lower income people have had the rug pulled out from under them to invest for retirement.
The biggest investment for most non-rich people is their home. Low interest rates mean cheap mortgages. You can get a 15 year for 3.5% and build equity fast.
I should have the same right to continually call them, tying up their phone line. Sounds fair, right?
Even better, you should do this to the politicians that have the power to ban this, and the power to require the telcos to fix the technology that makes abusive behavior possible in the first place. The politicians are the root of the problem. Focus on them.
The telcos will charge the spammers for direct access to voicemail and will offer consumers a service (at additional cost) that will block voicemails from spammers.
That will be very profitable. It is time to buy telco stock.
Is there a list somewhere of companies and politicians that use robo-calls and slydial? It would be great if their behavior could be publicised so we can boycott and vote against the offenders.
Funny, but I have the opposite problem: I get lots of calls that ring, but when I answer there is nobody there. I assume these are mostly poorly programmed predictive dialers.
Comparing stock valuations to an artificially-depressed and manipulated interest rate
Right... there is a vast conspiracy of the rich to push down interest rates so poor people make less money on their vast bond holdings. Whatever.
Interest rates are low because inflation is low, and higher interest rates would push us into ruinous deflation. There would be nothing "natural" about that.
All you have to do is look at the P/E ratios of the S&P500 to see that current stock valuations aren't based on fundamentals.
The PE for the S&P is about 25. That is a 4% ROI. Apple's PE is about 18, which is an ROI of over 5%. Ten year T-bills pay 2.5%. So unless you think interest rates are going to soar, stock prices look reasonable.
Amazon's PE is WAY higher (over 500) but Amazon is a growth stock. You don't buy AMZN for the dividends.
If/when rationality returns to the market, it'll be a bloodbath.
I have heard a lot of chicken-littles voice both of these opinions: 1. Robots/AI are going to steal all the jobs, and all the wealth will go to capital. 2. Stocks are way overvalued If you believe both of these, you have some severe cognitive dissonance.
Disclaimer: I don't believe either of these things.
I am a boomer. If I think back to all the shows I watched as a kid, I have no memory of which network they were on, nor do I think I knew at the time. Back then we had a paper "TV Guide" that told us which channel had which show at which time. The local paper also printed listings. I remembered when the shows were on, but I often had to double check the channel.
Millennials have it much harder today, because there are so many channels. We only had four: ABC, CBS, NBC, and PBS. The only good show on PBS was Sesame Street (I had a crush on Maria).
I think this idea would make sense for charging stations on the Interstate highways.
No it doesn't. Any exit along the interstate has grid power, to power lights, shops, etc. Solar makes sense for applications that can accept variable and intermittent supply, such as grid-ties. It does not make sense for charging electric cars while the customer is waiting, and doesn't want to wait even longer for clouds to blow over.
This is just stupid environmental theater. Since electricity is fungible, there is no logical reason to co-locate solar panels and charging stations, other than winning brownie points from low IQ environmentalists that care more about symbolism than reality.
You are dealing with a situation where people have weeks to break in
They have from the time the boarding is detected by sensors, until the closest naval patrol can reach the vessel. That may be measured in hours, or even less if they dispatch a helicopter gunship.
Stopping the boat is easy when you have explosives but moving it where they want to is hard.
When pirates seize a ship, they can reroute it because they have the crew as hostage, so the ship cannot be forcibly retaken. If there is no crew, that is not an issue. Anti-piracy patrols can respond with force, and shoot anything that moves.
I wonder how AI will handle pirates. Perhaps this is the "certain operations" why they retain a minimal crew?
Pirates usually target the crew, and hold the crew as hostage. If there is no crew, the bridge needs no windows or ventilation, so the pirates can't take over the ship unless they bring a welding torch to cut their way in. It is hard to buy acetylene in Somalia.
Doing AI is much harder than being an application developer.
Indeed. I know plenty of companies with openings, but they are looking for PhDs in machine learning and data science from top tier universities. Designing and training a deep ANN is a lot harder than learning how to edit HTML. It is not something you are going to learn in a 21 day "bootcamp".
Put in 4 hrs extra during the week and kick off at noon on Friday during the summer... Then the parent company 500 miles away decided that it could possibly run afoul of labor laws or something
It doesn't just "possibly" run afoul. The arrangement you describe is explicity ILLEGAL in many states, including California.
It doesn't matter if you like the arrangement and agree to give up your rights, it is still illegal.
Maybe the "broke motherfuckers" could pay less than the average. For instance, they could sell their crappy furniture on Craigslist rather than hauling it across the country.
If you can't get hired in this economy, you're obviously either looking in all the wrong places
This is a big part of the problem. People today are less willing to move to find work. Since I graduated from college many decades ago, I have lived in 4 different states, and 3 countries. Today, that happens less often.
This is partly an unintended consequence of our social safety net. Without that net, people in, say, Flint Michigan, would face a stark choice of either move or starve. So they would pack up, hop on the bus, and go to where the jobs are. But if they get a government check every month that gives them just enough to hold on, they stay on and live miserable lives.
Instead of helping these people buy groceries, maybe we should be helping them to buy moving boxes and bus tickets.
They're competing with a more experienced generation that isn't retiring at the age when previous generations did, and they're competing for fewer jobs.
This is the Lump of Labor Fallacy. Later retirements do not lead to "fewer jobs" . Labor force participation has actually been falling for more than a decade, so if there was really a fixed number of jobs in the economy (there isn't) plenty would be "freed up" for millennials.
But if your day job is coding, you can work on your startup code at your day job. Even if your boss walks by, he is just going to see a screen full of code, and assume you are working hard. I did this for six months, and then right before I quit I got a glowing performance review and a raise. They never realized what was actually going on.
Possibly between the current age, and the age of the robber barons, but that's debatable.
No, that is not debatable. That was a time when corporations dumped methylmercury into drinking water supplies, used coerced convict labor, and helped run the death camps of the Holocaust. The is no evidence, none whatsoever, that there was ever a "golden age" of corporate ethics and honesty. If anything, companies are most honest and ethical today, simply because it is harder to hide misdeeds, and the consequences of getting caught are more severe.
Slashdot Mirror
lower income people have had the rug pulled out from under them to invest for retirement.
The biggest investment for most non-rich people is their home. Low interest rates mean cheap mortgages. You can get a 15 year for 3.5% and build equity fast.
The people that will profit are the people that paid for the research and clinical trials that made the drug possible.
No idea if it works
It works. For more information, try reading the article ... or the summary ... or the headline.
.. but it seems like it should already be approved
It has already been approved. For more information, try reading the article ... or the summary.
I should have the same right to continually call them, tying up their phone line. Sounds fair, right?
Even better, you should do this to the politicians that have the power to ban this, and the power to require the telcos to fix the technology that makes abusive behavior possible in the first place. The politicians are the root of the problem. Focus on them.
The telcos will charge the spammers for direct access to voicemail and will offer consumers a service (at additional cost) that will block voicemails from spammers.
That will be very profitable. It is time to buy telco stock.
Is there a list somewhere of companies and politicians that use robo-calls and slydial?
It would be great if their behavior could be publicised so we can boycott and vote against the offenders.
Funny, but I have the opposite problem: I get lots of calls that ring, but when I answer there is nobody there. I assume these are mostly poorly programmed predictive dialers.
Just know when to cash out.
Thursday, 8 June 2017, before closing.
"Take all your savings and buy some good stock and hold it till it goes up, then sell it. If it don't go up, don't buy it." - Will Rogers
Comparing stock valuations to an artificially-depressed and manipulated interest rate
Right ... there is a vast conspiracy of the rich to push down interest rates so poor people make less money on their vast bond holdings. Whatever.
Interest rates are low because inflation is low, and higher interest rates would push us into ruinous deflation. There would be nothing "natural" about that.
Sesame street premiered in 1969. If you grew up watching Sesame street you aren't a Boomer.
I had several younger siblings. I only watched Sesame Street to see Maria. I taught my little brother to yell whenever she came on.
All you have to do is look at the P/E ratios of the S&P500 to see that current stock valuations aren't based on fundamentals.
The PE for the S&P is about 25. That is a 4% ROI. Apple's PE is about 18, which is an ROI of over 5%. Ten year T-bills pay 2.5%. So unless you think interest rates are going to soar, stock prices look reasonable.
Amazon's PE is WAY higher (over 500) but Amazon is a growth stock. You don't buy AMZN for the dividends.
If/when rationality returns to the market, it'll be a bloodbath.
I have heard a lot of chicken-littles voice both of these opinions:
1. Robots/AI are going to steal all the jobs, and all the wealth will go to capital.
2. Stocks are way overvalued
If you believe both of these, you have some severe cognitive dissonance.
Disclaimer: I don't believe either of these things.
I am a boomer. If I think back to all the shows I watched as a kid, I have no memory of which network they were on, nor do I think I knew at the time. Back then we had a paper "TV Guide" that told us which channel had which show at which time. The local paper also printed listings. I remembered when the shows were on, but I often had to double check the channel.
Millennials have it much harder today, because there are so many channels. We only had four: ABC, CBS, NBC, and PBS. The only good show on PBS was Sesame Street (I had a crush on Maria).
I think this idea would make sense for charging stations on the Interstate highways.
No it doesn't. Any exit along the interstate has grid power, to power lights, shops, etc. Solar makes sense for applications that can accept variable and intermittent supply, such as grid-ties. It does not make sense for charging electric cars while the customer is waiting, and doesn't want to wait even longer for clouds to blow over.
This is just stupid environmental theater. Since electricity is fungible, there is no logical reason to co-locate solar panels and charging stations, other than winning brownie points from low IQ environmentalists that care more about symbolism than reality.
You are dealing with a situation where people have weeks to break in
They have from the time the boarding is detected by sensors, until the closest naval patrol can reach the vessel. That may be measured in hours, or even less if they dispatch a helicopter gunship.
Stopping the boat is easy when you have explosives but moving it where they want to is hard.
When pirates seize a ship, they can reroute it because they have the crew as hostage, so the ship cannot be forcibly retaken. If there is no crew, that is not an issue. Anti-piracy patrols can respond with force, and shoot anything that moves.
I wonder how AI will handle pirates. Perhaps this is the "certain operations" why they retain a minimal crew?
Pirates usually target the crew, and hold the crew as hostage. If there is no crew, the bridge needs no windows or ventilation, so the pirates can't take over the ship unless they bring a welding torch to cut their way in. It is hard to buy acetylene in Somalia.
Doing AI is much harder than being an application developer.
Indeed. I know plenty of companies with openings, but they are looking for PhDs in machine learning and data science from top tier universities. Designing and training a deep ANN is a lot harder than learning how to edit HTML. It is not something you are going to learn in a 21 day "bootcamp".
It cost me almost that much to move and all I had were 5 boxes of items.
How big were these boxes?
You can ship a standard 40 foot container, weighing up to 25 tons, from NYC to LA for about $2500.
Put in 4 hrs extra during the week and kick off at noon on Friday during the summer... Then the parent company 500 miles away decided that it could possibly run afoul of labor laws or something
It doesn't just "possibly" run afoul. The arrangement you describe is explicity ILLEGAL in many states, including California.
It doesn't matter if you like the arrangement and agree to give up your rights, it is still illegal.
The average cost is about $5,500.
How many broke motherfuckers you know ...
Maybe the "broke motherfuckers" could pay less than the average.
For instance, they could sell their crappy furniture on Craigslist rather than hauling it across the country.
This probably means you'll have to live in a city run by Democrats, but you'll adjust.
Here is an complete list of states where the biggest city is not run by Democrats:
1. Oklahoma
https://xkcd.com/1827/
If you can't get hired in this economy, you're obviously either looking in all the wrong places
This is a big part of the problem. People today are less willing to move to find work. Since I graduated from college many decades ago, I have lived in 4 different states, and 3 countries. Today, that happens less often.
This is partly an unintended consequence of our social safety net. Without that net, people in, say, Flint Michigan, would face a stark choice of either move or starve. So they would pack up, hop on the bus, and go to where the jobs are. But if they get a government check every month that gives them just enough to hold on, they stay on and live miserable lives.
Instead of helping these people buy groceries, maybe we should be helping them to buy moving boxes and bus tickets.
They're competing with a more experienced generation that isn't retiring at the age when previous generations did, and they're competing for fewer jobs.
This is the Lump of Labor Fallacy. Later retirements do not lead to "fewer jobs" . Labor force participation has actually been falling for more than a decade, so if there was really a fixed number of jobs in the economy (there isn't) plenty would be "freed up" for millennials.
But if your day job is coding, you can work on your startup code at your day job. Even if your boss walks by, he is just going to see a screen full of code, and assume you are working hard. I did this for six months, and then right before I quit I got a glowing performance review and a raise. They never realized what was actually going on.
Possibly between the current age, and the age of the robber barons, but that's debatable.
No, that is not debatable. That was a time when corporations dumped methylmercury into drinking water supplies, used coerced convict labor, and helped run the death camps of the Holocaust. The is no evidence, none whatsoever, that there was ever a "golden age" of corporate ethics and honesty. If anything, companies are most honest and ethical today, simply because it is harder to hide misdeeds, and the consequences of getting caught are more severe.