I view Ikea products as disposable furniture. You buy it when you're a renter, or you want to decorate a child's room on the cheap. It's a decent quality product at a fair price for what it is intended to be. If you want something that will last then you pay for it.
Here's the thing that gets me. We bailed out AIG, GM, Chrysler, Goldman Sachs, GE, Bank of America, the list goes on and on. We gave them Trillions in direct cash infusions and 0% interest loans. Essentially every member of the financial sector and virtually all large businesses were saved because of either being directly saved or we saved their financial counter-parties. As soon as someone starts talking about raising taxes on the decision makers in those big corporations a few % all of a sudden it's class warfare. I agree there's class warfare going on, but it seems clear that my side is losing.
Yes, I'm imagining the early stages of the civil rights movement. A small group of dark-skinned people get together and decide the first thing they need to do is lay copper to create their own telephony system.
I have an HP printer and HP netbook. Guess what? The printer driver installation app requires a minimum of 1024x768, but my netbook has 1024x576... so I can't even install my HP printer on my HP netbook. There is a hack where you hold down the ctrl key when you click on the modal dialog that tells you you can't install the driver, but it took about an hour of reading blogs to find that solution. I'll never buy another HP printer.
I'm sorry, but your friend is an idiot. Everyone knows when they're working on a failed product/project. It doesn't always mean the project/you are going to get canned, but it shouldn't come as a surprise when it does.
This reminds me of GE. GE has been trying to sell off its home appliance business forever. It's a relatively simple business with steady income and GE has good market recognition, but the margins are just tiny. There's just no money in washer/dryer/refrigerators.
That's just silly. Any meaningful communication for events like this must be done over telephone, newspaper, internet, television, radio, etc. Mouth to mouth is a terribly inefficient means of getting the word out.
I agree. The only place to walk to with your feet is to the Apple store. It gets you away from Windows and does provide a Unix-y system, but if your primary issue is personal freedom you've got a long walk.
Well, by talking about the phone he opened Microsoft up to potential liability from Nokia for breaking the NDA. Companies tend to fire people pretty quickly for doing things that could get them sued, even if the people on the inside (including those doing the firing) know that it's silly. Silly or not, he pretty much had to be let go. Also, he gave the phone an 8/10. Implying that there's better phones on the market than the one you're working directly with a business partner on is just a bad idea.
Not true, freedom 0 is the ability to run third party software. With iProducts you can't run anything not blessed by Apple. With Android you at least get that. It's not much, but it's a start.
I will believe that corporations don't pay taxes when Republicans stop whining about tax levels on corporations. Because that talking point essentially means we can make corporate taxes whatever we want and it won't negatively impact corporations at all.
Here's the funny thing about all this. Raising taxes on the wealthy has zero impact on their lifestyle. Let me say that again, z.e.r.o. impact on their lifestyle. Why? Because of the beauty of capitalism. The prices of high end goods and services is based on the availability of money, not the nominal cost of production. Things that poor people buy are generally priced based primarily on production costs (food, non-designer clothing, etc.). Taxing billionaires (assuming they're taxed evenly) doesn't mean that they get fewer or lower quality houses, yachts, cars, etc. It means that the prices of the goods and services they purchase goes down.
The stock market is not a zero sum game. During an IPO someone takes money which is not in the stock market and puts it into the system. Eventually the stock goes to zero and the IPO price is a net loss because when the stock goes to zero the IPO price isn't pulled out of the system, it just evaporates because money is a myth to begin with.
The market when looked at as a closed system will always return a net negative equal to the IPO price. Your analysis ignores the fact that the $100 came from outside the system to begin with. And at the end of the day when the stock price hits zero that $100 will be lost.
Exactly. People don't realize that big energy users are the people who would love to save energy the most. The trucking industry, for example, would LOVE to find some tech that would improve their gas mileage by even 1%, it would save a lot of these companies Millions of dollars per year.
Bulk mail may be annoying but it subsidizes the cost of delivering "regular" mail. I support getting rid of bulk advertisement mail but that means that sending a letter will probably cost a lot more.
If you want to get rid of ads then you need to increase the cost of bulk-rate mail. The fact of the matter though, is that the bulk mail is what really pays the cost of delivering your "real" mail. So if you got rid of the bulk stuff you throw away the price of a stamp would need to go up quite a lot.
It goes both ways. Here's an anecdote for you. Post offices are split up into zones. A worker in zone A will be shipped around to any number of post offices in zone A to do work depending on need. A fairly effective system when you consider they will have varying loads and such. A worker in zone A, however, cannot work in zone B even if the worker lives in/near zone B. They're not even allowed to "trade" so that a worker from zone B comes to work in zone A and vice-versa because they live closer to where the work needs to be done. Getting rid of this silly zone rule where labor cannot be used as efficiently as possible is something the union has been pushing for years. Apparently it has to go all the way up to the muckety mucks, the union will have to make it a priority and then hopefully 2-3 years down the road it'll get changed (presumably it would be a contract negotiation issue). Clearly the union causes problems in some areas (like not being able to lay people off they don't need) but the union is also sometimes a force of effective use of labor.
Fuel and trucks are a huge cost, they're just not considered a cost that can "go away" in the sense that labor costs can go away if you lay people off. Decreasing the truck wear/tear and fuel costs by 50% or so would be a massive savings.
I live in Orlando, FL. Sending a letter to Tampa is the same price with USPS as sending a letter to Nome Alaska. The USPS still wins in a lot of areas.
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I view Ikea products as disposable furniture. You buy it when you're a renter, or you want to decorate a child's room on the cheap. It's a decent quality product at a fair price for what it is intended to be. If you want something that will last then you pay for it.
Here's the thing that gets me. We bailed out AIG, GM, Chrysler, Goldman Sachs, GE, Bank of America, the list goes on and on. We gave them Trillions in direct cash infusions and 0% interest loans. Essentially every member of the financial sector and virtually all large businesses were saved because of either being directly saved or we saved their financial counter-parties. As soon as someone starts talking about raising taxes on the decision makers in those big corporations a few % all of a sudden it's class warfare. I agree there's class warfare going on, but it seems clear that my side is losing.
Yes, I'm imagining the early stages of the civil rights movement. A small group of dark-skinned people get together and decide the first thing they need to do is lay copper to create their own telephony system.
I have an HP printer and HP netbook. Guess what? The printer driver installation app requires a minimum of 1024x768, but my netbook has 1024x576... so I can't even install my HP printer on my HP netbook. There is a hack where you hold down the ctrl key when you click on the modal dialog that tells you you can't install the driver, but it took about an hour of reading blogs to find that solution. I'll never buy another HP printer.
I'm sorry, but your friend is an idiot. Everyone knows when they're working on a failed product/project. It doesn't always mean the project/you are going to get canned, but it shouldn't come as a surprise when it does.
This reminds me of GE. GE has been trying to sell off its home appliance business forever. It's a relatively simple business with steady income and GE has good market recognition, but the margins are just tiny. There's just no money in washer/dryer/refrigerators.
That's just silly. Any meaningful communication for events like this must be done over telephone, newspaper, internet, television, radio, etc. Mouth to mouth is a terribly inefficient means of getting the word out.
I agree. The only place to walk to with your feet is to the Apple store. It gets you away from Windows and does provide a Unix-y system, but if your primary issue is personal freedom you've got a long walk.
Well, by talking about the phone he opened Microsoft up to potential liability from Nokia for breaking the NDA. Companies tend to fire people pretty quickly for doing things that could get them sued, even if the people on the inside (including those doing the firing) know that it's silly. Silly or not, he pretty much had to be let go. Also, he gave the phone an 8/10. Implying that there's better phones on the market than the one you're working directly with a business partner on is just a bad idea.
Not true, freedom 0 is the ability to run third party software. With iProducts you can't run anything not blessed by Apple. With Android you at least get that. It's not much, but it's a start.
Jesus was/is anything but tolerant to people of other faiths. When they die he condemns their eternal soul to never ending damnation. Just sayin...
I will believe that corporations don't pay taxes when Republicans stop whining about tax levels on corporations. Because that talking point essentially means we can make corporate taxes whatever we want and it won't negatively impact corporations at all.
Here's the funny thing about all this. Raising taxes on the wealthy has zero impact on their lifestyle. Let me say that again, z.e.r.o. impact on their lifestyle. Why? Because of the beauty of capitalism. The prices of high end goods and services is based on the availability of money, not the nominal cost of production. Things that poor people buy are generally priced based primarily on production costs (food, non-designer clothing, etc.). Taxing billionaires (assuming they're taxed evenly) doesn't mean that they get fewer or lower quality houses, yachts, cars, etc. It means that the prices of the goods and services they purchase goes down.
I'll spell it out for you..
INITIAL STATE
Market: $0
IPO @ $100
Person 1 Net: $-100
Sale @ $50
Person 1 Net: $-50
Person 2 Net: $-50
Sale @ $75
Person 2 Net: $25
Person 3 Net: $-75
Bankruptcy
Person 1 Net: -50
Person 2 Net: $25
Person 3 Net: -$75
System Net: -$100, which equals the IPO price
Technically you can make new gold atoms, it's just prohibitively expensive with current technology to do so.
The stock market is not a zero sum game. During an IPO someone takes money which is not in the stock market and puts it into the system. Eventually the stock goes to zero and the IPO price is a net loss because when the stock goes to zero the IPO price isn't pulled out of the system, it just evaporates because money is a myth to begin with.
The market when looked at as a closed system will always return a net negative equal to the IPO price. Your analysis ignores the fact that the $100 came from outside the system to begin with. And at the end of the day when the stock price hits zero that $100 will be lost.
Sounds to me like it's all working according to plan.
Exactly. People don't realize that big energy users are the people who would love to save energy the most. The trucking industry, for example, would LOVE to find some tech that would improve their gas mileage by even 1%, it would save a lot of these companies Millions of dollars per year.
Bulk mail may be annoying but it subsidizes the cost of delivering "regular" mail. I support getting rid of bulk advertisement mail but that means that sending a letter will probably cost a lot more.
If you want to get rid of ads then you need to increase the cost of bulk-rate mail. The fact of the matter though, is that the bulk mail is what really pays the cost of delivering your "real" mail. So if you got rid of the bulk stuff you throw away the price of a stamp would need to go up quite a lot.
Yes because you'll either need to buy a whole new fleet of (larger) trucks, or make two trips per route.
It goes both ways. Here's an anecdote for you. Post offices are split up into zones. A worker in zone A will be shipped around to any number of post offices in zone A to do work depending on need. A fairly effective system when you consider they will have varying loads and such. A worker in zone A, however, cannot work in zone B even if the worker lives in/near zone B. They're not even allowed to "trade" so that a worker from zone B comes to work in zone A and vice-versa because they live closer to where the work needs to be done. Getting rid of this silly zone rule where labor cannot be used as efficiently as possible is something the union has been pushing for years. Apparently it has to go all the way up to the muckety mucks, the union will have to make it a priority and then hopefully 2-3 years down the road it'll get changed (presumably it would be a contract negotiation issue). Clearly the union causes problems in some areas (like not being able to lay people off they don't need) but the union is also sometimes a force of effective use of labor.
Fuel and trucks are a huge cost, they're just not considered a cost that can "go away" in the sense that labor costs can go away if you lay people off. Decreasing the truck wear/tear and fuel costs by 50% or so would be a massive savings.
I live in Orlando, FL. Sending a letter to Tampa is the same price with USPS as sending a letter to Nome Alaska. The USPS still wins in a lot of areas.