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poorgradstudent
Participant[quote=svelte][quote=desmond]I understand most of this board would be better off with pepper spray in their satchels, but this is a definite trend that is happening, just like many other things to keep in mind.[/quote]
Oh I agree it’s a trend that probably reflects other trends.
It’s my theory that people are buying guns to shoot zombies, due to the astounding increase in zombie sightings lately.[/quote]
My friend bought a handgun a couple years ago, and although he won’t admit it, I know at least 5-10% of his reason why was just in case of zombies.December 1, 2011 at 1:16 PM in reply to: OT:. I never new about this hiring rule in the NFL… #733786Participant[quote=Allan from Fallbrook]
Football is driven by winning. Period. The only that matters to EVERY team in the NFL is winning the Superbowl and they’ll do whatever it takes to get there.[/quote]
Actually… no.Football is a business and about making money. Winning can help the teams make money. But clearly it is sometimes in a team’s best interest to go cheap on coaching if they know they don’t really have a shot at the superbowl that year.
Espn has a decent opinion article from this past August about it, mostly talking about unspent potential salary cap money:
http://espn.go.com/espn/page2/story/_/id/6883286/tmq-says-money-motivates-losing-cheap-paying-wins“Player expense might not equate to wins, of course. But there’s something more basic happening. In the NFL structure, a cheap team that loses might have more profits than an expensive team that wins. Victory is nice, to be sure, but losing cheap can be remunerative. As all NFL teams save the Packers are privately held, and of those all save the Raiders are family businesses, money that is not spent on players goes into the pockets of the owner and his relatives.
Each NFL team gets exactly the same national TV payment whether it’s winning big on “Monday Night Football” or losing badly and never aired nationally. Ticket sales can vary and generally are where the profit resides. But the revenue swing between packing the house and having a poor gate just isn’t that great.”
So yeah, NFL Football is about making money, first and foremost. High school football is much more about winning, and NCAA is sort of a hybrid.
ParticipantThe linked article is about Henry Paulson. A Republican. Appointed by George W. Bush. A Republican. Who was President when this happened.
Obviously “conservative” and “Republican” are not freely interchangeable. Many intelligent people have argued that GW Bush wasn’t really fiscally conservative, considering how much he increased government spending. But he certainly was never called “liberal”.
Remember that it was de-regulation that allowed all the excesses of the bubble to occur. The free market largely created the bubble, just like free markets have done in past bubbles. Obviously power corrupts, but I’m not sure how the ills of the Bush government translate to “liberal = bad”? Even Ron Paul doesn’t advocate for the sort of small government that would limit federal power that much.
Participant[quote=enron_by_the_sea]What do they call people who vote in caucuses? caucasians ? (J/K :))[/quote]
In Iowa? Mostly, yes 🙂ParticipantHistorically the Iowa Caucuses are very poor at predicting the party nominee. Interestingly, Romney looks to have a great shot at winning Iowa, something that seemed ridiculous three short months ago. T-Paw dropped out and Bachmann imploded, creating a midwest vacuum amongst the nominees.
R.P. will probably place second or third at the caucuses with around 20-25% of the vote; caucuses are his strong areas, where his narrow but passionate base can do more than primaries in states like N.H., where R.P. will almost certainly place behind John Huntsman.
Iowa very well may end up being a muddled mess where no candidate pulls over 25%, which is probably R.P.’s ideal scenario… a narrow “win” with mid-20s support that he can leverage into more national coverage. But in a campaign that now has Newt Gingrich (NEWT GINGRICH???) flirting with front-runner status, almost anything probably can happen.
November 15, 2011 at 10:25 AM in reply to: Excellent Economist Mag. article on CA’s Gov. retiree Pension problems #733006ParticipantEcon 101 pretty much tells us that long term, in order to keep talent, if critical government jobs cut benefit plans, they’d have to raise salaries, basically making it a wash in terms of taxpayer benefit. I personally know several people who work for the State for wages lower than they could take elsewhere specifically because of the benefits.
There’s room for reform, and the Brown plan seems fairly reasonable. My understanding is a lot of new hires don’t enjoy nearly the same luxurious benefits some of the old timers qualified for, benefits that it would be illegal to strip now and the state pretty much just has to wait out and let those folks die. But reforming the public sector unions is not a silver bullet to California’s revenue problems. Prison reform would probably have a bigger, longer lasting effect.
Participant[quote=ctr70]But I would really love to see a REAL business person get the presidency (George W. was not a REAL self-made business person and Arnold was an actor, not a real biz person). Just like I was hoping a businesswomen (Meg Whitman) would have won the CA governorship vs. the career bureaucrat that won. No more lawyers and career bureaucrats that have never had real jobs outside of politics. I like to see someone that has had the responsibility of employing people in the private sector, running a company, innovating, running a balance sheet, etc… I have always wanted to see Micheal Bloomberg run.[/quote]
On paper this kind of thinking sounds good, but in practice Good Government is nothing like Good Business. Businesses exist to make money, governments exist to provide public services. As a business owner if you’re doing something that isn’t profitable, you can stop doing it. Government has an obligation to continue taking care of the disabled and the elderly and defending our borders, even though it can’t make money doing it.Having worked in both private and public sector jobs, I’m surprised by the “government is wasteful compared to private enterprise” argument. Sure, inefficient businesses eventually fail. But on the whole, given the scope of what it does, the government does a lot of things very, very well. The last company I worked for was incredibly wasteful in how much we paid our mediocre CEO. Upper management made mistakes left and right thanks to not listening to the concerns of workers how their new initiatives actually reduced productivity. Middle managers often fudged numbers on their failed pet projects to save their skins. Show me a private company that doesn’t have plenty of waste and fat to trim, and I bet there are no more than 2-3 employees working there.
I will agree that because both sides of the political aisle are in bed with huge corporations, government does very little to really incentivize small businesses. Both sides pander around election time, but policy rarely cuts in favor of the little guy.
ParticipantIn general, one data point is meaningless, two is worth investigating, and three makes a trend.
That said, I don’t really care, because Cain is a terrible Presidential candidate anyways. 9-9-9 is a huge tax increase and wealth redistribution plan, stealing from the poor and giving to corporations. Cain has no coherent policy on social issues; he had a rational moderate stance on abortion that he flipped on when he realized it wouldn’t fly with Republican primary voters.
By all means, if you want 4 more years of Obama (which I do, for the record), nominate Cain. He has the potential to get thrashed worse than Mondale did. He reminds me a lot of Sharon Angle, the woman largely responsible for Harry Reid holding his senate seat.
ParticipantNot shocking, considering the rate of violent crime continues to fall, despite being in a recession. What I’m seeing from the data is a lot of folks saying “whatever we are doing now is working, so let’s not try to mess with it”. In the 90s there was a lot more gun-violence than there is today, gangs were much more prevalent, which was a big part of why gun control was a bigger issue.
ParticipantBased on our usage, $40 for high speed cable internet is a huge bargain in my household.
Costco 12-packs of San Pellegrino sparkling water also give us quite a bit of pleasure for the modest price.
ParticipantMitt Romney doesn’t mind if voters have to take one last trip around the bar to see if anyone else is out there before going home with Mitt Romney.
Participant[quote=flu]Trust me. I’m not confused. But I guarantee if people’s 401k go back up, people won’t be nearly as pissed.[/quote]
It’s not about 401ks. It’s about jobs. Once the unemployment rate falls below 8.5% the anger will deflate. A lot of the protestors are unemployed people with college degrees. People with good jobs don’t have time to protest; that’s part of why the tea party rallies were mostly old people.ParticipantI’m still all about Chilean and Spanish wines. For the buck, they seem to be the best values, at least in my sub-$20 price range.
ParticipantIf you can do your work from anywhere and don’t need to commute, there’s few reasons to live in an expensive city like San Diego. I work in biotech, so I have to physically be close to my job and every extra mile of commute costs in both time and dollars.
Vegas does get very hot in the summers and colder than SD in the winter. If you’d be flying out here every other weekend some of your cost savings might get eaten up pretty quickly on plane flights.
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