rmitz
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Posts posted by rmitz
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They charge a lot less in China you see. The stuff I do telecommuting can just as easily be contracted out to people there.
They don't outsource plumbing to China.
How much do you pay for a visit from your plumber? I only pay the pizza delivery person a few bucks, so I know it isn't the onsite visit alone that costs money -- it's the labor.
And it's not just the labor, it's the know-how. But yeah, I agree with you; if you're working in a very defined space then there is some outsourcing capability. The outsourcing projects I heard of and worked on generally didn't go really well because of cultural differences, as well as issues with communications. They ended up costing more money than just hiring competent local people in the first place.
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The plumbers who work where I live (Bainbridge Island) charge more than $100 per hour. If they can only make $50k per year maybe they are playing golf half the week.
I can only make $65 an hour for my labor if I start my own consulting business.
$100+ > $65
I don't know what you do in IT, I work in the field too, but $65 seems pretty low to me for a consulting arrangement. It would be almost reasonable if you knew you would get full-time style work, but that isn't reality. A rule of thumb I used to calculate what I'd need for a consulting rate would be to take your current rate, slap on 33% for benefits (true where I work), and then adjust it for a 50% utilization ratio, i.e. double it.
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A tortured 1200-page essay from the NY Times, (or any other elitist dismissal for that matter), doesn’t change the basic fact that 47% of American taxpayers receive all the benefits of the federal government without paying a dime. Anything you get for free is not properly valued and waste is guaranteed. Our government is no exception. Without simple incentives we sink deeper into an already unhealthy culture of entitlement.
Look, you're just plain distorting the facts. 1) You never qualified that as "federal" anything. 2) Medicare and Social Security don't count as federal taxes in support of federal services now? They aren't part of the "federal income tax", but clearly they are part of the federal tax regime.
Sound bites make for good TV (Pretty much all TV at this point is entertainment; you can't make money presenting facts in a responsible way), but while repeating falsehoods over and over again may sway the Hoi Polloi, you'll find us "elitists" are a tougher nut to crack.
And keep in mind here you're talking to someone who hates taxes! I would love a smaller central government. Scale back/change the war machine, first of all. We can make all sorts of suggestions, but it's inherently a slow process, and politics make certain things impossible. War, for example, has a HUGE lobby behind it, on multiple fronts.
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I'm not saying such a place exists, to my knowledge it doesn't, but that doesn't mean taxation is not theft. There was a time where you'd be hard pressed to find a place in the world that didn't practice chattel slavery, or where you could live without being a surf under some landed aristocracy. That didn't mean these practices were just. It just means most people have been brainwashed into thinking these things are OK and even necessary by the people who benefit from these abominations. Taxation is the same. Humanity will one day look back upon taxation the same way we today look smugly back upon chattel slavery and think we're so morally superior then our ancestors. You have a million reasons in your mind why coercive government is necessary, and they are all false. Just because you personally can't imagine the solutions to these problems you envision doesn't mean there are none. And - I don't beleive this to be so - but if you are correct, and it takes violence and slavery to produce roads and bridges, then I'd rather live without them. Just as, if it took violence and slavery to produce cotton and tobacco, I'd rather live without them. Fortunately it no more takes violence to produce convenient modes of transportation than it does to produce cotton or tobacco.
--Eric
Actually, just move to Qatar. I lived there for three years. No personal income taxes. The country is run based on petroleum revenues and some minor tariffs and low business taxes. They don't actually need the income from the latter things.
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I found one. Its called America. In 2009, 47% of Americans paid no income taxes whatsoever. Whats more, the bottom 40% recieve cash & benefits (EETC, unemployment benefits, S-CHIP, Medicaid, housing subsidies, food stamps, welfare, etc.) paid from reciepts of those who paid their share of this 'social contract'. What kind of perverted theory justifies a system where half the nation are freeloaders?
Incorrect. That number is only correct if you ignore local and state income taxes, medicare, social security, etc.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/14/business/economy/14leonhardt.html
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When does history begin?
There was no income tax prior to... 1913 I think? I might be getting the year wrong. Somewhere in there, I may be off by 10 years.
You're right on the year. But when income tax was instituted, and for many years thereafter, the burden fell overwhelmingly on the rich. Initially, it was only on people who by any definition were rich.
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You have a much more pessimistic view of humanity than I do. I don't think my neighbors would turn into Ruthless Bloodthirsty Savages, simply because the IRS and other government agencies have stopped stealing from them and they have to find a private company to pick up their trash.
--Eric
I don't think that extreme would be accurate, but you just have to look around you for examples of the Tragedy of the Commons. You don't have to look very far for situations in natural disasters where ordinary citizens start looting and stealing, either because they need supplies to live, or they just feel like it.
Will people pay money to fund roads? Some will, enough won't; it would certainly be enough to make a difference. You can go through an entire list of these sorts of things which create a better environment for people and society in general.
Accounting for externalities is a huge issue when you try to fully walk down the libertarian path. Suppose someone decides they just want to let the trash pile up in their backyard to save money?
Is government wasteful, and does it support things you or I wouldn't? Of course it does. That doesn't mean we should throw out the baby with the bathwater.
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We're all bound by a social contract to pay taxes. If you don't like it, you should move to a more tax friendly country instead of acting like a parasitic leech or complaining like one.
"social contract". I'm sorry, but I've never signed nor agreed to your contract, "social" or otherwise. You think you can bind someone to a contract whether they like it or not and enforce that with violence? You
Be honest. If there wasn't that implicit social contract out there, most of us would already be dead.
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Wealth for the Common Good, which represents many of these individuals, was organized to help rebalance our economic system. Our goal is to contribute to the public debate on taxes and support President Obama and Congress in creating a more progressive tax code.
Socialists
You say "Socialists" like it's a bad word. It's not. It's just another system, one I don't really agree with very much, but there are some good points.
I've been doing research on historical tax rates lately and I can tell you right now that, for the rich, our rates are historically *extremely* low, certainly relative to the taxes the middle class pays. To a degree, these historically low rates have created an incentive for bilking the shareholders with exorbitant pay packages for average CEO performance.
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Do nothing other than further their education (university, global travel, etc.) untill they marry, settle down, & have their 1st kid. AFTER they've bought their house, buy out 50% of it with the proceeds repaying mortgage principal; & 'will' the equity stake to the kid.
Sorry, Dad, no deal.
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I think IB Canada has had that for a long time--they require minimum commission of $10 per month. If you subscribe to a data package they waive the minimum commission fee.
Actually, they don't do that anymore, at least in the US. The only things that count towards the fee are actual commissions, at least from what I was able to determine.
This minimum fee is a logical requirement to filter out clients that trade very infrequently and have small amounts of capital. They can only make money from active traders or large accounts. It costs a lot to service small accounts that have small $ value (partly because those account holders are often just starting out and they call customer service a lot for help).
In some sense it is, though they should also be able to make money on margin (not very much, though, given their rates). I put together an advisor account so that I could manage several accounts in a unified interface. So far that experience has been somewhat trying in and of itself, and you have the minimum commissions for each account. It's not really targeted for people who have full authority on all the different accounts. All that said, the margin rates are so low that if one uses even a moderate amount sporadically, that should make up for the other fees.
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Whats the fee look like at IB for foreign shares, i may have to move to them at some point.
If you have a cash account (this security screams Roth to me) you have to manually convert funds over to GBP using an FX trade, then purchase the security on the LSE. The LSE real time quotes are actually free, but you need to enable them. The forex base fee is $2.50 and up to 50k GBP purchase on the LSE is 6GBP. You can find details here: http://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/p.php?f=commission and navigate to the appropriate tab.
The only thing irritating me lately on IB is that they started charging an inactivity fee on accounts if you don't have a minimum amount of commissions. I may have to reconsider having all my accounts there because I really don't trade very often. Or I suppose I could generate fees with some small-scale arbitrage.
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Myth, I read through the 10-K and am waiting for them to put the conference call online so that I can see if there are any interesting tidbits of info in there.
They already have it up. Just go to the "Live Webcast" link and you can listen to it. At least I did that after the call..
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Rmitz - It's not an ADR. I believe it trades on the OTC. Ratio is 1:1
Oh, right, pence not pounds. That explains it.
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Where can I find the ratio of shares between the pink sheets stock and the main one on the LSE? Nothing came up under ADRs.
My personal guess about the company is that they're not a long-term compounding machine, but as an insurance company they smash all the common valuation metrics so should trade at a significant premium at some point. Will look into the numbers.
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Cha Ching.
I didn't have the guts to buy any more on the dip since 1) this is my largest position (bought in the penny-stock days) and 2) it would have required too much leverage. But I definitely smiled when I read this news yesterday. :)
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There's not even any valuation work... I understand not wanting to own the company after the run-up, but shorting it seems like a waste of capital relative to other opportunities.
Agreed. This just attempts to put a negative spin on every possible angle; it's a hysterical surface analysis. Personally I think short opportunities should only be followed when companies are fundamentally unsound; otherwise there's too much timing risk. Even when you can make money, surely you can find a better short opportunity?
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Obviously you're not going to get a place like Sears or Walmart to mount your tires, though.
On Monday I had tires mounted at Walmart. I wasn't unhappy with the service. I had my winter tires pulled off and my summer tires put on. Mounting, balancing, etc...
That's even better than I expected, but I had forgotten about winter/summer tires, probably since I had them on separate rims, so I could change them myself. I don't know if they let you drop sip the tires there like most shops would, though.
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Tires are usually installed by someone other than the car owner. Don't car repair shops prefer to supply their own tires rather than deal with the customer buying them separately (hassle to the shop, lost margin on materials, issues with respect to liability)? If so, doesn't this limit the market for direct to consumer sales?
At least in the US, there's no real problem with shipping to local garages, and they're more than happy to take care of you. I used to order from Tirerack all the time. Obviously you're not going to get a place like Sears or Walmart to mount your tires, though.
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I'm sure Buffett enjoys his life immensely, but the amount of security that the poor guy requires these days is crazy. It must be tough living like that...I'm sure other celebrities have the same problem. Cheers!
Sometimes, the best security really is obscurity.
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Is the per share price of Berk guaranteed not to fall from this level?
I can't tell if you're being facetious or not, but no, of course it isn't. However, I'd say that to reduce berkshire's intrinsic value below what's currently priced in by the market price would be quite unlikely. The stock price itself, it's foolish to predict.
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Coca-Cola appears to be in catch-up mode relative to the industry where Dr.Pepper Snapple Group was already under the integrated model owning its main bottlers and after Pepsico announced the buyout of Pepsi Bottling Group and Pepsi Americas last fall.
DPS is likely to cash in another $1 billion following this change of control at CCE North America and it will increase earnings a bit. They did beat analysts this morning and 2010 guidance is also above what was thought. This transaction along with debt reduction/share repurchases should move earnings to around $2.60, so it is still a cheap stock. I am very impressed by management so far and you always have the possibility of a take-over by either PEP or KO.
Cardboard
Does anyone else think it's odd that Coca-cola and Pepsi would have gone to all the trouble to spin off their bottlers years ago, and now buy them back? They spun them off, I believe, to become a higher ROIC business. So either they see depressed values that they want to take advantage of, maybe contracts have timed out since they were in house so that costs are being raised by the bottlers, or they just don't see other good investments. [All this should be considered pure speculation; I haven't read anything specific].
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What I find interesting is that on a board with Berkshire's name on it there was no interest at all in buying BRK when it was selling for $98,000 per share while investments per share were over $90,000 and non-insurance operating earnings of around $5,000.
The way I looked at it, on a cash basis an owner was getting back his money with net cash, investments and income- within 2 years. Instead there was extensive interest in the fellow running SNS and discussion on how Markel would earn higher returns.
Markel? I've owned the stock for 15 years. Berkshire was a much better buy in my opinion than Markel or Fairfax- and I've owned Fairfax long before it came on the US board- to then delist. I also owned Hub when FFH was a 40% owner and had bought it on the Toronto exchange too and I think I remember getting it at 8 times earnings that were growing at 15% a year. So I've participated in a lot of what is disussed here.
I think the Market model of having investments of 3 or more times equity is a good one but I've sort of come to the conclusion that this ratio is going to gradually fall as Markel will be unable to continue to grow float at the old rate. Thus the earn 5% on investments and get a 15% annual return model will slowly grind down.
But I just don't get the lack of interest in Berkshire's stock. The book called, "The Diamonds are Under Your Feet" comes to mind.
Just interesting to me.
Who says there wasn't any? It's just not something that really needs to be discussed over and over...I know I bought.
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I would kick my own ass for selling below 100$. The operational side is going to kick ass over the next decade and more.
(Secretly I would situate IV closer to 160k-170k an A share at least.) ::)
I feel that $100 is a reasonable valuation. An optimistic one (which is probably not unreasonable) could easily be at $120. If I had the option today, I'd probably sell just above $100 though, except for my core position.
Berkshire Insurance Sub Acquires Business From Berkshire Insurance Sub!
in Berkshire Hathaway
Posted
Heh, whereas, I've been doing that with laptops for over a decade. (You should follow a strict "bathroom sanitary protocol", though.)
Note on the earlier post; skimming becomes much more possible on the computer when you use the right software. I accomplish similar newspaper-style skimming by using an RSS reader, for example. Everyone will have their own preferred interface; I'm sure the newspaper-copycat interfaces will have a lot of adherents in the future.