I think the lack of a margin call only offsets the limited liquidity of a house. From an "investment grade" loan on a building, you are usually looking at 30-50% down payment, with regular scrutiny on your income.
While I generally tend to agree with you, it all comes down to how leveraged your investments are. If you only own 5-10% of your home, you are extremely highly leveraged. Even having 30-40% equity is low in investment terms. Add to the fact that you need cash reserves, and most investors are highly vulnerable.
One question I do have on the study though is if they accounted for bi-weekly paychecks, which can skew things substantially relative to monthly data.
I'm no metallurgist, but SpaceX and Boeing have been making 3D printed structural components for years, just on an experimental basis as far as I know. I saw a lattice produced for something (landing gear IIRC), and the comment was that the micro-truss lattice structure gave comparable strength to the milled part, but was 30-40% lighter. They do finite element analysis on each tiny member and optimize the system to a degree that was impossible with the milled part (hence the reliance on virgin Titanium).
A serviced office runs $300-800/month, so $130 for a "work address is actually not a bad deal. Hell, an amortized cubicle runs over $500/month in most cities. In places where commute times are meaningful, having structured environments for employees to work from that are close to home is a huge advantage.
Say you are stuck with a 20-year lease on a big-box retail store for a commodity product that everyone just buys online now. You pay $1/square foot for the space. You realize that you could convert 10-20,000 square feet of non-performing space into something that has a value of $2.5-3.5/square foot, plus offers some follow-on benefit to the remaining store.
While not great for concentration, pop-up/improvised workspaces offer a number of opportunities that you don't get working from home; co-working tries to mimic that. Most co-working spaces offer everything from cafe tables to private offices.
For Staples, it is a smart move to maximize use of real-estate they are stuck with.
If I have a repetitive task that needs to be done which requires little critical thinking skill, the more intelligent a person is the more errors they will make, because their mind wanders at the mundane aspects of it all.
At first, yes. The problem is you don't get people that excel at different parts of the process. Yes, that might be a codeword for the "production" work. Super-intelligent people are great at some things but not everything.
A person that has spent $100-150k+ for four years of education is inherently more expensive than someone who avoided that time and cost, but not necessarily better for all tasks. Building a company of all superstars has its benefits, but isn't really a sustainable business model.
FWIW, they could likely get by with using the battery for about half the capacity and directly charging the other 50%... and there is also the possibility of the batteries being on a cart and rolled on/off, although the added complexity is unlikely to be worth the energy savings.
Yes, TSA part is the only one that makes any sense: the fuel cost is nowhere near 40% of the trip cost; pilot cost spread over 9 seats is higher that pilot, copilot, and 3 flight attendants for 150 seats; airspace congestion makes 15 small planes much harder to work with than one larger one; and, I am sure there are more.
The only place these would make sense is as air taxis between small markets.
If the service was via busses, they could likely only generate $500k/year maximum in fares, more likely $2-300k, and not really provide a high quality of service. They might even need to make it free to generate ridership. With Uber, they provide a higher quality of service, minimize risk, and maximize long term flexibility.
If nothing else, they will have data to determine if their money is being spent effectively.
My town has Downtowner, a "free" advertising supported 6-seat electric golf cart shuttle. Basically the drivers are paid with tips. It seems like an easy system to subsidize, and more effective than additional busses.
The service only supports an area with ~10,000 people, but a high concentration of businesses and tourists. It is limited in service area by safety regulations (can only be on roads with a speed limit under 35mph), but it will be interesting to see how well it does. On paper, it seems like an almost ideal model-- low capital cost of cars makes it easy to scale, you can exempt them from some of the traffic management rules (artificial one-way intersections), and it can work quite well for peak periods. Lower environmental impact is also nice.
The classic flaw of busses is maximizing utilization; people want point-to-point travel, and walking or transfers has a dramatic impact on ridership. For a small community, if you can make a "trunk" route, it likely has an artificially high trip time-- you are better off focusing on "express" service between population and commercial centers.
That has been said for the last 20 years, and has proven wrong. The specific exceptions are when the shipping time exceeds some threshold, there is a very high probability that when you need the spare parts so will many other people, and on a similar note when price (or shipping) elasticity can be impacted by external events. Just-in-time consumables (or components) is a different story. As we get better predictive data, preventative replacement parts pretty much goes out the window.
Now, if one part can shut you down 100% for n hours, maybe you consider on-site spares... but if it is a loss of 25% capacity for those n hours you likely take your chances, knowing you can make up the lost production over x days.
Can't speak to the current generation, but on my 2009 iMac, pulling the screen and upgrading the drive isn't really a big deal; they could make it a little more accessible, but you don't necessarily need hatches on the back/bottom.
I wish they would go back to offering a server form factor, but I get that the economics of it would be even worse today than when they discontinued the Xserve.
Sure, the rider aspect almost makes it a marketing gimick, but the devil is really in the details-- what other additional insurance you are required to have in order to be "fully" covered.
I think you are talking closer to two orders of magnitude higher to have a family IT manager, although one order of magnitude might get you a lawyer on speed dial. That said, how do you really defend against stupidity...
$1 million is actually a pretty low threshold in economic terms. In practical terms for an insurance company, the cost of an investigation and recovery is fairly constant for $50k or $1MM; it wouldn't make sense cost-wise to have without enough at stake.
That said, this is AIG we are talking about, son of sure if I would trust them in a major "heist." But, if you are less than 15 years from retirement, something like this might make a lot of sense.
The problem is that the money in Hollywood is pure finance dollars: maximize return and minimizing risk. This does not really contribute to "creative media."
There are a lot of lemmings that are in it for creativity... but the commodity value is gone thanks to the long tail.
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I think the lack of a margin call only offsets the limited liquidity of a house. From an "investment grade" loan on a building, you are usually looking at 30-50% down payment, with regular scrutiny on your income.
While I generally tend to agree with you, it all comes down to how leveraged your investments are. If you only own 5-10% of your home, you are extremely highly leveraged. Even having 30-40% equity is low in investment terms. Add to the fact that you need cash reserves, and most investors are highly vulnerable.
One question I do have on the study though is if they accounted for bi-weekly paychecks, which can skew things substantially relative to monthly data.
The detail level is more than you can reliably forge. Don't think you can forge a honeycomb reliably...
I'm no metallurgist, but SpaceX and Boeing have been making 3D printed structural components for years, just on an experimental basis as far as I know. I saw a lattice produced for something (landing gear IIRC), and the comment was that the micro-truss lattice structure gave comparable strength to the milled part, but was 30-40% lighter. They do finite element analysis on each tiny member and optimize the system to a degree that was impossible with the milled part (hence the reliance on virgin Titanium).
There are different arrangements; some places have lockers at the desk as well as external monitors and network resources.
It is more of a social at,o sphere than working at home... some people need that.
A serviced office runs $300-800/month, so $130 for a "work address is actually not a bad deal. Hell, an amortized cubicle runs over $500/month in most cities. In places where commute times are meaningful, having structured environments for employees to work from that are close to home is a huge advantage.
Say you are stuck with a 20-year lease on a big-box retail store for a commodity product that everyone just buys online now. You pay $1/square foot for the space. You realize that you could convert 10-20,000 square feet of non-performing space into something that has a value of $2.5-3.5/square foot, plus offers some follow-on benefit to the remaining store.
Do you like money?
While not great for concentration, pop-up/improvised workspaces offer a number of opportunities that you don't get working from home; co-working tries to mimic that. Most co-working spaces offer everything from cafe tables to private offices.
For Staples, it is a smart move to maximize use of real-estate they are stuck with.
VPNs would be considered a non fast-lane service. They might end up prioritizing Cisco VPNs, but not things like OpenVPN that hippies use.
ok... do you think a programmer makes a great QC person?
If I have a repetitive task that needs to be done which requires little critical thinking skill, the more intelligent a person is the more errors they will make, because their mind wanders at the mundane aspects of it all.
Really I didn't; I am calling the "top graduates of top colleges" superstars... which is still a stretch I will admit.
At first, yes. The problem is you don't get people that excel at different parts of the process. Yes, that might be a codeword for the "production" work. Super-intelligent people are great at some things but not everything.
A person that has spent $100-150k+ for four years of education is inherently more expensive than someone who avoided that time and cost, but not necessarily better for all tasks. Building a company of all superstars has its benefits, but isn't really a sustainable business model.
FWIW, they could likely get by with using the battery for about half the capacity and directly charging the other 50%... and there is also the possibility of the batteries being on a cart and rolled on/off, although the added complexity is unlikely to be worth the energy savings.
Yes, TSA part is the only one that makes any sense: the fuel cost is nowhere near 40% of the trip cost; pilot cost spread over 9 seats is higher that pilot, copilot, and 3 flight attendants for 150 seats; airspace congestion makes 15 small planes much harder to work with than one larger one; and, I am sure there are more.
The only place these would make sense is as air taxis between small markets.
If the service was via busses, they could likely only generate $500k/year maximum in fares, more likely $2-300k, and not really provide a high quality of service. They might even need to make it free to generate ridership. With Uber, they provide a higher quality of service, minimize risk, and maximize long term flexibility.
If nothing else, they will have data to determine if their money is being spent effectively.
My town has Downtowner, a "free" advertising supported 6-seat electric golf cart shuttle. Basically the drivers are paid with tips. It seems like an easy system to subsidize, and more effective than additional busses.
The service only supports an area with ~10,000 people, but a high concentration of businesses and tourists. It is limited in service area by safety regulations (can only be on roads with a speed limit under 35mph), but it will be interesting to see how well it does. On paper, it seems like an almost ideal model-- low capital cost of cars makes it easy to scale, you can exempt them from some of the traffic management rules (artificial one-way intersections), and it can work quite well for peak periods. Lower environmental impact is also nice.
The classic flaw of busses is maximizing utilization; people want point-to-point travel, and walking or transfers has a dramatic impact on ridership. For a small community, if you can make a "trunk" route, it likely has an artificially high trip time-- you are better off focusing on "express" service between population and commercial centers.
That has been said for the last 20 years, and has proven wrong. The specific exceptions are when the shipping time exceeds some threshold, there is a very high probability that when you need the spare parts so will many other people, and on a similar note when price (or shipping) elasticity can be impacted by external events. Just-in-time consumables (or components) is a different story. As we get better predictive data, preventative replacement parts pretty much goes out the window.
Now, if one part can shut you down 100% for n hours, maybe you consider on-site spares... but if it is a loss of 25% capacity for those n hours you likely take your chances, knowing you can make up the lost production over x days.
Can't speak to the current generation, but on my 2009 iMac, pulling the screen and upgrading the drive isn't really a big deal; they could make it a little more accessible, but you don't necessarily need hatches on the back/bottom.
I wish they would go back to offering a server form factor, but I get that the economics of it would be even worse today than when they discontinued the Xserve.
Sure, the rider aspect almost makes it a marketing gimick, but the devil is really in the details-- what other additional insurance you are required to have in order to be "fully" covered.
I think you are talking closer to two orders of magnitude higher to have a family IT manager, although one order of magnitude might get you a lawyer on speed dial. That said, how do you really defend against stupidity...
$1 million is actually a pretty low threshold in economic terms. In practical terms for an insurance company, the cost of an investigation and recovery is fairly constant for $50k or $1MM; it wouldn't make sense cost-wise to have without enough at stake.
That said, this is AIG we are talking about, son of sure if I would trust them in a major "heist." But, if you are less than 15 years from retirement, something like this might make a lot of sense.
The problem is that the money in Hollywood is pure finance dollars: maximize return and minimizing risk. This does not really contribute to "creative media."
There are a lot of lemmings that are in it for creativity... but the commodity value is gone thanks to the long tail.
Fat finger mod...
I really don't remember any impact from the last strike, aside from the Starbucks on Douglas being busier...