rkbabang

+1. If you ask most people why deflation is bad they give you the same look as if you asked them why they believe in dinosaurs. I do agree with Cardboard that low oil prices are beginning to be have deeper negative effects. While there's a fair argument that $65 oil is better for the economy than $100 dollar, $33 oil presents a lot of difficulties around the world. At the least, it seems like a good time to cap off the strategic petroleum reserves. I would love to hear the argument that $65 oil is better for the economy than $33 oil. Personally, I would prefer $2 oil and so would every other consumer out there, particularly those in the third world. Would our standard of living increase or decrease with $2 oil? Implementing price controls?.... hmmm beside not having the faintest clue as to how a central bank would do this, I wonder if that would make the problem better or worse. Do we have any other Soviet/Chinese methods to prop up falling oil prices? Humanity would clearly be better off with $2 oil over the long term. Although it would be a huge problem for many existing companies and a few entire countries. It is the same argument that says robots are bad because they cause unemployment. They are bad for you if you are a factory worker who loses his job, but they make everyone richer long term. $2 oil would mean either the abiotic oil theory was true and we found a way to easily tap into almost unlimited renewable oil within the Earth, we found a way to turn something else into oil cheaply, or we've transitioned away to another energy supply which is so cheap that there is no demand for oil costing more than $2/barrel. Deflation of prices = progress. It means a greater number of people can afford a greater number of things with less work. It means human beings accelerate our climb up Maslow's hierarchy of needs en masse. Any other view is the result of short term thinking.

:) True, but it would have to be a damn good book to make it comfortable if I was reading on the hard wood floor.

Just added some more AAPL.

Scott that is a great quote for this topic. I'm sure the number of people in the developed world who would agree with that is quite small. I enjoy owning a couch, a good reading chair, a computer desk&chair, and a bed. I really can't imagine living without any/all of those things.

50 gallon drums and some self storage space? If that proves impractical I found this: http://etfdb.com/type/commodity/energy/crude-oil/

There is nothing wrong with that. I don't think anyone on this thread has said there was. There is nothing wrong with buying a private jet either. The problem is that both of those things are quite expensive. Remember the statement that started this discussion wasn't "college is worthless" it was: I think with the price rising at the rate it has been, the truth of that statement is almost indisputable.

I graduated with almost $60K worth of debt in the mid 90s. It took me 10 years to pay it off, but that of course is during my 20s to early 30s when I was just getting started in my profession, just getting married, buying my first house, having kids, buying a car... that monthly bill takes a toll on you. I didn't even realize how much it bothered me until it was paid off and it felt like there was this huge weight off my shoulders. Now that is with an engineering degree, a good job, with a good salary. If I was going through that for 10 years while working a job I hated, having nothing to do with what I had studied, thinking my degree was useless, I think those payments would have driven me crazy. I probably would have stopped paying them too. Many people find themselves in exactly that situation today. Only it isn't $60K it is $160K+.

I'm not sure if they will, but they should. Government policy allowed banks to lend absurd amounts to anyone, because borrowers can't default on it. So the banks lent. And schools raised their prices in turn. Allowing more of a free market would have created a totally different landscape than what we have now. Everyone wanting to study 19th century poetry could still do it, just without 150K of debt. The government failed. I'm glad someone said it before me. When you subsidize something the demand increases and the costs go up. EDIT: The next step is to fix the cost with price controls, but then the supply shrinks. After that the only way out is to have the government take it over completely. What you then have is the public school system only for higher education and the price really goes through the roof (and the quality through the floor).

That's possibly true. I was not writing about costs. OTOH, IMHO the costs are often unoptimized by kids (and parents) the same way majors are unoptimized. Like you said "don't study art history", I can say "go to instate public school, live with parents, get part time jobs" to optimize the costs. A lot of people don't do that. Edit: clarified sentence above. Ah, that's where the disconnect is. I should have said that cost is the reason that more and more people will look to alternatives and that you will see enrollments drop in the future. Education is always valuable, but there are multiple ways to achieve the same goals. You make some good points about cutting the costs. Certainly the cost/value ratio is better at less expensive schools these days, and living at home would reduce the costs tremendously.

Ha! Like, all of them! ;)

I think the generalized-university-education vs. focused-needed-for-profession-knowledge is neverending discussion. :) There are arguments on both sides (and usually neither side changes their minds). :) Where I have worked ( in CS ), we had zero people who never graduated. IMHO, a lot of self educated CS people have giant holes in their knowledge (e.g. algorithm complexity) that bite them and their projects. Good ones figure out the issues and self educate, bad ones... well. Regarding writing - actually I was going to post that this is something that "worthless" humanities degrees teach, which is actually valuable: reading, analyzing, writing, communicating with others. Even in investing you may get people with humanities degrees that do well because they know how to read, how to analyze, how to write. My advisor has said that writing proficiency may affect your career more than your thesis topic. I don't agree with him totally, but there is some truth in what he said. I'm not saying it has zero value, but I'm not sure the value matches the current tuition costs. If those writing and humanities courses add $50K to your debt load upon graduation, that is a hell of a lot to pay for skills which could have been acquired in other, cheaper, ways.

WEBs opinions about politics are not outside his circle of competence. Considering that he is wrong everytime he opens his mouth to talk about such things I would disagree with you. Oh, yes, I know that you would disagree with me. I did not expect anything less. And actually WEB was not wrong about anything in politics so far. :) Hey Jurgis, you have to admit..., well anyway, I will admit that if the situation was reversed my opinion of his circle of competence on the matter would be reversed. If WEB was an anarchist and always said everything I agree with when speaking of politics, I would be saying that he was some kind of genius and that we should all listen to him. I suspect you would be questioning his competence on the matter and saying that he should just stick to investing.

Even in the STEM fields. I know people personally who work as computer scientists at Adobe and Google who never went to school past high school. In my own field (Electrical Engineering) I know people who have PhDs who make less than I do (I only have a BSEE). You could easily do my job with 2 years of schooling and 3+ years of on the job training. Take some basic electricity, math, and physics courses, maybe a statistics and computer science course or two then jump in and find a good mentor. The college I went to (WPI) required me to do a humanities project, take writing courses, history courses, economics courses, etc, much of which was just a continuation of high school, none of which contributes much to the work I do, and all of which I could easily have learned on my own with a few good books and/or the internet if I had wanted to. You could skip much of the first 2 years of college and be just fine. Even the last 2 years there is a lot of unneeded stuff. Take electrical engineering for example (since I'm familiar with it), I wanted to focus exclusively on digital design and computer engineering, yet I had to take all kinds of analog type courses learning about op amps and the like which had nothing to do with what I wanted to learn (and I don't remember any of what I learned today). I could easily have fit all the relevant math, science, and engineering courses that I wanted to take and are relevant to what I wanted to do in a 2 year program. It wouldn't have made me any less effective at my profession, but you can't do that in a University today, to get X degree you need to take this specific list of courses with an occasional elective that you can choose. There are better ways. And the price you pay in both time and money...there are cheaper ways.

WEBs opinions about politics are not outside his circle of competence. Considering that he is wrong everytime he opens his mouth to talk about such things I would disagree with you. Oh, yes, I know that you would disagree with me. I did not expect anything less. And actually WEB was not wrong about anything in politics so far. :) Good to know that I am living up to your expectations. :)

WEBs opinions about politics are not outside his circle of competence. Considering that he is wrong everytime he opens his mouth to talk about such things I would disagree with you.

Bull...crap. College is still the best salary enhancing option available for majority of people. Of course, a lot of people select crappy majors, but that's not college's fault. And BTW few exceptional cases of people who never finished college does not mean that college is a bad deal for 90%+ others. College is a great deal for Math, Engineering, Medicine, or other Tech majors. It isn't a great deal for almost everyone else. Certainly not for 90% of people who go. To be loaded down with debt and end up doing a job you could have done without college is not a good deal. As more and more realize this, you are going to see a shift away from traditional colleges and more toward on the job training and/or other non-degree training. That is just my opinion. If my kids wanted to go to school for women's studies or art history, etc, I'd tell them that they were nuts.

Fair enough on all points. Thanks.

With the possible exception of the first item, I would immediately agree with all of the others, which makes me wonder if they are really that contrarian. I think most Americans think that America will continue to dominate economically and culturally forever. I obviously don't think that is the case, but I do think it is likely that the age of American dominance will last into the 22nd century. Also many people are realizing that college is a bad deal for a lot (most?) people. And also it is pretty obvious that the majority of online articles with WEB in the headline are clickbait. The first one intrigues me however. In what ways do you think WEB is overrated? Do you think he is just lucky? The theory that if you start with 100,000,000 people flipping coins and only let those who flip heads onto the next round, someone is going to get heads 25 times in a row?

Honda's CVT's haven't been around long enough to really know. People with very high milage Honda's had normal standard or automatic transmissions. "CVT transmissions will first debut in the 2013 Honda Accord" http://www.autoguide.com/auto-news/2012/02/honda-to-make-switch-to-cvts-in-a-big-way.html

How much will you spend maintenance over the same time? And fuel does make a difference. The average driver will spend $2400 a year in fuel and the AAA estimates the average maintenance cost is 6 cents per mile. Over 10 years assuming average driving habit that's an additional $36k, $24k on fuel alone. The model 3 is estimated to be $35k. Lets assume he's off on this like he was on the model S for argument sake and say $40k. Typically the government rebate is about $8k from what I've read. So we're at $32k for a model 3. I've read multiple articles from Tesla owners (maybe Eric can confirm) who have said the only maintenance is tires. Which is a wash since every car needs them. Even the battery is under warranty for 8 years as per the Tesla website. But I'll also say we don't really know much about maintenance past 5 years since the car is so new. I have two concerns with the model 3. One is that the longevity of it will be unknown. Will it last 10 years and a quarter of a million miles? And 2: When will the batteries need to be replaced and how much will it cost? At first glance the $35K looks like it could workout in the Model 3's favor, but the answer to those 2 questions above could change things considerably. Also the Model 3 isn't available yet. Take my Corolla, I paid $13K, drove it for 253K miles. I changed the tires/breaks a few times. I only do oil changes about twice per year, which is over 10K miles in between changes. I did the timing belt on that once at 175K miles and I gave it one tune up also at 175K miles. That is it. My cost of maintenance was way, way, way below 6cents/mile. Timing belt and tune up for that little car was under $1000 Tires/breaks twice lets call it $1500 $60 year for oil changes (I did them myself most of the time, but for this purpose I'll suppose paying $30/oil change) = $660 Total maintenance $3160 or 1.25cents/mile. My Hyundai has only been 9 years, but has cost me similar to my Corolla so far. People who are used to driving American or German made cars really do not understand how much cheaper an Asian car is to maintain.

Used Chevrolet Volt with lower fuel cost than a Elantra: https://www.carsforsale.com/chevrolet-volt-for-sale-C999103 To be fair though you'd have to compare it to a similarly used Elantra, which are cheaper. Also I'm not convinced you can get 200-250K miles on a Volt without the major expense of replacing the batteries. If you buy one that already has 25-60k miles on it you'd probably be much better off with a gas car if you plan on driving it for 10 years. My Corolla was 11 years old and had 253K miles on it when I traded it in for my Hyundai. It still looked and ran great and I never had anything major go on it. I was just getting concerned about the amount of rust I could see underneath it and after 11 years I was ready for something new. I'm not sure you are going to hear people say things like that about a Volt. Anyway, I wouldn't risk it.

+1 for biking. I wish I lived close enough to work to bike. Excellent option for the health benefits alone. But it isn't practical all the time (It is 12°F where I am right now) And snows all winter long. Even if I lived in biking distance to work it would only be practical for 6-7 months out of the year, so I would still need a car. Even if you lived in a more agreeable climate and biked to work everyday you would probably still need to own a car to pick up groceries and for other things. There are only a limited number of places you can live car-free in the US.

You guys spend a lot on cars. Let's see how many years I can drive for the same price you spend on one tesla. 2007: I paid $15K will drive it at least until 2017 (maybe longer): 2007-2017 $15K 2017: An Elantra is now about $18K: 2007-2027 $33K 2027: Probably about $20K now: 2007-2037 $53K 2037: $22K for new Hyundai: 2007-2047 $75K So I get 40+ years of driving for the price of one Tesla or 20+ years of driving for the price of one $33K sedan or Chevy volt. I know there is gas savings to be had, but it won't make up that much of the difference. EDIT: If I add in the Corolla I had before the Hyundai it looks even better: 1996: $13K For the Corolla. 1996-2047 $88K for 51 years of driving.

I bought a Hyundai Elantra in 2007, $15K brand new. It gets about 35 mpg (advertised as 38hwy, but I've never gotten 38). I've got over 170k miles on it now and the only things I've ever done to it are the tires, breaks, oil changes twice per year, a tune up once and the timing belt once. It has been great. I had a Corrolla before this which was also a great car, but the Ellantra is bigger, about half way between compact and midsize, and has more power better acceleration, and it is cheaper than the Toyota. It's 9 years old now and I don't plan on replacing it any time soon.

Short Musk video from September