[poorgradstudent]

I for one am perfectly happy accepting that moderate Justices Anthony Kennedy and John Roberts understand the Constitution a LOT better than anyone posting on this board (myself included) does.

[poorgradstudent]

Well, with Rich posting his analysis it’s pretty clear to me that *Nominal* prices have probably hit a true bottom. Those cheering for a 10-20% additional haircut from current prices are likely to be disappointed.
However, Inflation adjusted prices may still fall a bit. This past winter’s inflation adjusted bottom was lower than the nominal bottom from 2009. It’s entirely possible this winter will bring even lower inflation adjusted values.
Barring a dramatic economic and unemployment recovery, at least 12 more months of flatline behavior with typical seasonal fluctuations and inflation based creep up seem reasonable to expect.

[poorgradstudent]

I think we can all agree Roberts threw everyone a curve ball. People were thinking Kennedy would be the swing vote, and he didn’t seem very sympathetic in questions.
I actually think the Supremes handed Republican House members seeking re-election a gift. Not so much Romney; he implemented RomneyCare and has been flopping like a fish on the issue since the mandate became unpopular. But a lot of House Republicans will be able to make “Repeal ObamaCare” their *only* platform plank and get re-elected on it.

[poorgradstudent]

“April home prices in San Diego are 1.8 percent lower than a year ago.”

These newest numbers aren’t seasonally adjusted. That adjustment would make them look less exciting to those hoping for prices to rise.

[poorgradstudent]

Out of curiosity, are you going to be commuting to work in San Diego? I *love* coronado, but it’s essentially an island, which makes the commute getting on and off of it pretty challenging. San Diego has some bad rush hour traffic (although it’s nothing like LA). We don’t have good public transportation options like you probably have in New England, so keep that in mind when you’re looking at areas to live. Coronado in particular is just a long drive to almost anywhere, except maybe downtown.

Those are all very ritzy areas of San Diego. La Jolla Country Day in particular has snobbery issues amongst the students. I knew a former UCSD professor who sent his kids there, they probably grossed at least $250K a year, and they were “poor” kids there and hated it. SD actually does have a couple Catholic schools, they are more centrally located. If you have money but want a more “walkable” neighborhood check out Kennsington and South Park. Kennsington in particular is a beautiful, old established neighborhood that is just isolated enough to feel extremely safe. You should at least drive through it to get a contrast to La Jolla and Del Mar. I’ve just heard too many people not from San Diego complain about how “fake” it is, when they only see La Jolla and the Gaslamp.

[poorgradstudent]

[quote=AN]I totally agree, API has a lot more to do with demographic than how well a school educate the kids. I personally think, as long as the school is ranked 8+ (in HS), it should have enough students in AP level classes to keep the classes full and all the AP classes to be available. It’s only when you drop to the lower API schools, where you might not have enough AP level students to keep all AP classes full. Which would have a higher chance of AP class being canceled due to low interest.[/quote]
Yep.

I find the fact API scores are 3 digits to be tremendously misleading. The difference between a 904 and a 954 is not tremendous. A good student will thrive at either of those hypothetical schools, and a screw-up will still screw-up. The only value that is truly interesting is the “Similar Schools Rank”. Carlsbad schools, for example, tend to have high API scores, but much lower Similar Schools scores; they aren’t doing as much with the material they’re being given compared to a lot of similar schools. Fallbrook has the opposite effect; a lot of its schools overperform relative to similar schools.

Poway District, despite having a sterling reputation, is actually quite mediocre compared to other similar schools. RB High and Westview High in particular have high API scores, but are relatively weak compared to similar schools. If you just look at API you might say “Those are good schools”, but there’s actually a decent chance if you took your student out of there and put them elsewhere they’d actually do better.

[poorgradstudent]

The Rooney rule is goofy, and a bit of an artifact. It clearly fixed a real problem that existed for a while in the NFL, a serious under representation of minority coaches compared to the number of players. It’s part PR, part labor relations, and part idealism. Anyone who has ever had a job interview where it became clear they already had someone else in mind for the job knows how annoying a dog-and-pony show interview can be. But the NFL is a fairly special case and does make its own rules for the most part.

[poorgradstudent]

I think a lot of selling agents will probably treat someone without their own broker as a window shopper. Really, if they give you grief I’d just say something vague about how you haven’t found the right representation yet. I imagine they mostly just want to know you are serious and not wasting their time.

[poorgradstudent]

[quote=ocrenter]Is there really that much hair to split comparing elementary API of 990 vs 920?[/quote]
Like IQ scores, API becomes fairly worthless after it goes above a certain level. But then again, I view API as fairly worthless to begin with as a measure of anything but the wealth of people living in the area, so I’m not sure I’d trust my opinion.

[poorgradstudent]

[quote=harvey]Just about everyone’s ethical stance regarding animal treatment has contradictions. Why are dogs and cats subject to different rules than animals bred for food? It’s ok to be cruel to something you are going to kill, but you have to be nice to something you aren’t going to kill? The list goes on…

The vegans probably have the most logically consistent framework, but I like lamb and veal way too much to go that route.[/quote]
I freely admit my own stance is pretty arbitrary. I choose to avoid veal (aka tortured baby cow) and lamb and try to minimize my beef consumption. I view chickens and fish as stupid creatures and don’t mind eating them.

Dogs provide companionship and historically were working animals. It’s the same reason humans historically don’t eat horses. They provide more economic value alive than as food. I’m not much of a cat person myself, but I imagine their meat would be pretty stringy and gamey. They also do provide potential economic value in their traditional role as hunters of rodents and pest birds.

[poorgradstudent]

[quote=harvey]- The reason private-sector pensions are going away is because shareholders have become wise to the issues described the prior points, and accounting changes have made it is harder to hide the obligations on the financial statements. Basically the market has spoken. Government has been able to get away with hiding pension costs longer because taxpayers don’t scrutinize the books as much as investors do.

– Military pensions are also a growing problem as life expectancies increase, but we don’t see the impact because it just gets piled on with the national debt that will be monetized away eventually. Plus “half-pay” doesn’t sound very generous – if you do the math you see that it can be though. But the public doesn’t do the math. Of course military pensions are also political land-mines, as no one dares question military pay.[/quote]
-There has been a pretty steady march of corporations continuing to screw over the little guy buy cutting benefits and perks like pensions (although some companies do have pretty sweet matching for their 401k plans). This trend might reverse itself if the economy ever gets back to 5-6% unemployment, when companies fret more about keeping their talent rather than cutting costs.

-Enlisted military pay just isn’t very good at all, and there are roughly 5x more enlisted military than officers. A decent chunk of officers are in highly skilled professions (doctor, pilot) where sticking around for full retirement comes with a significant earnings cost. Retaining good talent in the military is already a problem, and cutting pensions without increasing salaries would only make that problem worse. Of course, with the ends of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq we should be able to continue cutting our forces, unless Romney gets elected. Then, we’re probably screwed in terms of over exuberant military spending and use of force.

[poorgradstudent]

With a few accessories, our BOB Stroller ran us $400. It will see our son through at least 2 years, possibly 3, at which point we very well will be manufacturing baby #2. Oh, and did I mention the resell value on BOBs is amazing. I wish my car was still worth 75% of its retail value years later. Getting back $200 for it would be “let’s just sell it to our friends for a deal”. So net we’re looking at 200 bucks spread over 5-6 years… I spend significantly more per year on Netflix.

Oh, and do you know who that stroller is actually for? Mom and Dad and their backs. It’s a great piece of engineering. It JUST WORKS. Not having to struggle with a cheap stroller saves us minutes of our lives here and there, and that can really add up fast in terms of value.

That said, there definitely are a few things my wife has chosen to purchase for our baby I view as unnecessary. It’s hard for me to keep track of what we bought vs. bought with gift cards vs. received as hand-me-downs (90% of his wardrobe) vs. received as gifts. A lot of the more useless stuff falls into the hand-me-down category. We have a lot of stuff that we are the 3rd to 4th owner for. It’s nice to have yuppie friends who are done having kids and eager to clear out their garages!

Honestly, the people who waste money on their kids aren’t people we need to worry about. They’re the top 10% and 1% of income earners, people who will be able to afford to send their kid to whatever college and will have reasonably comfortable retirements. It’s not the poor families having modest birthday parties at Mission Bay on the weekends that are buying fancy clothes and diaper bags for their babies.

Kids eat, especially after they wean. They need health insurance. Babies need diapers (cloth is an option with its own headaches). Children grow and need clothing, although hand-me-downs are an option. Finally, most parent don’t want their child sharing their bedroom beyond a certain age, so that means a young family renting a studio or 1-bedroom needs a 2-bedroom apartment, with the increased rent costs. Oh, and part of having kids means a lot more laundry, driving up water and electric bills. Most of these aren’t areas you can cut costs much.

[poorgradstudent]

According to one random website I googled, the average baby boomer *with* a company sponsored retirement plan has $88,000 saved for retirement. Although older boomers do seem to be in slightly better shape than the youngest, which does make sense. So, most people have done a pretty terrible job of planning for retirement.

[poorgradstudent]

[quote=kev374]How many people have you seen drink an entire glass of Orange juice for breakfast and they are thinking this is actually HEALTHY! while infact they are pouring sugar down their throats and destroying their body.

The public health crisis is also caused due to lack of education. When most people think of sugar they think of sucrose – white table sugar.

They do not know that sugars include all starches rice, wheat, corn etc. (complex carbs). A starch is nothing but a chain of sugar (glucose) molecules. That means white rice, white bread etc. is JUST AS damaging as a can of soda – why not ban those as well?[/quote]
This is a fairly simplistic way of thinking about nutrition. If your point is the fact that ultimately all carbohydrates are broken down into glucose (which in turn is broken down into ATP at the cellular level), then sure, all starches are identical. But complex carbs require more energy to break down to get the glucose out of them, which actually can mean less net gain relative to grams consumed. There’s even debate if fructose and sucrose are processed in different ways by the body. Many of the foods that contain complex carbs also have more other nutrients present as well. I don’t think anyone would claim the carbs from a slice of whole wheat bread and equal carbs from a can of soda are identical for your body.

I think the big difference between juice and soda is how they are consumed. Most people don’t drink 32 or 64 ounces of juice in a day. But drinking that much soda isn’t unusual. Generally you can consume anything in moderation, and *most* people drink juice in moderation. If you drink one can of sugar soda a day, there’s a bigger risk to your teeth than your waistline.

[poorgradstudent]

Obesity is a huge public health problem, one the free market obviously has no incentive to solve, and thus requires public and government action.

Bloomberg’s idea is terrible. I can think of plenty of workarounds. “Buy one, get one free (or half off or whatever)” for starters. Selling large soda cups with “diet only” printed on them, but not making any effort to police customers filling their own soda drinks. Those are just two mediocre ideas off the top of my head.

Obesity for the most part isn’t a supply problem, it’s a demand problem. There are ways to Nudge the public into making better choices, but this sort of heavy handed ban just never works. Reminds me of San Fran’s ban on free toys with happy meals. The easy work around? Sell the toys for a penny.

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