Oh dear... I sometimes make the error of assuming that/.ers grok under- and overstatement. My apologies for overestimating intelligence...
Of course I didn't mean that the ACLU counts 1,3,4,5,6,7....
However, the ACLU's interpretation of the 2nd is so lame as to be laughable and therefore equivalent to pretending it didn't exist. For about 15 years - perhaps from 1980 to 1995 - a few moderately respected academics took their view, but have pretty much abandoned it for the past decade or so. In the only SCOTUS test of the ACLU's position on this matter (Heller) in at about 70 years, their interpretation was a FAIL. The ACLU, on this matter, reminds me of one of our (stupid) cats -- he assumes that if he can't see me, I can't see him (the fact that his butt and tail are sticking out from under the sofa seems to be lost on him).
So sad that we spent sixty-plus years arguing about the significance of Miller just because the (dead) plaintiff wasn't an effective advocate. Fortunately, I think from a precedent standpoint, Heller fixed 80% of this, now all that has to be done is unravel sixty years of cultural nonsense, educational bias, and media bias.
Umm... Perhaps the root cause is that we are not defending the borders? I think that's the job of the Federal Government (actually, one of their few jobs) but somehow they seem reluctant to do their job.
Of course any gun shop that violates Federal laws by selling illegally should be held responsible and, generally, shut down (an exception being for, for example, minor inadvertent technical violations which don't actually result in ineligible people acquiring weapons).
Can you cite a single case of an automatic weapon being illegally sold by a US gun retailer to a illegal immigrant who just came across the border for that purpose? After you provide that cite, we can then address how many cites you need to provide per day to justify your "streaming over the border". Are you sure you know what an automatic weapon is? While it is legal to own them in the United States, they are very difficult to get due to Federal laws that control them tightly. Be careful with your cite though - the news media regularly confuses the terms automatic and semiautomatic and "reenactments" on crime shows often show what were actually semiautomatic weapons "firing" as if they were automatic weapons.
I'm also curious, if we find a case where an Iranian visiting the US buys a copy of Playboy and sneaks it back into Iran, should the US ban all printed materials (or clothing or videos) that Iran's Islamic government bans?
Well, actually, I don't think that's the reason. (Of course, my question was rhetorical as I know the answer).
It's because they disagree with the Supreme Court that the Second Amendment refers to an individual right -- preferring to embrace a modern notion, never endorsed by the Supreme Court, that it's some sort of "collective" right. It's odd that an organization which so vigorously (usually rightfully) defends individual rights would choose to read the word people as state in one, and only one, place in the United States Constitution while using the conventional understanding of the word people everywhere else it occurs. Oh, and that they would insult their readers' intelligence by claiming that Miller supports their collective rights view (of course, they are careful to cover their ass on that one by claiming that they don't rely on Miller to reach their conclusion -- I think because they realize that's so easy to disprove and accepted by so few scholars).
[Miller lost his case for a variety of reasons. Certainly the fact that he was already dead and that his lawyer didn't appear at oral arguments probably didn't help much. But, the primary relevant reason was that he (or his representatives) didn't convince the court that short barreled shotguns actually had a military use. The strongest implication that one can reasonably draw from the court's analysis in Miller
In the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a 'shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length' at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument.
is that the Second Amendment recognizes the right to keep and bear weapons that might be generally useful in a militia -- not that the right is restricted to the "militia". (Also, the notion of a "militia" "bearing" arms seems like very odd wording to me -- but arguing linguistic nuances of 200+ year old writings can be fraught with difficulties).]
Perhaps you didn't notice what "NRA" stands for - it stands for National Rifle Association (not, for example, National Rights Association). Why are you surprised that they don't spend their members' money on issues outside their charter? Other organizations like the ACLU defend a broader range of rights (why, however, the ACLU generally pretends the second amendment doesn't exist perplexes me).
Hmm... seems compensation should not be based on "depth of knowledge and capacity to innovate". It should be based on results - a developer with moderate knowledge who writes code that is reliable but not particularly "elegant" is a whole lot more valuable than a really knowledgeable and innovative developer who doesn't finish projects in a timely fashion or whose code is unreliable.
In reality, as it should be, mostly compensation is determined by what you can get somewhere else.
Not to defend cameras on every street corner (if I lived in a high crime area, I suspect I would, otherwise not so much), but...
The video of the crime may be quite useful in a street crime by making several of the steps easier, cheaper, more effective, or, perhaps, possible.
If police/prosecutors have a video of the crime they can us it to...
cross check the story of the person reporting the crime -- sometimes there are important missing details (such as the "victim" forgetting to mention the part where they were shoving the "perp" before the "perp" did anything)
discover details that the victim was unaware of, can't remember, has forgotten, or is having difficulty reporting (such as make/model/tag # of the car the perp got into or what the perp did while the victim was unconscious or details the dead victim is having some difficulty communicating to police)
discredit the perp's version of the story
show the jury what happened - video is very effective with juries
Video doesn't eliminate any of the steps to a successful prosecution, but it simplifies some and in some cases may be the difference between wasting effort (such as when the victim is withholding important information) or being unable to move on to the next step (such as when the victim is dead and can't report what the camera did).
Your credit card being stolen is pretty easy to deal with and fairly low cost (mostly just a bit of phone calling and paperwork) - esp. if you notice it and contact the CC company before the card's been used. It just gets canceled. Even if it gets used before you can contact the CC company, your liability is very limited by Federal law (it's $50 or something like that) if you notify the company as soon as you can after discovering the loss.
On the other hand, if your userid/password to your brokerage account was compromised, a clever person might well be able to get the contents of your account liquidated and wired to a nefarious offshore bank and turned into cash for their spending pleasure with little hope of recourse on your part.
Unfortunately, going to work for such a company in the middle of nowhere has at least two problems. First, it's really TWO relocations you're signing up for (the first there, the second out of there to the next job). Second, if your spouse works, what will they do (esp. if they work in a field that IBM isn't involved in)? The main reason the Silicon Valley is so popular is easy job mobility to a large variety of jobs - even without spouse changing their job (or kids being dislocated).
It seems that 41% of IBM's revenue (2007) comes from the "Americas" (which, presumably, includes Canada, Mexico, and South America). About 31% of their employees (2007) are in the US.
Although I don't see a breakdown of revenue in the Americas by country, I would expect that the "non-US" portion is significant. Hence, it looks like IBM employees about the same percentage of people in the US as the percentage of revenue received from the US. Since the average pay in the US is probably higher than the average pay elsewhere in the world, they probably pay a larger percent of total wages to US workers than the percentage of revenue received from US sources.
Seems pretty hard to complain about this in a global economy.
Yes, I generally try to do much what you describe -- although a "four second rule" just won't work in many situations I drive in -- people will just cut into the gap in front of you and cause you to slow down a bit more etc. until, at the limit, you've slowed traffic to a crawl such that a four second gap plus your added insurance for any tailgater(s) behind you leaves not much more than one car length between you and the car in front (i.e., the limit at which someone else can't "take" the gap ahead away from you causing you to slow down more). I think this limit works out to be about 3.5 miles per hour ignoring your additional "tailgater safety margin" (assuming that anything less than 20 feet between you and the driver in front prevents someone from cutting in and taking your "safety gap" away). Yes, I do know that I'm carrying this analysis to an extreme and that a rational person (as I assume you are) really wouldn't maintain the "four second rule" to this absurd level.
At 60 MPH, four seconds is 352 feet between you and the car in front of you - on dry pavement, some charts show the TOTAL stopping time (reaction plus braking) on dry pavement to be only 240 feet or 303 feet so your rule, while safe, seems to unnecessarily allow the car in front of you to stop instantly and you still to come to a stop 49 feet behind it.
Really, this is mostly about intersections with traffic lights and people who begin to tailgate you just as you're approaching the intersection.
Unfortunately, this strategy doesn't work too well in moderately heavy traffic (light enough for traffic to be flowing at or near the speed limit but heavy enough that it can be hard to change lanes) on fairly high speed (45-50 MPH) 3+ lane roads with moderately frequent entrances, exits, and intersections.
My guess is that we drive in different environments (area, times of day etc.). Also, the tailgating that I'm discussing here is, I think, mostly due to inattention/poor driving skills by the tailgater rather than them trying to get me to move faster (I'm at the flow of traffic - or, sometimes, slightly ahead of it). In the last ten years, they are often gabbing on their cell phones which I suspect is a major contributor to their inattention.
In the traffic conditions I describe, slowing down just doesn't help when people slip into your lane just behind you shortly before an intersection. Slowing down just narrows the gap and makes the situation worse if the light turns yellow 500ms later.
Also, in the traffic conditions I describe, slowing down impedes traffic. Yes, they do give tickets for that where I live - not common, but if you're driving at half the flow of traffic, esp. if you're not in the far right lane, you're at risk of a fun Saturday in traffic school. If nothing else, the cops assume you're drunk or have car problems and get interested in you for that reason alone and once they pull you over, they might as well give you a ticket for something since you wasted their time.
Also, in the traffic conditions I describe, once you slow down, the tailgater is the one who is least likely to change lanes to get around you because, quite simply, they can't -- once you have slowed the #2 lane down by 10 MPH, the guy right behind you can't move into #1 or #3 because the "(tiny) holes" in traffic in those lanes are moving 10 MPH faster than he is. Obviously, carrying this to the extreme as you suggest (stopping in the middle of a traffic lane) makes this problem much worse until you've create a nightmare of a traffic jam that may take several minutes to clear (rippling backwards through traffic until it, hopefully before rush hour ends, dissipates). I suppose the "stopping in traffic" might result in the tailgater getting out of their car to (1) curse at you and shoot you or (2) try to help you since you've obviously broken down -- and giving you the pleasure of seeing them squashed in traffic in front of their kids.
Also, in the situation I describe, slowing down increases hazards for other drivers. Being a fairly socially responsible person, I try to avoid such societal costs when they are not necessary. The problem is that the tailgater gets "stuck" behind you, the guy behind him (and so on) notice that their lane is much slower, so they change lanes - trying to slip into "holes" in traffic that are moving faster than they are. These speed differentials are among the most dangerous traffic conditions (trumped probably only by drunk drivers, insanely high speeds, and unfamiliar weather conditions).
But, we are not talking about a case of a child - obviously the decision would be different in that case (and, more instinctive and less analytical). We are talking about possibly entering an intersection just after the signal has turned red - opposing traffic doesn't get a green until AFTER my direction has turned red - and where I live, the delay between red one direction and green the other is one or two seconds.
As a driver, you should maintain 360 degree awareness - anything less is unsafe. This includes drivers beside you, behind you, and in front of you. At any point in time, you should have a good understanding if there's someone on your tail without looking at the moment you need to know (there isn't time to check the rearview mirror when the light turns yellow in front of you - you have less than 750 ms to decide what you're going to do and begin physical action on that decision).
"A yellow signal light means "CAUTION." The red signal is about to appear. When you see the yellow light, stop if you can do so safely. If you can't stop safely, enter the intersection cautiously.
Certainly stopping in a manner that would cause an accident is not safe -- esp. when compared to entering an intersection on a yellow light even though you could stopped.
And that general strategy is what got me rear ended once! A truck had cut in front of me blocking the signal, so when I could again see the signal it was yellow and I had no idea how long it had been so. I didn't enter the intersection - cost the insurance company of the guy behind me a bunch of money! In fact, I could have easily made it into the intersection before the light turned red, but I didn't want to risk a "running red" ticket so made a split second decision to risk an accident because of a tailgater behind me instead.
I think the problem is that people try to stop more quickly than is prudent in fear of getting nailed by the camera and the result is an increase in rear end collisions from tailgaters behind them or skidding out of control into other cars/objects.
Although, of course, one should not tailgate the car in front of them, they have no control over the car behind them. At times when someone is tailgating me in heavy traffic, I've made a decision to not stop at a yellow light that I could have stopped at. The reason being, I felt that given normal signal timing, if I didn't stop, I would still enter the intersection on the yellow but if I did stop, I would get rear ended. I placed my obligation to avoid an accident higher than the slight risk of a "fast yellow" set to the theoretically shortest possible timing and confident that if a cop happened to be watching, he might nail the guy behind me instead of me (as, the second guy entering on a red is somehow "more guilty" IMHO). If I know there's a red light camera at the intersection, sorry, I assume that the yellow is as short as possible and I stop even if it increases the risk of being rear ended (his insurance company pays for my car repairs, he doesn't pay for the red light ticket). In fact, I had a couple of close calls (guy behind me smoking squealing tires, skidding etc. while I stopped safely behind the limit line without fanfare) at a local intersection that I drive through regularly -- and was annoyed when I read in the paper much later that the cameras had been turned off at that intersection for over a year!
When someone is tailgating you in heavy traffic, you have few options to stopping that behavior quickly - changing lanes isn't always an option, slowing down may just make the problem worse if you're approaching a signal which may turn yellow suddenly since the distance between yourself and the following car - i.e. the margin of safety - is reduced (because the gap is shorter and you're going slower so actually stop more quickly) if the tailgater doesn't take heed of your speed change before you decide to stop for a yellow.
Even with all this care, twice I've been rear ended by a tailgater when I stopped quickly - once for a yellow light, another time for another reason. One of these times, three cars behind me ended up hitting each other also. The car behind me was lighter, more fragile, and had a lower bumper than my car (his was a small Fiat I think) so his impact on my bumper just scuffed the underside of my bumper cover but his bumper, grill, lights, and hood were seriously trashed. (After determining I had no damage I cared about, the officer noted that there was only room for three cars on the standard accident report he had to fill out so, unless I needed the report for my uses, he would just leave me off and I could go on my way -- I always wondered how the guy behind me explained to his insurance company how his car had thousands of dollars of damage and the car he hit didn't even exist on the accident report).
Stopping "as quickly as you can" is just a bad idea unless it's necessary and safe.
Key phrase "as much as". I think it's not highly probable the DOW will drop to half its current level (in real dollars), but it's possible.
However, I expect further substantial decline and don't expect a sudden (real) recovery - so I'd rather wait until I find some reason to believe a recovery is likely soon. Yes, I might leave 10% or even 20% on the table from the low point, but I'd rather do that than jump in now when I'm pretty certain we have more than a 20% decline ahead of us.
Note here that I'm talking about typical 401(k) plans which offer few investment options.
I assume you are putting your 401(k) deductions into something other than US equities?
Better to have missed the first 10% or 20% of a recovery than to have paid for the last 50% of a crash! If (as I expect) US equities (broad indexes such as SP500 and Dow Industrials) drop by as much as another 50%, you would need a 200% return to recover - that's a lot. (If you buy a stock at 50 and it drops to 25 - i.e., a 50% loss, just to get back to 50 requires doubling in value - or 200% - I'm not expressing this well, but that's what I mean)
Too early to get into equities with ANY money unless you can pick individual winner stocks (usually not an option with employer 401(k)s until you quit and roll them over into IRAs).
That depends, of course, on the number of outstanding shares. "Number of shares" or "price per share" is completely irrelevant - these things change by orders of magnitude on the next round depending on how strong the bargaining position of the company is. If there are ten(s) of VCs vying to invest, dilution is limited; if there are one or two, serious dilution is inevitable.
(Been doing this for over 25 years, learned a bit here and there)
Are you SURE it was free money?:) Last time I started a new job with anything BUT a startup was in 1980. I made a few bucks, but NONE of it was "free":) I would have made more per hour (in salary - not considering stock) driving a D8 Cat and being paid for overtime (and, driving the D8 would have been cool - I'd should buy one to play with now that I think of it).
Good observations. This works if your employer is not good at keeping existing employees "at market" -- too often managers are not good at this (they get a X% raise pool and need to take "performance" and "market adjustment" raises out of this). The key is presenting it (as I suspect the parent does) as JUST about money and, much as you would like to stay, you just can't subject your family to $20K less per year just for your selfish interests!
Of course, one needs to know when to stop milking this cow -- a new employer will always offer you more than you're making now (they don't know your hidden weaknesses and they have a damned position to fill and if they don't, they will be dinged on their next performance review). The new employer knows they can give you shit raises for the next few years and that's why they were willing to offer a premium today. If your current employer is worth working for, they know this. If you really are "at market", they may counter with "over market", but don't expect them to (1) give you a good raise for three years or (2) not start developing a strategy to make sure you're no longer a "required employee".
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Oh dear... I sometimes make the error of assuming that /.ers grok under- and overstatement. My apologies for overestimating intelligence...
Of course I didn't mean that the ACLU counts 1,3,4,5,6,7....
However, the ACLU's interpretation of the 2nd is so lame as to be laughable and therefore equivalent to pretending it didn't exist. For about 15 years - perhaps from 1980 to 1995 - a few moderately respected academics took their view, but have pretty much abandoned it for the past decade or so. In the only SCOTUS test of the ACLU's position on this matter (Heller) in at about 70 years, their interpretation was a FAIL. The ACLU, on this matter, reminds me of one of our (stupid) cats -- he assumes that if he can't see me, I can't see him (the fact that his butt and tail are sticking out from under the sofa seems to be lost on him).
Indeed.
So sad that we spent sixty-plus years arguing about the significance of Miller just because the (dead) plaintiff wasn't an effective advocate. Fortunately, I think from a precedent standpoint, Heller fixed 80% of this, now all that has to be done is unravel sixty years of cultural nonsense, educational bias, and media bias.
Umm... Perhaps the root cause is that we are not defending the borders? I think that's the job of the Federal Government (actually, one of their few jobs) but somehow they seem reluctant to do their job.
Of course any gun shop that violates Federal laws by selling illegally should be held responsible and, generally, shut down (an exception being for, for example, minor inadvertent technical violations which don't actually result in ineligible people acquiring weapons).
Can you cite a single case of an automatic weapon being illegally sold by a US gun retailer to a illegal immigrant who just came across the border for that purpose? After you provide that cite, we can then address how many cites you need to provide per day to justify your "streaming over the border". Are you sure you know what an automatic weapon is? While it is legal to own them in the United States, they are very difficult to get due to Federal laws that control them tightly. Be careful with your cite though - the news media regularly confuses the terms automatic and semiautomatic and "reenactments" on crime shows often show what were actually semiautomatic weapons "firing" as if they were automatic weapons.
I'm also curious, if we find a case where an Iranian visiting the US buys a copy of Playboy and sneaks it back into Iran, should the US ban all printed materials (or clothing or videos) that Iran's Islamic government bans?
Well, actually, I don't think that's the reason. (Of course, my question was rhetorical as I know the answer).
It's because they disagree with the Supreme Court that the Second Amendment refers to an individual right -- preferring to embrace a modern notion, never endorsed by the Supreme Court, that it's some sort of "collective" right. It's odd that an organization which so vigorously (usually rightfully) defends individual rights would choose to read the word people as state in one, and only one, place in the United States Constitution while using the conventional understanding of the word people everywhere else it occurs. Oh, and that they would insult their readers' intelligence by claiming that Miller supports their collective rights view (of course, they are careful to cover their ass on that one by claiming that they don't rely on Miller to reach their conclusion -- I think because they realize that's so easy to disprove and accepted by so few scholars).
[Miller lost his case for a variety of reasons. Certainly the fact that he was already dead and that his lawyer didn't appear at oral arguments probably didn't help much. But, the primary relevant reason was that he (or his representatives) didn't convince the court that short barreled shotguns actually had a military use. The strongest implication that one can reasonably draw from the court's analysis in Miller
In the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a 'shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length' at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument.
is that the Second Amendment recognizes the right to keep and bear weapons that might be generally useful in a militia -- not that the right is restricted to the "militia". (Also, the notion of a "militia" "bearing" arms seems like very odd wording to me -- but arguing linguistic nuances of 200+ year old writings can be fraught with difficulties).]
Shush... please don't give them any ideas, I just drank half a pot of coffee.
Perhaps you didn't notice what "NRA" stands for - it stands for National Rifle Association (not, for example, National Rights Association). Why are you surprised that they don't spend their members' money on issues outside their charter? Other organizations like the ACLU defend a broader range of rights (why, however, the ACLU generally pretends the second amendment doesn't exist perplexes me).
Hmm... seems compensation should not be based on "depth of knowledge and capacity to innovate". It should be based on results - a developer with moderate knowledge who writes code that is reliable but not particularly "elegant" is a whole lot more valuable than a really knowledgeable and innovative developer who doesn't finish projects in a timely fashion or whose code is unreliable.
In reality, as it should be, mostly compensation is determined by what you can get somewhere else.
I think s/he tipped his/her hand about their level of social responsibility when writing "I don't drink and drive nearly as often".
Not to defend cameras on every street corner (if I lived in a high crime area, I suspect I would, otherwise not so much), but...
The video of the crime may be quite useful in a street crime by making several of the steps easier, cheaper, more effective, or, perhaps, possible.
If police/prosecutors have a video of the crime they can us it to...
Video doesn't eliminate any of the steps to a successful prosecution, but it simplifies some and in some cases may be the difference between wasting effort (such as when the victim is withholding important information) or being unable to move on to the next step (such as when the victim is dead and can't report what the camera did).
Your credit card being stolen is pretty easy to deal with and fairly low cost (mostly just a bit of phone calling and paperwork) - esp. if you notice it and contact the CC company before the card's been used. It just gets canceled. Even if it gets used before you can contact the CC company, your liability is very limited by Federal law (it's $50 or something like that) if you notify the company as soon as you can after discovering the loss.
On the other hand, if your userid/password to your brokerage account was compromised, a clever person might well be able to get the contents of your account liquidated and wired to a nefarious offshore bank and turned into cash for their spending pleasure with little hope of recourse on your part.
After all, that worked well for the UAW.
Unfortunately, going to work for such a company in the middle of nowhere has at least two problems. First, it's really TWO relocations you're signing up for (the first there, the second out of there to the next job). Second, if your spouse works, what will they do (esp. if they work in a field that IBM isn't involved in)?
The main reason the Silicon Valley is so popular is easy job mobility to a large variety of jobs - even without spouse changing their job (or kids being dislocated).
It seems that 41% of IBM's revenue (2007) comes from the "Americas" (which, presumably, includes Canada, Mexico, and South America). About 31% of their employees (2007) are in the US.
Although I don't see a breakdown of revenue in the Americas by country, I would expect that the "non-US" portion is significant. Hence, it looks like IBM employees about the same percentage of people in the US as the percentage of revenue received from the US. Since the average pay in the US is probably higher than the average pay elsewhere in the world, they probably pay a larger percent of total wages to US workers than the percentage of revenue received from US sources.
Seems pretty hard to complain about this in a global economy.
Yes, I generally try to do much what you describe -- although a "four second rule" just won't work in many situations I drive in -- people will just cut into the gap in front of you and cause you to slow down a bit more etc. until, at the limit, you've slowed traffic to a crawl such that a four second gap plus your added insurance for any tailgater(s) behind you leaves not much more than one car length between you and the car in front (i.e., the limit at which someone else can't "take" the gap ahead away from you causing you to slow down more). I think this limit works out to be about 3.5 miles per hour ignoring your additional "tailgater safety margin" (assuming that anything less than 20 feet between you and the driver in front prevents someone from cutting in and taking your "safety gap" away). Yes, I do know that I'm carrying this analysis to an extreme and that a rational person (as I assume you are) really wouldn't maintain the "four second rule" to this absurd level.
At 60 MPH, four seconds is 352 feet between you and the car in front of you - on dry pavement, some charts show the TOTAL stopping time (reaction plus braking) on dry pavement to be only 240 feet or 303 feet so your rule, while safe, seems to unnecessarily allow the car in front of you to stop instantly and you still to come to a stop 49 feet behind it.
Really, this is mostly about intersections with traffic lights and people who begin to tailgate you just as you're approaching the intersection.
Unfortunately, this strategy doesn't work too well in moderately heavy traffic (light enough for traffic to be flowing at or near the speed limit but heavy enough that it can be hard to change lanes) on fairly high speed (45-50 MPH) 3+ lane roads with moderately frequent entrances, exits, and intersections.
My guess is that we drive in different environments (area, times of day etc.). Also, the tailgating that I'm discussing here is, I think, mostly due to inattention/poor driving skills by the tailgater rather than them trying to get me to move faster (I'm at the flow of traffic - or, sometimes, slightly ahead of it). In the last ten years, they are often gabbing on their cell phones which I suspect is a major contributor to their inattention.
In the traffic conditions I describe, slowing down just doesn't help when people slip into your lane just behind you shortly before an intersection. Slowing down just narrows the gap and makes the situation worse if the light turns yellow 500ms later.
Also, in the traffic conditions I describe, slowing down impedes traffic. Yes, they do give tickets for that where I live - not common, but if you're driving at half the flow of traffic, esp. if you're not in the far right lane, you're at risk of a fun Saturday in traffic school. If nothing else, the cops assume you're drunk or have car problems and get interested in you for that reason alone and once they pull you over, they might as well give you a ticket for something since you wasted their time.
Also, in the traffic conditions I describe, once you slow down, the tailgater is the one who is least likely to change lanes to get around you because, quite simply, they can't -- once you have slowed the #2 lane down by 10 MPH, the guy right behind you can't move into #1 or #3 because the "(tiny) holes" in traffic in those lanes are moving 10 MPH faster than he is. Obviously, carrying this to the extreme as you suggest (stopping in the middle of a traffic lane) makes this problem much worse until you've create a nightmare of a traffic jam that may take several minutes to clear (rippling backwards through traffic until it, hopefully before rush hour ends, dissipates). I suppose the "stopping in traffic" might result in the tailgater getting out of their car to (1) curse at you and shoot you or (2) try to help you since you've obviously broken down -- and giving you the pleasure of seeing them squashed in traffic in front of their kids.
Also, in the situation I describe, slowing down increases hazards for other drivers. Being a fairly socially responsible person, I try to avoid such societal costs when they are not necessary. The problem is that the tailgater gets "stuck" behind you, the guy behind him (and so on) notice that their lane is much slower, so they change lanes - trying to slip into "holes" in traffic that are moving faster than they are. These speed differentials are among the most dangerous traffic conditions (trumped probably only by drunk drivers, insanely high speeds, and unfamiliar weather conditions).
But, we are not talking about a case of a child - obviously the decision would be different in that case (and, more instinctive and less analytical). We are talking about possibly entering an intersection just after the signal has turned red - opposing traffic doesn't get a green until AFTER my direction has turned red - and where I live, the delay between red one direction and green the other is one or two seconds.
As a driver, you should maintain 360 degree awareness - anything less is unsafe. This includes drivers beside you, behind you, and in front of you. At any point in time, you should have a good understanding if there's someone on your tail without looking at the moment you need to know (there isn't time to check the rearview mirror when the light turns yellow in front of you - you have less than 750 ms to decide what you're going to do and begin physical action on that decision).
Certainly stopping in a manner that would cause an accident is not safe -- esp. when compared to entering an intersection on a yellow light even though you could stopped.
And that general strategy is what got me rear ended once! A truck had cut in front of me blocking the signal, so when I could again see the signal it was yellow and I had no idea how long it had been so. I didn't enter the intersection - cost the insurance company of the guy behind me a bunch of money! In fact, I could have easily made it into the intersection before the light turned red, but I didn't want to risk a "running red" ticket so made a split second decision to risk an accident because of a tailgater behind me instead.
I think the problem is that people try to stop more quickly than is prudent in fear of getting nailed by the camera and the result is an increase in rear end collisions from tailgaters behind them or skidding out of control into other cars/objects.
Although, of course, one should not tailgate the car in front of them, they have no control over the car behind them. At times when someone is tailgating me in heavy traffic, I've made a decision to not stop at a yellow light that I could have stopped at. The reason being, I felt that given normal signal timing, if I didn't stop, I would still enter the intersection on the yellow but if I did stop, I would get rear ended. I placed my obligation to avoid an accident higher than the slight risk of a "fast yellow" set to the theoretically shortest possible timing and confident that if a cop happened to be watching, he might nail the guy behind me instead of me (as, the second guy entering on a red is somehow "more guilty" IMHO). If I know there's a red light camera at the intersection, sorry, I assume that the yellow is as short as possible and I stop even if it increases the risk of being rear ended (his insurance company pays for my car repairs, he doesn't pay for the red light ticket). In fact, I had a couple of close calls (guy behind me smoking squealing tires, skidding etc. while I stopped safely behind the limit line without fanfare) at a local intersection that I drive through regularly -- and was annoyed when I read in the paper much later that the cameras had been turned off at that intersection for over a year!
When someone is tailgating you in heavy traffic, you have few options to stopping that behavior quickly - changing lanes isn't always an option, slowing down may just make the problem worse if you're approaching a signal which may turn yellow suddenly since the distance between yourself and the following car - i.e. the margin of safety - is reduced (because the gap is shorter and you're going slower so actually stop more quickly) if the tailgater doesn't take heed of your speed change before you decide to stop for a yellow.
Even with all this care, twice I've been rear ended by a tailgater when I stopped quickly - once for a yellow light, another time for another reason. One of these times, three cars behind me ended up hitting each other also. The car behind me was lighter, more fragile, and had a lower bumper than my car (his was a small Fiat I think) so his impact on my bumper just scuffed the underside of my bumper cover but his bumper, grill, lights, and hood were seriously trashed. (After determining I had no damage I cared about, the officer noted that there was only room for three cars on the standard accident report he had to fill out so, unless I needed the report for my uses, he would just leave me off and I could go on my way -- I always wondered how the guy behind me explained to his insurance company how his car had thousands of dollars of damage and the car he hit didn't even exist on the accident report).
Stopping "as quickly as you can" is just a bad idea unless it's necessary and safe.
Key phrase "as much as". I think it's not highly probable the DOW will drop to half its current level (in real dollars), but it's possible.
However, I expect further substantial decline and don't expect a sudden (real) recovery - so I'd rather wait until I find some reason to believe a recovery is likely soon. Yes, I might leave 10% or even 20% on the table from the low point, but I'd rather do that than jump in now when I'm pretty certain we have more than a 20% decline ahead of us.
Note here that I'm talking about typical 401(k) plans which offer few investment options.
I assume you are putting your 401(k) deductions into something other than US equities?
Better to have missed the first 10% or 20% of a recovery than to have paid for the last 50% of a crash! If (as I expect) US equities (broad indexes such as SP500 and Dow Industrials) drop by as much as another 50%, you would need a 200% return to recover - that's a lot. (If you buy a stock at 50 and it drops to 25 - i.e., a 50% loss, just to get back to 50 requires doubling in value - or 200% - I'm not expressing this well, but that's what I mean)
Too early to get into equities with ANY money unless you can pick individual winner stocks (usually not an option with employer 401(k)s until you quit and roll them over into IRAs).
That depends, of course, on the number of outstanding shares. "Number of shares" or "price per share" is completely irrelevant - these things change by orders of magnitude on the next round depending on how strong the bargaining position of the company is. If there are ten(s) of VCs vying to invest, dilution is limited; if there are one or two, serious dilution is inevitable.
(Been doing this for over 25 years, learned a bit here and there)
Are you SURE it was free money? :) Last time I started a new job with anything BUT a startup was in 1980. I made a few bucks, but NONE of it was "free" :) I would have made more per hour (in salary - not considering stock) driving a D8 Cat and being paid for overtime (and, driving the D8 would have been cool - I'd should buy one to play with now that I think of it).
Sorry, but you were "taken". If you let yourself get to the point that your current employer left you at 50% of market, YOU did something very wrong.
Good observations. This works if your employer is not good at keeping existing employees "at market" -- too often managers are not good at this (they get a X% raise pool and need to take "performance" and "market adjustment" raises out of this). The key is presenting it (as I suspect the parent does) as JUST about money and, much as you would like to stay, you just can't subject your family to $20K less per year just for your selfish interests!
Of course, one needs to know when to stop milking this cow -- a new employer will always offer you more than you're making now (they don't know your hidden weaknesses and they have a damned position to fill and if they don't, they will be dinged on their next performance review). The new employer knows they can give you shit raises for the next few years and that's why they were willing to offer a premium today. If your current employer is worth working for, they know this. If you really are "at market", they may counter with "over market", but don't expect them to (1) give you a good raise for three years or (2) not start developing a strategy to make sure you're no longer a "required employee".