rkbabang

It still looks pretty good when you click the "6m" view though.

Yes, the feds leaving something alone doesn't make much difference if all the state and/or local governments are busy regulating it to death. The founders of this country had a great idea when they demanded the separation of church and state. I just wish they had also demanded the separation of medicine and state, science and state, education and state, transportation and state, banking and state, money and state, ...

Just look at the US Federal income tax, the top rate of a whopping 7% didn't kick in until your income was over $500K per year which is almost $12M in 2012 dollars. "people supported the income tax because it was originally meant to impose only very low tax rates on only the highest incomes. Proponents argued that the 16th amendment to the U.S. Constitution would force the so-called "robber barons" to pay taxes. It was not supposed to provide a mechanism for Washington to reach into most Americans' pockets...high-octane fuel for the growth of government spending. Between 1913 and 1994, inflation-adjusted federal government expenditures increased by 13,592 percent! Over this same period, personal and corporate income taxes grew from 7 percent of total federal revenues and 0.1 percent of the economy, to more than 54 percent of total federal revenues and over 10 percent of U.S. GDP." Original Intent and the Income Tax

So did I. Imagine, if you will, a system where the government made it hugely advantageous for employers to offer auto insurance to their employees. Soon constituency groups formed to express their "outrage" that some employers didn't offer this insurance and laws were passed to mandate it (at least for full-time employment). This would remove the average consumer completely from knowing or caring about the cost of such insurance and because companies are mandated to purchase it it for them in a third party type situation they have no control over how their employees use it. Would this not be ripe situation for insurance companies to raise prices? Now as deductibles started being limited by law and the number of things insurance was required to pay increased (oil changes, tuneups, fuel, and eventually even elective modifications to vehicles) wouldn't the price of such things sky rocket as the consumer ceased to care what any of these things cost? What if mechanics needed to go through extensive education and government licensing to do even the most basic work to any vehicle massively restricting the number of experts? Would not the cost of even the most basic and simple vehicle maintenance skyrocket? Then imagine someone on an online discussion board in such a world pointing out that the "private" system has so obviously failed and asking why the government doesn't just take over the whole damn thing?

Private system? Please tell me about this unregulated private system? I've lived in the US my entire life and didn't know it existed. All this time I've been using the inefficient highly regulated system which gets worse and worse every year. I'd love to know where this private system of which you speak is and how I gain access to it?

Yes, probably not this year. But this is an indication of what they are thinking. Maybe it gets through in two years with the cap at $10M rather than 3, in some kind of compromise. That will be a foot in the door to loot a little out of these accounts. They can reduce the cap in the future and of course inflation will be reducing the cap passively year in and year out, allowing them to loot more and more each year. This is why I've never trusted the Roth IRA. I want my tax break now, while I can get it. I don't want to have to trust that these accounts will work anything like they do now someday when I retire.

Eric, I think you'll find that (all campaign rhetoric aside) Republicans aren't all that keen on reducing taxation. There's billions of people in the world in need of bombing and that takes cash. Lot's of it. The two party system is a ratcheting effect for increasing the size and scope of the state. The D's create programs and raise taxes which the R's never repeal, the R's pass drug laws and start wars which the D's won't end. Back and forth, up and up, and on and on it goes, with both of the constituencies always blaming the other side, and neither ever realizing that both sides are really just two faces of the same coin. Government is what it is, it does what it does. This has been the case for over 5000 years. If you have it, this is what you get.

The government is looking at the huge pile of money sitting in these accounts and is salivating at the prospects of getting their hands on it. This is just the fist salvo in a process that will lead to just that. There is no escape from the looters. None.

The poll asks if bitcoin is a safe store of value. To which I answered "No". Your first post asked "Would you ever consider holding/trading Bitcoins?" I have considered it, but haven't done so yet. I've been watching bitcoin since the exchange value was well below $1, but have done nothing but watch. If bitcoin catches on it will be worth many many multiples of where is now, because there will never be more than 21Million bitcoins in existence. People will be trading with small fractions of a bitcoin for most items. What has stopped me is that I am not convinced of the safety of the whole thing. There are flaws in the way bitcoin works that I'm not comfortable with. When Uncle Sam wants it to stop they will stop it. One such flaw off the top of my head is that everyone needs to keep a copy of the blockchain on their computers for bitcoin to remain decentralized. This blockchain contains every bitcoin transaction. I won't even get into the fact that this file is already huge and will grow significantly over time. But hackers have already done things like structure transactions in such a way as to encode pictures in the blockchain. What if someone did this to encode childporn into the blockchain? This would effectively shutdown bitcoin as a legitimate currency, as no one would want to be caught with this file on their computers. I've read about other flaws, but this is the easiest one to pull off for anyone who wants to shutdown bitcoin and drive it permanently underground. I hope something like bitcoin will eventually become a replacement for government money, but I don't think bitcoin is quite robust enough to manage it.

After reading your summary I was hoping the link would be from The Onion, not the Washington Post, but I should have known it had to be true. You just couldn't make something like this up.

Not really the same as charging a membership fee. Once you pay your Costco fee you can walk in and browse around everyday (or multiple times per day) if you want at no extra charge. And I'm not sure, but I think you can go in and walk around Costco anytime you want, you just need to be a member to buy something. I've never been in a Costco, but BJ's wholesale club in my area works this way. You can go in and look around anytime, they only check for your membership card at the register before you checkout. They want you to look around so that you will see what you could get if you were a member. This store is the exact opposite. If you do not already know what is in there, you'd have to pay just to find out.

I had to laugh at this: If that were true the problem wouldn't exist. Why would people buy elsewhere if they were already in your store and your prices were just as good? And how could people possibly buy elsewhere if the product isn't available anywhere else? I wouldn't pay someone $5 just to enter a store, unless I already knew what I wanted and was sure I wanted to buy it there. In other words, they will no longer have any customers at all in the store who are "just looking". Idiots!

Elon Musk at TED Video

I'm not sure where to put this, but it's interesting so I'll put it here. These glasses "cure" red/green color blindness. They were invented to help doctors, surgeons, and phlebotomists, see blood vessels, it was only later that it was discovered that color blind people could distinguish between red and green while wearing them. There is all kinds of other uses for the technology that is under development. Such as light bulbs (for dressing rooms in clothing stores for instance) that make you look younger. As well as light bulbs with the equivalent effect as the glasses I mentioned above without the glasses. How Mark Changizi Conquered Colorblindness With Glasses The web site for the glasses: o2amp.com The research company that created them: http://2ai.org/

I've been using Feedly since I got the notice. If you go into settings and make the index page your start page and change the default view to "condensed" it is quick and minimal like reader was. Also right now they are basically a front end for google reader, but plan on seamlessly transitioning all of their users when reader shuts down: Transitioning from Google Reader to feedly I'm planing on trying some of the other readers as well when I have some time. Feedly is good enough for now though.

My broker (Fidelity) doesn't charge for partial fills if they all happen in the same day. But if part of the order fills today and another part on another day, I would be charged twice. I've built positions in stocks which didn't even trade a single share on many days. I've done this by picking off offers that I've wanted (and paying the commissions) over a number of months and years. And disposed of it the same way. If the stock is sufficiently undervalued then the commissions ($7.95/trade for me) are negligible in the end. If your valuation turns out to be wrong then the commissions will be the least of your problems. Getting out of these stocks can be nearly impossible (without massive losses anyway) if the excrement hits the fan. I'd imagine (but I don't know) that there would be a hefty fee to call a full service broker and have them trade it the way Sanjeev does. Probably equal to quite a few $7.95 trades.

Or it could be that Apple doesn't target price segments that other companies do, so they have a free reign on those segments. that's true. but then they lose market share and become a product for the 1%. :) I think Apple does target upper income consumers, but it isn't just the 1%, it is more like the 25%.

Excellent footage of it from a distance in this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=QIMKQihoYRI

I think to be successful and make a positive difference in the world you need to believe and have a tremendous amount of faith.... in yourself. "But you're a profoundly religious man, Mr. Roark—in your own way."

TO SELL IS HUMAN, by Daniel H. Pink giofranchi Another book added to my ever growing to-read list. I seem to add 3 books to the list for every one I am able to read and take off the list. Thank you for posting this, though, if the rest of the book is nearly as good as that snippet it should prove a fascinating read.

I'd estimate if you took my entire TV watching over the last year it would average about 2-3 hours per week. I like Boardwalk Empire, that is the only series I watched in the last year. I used to like The Sopranos back when it was on and I like Dexter, but I don't have Showtime so I wait until I can get the season DVDs from Netflix. When Boardwalk Empire was on I probably averaged 3 hours per week, when it wasn't probably about 2 hours or less. The only TV I watch regularly is a DVD per week from Netflix on a Friday or Saturday night. I've never been into sports very much. There have been years I'd watch the Red Sox, but I don't think I've seen a game in the last 2 years. I probably haven't watched a football or basketball game since I was a teenager (20+ years ago), I don't even watch the superbowl. And I don't think I've ever watched a complete hockey or soccer game on TV. I read probably 8-10 hours per week though.

Thanks for the link. I don't follow Olympus (or any other Japanese company), so I never read that thread before today. Interesting. Japan is a culture I have a very hard time understanding. Not only the business culture, but all of it. Probably for this reason alone, I've never been very interested in Japanese stocks.

I couldn't find anything searching for Olympic Camera. Do you mean Olympus Camera? They seem to still be around. What happened to them?

There is also a large cultural component to violence. Many people like to point to homicide statistics between the US and the UK and make a correlation between the current gun laws and the current homicide rates forgetting that correlation doesn't equal causation. What you find if you look at the statistics over time is that 1) the UK always had a much much lower homicide rate than the US even back when neither country had any gun laws to speak of. And 2) the UK's rate is much higher today than earlier in the last century when it had no gun laws to speak of. You could take that data and conclude that all else being equal gun laws increase violence. Statistics can be used to prove just about anything as the IE vs homicide rate chart shows. Again correlation doesn't imply causation. http://i.imgur.com/47D7zGq.png

The original gun control laws in the US were passed as a direct result of the fact that whites didn't want blacks to own guns. In Massachusetts where I lived up to about 14 months ago you still have to ask your police chief to issue you a license and he gets to use his "discretion" to decide if you are an "appropriate person" (read: white). I find it disgusting that even in a liberal state such as Massachusetts these old clearly racist laws are still on the books and supported whole heatedly by the so-called progressive liberals (the white ones anyway). Oh wait a minute... or are you suggesting that we discriminate against the blind?