A big part of that is that our national policies subsidize the crap out of owning a home. The income tax deduction for mortgage interest and Fannie/Freddie allow borrowers to get US government rates mean that it is silly not to own a home (denser housing has not historically appreciated as well as single family housing). These two combined with most homeowners lack of financial knowledge (not counting leverage as part of the return equation, leads people to believe that homes appreciate in value faster than other assets (they don't but most assets don't allow 5+ leverage). I really don't understand why our policies continue to encourage homeownership, especially in the light of current policies moving slowly toward oil conservation. There are lots of people who would benefit from denser apartment living closer to work. Good luck trying to change that, however, the mortgage tax deduction is even more of a third rail than social security. Even flat taxers try hard not to bring up the fact that that would go away on the post card returns.
Unless I seriously mixed up my calcs, it appears that $500/mo is reasonable for a $20,000 car @ 2%-4% for 36-48 months. If you are financing your car for something like 5 years, you are highly likely to be underwater in the event of an accident or when you go to trade that vehicle in. Perhaps a lease (or cheaper car) would be a better option. Insurance at $400+/mo! Thanks I don't feel nearly as bad about my full coverage for $1200/yr (high compared to most local peers), although if you include licensing and the occasional ticket that is probably close.
Let us imagine two loaves of bread one is higher quality while the other is cheaper. Say retail prices of the two in stores would be $1 and $2. If delivery costs for the bread are $2 (taking the extra costs of the whole order and applying part of it to the bread) than a company offering a premium service (home delivery of groceries, would be very likely to sell the $2 bread for $4 rather than the $1 bread for $2. The cost of bread is a smaller portion of the total cost. Incidentally, this also works for produce so the better quality perishable produce is usually sold further away from the groves, orchards, or fields. If you happen to be near one of those or the shippment is likely to damage the fruit (think pre "Gold" pineapples) than this might not be as true.
You are correct, great was a pretty major reach on my part. The problem is and was media companies are generally run as fiefdoms by individual group, division (or even subsegment heads) who have really run amuck at TimeWarner. Adding AOL to the mix could have presented many opportunities, but didn't as TWX can't agree to share between it's old media divisions for the good of the overall company. I'm not sure why this is such a problem at especially media companies (look at Disney's row with Eisner).
Not so much that it doesn't make sense to put together a distribution company (AOL or TimeWarner Cable) with a content provider, but the price was too high. AOL should have owned about 1/4 or less of the combined company.
Keep in mind Apple really does the iTMS to promote and legitimatize their iPod sales, not that that is a bad thing, also most of the profit came from the CD mastering part of TimeWarner's music business that they quietly sold off just before selling the label to Bronfman. Since the real profits were quietly coming from CD mastering it's not real surprise that they didn't want to distribute music online (even at lower price & higher margins).
There is a good chunk of ad/spyware that redirects victims away from Google's search or display's popups when you travel there. As a result people think they are going to Google, but it is taking them to a page that looks like Google, but display's ads for other companies on google's page. So it's not just altruistic eliminating spyware helps Google, too.
TimeWarner was and is in great shape, it's too bad that half their company is owned by shareholders of a former internet company that dont contribute half the current comapny's value. Same thing between Qwest and US West, except Qwest also brought a whole bunch of debt along with it's buying of half the company. I was surprised they didn't try to get in on the Universal action, too. I think they have their sights set on snatching a good part of Adelphia.
I think Starbuck's big things are consistency and hotties working behind the counter. The hottie's are obvious. But I've gotten much better cups of coffee from other places, but much worse cups from the same places. Starbuck's is consistently above average to good regardless of which one you get it from. In that sense your Bettle example is a good one, although the M3 is consistently excellent!
FYI, Bill resigned to join Motorola's semi group last week (although their board is still quite political). And SBC haven't been telling Wall St anything good about profits (we're sort of hoping that Cinglar stops sucking rocks prior to the collapse of the wired phone market). They aren't in quite the same shape Qwest is (similar to AOL&TimeWarner only with more debt). Verizon and BellSouth are in the best shape of the group.
There are still a few rural LECs (AllTel, CenturyTel, and Citizens) Sprint has slome local operations and there are a very small number of co-ops in the deep sticks.
Keep in mind that the same can be said for capital, which is what the owners own except in cases involving market power (where true profits flow to the person who began exploiting the potential market power). Also, a big political paradox is that modern wage earners are far more likely to be fiscally conservative, while those class heirs (as well as workers who make enough to potentially join them) are much more likely to be liberal.
It did used to stand for SouthWesternBell but they changed it in the 1990s. The company provides local phone service to California, Texas, and most of the MidWest (former AmeriTech or AmeriTouch regions). Comm. Workers of America is the union of communications employees. The strike is over health care costs (esepecially for retirees or for current workers when they retire). It's quite similar to the fight Verizon had last year (can't remember if they struck or not) or the firght the grocery retailers had with their their Unions last fall/winter. This will be a major fight between almost every large employer and their employees/unions, as the cost of health care shot up over the last decade (with little sign of abatement) and companies are extrapolating those costs over the current employees careers (and life expectancy) and attempting to scale back benefits considerably.
I don't think M5, 911 (maybe), or Benz 500 and 600 series are really considered small cars. After looking at your username, I stand corrected. However, while the body of a 911 might be small the engine sure isn't. I've always gotten a kick out of the fact that protests in the US are about SUVs not the gas guzzling European sedans and coupes. I think you could drive to an SUV protest in one of those, and no one would bat an eye.
The biggest factor in the dollar's fall has been central bankers. Ours who reduced rates signficantly to keep investment up following the bursting of the bubble (or at least transfering asset value over to houses, if you're a cynic). As well as, Japan and China's who continue to buy US bonds, regardless of rates, as this keeps their exchange rates consistent over time, and the prices of those Chinese goods (and Toyota cars) somewhat similar here. As a result the USD/EUR rate absorbed the impacts (European central bankers did not try to manage currency rates) so something had to give and the dollar fell against currencies other than China and Japan. In addition the tanking stock market brought a ton of capital toward other markets greatly increasing the speculation in commodities (including oil prices).
Most cities require a slightly different blend of gas/ethanol/MTBE to reduce NOx emissions? (smog). Each city requires slightly different blends, so gas refined for most of Illinios cannot be used in Chicago, for example, if demand surges there. I think there are currently 26 or so different blends.
The problem is that if these theories are correct, (Hibbert was a pretty smart fellow as evidenced by all prior fields) that prices will be increasing rapidly over the next decade resulting in much higher costs for gas anyway. If we tax it now, it will cause a major shock and disproportionatly hit wage earners. However, it would provide the funding for a public transportion system as well as reduce demand through the purchase of more efficent transportation and reduced transportation needs. Otherwise the prices rise and the beneficiaries are the owners of the remaining oilfields resulting in huge transfers of wealth (and the same impacts on the wage earners). You are correct that we cannot slap taxes on it within a year, but some big investments in public transportation (and ending support of Freddie/Fannie, while boosting subsidies for denser housing near job centers) is something that should be implimented soon allowing tax increases on gas to fund reduced consumtion and heavy research into alternate energy storage and generation.
Re:Inflation.
on
Out of Gas
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Keep in mind that higher taxes shield some of the impact, if wholesale price of gas goes from $0.60/gallon (roughly GBP 0.08/L) to $1.30/gallon (roughly GBP 0.16/L) but taxes remain constant at $0.70/gallon here and GBP0.30/L there. Our price is about 35% ($1.30/gal to $2.00/gal) while yours are only up about 20% GBP 0.38/L to 0.46/L. The pricing is simlar in EUR just double the prices and you should be close, the ratios are close. Also the exchange rates should have reduced the impact slightly, as oil is priced in dollars.
I'm tending to agree with maximllin that the order level cannot sustain an industry that is growing as rapidly or has become as sphisticated as spamming. The guy who buys from spammers made the front page of the Wall St. Journal. The front page! Which tells you how common it is that people buy from spammers. Sure perhaps you get a few page views, probably not very high quality page views, but adwords would seem to be a better method of generating better hits today.
I have to think that a serious amount of cash is coming from somewhere else, likely investments and loans and other such activities. I've seen enough of the business world to know that you have to take a significant amount of cash from the majority of the population to make real money or do that vicariously through filter organizations (like the government). I'd be surprised if there were more than 10,000 people like Mr Soto and if so they are sending a whole lot of emails chasing the last 1,000 or so who aren't already buying. Thanks to everyone who replied with such insightful and interesting discussion.
Except that Google's founders will control super voting stock which makes them the ultimate "insiders". Depending on how many shares are offered, they will likely have 90% of the voting rights of the company's total offering. Most of the time, this class of stock is non dilutive, unless the owners agree to let their vote be diluted. So even if they grant 100,000,000 options a year, they keep the same percentage of control over directors, board meetings, and other strategic decisions.
I was thinking about that, back in the refi days a broker would pay upwards of $25 per lead for refinancing leads. I could see how a spammer would easily clear some decent money. Selling jars of pills for what $10-$20 means the markup has to be pretty steep to cover their costs. Considering that they are now swaping zombie PCs to cover their tracks, one would think that there was some real money in this business. I haven't seen a cellular spam in some time (another source of high dollar commissions). I'm surprised that there is that much money in p3nIs 3nI@rgm3nt and other cheapo items. I wouldn't think that the spammer would be in the business of the refil, and the commission wouldn't be as large. Perhaps I should get to cracking on ebay or with some ad sense words.
I have to ask where does the money come from in spamming? I could understand back in the mortgage boom when brokers were paying lot's of hard cash for leads, but this and other stories make spamming seem like a pretty big business which is rather surprising. Ultimately the money has to come from somewhere (the spam lists can only be sold so many times).
The problem with this strategy is that their business is not well understood by most investors, and the interpreters of complex businesses (Wall St. analysts) really like having some foundation to build on (it doesn't have to be earnings down to the penny, but an idea of revenue growth, potential cost structures, etc. If they get surprised too often, they label the company as erratic and start issuing negative reports driving the stock price down. To avoid this Google must have exceedingly consistent results (reducing the need for guidance) or begin issuing guidance.
Your are correct that silage is usually for dairy cows. Generally for silage they just chop the whole thing, cobs, stalks, grain, and leaves and stuff it in a big bag (ours looked like giant white sausage. Most of the farmers I knew had a 1/2 acre plot of sweet corn (for firends and family) and the remainder of a circle of field corn. Then occasionally you would see a whole field growing sweetcorn. That does not include the huge amount of land devoted to hay production (grasses and legumes). We had a bit of wheat, and a smattering of everything else. Beef cattle are usually grazed for the first year to 16 months of their lives. It's cheaper to let them eat grasses. If winter is snowcovered they will be fed hay and some mixture of grains. At this point dairy cows and beef cows diets are pretty similar (dairy cows will sometimes get other nutirents to increase milk production). Most beef cattle are not raised in places that will grow corn, the land is too valuable, or silage could be fed in the winter as well.
Once the steers are being fattened for butcher, they will go on a mostly grain (cracked corn, occasionally soy or other protien sources (in hawaii they use the cores and waste flesh from Dole's cannery)) diet at the feed lot. This produces the thick white fat (grass fat is more yellow and tough).
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A big part of that is that our national policies subsidize the crap out of owning a home. The income tax deduction for mortgage interest and Fannie/Freddie allow borrowers to get US government rates mean that it is silly not to own a home (denser housing has not historically appreciated as well as single family housing). These two combined with most homeowners lack of financial knowledge (not counting leverage as part of the return equation, leads people to believe that homes appreciate in value faster than other assets (they don't but most assets don't allow 5+ leverage). I really don't understand why our policies continue to encourage homeownership, especially in the light of current policies moving slowly toward oil conservation. There are lots of people who would benefit from denser apartment living closer to work. Good luck trying to change that, however, the mortgage tax deduction is even more of a third rail than social security. Even flat taxers try hard not to bring up the fact that that would go away on the post card returns.
Unless I seriously mixed up my calcs, it appears that $500/mo is reasonable for a $20,000 car @ 2%-4% for 36-48 months. If you are financing your car for something like 5 years, you are highly likely to be underwater in the event of an accident or when you go to trade that vehicle in. Perhaps a lease (or cheaper car) would be a better option. Insurance at $400+/mo! Thanks I don't feel nearly as bad about my full coverage for $1200/yr (high compared to most local peers), although if you include licensing and the occasional ticket that is probably close.
Let us imagine two loaves of bread one is higher quality while the other is cheaper. Say retail prices of the two in stores would be $1 and $2. If delivery costs for the bread are $2 (taking the extra costs of the whole order and applying part of it to the bread) than a company offering a premium service (home delivery of groceries, would be very likely to sell the $2 bread for $4 rather than the $1 bread for $2. The cost of bread is a smaller portion of the total cost.
Incidentally, this also works for produce so the better quality perishable produce is usually sold further away from the groves, orchards, or fields. If you happen to be near one of those or the shippment is likely to damage the fruit (think pre "Gold" pineapples) than this might not be as true.
You are correct, great was a pretty major reach on my part. The problem is and was media companies are generally run as fiefdoms by individual group, division (or even subsegment heads) who have really run amuck at TimeWarner. Adding AOL to the mix could have presented many opportunities, but didn't as TWX can't agree to share between it's old media divisions for the good of the overall company. I'm not sure why this is such a problem at especially media companies (look at Disney's row with Eisner).
Not so much that it doesn't make sense to put together a distribution company (AOL or TimeWarner Cable) with a content provider, but the price was too high. AOL should have owned about 1/4 or less of the combined company.
Keep in mind Apple really does the iTMS to promote and legitimatize their iPod sales, not that that is a bad thing, also most of the profit came from the CD mastering part of TimeWarner's music business that they quietly sold off just before selling the label to Bronfman. Since the real profits were quietly coming from CD mastering it's not real surprise that they didn't want to distribute music online (even at lower price & higher margins).
There is a good chunk of ad/spyware that redirects victims away from Google's search or display's popups when you travel there. As a result people think they are going to Google, but it is taking them to a page that looks like Google, but display's ads for other companies on google's page. So it's not just altruistic eliminating spyware helps Google, too.
TimeWarner was and is in great shape, it's too bad that half their company is owned by shareholders of a former internet company that dont contribute half the current comapny's value. Same thing between Qwest and US West, except Qwest also brought a whole bunch of debt along with it's buying of half the company. I was surprised they didn't try to get in on the Universal action, too. I think they have their sights set on snatching a good part of Adelphia.
The spirit of Calvin Coolidge has taken over the mods today.
Is there a name for 27k? Has anyone ever thrown one (even if someone reached base).
I think Starbuck's big things are consistency and hotties working behind the counter. The hottie's are obvious. But I've gotten much better cups of coffee from other places, but much worse cups from the same places. Starbuck's is consistently above average to good regardless of which one you get it from. In that sense your Bettle example is a good one, although the M3 is consistently excellent!
FYI, Bill resigned to join Motorola's semi group last week (although their board is still quite political). And SBC haven't been telling Wall St anything good about profits (we're sort of hoping that Cinglar stops sucking rocks prior to the collapse of the wired phone market). They aren't in quite the same shape Qwest is (similar to AOL&TimeWarner only with more debt). Verizon and BellSouth are in the best shape of the group.
There are still a few rural LECs (AllTel, CenturyTel, and Citizens) Sprint has slome local operations and there are a very small number of co-ops in the deep sticks.
Keep in mind that the same can be said for capital, which is what the owners own except in cases involving market power (where true profits flow to the person who began exploiting the potential market power). Also, a big political paradox is that modern wage earners are far more likely to be fiscally conservative, while those class heirs (as well as workers who make enough to potentially join them) are much more likely to be liberal.
It did used to stand for SouthWesternBell but they changed it in the 1990s. The company provides local phone service to California, Texas, and most of the MidWest (former AmeriTech or AmeriTouch regions). Comm. Workers of America is the union of communications employees. The strike is over health care costs (esepecially for retirees or for current workers when they retire). It's quite similar to the fight Verizon had last year (can't remember if they struck or not) or the firght the grocery retailers had with their their Unions last fall/winter. This will be a major fight between almost every large employer and their employees/unions, as the cost of health care shot up over the last decade (with little sign of abatement) and companies are extrapolating those costs over the current employees careers (and life expectancy) and attempting to scale back benefits considerably.
I don't think M5, 911 (maybe), or Benz 500 and 600 series are really considered small cars. After looking at your username, I stand corrected. However, while the body of a 911 might be small the engine sure isn't. I've always gotten a kick out of the fact that protests in the US are about SUVs not the gas guzzling European sedans and coupes. I think you could drive to an SUV protest in one of those, and no one would bat an eye.
The biggest factor in the dollar's fall has been central bankers. Ours who reduced rates signficantly to keep investment up following the bursting of the bubble (or at least transfering asset value over to houses, if you're a cynic). As well as, Japan and China's who continue to buy US bonds, regardless of rates, as this keeps their exchange rates consistent over time, and the prices of those Chinese goods (and Toyota cars) somewhat similar here. As a result the USD/EUR rate absorbed the impacts (European central bankers did not try to manage currency rates) so something had to give and the dollar fell against currencies other than China and Japan.
In addition the tanking stock market brought a ton of capital toward other markets greatly increasing the speculation in commodities (including oil prices).
Most cities require a slightly different blend of gas/ethanol/MTBE to reduce NOx emissions? (smog). Each city requires slightly different blends, so gas refined for most of Illinios cannot be used in Chicago, for example, if demand surges there. I think there are currently 26 or so different blends.
The problem is that if these theories are correct, (Hibbert was a pretty smart fellow as evidenced by all prior fields) that prices will be increasing rapidly over the next decade resulting in much higher costs for gas anyway. If we tax it now, it will cause a major shock and disproportionatly hit wage earners. However, it would provide the funding for a public transportion system as well as reduce demand through the purchase of more efficent transportation and reduced transportation needs. Otherwise the prices rise and the beneficiaries are the owners of the remaining oilfields resulting in huge transfers of wealth (and the same impacts on the wage earners). You are correct that we cannot slap taxes on it within a year, but some big investments in public transportation (and ending support of Freddie/Fannie, while boosting subsidies for denser housing near job centers) is something that should be implimented soon allowing tax increases on gas to fund reduced consumtion and heavy research into alternate energy storage and generation.
Keep in mind that higher taxes shield some of the impact, if wholesale price of gas goes from $0.60/gallon (roughly GBP 0.08/L) to $1.30/gallon (roughly GBP 0.16/L) but taxes remain constant at $0.70/gallon here and GBP0.30/L there. Our price is about 35% ($1.30/gal to $2.00/gal) while yours are only up about 20% GBP 0.38/L to 0.46/L. The pricing is simlar in EUR just double the prices and you should be close, the ratios are close. Also the exchange rates should have reduced the impact slightly, as oil is priced in dollars.
I'm tending to agree with maximllin that the order level cannot sustain an industry that is growing as rapidly or has become as sphisticated as spamming. The guy who buys from spammers made the front page of the Wall St. Journal. The front page! Which tells you how common it is that people buy from spammers. Sure perhaps you get a few page views, probably not very high quality page views, but adwords would seem to be a better method of generating better hits today.
I have to think that a serious amount of cash is coming from somewhere else, likely investments and loans and other such activities. I've seen enough of the business world to know that you have to take a significant amount of cash from the majority of the population to make real money or do that vicariously through filter organizations (like the government). I'd be surprised if there were more than 10,000 people like Mr Soto and if so they are sending a whole lot of emails chasing the last 1,000 or so who aren't already buying.
Thanks to everyone who replied with such insightful and interesting discussion.
Except that Google's founders will control super voting stock which makes them the ultimate "insiders". Depending on how many shares are offered, they will likely have 90% of the voting rights of the company's total offering. Most of the time, this class of stock is non dilutive, unless the owners agree to let their vote be diluted. So even if they grant 100,000,000 options a year, they keep the same percentage of control over directors, board meetings, and other strategic decisions.
I was thinking about that, back in the refi days a broker would pay upwards of $25 per lead for refinancing leads. I could see how a spammer would easily clear some decent money. Selling jars of pills for what $10-$20 means the markup has to be pretty steep to cover their costs. Considering that they are now swaping zombie PCs to cover their tracks, one would think that there was some real money in this business. I haven't seen a cellular spam in some time (another source of high dollar commissions). I'm surprised that there is that much money in p3nIs 3nI@rgm3nt and other cheapo items. I wouldn't think that the spammer would be in the business of the refil, and the commission wouldn't be as large. Perhaps I should get to cracking on ebay or with some ad sense words.
I have to ask where does the money come from in spamming? I could understand back in the mortgage boom when brokers were paying lot's of hard cash for leads, but this and other stories make spamming seem like a pretty big business which is rather surprising. Ultimately the money has to come from somewhere (the spam lists can only be sold so many times).
One question do they have medical X at retirement homes? That could well be the coolest thing I've heard this week.
The problem with this strategy is that their business is not well understood by most investors, and the interpreters of complex businesses (Wall St. analysts) really like having some foundation to build on (it doesn't have to be earnings down to the penny, but an idea of revenue growth, potential cost structures, etc. If they get surprised too often, they label the company as erratic and start issuing negative reports driving the stock price down. To avoid this Google must have exceedingly consistent results (reducing the need for guidance) or begin issuing guidance.
Your are correct that silage is usually for dairy cows. Generally for silage they just chop the whole thing, cobs, stalks, grain, and leaves and stuff it in a big bag (ours looked like giant white sausage. Most of the farmers I knew had a 1/2 acre plot of sweet corn (for firends and family) and the remainder of a circle of field corn. Then occasionally you would see a whole field growing sweetcorn. That does not include the huge amount of land devoted to hay production (grasses and legumes). We had a bit of wheat, and a smattering of everything else. Beef cattle are usually grazed for the first year to 16 months of their lives. It's cheaper to let them eat grasses. If winter is snowcovered they will be fed hay and some mixture of grains. At this point dairy cows and beef cows diets are pretty similar (dairy cows will sometimes get other nutirents to increase milk production). Most beef cattle are not raised in places that will grow corn, the land is too valuable, or silage could be fed in the winter as well.
Once the steers are being fattened for butcher, they will go on a mostly grain (cracked corn, occasionally soy or other protien sources (in hawaii they use the cores and waste flesh from Dole's cannery)) diet at the feed lot. This produces the thick white fat (grass fat is more yellow and tough).