It turns out my company offers a pension, but they didn't even mention that during the recruiting process. They did mention their 401k matching contributions, though. I just found it interesting that I ended up being surprised by the pension benefit. I wonder if it is their way of beginning to phase it out?
Ok, but the parent does have a point. 30 year ago, people dreamed of having their own car. Now they dream of having 2 luxury cars and a monster SUV for when there's 1/2 inch of snow on the ground. And of course you have 3 garages for those cars.
Specifically the quote from the Washington Times article:
Easterlin attributes the phenomenon of happiness levels not keeping pace with economic gains to the fact that people's desires and expectations change along with their material fortunes. Where an American in 1970 may have once dreamed about owning a house, he or she might now dream of owning two. Where people once dreamed of buying a new car, they now dream of buying a luxury model.
"People are wedded to the idea that more money will bring them more happiness," Easterlin said. "When they think of the effects of more money, they are failing to factor in the fact that when they get more money they are going to want even more money. When they get more money, they are going to want a bigger house. They never have enough money...
Is it really that people don't have enough money for retirement, or do people simply have greater expectations for what retirement life is like? I'm paying into social security to help retirees subsist, not travel and play golf. Is there a health care system problem? Yes, absolutely. But that is not the whole picture. I don't think it's as simple as that. No one wants to turn 62 1/2 and have to seriously change their lifestyle for the "worse".
Why isn't it their fault, again? Whose fault is it?
Creating a portfolio does require some education, but it'd be about 2 weeks max in a microeconomics course. If you keep it simple and just try to match the market, there's not much to it. The problem is, once you develop a curriculum explaining how to invest, it leaves the door open for other investors taking advantage of that (ie, the knowledge that at certain times of the year there will be a larger purchase volume of things like VTSMX, etc. which would inflate the prices of those funds and their underlying holdings).
It doesn't matter if it is current or projected, except that you have to factor in a couple extra years of cost of capital. The part I am contending is that he is saying the market is expecting that % of return. If that were true, then the price would be high enough that the return ends up being equal to the market. Whether that is 3 years from now or 50 years from now is not relevant, because the underlying assumption is that the market is already convinced it will happen. I am not making that "mistake"; it was an assumption put forth by the original post.
Your mistake is in this statement:
If the numbers do, in fact, play out that way, then the price of the stock will be bid up further as the results play out.
That is not the scenario we are discussing. The scenario we are discussing is one where the market already is convinced this return will happen, so there is no additional information gained by it playing out. What you are talking about is a scenario where the market believes with x% certainty that the stock will return y%, and the probability x increases as it becomes partially true (but in this scenario it is numerically the same thing, as the expected value changes, the price increases appropriately, and you still cannot beat the market except through luck).
If you recognize this assumption from the original post, I'm pretty sure we're saying the same thing, as I said a few posts ago...
Also, this is not something I made up after smoking too much weed one night. This is the Efficient Market Hypothesis, postulated by men much smarter than I: "The efficient-market hypothesis states that it is impossible to consistently outperform the market by using any information that the market already knows, except through luck." The market is not 100% efficient, as there are individuals (eg, Buffett) who have consistently out-performed market returns, but most people aren't Warren Buffett nor do they have the information infrastructure that he has. For the most part, the EMH holds true, and that has been supported with historical data.
I don't get it, still. Perhaps I am just dense. That part was a lead-in to the bigger point of the comment, which is if the market expects something, that means it has already priced appropriately (otherwise, what evidence are you using to suggest that the market expects it, and if there is a disparity between market's value and the actual share price, then why isn't the market buying the stock until there is no more disparity?).
So if the market is expecting a 12% annualized return on investment on Apple stock, the share price will increase until the marginal return of each subsequent share falls to that of the next best investment. Of course, it is not as deterministic as I am making it sound, but the general idea holds certainly for large disparities like the one the parent was suggesting.
If you are trying to say that 12% annualized return is not better than the market because historically the market grows at 11% on average (which at this point is what I'm thinking you're saying), that's not really relevant. You are talking about long term historical averages, but the only thing that is relevant is recent past, current, and recent future performance. The broad market indexes are down over 10% year to date, and even if you believe that the market will recover half of that in the next year (not likely), we're still talking a 7 point higher return if you invest in Apple. If only long term historical averages mattered, then the market would see no volatility at all; prices would increase to a proportion of 10% expected return and not budge.
Um... isn't that exactly what I just said? The stock price will increase to the point where the expected rate of return is equal to that of alternative investments (the market, if you will).
I certainly don't see where I'm wrong by my own logic...
Yes, that would be growth within the franchise (goodwill has nothing to do with it -- that's related to paying more than market value for acquisitions.)
What you say is true in an innovating economy. However, the point Ron Paul makes is that because the government does NOT hold the money supply constant, there is a severe punishment to anyone who saves or invests their income rather than spending it through consumption. There is even a school of thought that gains more and more steam every year that the government inflates that says you should save next to nothing and spend everything, since (the school of thought says) you are more likely to be saved by the government's social programs than by trying to fight the government's inflation through retirement savings.
Take away the idea of inflation and replace with a 5% yearly tax on your savings accounts (of any type). Do you get it yet? It's the same damn thing (except worse since that 5% doesn't get fed back into the economy by the government).
Huh? Assuming a constant price, you would make a profit the first time there was a distribution of earnings. It sounds like you believe that you purchase a share and the share doesn't hold any of that value. It does, just like any other purchase.
This is wrong, wrong, wrong. IF what you say is true -- that the market expects a growth from 3.9% to 12% in 3 years, then the market price would have already increased enough to bring that return rate much, much lower.
ALMOST every time you see something like you just said, it is inherently contradictory. You can't say the market expects such a huge increase in return, because the proof of that would be a large increase in the stock price... more and more until the return is no longer more attractive than alternative investments.
No, it is not growth. Growth does not mean anything in a competitive market.
The reason that Apple has a larger market cap is because they have a valuable franchise, and growth within that franchise will continue to maintain profit margins. Growth outside of the franchise will result in (theoretically) zero profit due to competition.
Apple is overvalued. It's a bubble. Yadda yadda. But at the same time, you cannot take asset value and equate that to market cap without taking into account the value of the franchise.
> On this scale of event, they would have had multiple operators dedicated to watching > over particular areas in case of such a fault. It looks like someone wasn't paying > attention.
You completely missed the point. The point of parent is that blackbox voting is a BAD IDEA no matter what has already happened, even if nothing happened. In that way, it is not a partisan issue. There's no legitimate reason to want blackbox voting.
It's a very long and expensive process, because these legacy systems are all big intertwined messes. Skilled people have to come up with a complex plan to strategically and incrementally pull pieces off of the legacy system in such a way that allows this live system to operate during the 5-10 year transition period to a web based or thick client system.
Re:Who Cares What Language, It Reeks of Poor Desig
on
Why COBOL Could Come Back
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
What it does have is inertia. It works, right? Why replace it? It's the product of decades of business evolution, do you think you can replace that overnight? New code will never be as good.
State governments are paying millions and millions of dollars to replace their legacy COBOL based systems, so the question of "Why replace it?" has some pretty convincing answers...
Slashdot Mirror
The feature is so good that if you write 's name anywhere within Chrome, the browser removes "" from the text.
It turns out my company offers a pension, but they didn't even mention that during the recruiting process. They did mention their 401k matching contributions, though. I just found it interesting that I ended up being surprised by the pension benefit. I wonder if it is their way of beginning to phase it out?
Ok, but the parent does have a point. 30 year ago, people dreamed of having their own car. Now they dream of having 2 luxury cars and a monster SUV for when there's 1/2 inch of snow on the ground. And of course you have 3 garages for those cars.
See also a recent post from "Get Rich Slowly": http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/2008/08/25/the-psychology-of-happiness-13-steps-to-a-better-life/
Specifically the quote from the Washington Times article:
Is it really that people don't have enough money for retirement, or do people simply have greater expectations for what retirement life is like? I'm paying into social security to help retirees subsist, not travel and play golf. Is there a health care system problem? Yes, absolutely. But that is not the whole picture. I don't think it's as simple as that. No one wants to turn 62 1/2 and have to seriously change their lifestyle for the "worse".
> Its not their fault either.
Why isn't it their fault, again? Whose fault is it?
Creating a portfolio does require some education, but it'd be about 2 weeks max in a microeconomics course. If you keep it simple and just try to match the market, there's not much to it. The problem is, once you develop a curriculum explaining how to invest, it leaves the door open for other investors taking advantage of that (ie, the knowledge that at certain times of the year there will be a larger purchase volume of things like VTSMX, etc. which would inflate the prices of those funds and their underlying holdings).
Hey, if 40-50% of my wealth didn't disappear in taxes, perhaps I'd be able to tuck more away for the last 20 years of my life.
If government is no longer the answer for retirement support, then why haven't my taxes decreased?
It doesn't matter if it is current or projected, except that you have to factor in a couple extra years of cost of capital. The part I am contending is that he is saying the market is expecting that % of return. If that were true, then the price would be high enough that the return ends up being equal to the market. Whether that is 3 years from now or 50 years from now is not relevant, because the underlying assumption is that the market is already convinced it will happen. I am not making that "mistake"; it was an assumption put forth by the original post.
Your mistake is in this statement:
That is not the scenario we are discussing. The scenario we are discussing is one where the market already is convinced this return will happen, so there is no additional information gained by it playing out. What you are talking about is a scenario where the market believes with x% certainty that the stock will return y%, and the probability x increases as it becomes partially true (but in this scenario it is numerically the same thing, as the expected value changes, the price increases appropriately, and you still cannot beat the market except through luck).
If you recognize this assumption from the original post, I'm pretty sure we're saying the same thing, as I said a few posts ago...
Also, this is not something I made up after smoking too much weed one night. This is the Efficient Market Hypothesis, postulated by men much smarter than I: "The efficient-market hypothesis states that it is impossible to consistently outperform the market by using any information that the market already knows, except through luck." The market is not 100% efficient, as there are individuals (eg, Buffett) who have consistently out-performed market returns, but most people aren't Warren Buffett nor do they have the information infrastructure that he has. For the most part, the EMH holds true, and that has been supported with historical data.
I don't get it, still. Perhaps I am just dense. That part was a lead-in to the bigger point of the comment, which is if the market expects something, that means it has already priced appropriately (otherwise, what evidence are you using to suggest that the market expects it, and if there is a disparity between market's value and the actual share price, then why isn't the market buying the stock until there is no more disparity?).
So if the market is expecting a 12% annualized return on investment on Apple stock, the share price will increase until the marginal return of each subsequent share falls to that of the next best investment. Of course, it is not as deterministic as I am making it sound, but the general idea holds certainly for large disparities like the one the parent was suggesting.
If you are trying to say that 12% annualized return is not better than the market because historically the market grows at 11% on average (which at this point is what I'm thinking you're saying), that's not really relevant. You are talking about long term historical averages, but the only thing that is relevant is recent past, current, and recent future performance. The broad market indexes are down over 10% year to date, and even if you believe that the market will recover half of that in the next year (not likely), we're still talking a 7 point higher return if you invest in Apple. If only long term historical averages mattered, then the market would see no volatility at all; prices would increase to a proportion of 10% expected return and not budge.
Um... isn't that exactly what I just said? The stock price will increase to the point where the expected rate of return is equal to that of alternative investments (the market, if you will).
I certainly don't see where I'm wrong by my own logic...
Yes, that would be growth within the franchise (goodwill has nothing to do with it -- that's related to paying more than market value for acquisitions.)
What you say is true in an innovating economy. However, the point Ron Paul makes is that because the government does NOT hold the money supply constant, there is a severe punishment to anyone who saves or invests their income rather than spending it through consumption. There is even a school of thought that gains more and more steam every year that the government inflates that says you should save next to nothing and spend everything, since (the school of thought says) you are more likely to be saved by the government's social programs than by trying to fight the government's inflation through retirement savings.
Take away the idea of inflation and replace with a 5% yearly tax on your savings accounts (of any type). Do you get it yet? It's the same damn thing (except worse since that 5% doesn't get fed back into the economy by the government).
Huh? Assuming a constant price, you would make a profit the first time there was a distribution of earnings. It sounds like you believe that you purchase a share and the share doesn't hold any of that value. It does, just like any other purchase.
This is wrong, wrong, wrong. IF what you say is true -- that the market expects a growth from 3.9% to 12% in 3 years, then the market price would have already increased enough to bring that return rate much, much lower.
ALMOST every time you see something like you just said, it is inherently contradictory. You can't say the market expects such a huge increase in return, because the proof of that would be a large increase in the stock price... more and more until the return is no longer more attractive than alternative investments.
No, it is not growth. Growth does not mean anything in a competitive market.
The reason that Apple has a larger market cap is because they have a valuable franchise, and growth within that franchise will continue to maintain profit margins. Growth outside of the franchise will result in (theoretically) zero profit due to competition.
Apple is overvalued. It's a bubble. Yadda yadda. But at the same time, you cannot take asset value and equate that to market cap without taking into account the value of the franchise.
Perhaps it is the only way to get news where the newscaster wears his bias on his sleeve.
Story is old news. They've had these robots working in post offices in the US for years.
To clarify, parent is talking about the summary (abstract) in TFA, not the /. summary
> On this scale of event, they would have had multiple operators dedicated to watching
> over particular areas in case of such a fault. It looks like someone wasn't paying
> attention.
Sorry, we have no record of this person.
Thanks,
China
Macs only crash when you use the grammatically incorrect version of i
with an SMS-based happy ending
And here I thought phone sex was a waste of time.
Yes, they do use Windows on their ATMs.
http://www.securityfocus.com/news/7517
In this scenario, voting for John McCain and satisfying my lover sexually would be mutually exclusive options. There's a joke in there... somewhere...
You completely missed the point. The point of parent is that blackbox voting is a BAD IDEA no matter what has already happened, even if nothing happened. In that way, it is not a partisan issue. There's no legitimate reason to want blackbox voting.
It's a very long and expensive process, because these legacy systems are all big intertwined messes. Skilled people have to come up with a complex plan to strategically and incrementally pull pieces off of the legacy system in such a way that allows this live system to operate during the 5-10 year transition period to a web based or thick client system.
What it does have is inertia. It works, right? Why replace it? It's the product of decades of business evolution, do you think you can replace that overnight? New code will never be as good.
State governments are paying millions and millions of dollars to replace their legacy COBOL based systems, so the question of "Why replace it?" has some pretty convincing answers...
I am concerned about the validity of this story, and I agree that seeing the video would help lend credibility.