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Tim Eriksen

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Everything posted by Tim Eriksen

  1. You are way underestimating the Falcons offense. If Prescott shredded Green Bay's defense, Matt Ryan will kill them. I say that as a Hawks fan. Falcons are the best team remaining.
  2. click include and then show all button and it will show form 3's and 4's
  3. I hold to nearly the opposite opinion. While Presidents rarely can boost the economy I think reducing excessive regulations, repatriating funds stuck overseas, eliminating inversions by lowering taxes will definitely be helpful. Trump will actively use the bully pulpit against corporations moving jobs out of the country. He will shame them. We are far along in a weak bull market but valuations are not excessive (closer to full value I admit). We do not have high employment. We have a low reported unemployment percentage which is not the same. If wages rose the work force would grow. Oil prices are relatively low. Government spending is not high versus historical numbers in terms of % of GDP.
  4. negative is <2% i have a cash component. do i include that in my denominator? Absolutely yes. Anything else is rather meaningless.
  5. Trump wants 15% and the House Republicans 20%. Yes I think it is a done deal and will passed fairly quickly and be retroactive to the beginning of 2017. There are some issues that have to be ironed out, for example immediate expensing of capital equipment. Last I heard if a company chose that option it could not deduct interest expense. What they need to clean up is the whole subisidiary in Ireland that owns the IP and makes most of the profits avoiding US taxation. Maybe the lower rate will capture that on its own, but they need to ban it. If some of that "lost revenue" comes back to US taxes the overall cost of the tax cut would be smaller. Right now corporate tax revenues are about 300 billion annually, so a tax cut would likely reduce that by 100 billion. But it should lead to greater investment, a wealth effect, improved pension plan funding, higher employment, etc.
  6. You do realize that poverty statistics exclude from income all government benefits? to say we have 47 million living in poverty is not accurate. In other words, yes we have some poor, but no one is starving. There is substantial assistance to the poor in this country in terms of education, food, housing, healthcare, unemployment, etc. The government has done and continues to do an immense amount for the poor in this country. Of course "government" is an entity funded by income and corporate tax payers, so the upper middle class and rich have done this for them. The goal is not make the poor middle class. It is a safety net, which for most should be short term, to allow them to better their own lives. For most of my life I have been solidly middle class, and I received far more in benefits just from public education than what I or my parents contributed. I am thankful to the wealthy for their generosity because I do not have a right to expect another to pay for me or for my children.
  7. "every human being has a right to their own life" Lets just stop here because the right hasn't even settled on this yet. I doubt if they include blacks,women or muslims and their leader has openly stated that. Let them get to that intellect level first and then we can read the rest. This has to be the dumbest comment I have seen in a while. Who supports the right of the unborn? Who supports freedom not to buy health insurance? Who supports charter schools? Who supports smaller government? Who supports freedom not to sell a wedding cake for a same sex marriage?
  8. The analysis on this election will be interesting. Polls were wrong by 2-3 points on average, worse if not for the few LA Times poll. Was it that people were afraid to give their true leaning? The problem with that is the polls were wrong on the Senate races too. I don't see how the argument holds up. No major reason to be embarrassed to vote R in NC, PA, WI, MO, etc. Maybe the Trump supporter just didn't participate in the polls. Was it late undecideds? Trump did run hard hitting and I thought effective ads the last week. Was it a poor job by the Clinton campaign? They spent heavily in OH, FL and NC and little in states they knew Trump needed and was targeting demographically (rust belt ex OH). She didn't target just what she needed to win, she tried to win and swing the Senate. Was it just a case of overreach? Or was it the recent American "tradition" of Presidential change every 8 years? Ike, Kennedy/Johnson, Nixon/Ford, Carter only 4 but he stunk, Reagan/Bush an unusually long 12 years, Clinton, Bush 43, Obama.
  9. Thanks Tim, for your thoughtful response. It is an interesting conundrum for me, because if you hire a hit man to kill someone, I think you can equally be charged with murder, not just the hit man. And I think you should be. To me, this question might be problematic to the anti-choicers in the same way as "can you abort a baby while the mom is labor, about to deliver it?" is to the pro-choicers. The pro-choice counter-argument is that such a scenario basically never occurs outside life-threatening scenarios. But that's still intellectually unsatisfying, even if it is a practical position to take. Just as "charge the doctor, not the woman" is a practical anti-choice solution, but still intellectually unsatisfying. (You can pay a person to kill someone for you, and not be charged? And what if the woman goes at herself with a coat hook so she's the doctor and the patient?) I think the big problem is the main milestones in development that people understand are conception and birth. If technology adds a couple other milestones like "ability to think" (don't ask me to define that, because I don't know), it might make some of these answers easier. (For instance, we already consider death to be cessation of brain functions, so a loose parallel is already there.) Area men compete to see who will be the Rachel Dolezal of abortion. How does a white woman viewing herself as black relate???
  10. Just out of curiosity, if you feel this way, would you have the courts throw women who have abortions into prison for first degree murder? (Like, if you think abortion is the deliberate killing of people then it's murder. And it's clearly premeditated, which makes it first degree.) I saw a video where they asked some anti-choice protestors that, and only one suggested prison was the right punishment, which seemed odd to me. So I'm curious if that's where your beliefs lead you, to first degree murder charges. Or do you just say fetuses are people who deserve to be protected, but are different somehow so it would be a lesser charge than first degree murder? Or something else? That is an excellent question. Would I have courts throw women who have abortions into prison for first degree murder? NO. Prior to Roe v Wade (and Doe v. Bolton) while some state laws made it a crime for the woman, as best I can tell, no one was ever actually prosecuted. The laws and more importantly prosecution were focused on the abortionist. The abortionist should be the only one charged. That is why pro-life people were stunned by Trump's comments in a townhall during the campaign, which he later corrected.
  11. Tim, we're not really gonna engage on the abortion topic cause that's not gonna lead anywhere good. That argument that Hillary is such a flawed candidate and anyone else would win bigly is such BS. Hillary is sitting on a 4-5% polling lead right now. One of the polls tested a generic Obama against trump and it came out that he would win by 12. That's Obama that is having a Regan like approval rating. But it's also an Obama that's not running so he didn't take electoral fire for for 18 months. If he were to actually run he'll win maybe by 6 and that would be mainly because of higher black turnout. So give me a break with the flawed candidate. As for the deplorable part, I think H said that about half of Trump supporters fall into a basket, then she revised it to maybe less than that. The fact is that there is a good chunk of deplorables supporting Trump: the alt-right (hell one of the leaders of the alt-right is his campaign "CEO"), the KKK, the guy yelling Jew-S-A. That's a pretty deplorable bunch. Top it off with Trump supporters self identifying as deplorables and being proud. Then you have the family values people standing firmly behind Trump. While I know a lot of them and know that they're not depolable, they're still committing a pretty deplorable act. Let's call it hypocritical instead. As for freedom of speech. Trump is the one banning media outlets, talking about opening up libel laws, raving about dishonest media, and directing ire toward the media at his rallies. Secret service never had to escorts journalists out of Clinton rallies for their protection. They had to do that at Trump rallies. As for freedom of religion. Clinton never threatened anyone's freedom of religion. Trump is the one who talked about closing places of worship, surveillance of places of worship, and banning people belonging to a religion from entering the US. On taxes, Trump's people just say lower taxes. They don't care where they go or what they do they just want lower taxes. There can be a discussion here but they're not engaging on it at least not honestly. There are two dimensions. One around services - this is more mathematical. This is an efficiency argument. My view is there are some services that can be more efficiently delivered by the private sector and should be shifted. Also there are some services that are more efficiently delivered by the public sector and should be shifted. The other dimension is welfare - this is more personal and subjective. We live in an unequal society. Because of this I am a well off individual. Because of this others are not. Then I sit back and look at what kind of society I want to live in. For example, I do not want to live in one where people are in danger of disease and death because they are poorer than i am. To live in that kind of a society I am willing to pay more. What's amazing to me is that people that are so concerned with life do not share my view. They're so concerned with the 9 months between ejaculate and birth. After that they're just concerned with low taxes. In the US there's still one man, one vote. Everyone can vote for anyone they want. You want to vote for Trump, it's your right. Go ahead and do that, I respect that. But please spare me the bullshit. That I do not respect. Or maybe come up with some better one. I may be able to respect that. Right. Let's not discuss abortion cause that never gets anywhere good (sarcasm). You try to make a moral argument on help later in life but refuse to engage in moral arguments while in the womb. Don't misunderstand, I am NOT trying to switch the discussion to the killing of over a million people each year. My only point was you fail to see how that is a meaningful issue to a large chunk of the electorate. You fail to see that Hillary's position is extreme (any time for any reason). The point I was making you recognize but then irrationally dismiss. You know Obama would be up big in a hypothetical matchup (12 points), but then assume that it would not really be the case in a real matchup (you arbitrarily make it 6), You are ignoring the facts and spinning them to defend a flawed candidate. That was my point and you proved it. The only bullshit is what you are telling yourself. The overwhelming majority of the country sees the flaws in both candidates and you don't. You are just like the person who thinks Trump is good and Hillary bad, you just have it reversed. It is pure partisanship. It is pure self deception. That was my only point. You proved it but you still don't see it. I don't want to vote for Trump. I do prefer the Republican platform on social and economic issues over the Democratic platform. That is how I voted.
  12. What I am surprised is how little it would take to move the needle to the other side. Imagine if we just had another meltdown similar to 2008. I can guarantee that Trump would have won handily no matter how racist,misogynist, dangerous tyrant he would sound. How are we any different than the authoritarian countries that we lecture every day about the wonders of democracy and open society ? They just happen to have shitty economy and bad neighbors.Doesn't make China look so bad does it when they clamp down on the free media? How about Venezuela or Iran who blame their neighbors for their problems? Or Russia who employs the draconian measure to save the republic? Or Israel who we lecture how to treat the muslims. This close race is what scares the hell out of me. I wore why I believe this is fascism. The thing is that compared to past fascists Trump is kind of incompetent and kind of an idiot. He ranks pretty low on the scale. What if we got a more competent one. Or what if he didn't pick on Mexicans but instead picked on the Chinese or something. He may very well have closed that small gap. We got luck this time (hopefully. don't count chickens and jinx it). Hopefully tomorrow is a wake up call and after the hangover clears America realizes it had a close call, does some serious introspection and cleans up its act. I won't hold my breath though. The reason it is close race is because of how flawed Clinton is. A decent candidate would destroy Trump. That so many on this board cannot see that is what amazes me. Instead of looking at their candidate and/or her policies they call the other side deplorables, and draw comparisons to Nazi Germany. It is not deplorable to want to protect life, freedoms of speech and religion, second amendment rights, have lower taxes, or want to control our borders. Don't get me wrong, Trump sucks. He is a pig. Just as any decent Democrat should easily beat Trump, any decent Republican would be comfortably ahead of Clinton. Like it or not they are our only two real choices.
  13. Do you not even realize that your idea violates the Constitution?? You can't tax certain groups for participating in the political process. The reasons lines are long is government is incompetent and doing even simple things such as holding an election.
  14. And no, I don't have to respect people's choices when they are bad choices. When it comes to corruption and lies there are actually metrics and facts they can look at. Here's corruption and lies metric: Which candidate is under criminal investigation by the FBI with a highly likely indictment forthcoming? Clinton ...... YES Trump ....... NO It appears to be multiple investigations - the misuse of classified information (email server) and the Foundation.
  15. Wow! In one paragraph in one post you managed to lecture about respecting women's choices and railed against abortion. That's just a complete new level of bs right there. And no, I don't have to respect people's choices when they are bad choices. It's not like you're ordering something for dinner - well that looks gross but I respect your choice. When it comes to corruption and lies there are actually metrics and facts they can look at. So they either didn't compare, did bad research, or did good research but they still didn't care. None of that is worthy of respect. Now here Cardboard is as partisan and ideological as they come. But even he went like "C'mon man, this guy Trump is too much". Now he and I probably disagree on a lot of things and will probably continue to disagree on a lot of things. But that is worthy of respect. In addition, if you guys are so worried about the number of abortions then why are the anti-abortion people so against contraception and sex education which are the biggest factors in decreasing the number of abortions? So you actually believe that when it comes to lies and corruption that Trump is a worse choice than Hillary. Are you trolling me? Seriously, you have to be joking or blind to reality.
  16. Human beings in general are screwed up in the head. Politics may just be the place where this shows up most. Maybe these women think differently than you. Maybe they are smarter. Maybe they compared both candidates and decided that a corrupt, serial liar, who supports the killing of unborn children at any time for any reason is worse in their mind than Trump. It doesn't mean they love Trump, or even like Trump. Nor does it mean they don't care about sexual harassment or the disabled. It means they believe HRC is a worse choice in their minds. You can rip on them or respect their choice even if you don't agree.
  17. A lot of people have had single positions average 50% per year for a few years, but that is a far cry from one's overall portfolio. I think the following was from Packer on this subject a number of years ago. It is not doable. No one has a public record of success picking stocks like this. Even the 70 year old Warren would make misjudgements and mistakes that would reduce his rate back to 30% over a few years. In his 50% there are several assumptions I think he has overlooked: 1) He has the intelligence of hundred companies feeding him daily information to help inform his choices today. Without this back drop he wouldn't have nearly the handle on what the overall economy is doing as he does now. That would handicap his results. 2) He is assuming that the competition is the same as it was in the 1950s - it isn't 3) Many of the things he did to juice his early results are much more difficult in todays climate due to competition, greater regulation etc. The Hayden Ahmanson affair comes to mind where his lawyer pal went around Nebraska offering 100 per share. Today the company would have been required to publicly disclose that they were planning a share buyback and were going private. 4) Greater investor sophistication leads to fewer of the workout type things he did such as Dempster Mill, Sanborn Map. Many fewer companies are allowed to get so cheap that they have more cash and securities on the balance sheet than the market value. I saw one once. 5) The baseline is higher now than the 50s. They were coming off of the great depression remnants. Times were very different. Buffett rode the wave. Had he been born in the 1950s rather than in 1930 we may never have heard of him.
  18. I can't explain why Buffett thinks the way he does, regardless his reasoning is flawed. If you look it up the rich pay a much higher percentage rate than the middle class or poor. There has been a massive decrease in the rates the poor and middle class pay due to the Reagan and Bush tax cuts. The poor now have negative rates, and lower middle class pays 1/4 of what they did 40 years ago. Just look up effective rates by income. We are massively more progressive. Yes I absolutely disagree with his overall point. Data does not support it. Of course there are some exceptions, but his point is more across the board than a few isolated issues like carried interest. The group that gets hit the hardest is the upper middle class earning $150k to $250k. Their income is almost all earned wages and they are ineligible for most subsidies (e.g. child tax credit). The current debate is all because one party is using it to deceive people. It is so commonly believed that few are willing to stand up against it. He's not talking about people earning 150-250k, he's talking about the mega-rich and his proposal only applies to those earning more than 1m and 10m and the goal is to bring their levels back closer to what other people who aren't getting special breaks pay. So talking about how the poor pay negative taxes or how the middle class pays this or that is a totally different question, which Buffett wasn't talking about in his piece about coddling the super-rich. But this is going in circles, so let's leave it at that. I never said he was talking about people earning 150-250k. It is hard to have a meaningful exchange if you don't carefully read what I or what Buffett wrote. Buffett is talking about the mega rich in COMPARISON TO the middle class, so what the middle class pays is relevant. After all that was his point that he pays more than his secretary, which is pure fiction.
  19. I can't explain why Buffett thinks the way he does, regardless his reasoning is flawed. If you look it up the rich pay a much higher percentage rate than the middle class or poor. There has been a massive decrease in the rates the poor and middle class pay due to the Reagan and Bush tax cuts. The poor now have negative rates, and lower middle class pays 1/4 of what they did 40 years ago. Just look up effective rates by income. We are massively more progressive. Yes I absolutely disagree with his overall point. Data does not support it. Of course there are some exceptions, but his point is more across the board than a few isolated issues like carried interest. The group that gets hit the hardest is the upper middle class earning $150k to $250k. Their income is almost all earned wages and they are ineligible for most subsidies (e.g. child tax credit). The current debate is all because one party is using it to deceive people. It is so commonly believed that few are willing to stand up against it.
  20. Buffett either intentionally misleads about his taxes versus his Secretary or he is appallingly ignorant of how faulty his analysis was. 1. He used taxable income and not income to lower the denominator substantially which disproportionately impacted the calculations. 2. He included the employer portion of payroll taxes which disproportionately impacted the results. Once coudl further argue that this not only increased taxes for his secretary but it allowed him to act as if BRK (and thius himself as a look through owner) is not paying those taxes. 3. He excluded medical benefits form income which also disproportionately impacted results since the cost impacts the secretary more than him. 4. He includes payroll taxes but excludes future social security benefits, which for most people results in all the taxes plus being returned to them, which once again disproportionately impacted results. This accoutns for the majority of taxes the middle class pays. 5. He used himself as an example of the super-rich, which is problematic since nearly all of his wealth was not earned income but stock appreciation (Trump is also a bad example as his wealth is likely unrealized appreciation as well, except in real estate you borrow against the increase generating tax free cash flow). 6. He ignores corporate taxes entirely. As a business owner one could argue that you are paying whatever portion of the business you own. Of course the income of the business would need to be included as well. BRK has historically been a full tax payer. Are_We_Really_Coddling_the_Super_Rich.pdf
  21. The majority of people in the U.S. do not support: building a wall along the Mexican border, banning Muslim immigrants and refugees, and trade protectionism. You are misreading a vocal minority for a majority. I don't think this is true. Polls I have seen show a majority do favor protectionism over free trade. You are right that majority may not favor the other two, but they are near 50/50. Polls don't favor a wall along the whole border but that is not what has been proposed. It is all about wording in polls.
  22. I don't think I missed that at all. I would agree with you if you are talking about stiffing contractors. He seems to have repeatedly done that. That is disgusting if true. But that is not the main point of your comments as I understand them. It is about stiffing lenders. He didn't. The lenders made a non recourse loan and took the risk of the business not being able to support the debt. It wasn't planned by Trump or the lenders. He had no moral obligation to cover a debt that was non-recourse. I think you know that. (I get it that I too would feel obligated to pay it back, but that feeling is not necessarily correct.) You know that due to having no recourse the loan is priced higher. If the lender wanted recourse they would have demanded it or else not made the loan. The lender chose not to. The business under performed. It happened. I think there is no meaningful difference between him and most mortgage borrowers who defaulted. Personally I think you are arguing your point based on animosity toward him. I dislike him too. But I think your argument fails a logic test. Sorry to have butted in. :)
  23. I don't think you get it. You are saying Buffet should keep funding the Hathaway mills instead of shutting them down, and you are saying that Buffet should keep funding Dexter shoes even after billions of dollars invested in it already went into the drain. It is all about personal reputation. Therefore Buffet should rather keep losing money on these investees than take the lose and move on? I am sure you will disagree on that, but when the same thing is applied to Trump, you demonize him and make he look like an evil? You completely miss my point. If the business isn't working, you pay your debts and shut the business down. You don't just declare bankruptcy, walk out and stiff your creditors like Trump has done six times. That's wrong. If this is the case then what's the point of having an LLC? BTW do you even know what LLC means and what legal rights and protections you have? John Malone said it is important to compartmentalize the debt. Do you even understand what he means? BTW, how long have you been doing investing? I can't imagine such words coming out of an investing veteran. cwericb, Do you believe the same way about those walked away from their mortgage in the housing crisis? What about bankruptcy for medical bills? If you don't, isn't that hypocritical. If you do, your candidate would be appalled, and you are morally requiring something that is not legally required. Non-recourse debt is just that and is priced higher for a reason. You know the saddest part about reading these discussions isn't that someone has radically different views, it is that so many are blind to the same problems in their own candidate/party. How can a a Trump or Hillary supporter adopt the rationale that the other candidate is unqualified for lying while saying their candidate isn't? I know we are all susceptible to bias, but we should be diligent about reducing it in our lives.
  24. Do you think Trump would feel bound by his campaign once in office? You can't even say that you know where Trump stands on things and that once elected that's what he'd do, because in the past he's been all over the place and seems more guided by self-interest in the moment than by values that are stable over time. IMO one of the variables you forgot is that one candidate is pretty predictable, while the other isn't. I wouldn't mind it so much if I also thought he was honest, put the interests of others above his own, wasn't belligerent, etc. But unpredictable + these things gets pretty scary.. No I do not think that Trump would feel bound by anything nor do I know what he truly believes and would do. What if his views were actually the same as Hillary, but if that is the case then it is essentially the same as a vote for her. Without a doubt Trump is higher risk than Hillary, but he is the only one who could pleasantly surprise. The risks are largely, but clearly not totally, mitigated by our system of divided government. I didn't ignore the issue of predictability. It is included in the inversion. Presidential power is vast but somewhat limited. I too would prefer him to be honest and put the interests of others before his own and wasn't belligerent. If those attributes were even remotely true of either candidate it would be a simpler choice.
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