested by private companies in alternative energy? I would rather wait another decade until there are CHEAPER alternatives, rather than be forced to pay MORE for alternatives that aren't yet ready and use toxic materials and produce waste.
And think of all the new exploration Exxon could do with that money, so we really lose twice. Once for the current price, and again in the future because of the reduced exploration.
Yes, it has nothing to do with the falling value of the dollar. People should just accept less money for commodities and not raise prices in nominal terms. Gimme a break.
It's impossible to get cheaper prices by increasing prices (taxing imports). With the current rate of monetary expansion it's impossible for oil prices to go down. Unless the dollar stops falling in value we won't be getting cheap oil anytime soon.
Wasn't the whole point of putting it deep in a mine to get rid of cosmic ray interference. The area the tourists see are separated from dark matter experiments, so any gamma rays coming from a wristwatch wouldn't do anything, and that glow in the watch is from alpha particles anyway. The antimatter-matter annihilations and K-40 peaks from Human bodies are much higher energy than anything from the watch, so just having humans around has to be dealt with.
Radon experts are on site to deal with it. Even background Radon on the Earth's surface,.25 pCi/L is far, far too high to do dark matter experiments, nevermind 100 pCi/L underground. Radon has to be completely eliminated in these labs in the mines, and a 5-10 fold increase would be picked up by monitors.
Well I only have a ipod touch 4, so it's doesn't do calls, but everything else is quick. My N900 doesn't do any UI smoothly, it looks like 24fps video.
I have the same issue. I think one of the most appealing things about the iPhone is simply how smooth and fast is reacts. It's like GNOME or KDE vs Windows 7, the slight lag just makes Linux not fun to use.
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Perhaps terrorists don't use those smartphones for exactly that reason. Or perhaps they simply turn them off while they drive, you're assuming they are targeting innocents nerds for no reason.
The problem was the instruments of energy we chose to achieve that without a clear vision or plan in mind to maintain it.
Problem? We have been using gas for 100 years, and the only time there was a problem was when price controls were implemented. I keep hearing about problem that will arise.
Growth in the Medical field should lead to lower prices, just like growth in any other field leads to lower prices and higher quality in that field, be it energy production, electronics, farming, mining, internet access and services, or whatever. Just measure prices in inflation adjusted prices.
Prices are high because Medical insurance is screwed up. You get tax breaks on it if you employer pays, which leads to many problems. First, people try to get more of their income in benefits, since it's the tax code encourages it. Since it's from the employer, you lose it when you leave your job, and you get things like preconditions barring you from switching insurances.
Just make it like any other insurance, like house or car, and some problems will go away. First, once you get insurance, you'll just stay on the same plan, reducing pre-condition problems. Second, since there is no tax incentive, it now makes sense to only get insurance for major medical, and all doctor visits and flu shots and all 'maintenance' will be paid out of pocket. This finally puts free market forces into price control and quantity control.
It's similar to the way government guaranteed students loans that remove free market forces from price control in University tuition leads to runaway tuition costs.
This isn't to say government charities like Medicaid should be done away with, or government funding of Universities should be done away with, but clearly there is a lack of free market forces on prices in those areas right now.
So increase prices now by taxing imports, which is a tax on Americans at the pump, which will spur production, eventually (takes at least 5-10 years to come online) leading to slightly lower prices.
I'd much rather see a tax break on the energy companies and their workers salaries domestically. Instead of the money for gasoline going abroad, it goes to domestic workers. So by not taxing them at all the government doesn't lose revenue, Americans don't pay more, and their profit margins would be similar to your plan. Your plan's goal of higher profit margins to spur growth is good, except in your plan massive amounts of money are funneled to the US government from every American buying gas.
If it's not profitable now, don't subsidize it with my money, into something YOU think is the correct investment path in future energy production, let the market work. Even tax breaks across all energy production doesn't interfere with market forces and keeps a balanced playing field.
Of course maintenance has to be done. You factor that into rents. I think you're overestimating how much leverage can boost your gains. Also, with less leverage in the game, asset prices will stay lower and more stable.
Say you can build 1 house and make 1% profit with rents. Now say you can borrow money, leverage up 20:1 and build 20 houses. That's 1% profit on each house, or 20% profit now. All that money spent building new houses increases supply and reduces prices.
The cost of insuring against falling prices will be lower, because volatility will be lower.
This cost is the down payment, but you wanted no leverage, or 100% down payment, so there is no insurance cost involved.
The precious metals ETFs are non-leveraged, produce no income, and have an expense -- 0.4% for GLD. That doesn't prevent them from being a worthwhile part of an investment plan. They also have very liquid options markets.
Houses bought to use are not meant to be investments. There are plenty of leveraged ETFs, but you're right, they aren't investments, it's speculation or gambling that the price of a particular commodity will increase. Investments pay dividends or interest. Buying precious metals is hedge against inflation, but if we had the gold standard people would just put money in the bank and earn interest on their gold.
I don't know why you think houses are some special asset that should be treated differently than any other product I could buy or rent or lease.
I'm getting it, put savings into stocks in the physical item you want to purchase. Of course this assumes you won't change your mind, and aren't concerned in price fluctuations due to technological advancement and other factors. It doesn't matter what instrument you use to purchase a house, both the asset and the equity are priced in dollars.
I think you are also forgetting house prices usually follow inflation IF maintenance is done. This means the physical asset loses value in real terms.
Highly liquid, diversified, non-leveraged REITs would be far too low yielding to be profitable. Unless leverage is used, the dividend payouts would be ridiculously small. Basically, if it's leveraged 20:1, the profits are 20 times higher - interest payments.
Furthermore, it's no different than car loans. If the people can't pay back the loan, and the car drops a lot in value, the lender loses money. That's all the happening with houses.
All the big banks are insolvent, because they loaned to people that can't pay back the loans. Unless you were speculating in houses, it makes no difference to you that your house lost value, you bought it thinking it was worth the money. Unless you plan on selling it now, which means you're a speculator, the current price doesn't matter.
The solution is to let them all go bankrupt, and let all the firms that didn't make these horrible loans come in and buy up the pieces. Let Capitalism work.
Oh, so you just mean make the down payment requirement 100%. The only point of requiring your savings to be in REIT shares, as opposed to any other savings method, would be to artificially skyrocket the price of houses, which would then make them unaffordable.
So it has nothing to do with people buying a house to live in, it's for people buying houses to rent out. Rent would be lower if house prices were allowed to fall and foreclosures were foreclosed on. So how is this a solution? Unless you concern is that the inflation isn't going into houses fast enough. By tying houses to dollars, then when you print dollars, house prices go up immediately.
The gold standard worked just fine, Germany just didn't have any gold, so they were forced to use real estate, land, and other goods.
REITs are for rental properties or income producing properties. It's impossible to receive dividends on money you owe unless there's a negative interest rate. Buying a house is no different than buying anything else.
Just let the prices fall, let the banks fail, let people lose money. I didn't overpay for a house, so don't force me to subsidize their loss.
And 5 years ago it was subsidies for SUVs, which helped increase the gas price. Now that's it's high, let's subsidize technology that isn't ready yet. They certainly are good at wasting money.
So we should waste money that could be used for research to stockpile old technology, with the hope that new technology doesn't replace it before we can sell it and turn a profit? If this was in anyway a good idea, there would be plenty of private companies offering these services.
Don't forget that's $15,000 taken out of the economy that could be used to invest in future technologies, so you really lose twice.
The gas prices are high, artificially high from all the inflation. Have you not noticed the billions upon billions invested by private companies in alternative energy? I would rather wait another decade until there are CHEAPER alternatives, rather than be forced to pay MORE for alternatives that aren't yet ready and use toxic materials and produce waste.
And think of all the new exploration Exxon could do with that money, so we really lose twice. Once for the current price, and again in the future because of the reduced exploration.
Yes, it has nothing to do with the falling value of the dollar. People should just accept less money for commodities and not raise prices in nominal terms. Gimme a break.
Why do people want more expensive houses? Falling prices are good, think of electronics.
It's impossible to get cheaper prices by increasing prices (taxing imports). With the current rate of monetary expansion it's impossible for oil prices to go down. Unless the dollar stops falling in value we won't be getting cheap oil anytime soon.
If not WIMPs, then what? Are there any other candidates, or did you mean entirely new particle that hasn't been thought of?
Wasn't the whole point of putting it deep in a mine to get rid of cosmic ray interference. The area the tourists see are separated from dark matter experiments, so any gamma rays coming from a wristwatch wouldn't do anything, and that glow in the watch is from alpha particles anyway. The antimatter-matter annihilations and K-40 peaks from Human bodies are much higher energy than anything from the watch, so just having humans around has to be dealt with.
Radon experts are on site to deal with it. Even background Radon on the Earth's surface, .25 pCi/L is far, far too high to do dark matter experiments, nevermind 100 pCi/L underground. Radon has to be completely eliminated in these labs in the mines, and a 5-10 fold increase would be picked up by monitors.
If it's not orbiting it would just fall into the galactic center, so there would be no periodicity for hitting those particles.
Well I only have a ipod touch 4, so it's doesn't do calls, but everything else is quick. My N900 doesn't do any UI smoothly, it looks like 24fps video.
I have the same issue. I think one of the most appealing things about the iPhone is simply how smooth and fast is reacts. It's like GNOME or KDE vs Windows 7, the slight lag just makes Linux not fun to use.