[jstoesz]

Does an hour away count as your neighborhood (not including skinning time of course)?

[jstoesz]

brawely or someplace around the salton sea perhaps?

[jstoesz]

In keeping with the topic, I happened to be visiting my folks last week in Minneapolis, and I took these as the sun was going down two blocks from their place. This is my former neighborhood.

[jstoesz]

In the year and a half I have been in n. california, airfare has nearly doubled between here and our three major destinations, minneapolis, orange county, and san diego. The expensive tickets are more expensive, and the deals have gotten very very scarce. SouthWest used to be cheap, now it is the same if not more than the other major carriers. My experience is purely anecdotal, but I seem to read a story about airlines hiking fares every month or so. Frequent flier miles? fugetaboutit.

[jstoesz]

I can’t decide to what degree I should be offended by this thread.

[jstoesz]

subcontinentians

[jstoesz]

I was impressed by the idea of it, but calculating cpi is about as statistics heavy as anything. So, I start from a heavily skeptical bias.

Lies, damned lies, and statistics.

[jstoesz]

[quote=Rich Toscano][quote=jstoesz]I saw an inflation calculation out of Stanford or Harvard not to long ago that used amazon prices or some such thing to determine inflation. Does anyone know what I am talking about? It obviously did not jive with the gov stats, but nothing seems to in my reading. Government stats always land on the conservative side, by design I suppose. Hasn’t the inflation formula changed a couple dozen times since Nixon killed the last vestiges of the gold standard?[/quote]

You are probably thinking of this: http://bpp.mit.edu/usa/

Seems they haven’t updated it since Jan. Looks like maybe they are switching over to a pay model or something?[/quote]

Thats it Rich, thanks. To bad it hasn’t been updated in a while, and who know if it is worth the bytes it is written on.

I remember the curves diverging a bit more. I probably saw it during the fall of 2010 when the two curves were somewhat divergent.

[jstoesz]

I saw an inflation calculation out of Stanford or Harvard not to long ago that used amazon prices or some such thing to determine inflation. Does anyone know what I am talking about? It obviously did not jive with the gov stats, but nothing seems to in my reading. Government stats always land on the conservative side, by design I suppose. Hasn’t the inflation formula changed a couple dozen times since Nixon killed the last vestiges of the gold standard?

[jstoesz]

The 2010 republican wave did not occur in CA. Quite the opposite in fact, granted Whitman was a loser robot. I just don’t see much appetite for reform among the state at large, too many people benefit from the free stuff to vote for reform of their benefits.

[jstoesz]

Calpers lowers assumed rate of return.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304537904577279572284025222.html

[jstoesz]

Anyone have a chart for per pupil spending across the last 50 years, inflation adjusted of course?

Just curious, if we are really supporting universities less as a state, or spending more poorly.

I graduated from Cal Poly not that long ago, and my tuition felt dirt cheap (1200 bucks a quarter not including books), but I understand UC’s are more expensive.

Books are a whole other topic.

[jstoesz]

I had my car stolen in a nice residential neighborhood outside of vegas over thanksgiving, we were climbing in Red Rock Canyon. They stole thousands of dollars of camping and climbing gear, including my wife’s purse and checkbook.

Couple weeks later I get a call from a check casher place, asking if I wrote so and so a check. I told them I did not, and the employee told me they would hold their ID until the police could arrive. When the police arrived, the criminal was gone, but they had her ID and current address. They said they were going to arrest her and ask her where the check came from. She was a felon by the way. Well, to date they still have not attempted to arrest her. Even though they have her on camera and know her home address. Fact is, they don’t care about petty theft.

Police were very nice and answered their phones and stuff, but at the end of the day, they just don’t care. You get the feeling they are just pretending to do something.

[jstoesz]

Well there is always disability.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/art-cashin-explains-what-happens-those-who-stop-looking-work

[jstoesz]

[quote=briansd1]Why not improve the baseline? That’s what progress is all about.

Standards today are not the same as those of 50 years ago.[/quote]

Brian, I totally agree we should improve the baseline. Any caring person should try to improve the baseline. But those improvements need to be self-sustaining.

I can’t help but think about those people, who were not ready for easy access to credit. Giving people money to live like the middle class does not equate to giving them the Financial acumen to sustain living in the middle class. That is not a problem solved with easy solutions. I think if we incentivize people to not work, we will get less work. Anecdotally, I’ve seen this happen amongst my friends who have gone through long spats of unemployment. If I’m honest about myself, I too would fall prey to the incentives, with how little I enjoy my job and how much I enjoy recreating, but this would be disastrous for my family just like it’s disastrous for every other family.

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