I'm less worried about direct corruption and much more worried about neglect. Privately owned, there is an incentive to fix damage and maintain infrastructure. Publicly owned, the money that would otherwise be used here would be redirected to someone's pet project.
Not to mention the irony that most people trust private companies with their data and network more these days than their own "public" government. And for good reason! Sadly many of those companies are doing more to advocate and protect privacy than the government that is supposed to be of, by, and for the people.
And why? Even more ironically: accountability. Companies are accountable to their shareholders not to lose business by pissing off and losing their customers, but politicians are often only accountable to a few power players able to influence elections, rather than their full constituency. It's all about money in the end, of course, but in the two cases it sometimes works to opposite goals...
No, because Apple specifically prohibits that. But depending on how many sales happen through iOS, they could reduce the prices everywhere.
It's entirely possible Amazon remove iOS support because it was initially a loss-leader, and now they don't feel like losing any more money. It may not be bad for Comixology at all as long as they make as much or more by not selling with a 30% less margin on iOS...
Yes, which is why if a company that sells significant product via Apple they may have to increase ALL of their prices by up to 30% to keep making a profit.
While that may be possible for companies that are a sole supplier (publishers producing their own content, for example) it's basically impossible for resellers to stay competitive that way.
Which means for any content that Apple sells on their devices, they effectively have no direct competition. For now, they are getting away with that, but if what they say about iTunes being their biggest growth market is true, I wouldn't be surprised if the FTC starts looking at the practice eventually...
What "others" (beyond Amazon themselves) have the policy that you can in no way sell content directly from within your own app running on their device without paying 30%?
You can still buy Comixology comics on an Android app, just not via Google Play, but directly via CC or Paypal. Why would Amazon want to pay Google extra to use Google Play in-app purchases when they are the largest online retailer in the world already? That's not only good business practice it's EXACTLY WHAT I SAID IN MY POST ("any company that sells content outside of Apple's walled garden has to have that entire infrastructure anyway").
NO ONE of significance has the same policies as Apple on in-app purchases. And Amazon's Comixology was not similar at all, since the customer still has almost the same in-app experience, just without a middle-man taking an unnecessary cut of it all.
In fact, given what Apple does for the developer, from payment handling, refund handling, taxes, hosting, etc., 30% can be considered cheap.
Bullshit. Any company that sells content outside of Apple's walled garden has to have that entire infrastructure anyway. If we were talking purchasing the app itself, fine, but that's not what anyone has been talking about here. For in-app purchases of digital media Apple provides no value beyond the convenience of their device but still wants to take 30%, which is usually pretty close to the margin on the content itself (the same content that Apple is often selling!)
If there's a minimum amount of profit you must make from each sale, the answer is simple - when selling through Apple increase your prices to compensate for Apple's cut. Pass along the costs directly to the customer if you think they are unfair.
Except, of course, the obvious flaw to that suggestion for most digital content (books, music, movies/tv) is that the content owners are charging the same wholesale cost to Apple as they are to the other providers. Apple gets to keep all of their margin (which for digital content is often in the 30% range) while their competitors either give away the content at cost or become completely uncompetitive vs. iTunes.
Similarly, lots of things sold in stores are taking more than 30% of wholesale. Usually a LOT more.
Actually, physical media is no longer taking "a LOT more" than 30% margin these days, either. You can credit the popularity of digital purchases, Amazon's loss-leaders, or Walmart's low prices, but 30% is actually a pretty decent margin for physical DVDs & BDs now, as well.
I know for video that's pretty much the entire profit margin. Apple basically doesn't want any competition to iTunes so they have priced out TVOD/music competitors completely.
Actually, it's not even a matter of Apple handling the payment processing. Even if you handle your own payment, they still want 30% if it's in app.
And you can *say* the "vast, vast majority of developers happily pay that fee", but in fact it's ONLY for their OWN in-app purchased assets, which 99% of the time are completely arbitrary (oh, Apple just took 30% of the fee on your extra life or 1000 quatloos? No way!) Please name any major TVOD or popular music providers who are paying a 30% fee on all purchases. I guarantee you can't, because that's for the most part more than the their profit margin on that content. Hell, even *Walmart* makes less than 30% on physical DVDs/BDs these days. Apple actually has to be careful they don't get too much of the content market with iTunes, or their conflict of interest in being a content seller and a fee-based marketplace could get them into anti-trust trouble...
So, you love the service but not enough just to go to a web site and buy it for 30% (or so) less than you have been paying now?
I can't wait to see more companies rebelling against Apple's ridiculous (and in the case of music, borderline anti-trust) tax on all in-app purchases. The fact is they have priced everyone else but themselves out of the content market on iOS devices since the margin on a lot of content is less than the 30% they take...
VUDU was doing real time P2P streaming in 2007, and 1080p P2P streaming since 2008. The technology worked great. The problem was it required devices with HDDs, and so it was the matter of a small startup with limited capital trying to sell their own hardware, which is very difficult. Not to mention the cost of CDB bandwidth and storage dropped drastically in the late 2000's, making the P2P play solution financially rewarding given the complexity and disk space requirements for peers.
The current incarnation of VUDU is a pure streaming service after a pivot to embed the software in all consumer devices and grow the customer base enough to actually make money.
Not really. Most embedded devices have just enough RAM allocated for streaming buffers to hold 10-20 seconds of video, max, and in practice it may be less if they are near the limit of their ISP bandwidth. That's hardly useful for a *real time* P2P streaming system.
He did read the post, and in fact has made about a dozen good comments on it in this thread.
It's not about DRM, since the DRM is perfectly capable of supporting downloaded content. It's about specific Netflix and Hulu business policy. The every title is "HOW MUCH BANDWIDTH WASTED BY DRM?", which basically makes the entire post a misguided argument against DRM (and like the OP I'm not really trying to defend it, but I dislike inaccurate information posted as fact and logical fallacies and more than DRM:) The whole post is a rant against the usual powderpuff slashdot topic of DRM, with the critical flaw that, even though there are a number of valid arguments against it, this wasn't one of them.
Anyway, the real answer to that question would be "almost none" beyond a simple license/key download, which is probably max a couple kilobytes.
Actually, I agree with him, the premise of your post is mostly wrong.
It actually has almost NOTHING to do with DRM. It's just about policy. And you can say that you are including that "policy" in your definition of DRM, but DRM has a pretty simple definition and the way you acquire the content is not part of it.
All of the downloadable solutions from iTunes, VUDU, Amazon, etc still have DRM. In fact, in many cases it's the same stream that is downloaded as streamed, and the same DRM to decrypt it. Some implementations require an Internet connection to get the license/keys, and some can get it up front for offline playback. But there is NOTHING about the technology that is preventing downloads.
DRM, as in making the content only available when you have paid for it or have an active subscription, is not the problem in this case. Netflix and Hulu's policy not to allow downloads is the problem. If they (and the studios, who are likely mandating the policy) decided to allow downloads of encrypted streams, they'd still prevent 95% of the casual piracy (as in, "ok, I don't subscribe to Netflix any more but hey, I still have all of the content I downloaded forever - good deal for $8!") while providing a great feature to customers.
Bull Run water is not filtered. Chlorine is added to disinfect the water of any potential natural contaminants. Ammonia is added in a process called chloramination to ensure that water throughout the system meets federal and state drinking water regulations. Without ammonia the chlorine would evaporate by the end of the supply line.
So, it's treated with chlorine and ammonia. And though it's not "filtered" in the decontamination sense, of course it's run through coarse filters to get large objects out of it before it goes into the pipes.
The ammonia is especially ironic, since urea is basically what the body creates to make ammonia *less* toxic.
Are you kidding? Sure, there may be decent well water out there, but not in many areas. Much of the midwest US that uses well water has to use water softeners because of the mineral content, and some still have occasional boil orders for safety.
I remember when my Chicago suburb switched from well water to Lake Michigan water. The lake water was not only much better tasting, but usually 10 degrees colder out of the tap...
I find no straight 10% line unless you include the volatility of the 1990s
Sigh. You don't NEED a straight 10% line! That's the point of using the S&P for a *retirement* account like 401(k). All you need is an averaged 10% over 30 years, which is pretty much true over any window that size.
Hell, when you *include* the single largest drop in the history of the market (1987 crash) it's *still* up 10% in the last 30 years. Much of the "90's volatility" was a recovery of the late 80's downward volatility, just as the early 80's were a recovery from the late 70's, just as the mid 2000's were a recovery from the early 2000's and the last couple of years a recovery from the late 2000's. It's a giant sawtooth, sure, but it's an upward pointing sawtooth with a long term averaged gain of about 10%.
If that were the case the top 20% would all be millionaires by now.
It only happens if you 1) invest enough each year for that interest to accumulate to that level, and 2) ACTUALLY FOLLOW what was said in this thread. The fact is, most people don't do #1 and max out their 401(k), or do #2 and follow the simple guideline suggested, ie. cautious investment in an indexed S&P fund vs silly risky investments and pointlessly moving around their funds (which is usually a losing battle against the market makers). And one BIG area people fail is to get scared of a bad year and not invest as much or more the next, even though time and again that's the BEST time to invest. Look at most of the years that the market was down double digits, and it was often up double digits the next year. When the market tanks, it's time to double down, not run away (as long as you in toe the long run). And sure, don't trust me on that, Warren Buffet has used that investing strategy pretty damn well...
Oh, and if you include homes, the number of millionaires in the US is pushing 15%+, anyway. It's over 5% if you exclude homes (but why many stats do I don't know, real estate in many areas is clearly a major capital investment). A million just ain't what it used to be...
It's going to be hard to follow the S&P 500 index during the great depression since it was STARTED in 1957.
And if you go back that far it actually averages about 10.8%.
But that's the whole POINT of this thread. Ignore the short term volatility and look long term. There really is no indication that it's much different today than it was 30 years ago or that "the growth is over". Seriously, go look at the actual numbers before you state these "facts", not only are they easily found, it's one of the most heavily analyzed aspects of the entire stock market.
I never said Federal alone (CA state taxes are 9% @ 70k), and never said net taxes. Obviously we are talking about gross tax rate, because capital gains are income taxes as well, and thus subject to the same deductions. The clear fact is middle class wage earners are paying a much higher tax rate than wealthy investors. The rich have pretty much figured out how to defeat the "progressive" tax system.
But that's completely untrue for most of the money made from the stock market. Only dividends could even possibly work that way, and given that dividends a) usually only pay a few percent that's NOT how wealthy people are getting 10-15%+ return on their investments, and b) are not generally based on the gross profits but set based on the price of the stock as a way to give back cash flow.
If you buy a stock, it doubles, you sell it and pay 15% capital gains tax, NONE of that profit had ANYTHING to do with corporate income tax. Same goes for shorting a stock or trading in derivatives, which is where the real money is made.
And besides, it's a fairly spurious argument in the first place, since employees paid from corporations, service workers paid by those employees, sales taxes paid when you use your income already taxed, etc all work the same way. Taxes are not in general a one time fee taken from some pile of money, it's really a tax on the exchange and flow of money, so why should this be any different?
Ronald Reagan's tax breaks resulted in increased government revenue, is the thing. Voodoo economics actually worked
Increased revenue but MASSIVELY INCREASED spending. So, no, it did not work at all and is still the current model of pretty much every administration after his (Republican and Democrat) as to how to spend way more money than they take in for short term political gain over long term solutions.
Claiming the tax breaks themselves results in increased revenue is horribly conflating correlation with causation. It's much more likely the increased revenue was in fact due to the increased deficit spending, of course.
Actually, I don't agree that food, shelter, educations, and health care are in any way *rights*. I see rights as restrictions that should not be placed on an individual by others. Rights are the basic humans conditions that the government should leave alone and/or protect, depending on the situation.
But that doesn't mean I don't think there are *obligations*. If you have an extreme excess of wealth and no interest in helping others in severe need, you are morally if not financially bankrupt. The fact that many people in this situation seem to pretend to follow "Christian" or other religious practices is even worse, and at some point hypocritical.
I agree with you that private charity will never cover the "need" if the need is in fact just basic income inequality. Private charities do a great job solving issues like diseases because they focus on popular trends or cross-cutting concerns that affect everyone equally. But being poor isn't likely to afflict the child of a wealthy person, and that's where collective pooling of resources come in, ie. taxes - which is where the US system of regressive taxes and selective charities is failing so badly. If you make $70k a year in salary you will pay 30%+ in taxes, but if you make $100M a year from investments you will pay 15% (eh, and yeah, 15% if you are an idiot). Hey, even without all of the tax shelters if you feel generous/guilty and want to donate to a charity, it can be much less! More to homeless albino 3 legged dogs, less to homeless veterans...
Yeah, but not including houses makes no sense. I'm pretty sure by the time I (and many others in the same boat) retire I'll be able to sell my very modest SF Bay Area house, move almost anywhere else in the country, and be much better off financially for it.
It's long term, not short term. He's right, the S&P has earned just over 10% a year averaged over the last 30 years. The point of the 401(k) is to let it sit in a conservative investment long term until you need it, and it has historically been a great retirement vehicle if you do exactly what he said...
Slashdot Mirror
I'm less worried about direct corruption and much more worried about neglect. Privately owned, there is an incentive to fix damage and maintain infrastructure. Publicly owned, the money that would otherwise be used here would be redirected to someone's pet project.
Not to mention the irony that most people trust private companies with their data and network more these days than their own "public" government. And for good reason! Sadly many of those companies are doing more to advocate and protect privacy than the government that is supposed to be of, by, and for the people.
And why? Even more ironically: accountability. Companies are accountable to their shareholders not to lose business by pissing off and losing their customers, but politicians are often only accountable to a few power players able to influence elections, rather than their full constituency. It's all about money in the end, of course, but in the two cases it sometimes works to opposite goals...
No, because Apple specifically prohibits that. But depending on how many sales happen through iOS, they could reduce the prices everywhere.
It's entirely possible Amazon remove iOS support because it was initially a loss-leader, and now they don't feel like losing any more money. It may not be bad for Comixology at all as long as they make as much or more by not selling with a 30% less margin on iOS...
Yes, which is why if a company that sells significant product via Apple they may have to increase ALL of their prices by up to 30% to keep making a profit.
While that may be possible for companies that are a sole supplier (publishers producing their own content, for example) it's basically impossible for resellers to stay competitive that way.
Which means for any content that Apple sells on their devices, they effectively have no direct competition. For now, they are getting away with that, but if what they say about iTunes being their biggest growth market is true, I wouldn't be surprised if the FTC starts looking at the practice eventually...
What "others" (beyond Amazon themselves) have the policy that you can in no way sell content directly from within your own app running on their device without paying 30%?
You can still buy Comixology comics on an Android app, just not via Google Play, but directly via CC or Paypal. Why would Amazon want to pay Google extra to use Google Play in-app purchases when they are the largest online retailer in the world already? That's not only good business practice it's EXACTLY WHAT I SAID IN MY POST ("any company that sells content outside of Apple's walled garden has to have that entire infrastructure anyway").
NO ONE of significance has the same policies as Apple on in-app purchases. And Amazon's Comixology was not similar at all, since the customer still has almost the same in-app experience, just without a middle-man taking an unnecessary cut of it all.
Name one that sells premium video content on iOS, then.
In fact, given what Apple does for the developer, from payment handling, refund handling, taxes, hosting, etc., 30% can be considered cheap.
Bullshit. Any company that sells content outside of Apple's walled garden has to have that entire infrastructure anyway. If we were talking purchasing the app itself, fine, but that's not what anyone has been talking about here. For in-app purchases of digital media Apple provides no value beyond the convenience of their device but still wants to take 30%, which is usually pretty close to the margin on the content itself (the same content that Apple is often selling!)
If there's a minimum amount of profit you must make from each sale, the answer is simple - when selling through Apple increase your prices to compensate for Apple's cut. Pass along the costs directly to the customer if you think they are unfair.
Except, of course, the obvious flaw to that suggestion for most digital content (books, music, movies/tv) is that the content owners are charging the same wholesale cost to Apple as they are to the other providers. Apple gets to keep all of their margin (which for digital content is often in the 30% range) while their competitors either give away the content at cost or become completely uncompetitive vs. iTunes.
Similarly, lots of things sold in stores are taking more than 30% of wholesale. Usually a LOT more.
Actually, physical media is no longer taking "a LOT more" than 30% margin these days, either. You can credit the popularity of digital purchases, Amazon's loss-leaders, or Walmart's low prices, but 30% is actually a pretty decent margin for physical DVDs & BDs now, as well.
I know for video that's pretty much the entire profit margin. Apple basically doesn't want any competition to iTunes so they have priced out TVOD/music competitors completely.
Actually, it's not even a matter of Apple handling the payment processing. Even if you handle your own payment, they still want 30% if it's in app.
And you can *say* the "vast, vast majority of developers happily pay that fee", but in fact it's ONLY for their OWN in-app purchased assets, which 99% of the time are completely arbitrary (oh, Apple just took 30% of the fee on your extra life or 1000 quatloos? No way!) Please name any major TVOD or popular music providers who are paying a 30% fee on all purchases. I guarantee you can't, because that's for the most part more than the their profit margin on that content. Hell, even *Walmart* makes less than 30% on physical DVDs/BDs these days. Apple actually has to be careful they don't get too much of the content market with iTunes, or their conflict of interest in being a content seller and a fee-based marketplace could get them into anti-trust trouble...
So, you love the service but not enough just to go to a web site and buy it for 30% (or so) less than you have been paying now?
I can't wait to see more companies rebelling against Apple's ridiculous (and in the case of music, borderline anti-trust) tax on all in-app purchases. The fact is they have priced everyone else but themselves out of the content market on iOS devices since the margin on a lot of content is less than the 30% they take...
VUDU was doing real time P2P streaming in 2007, and 1080p P2P streaming since 2008. The technology worked great. The problem was it required devices with HDDs, and so it was the matter of a small startup with limited capital trying to sell their own hardware, which is very difficult. Not to mention the cost of CDB bandwidth and storage dropped drastically in the late 2000's, making the P2P play solution financially rewarding given the complexity and disk space requirements for peers.
The current incarnation of VUDU is a pure streaming service after a pivot to embed the software in all consumer devices and grow the customer base enough to actually make money.
Not really. Most embedded devices have just enough RAM allocated for streaming buffers to hold 10-20 seconds of video, max, and in practice it may be less if they are near the limit of their ISP bandwidth. That's hardly useful for a *real time* P2P streaming system.
He did read the post, and in fact has made about a dozen good comments on it in this thread.
It's not about DRM, since the DRM is perfectly capable of supporting downloaded content. It's about specific Netflix and Hulu business policy. The every title is "HOW MUCH BANDWIDTH WASTED BY DRM?", which basically makes the entire post a misguided argument against DRM (and like the OP I'm not really trying to defend it, but I dislike inaccurate information posted as fact and logical fallacies and more than DRM :) The whole post is a rant against the usual powderpuff slashdot topic of DRM, with the critical flaw that, even though there are a number of valid arguments against it, this wasn't one of them.
Anyway, the real answer to that question would be "almost none" beyond a simple license/key download, which is probably max a couple kilobytes.
How much are *you* paying for your Slashdot account, then? Mine is pretty cheap...
Actually, I agree with him, the premise of your post is mostly wrong.
It actually has almost NOTHING to do with DRM. It's just about policy. And you can say that you are including that "policy" in your definition of DRM, but DRM has a pretty simple definition and the way you acquire the content is not part of it.
All of the downloadable solutions from iTunes, VUDU, Amazon, etc still have DRM. In fact, in many cases it's the same stream that is downloaded as streamed, and the same DRM to decrypt it. Some implementations require an Internet connection to get the license/keys, and some can get it up front for offline playback. But there is NOTHING about the technology that is preventing downloads.
DRM, as in making the content only available when you have paid for it or have an active subscription, is not the problem in this case. Netflix and Hulu's policy not to allow downloads is the problem. If they (and the studios, who are likely mandating the policy) decided to allow downloads of encrypted streams, they'd still prevent 95% of the casual piracy (as in, "ok, I don't subscribe to Netflix any more but hey, I still have all of the content I downloaded forever - good deal for $8!") while providing a great feature to customers.
Not true. From their site:
How is my tap water treated?
Bull Run water is not filtered.
Chlorine is added to disinfect the water of any potential natural contaminants.
Ammonia is added in a process called chloramination to ensure that water throughout the system meets federal and state drinking water regulations. Without ammonia the chlorine would evaporate by the end of the supply line.
So, it's treated with chlorine and ammonia. And though it's not "filtered" in the decontamination sense, of course it's run through coarse filters to get large objects out of it before it goes into the pipes.
The ammonia is especially ironic, since urea is basically what the body creates to make ammonia *less* toxic.
Are you kidding? Sure, there may be decent well water out there, but not in many areas. Much of the midwest US that uses well water has to use water softeners because of the mineral content, and some still have occasional boil orders for safety.
I remember when my Chicago suburb switched from well water to Lake Michigan water. The lake water was not only much better tasting, but usually 10 degrees colder out of the tap...
I find no straight 10% line unless you include the volatility of the 1990s
Sigh. You don't NEED a straight 10% line! That's the point of using the S&P for a *retirement* account like 401(k). All you need is an averaged 10% over 30 years, which is pretty much true over any window that size.
Hell, when you *include* the single largest drop in the history of the market (1987 crash) it's *still* up 10% in the last 30 years. Much of the "90's volatility" was a recovery of the late 80's downward volatility, just as the early 80's were a recovery from the late 70's, just as the mid 2000's were a recovery from the early 2000's and the last couple of years a recovery from the late 2000's. It's a giant sawtooth, sure, but it's an upward pointing sawtooth with a long term averaged gain of about 10%.
If that were the case the top 20% would all be millionaires by now.
It only happens if you 1) invest enough each year for that interest to accumulate to that level, and 2) ACTUALLY FOLLOW what was said in this thread. The fact is, most people don't do #1 and max out their 401(k), or do #2 and follow the simple guideline suggested, ie. cautious investment in an indexed S&P fund vs silly risky investments and pointlessly moving around their funds (which is usually a losing battle against the market makers). And one BIG area people fail is to get scared of a bad year and not invest as much or more the next, even though time and again that's the BEST time to invest. Look at most of the years that the market was down double digits, and it was often up double digits the next year. When the market tanks, it's time to double down, not run away (as long as you in toe the long run). And sure, don't trust me on that, Warren Buffet has used that investing strategy pretty damn well...
Oh, and if you include homes, the number of millionaires in the US is pushing 15%+, anyway. It's over 5% if you exclude homes (but why many stats do I don't know, real estate in many areas is clearly a major capital investment). A million just ain't what it used to be...
It's going to be hard to follow the S&P 500 index during the great depression since it was STARTED in 1957.
And if you go back that far it actually averages about 10.8%.
But that's the whole POINT of this thread. Ignore the short term volatility and look long term. There really is no indication that it's much different today than it was 30 years ago or that "the growth is over". Seriously, go look at the actual numbers before you state these "facts", not only are they easily found, it's one of the most heavily analyzed aspects of the entire stock market.
I never said Federal alone (CA state taxes are 9% @ 70k), and never said net taxes. Obviously we are talking about gross tax rate, because capital gains are income taxes as well, and thus subject to the same deductions. The clear fact is middle class wage earners are paying a much higher tax rate than wealthy investors. The rich have pretty much figured out how to defeat the "progressive" tax system.
But that's completely untrue for most of the money made from the stock market. Only dividends could even possibly work that way, and given that dividends a) usually only pay a few percent that's NOT how wealthy people are getting 10-15%+ return on their investments, and b) are not generally based on the gross profits but set based on the price of the stock as a way to give back cash flow.
If you buy a stock, it doubles, you sell it and pay 15% capital gains tax, NONE of that profit had ANYTHING to do with corporate income tax. Same goes for shorting a stock or trading in derivatives, which is where the real money is made.
And besides, it's a fairly spurious argument in the first place, since employees paid from corporations, service workers paid by those employees, sales taxes paid when you use your income already taxed, etc all work the same way. Taxes are not in general a one time fee taken from some pile of money, it's really a tax on the exchange and flow of money, so why should this be any different?
Ronald Reagan's tax breaks resulted in increased government revenue, is the thing. Voodoo economics actually worked
Increased revenue but MASSIVELY INCREASED spending. So, no, it did not work at all and is still the current model of pretty much every administration after his (Republican and Democrat) as to how to spend way more money than they take in for short term political gain over long term solutions.
Claiming the tax breaks themselves results in increased revenue is horribly conflating correlation with causation. It's much more likely the increased revenue was in fact due to the increased deficit spending, of course.
Actually, I don't agree that food, shelter, educations, and health care are in any way *rights*. I see rights as restrictions that should not be placed on an individual by others. Rights are the basic humans conditions that the government should leave alone and/or protect, depending on the situation.
But that doesn't mean I don't think there are *obligations*. If you have an extreme excess of wealth and no interest in helping others in severe need, you are morally if not financially bankrupt. The fact that many people in this situation seem to pretend to follow "Christian" or other religious practices is even worse, and at some point hypocritical.
I agree with you that private charity will never cover the "need" if the need is in fact just basic income inequality. Private charities do a great job solving issues like diseases because they focus on popular trends or cross-cutting concerns that affect everyone equally. But being poor isn't likely to afflict the child of a wealthy person, and that's where collective pooling of resources come in, ie. taxes - which is where the US system of regressive taxes and selective charities is failing so badly. If you make $70k a year in salary you will pay 30%+ in taxes, but if you make $100M a year from investments you will pay 15% (eh, and yeah, 15% if you are an idiot). Hey, even without all of the tax shelters if you feel generous/guilty and want to donate to a charity, it can be much less! More to homeless albino 3 legged dogs, less to homeless veterans...
Yeah, but not including houses makes no sense. I'm pretty sure by the time I (and many others in the same boat) retire I'll be able to sell my very modest SF Bay Area house, move almost anywhere else in the country, and be much better off financially for it.
It's long term, not short term. He's right, the S&P has earned just over 10% a year averaged over the last 30 years. The point of the 401(k) is to let it sit in a conservative investment long term until you need it, and it has historically been a great retirement vehicle if you do exactly what he said...