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no_such_reality
Participant[quote=flu]You guys just suck… If you’re going to throw money into the trash, might as well do it for charity…
http://www.sdraffle.com/Overview.aspx%5B/quote%5D
Um, our Schools are a charity case…
Participant[quote=Arraya]They think if modern-industrial society malfunctions people are going to turn into brain-hungry zombies. Zero faith in humanity.
[/quote]Never mind 10000 years of civilization history.
They’re not prepping for zombies, they’re prepping for the G8 to revert to subsistance third world status. Think Congo, Somalia, Cambodia and Khmer Rouge.
Most americans have no subsistance skills. Nor do other G8 citizens. They haven’t picked fruit, pruned fruit trees, grown veggies, butchered an animal or clean fished. Not do they have land to support themselves at a subsistance level. Slowly starving people are desperate people. What do desperate people do?
Argentina came close but got bailed out. Greece, bailed out but still could fail. The last industrial country to have their financial purchasing power collapse was Germany in the 1930s. We know how that turned out.
That said, I think all the preppers are nutz. As another said, reposition your finances in view of risk don’t build a bunker.
ParticipantExpected value isn’t useful when the probabilities are very small or the payoffs extreme.
As for the rich people not buying all the numbers, it’s not because they can do math, it’s because the cost and time of doing it is excessive.
And, the odds of multiple winners is calculable. It’s just additional statistics. Purchased tickets are porportional to jackpot size.
Buy for the fun of it. Like you buy a donut or Starbucks for the occasional enjoyment.
But the biggest question is after I win, will I have enough money to buy my own politician?
Participant[quote=sdduuuude]Even if you like to haggle, at least find out the costco price and use it as a starting point for other dealers.[/quote]
And use edmunds.com and truecar.com to findout dealer holdback and invoice to prepare and identify the current incentives, all of which should still come back to you.
We just bought a mini-van through Costco. Since we had test drove the main competitors the prior few weeks and gotten our ears talked off, the costco deal was worth whatever we didn’t save by haggling just in time and hassle savings.
We stopped in on Sunday of daylight savings day late with our toddler son and spent 45 minutes doing an additional test drive and verifying color choices. We then were showed the prices, the rebates, the financing deal and picked the one we wanted to hold until we came back in the week. We prephoned our information to the dealer and came back at the chosen, 30 minutes to do a final checkover of the car, verify paperwork, sign, and out the door with the new car.
1.9% financing, honda makes first payment, extra incentive $$$ and a price that smoked truecar.com’s ‘great price’.
They made money, we had a pleasant experience and got the car at a price better than I expected. Plus ironically, it’s more American made than the American minivans.
ParticipantSo our California department of finance publishes some interesting stats:
Current 2010 Census population shows only 4.2 million people age 65+
California government stats also show legal immigration to be 5.58 million from 1984 to 2010.
Nearly half immigrated to Los Angeles county, 2.044 million.
Over the last ten years, we’ve seen a marked increase in the population under 18. From 25% to 27.5%.
http://www.dof.ca.gov/research/demographic/reports/documents/Immigration_1984-2010.xls
On a side note, I don’t believe any place else in the US refers to California housing as cheap, except maybe people in Romney’s income range.
While homes in podunk Cali seem cheap to us, to people living in elsewhere, they’re still more expensive compartively with cheaper alternative locally in podunk-USA.
Participant[quote=pri_dk]
http://future.aae.wisc.edu/data/annual_values/by_area/301?tab=pricesMilk price in 1995: $2.50
Milk price in 2011: $3.60Annual rate of change: 2.3%[/quote]
National averages for foodstuffs is a bad measure.http://www.cdfa.ca.gov/dairy/uploader/docs/comparisonfarmandretailprices.xlsx
Average 2010 San Diego whole milk price $3.03.
Average 2011 whole milk price $3.51.January 2010 San Diego Price $2.96
December 2011 San Diego Price $3.60
Annual rate of change 11%.ParticipantBoth Washington and Oregon have budget problems On par with California
Oregon, home of Portland’s low growth paradise has a projected 24% gap for next year
Cali is more like 9.8%
Portland also has been having budget woes
ParticipantMy observation is that any fresh food is dramatically increased. Particularly meAt and milk. Meat seemingly has an on sale price today equal to last years regular price. The regular price is really up there. Other places like Phoenix make Cali look cheap
I suspect it will just it worse as more production is converted to organic or grass fed due to the higher profitability and decreased hassle factor
March 9, 2012 at 6:07 PM in reply to: OT-Contest to guess the occupant of beautiful new building in RSF #739658Participant[quote=bearishgurl][quote=no_such_reality]Again. The why doesn’t matter. The what is does[/quote]
Ahh, but the “why” DOES matter…..the “why” ALWAYS matters!
How are you going to fix the problem if you don’t understand how you got into it in the first place?
Oh, yeah, that’s right. As a City, look in the mirror and pretend your “red herrings” never existed … and those “in charge” never acted in their own self-interests. File for BK. Or better yet …..
Blame the unions.
[/quote]If your argument is the city politicians acted liked a bunch drunken Casey Serins and thought the flipper money would never end, I won’t deny that.
I won’t deny they acted in their own interest and self political preservation in giving the farm away to continue stint in power.
It wasn’t sustainable. They spent like it was.
The Union, oh no blaming the unions, bellied up to bar and demand their cut of largess. Yes? Yes they did.
The budget addresses that they did overspend. That they need to be prudent going forward. That they need to create a cushion on funding. Here’s their budget presentation. http://www.ci.vallejo.ca.us/uploads/1/06142011%20-%20Recommended%20Budget%20FY%202011-2012%20Presentation.pdf
It’s scary with how basic it is… Not basic as in bare bones, basic as in Budgeting 101.
Now back to reality of today.
Vallejo’s budget going forward will have $13.8 Million out of $65 Million in pensions costs, after slashing almost half of the work force. $13.8 million in pension and $34.5.
That’s 40 cents for every dollar of salaries is just pension. My company has a great 401K plan. We’re no were near 40 cents of every dollar of salary for retirement benefits.
Currently retiree healthcare is 5% of the budget. They think they’ll push it down. I wonder. That’s another $3 million today. That’s 10 cents for every dollar of a current employee salary, they need to pay in retiree health care costs. That’s on top of the 10 cents for every employee health care costs.
If this was Casey Serin, he’d be done with bankruptcy working a $65K a year job and still having a minimum credit card payment of $1500 a month.
But you make our point for us. Government has been on auto pilot.
That level of pension debt and retiree health benefit going forward will cripple the city.
To be blunt, the Cities acted just like the over extended construction guy that I bought the short sale house from. Well, the house had to go.
His problem wasn’t he had too much money coming in during the boom times. He spent it poorly.
ParticipantLOL, Valencia is hardly crumbling. It’s just as Agrestic as it has ever been.
Like all areas, it has its over extended owners.
March 9, 2012 at 4:04 PM in reply to: OT-Contest to guess the occupant of beautiful new building in RSF #739648ParticipantAgain. The why doesn’t matter. The what is does
They’ve over spent. Now they are left with budgets that are 30% retirements and benefits.
Pensions are like debt.
Your the one making the claim, you need to prove it.
In the end, it doesn’t matter whyWhat is does. 30% of their budget will be pension and health benefits
March 9, 2012 at 2:52 PM in reply to: OT-Contest to guess the occupant of beautiful new building in RSF #739643ParticipantIs that a very long way of saying “I went broke because I won the lottery?”
Urban sprawl red herring aside, look at Vallejo’s post BK budget
Police reduce from 155 to 92 officers.
Fire reduce from 9 companies to 5. That’s 122 to 85Their budget is 28.6% pension and health benefits for current and existing retires
40% of salaries and benefits are benefits and works comp.
Next years projection calls for the pension piece to increase from $11.7 to $13.7 million
That’s on a $65.4 million budget To keep it balanced they’re projecting a 40% reduction in health benefits and a 25% cut to retiree health.
Why Rthey thought they could give them away is immaterial
March 9, 2012 at 6:29 AM in reply to: OT-Contest to guess the occupant of beautiful new building in RSF #739599Participant[quote=bearishgurl]
nsr, I don’t “wisecrack” about things like this. It’s actually the law.You can join your “friends,” pri_dk and sdr in their “legislation-writing sessions.”
I’ll be standing by to proofread or assist in any way I can :=}
[/quote]Your prior comment.
[quote=bearishgurl]
Lol, CAR … I’m still waiting for all these Piggs who think the public sector is paid too much to go thru the application process themselves and then sign all the releases necessary to open up their private lives and credit reports to the PTB so that they, too, can get “selected” to make the BIG BUCKS and eventually become “vested” to collect an unconscionable pension!
Any takers???
Ah …. I didn’t think so … :=![/quote]You can’t have it both ways. In one post the defense is the unconscionable pensions aren’t available to new hires. In others, it’s come work for the government to get that pension. They are just red herrings. The problem is like social security and the pig in the snake.
In other topics, CAR and others rail against the evil investment bankers and the option ARMs mortgages with the false promises luring buyers in creating the mess. Never mind the similarities to the investment bankers at CalPERs telling the State & Local governments and Unions they can have the bigger payouts at ‘no cost’. Well, looks like the option part is gone and now the big spikes are coming.
Things I do know, in the private sector, if my employees felt half as maligned as you come across, I’d have a 30%+ annual turnover. People like Flu, I wouldn’t be able to keep on staff no matter how much gold I threw at him. I know, I’ve run plenty of death march projects as a consultant.
When those same maligned people don’t move on, the reason typically boils down to one or combination of the following three:
1. They are paid substantially above market or have golden equity handcuffs
2. Their skills are dated and not readily transferable (this isn’t a subset of 1, this is low employability for their skillset which is much more rare than they’re paid more than their skillset is now paying)
3. They’re close to vesting in some retirement plan.The legality or cost of conversion of pensions keeps getting thrown up. I get it may be more expensive, but we will all be better off if it is paid up front and is portable. It removes #3 from the equation.
Laws can change. Bankruptcy happens. Look at Vallejo and Stockton. San Jose. CalPERs strong armed Vallejo. The retirement benefits were largely protected. All the rest of the city services where largely stripped. Is that what the city government workers are fighting to get? Their pension at the cost of the entire city?
As for the thread being yet another prop for SDR to rant against the government, well, why is it so easy to find targets? Every week we turn on the news, the altruistic teachers stands accused of 23 counts of child molestation, the cops investigated over a year. Or the city cops are on video beating a homeless man to death. Or the firefighters have a lawsuit about feeding dog food to the black firefighter in the station. Or they’re is a hubbub because they took their fire engine to the beach and allowed it to be filmed in a porn film with the coup de grace being they can’t be disciplined because the filming was more than 12 months ago per city contract. Or the cops shotdown Marine in his SUV in front of his kids. Or…
Or…
Or…March 8, 2012 at 9:25 AM in reply to: OT-Contest to guess the occupant of beautiful new building in RSF #739558Participant[quote=sdrealtor]These public sector defenders really are so off base its laughable. Like pri said, no one is claiming they are slothful opportunistics. However in most of our opinions they are overcompensated, not subject to free market constraints and most importantly its not sustainable.[/quote]
You missed the it’s not legal technicality they keep throwing up.
Much like its not legal for a city to go to bankruptcy without arbitration first do to another union sponsored recent law.
And never mind their own admission that the pensions are sustainable
BG wisecracked about them of being able to collect them anyway earlier in the thread.
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