It's not a number of years off it's a question of research $$$ to finish. AKA spend 3 billion a year and we get fusion in 30 years spend 1 billion a year and it's going to be closer to 70.
The are basically 3 approaches to hot fusion:
Kinetic: AKA no Confinement other than time. Build a bunch of big lasers and hit a little ball. It's by far the hardest but it's a good way to get the department of energy to help pay for your lasers. Take this project, which is getting 15% of this, lasers time but that's not in the article anywhere. (PS: It's a stupid idea and is 100's of years from being efferent. But the military loves them because it involves blowing things up and using big lasers.)
Magnetic Confinement: Sounds all sci-fi and it's the most "fun" to work with. You use supper cooled "high temperature" super conductors to confine supper hot plasma. Science geeks life this stuff and it's not that hard to get working if you have a few Million $ and a bunch of unemployed plasma physicists. It's about 30-75 years off with sufficient funding. (Not with this white house.)
Electrostatic Confinement: Take a wire mesh charge it up to 100+k Electron volts (Works at 15 k but it works much better at higher energy levels ) stir in some plasma and it just works. This is by far the simplest with several hobbyists building working proto types. The problem is it's not that sexy. For the most part you build it and it and then all you can do is optimize the gas density and charge on the mesh. The problem is it's really simple so once you build one there is not much effort to keep it running 24/7. (No idea what time frame this one is at we could probably build a working aka net positive energy plant today if someone wanted to pay for it but nobody is putting much money behind this so it's anybody's' guess how long it's going to take. (Note this is by far the best approach to use in space, as it's extremely lightweight if you don't need a vacuum chamber.)
I agree that most people should wait longer to retire.
Let's say someone is looking at an income of 100k / year at 62 now most people would be able to live off of that just fine right?
Now assuming they forgot about inflation and did not reinvest any money they would be living off of 100*(.97^(X-62) where X is their age.
At 62 they are living off of 100k / year
At 70 they are living off of 78k / year
At 80 they are living off of 57k / year
At 90 they are living off of 42k / year
They could use up some of their principle, but it keeps being worth less each year so at 80 they would have 42% of the income AND 42% of the capital..
Most people do reinvest but not as much as they should and it's ok to eat principle at 90+ but more people than you might think don't do the math on this.
PS: I keep restating this because you seem to gloss over the fact that inflation is important.
Many old people buy things like gold to act as a "hedge" but they forget that they need to keep taking risks or they are not going to make it. As people get older some costs go down, but inflation is still a bitch for long retirements I know someone who "retired" at 45 for 7 years and then noticed that they where not going to make it till 80 and went back to work. I think it's a good idea to figure out what you think you will need and then shoot for double that before retiring. Chances are good you could have stopped sooner, but it's better to be working at 60 then to try and find employment at 80.
Over an extended period of tyme(time?) 10% isn't high(agree)
Over an extended period of tyme 10%over inflation isn't high(disagree)
An aggressive and diversified portfolio can average 11% ROI every year, but inflation can eat into this fast. Pick an index like S&P 500 or NASDAQ and look what it was at 50 years ago vs. today and then look at the value of the money then and now and the ROI is vary different.
My point is that people tend to forget about inflation. A lot of people think they can retire at little early (say 62) because they have say 1mil, but they forget they need to have a nest egg that does more than meet their needs it needs to grow because at 3% inflation 1mil is not going to be worth nearly as much when they are 80 than it looked like at 62.
Japan's growth has been limited by its lack of natural resources, it's ageing population, and it's excessive investment in infrastructure.
Now China is a long way from having a population as old as Japan but they are getting older.
It's also a long way from being excessive in the amount of infrastructure it's setting up but with the amount of available land it should be able to avoid a lot of the truly wasteful practices.
Finally with a lower population density there is much more available resources to feed it's economic growth.
If it keeps growing, as fast as it is right now it's still about 50 years from having an equal per capita income as the US, but that's so far off it's hard to predict what's going on. For the next 30 years it should be able to fuel it's economic growth off of the western world after that it's anybody's guess.
In 45 years at 3% inflation 1mill is only going to be worth what 264k is worth now so you need 4x that much if you want to have a "real mil" at 65. Investing 2k every year 18 - 25 is going to be worth what investing 2k every year 26-65 so you basicly need to invest 4k every year from 18 to 65 to hit 1 mil in todays money. Or invest 3k at 18 and keep up with inflation.
PS: Note if your saying 10% over inflation then the numbers work out to be vary close to what your talking about but that's a little high for asumed ROI IMO.
I drive an old Volvo 240 station wagon that was made in 91. It get's around 20MPG.
While I do care about the environment I live 4.5 miles from work so getting good gas mileage is not really a concern. It does not have much acceleration but I can accelerate up to 85MPH up a mountain just fine. It's got better clearance that most SUV's and I have driven around in blizzards just fine. (I still remember the look on the guy's face when I drove up in my Volvo to pull him out of the snow The guy was in a Jeep but that's not as important as knowing how to drive.)
I can haul a full sheet of plywood or a La-Z-boy just fine. I can drive though fields just fine (as long as their not overly muddy.) It's got 225k miles on the thing but I can't find anything worth replacing it for. It's also built like a tank.
I could have a nicer car but I like putting 5k a year into savings vs. having a huge car payment. I want to retire at 40 a hell of a lot more than I want a car with a lot of image behind it. Not that I can find a new car with all the features I am looking for but that's a side issue.
The reason why most people say it's a sports car is a status issue is because there is so little real difference between what the cars cost and what they can do.
The auto industry pumps an amassing amount of cash into advertising because that's one of the few ways to differentiate cars. You can get a brand new car for 10k or 100k but what's the real difference between them? It does not really cost that much more to build a 500HP engine vs. a 140HP engine and leather seating ect is not really that expensive.
When you buy a Ferrari your paying most of that cash to buy into the image of that car. If most people just wanted a high performance car then someone would build a no name model that preformed like a Ferrari at 1/2 the price. And a car company could corner the market by selling them to all those people who like fast cars but don't care about the image. But clearly something else is going on.
PS: It's funny, but after getting back into shape I changed a lot of other attitudes. I am 25, 6'2" tall, good looking, reasonably educated, intelligent, and I have an above average girth and length (not that it's important but this is for the discussion.) ect. But, I sill found the need to try and make up for stuff when I was out of shape. It's not just about cars and such but after making eye contact I find a quiet smile works as well as a great pickup line, but it's the guys with image issues that worry about such things. I find snowboarding to be fun in the say way you like to drive fast, but I think most guys that snowboard feel the need for an audience. It's not that having a nice snowboard or a fast sports car means your compensating for something, but it is a sign that you might be compensating for a preceded problem.
I drive an old Volvo 240 station wagon that was made in 91. It get's around 20MPG.
While I do care about the environment I live 4.5 miles from work so getting good gas mileage is not really a concern. It does not have much acceleration but I can accelerate up to 85MPH up a mountain just fine. It's got better clearance that most SUV's and I have driven around in blizzards just fine. (I still remember the look on the guy's face when I drove up in my Volvo to pull him out of the snow The guy was in a Jeep but that's not as important as knowing how to drive.)
I can haul a full sheet of plywood or a La-Z-boy just fine. I can drive though fields just fine (as long as their not overly muddy.) It's got 225k miles on the thing but I can't find anything worth replacing it for. It's also built like a tank.
I could have a nicer car but I like putting 5k a year into savings vs. having a huge car payment. I want to retire at 40 a hell of a lot more than I want a car with a lot of image behind it. Not that I can find a new car with all the features I am looking for but that's a side issue.
The reason why most people say it's a sports car is a status issue is because there is so little real difference between what the cars cost and what they can do.
The auto industry pumps an amassing amount of cash into advertising because that's one of the few ways to differentiate cars. You can get a brand new car for 10k or 100k but what's the real difference between them? It does not really cost that much more to build a 500HP engine vs. a 140HP engine and leather seating ect is not really that expensive.
When you buy a Ferrari your paying most of that cash to buy into the image of that car. If most people just wanted a high performance car then someone would build a no name model that preformed like a Ferrari at 1/2 the price. And a car company could corner the market by selling them to all those people who like fast cars but don't care about the image. But clearly something else is going on.
PS: It's funny, but after getting back into shape I changed a lot of other attitudes. I am 25, 6'2" tall, good looking, reasonably educated, intelligent, and I have an above average girth and length (not that it's important but this is for the discussion.) ect. But, I sill found the need to try and make up for stuff when I was out of shape. It's not just about cars and such but after making eye contact I find a quiet smile works as well as a great pickup line, but it's the guys with image issues that worry about such things. I fund snowboarding fun in the say way you like to drive fast, but I think most guys that snowboard feel the need for an audience. It's not that having a snowboard or sports car means your compensating for something but it is a sign that you might be compensating for a preceded problem.
We have 30% efferent solar systems that cost around 8c / KW. Using 1/1000th of the earths surface area at 30% efficiency we would average 3TW of power.
Note: In 2001 the world averaged 1.7TW of electric energy usage.
"There is enough ice on land to raise sea levels by about 70 meters."
Which means the whole floating issue is somewhat mute. I think the floating ice might melt a little sooner as it's in salt water so it needs to be colder to remain ice but that just means it's a warning that bad things are on the way.
I like fusion, but it needs to be scaled before it's going to become efficient. A 30billion$ plant could be efficient but there is little point in building plants smaller than that.
We already have 30+% efficient solar systems that could produce power at around 8c (or less) per kWh under large scale deployment. That's around 777MW / square mile * 5 h / day. The total surface area of the Earth is 197000000 square miles and more than.01% of which is perfect for solar systems as it's not in use and would work well with solar systems (Basically desert's as approximately one-third of Earth's land surface is desert but a lot of that is in use.)). That's.01% = 75TWh/day of power or 3TW / h average vs 1.7TW (the average global electric power usage in 2001).
Not that I think we are going to try and cover 1/1000th of the earth in a solar systems, but I think solar is probably "next best thing in the way of scalable and efficient power generation."
Fusion might be 30 - 70 years away, but solar systems are only 2-3 years from coming on strong.
I don't believe in god. If you want to know how we think and act feel free to ask us but don't assume godless = without conscious.
Some people wonder why those without fear don't just go out and rape pillage and plunder at will. But it's much simpler if you think of 20 people stuck on an island that know nothing about each other for say 20 years. If there was only one woman then there would be a higher chance she would end up raped than if there where 15 women. Why? Well if you can separate people into you (people with most of the power) and not you (people with little power) then you can dominate them. But in a more balance situation say 10 and 10 then the women would be able to fight back better so there would be less risk that they would be harmed.
Now this is a simple case but it's easy to see that when there is risk to harming someone then there is less chance people will do that. I said nothing about god but I still demonstrated a reason why people would not go around harming others without cause.
Now take the same group of 20 people. Let's start out with them knowing little about each other but they are all starting out except one of them is stuck on the boat. Some driftwood is covering the door and one of them can't get out. So they are calling for help. Now 3 people walk by and see that person in distress. Helping him is going to be a minor risk but if you don't help him nothing would seemingly come of it. However, if one of that group walked over and let they guy out then the guy would "owe him a favor" and the rest of the group would start to think of him as a "nice guy". Well would there be any reason for the guy on the boat to try a pay back the favor? If he did not do that then people would be less likely to help him out. But the other 2 people would also be willing to help him out because he is a "nice guy" so he would probably help them out in the same situation. Now even if the helper where a neutral guy he could think about hey all these people would react and see that helping someone out could help him out more.
Now you can use god to teach your kids these two basic ideas so they will not do bad things and help others out OR you can say why doing so might be a good idea. Doing bad things might seem like FUN to the religious people but that's because they never really think of rational reason not to harm others. So it seems like a lot of them can't understand why people might do nice things without the fear that the need to do nice things.
If you want to read up on this type of stuff look into game theory. It look at how to win games but has found that the simplest method is often to start with minor gifts and work your way up. As long as the benefit from harming the other players is less than the benefit of helping them then it's a good idea to keep helping them. In the end you might end up with the classic bank robbers situation where everyone is trying to run off with the same loot but as long as there are plenty of banks to rob or cops to hide from it's often a great idea to keep helping your buddies.
On the down side this also expanse why you tend to consolidate power to smaller groups who try and dominate the whole. But overall society's can function based on logic as well as they would out of fearing god.
Don't get me wrong I think your doing a hell of a lot better than most people.
I think of my self as a reasonably conservative investor. But, I am still young enough that it's probably a long time till I am going to be using this money so I stick with a diversified list of mid/high risk investments in US and Europe. When you're overly conservative you will lose out on a lot of the value of doing long term investing.
I think owning your own home can be a wonderful long-term investment but you have a lot of eggs in one basket. A friend of mine wrote a check for his house and said "this is a safe place to keep 1/4 of my net worth" and I had to agree with him. It's great piece of mind and a vary safe investment but it's also probably a lot of lost revenue over time.
Granted I don't know anything about that company but it's about what most growth oriented barely managed mutual funds look like. If you pick at random from small company's you tent to do better than 10% ROI over time assuming a little cost dollar averaging.
PS: What I mean by cost dollar averaging:
With exagurated numbers.
Let's say your buying 100$ worth of stock every month
Now the price is 20$ if you sell will you make any money?
Well you got a total of 36 shares for 600$ at an average price of 16.67$ a pop even though the average price was 21$. So just made 36 *20 - 600 = 120$ or 20% ROI.
Now most stocks don't go up and down that much, but the same basic idea helps out a lot over time.
I get why most people buy home theater system but I am paying devils advocate here.
In the last 3 years I spent over 800$ for monitors from my father and sister and I got a 1500$ laptop for my mom so I could have easily afforded a good home theater system but I am pointing out why for me it's not such a great investment.
I don't watch enough TV to make normal cable worth it. I don't like to re watch most things as I have a near photographic memory. If I have seen a movie more than twice it gets vary boring so building up a home DVD library seems silly to me. Now I could rent movies at 2-3 movies a month @ 4$ a pop or spend an extra 4$ and see them in the theater which is 1/2 a mile away. I do have a DVD drive for my PC so I can watch stuff on DVD's that I missed but normal TV is just not a big deal.
Now if I lived in the middle of nowhere then going to the theater would be a bigger pain but I would rather read a book than watch 99% of TV out there so I still don't see the value in cable. I used to buy big-ticket home entertainment items but I found out that I could do much more mid ticket items (Like actually using my 800$ snowboard) if I avoided that. Now, I use the internet to stay informed so TV news / weather channel is not that useful which leaves what? The discovery channel which I do miss a little bit but the quality of their programming seems to have droped off anyway. I mean what's the point of 50 home make over channels? MythBusters is ok, but I have a better grasp of basic science than their target audience so it's not that interesting.
I'm broke? I just turned 25 and I have over 10k in savings thanks vary much. I am making a little under 60k a year so I could be broke if I tried living in the burbs and driving an SUV but I like living 4 miles from work and not caring about gas prices. It's all about the choices you make..
My first year out of school I had a huge apartment, but it's a waste of cash to spend more than a grand a month on an apartment IMO. Sure you can't have huge parties but other than that I don't really notice the difference.
Right now I don't have kids and I don't have a TV and I live in a small ~900sf apartment. So for me going to your setup would cost more than 2200$ because I need to buy content which is NOT free, and I have to give up space which is NOT free.
You can say your going to have cable anyway but that's all part of the decision to watch TV / Movies at home. The choice to have a system at home with a DVD player, surround sound system, Huge Screen (+/- HD), couch ect is involved with your situation. If you have kids and own your own home it's not a bad idea, but it's still a choice.
PS: If your making less that 10% from investments on average you don't know what your doing. So your paying at least that much interest even if have cash because you're losing that income. Paying of the mortgage early is not such a great idea, because you could be making better money with other investments unless you had a vary high interest mortgage. Beating 5-6% a year over 15 years is vary easy to do but if it's much higher than that it's a good idea. I don't know what you where paying but assuming it was 5% then you could have paid of a 100k loan over 15 years by paying ~ 10.1k per year or you could have paid it off in 30 years by paying ~6.6k but that would have let you invest ~3.5k a year every year for 30 years vs waiting 15 years to invest 10.1k every year. Now at 10% ROI the first would have left you with the house and 575k after 30 years where the second would leave you with 488k after 30 years. Granted it's a little more risky to have money in stocks but small investments over 30years means your getting good cost dolor averaging so your risk is fairly low if you have a balance portfolio.
Spending 3k in cash is still 3k that you could have invested at 10+% a year. I get the convince issue but I like the motivation to go out because I don't like staying at home all the time.
Anyway, surround sound systems are pointless for music. They work, but it's 1/2 the cost for a high-end 2.1 system vs. a high end 5.1 system.
I am living in an apartment is so I can't really turn up the sound on my speakers anyway. Large screen TV's with sounds systems also take up a lot of space.
Granted I live in an area (Fairfax, VA) with a lot of stuff to do that's close. Hell I can walk to a mall and 2 different theater complexes so convenience is almost mute issue.
Cable is nice but with high speed Internet and lots of other things to do I did not watch it much (when I had it). You could say you would have it anyway but if you cut out the movie packages you can save close to 50$ a month anyway. I workout an hour a night, read, go to the movies, snow board ect so getting sucked into TV land is not how I really want to spend my free time. Yes having a great entertainment system at home is affordable, but it's a lot more costly than what you're presenting.
Note: I am using an 800$ flat screen for my PC but that was a gift that was returned after she started using a wide screen dell laptop. I also had a 350$ set of klipch 4.1 speakers for by PC that I picked up in collage but they broke and I replaced them with some cheepo 60$ 2.1 system, but I don't really notice the difference as I have to keep the volume low and I stopped playing FPS's. I understand that for people who live in sub divisions it's nice to set up an area to watch the big game with the neighbors (as it where) but as a young person I like being more mobile with my entertainment $$$.
Adding reflective coatings are vary effective. 1/2 inch multi layered reflective coatings will stop a high-powered laser. Granted at some point you can build a 'super high powered" laser that will earth though this but...
But, what happens when a particle of dust lands on the outside of your "supper high powered laser?"
PS: Energy levels / frequency / duration where left out of this discussion, but the same principals always apply. Basically you can build a system that would stop most modern munitions but it's a lot cheaper to defend agenst that system than it is to deploy that system.
At 8.50 a ticket it's 235-411 tickets to hit 2k-3.5k.
Now divide by 2 because your taking 2 people, but most people pay interest on that so let's say ~300 movies over 5 years.<BR><BR> Anyway, you still have to pay for your content but let's be cheep and say 50$ a month for cable and 15$/month for move rentals so over 5 years your talking an extra 3900$...
Now I might watch a lot of movies but even at 2 movies a week for 2 people I sill come out ahead. The real bonus is I am not stuck at home with my entertainment money because I am not stuck with those reoccurring bills every month. If I want to take that cash and put it toward snowboarding some weekend I can do that, because I an not forced to pay for that content or system when I am not using it. Granted I live in a nice area with 2 theaters in walking distance, but for someone who would rather do stuff than sit at home in front of the TV it's really been helpful.
PS: <rant>I know people that spend over 120$ a month on cable AND rent moves @ 20$ a month AND still buy 1-2 movies a month. That's 5.60$ each and every day on content. Most of them say they don't have money to go out and do stuff but that is because they have already spent their money assuming they would be sitting on the couch anyway. Then again these are the same people who buy stuff on credit thinking they can afford it, but forget that in many cases they are going to pay twice as much money because, they could not be bothered to save up for it. </rant>
They do this in most MMO's but when the dev team is ~100 people if 2,000,000 people play the game there is no way that they can "get a feel" for how the game is played by talking to people. Most of them don't have the time to join a raiding guild. MMO's are built for people with abundant free time and game developers don't have that. The simple economics of MMO's mean that there needs to be 1,000+ players per developer to come close to breakeven.
If these people have anything approaching a life outside of work they are limited to ~60 hours a week of productive time and ~15 hours of meetings coffee breaks ect. Now 2/3 of them work on things outside of the message boards like server stability, networking code, Sound track, 3d modeling, GUI, webpage design, ect. So chances are the core developers could spend time reading the message boards but most of them don't get to decide what their working on so we are down to ~5 people one or two of which might spend 20 hours a week reading the message boards but they are not going to have time to respond to more than a few of the most basic issues.
Eslyjah: Thanks, I like to debate / discuss with people who have a reasonably consistent / logical view point. My political stance is all over the map so focusing on a single issue to debate become a problem. If you want to continue / expand this feel free to drop me a line a jkirbyjobs in hotmail.
When it comes to political funding for research I agree that there are a great number of problems with it overall but a simple example of the cancellation of the supper colidder project should demonstrate what happens to over the horizon scientific projects after government funding dries up. (So clearly there are gaps in what private money will pay for in terms of research.)
My basic views on scientific progress are that it's is a basic feedback loop. Basic Science > Applied Science > Increased Economic Efficiency > More Money for Basic Science. As such there is no way for anyone in the dark ages to build an ICBM but the overall cost of basic science keeps going up as the easer subjects have been explored. Assuming we survive we might know all there is to learn from Science in 10,000 years whatever we do but by dumping more money into Basic Science now you can slightly alter the level of economic growth. In that way I view basic science as infrastructure in that it promotes long-term economic growth but has little value to individual segments in society.
When it comes to goods and services I don't want individuals or companies building ICBM's. O they can make the rocket but the basic bomb should be made from someone who is less concerned with the bottom line than the level of safety for society. This apply's to high level encryption software / hardware used by the government and a few other such items whose design and development should be tightly controlled.
As to services I think it's a good idea to give people some basic services like legal / tax advice and monitoring the food supply, but this should be small scale. As in a few good websites and a few hours per year of professional advice. It's not that private industry can't provide these services but rather that it's a bad idea for people to give up on them. AKA: the bank is about to foreclose on my house what can / should I do?
I don't like the way that most of the government is run. I think spending more money than the rest of the world put together on our military is insane.
I think SS should be limited to the oldest ~5% of the population (as people live longer you need to wait longer to retire) and those who are demonstrate-ably incapable of gainful employment (Quadriplegics not those with minor back problems) but provide a livable income to those people. I hate the idea of Medicare I have no problem with a form of socialized care that will pay for ~3k / year of basic care as it will help pay for things like proper care for broken bones which will help society for little real cost but paying for expensive minimally useful medicine for old people is stupid. I know that such systems are never going to be in place but for most things the government does as most of the value is had for the first 1/3 of the cash. EX: The public school system could be reasonably effective and run for 1/3 of the year per student. You could teach most people to read, write, basic math (up to trig), basic science, and provide materials for interested students to look into other areas in their free time with the ability to easily test out of most subjects after demonstrated ability. But our system has become closer to government subsidies daycare. Not that I think it should be cut but rather the insane amount of cash we spend on most things means that a few percent here or there can get a lot done.
I think that tax cuts for the wealthy are a stupid idea. If you want to help the economy talk with the fed or subsidies loans for small business to grow / expand, don't just give people money because they happen to have a lot of it.
As to accountability the system we have now works by trading what people w
Energy density is one issue with bombs but not all reactions can take place fast enough to be an issue. An oil tanker might seem like a huge explosive danger but a tanker full of C4 would be more dangerous even though it has a much lower energy density / stores much less energy.
By this point / Rothbard I am talking about those with little knowledge screaming about economic issues. I think you have a reasonable grasp on the subject but in general I agree with him on that issue.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not a number of years off it's a question of research $$$ to finish. AKA spend 3 billion a year and we get fusion in 30 years spend 1 billion a year and it's going to be closer to 70.
The are basically 3 approaches to hot fusion:
Kinetic: AKA no Confinement other than time. Build a bunch of big lasers and hit a little ball. It's by far the hardest but it's a good way to get the department of energy to help pay for your lasers. Take this project, which is getting 15% of this, lasers time but that's not in the article anywhere. (PS: It's a stupid idea and is 100's of years from being efferent. But the military loves them because it involves blowing things up and using big lasers.)
Magnetic Confinement: Sounds all sci-fi and it's the most "fun" to work with. You use supper cooled "high temperature" super conductors to confine supper hot plasma. Science geeks life this stuff and it's not that hard to get working if you have a few Million $ and a bunch of unemployed plasma physicists. It's about 30-75 years off with sufficient funding. (Not with this white house.)
Electrostatic Confinement: Take a wire mesh charge it up to 100+k Electron volts (Works at 15 k but it works much better at higher energy levels ) stir in some plasma and it just works. This is by far the simplest with several hobbyists building working proto types. The problem is it's not that sexy. For the most part you build it and it and then all you can do is optimize the gas density and charge on the mesh. The problem is it's really simple so once you build one there is not much effort to keep it running 24/7. (No idea what time frame this one is at we could probably build a working aka net positive energy plant today if someone wanted to pay for it but nobody is putting much money behind this so it's anybody's' guess how long it's going to take. (Note this is by far the best approach to use in space, as it's extremely lightweight if you don't need a vacuum chamber.)
I agree that most people should wait longer to retire.
Let's say someone is looking at an income of 100k / year at 62 now most people would be able to live off of that just fine right?
Now assuming they forgot about inflation and did not reinvest any money they would be living off of 100*(.97^(X-62) where X is their age.
At 62 they are living off of 100k / year
At 70 they are living off of 78k / year
At 80 they are living off of 57k / year
At 90 they are living off of 42k / year
They could use up some of their principle, but it keeps being worth less each year so at 80 they would have 42% of the income AND 42% of the capital..
Most people do reinvest but not as much as they should and it's ok to eat principle at 90+ but more people than you might think don't do the math on this.
PS: I keep restating this because you seem to gloss over the fact that inflation is important.
Many old people buy things like gold to act as a "hedge" but they forget that they need to keep taking risks or they are not going to make it. As people get older some costs go down, but inflation is still a bitch for long retirements I know someone who "retired" at 45 for 7 years and then noticed that they where not going to make it till 80 and went back to work. I think it's a good idea to figure out what you think you will need and then shoot for double that before retiring. Chances are good you could have stopped sooner, but it's better to be working at 60 then to try and find employment at 80.
Over an extended period of tyme(time?) 10% isn't high(agree)
Over an extended period of tyme 10%over inflation isn't high(disagree)
An aggressive and diversified portfolio can average 11% ROI every year, but inflation can eat into this fast. Pick an index like S&P 500 or NASDAQ and look what it was at 50 years ago vs. today and then look at the value of the money then and now and the ROI is vary different.
My point is that people tend to forget about inflation. A lot of people think they can retire at little early (say 62) because they have say 1mil, but they forget they need to have a nest egg that does more than meet their needs it needs to grow because at 3% inflation 1mil is not going to be worth nearly as much when they are 80 than it looked like at 62.
Japan's growth has been limited by its lack of natural resources, it's ageing population, and it's excessive investment in infrastructure.
Now China is a long way from having a population as old as Japan but they are getting older.
It's also a long way from being excessive in the amount of infrastructure it's setting up but with the amount of available land it should be able to avoid a lot of the truly wasteful practices.
Finally with a lower population density there is much more available resources to feed it's economic growth.
If it keeps growing, as fast as it is right now it's still about 50 years from having an equal per capita income as the US, but that's so far off it's hard to predict what's going on. For the next 30 years it should be able to fuel it's economic growth off of the western world after that it's anybody's guess.
In 45 years at 3% inflation 1mill is only going to be worth what 264k is worth now so you need 4x that much if you want to have a "real mil" at 65. Investing 2k every year 18 - 25 is going to be worth what investing 2k every year 26-65 so you basicly need to invest 4k every year from 18 to 65 to hit 1 mil in todays money. Or invest 3k at 18 and keep up with inflation.
PS: Note if your saying 10% over inflation then the numbers work out to be vary close to what your talking about but that's a little high for asumed ROI IMO.
I drive an old Volvo 240 station wagon that was made in 91. It get's around 20MPG.
While I do care about the environment I live 4.5 miles from work so getting good gas mileage is not really a concern. It does not have much acceleration but I can accelerate up to 85MPH up a mountain just fine. It's got better clearance that most SUV's and I have driven around in blizzards just fine. (I still remember the look on the guy's face when I drove up in my Volvo to pull him out of the snow The guy was in a Jeep but that's not as important as knowing how to drive.)
I can haul a full sheet of plywood or a La-Z-boy just fine. I can drive though fields just fine (as long as their not overly muddy.) It's got 225k miles on the thing but I can't find anything worth replacing it for. It's also built like a tank.
I could have a nicer car but I like putting 5k a year into savings vs. having a huge car payment. I want to retire at 40 a hell of a lot more than I want a car with a lot of image behind it. Not that I can find a new car with all the features I am looking for but that's a side issue.
The reason why most people say it's a sports car is a status issue is because there is so little real difference between what the cars cost and what they can do.
The auto industry pumps an amassing amount of cash into advertising because that's one of the few ways to differentiate cars. You can get a brand new car for 10k or 100k but what's the real difference between them? It does not really cost that much more to build a 500HP engine vs. a 140HP engine and leather seating ect is not really that expensive.
When you buy a Ferrari your paying most of that cash to buy into the image of that car. If most people just wanted a high performance car then someone would build a no name model that preformed like a Ferrari at 1/2 the price. And a car company could corner the market by selling them to all those people who like fast cars but don't care about the image. But clearly something else is going on.
PS: It's funny, but after getting back into shape I changed a lot of other attitudes. I am 25, 6'2" tall, good looking, reasonably educated, intelligent, and I have an above average girth and length (not that it's important but this is for the discussion.) ect. But, I sill found the need to try and make up for stuff when I was out of shape. It's not just about cars and such but after making eye contact I find a quiet smile works as well as a great pickup line, but it's the guys with image issues that worry about such things. I find snowboarding to be fun in the say way you like to drive fast, but I think most guys that snowboard feel the need for an audience. It's not that having a nice snowboard or a fast sports car means your compensating for something, but it is a sign that you might be compensating for a preceded problem.
I drive an old Volvo 240 station wagon that was made in 91. It get's around 20MPG. While I do care about the environment I live 4.5 miles from work so getting good gas mileage is not really a concern. It does not have much acceleration but I can accelerate up to 85MPH up a mountain just fine. It's got better clearance that most SUV's and I have driven around in blizzards just fine. (I still remember the look on the guy's face when I drove up in my Volvo to pull him out of the snow The guy was in a Jeep but that's not as important as knowing how to drive.) I can haul a full sheet of plywood or a La-Z-boy just fine. I can drive though fields just fine (as long as their not overly muddy.) It's got 225k miles on the thing but I can't find anything worth replacing it for. It's also built like a tank. I could have a nicer car but I like putting 5k a year into savings vs. having a huge car payment. I want to retire at 40 a hell of a lot more than I want a car with a lot of image behind it. Not that I can find a new car with all the features I am looking for but that's a side issue. The reason why most people say it's a sports car is a status issue is because there is so little real difference between what the cars cost and what they can do. The auto industry pumps an amassing amount of cash into advertising because that's one of the few ways to differentiate cars. You can get a brand new car for 10k or 100k but what's the real difference between them? It does not really cost that much more to build a 500HP engine vs. a 140HP engine and leather seating ect is not really that expensive. When you buy a Ferrari your paying most of that cash to buy into the image of that car. If most people just wanted a high performance car then someone would build a no name model that preformed like a Ferrari at 1/2 the price. And a car company could corner the market by selling them to all those people who like fast cars but don't care about the image. But clearly something else is going on. PS: It's funny, but after getting back into shape I changed a lot of other attitudes. I am 25, 6'2" tall, good looking, reasonably educated, intelligent, and I have an above average girth and length (not that it's important but this is for the discussion.) ect. But, I sill found the need to try and make up for stuff when I was out of shape. It's not just about cars and such but after making eye contact I find a quiet smile works as well as a great pickup line, but it's the guys with image issues that worry about such things. I fund snowboarding fun in the say way you like to drive fast, but I think most guys that snowboard feel the need for an audience. It's not that having a snowboard or sports car means your compensating for something but it is a sign that you might be compensating for a preceded problem.
Sounds like someone is spending a little too much time with Dracula.
PS: ~30/1000th of the earth is covered in farmland.
We have 30% efferent solar systems that cost around 8c / KW. Using 1/1000th of the earths surface area at 30% efficiency we would average 3TW of power.
Note: In 2001 the world averaged 1.7TW of electric energy usage.
"There is enough ice on land to raise sea levels by about 70 meters."
Which means the whole floating issue is somewhat mute. I think the floating ice might melt a little sooner as it's in salt water so it needs to be colder to remain ice but that just means it's a warning that bad things are on the way.
I like fusion, but it needs to be scaled before it's going to become efficient. A 30billion$ plant could be efficient but there is little point in building plants smaller than that.
.01% of which is perfect for solar systems as it's not in use and would work well with solar systems (Basically desert's as approximately one-third of Earth's land surface is desert but a lot of that is in use.)). That's .01% = 75TWh /day of power or 3TW / h average vs 1.7TW (the average global electric power usage in 2001).
We already have 30+% efficient solar systems that could produce power at around 8c (or less) per kWh under large scale deployment. That's around 777MW / square mile * 5 h / day. The total surface area of the Earth is 197000000 square miles and more than
Not that I think we are going to try and cover 1/1000th of the earth in a solar systems, but I think solar is probably "next best thing in the way of scalable and efficient power generation." Fusion might be 30 - 70 years away, but solar systems are only 2-3 years from coming on strong.
I don't believe in god. If you want to know how we think and act feel free to ask us but don't assume godless = without conscious.
Some people wonder why those without fear don't just go out and rape pillage and plunder at will. But it's much simpler if you think of 20 people stuck on an island that know nothing about each other for say 20 years. If there was only one woman then there would be a higher chance she would end up raped than if there where 15 women. Why? Well if you can separate people into you (people with most of the power) and not you (people with little power) then you can dominate them. But in a more balance situation say 10 and 10 then the women would be able to fight back better so there would be less risk that they would be harmed.
Now this is a simple case but it's easy to see that when there is risk to harming someone then there is less chance people will do that. I said nothing about god but I still demonstrated a reason why people would not go around harming others without cause.
Now take the same group of 20 people. Let's start out with them knowing little about each other but they are all starting out except one of them is stuck on the boat. Some driftwood is covering the door and one of them can't get out. So they are calling for help. Now 3 people walk by and see that person in distress. Helping him is going to be a minor risk but if you don't help him nothing would seemingly come of it. However, if one of that group walked over and let they guy out then the guy would "owe him a favor" and the rest of the group would start to think of him as a "nice guy". Well would there be any reason for the guy on the boat to try a pay back the favor? If he did not do that then people would be less likely to help him out. But the other 2 people would also be willing to help him out because he is a "nice guy" so he would probably help them out in the same situation. Now even if the helper where a neutral guy he could think about hey all these people would react and see that helping someone out could help him out more.
Now you can use god to teach your kids these two basic ideas so they will not do bad things and help others out OR you can say why doing so might be a good idea. Doing bad things might seem like FUN to the religious people but that's because they never really think of rational reason not to harm others. So it seems like a lot of them can't understand why people might do nice things without the fear that the need to do nice things.
If you want to read up on this type of stuff look into game theory. It look at how to win games but has found that the simplest method is often to start with minor gifts and work your way up. As long as the benefit from harming the other players is less than the benefit of helping them then it's a good idea to keep helping them. In the end you might end up with the classic bank robbers situation where everyone is trying to run off with the same loot but as long as there are plenty of banks to rob or cops to hide from it's often a great idea to keep helping your buddies.
On the down side this also expanse why you tend to consolidate power to smaller groups who try and dominate the whole. But overall society's can function based on logic as well as they would out of fearing god.
Don't get me wrong I think your doing a hell of a lot better than most people.
I think of my self as a reasonably conservative investor. But, I am still young enough that it's probably a long time till I am going to be using this money so I stick with a diversified list of mid/high risk investments in US and Europe. When you're overly conservative you will lose out on a lot of the value of doing long term investing.
I think owning your own home can be a wonderful long-term investment but you have a lot of eggs in one basket. A friend of mine wrote a check for his house and said "this is a safe place to keep 1/4 of my net worth" and I had to agree with him. It's great piece of mind and a vary safe investment but it's also probably a lot of lost revenue over time.
If you want to save up some cash look into small cap growth funds.
s px
Now I don't use this company but this is the first thing that popped into Google.
As of 7/31/2005
Wasatch Core Growth 5 year average 16.79%
Since Inception*15.05%
http://www.wasatchfunds.com/Performance/returns.a
Granted I don't know anything about that company but it's about what most growth oriented barely managed mutual funds look like. If you pick at random from small company's you tent to do better than 10% ROI over time assuming a little cost dollar averaging.
PS: What I mean by cost dollar averaging:
With exagurated numbers.
Let's say your buying 100$ worth of stock every month
For 6 months:
10$ = 10 shares
20$ = 5 shares
33$ = 3 shares
20$ = 5 shares
10$ = 10 shares
33$ = 3 shares
Now the price is 20$ if you sell will you make any money?
Well you got a total of 36 shares for 600$ at an average price of 16.67$ a pop even though the average price was 21$. So just made 36 *20 - 600 = 120$ or 20% ROI.
Now most stocks don't go up and down that much, but the same basic idea helps out a lot over time.
I get why most people buy home theater system but I am paying devils advocate here.
In the last 3 years I spent over 800$ for monitors from my father and sister and I got a 1500$ laptop for my mom so I could have easily afforded a good home theater system but I am pointing out why for me it's not such a great investment.
I don't watch enough TV to make normal cable worth it. I don't like to re watch most things as I have a near photographic memory. If I have seen a movie more than twice it gets vary boring so building up a home DVD library seems silly to me. Now I could rent movies at 2-3 movies a month @ 4$ a pop or spend an extra 4$ and see them in the theater which is 1/2 a mile away. I do have a DVD drive for my PC so I can watch stuff on DVD's that I missed but normal TV is just not a big deal.
Now if I lived in the middle of nowhere then going to the theater would be a bigger pain but I would rather read a book than watch 99% of TV out there so I still don't see the value in cable. I used to buy big-ticket home entertainment items but I found out that I could do much more mid ticket items (Like actually using my 800$ snowboard) if I avoided that. Now, I use the internet to stay informed so TV news / weather channel is not that useful which leaves what? The discovery channel which I do miss a little bit but the quality of their programming seems to have droped off anyway. I mean what's the point of 50 home make over channels? MythBusters is ok, but I have a better grasp of basic science than their target audience so it's not that interesting.
I'm broke? I just turned 25 and I have over 10k in savings thanks vary much. I am making a little under 60k a year so I could be broke if I tried living in the burbs and driving an SUV but I like living 4 miles from work and not caring about gas prices. It's all about the choices you make..
My first year out of school I had a huge apartment, but it's a waste of cash to spend more than a grand a month on an apartment IMO. Sure you can't have huge parties but other than that I don't really notice the difference.
Right now I don't have kids and I don't have a TV and I live in a small ~900sf apartment. So for me going to your setup would cost more than 2200$ because I need to buy content which is NOT free, and I have to give up space which is NOT free.
You can say your going to have cable anyway but that's all part of the decision to watch TV / Movies at home. The choice to have a system at home with a DVD player, surround sound system, Huge Screen (+/- HD), couch ect is involved with your situation. If you have kids and own your own home it's not a bad idea, but it's still a choice.
PS: If your making less that 10% from investments on average you don't know what your doing. So your paying at least that much interest even if have cash because you're losing that income. Paying of the mortgage early is not such a great idea, because you could be making better money with other investments unless you had a vary high interest mortgage. Beating 5-6% a year over 15 years is vary easy to do but if it's much higher than that it's a good idea. I don't know what you where paying but assuming it was 5% then you could have paid of a 100k loan over 15 years by paying ~ 10.1k per year or you could have paid it off in 30 years by paying ~6.6k but that would have let you invest ~3.5k a year every year for 30 years vs waiting 15 years to invest 10.1k every year. Now at 10% ROI the first would have left you with the house and 575k after 30 years where the second would leave you with 488k after 30 years. Granted it's a little more risky to have money in stocks but small investments over 30years means your getting good cost dolor averaging so your risk is fairly low if you have a balance portfolio.
Spending 3k in cash is still 3k that you could have invested at 10+% a year. I get the convince issue but I like the motivation to go out because I don't like staying at home all the time.
Anyway, surround sound systems are pointless for music. They work, but it's 1/2 the cost for a high-end 2.1 system vs. a high end 5.1 system.
I am living in an apartment is so I can't really turn up the sound on my speakers anyway. Large screen TV's with sounds systems also take up a lot of space.
Granted I live in an area (Fairfax, VA) with a lot of stuff to do that's close. Hell I can walk to a mall and 2 different theater complexes so convenience is almost mute issue.
Cable is nice but with high speed Internet and lots of other things to do I did not watch it much (when I had it). You could say you would have it anyway but if you cut out the movie packages you can save close to 50$ a month anyway. I workout an hour a night, read, go to the movies, snow board ect so getting sucked into TV land is not how I really want to spend my free time. Yes having a great entertainment system at home is affordable, but it's a lot more costly than what you're presenting.
Note: I am using an 800$ flat screen for my PC but that was a gift that was returned after she started using a wide screen dell laptop. I also had a 350$ set of klipch 4.1 speakers for by PC that I picked up in collage but they broke and I replaced them with some cheepo 60$ 2.1 system, but I don't really notice the difference as I have to keep the volume low and I stopped playing FPS's. I understand that for people who live in sub divisions it's nice to set up an area to watch the big game with the neighbors (as it where) but as a young person I like being more mobile with my entertainment $$$.
Adding reflective coatings are vary effective. 1/2 inch multi layered reflective coatings will stop a high-powered laser. Granted at some point you can build a 'super high powered" laser that will earth though this but...
But, what happens when a particle of dust lands on the outside of your "supper high powered laser?"
PS: Energy levels / frequency / duration where left out of this discussion, but the same principals always apply. Basically you can build a system that would stop most modern munitions but it's a lot cheaper to defend agenst that system than it is to deploy that system.
At 8.50 a ticket it's 235-411 tickets to hit 2k-3.5k.
Now divide by 2 because your taking 2 people, but most people pay interest on that so let's say ~300 movies over 5 years.<BR><BR>
Anyway, you still have to pay for your content but let's be cheep and say 50$ a month for cable and 15$/month for move rentals so over 5 years your talking an extra 3900$...
Now I might watch a lot of movies but even at 2 movies a week for 2 people I sill come out ahead. The real bonus is I am not stuck at home with my entertainment money because I am not stuck with those reoccurring bills every month. If I want to take that cash and put it toward snowboarding some weekend I can do that, because I an not forced to pay for that content or system when I am not using it. Granted I live in a nice area with 2 theaters in walking distance, but for someone who would rather do stuff than sit at home in front of the TV it's really been helpful.
PS: <rant>I know people that spend over 120$ a month on cable AND rent moves @ 20$ a month AND still buy 1-2 movies a month. That's 5.60$ each and every day on content. Most of them say they don't have money to go out and do stuff but that is because they have already spent their money assuming they would be sitting on the couch anyway. Then again these are the same people who buy stuff on credit thinking they can afford it, but forget that in many cases they are going to pay twice as much money because, they could not be bothered to save up for it. </rant>
They do this in most MMO's but when the dev team is ~100 people if 2,000,000 people play the game there is no way that they can "get a feel" for how the game is played by talking to people. Most of them don't have the time to join a raiding guild. MMO's are built for people with abundant free time and game developers don't have that. The simple economics of MMO's mean that there needs to be 1,000+ players per developer to come close to breakeven.
If these people have anything approaching a life outside of work they are limited to ~60 hours a week of productive time and ~15 hours of meetings coffee breaks ect. Now 2/3 of them work on things outside of the message boards like server stability, networking code, Sound track, 3d modeling, GUI, webpage design, ect. So chances are the core developers could spend time reading the message boards but most of them don't get to decide what their working on so we are down to ~5 people one or two of which might spend 20 hours a week reading the message boards but they are not going to have time to respond to more than a few of the most basic issues.
Eslyjah: Thanks, I like to debate / discuss with people who have a reasonably consistent / logical view point. My political stance is all over the map so focusing on a single issue to debate become a problem. If you want to continue / expand this feel free to drop me a line a jkirbyjobs in hotmail.
When it comes to political funding for research I agree that there are a great number of problems with it overall but a simple example of the cancellation of the supper colidder project should demonstrate what happens to over the horizon scientific projects after government funding dries up. (So clearly there are gaps in what private money will pay for in terms of research.)
My basic views on scientific progress are that it's is a basic feedback loop. Basic Science > Applied Science > Increased Economic Efficiency > More Money for Basic Science. As such there is no way for anyone in the dark ages to build an ICBM but the overall cost of basic science keeps going up as the easer subjects have been explored. Assuming we survive we might know all there is to learn from Science in 10,000 years whatever we do but by dumping more money into Basic Science now you can slightly alter the level of economic growth. In that way I view basic science as infrastructure in that it promotes long-term economic growth but has little value to individual segments in society.
When it comes to goods and services I don't want individuals or companies building ICBM's. O they can make the rocket but the basic bomb should be made from someone who is less concerned with the bottom line than the level of safety for society. This apply's to high level encryption software / hardware used by the government and a few other such items whose design and development should be tightly controlled.
As to services I think it's a good idea to give people some basic services like legal / tax advice and monitoring the food supply, but this should be small scale. As in a few good websites and a few hours per year of professional advice. It's not that private industry can't provide these services but rather that it's a bad idea for people to give up on them. AKA: the bank is about to foreclose on my house what can / should I do?
I don't like the way that most of the government is run. I think spending more money than the rest of the world put together on our military is insane. I think SS should be limited to the oldest ~5% of the population (as people live longer you need to wait longer to retire) and those who are demonstrate-ably incapable of gainful employment (Quadriplegics not those with minor back problems) but provide a livable income to those people. I hate the idea of Medicare I have no problem with a form of socialized care that will pay for ~3k / year of basic care as it will help pay for things like proper care for broken bones which will help society for little real cost but paying for expensive minimally useful medicine for old people is stupid. I know that such systems are never going to be in place but for most things the government does as most of the value is had for the first 1/3 of the cash. EX: The public school system could be reasonably effective and run for 1/3 of the year per student. You could teach most people to read, write, basic math (up to trig), basic science, and provide materials for interested students to look into other areas in their free time with the ability to easily test out of most subjects after demonstrated ability. But our system has become closer to government subsidies daycare. Not that I think it should be cut but rather the insane amount of cash we spend on most things means that a few percent here or there can get a lot done.
I think that tax cuts for the wealthy are a stupid idea. If you want to help the economy talk with the fed or subsidies loans for small business to grow / expand, don't just give people money because they happen to have a lot of it.
As to accountability the system we have now works by trading what people w
Energy density is one issue with bombs but not all reactions can take place fast enough to be an issue. An oil tanker might seem like a huge explosive danger but a tanker full of C4 would be more dangerous even though it has a much lower energy density / stores much less energy.
By this point / Rothbard I am talking about those with little knowledge screaming about economic issues. I think you have a reasonable grasp on the subject but in general I agree with him on that issue.