I know of no other country where love of
money has such a grip on men's hearts or where stronger scorn is
expressed for the theory of permanent equality of
property.--deTocqueville
The underground economy in the U.S. is estimated at $450 billion. The question is, of course, how would they know?
A Galton-like idea from Sowell: Even if an intellectual knows more than anybody else, that is not the same as saying that he knows more than everybody else put together — which is what would be needed to justify substituting his judgment for that expressed by millions of others through the market or through the ballot box.
The underground economy in the U.S. is estimated at $450 billion. The question is, of course, how would they know?
A Galton-like idea from Sowell: Even if an intellectual knows more than anybody else, that is not the same as saying that he knows more than everybody else put together — which is what would be needed to justify substituting his judgment for that expressed by millions of others through the market or through the ballot box.
Who is....Christina Kelly?
Home
ownership is at a 19 year low, apartment living at a 17 year high.
Balloon mortgages are coming due so foreclosures are up as well. 40% of
millennials say they want to own a home. 97% of late teens do.
The
White House had their own photos for the Nurse Pham Obama visit,
replacing independent photojournalism with visual press releases. This
provided an opportunity for some pent-up resentment to emerge. Former
New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson said, “It is the most
secretive White House that I have ever been involved in covering”; New
York Times reporter James Risen said, “I think Obama hates the press”;
and CBS News’s Bob Schieffer said, “This administration exercises more
control than George W. Bush’s did, and his before that.” USA Today
Washington Bureau Chief Susan Page called the current White House not
only “more restrictive” but also “more dangerous” to the press than any
other in history. This is the press that loves Obama so, presumably, his
opponents can be forgiven their excesses.
AC/DC drummer Phil Rudd has been charged with trying to arrange a murder, BBC reports.
AC/DC drummer Phil Rudd has been charged with trying to arrange a murder, BBC reports.
According
to new statistics released by the Association of American Publishers,
the first seven months of 2014 showed marked growth in e-book revenue —
largely thanks to young adult and children's literature.
The
WSJ has a short weekly article called "The Experts" where opinions and
advice from business experts is offered. This is from a recent article
by Tom Davenport a Distinguished Professor at Babson College, a research
fellow at the Center for Digital Business, director of research at the
International Institute for Analytics, and a senior adviser to Deloitte
Analytics: "Understanding how to design, write and maintain a computer
program is important even if you never plan to write one in business. If
you don’t know anything about coding, you won’t be able to function
effectively in the world today."
Golden oldie:
There
is 24 trillion dollars in retirement plans. An additional 3 trillion
dollars are unfunded, 1% in private plans, the rest in state and federal
plans. 41% of 55-59 year old workers do not contribute to 401-K plans.
McDonalds has just announced that the minimum wage changes will make them replace some workers with automation. Lowe's will do the same.
The
$300,000 NIH's study of the response of mothers to pictures of
babies compared to their response to pictures of puppies was
inconclusive. Fortunately they have another proposal, this for $400,000,
to include men in the study. Fairness.
Orbital
Sciences Corp.'s Antares rocket and Cygnus cargo module blew up Tuesday
night just moments after lifting off from NASA's launch complex at
Wallops Island, Virginia. The accident could draw scrutiny to the space
agency's growing reliance on private U.S. companies in the post-shuttle
era. NASA is paying billions of dollars to Virginia-based Orbital
Sciences and the California-based SpaceX company to make station
deliveries, and it's counting on SpaceX and Boeing to start flying U.S.
astronauts to the orbiting lab as early as 2017. It was the fourth
Cygnus bound for the orbiting lab; the first flew just over a year ago.
SpaceX is scheduled to launch another Dragon supply ship from Cape
Canaveral, Florida, in December.
Until Tuesday, all of the supply missions by Orbital Sciences and SpaceX had been near-flawless.
700,000 Social Security homes have student loans outstanding.
At
least 20 emails between AG Eric Holder and his spouse, Sharon Malone,
a medical doctor in Washington, D.C., and between Holder and his late
mother are being withheld from a Freedom of Information suit over the
"Fast and Furious" scandal under a claim of "executive privilege." Quite
something. And no one laughed.
According
to the GAO, paying an additional 1% a year in 401-K expenses can reduce
your nest egg by 17% after two decades. The expense ratio for any
mutual fund — whether in your 401(k) or elsewhere — doesn’t capture all
the costs you’re paying. The biggest missing expense is commissions the fund pays to buy and sell investments, which are disclosed in the “statement of additional information.”
Quiddity \KWID-ih-tee\, n.:
The essence, nature, or distinctive peculiarity of a thing. A
hairsplitting distinction; a trifling point; a quibble. An eccentricity;
an odd feature. From the scholastic Medieval Latin term quidditas, "essence," from quid, "what."
A recent
Chapman University survey showed that more Americans believe in the
lost civilization of Atlantis and that "UFOs are probably spaceships"
than evolution and that as many people believed in Bigfoot as the Big
Bang.
The investigator who led
Homeland Security's internal review of how the 2012 Secret Service
prostitution scandal was handled has himself resigned after he was
reportedly spotted with a hooker. Probably research.
As
of Oct. 25, the World Health Organization reports that 450 health care
workers have contracted Ebola this year and 244 have died. One in seven
people infected with Ebola doesn't have a fever before diagnosis. Data
on over 4,000 Ebola cases — the most complete analysis ever — published
Oct. 16 in the New England Journal of Medicine show that 13% of
patients don't develop fever early on. Relying on returning doctors and
nurses to monitor themselves assumes they will catch any sign of
illness quickly and avoid spreading it. But the New England Journal of
Medicine research found doctors and nurses with Ebola don't get to the
hospital sooner. The administration has taken the position that
temperature monitoring is adequate yet there is actually strong evidence
that is not true. But there clearly is more going on here than science
and epidemiology. Thomas Frieden, the head of the CDC, said, in response
to the move by several governors to create quarantine programs for
doctors and nurses returning from West Africa, that isolation would be a
"stigma" and make them "pariahs." Stigma? Pariahs? These people are
willing to sacrifice a lot for some principle that is hard to define.
Remember when AIDS was supposed to be a heterosexual disease?
Ice
cores in Greenland contain traces of lead dust from 2,000 years ago,
carried on the wind from giant Roman smelters. One of the largest,
located in Spain, was operated by tens of thousands of slaves.
Christina Kelly, 39, is filing for divorce in Manhattan from her husband, a big deal Wall Street guy. There has not been much attention paid to this suit in the U.S. but the Brits have been running it. The allegations are startling. Drugs--lots of them--and wild and weird sex accusations fill the complaint. It gives you a very unsettling feeling to think people with a lot of financial sway in the culture do stuff like this.
If corporations and businesses do not create jobs, as Obama and Hillary say, why is outsourcing bad?
Christina Kelly, 39, is filing for divorce in Manhattan from her husband, a big deal Wall Street guy. There has not been much attention paid to this suit in the U.S. but the Brits have been running it. The allegations are startling. Drugs--lots of them--and wild and weird sex accusations fill the complaint. It gives you a very unsettling feeling to think people with a lot of financial sway in the culture do stuff like this.
If corporations and businesses do not create jobs, as Obama and Hillary say, why is outsourcing bad?
There
is fear in Europe of deflation. What happens? Prices fall. Incomes fall
and offset any advantage of lower prices. People put off purchases with
hopes that falling prices will give them a cheaper product later. Debts
are harder to pay and are defaulted on; that compromises the banks.
$4 billion will be spent on this year's election, an off year.
The
U.N. is making a bid to control the Internet and make it a utility. 17%
of the phone bill is tax. How the American citizen is supposed to vote
for a tax that supports its enemies is, as yet, unexplained. What is
also unexplained is why we would accept the idea of an international
censor--taxation being the inherent ability to control. The U.S. is in favor, in favor, of this U.N. control. One can only wonder how Saudi Arabia, Chad and other lovers of freedom will take their new responsibility.
AAAAAaaaaannnnnndddddd.....a graph on what and when earnings start to out-gain contributions to savings:
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