you can see an example of a la carte pricing in Japan. I have it. What ends up happening is the premium channels that used to only be available after you bought a basic package (read star channel, wowwow in Japan, HBO in the US) go WAY up in price (I pay 2400 JPY/mo for the star channel package). you then pay some moderate fee (400 JPY in my case) for fixed costs and then get channels one at a time or as a package. I pay 750 JPY for the discovery channel and that's it, but it would cost me 3500 JPY for 42 channels, which include discovery along with some other movie channels.
All those premium channels and high demand channels spike in price because they are now unbundled and can milk you for 100% what you are willing to pay, especially since a significant chunk of your budget has been freed up by not having to pay for channels you don't want. now of course, I can add channels and subtract them any time I want, without any penalty, so I really like the system. But trust me, you don't save much money if you watch a few highly desired channels (think ESPN + HBO + WB or whatever other channel is hot on a standard cable package in the US now).
On the plus side, for 2 years in the US I didn't keep a cable subscription because after 3 months I realized it wasn't worth it to pay 80 bucks for 120 channels when i watched 3. So this a la carte made me a subscriber again, but that may be because I wanted english language entertainment in a country where it's hard to come by......
your point seems self perpetuating. If a well learned scientist who had done the work said the same thing, you can simply dismiss it without consideration simply because you "don't know him". But that isn't logic or a discussion, it's more akin to putting your fingers in your ears to dismiss anything you don't want to take the time to consider, isn't it?
Can I ask you why do you dismiss all things being said whether informed or not with the same response? What does the fact that someone not you or I did the research? Is it relevant to the question of what data is out there? Obviously, there is the possibility that anything we can imagine (and even what we can't imagine) is true. It's pretty irrelevant though to the question of informed decision making. It just means you should never look at anything as 100% certain.
might I ask, which case are you referring to? I'm truly wondering about what case you are talking about because I've never heard of one.
I'm going to assume you are not talking about a case of a display in a government building like a court, because the Supreme court has already spoken in quite definitive terms about this.
income disparity by definition should increase with globalization as a smaller group that has services people want can expand their markets astronomically. It isn`t about tax havens or offshoring of money. That is quite irrelevant.
Take actors for example. As the market for Hollywood has massively expanded, so has the pay an actor can demand, simply because the movies will generate more revenue with a larger possible audience. But those benefits will generally go towards those workers on the set who bring in the audience, and that isn`t the janitor or executive assistants. This naturally creates increasing disparity even though those who work on the movie are doing essentially the same work they did 20 years ago.
We can do the same argument for the pay for the CEO of a company, who simply by an increase in the market size, can argue for a large disparity as workers compete globally for jobs (greater supply) while the complexity of running an international organization being many levels higher than a smaller outfit leads to fewer and therefore, more highly compensated individuals at the top (please don't get into a long winded diatribe about how some managers are not worth the money, that is a different question).
you are almost right, except in saying the rich are taxed a considerable amount. given all the loopholes, the rates can be significantly different.
here is a great example: a doctor living in the US can pay around 35 pct of their income to taxes(granted, at a very high earning level, but still). A person who simply trades futures on an exchange pays no more than 25 percent. In what way does the trader offer so much more of a public service that the tax rate should be lower?
we can go on, using the 15% on carried interest as a PE investor vs a small business owner paying significantly more, as much as the doctor.
Let`s make it even better: if I day trade with my own personal money, I pay up to ordinary income tax. On the other hand, if I create a mutual fund and engage in similar trading and be an owner of shares of the fund, I can defer to long term capital gains without changing my trading style.
The rich are not some monolithic group, but if we leveled the tax system and treated all income as equivalent (that includes gifts from your parents, i.e. inheritance), rates could be much, much lower. Oh, and filing your taxes would require about a 4th grade education, as compared to a college degree it now requires when your returns grow complex (as mine have). You could massively lower taxes on many of the rich simply by removing exemptions and deferrals that others use.
it's that pesky first amendment, that prohibits congress from abridging your right to petition government to address your grievances. I don't think the child tax credit, earned income tax credit, or mortgage interest deduction are "fair", but maybe if I bought a house, had children, and my income dropped, I would care quite a bit.
you may not think it is fair for a corporation to be able to take a research and development tax break, but if your job existed because that tax break has made research teams larger, you might think it's a pretty fair allowance.
But either way, we are allowed to petition congress to address these grievances.
isn't that the same thing you do when pointing out reference work (assuming, of course, you aren't showing them raw test data)? the domain of all knowledge is very large, and it is hard to be well versed in the fundamentals of every field. Hell, most people aren't well versed in the fundamentals of any one field. So you trust in sources you have come to rely on for both basic background and analysis. The news, newspapers, wikipedia, even an academic journal.
worse, most arguments come in fields that, unfortunately, are not settled. A great example is what tax and spending policy by the government should be right now. The economics is not settled, contrary to what Krugman fans may think. And you have a lot of people who (very reasonably) give his nobel prize enough weight to agree with him, when he calls for policies many people agree with. But there are entirely reasonable behavioral arguments as to why he is completely wrong and someone like Ron Paul is much more reasonable. But generally, who you agree with or find reasonable has a lot more to do with your own bias as frankly, neither "know" with almost any certainty why things are the way they are.
honestly, in what way did Fannie and Freddie cause the financial crisis? The crisis wasn't even centered on them until much later in the crisis. Everyone who wrote some form of credit protection, regardless of the type, generally got crushed in the crisis (I'll doubt if you recall, but the monolines were a much bigger issue the entire way through due to the credit exposure they carried vs capital).
honestly, what actions that were unique or excessive in size to those two organizations caused the crisis? Massive mortgage protection was written by the monolines, AIG, and several other firms that hardly exist in the markets today (yes, I work at a bank trading fixed income, so I have had a front seat for all of this for a while). Yes, they take some blame, but the lion's share? I doubt it. Stupid mortgages were given out across the US on all types of homes, even those untouched by the GSE's, and went on globally as well. Sure, they were one of the first to go down (well, actually, quite far from the first), but the global financial change that is underway is far more fundamental than "GSEs supported too many mortgages".
worse yet, global warming is not obvious. what are you going to say, it's now 2 degrees warmer every day than it was before? who cares... it' s 2 degrees. And let's say it ends up being 3 degrees celcius... everyone thinks it's the difference between 80-86 degrees, not in terms of "every year you are likely to have 2 more category 5 hurricanes and the possibilty of a Katrina or Andrew goes up by x percent".
It's a damn good thing they started calling it climate change. Then when people ask what that is (rather than right off changing from jeans to shorts or wearing sandals instead of tennis shoes), you can better explain what it means (more severe winter snow storms, etc).
obviously, it also doesn't help that while we know there is some anthropogenic global warming, it is absolutely unclear what percent of total increase in mean temperature is human caused or to what level we need to reduce our emissions to matter.
you really want developers to maintain a second version of a website for people on severely outdated technology? next you will be telling me you want apps to run on no more than 640 kb of memory.
but out of curiosity, how is it your parents can't get any type of broadband? comcast in that area severs up cable connections, which aren't great, I know, but they are reasonable.
I think you've been watching too many bad movies (perhaps Stealth?). drones can't even come close (yet) to what fighters can do. I'm not saying it won't happen at some point in the future, at our military will be even better, but that point is not even within a generation of now.
you've never run the numbers, have you? in 2007, the top of the middle class had a household income of around 60k (yeah, I'm using a high print). let's use that and assume this guy had a modest income growth rate of 4% per year every year and is 40 years deep into his career. Let's even assume 35% savings rate (a very high savings rate at that income level, but let's say he was very diligent.
Do you know the investment return rate he would need to work his way to 9 million in net worth today? 14% all in. The dow, no dividends, has returned 7.8% at that time (not even actually, as I gave you the benefit of the doubt of using the 1974 low). Add dividends at a generous 2% for those stocks and you don't get to 10%. I'm not saying it isn't possible, just that your definition of middle class is far from the true middle in the US (and most people don't save 35% of gross income, you are lucky if you can save 35% of net income), or he is an investment genius. The average man can't beat the averages. In fact, by definition, you should be slightly worse than the averages as you will always incur transaction costs and generally suffer from liquidity problems at the worst time (when stocks do poorly).
Let's rerun with some slightly more realistic asumptions of matching the market over the long term, saving 25% of gross, and see the income today that would imply it all out --> 235k USD today and a very bulky 48k back in 1971.
you somehow went from about 150k of net worth to over 9 million from just being a savvy retain investor..... me thinks you missed a calling as an investment manager.
but this is 10th grade. all that groundwork was done in 7th grade..... this is why I'm really surrprised that was considered a "hard" question. and I'm only 27, so not that far removed.
but some of their questions in that test are answered incorrectly. on page 18, they show a disc of silver, weighting 2.7 grams, and ask you the weight of a wedge cut with a 40 degree angle. I'm no mathematologist, but I figure it should be 40/360 * 2.7 =! 0.27 as they key in for they answer, even they got lazy and would accept an answer that figure 40/360 ~ 10, even though it is a whole number. please don't tell me they allow calculators, else it's just pitiful....
what's your point? that this situation has ever happened? or that people somehow would make the "right" decision?
I've seen many drivers swerve to avoid a dog or other small animal and end up in a wreck. I figure if we keep those people from making any snap decision, the computer can't do any worse. and there are far worse drivers.
of course, your problem is you seem to think a computer's processing power is somehow limited or that it couldn't be programmed with that type of judgement. worse, you seem to think that an oncoming gas tanker would be obviously recognized as one by a driver from quite a distance away, which is far from unlikely, and forget a computer could see all these things well ahead of time because it's vision isn't nearly as limited as our eyes.
your questions are ones of computational power and judgement. the first can easily be addressed, the second we can't end up worse off, and given traffic laws, it will be quite obvious how to program the car to be in line with relevant laws.
unlikely. you still have massive rural areas, especially in the US. of course, our cities could have huge, far improved public transport systems similar to say, tokyo (where I live). But that doesn't mean I don't need a car any time I want to go to a rural area (every weekend for hiking, climbing, etc) or to go shopping at costco.
where I grew up in the states was truly the middle of nowhere. I cannot imagine a functioning public transport system working. the frequency required for a bus or train would make them far less efficient than even the worst passenger cars right now.
your friends aren't the top tier, no matter how much knowing you makes them special.
everyone wants to believe they are in the top tier, just as the majority of people believe they are above average in intelligence. it turns out, though, that almost everyone is not, including your friends.
granted, I've never met anyone doing accounting who earns 10s of millions, not while actually engaging in accounting. whereas the best paid programmers I've ever seen are actually programming.
for an elite grad from MIT? they are getting hired in droves to start around 110k in the first year and can expect pay of 300k by year 6. Our top guys (who have some grad school at times) are at the 7 figure range easily though they are quite senior and while they do some programming, they end up doing a lot of project management.
the vast majority of surgeons come no where close to 1mm a year. But if you want that money, you only have to work 80-100 hour weeks for years to build up the strong practice.
you seem to not know how these few elite schools work with financial aid. If your parents attest to not giving you anything, you have 0 assets and 0 income which means most of these schools come almost free outside of spending money. Hell, if your parents make 100,000 as a family income (pretty damn good frankly), harvard expects them to contribute something like 7k dollars, unless you haev siblings, etc at which point it can be 0.
so no, you don't need massive loans or parental help to enter the most elite schools. But if you want to go to a substandard private college "for the experience of a small calssroom", then yeah, you'll need to pay up big and probably will never get comp'ed.
anyways, for the elite programmers, pay is far, far beyond 150k/year. in my firm, top tier programmers command 7 figures easily and even middle of the road programmers(5-10 years) can command 300-400k. This comes with much easier hours than a surgeon, no malpractice insurance to pay (which can be horrendous), and a lot of other perks like ease of moving around.
the problem is what you consider elite and what is elite are far different things.
Slashdot Mirror
you can see an example of a la carte pricing in Japan. I have it. What ends up happening is the premium channels that used to only be available after you bought a basic package (read star channel, wowwow in Japan, HBO in the US) go WAY up in price (I pay 2400 JPY/mo for the star channel package). you then pay some moderate fee (400 JPY in my case) for fixed costs and then get channels one at a time or as a package. I pay 750 JPY for the discovery channel and that's it, but it would cost me 3500 JPY for 42 channels, which include discovery along with some other movie channels.
All those premium channels and high demand channels spike in price because they are now unbundled and can milk you for 100% what you are willing to pay, especially since a significant chunk of your budget has been freed up by not having to pay for channels you don't want. now of course, I can add channels and subtract them any time I want, without any penalty, so I really like the system. But trust me, you don't save much money if you watch a few highly desired channels (think ESPN + HBO + WB or whatever other channel is hot on a standard cable package in the US now).
On the plus side, for 2 years in the US I didn't keep a cable subscription because after 3 months I realized it wasn't worth it to pay 80 bucks for 120 channels when i watched 3. So this a la carte made me a subscriber again, but that may be because I wanted english language entertainment in a country where it's hard to come by......
your point seems self perpetuating. If a well learned scientist who had done the work said the same thing, you can simply dismiss it without consideration simply because you "don't know him". But that isn't logic or a discussion, it's more akin to putting your fingers in your ears to dismiss anything you don't want to take the time to consider, isn't it?
Can I ask you why do you dismiss all things being said whether informed or not with the same response? What does the fact that someone not you or I did the research? Is it relevant to the question of what data is out there? Obviously, there is the possibility that anything we can imagine (and even what we can't imagine) is true. It's pretty irrelevant though to the question of informed decision making. It just means you should never look at anything as 100% certain.
might I ask, which case are you referring to? I'm truly wondering about what case you are talking about because I've never heard of one.
I'm going to assume you are not talking about a case of a display in a government building like a court, because the Supreme court has already spoken in quite definitive terms about this.
income disparity by definition should increase with globalization as a smaller group that has services people want can expand their markets astronomically. It isn`t about tax havens or offshoring of money. That is quite irrelevant.
Take actors for example. As the market for Hollywood has massively expanded, so has the pay an actor can demand, simply because the movies will generate more revenue with a larger possible audience. But those benefits will generally go towards those workers on the set who bring in the audience, and that isn`t the janitor or executive assistants. This naturally creates increasing disparity even though those who work on the movie are doing essentially the same work they did 20 years ago.
We can do the same argument for the pay for the CEO of a company, who simply by an increase in the market size, can argue for a large disparity as workers compete globally for jobs (greater supply) while the complexity of running an international organization being many levels higher than a smaller outfit leads to fewer and therefore, more highly compensated individuals at the top (please don't get into a long winded diatribe about how some managers are not worth the money, that is a different question).
you are almost right, except in saying the rich are taxed a considerable amount. given all the loopholes, the rates can be significantly different.
here is a great example: a doctor living in the US can pay around 35 pct of their income to taxes(granted, at a very high earning level, but still). A person who simply trades futures on an exchange pays no more than 25 percent. In what way does the trader offer so much more of a public service that the tax rate should be lower?
we can go on, using the 15% on carried interest as a PE investor vs a small business owner paying significantly more, as much as the doctor.
Let`s make it even better: if I day trade with my own personal money, I pay up to ordinary income tax. On the other hand, if I create a mutual fund and engage in similar trading and be an owner of shares of the fund, I can defer to long term capital gains without changing my trading style.
The rich are not some monolithic group, but if we leveled the tax system and treated all income as equivalent (that includes gifts from your parents, i.e. inheritance), rates could be much, much lower. Oh, and filing your taxes would require about a 4th grade education, as compared to a college degree it now requires when your returns grow complex (as mine have). You could massively lower taxes on many of the rich simply by removing exemptions and deferrals that others use.
it's that pesky first amendment, that prohibits congress from abridging your right to petition government to address your grievances. I don't think the child tax credit, earned income tax credit, or mortgage interest deduction are "fair", but maybe if I bought a house, had children, and my income dropped, I would care quite a bit.
you may not think it is fair for a corporation to be able to take a research and development tax break, but if your job existed because that tax break has made research teams larger, you might think it's a pretty fair allowance.
But either way, we are allowed to petition congress to address these grievances.
not really at all. read this as to why the iPhone isn`t made in the USA
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/business/apple-america-and-a-squeezed-middle-class.html?_r=3&hp=&pagewanted=all
employee costs are far less important than the availability of labor to quick ramping up of production and proximity to parts suppliers.
she was featured on slashdot years ago when she got the certification:
http://slashdot.org/story/05/07/15/0651245/microsofts-10-year-old-certified-professional
it's a sad fact so many assholes have basically the same comments that were said back then... I wonder if they just copy and paste?
that creates a great loop for me when I think of all the kids who sing the refrain "because the bible tells me so"
isn't that the same thing you do when pointing out reference work (assuming, of course, you aren't showing them raw test data)? the domain of all knowledge is very large, and it is hard to be well versed in the fundamentals of every field. Hell, most people aren't well versed in the fundamentals of any one field. So you trust in sources you have come to rely on for both basic background and analysis. The news, newspapers, wikipedia, even an academic journal.
worse, most arguments come in fields that, unfortunately, are not settled. A great example is what tax and spending policy by the government should be right now. The economics is not settled, contrary to what Krugman fans may think. And you have a lot of people who (very reasonably) give his nobel prize enough weight to agree with him, when he calls for policies many people agree with. But there are entirely reasonable behavioral arguments as to why he is completely wrong and someone like Ron Paul is much more reasonable. But generally, who you agree with or find reasonable has a lot more to do with your own bias as frankly, neither "know" with almost any certainty why things are the way they are.
honestly, in what way did Fannie and Freddie cause the financial crisis? The crisis wasn't even centered on them until much later in the crisis. Everyone who wrote some form of credit protection, regardless of the type, generally got crushed in the crisis (I'll doubt if you recall, but the monolines were a much bigger issue the entire way through due to the credit exposure they carried vs capital).
honestly, what actions that were unique or excessive in size to those two organizations caused the crisis? Massive mortgage protection was written by the monolines, AIG, and several other firms that hardly exist in the markets today (yes, I work at a bank trading fixed income, so I have had a front seat for all of this for a while). Yes, they take some blame, but the lion's share? I doubt it. Stupid mortgages were given out across the US on all types of homes, even those untouched by the GSE's, and went on globally as well. Sure, they were one of the first to go down (well, actually, quite far from the first), but the global financial change that is underway is far more fundamental than "GSEs supported too many mortgages".
worse yet, global warming is not obvious. what are you going to say, it's now 2 degrees warmer every day than it was before? who cares... it' s 2 degrees. And let's say it ends up being 3 degrees celcius... everyone thinks it's the difference between 80-86 degrees, not in terms of "every year you are likely to have 2 more category 5 hurricanes and the possibilty of a Katrina or Andrew goes up by x percent".
It's a damn good thing they started calling it climate change. Then when people ask what that is (rather than right off changing from jeans to shorts or wearing sandals instead of tennis shoes), you can better explain what it means (more severe winter snow storms, etc).
obviously, it also doesn't help that while we know there is some anthropogenic global warming, it is absolutely unclear what percent of total increase in mean temperature is human caused or to what level we need to reduce our emissions to matter.
you really want developers to maintain a second version of a website for people on severely outdated technology? next you will be telling me you want apps to run on no more than 640 kb of memory.
but out of curiosity, how is it your parents can't get any type of broadband? comcast in that area severs up cable connections, which aren't great, I know, but they are reasonable.
name a single jet aircraft that was designed, flown, and retired in 6 years between 1945 and 1991.
many jets that were designed during the cold war are STILL IN USE today.
I think you've been watching too many bad movies (perhaps Stealth?). drones can't even come close (yet) to what fighters can do. I'm not saying it won't happen at some point in the future, at our military will be even better, but that point is not even within a generation of now.
you've never run the numbers, have you? in 2007, the top of the middle class had a household income of around 60k (yeah, I'm using a high print). let's use that and assume this guy had a modest income growth rate of 4% per year every year and is 40 years deep into his career. Let's even assume 35% savings rate (a very high savings rate at that income level, but let's say he was very diligent.
Do you know the investment return rate he would need to work his way to 9 million in net worth today? 14% all in. The dow, no dividends, has returned 7.8% at that time (not even actually, as I gave you the benefit of the doubt of using the 1974 low). Add dividends at a generous 2% for those stocks and you don't get to 10%. I'm not saying it isn't possible, just that your definition of middle class is far from the true middle in the US (and most people don't save 35% of gross income, you are lucky if you can save 35% of net income), or he is an investment genius. The average man can't beat the averages. In fact, by definition, you should be slightly worse than the averages as you will always incur transaction costs and generally suffer from liquidity problems at the worst time (when stocks do poorly).
Let's rerun with some slightly more realistic asumptions of matching the market over the long term, saving 25% of gross, and see the income today that would imply it all out --> 235k USD today and a very bulky 48k back in 1971.
you somehow went from about 150k of net worth to over 9 million from just being a savvy retain investor..... me thinks you missed a calling as an investment manager.
but this is 10th grade. all that groundwork was done in 7th grade..... this is why I'm really surrprised that was considered a "hard" question. and I'm only 27, so not that far removed.
but some of their questions in that test are answered incorrectly. on page 18, they show a disc of silver, weighting 2.7 grams, and ask you the weight of a wedge cut with a 40 degree angle. I'm no mathematologist, but I figure it should be 40/360 * 2.7 =! 0.27 as they key in for they answer, even they got lazy and would accept an answer that figure 40/360 ~ 10, even though it is a whole number. please don't tell me they allow calculators, else it's just pitiful....
how is any of this different from 10 years ago? 20 years ago? 30 years ago? What era do we need to go back to for this to work?
what's your point? that this situation has ever happened? or that people somehow would make the "right" decision?
I've seen many drivers swerve to avoid a dog or other small animal and end up in a wreck. I figure if we keep those people from making any snap decision, the computer can't do any worse. and there are far worse drivers.
of course, your problem is you seem to think a computer's processing power is somehow limited or that it couldn't be programmed with that type of judgement. worse, you seem to think that an oncoming gas tanker would be obviously recognized as one by a driver from quite a distance away, which is far from unlikely, and forget a computer could see all these things well ahead of time because it's vision isn't nearly as limited as our eyes.
your questions are ones of computational power and judgement. the first can easily be addressed, the second we can't end up worse off, and given traffic laws, it will be quite obvious how to program the car to be in line with relevant laws.
unlikely. you still have massive rural areas, especially in the US. of course, our cities could have huge, far improved public transport systems similar to say, tokyo (where I live). But that doesn't mean I don't need a car any time I want to go to a rural area (every weekend for hiking, climbing, etc) or to go shopping at costco.
where I grew up in the states was truly the middle of nowhere. I cannot imagine a functioning public transport system working. the frequency required for a bus or train would make them far less efficient than even the worst passenger cars right now.
your friends aren't the top tier, no matter how much knowing you makes them special.
everyone wants to believe they are in the top tier, just as the majority of people believe they are above average in intelligence. it turns out, though, that almost everyone is not, including your friends.
granted, I've never met anyone doing accounting who earns 10s of millions, not while actually engaging in accounting. whereas the best paid programmers I've ever seen are actually programming.
for an elite grad from MIT? they are getting hired in droves to start around 110k in the first year and can expect pay of 300k by year 6. Our top guys (who have some grad school at times) are at the 7 figure range easily though they are quite senior and while they do some programming, they end up doing a lot of project management.
the vast majority of surgeons come no where close to 1mm a year. But if you want that money, you only have to work 80-100 hour weeks for years to build up the strong practice.
you seem to not know how these few elite schools work with financial aid. If your parents attest to not giving you anything, you have 0 assets and 0 income which means most of these schools come almost free outside of spending money. Hell, if your parents make 100,000 as a family income (pretty damn good frankly), harvard expects them to contribute something like 7k dollars, unless you haev siblings, etc at which point it can be 0.
so no, you don't need massive loans or parental help to enter the most elite schools. But if you want to go to a substandard private college "for the experience of a small calssroom", then yeah, you'll need to pay up big and probably will never get comp'ed.
anyways, for the elite programmers, pay is far, far beyond 150k/year. in my firm, top tier programmers command 7 figures easily and even middle of the road programmers(5-10 years) can command 300-400k. This comes with much easier hours than a surgeon, no malpractice insurance to pay (which can be horrendous), and a lot of other perks like ease of moving around.
the problem is what you consider elite and what is elite are far different things.