[poorgradstudent]

[quote=flu]Anyway, for the rest of the folks… Any takers on Romney versus Obama.

I was saying Obama is going to win for the past few months with the precondition that the economy holds up they that is was…Well guess what? My prediction now is that if the stock market continues to tank the way it is up to the election, he ain’t going to make a second term.[/quote]
I feel that the unemployment rate matters a heckuva lot more to your typical voter than the stock market. Most of the folks like flu who watch the market closely aren’t going to vote for Obama anyways. I’ll grant if the Dow tanks another 10-20% by election day it’s not good for Obama, but that’s more of a symptom of overall economic weakness than a cause.

Romney’s two huge problems are the main problems the National Republican Party faces: Women and Latino voters. Both were actively alienated in the primary process. I’m not convinced Romney can carry more than 45% of either of these two large blocs, and that makes the electoral math pretty challenging for Romney. There are only so many white males making over $200K a year in swing states, which is one of the few groups Romney totally dominates.

Obviously it’s far from over, but at this moment in time Obama has the inside track. Still, if someone gave me 3:2 odds on Romney, I’d probably take that bet. But since it’s baseball season I’ll use this analogy: It’s the end of the 2nd inning, and the score is Obama 2, Romney 1, with a lot of game left to play.

[poorgradstudent]

I’m not sure I’d call it a “scam”. Perhaps it qualifies as an “interesting, but financially impractical idea”. There’s no denying it could be really nice to just hop a train to glide up to LA and avoid all that horrible traffic to go to Staples Center or see a show. And who hasn’t opted to drive to the Bay Area rather than deal with flying? There are other countries that have successfully implemented HSR, and transportation is obviously an important role of government. Public highways are far, far more efficient than a makeshift patchwork of private roads could possibly be.

All that said, it’s quite possible the price tag is just too high to make it worthwhile for the benefit HSR would provide. Unfortunately because the plan is constantly shifting, it’s tough to get up to date, quality *objective* analysis. I’m glad there is a careful, drawn out planning process. I do hope some version of the LA/SD line gets done in the next 5-10 years, which seems pretty feasible.

[poorgradstudent]

This is Ron Paul’s moment to shine. The door is wide open for him to face Romney one-on-one, start winning primaries in big states…

Hehe, just kidding. It’s over, no brokered convention. It was always going to be Romney who gets the privilege of losing to Obama this November.

[poorgradstudent]

Predicting the results of a jury trial can be challenging. There are a lot of variables at play. This case has a number of hot-button issues; Florida’s Gun Laws/Stand your ground law, Race, and the technology evidence, which can be used to support a case but isn’t really a slam dunk.

This certainly could be an instance where there is no criminal trial but a civil suit finds in favor of the Martin family. But again, hard to predict.

[poorgradstudent]

I for one feel quite sorry for those people whose gross exceeds 200k and will be slightly affected by this.

Oh, no, wait, I don’t.

[poorgradstudent]

My mother-in-law has a better job these days, but at her previous job when she had a bad day she would go to the 7-11 and buy a lotto ticket. Just imagining what life would be like if she won and could quit her job made her feel better and gave her peace of mind.

I’d call that $1 well spent. Heck, I routinely spend $2 to get a similar sense of happiness from a sugar soda!

[poorgradstudent]

[quote=flu]nope. Feeling pretty bullish these days myself.[/quote]
Time to sell then, I guess? 🙂

[poorgradstudent]

Speaking from my own experience as a renter, property management companies don’t do anyone any big favors. The companies are out to make money for themselves, which is understandable, but I witnessed first hand how willing our manager was to short change actually maintaining the property in a proper way in order to maximize short-term profit. Specifically, the plumbing; it was an old property with the sort of issues you’d expect, but the property manager always chose the cheapest, quickest “fix” rather than investing any money in upgrading or improving the property.

I’m sure there are good property management companies out there, but my overall impression is they eat away at a property owner’s bottom line without providing that much benefit.

[poorgradstudent]

[quote=flu]BTW: markmax33 might actually be right about zygna….What caught my eyes was zygna launched a gaming platform for developers. And they got some of the big label game co’s signed up to develop on it… That’s a big deal…So I’ll swallow my pride and say markmax33 might actually be right….[/quote]
The problem with Zynga is no one, including their customers, actually *likes* Zynga. Their “games” are just terrible. Solitaire involves more thought and strategy than most of their “click and your number goes up!” “games”.

Zynga *is* profitable. They pioneered the concept of microtransactions for virtual goods. They clearly spend very little money on developing and testing their “games”.

I’m biased because I truly, truly hate their product, but it’s hard to see how they are going to grow as a business.

[poorgradstudent]

We used to rent an in-law unit in the University heights area where most of the properties have that arrangement. The owner lived in the front house, although he hired a property manager to deal with maintenance. There were two seriously awkward moments; one was when he passed out drunk in his yard and we had to nudge him to make sure he was alive and breathing and ok. The other was when a guy I can only assume was some sort of collections agent knocked on our door and asked questions about the property owner, mostly when he was normally home.

Honestly though, I agree with Rich; having had some bad neighbors, the ability to pick (and oust!) your neighbor would be a huge plus. Just try not to pass out drunk in your yard!

[poorgradstudent]

Princeton, Harvard and Yale have done an admirable job in the past decade offering financial aid to attract top talent. Part of the driving force has been a way to attract more diversity in a meaningful way rather than simply grabbing a few non-whites from upper middle class backgrounds with money and good test scores. Princeton and its competitors have done a good job making their schools more affordable for a certain group of qualified students.

Meanwhile, the voters of California have shown a very clear preference for lower taxes as opposed to funding education. The state budget crisis is the biggest driving force in the rising cost of higher education. Increased demand isn’t helping either; as more Californians seek to improve their education existing resources are being stretched thin.

The only issue I would take with AB 1655 would be the shortening of the statute of limitations for fraud. Most of the other clauses seem reasonable to me, although some would require clarification. As I’ve noted before, most public institutions function on slimmer budgets with far less waste than most private companies.

California spends more on Prisons than Education. So yes, we do need to get our priorities straight.

[poorgradstudent]

[quote=pri_dk]Still don’t have an answer to a very relevant question:

50% of people, or 50% of households?

Veritas didn’t answer. He sent me a PM with some profanity and then ran off whimpering (I see him hiding behind Rush Limbaugh though – you’d think someone could easily hide behind an object that big…)

So can we get some genuine ‘truth’ ?

50% of people, or 50% of households?[/quote]
The new one I’m seeing seems to go by people, ie 151.7 million american citizens paid no federal income taxes. Of course, this lumps in children, the disabled, and the elderly. It was also above 40% during the GW Bush years, partially due to lowering everyone’s tax rates. The study I’m seeing online that seems to be bouncing around the conservative blogosphere also is looking at 2009, when the recession was at its worst.

It’s a pretty meaningless number taken by itself. It’s also not a great talking point for those who favor lower taxes and smaller government overall. In fact, if you really want smaller government, that percentage ought to be *higher*.

[poorgradstudent]

[quote=briansd1]3% GDP growth. Pretty good for the economy as a whole.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/fourth-quarter-us-gdp-growth-revised-up-to-3-2012-02-29?link=MW_latest_news

Asset values don’t have anything to do with GDP growth; but asset values do affect consumer confidence.

If you bought a house at the peak in 2006 and you’ve been getting pay cuts, then raises 0% to 3%, you’re probably not happy making your mortgage payments. But still 3% is better than 0%, or negative.[/quote]
Upward revisions are always encouraging. It looks like first time jobless claims also is continuing it’s steady march in the good direction.

On a tangential note, Marketwatch has some of the dumbest commenters I’ve seen.

[poorgradstudent]

In theory they provide a useful service. There are plenty of legitimate short term uses for a storage locker, and in terms of $/sq foot they are way cheaper than renting an apartment and easier to get. I also know some small businesses use storage units effectively as they grow before making the jump to leasing permanent space.

However, I also have relatives that use their storage unit as a sort of second garage for all their junk they are unwilling to part with. Smaller house + storage unit is probably cheaper than bigger house. Let’s face it, there are far, far stupider things most people waste their money on.

[poorgradstudent]

[quote=paramount]This is what I took away from CES 2012:
* 3-D is all but on it’s way out; at least it won’t be on the top of many shoppers lists. 3-D was a fad.
* OLED should be out in the fall, and as I understand the picture blows away anything out there today. Since it is new it’s big $$.
* TV’s are becoming computers (convergence).
* The TV manufacturers are trying just about anything to get you to buy a new TV. The 3-D thing didn’t work.[/quote]
3D prices have already crashed. Let’s face it, the glasses are annoying, there isn’t that much content out there and the payoff isn’t that amazing, and that’s assuming you don’t get headaches.

Built in wifi sounds nice, but it seems like most tvs don’t really capitalize on it beyond “if you pay for Netflix or Hulu Plus you can use it without an additional box”. I agree there’s definitely a trend towards television and computers converging long term. Some of us have been using HDMI cables to stream content from our computers to big screens for a while now. I look forward to the day when it’s easy to fling content between devices wirelessly.

It sounded like the biggest market for TVs this past Christmas was people who already own a flatscreen and wanted one in an additional room, such as bedroom. Similar to the PC boom and bust of the late 90s/early 2000s, we’ve reached the point in the cycle when most people who want a flatscreen have one, and there isn’t much incentive to upgrade. Maybe OLED or additional computer-like features will change that as the economy continues improving.

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