dude, where do you live? certainly not the US, where the best selling vehicles(i.e. the cars of the solidly middle class) are priced around 20 to 25k. you don't need some obscene tax on the wealthy to make electric cars affordable. the step from 30k to 25k is rather minor and probably one of scale and improvements in batteries. this foolish notion of yours that the car needs to be 8k for the majority of americans to afford is just FUD.
the real issue is when they will have locations like gas stations to fill up an electric car and have it not take endless hours.
the real issue with a mac price tag isnt' if a comparable PC prices at the same level. The problem is people don't buy on specs, you buy on work needs and output efficiency.
So if I need a computer to check internet based email, play solitaire, and watch a video, the 200$ wal mart pc is perfect. if I need a computer to do the above and also has MS office, windows is the best bet. A mac finally becomes a good deal if I want to: have a remote control for my computer interface with the apple tv have video chat have voice chat
Lots of these things aren't needed by a lot of people so the fact that a comparable PC costs the same is meaningless if I can get a 200$ discount by leaving that stuff out. I use that stuff regularly(at least every week besides the apple tv) so when I got a mac, I thought it was a good deal(this is outside of the constant hardware issues I've had along with shoddy construction of the notebook case which has greatly lowered my view of macs at this point). But I can easily see someone wanting the same power notebook for whatever use without those frills and will happily take the 200$ discount.
why is it so different? it is extremely similar to the same old thumb entry system + auto-correct options that have been around for ages. If you are going to tell me that because you can't feel the buttons, it becomes more different, I'll tell you it isn't much more different than going from a desktop keyboard with high levels of tactile response compared to a cell phone keyboard with very limited tactile response (especially my current phone where it is basically equivalent to having none).
they weren't text messages that were randomly chosen. everyone entered the exact same messages and they used grammatically correct sentences. This should have been a very good example of what the iPhone is good at: emails that require accuracy in the spelling of words.
Jaded??? you ever lived in Japan? I do. tehy are far from jaded. your tech gaget is a symbol of your self worth here. Cell phones that aren't used to 10% of their ability are thrown out and bought new in under a year!!
This is the most status symbol obsessed place I've ever been for an extended period(been here 2 years total). This would only compare to maybe, just maybe, a small subset of LA. But here, it's EVERYONE in the target age. Apple markets a brand and then inflates prices to make sure it looks like one.
You'll find girls working at a fast food restaurant who live in the shabbiest conditions imaginable but still save up to buy the latest Gucci and Burberry (and this isn't rare at all) fashion. This is the only country where people earning 20k a year are willing to buy a 500 dollar handbag.
This place is far, far, far from jaded. That the iPhone is far LESS capable than any local cell phone in this country(even the ones you get for free), it doesn't matter a bit because people don't buy their things here based on capabilities. They will buy an iPhone when the fashion magazine advertises it with clothing(for girls and guys). The comment at the end has nothing to do with a hunger for apple; just a hunger for what is considered the greatest status symbol available. Want to see a country that will drink the kool-aid as fast as you can offer it? Come here.
actually, that is called cowardice, by those people that want a system changed. If you are only willing to push a button in a voting booth and not take to the streets and actually "do" something to support those you put into office, you are gonna always be rolled over. the reason mobs are allowed to rule isn't because they have more power; it's because they are the ones willing to fight for what they want. Look at how the US was slowly falling to the religious nutjobs.
I think you have a bad sense of time here. let me try to highlight how it could be for some families there by using my dad's family structure(down to me) as an example.
My father would be born in a refugee camp as the 16/16 children. Only one other of his siblings would be the same. He would be born along side 3 of my cousins in that same situation. He would be surrounded by brothers, sisters, parents, grandparents, cousins, uncles, and aunts that all talk about how they have been forced out of their homes. Worse yet, he would be told in no uncertain terms that that land was his and he was a complete right to owning it after his two older brothers. In his teenage years he would watch his parents die of(different than reality) some sickness that would be blamed on the living situation(refugee camps are definitely not a great place for public health).
In the early 80's, I and my sister would be born and my father would have one goal left after watching most of his family die wishing they could be at their homes they had owned for 50, 60, or 100 years depending on the family. He is too old to go fighting the good fight now but there are groups, seemingly strong groups that are currently fighting Israel. They use harsh tactics, but after hearing about the horrific treatment in certain refugee camps, it is no more than the Jewish dogs deserve. He raises me with only that outlook. Fatah and Hamas are freedom fighters for us; our patriots. and as a hormonal 20 something, I run to reinforce their ranks and just maybe claim what I have been raised to believe is ours as a family.
Another issue I think westerners(born in the west, not necessarily white or what not) have in understanding that mind set is you would think I am not affected so it must be stupid for me to fight. But this is about protecting my family; it is a mindset that gets drilled into you throughout the middle east and India(though it is dying now as individual families become more affluent).
If 300k has become 3mm, it's called population growth and if your policy hadn't put 300k people into desperate situations, they probably wouldn't have had that many children.
Israel could support a tiered repatriation of those people(starting with the oldest and taking down 300k a year or so). Starting with those of working age first to build an economically sustainable community. At some point those efforts would be seen as reasonable but they probably have the exact same xenophobia that set the arabs off against the incoming Jews in the 1920's. It makes for stupid decisions regarding surmountable problems.
you are severely confused about who signed the Geneva conventions. Countries sign it. Afghanistan is a member and as such, ever person fighting us there/who fought us there is and should be protected by it. If that war is over then they should be returned to their country(I distinctly remember victory being declared in that one). Just because someone doesn't like you or you think they will work against you isn't a reason to hold them and they do deserve full treatment as POW's. Afghanistan has never made any reservation or declaration reducing the protection it will afford compared to the Geneva convention and therefore, all people picked up there are POW's.
Just because you don't like them doesn't change that fact.
As to Al Qaeda, they are not a country. How it falls under the Geneva conventions in tricky at best and in no way legally clear. 60 years ago no one even began to think about something like the kind of wars that occur now. It is , most likely, something that should be addressed again. But it should be said that there is one clause that probably does cover all terrorists. I remember, paraphrased, it speaks of how illegal combatants not belonging to any state are to be prosecuted under the domestic laws of the country that captures them. If this is the case, then even Al Qaeda is covered 100% by our constitutional protections and deserve a trial(barring the courts/executive finding that a suspension of habeas corpus is called for now). It is still hairy and I am in no way a specialist in this law, but to draw it black and white is to ignore the fact that many well respected lawyers outside of the administration have disagreed on this point.
this is much closer to them insulting mom for yelling at them when all they did was listen to dad. Seeing as how China and the US are complete Nanny states, I think the parent comparison is pretty good...... of course, it would be much more instructive to draw the pot nad kettle analogy between the US and china.
1) the ivy league isn't the home of hte only good schools in the US. in fact, there are more great schools outside the ivy league than in it.
2) in the US you can still be middle class without a college education in certain fields of work. If you take the median household income, it's about 50k. so Married, you can be at the median with just a 25k a year job for the two earners which is well within the range of common jobs such as a police officer, nurse,fireman, miner(yeah, mining where I'm from), etc. None of these jobs require a college education to begin making a reasonable amount of money.
Unfortunately, it's become standard to say you are in the middle class even when making 100k or 150k a year just because Joe down the street is making 500k. 100k a year is in no way middle class! there is nothing middle class about it.
while I'm not debating the facts about tuition or financial aid(though in my experience, financial aid has very quickly caught up and surpassed tuition increases), I'd like to see a source that corroborates that.
so you really don't know anything about what it's like to be from a poor community do you? I can count on my hands the number of families that could even hope to help with the other 20% + expenses of a Stanford education. 80% of tuition is about 28k now at stanford, so 7k per year + 15k per year for regular expenses according to their website. that is about 90k. I know lots of parents that couldn't afford 3 dollars to rent a movie once a month and their only goal was to see their child go to college(first ever for some). Some never got to go to anything beyond the Community college. If their parents could have afforded to pay for it, they would have got to a state university but they weren't naturally talented enough for a full scholarship or aid that could get them there.
You seem to have a distorted view about what options you get being from where most places are. We had students graduate with an AA from the community college with a high school degree and rock star SATs and still didn't get scholarships enough to pay for a university out of state. Those 80k dollar loans don't just appear and many people can't get them. Worse are the summer programs some have access to. I did. turns out 3k for a 4 week summer program isn't an option when you are working so you can buy clothes.
Try to remember lots of more qualified people(far more than you or I) would dominate the top tier colleges if money was so easy to come by or pay off. Few college degrees offer you a cash flow deep enough to afford to pay off your loans(the highly qualified writer still makes far less(probably 5x) than the highly qualified financial engineer at 22).
Now I'm not trying to blame stanford for being expensive or to blame the government for not giving everyone a chance. Stanford is a luxury good. you pay for a great name on your resume(for as long as that matters) and in a small subset of fields, the possibility of working with a professor that may mean something to you. But don't act like it's magically affordable for everyone qualified enough to be accepted. There is a wide range of talent that gets accepted and few are in such a cushy position to be able to acquire the money for that place. Regardless of whether this is the fault of the parents for not caring is immaterial; there are qualified students that can't go due to money.
as an aside, a big reason why Asians have come to dominate the to tier schools is because as immigrants, the parents are generally top tier students from their schools which means they do have strong genetics. If Asians had lower average income families and higher acceptance your end result could be a function of parent involvement levels. But given that they have higher average family incomes and family income is a major predictor of college success, it is doubtful it is unproven that it has anything to do with culture.
really? ever seen a brilliant kid from a small town area? Generally, there are very very few scholarships of any real amount(in my home town, a 500$ scholarship was considered great; enough to pay for a significant portion of college costs) and it is not exactly easy to make yourself look great when your school can't afford paper, much less any high powered classes to let you look strong. High SAT scores do almost nothing today to get you in to one of the top 5 universities.
Worse yet, I knew people in my town that got into the big name colleges(high end liberal arts schools, and a couple of big name universities). they were, without a doubt, as smart as people I met at the big schools but they didn't go. It turns out money for lots of things can be prohibitive(food, buying completely new clothes for cold weather vs. south florida, rent costs, books). If you went to the community college(what most people think as great education) you could have a full education for about 3,500 a year. So guess what a 80k dollar loan looks like when you get 80% tuition covered as a scholarship(yeah, it's about that according to stanford)? Maybe you can get that fictitious research or TA spot as a freshman, but then, I doubt it at a university with legions of grad students for that spot.
yeah, those schools cater to the rich. Especially glaring is the one tier down from exceptional student(probably 80% of the students at these schools). They aren't good enough to get a scholarship to go to Stanford so immediately, those spots are taken by the families with the ability to pay 50k a year for college. I'm not saying it's a rich person's fault. I was born into a family like that. But I know for a fact that those things can be a real impediment to going to one of those schools and most of the graduates from those institutions aren't the best, but rather the best of those people who could pay for it.
what magical country are you talking about? Japan is known for working their employees into the ground under all circumstances. It is considered standard to work your new employees to the bone and then not even let them collect overtime(which is supposedly guaranteed by the government). If you ask why, they tell you "the reason you have to work so hard is because you are too stupid at your job. after 2 or 3 years you can start claiming a little overtime because by then, maybe it's not your fault". of course, it is completely culturally accepted to be treated that way so maybe that is why so many americans think working conditions are actually good.
Japanese employees definitely get the short end of the stick. worse yet, most pay is based purely on seniority (like most unions in the US) meaning the skilled person at 25, even if twice as good as the 45 year old, gets far far less in comp. Hurray for unionism, keeping the most inept receiving paychecks and guarantying raises and jobs for even the most incompetent. I pity all my japanese friends when they tell me about their work and lots of them wish they could work for a foreign company(which I do).
it's got to do with the fumes from it. I'm not sure how they use it, but at my buddy's ranch, we sit out with 22's (he is one of the few licensed to have storage on his land) and shoot at the drug dealers that come by trying to drain the tanks. it's really fun to watch them running as we do our best to hit them(it's a few hundred yards and none of us are starring in the movie shooter).
but, they did freeze employee's rights to sell stock once the news started coming out and their employees lost about 75% of their investment during that freeze while executives continued to sell their stock. So they did fuck the employees royally. At least they could have liquidated at far better levels rather than after all the bad news had finally come out and NO ONE was a buyer of the stock. but of course, you have given many many more examples of possible corporate impropriety. It is uncertain at best whether their costing of the pensions is incorrect. I've never seen any hard evidence, only certain examples of how dependent they are on accounting rules.
easy man. haven't you done any engineering before. take some elmer's, sandpaper, and copper wire and any person worth their slashdot cred should be able to put 16 of these guys together
reread. I never say I won't invest in a company that doesn't pay dividends ever. I won't invest in a company that pays dividends as in pays them now. I never once said I won't invest in a company that will ever, in it's history pay dividends(though that payment is in no way required to earn a return I feel I deserve). As usual, you are pretty narrow minded as to the life a company can have. A company could easily get bought out(one of several ways including M&A, private equity firm buyouts, etc) or divest(being very rare in large public corporations). I have invested in companies that never once pay me a single dividend and it was still a good investment. I don't invest in a company with is pay dividends now because that does mean there is little to no growth opportunities left for the company, not what you assume. At that point, I can probably sell it to someone like you and move on(I guess this is that pump and dump scheme... you sure you know what that is?). Though you are right, I assumed incorrectly that you knew at least something about investment theory and I shouldn't have replied once it became clear you didn't. Investing in a stock does have nothing to do with whether or not the company is currently paying dividends and I don't want a company that is so mature it doesn't see anything to do with it's cash except give it out. It's also severely tax inefficient but that is another discussion and a secondary reason.
btw, deflation isn't just prices of stuff you buy, it effects all prices in the economy including wages. so yeah, you end up with 100$ debt load and instead of making 1$ an hour you make 50 cents/ hour. That sucks if you've already used the cash you borrowed(i.e. have real net debt). The crash of 29 occurred during a time that the US was not able, by law, to start printing money like mad(quasi gold standard). it was abondoned in 31 to allow the fed to step in and curb deflation(which had already racked the economy). you have the argument right. seems like you would AGREE with Greenspan. Granted, I would expect even with your vehemence you may have read one of the many articles written in newspapers about the book(maybe not, but then you are just pissed at a book you know absolutely nothing about) and that passage was referenced in most articles(and ironically, actually, why some people call him being revisionist).
you own a company. you own all shares of stock. At the end of the year, you reinvest the company earnings rather than taking a big payout and live on a meager salary. through the investment, you can grow your business so several years down the road you can start taking much larger "dividend" payments.
guess what? it's what most major industries do. It's actually a standard case study in why payment of dividends is (risk neutral wise) the same as reinvestment if you believe you have a competent management in place and growth opportunities. Yeah, this is basic, basic, finance. It's why apple is a good investment even when they don't pay out dividends now, growth will allow them to pay much higher dividends when they run low on good investment opportunities(see MS). Whether you own 100% of the company or only a small part is irrelevant with good corporate governance in place(for failures, see the scandals of 5 years ago). But that you don't understand how to grow a business to earn far more in the future does not mean that everyone else is a "pump and dump" scheme in the making.
Greenspan in his book quoted several macro economists that pointed out the severe deflation that the fed allowed in 1929 was a major cause for the extension of the depression(40% drop increases you're real debt load by a massive amount, 1.7x). He argues he pushed for record low interest rates to avoid this and this cause a massive credit bubble(which is now unwinding). Other economists argue that a credit bubble(due to loose fed policy) in the 20's was a major cause of the depression. That is a legit parallel to draw between now and then(which some have). I see you didn't get that reference last time, but I'm guessing you also don't read much about finance or economics to honestly analyze the thought process of those in the business.
Not true in the slightest. Dividends in fact encourage a company to make as many short term concessions as possible(screwing workers, customers, etc) to make profit numbers every quarter so they can legally pay dividends(paying dividends requires positive profit on your balance sheet). But, if you want your company to grow as quickly and agressively as possible, then you are cutting them down by demanding they make cash payments to you. I'd rather have the company grow 15% faster than get some cash now because in the long run when that growth runs out, I can sell the stock out to someone(maybe you) who wants the stream of dividends that the company is now paying.
Take MS(yeah, yeah, even if you hate them, bare with me for a sec). They now pay dividends but are experiencing far slower growth and less competitiveness than they had 15 years ago(even 10 or 5 years ago). Take Apple, they pay no dividends but are a far better long term growth company than MS is. So who do you invest in? it depends on your risk appetite. I prefer hte higher risk companies which , by hoarding cash for investments, leave themselves with far more options for future growth.
You of course, assume a company goes from birth to bankruptcy. There are several other options including mergers, several types of acquisitions(all these can give a final value far great than the initial, with or without dividends), or complete liquidation(common for smaller companies).
The corrolary in investment theory is this: Imagine if you owned your own company. you own all the stock. now if you had a choice of reinvesting profit of your business one year into growth or into a payout to yourself, which would you choose? naturally, it depends on the opportunities but a priori reinvestment into the company does not imply I have to "cheat" someone to get a return.
That I do not want a stock which is currently paying dividends does not mean that in the long run, I don't fundamentally understand they all have to somehow pay out their hoarded earnings. Like MS that started to be crushed under the weight of its cash on its balance sheet, I do require a company to make the right decision. At one point, an investment in MS was equivalent to taking 15% of that money and holding it as cash. now ask yourself if that is what you wanted to invest in....
so in other words, you have no reply to any point I made but still felt like copying adn pasting my words in?
but, if you think dividends are a basic part of the value of a company, go back and study basic, basic, finance and then come talk. I don't debate the fundamental superiority of the Linux kernel vs. the windows kernel because I wouldn't know. If you don't know even fundamental company valuation, then you probably shouldn't bet the house on your investment strategy(and I'm not trying to insult your intelligence, just your depth of knowledge in economic history and finance are severely lacking).
I don't invest in companies that believe dividends are somehow 'good'. if you are paying out dividends, it means you have no better thing to do with the cash you already have. If you aren't capable of putting money to good use in a productive manner, I might as well just say screw the stock and go find a company with real growth opportunities.
This isn't a new view at all. Warren Buffet has a long standing opposition to both share buybacks and dividends for similar reasons. investing my the fundamentals has absolutely nothing to do with dividends existing or not.
Whether or not income disparity had ANYTHING to do with the depression or the crash is an unsettled question and many people currently think it had more to do with over extended credit (in which, you can only blame the central bank in those times). In fact, Greenspan argued that in order to avoid the painful cycle of deflation that made the depression much worse, he was willing to take short term interest rates to lower levels than they had been in decades.
of course, if you have a piece of research to support your position I'd like to read it but somehow I think you are just drawing spurious relationships. Granted, many politicians blamed big business and the rich and whoever else they could point to that wasn't a constituency. But just like believing WMDs were in Iraq doesn't really mean they are, Roosevelt's opinion has little to do with what was really going on.
Slashdot Mirror
dude, where do you live? certainly not the US, where the best selling vehicles(i.e. the cars of the solidly middle class) are priced around 20 to 25k. you don't need some obscene tax on the wealthy to make electric cars affordable. the step from 30k to 25k is rather minor and probably one of scale and improvements in batteries. this foolish notion of yours that the car needs to be 8k for the majority of americans to afford is just FUD.
the real issue is when they will have locations like gas stations to fill up an electric car and have it not take endless hours.
the real issue with a mac price tag isnt' if a comparable PC prices at the same level. The problem is people don't buy on specs, you buy on work needs and output efficiency.
So if I need a computer to check internet based email, play solitaire, and watch a video, the 200$ wal mart pc is perfect. if I need a computer to do the above and also has MS office, windows is the best bet. A mac finally becomes a good deal if I want to:
have a remote control for my computer
interface with the apple tv
have video chat
have voice chat
Lots of these things aren't needed by a lot of people so the fact that a comparable PC costs the same is meaningless if I can get a 200$ discount by leaving that stuff out. I use that stuff regularly(at least every week besides the apple tv) so when I got a mac, I thought it was a good deal(this is outside of the constant hardware issues I've had along with shoddy construction of the notebook case which has greatly lowered my view of macs at this point). But I can easily see someone wanting the same power notebook for whatever use without those frills and will happily take the 200$ discount.
why is it so different? it is extremely similar to the same old thumb entry system + auto-correct options that have been around for ages. If you are going to tell me that because you can't feel the buttons, it becomes more different, I'll tell you it isn't much more different than going from a desktop keyboard with high levels of tactile response compared to a cell phone keyboard with very limited tactile response (especially my current phone where it is basically equivalent to having none).
they weren't text messages that were randomly chosen. everyone entered the exact same messages and they used grammatically correct sentences. This should have been a very good example of what the iPhone is good at: emails that require accuracy in the spelling of words.
Jaded??? you ever lived in Japan? I do. tehy are far from jaded. your tech gaget is a symbol of your self worth here. Cell phones that aren't used to 10% of their ability are thrown out and bought new in under a year!!
This is the most status symbol obsessed place I've ever been for an extended period(been here 2 years total). This would only compare to maybe, just maybe, a small subset of LA. But here, it's EVERYONE in the target age. Apple markets a brand and then inflates prices to make sure it looks like one.
You'll find girls working at a fast food restaurant who live in the shabbiest conditions imaginable but still save up to buy the latest Gucci and Burberry (and this isn't rare at all) fashion. This is the only country where people earning 20k a year are willing to buy a 500 dollar handbag.
This place is far, far, far from jaded. That the iPhone is far LESS capable than any local cell phone in this country(even the ones you get for free), it doesn't matter a bit because people don't buy their things here based on capabilities. They will buy an iPhone when the fashion magazine advertises it with clothing(for girls and guys). The comment at the end has nothing to do with a hunger for apple; just a hunger for what is considered the greatest status symbol available. Want to see a country that will drink the kool-aid as fast as you can offer it? Come here.
actually, that is called cowardice, by those people that want a system changed. If you are only willing to push a button in a voting booth and not take to the streets and actually "do" something to support those you put into office, you are gonna always be rolled over. the reason mobs are allowed to rule isn't because they have more power; it's because they are the ones willing to fight for what they want. Look at how the US was slowly falling to the religious nutjobs.
I think you have a bad sense of time here. let me try to highlight how it could be for some families there by using my dad's family structure(down to me) as an example.
My father would be born in a refugee camp as the 16/16 children. Only one other of his siblings would be the same. He would be born along side 3 of my cousins in that same situation. He would be surrounded by brothers, sisters, parents, grandparents, cousins, uncles, and aunts that all talk about how they have been forced out of their homes. Worse yet, he would be told in no uncertain terms that that land was his and he was a complete right to owning it after his two older brothers. In his teenage years he would watch his parents die of(different than reality) some sickness that would be blamed on the living situation(refugee camps are definitely not a great place for public health).
In the early 80's, I and my sister would be born and my father would have one goal left after watching most of his family die wishing they could be at their homes they had owned for 50, 60, or 100 years depending on the family. He is too old to go fighting the good fight now but there are groups, seemingly strong groups that are currently fighting Israel. They use harsh tactics, but after hearing about the horrific treatment in certain refugee camps, it is no more than the Jewish dogs deserve. He raises me with only that outlook. Fatah and Hamas are freedom fighters for us; our patriots. and as a hormonal 20 something, I run to reinforce their ranks and just maybe claim what I have been raised to believe is ours as a family.
Another issue I think westerners(born in the west, not necessarily white or what not) have in understanding that mind set is you would think I am not affected so it must be stupid for me to fight. But this is about protecting my family; it is a mindset that gets drilled into you throughout the middle east and India(though it is dying now as individual families become more affluent).
If 300k has become 3mm, it's called population growth and if your policy hadn't put 300k people into desperate situations, they probably wouldn't have had that many children.
Israel could support a tiered repatriation of those people(starting with the oldest and taking down 300k a year or so). Starting with those of working age first to build an economically sustainable community. At some point those efforts would be seen as reasonable but they probably have the exact same xenophobia that set the arabs off against the incoming Jews in the 1920's. It makes for stupid decisions regarding surmountable problems.
you are severely confused about who signed the Geneva conventions. Countries sign it. Afghanistan is a member and as such, ever person fighting us there/who fought us there is and should be protected by it. If that war is over then they should be returned to their country(I distinctly remember victory being declared in that one). Just because someone doesn't like you or you think they will work against you isn't a reason to hold them and they do deserve full treatment as POW's. Afghanistan has never made any reservation or declaration reducing the protection it will afford compared to the Geneva convention and therefore, all people picked up there are POW's.
Just because you don't like them doesn't change that fact.
As to Al Qaeda, they are not a country. How it falls under the Geneva conventions in tricky at best and in no way legally clear. 60 years ago no one even began to think about something like the kind of wars that occur now. It is , most likely, something that should be addressed again. But it should be said that there is one clause that probably does cover all terrorists. I remember, paraphrased, it speaks of how illegal combatants not belonging to any state are to be prosecuted under the domestic laws of the country that captures them. If this is the case, then even Al Qaeda is covered 100% by our constitutional protections and deserve a trial(barring the courts/executive finding that a suspension of habeas corpus is called for now). It is still hairy and I am in no way a specialist in this law, but to draw it black and white is to ignore the fact that many well respected lawyers outside of the administration have disagreed on this point.
obviously, you never read anything by Homer :-)
I think you mean 1941... unless something incredible happened 4 months after the a bomb(well, almost 4 months)
this is much closer to them insulting mom for yelling at them when all they did was listen to dad. Seeing as how China and the US are complete Nanny states, I think the parent comparison is pretty good...... of course, it would be much more instructive to draw the pot nad kettle analogy between the US and china.
1) the ivy league isn't the home of hte only good schools in the US. in fact, there are more great schools outside the ivy league than in it.
2) in the US you can still be middle class without a college education in certain fields of work. If you take the median household income, it's about 50k. so Married, you can be at the median with just a 25k a year job for the two earners which is well within the range of common jobs such as a police officer, nurse,fireman, miner(yeah, mining where I'm from), etc. None of these jobs require a college education to begin making a reasonable amount of money.
Unfortunately, it's become standard to say you are in the middle class even when making 100k or 150k a year just because Joe down the street is making 500k. 100k a year is in no way middle class! there is nothing middle class about it.
while I'm not debating the facts about tuition or financial aid(though in my experience, financial aid has very quickly caught up and surpassed tuition increases), I'd like to see a source that corroborates that.
so you really don't know anything about what it's like to be from a poor community do you? I can count on my hands the number of families that could even hope to help with the other 20% + expenses of a Stanford education. 80% of tuition is about 28k now at stanford, so 7k per year + 15k per year for regular expenses according to their website. that is about 90k. I know lots of parents that couldn't afford 3 dollars to rent a movie once a month and their only goal was to see their child go to college(first ever for some). Some never got to go to anything beyond the Community college. If their parents could have afforded to pay for it, they would have got to a state university but they weren't naturally talented enough for a full scholarship or aid that could get them there.
You seem to have a distorted view about what options you get being from where most places are. We had students graduate with an AA from the community college with a high school degree and rock star SATs and still didn't get scholarships enough to pay for a university out of state. Those 80k dollar loans don't just appear and many people can't get them. Worse are the summer programs some have access to. I did. turns out 3k for a 4 week summer program isn't an option when you are working so you can buy clothes.
Try to remember lots of more qualified people(far more than you or I) would dominate the top tier colleges if money was so easy to come by or pay off. Few college degrees offer you a cash flow deep enough to afford to pay off your loans(the highly qualified writer still makes far less(probably 5x) than the highly qualified financial engineer at 22).
Now I'm not trying to blame stanford for being expensive or to blame the government for not giving everyone a chance. Stanford is a luxury good. you pay for a great name on your resume(for as long as that matters) and in a small subset of fields, the possibility of working with a professor that may mean something to you. But don't act like it's magically affordable for everyone qualified enough to be accepted. There is a wide range of talent that gets accepted and few are in such a cushy position to be able to acquire the money for that place. Regardless of whether this is the fault of the parents for not caring is immaterial; there are qualified students that can't go due to money.
as an aside, a big reason why Asians have come to dominate the to tier schools is because as immigrants, the parents are generally top tier students from their schools which means they do have strong genetics. If Asians had lower average income families and higher acceptance your end result could be a function of parent involvement levels. But given that they have higher average family incomes and family income is a major predictor of college success, it is doubtful it is unproven that it has anything to do with culture.
really? ever seen a brilliant kid from a small town area? Generally, there are very very few scholarships of any real amount(in my home town, a 500$ scholarship was considered great; enough to pay for a significant portion of college costs) and it is not exactly easy to make yourself look great when your school can't afford paper, much less any high powered classes to let you look strong. High SAT scores do almost nothing today to get you in to one of the top 5 universities.
Worse yet, I knew people in my town that got into the big name colleges(high end liberal arts schools, and a couple of big name universities). they were, without a doubt, as smart as people I met at the big schools but they didn't go. It turns out money for lots of things can be prohibitive(food, buying completely new clothes for cold weather vs. south florida, rent costs, books). If you went to the community college(what most people think as great education) you could have a full education for about 3,500 a year. So guess what a 80k dollar loan looks like when you get 80% tuition covered as a scholarship(yeah, it's about that according to stanford)? Maybe you can get that fictitious research or TA spot as a freshman, but then, I doubt it at a university with legions of grad students for that spot.
yeah, those schools cater to the rich. Especially glaring is the one tier down from exceptional student(probably 80% of the students at these schools). They aren't good enough to get a scholarship to go to Stanford so immediately, those spots are taken by the families with the ability to pay 50k a year for college. I'm not saying it's a rich person's fault. I was born into a family like that. But I know for a fact that those things can be a real impediment to going to one of those schools and most of the graduates from those institutions aren't the best, but rather the best of those people who could pay for it.
what magical country are you talking about? Japan is known for working their employees into the ground under all circumstances. It is considered standard to work your new employees to the bone and then not even let them collect overtime(which is supposedly guaranteed by the government). If you ask why, they tell you "the reason you have to work so hard is because you are too stupid at your job. after 2 or 3 years you can start claiming a little overtime because by then, maybe it's not your fault". of course, it is completely culturally accepted to be treated that way so maybe that is why so many americans think working conditions are actually good.
Japanese employees definitely get the short end of the stick. worse yet, most pay is based purely on seniority (like most unions in the US) meaning the skilled person at 25, even if twice as good as the 45 year old, gets far far less in comp. Hurray for unionism, keeping the most inept receiving paychecks and guarantying raises and jobs for even the most incompetent. I pity all my japanese friends when they tell me about their work and lots of them wish they could work for a foreign company(which I do).
it's got to do with the fumes from it. I'm not sure how they use it, but at my buddy's ranch, we sit out with 22's (he is one of the few licensed to have storage on his land) and shoot at the drug dealers that come by trying to drain the tanks. it's really fun to watch them running as we do our best to hit them(it's a few hundred yards and none of us are starring in the movie shooter).
but, they did freeze employee's rights to sell stock once the news started coming out and their employees lost about 75% of their investment during that freeze while executives continued to sell their stock. So they did fuck the employees royally. At least they could have liquidated at far better levels rather than after all the bad news had finally come out and NO ONE was a buyer of the stock. but of course, you have given many many more examples of possible corporate impropriety. It is uncertain at best whether their costing of the pensions is incorrect. I've never seen any hard evidence, only certain examples of how dependent they are on accounting rules.
easy man. haven't you done any engineering before. take some elmer's, sandpaper, and copper wire and any person worth their slashdot cred should be able to put 16 of these guys together
reread. I never say I won't invest in a company that doesn't pay dividends ever. I won't invest in a company that pays dividends as in pays them now. I never once said I won't invest in a company that will ever, in it's history pay dividends(though that payment is in no way required to earn a return I feel I deserve). As usual, you are pretty narrow minded as to the life a company can have. A company could easily get bought out(one of several ways including M&A, private equity firm buyouts, etc) or divest(being very rare in large public corporations). I have invested in companies that never once pay me a single dividend and it was still a good investment. I don't invest in a company with is pay dividends now because that does mean there is little to no growth opportunities left for the company, not what you assume. At that point, I can probably sell it to someone like you and move on(I guess this is that pump and dump scheme... you sure you know what that is?). Though you are right, I assumed incorrectly that you knew at least something about investment theory and I shouldn't have replied once it became clear you didn't. Investing in a stock does have nothing to do with whether or not the company is currently paying dividends and I don't want a company that is so mature it doesn't see anything to do with it's cash except give it out. It's also severely tax inefficient but that is another discussion and a secondary reason.
btw, deflation isn't just prices of stuff you buy, it effects all prices in the economy including wages. so yeah, you end up with 100$ debt load and instead of making 1$ an hour you make 50 cents/ hour. That sucks if you've already used the cash you borrowed(i.e. have real net debt). The crash of 29 occurred during a time that the US was not able, by law, to start printing money like mad(quasi gold standard). it was abondoned in 31 to allow the fed to step in and curb deflation(which had already racked the economy). you have the argument right. seems like you would AGREE with Greenspan. Granted, I would expect even with your vehemence you may have read one of the many articles written in newspapers about the book(maybe not, but then you are just pissed at a book you know absolutely nothing about) and that passage was referenced in most articles(and ironically, actually, why some people call him being revisionist).
simple example:
you own a company. you own all shares of stock. At the end of the year, you reinvest the company earnings rather than taking a big payout and live on a meager salary. through the investment, you can grow your business so several years down the road you can start taking much larger "dividend" payments.
guess what? it's what most major industries do. It's actually a standard case study in why payment of dividends is (risk neutral wise) the same as reinvestment if you believe you have a competent management in place and growth opportunities. Yeah, this is basic, basic, finance. It's why apple is a good investment even when they don't pay out dividends now, growth will allow them to pay much higher dividends when they run low on good investment opportunities(see MS). Whether you own 100% of the company or only a small part is irrelevant with good corporate governance in place(for failures, see the scandals of 5 years ago). But that you don't understand how to grow a business to earn far more in the future does not mean that everyone else is a "pump and dump" scheme in the making.
Greenspan in his book quoted several macro economists that pointed out the severe deflation that the fed allowed in 1929 was a major cause for the extension of the depression(40% drop increases you're real debt load by a massive amount, 1.7x). He argues he pushed for record low interest rates to avoid this and this cause a massive credit bubble(which is now unwinding). Other economists argue that a credit bubble(due to loose fed policy) in the 20's was a major cause of the depression. That is a legit parallel to draw between now and then(which some have). I see you didn't get that reference last time, but I'm guessing you also don't read much about finance or economics to honestly analyze the thought process of those in the business.
Not true in the slightest. Dividends in fact encourage a company to make as many short term concessions as possible(screwing workers, customers, etc) to make profit numbers every quarter so they can legally pay dividends(paying dividends requires positive profit on your balance sheet). But, if you want your company to grow as quickly and agressively as possible, then you are cutting them down by demanding they make cash payments to you. I'd rather have the company grow 15% faster than get some cash now because in the long run when that growth runs out, I can sell the stock out to someone(maybe you) who wants the stream of dividends that the company is now paying.
Take MS(yeah, yeah, even if you hate them, bare with me for a sec). They now pay dividends but are experiencing far slower growth and less competitiveness than they had 15 years ago(even 10 or 5 years ago). Take Apple, they pay no dividends but are a far better long term growth company than MS is. So who do you invest in? it depends on your risk appetite. I prefer hte higher risk companies which , by hoarding cash for investments, leave themselves with far more options for future growth.
You of course, assume a company goes from birth to bankruptcy. There are several other options including mergers, several types of acquisitions(all these can give a final value far great than the initial, with or without dividends), or complete liquidation(common for smaller companies).
The corrolary in investment theory is this: Imagine if you owned your own company. you own all the stock. now if you had a choice of reinvesting profit of your business one year into growth or into a payout to yourself, which would you choose? naturally, it depends on the opportunities but a priori reinvestment into the company does not imply I have to "cheat" someone to get a return.
That I do not want a stock which is currently paying dividends does not mean that in the long run, I don't fundamentally understand they all have to somehow pay out their hoarded earnings. Like MS that started to be crushed under the weight of its cash on its balance sheet, I do require a company to make the right decision. At one point, an investment in MS was equivalent to taking 15% of that money and holding it as cash. now ask yourself if that is what you wanted to invest in....
so in other words, you have no reply to any point I made but still felt like copying adn pasting my words in?
but, if you think dividends are a basic part of the value of a company, go back and study basic, basic, finance and then come talk. I don't debate the fundamental superiority of the Linux kernel vs. the windows kernel because I wouldn't know. If you don't know even fundamental company valuation, then you probably shouldn't bet the house on your investment strategy(and I'm not trying to insult your intelligence, just your depth of knowledge in economic history and finance are severely lacking).
I don't invest in companies that believe dividends are somehow 'good'. if you are paying out dividends, it means you have no better thing to do with the cash you already have. If you aren't capable of putting money to good use in a productive manner, I might as well just say screw the stock and go find a company with real growth opportunities.
This isn't a new view at all. Warren Buffet has a long standing opposition to both share buybacks and dividends for similar reasons. investing my the fundamentals has absolutely nothing to do with dividends existing or not.
Whether or not income disparity had ANYTHING to do with the depression or the crash is an unsettled question and many people currently think it had more to do with over extended credit (in which, you can only blame the central bank in those times). In fact, Greenspan argued that in order to avoid the painful cycle of deflation that made the depression much worse, he was willing to take short term interest rates to lower levels than they had been in decades.
of course, if you have a piece of research to support your position I'd like to read it but somehow I think you are just drawing spurious relationships. Granted, many politicians blamed big business and the rich and whoever else they could point to that wasn't a constituency. But just like believing WMDs were in Iraq doesn't really mean they are, Roosevelt's opinion has little to do with what was really going on.
yes, we finally decided that the slashdot community has seen enough ads for apple gear.
~the people who come up with repetitive slashdot stories
there is a guy whose honest to god name is Diclik