It's true that car dealers make quantitatively less from new car sales (used car sales are much higher margin), but it's not a bad income stream once you realize that they "own" all their cars via leverage.
When they sell a Camry, they don't really pay the full $25,000 invoice (or whatever it is) to have it sit on the lot. They essentially lease it from the manufacturer. So they may be leveraging $500 of their own money or something like that to have the car sit on the lot for, say, 60 days. When the car is sold, the "loan" is paid back with the proceeds from the sale. Let's say the dealer nets $1000 after paying back the loan and after subtracting all the business overhead, they're making $1000 on a $500 investment. That's a pretty decent return. Even if the dealer only nets $250 from the sale, it's still a 50% return.
Think about this next time you feel sorry about how the dealer's not making money off new car sales.
I've always been a good car buyer and trying to buy "cream puffs" that are about 4-6 years old, so that the hardest hit of the depreciation has already been priced into the car.
However, that's getting harder these days as used car prices are through the roof. When I was shopping for my last car (~$35k), the market price I was seeing for a 3-year-old model with 30k miles was only $2000 less than a new one - even for a private party sale without the dealer markup. So it's making less and less sense to buy used, especially with the aggressive financing deals for new models.
I think people like us would complain less if 1.) the DTA boxes were free for perpetuity, 2.) the DTA boxes did not downconvert the HD signal down to SD, and 3.) if it did not render existing PCTV/DVRs unusable.
But I'm the scum of Comcast subscribers, daring to only pay for the lowest package mandated by the cable franchisee agreement. Why would they care about me?
They just encrypted all the over-the-air channels on my cheapo Comcast limited basic cable package last week.
So I ordered a ChannelMaster antenna and I'm getting everything beautifully. Need to adjust a few more times to the optimum position but everything seems to be working despite the wintry weather.
Just called Comcast today to cut TV. I'm paying $16+tax per month for over-the-air TV right now, and now they'll add $10/month to my Internet bill. Still better than throwing away $6/month.
Not happy that Comcast bought off the FCC to encrypt over-the-air channels.
It's like my relatives in Asia emailing/phoning to express concern about some weather / storm disaster happening on the east coast when I live on the opposite coast. Or that they refuse to come visit because there's a mall shooting in some state thousands of miles away.
A famous case was Qian Xuesen. He was one of the fathers of the American rocket and space programs and one of the founders of JPL. McCarthyism was responsible for deporting him and enabling Mainland China to develop a nuclear and space program.
A friend of mine owns a single family home 2 houses from a fire station, on a major 4-lane boulevard, under the Sky Train, and in a neighborhood known for break-ins.
I've got lots of family in Vancouver and Toronto, and their waits are no worse than mine in Seattle.
This article says that 46159 Canadians went abroad (notice it doesn't say which country) for medical care. Out of a country with a population of 33.5 million, that's 0.14% of the population. Sounds like their health care system is an undisputed resounding success to me.
The people using Canada as a political talk point are just plain sad. In this age of Google there's just no excuse.
True. In my case, my wife was in excruciating pain from an ulcer in an ER and it was a good 2-hour wait. This was in a highly rated hospital 1.5 miles away from the Microsoft campus close to luxury car dealerships.
GE donates stuff like this for the same reason that Microsoft donates software - market penetration. When those machines reach end-of-life, they're much more likely to buy one from GE as a replacement.
Back in the early 2000s, I always chuckle when I come across resumes with "IIT" on it. I swear, 4 out of 5 of those turn out to be from Illinois Institute of Technology.
The people are already dead. Rather than saying sorry for something you haven't actually done to someone you haven't even done it to...but we're going to do better."
Except they're still enshrining dead war criminals and not imprisoning ones who are still alive. So they clearly have no intention of doing it better. It's not hard to see why people in East Asia are still so sore about this topic. No one would fault the Simon Wiesenthal Center for "being upset" - and Rommel and Goebbels aren't even posthumously celebrated after death in a grand cathedral in Germany like their peers are in Japan.
Choice quote from the article:
"When a guy in the developmental stages sees girls his age swooning over the [sensitive, sissy guy] type, this sets a precedent within his brain â" this is what girls like, and if you want to be what girls like, you have to be like this. It may not even be an active choice, but something that just fires subconsciously in his brain. So the seed has been planted. Granted, Japanese guys have taken this sissy seed and watered and nurtured it into a massive pussy forest, but thatâ(TM)s just the special Japanese skill of taking everything to hardcore extremes."
Starting his trek with Hong Kong was a brilliant move. A US passport holder can go to Hong Kong without a visa (automatically granted for 90 days) and still get high-level diplomatic coverage from the Chinese if international scuffles like these arise.
Slashdot Mirror
If any of you use the AngelCare monitoring device, there's a cord strangulation related recall.
It's true that car dealers make quantitatively less from new car sales (used car sales are much higher margin), but it's not a bad income stream once you realize that they "own" all their cars via leverage.
When they sell a Camry, they don't really pay the full $25,000 invoice (or whatever it is) to have it sit on the lot. They essentially lease it from the manufacturer. So they may be leveraging $500 of their own money or something like that to have the car sit on the lot for, say, 60 days. When the car is sold, the "loan" is paid back with the proceeds from the sale. Let's say the dealer nets $1000 after paying back the loan and after subtracting all the business overhead, they're making $1000 on a $500 investment. That's a pretty decent return. Even if the dealer only nets $250 from the sale, it's still a 50% return.
Think about this next time you feel sorry about how the dealer's not making money off new car sales.
I've always been a good car buyer and trying to buy "cream puffs" that are about 4-6 years old, so that the hardest hit of the depreciation has already been priced into the car.
However, that's getting harder these days as used car prices are through the roof. When I was shopping for my last car (~$35k), the market price I was seeing for a 3-year-old model with 30k miles was only $2000 less than a new one - even for a private party sale without the dealer markup. So it's making less and less sense to buy used, especially with the aggressive financing deals for new models.
How's that going? They've been talking about rolling that out "next year" since I was first hearing about it at school in the late 90s.
I think people like us would complain less if 1.) the DTA boxes were free for perpetuity, 2.) the DTA boxes did not downconvert the HD signal down to SD, and 3.) if it did not render existing PCTV/DVRs unusable.
But I'm the scum of Comcast subscribers, daring to only pay for the lowest package mandated by the cable franchisee agreement. Why would they care about me?
They just encrypted all the over-the-air channels on my cheapo Comcast limited basic cable package last week.
So I ordered a ChannelMaster antenna and I'm getting everything beautifully. Need to adjust a few more times to the optimum position but everything seems to be working despite the wintry weather.
Just called Comcast today to cut TV. I'm paying $16+tax per month for over-the-air TV right now, and now they'll add $10/month to my Internet bill. Still better than throwing away $6/month.
Not happy that Comcast bought off the FCC to encrypt over-the-air channels.
Same here. The bills bouncing between doctor, hospital, insurance company, lab, x-ray technician, OBGYN are just comical.
It's like my relatives in Asia emailing/phoning to express concern about some weather / storm disaster happening on the east coast when I live on the opposite coast. Or that they refuse to come visit because there's a mall shooting in some state thousands of miles away.
They even sold entire houses.
Yes, if French and Portuguese uses 98%+ identical written grammar and vocabulary.
So, no.
A famous case was Qian Xuesen. He was one of the fathers of the American rocket and space programs and one of the founders of JPL. McCarthyism was responsible for deporting him and enabling Mainland China to develop a nuclear and space program.
Herman Miller (MLHR) is down about 1% today.
Vancouver's real estate market is nuts.
A friend of mine owns a single family home 2 houses from a fire station, on a major 4-lane boulevard, under the Sky Train, and in a neighborhood known for break-ins.
He just sold for $950,000 to a condo developer.
I've got lots of family in Vancouver and Toronto, and their waits are no worse than mine in Seattle. This article says that 46159 Canadians went abroad (notice it doesn't say which country) for medical care. Out of a country with a population of 33.5 million, that's 0.14% of the population. Sounds like their health care system is an undisputed resounding success to me. The people using Canada as a political talk point are just plain sad. In this age of Google there's just no excuse.
True. In my case, my wife was in excruciating pain from an ulcer in an ER and it was a good 2-hour wait. This was in a highly rated hospital 1.5 miles away from the Microsoft campus close to luxury car dealerships.
GE donates stuff like this for the same reason that Microsoft donates software - market penetration. When those machines reach end-of-life, they're much more likely to buy one from GE as a replacement.
Most 3 series (as well as all other BMWs and other luxury makes) are leased, so payments are indeed around $300/month.
"Real high quality ones from IITs"
Back in the early 2000s, I always chuckle when I come across resumes with "IIT" on it. I swear, 4 out of 5 of those turn out to be from Illinois Institute of Technology.
And plus many are single-child brats with 4 doting servants, uh, grandparents.
The people are already dead. Rather than saying sorry for something you haven't actually done to someone you haven't even done it to ...but we're going to do better."
Except they're still enshrining dead war criminals and not imprisoning ones who are still alive. So they clearly have no intention of doing it better. It's not hard to see why people in East Asia are still so sore about this topic. No one would fault the Simon Wiesenthal Center for "being upset" - and Rommel and Goebbels aren't even posthumously celebrated after death in a grand cathedral in Germany like their peers are in Japan.
The apologies would probably be much more believable and accepted if they had not been housing convicted Class A war criminals in a war hero shrine all this time.
Imagine Goebbels enshrined in the Cathedral of Cologne in the present day.
Finance Minister Taro Aso has come under fire for comments that some listeners interpreted as suggesting Tokyo should look to Nazi Germany as a model in changing its pacifist constitution.
Reference the following article about Japan's newest crop of "Grass Eaters":
http://gaijinchronicles.com/2010/08/31/plight-of-the-grass-eater
Choice quote from the article: "When a guy in the developmental stages sees girls his age swooning over the [sensitive, sissy guy] type, this sets a precedent within his brain â" this is what girls like, and if you want to be what girls like, you have to be like this. It may not even be an active choice, but something that just fires subconsciously in his brain. So the seed has been planted. Granted, Japanese guys have taken this sissy seed and watered and nurtured it into a massive pussy forest, but thatâ(TM)s just the special Japanese skill of taking everything to hardcore extremes."
But to be fair, macho Americans have their own massive crops of sissy men with a large female following.
Starting his trek with Hong Kong was a brilliant move. A US passport holder can go to Hong Kong without a visa (automatically granted for 90 days) and still get high-level diplomatic coverage from the Chinese if international scuffles like these arise.
That's pretty strange. I'm buying the hard stuff from a privatized liquor store here in liberal Seattle.