Texanadian

So naturally the fix this time is to trust the same unaccountable government politicians and give them more money.

The US had the largest boom in its history during the same time period that it also had the highest tax rates on the highest earners.

The country did the best when the majority of Americans earned a good salary, which also happens to coincide with the aforementioned time period.

So you're saying that we should pay more taxes so that we can earn more?

'The Situation' earned $5 million last financial year. Or how about dumbfuck atheletes or entertainers that earn tens of millions for what. My sperm has higher cognitive power than a entire NFL team combined.

That alone illustrates where a country's priorities lies. Ironically a similar situation found in numerous third world countries.

Seinfeld used to make $1 million per episode. 20 shows in a season? The work isn't exactly 40 hours a week either. Much as I think The Situation is a giant tool, he makes his living by entertaining millions of people. Simple as that. If you can sell a product to millions of people, you'll do the same.

The market can't always assign value to labor, particularly when it comes to intangibles. Even an NFL coach recognizes certain intangibles that don't show up on a player's stats when determining who stays and who gets cut from the team.

I agree on the sports analogy. Some hockey players get low goals and low assists. But they can block plays. Intimidate or irritate other teams. Hold other teams back while their own team goes on the offensive. As for value and labour? That's why pay is better determined at the local lower level than at the top. The CEO doesn't know if you're better or worse than your co-workers. Your manager does.

There are a lot of good key factors to debate in the article.

1) Minimum wage. Most people think of this as how much a working person at the bottom end gets paid. In reality what it is is a rule that says you can't pay somebody less money than what the min wage is. Ever notice you don't see full serve gas stations anymore? Or elevator operators? These jobs have become obsolete as min wage has gone up. We've determined that it's better for people to be unemployed than work for low wages. Raise the min wage to $10 and you'll have people that are earning min wage now, having to compete with people who are currently worth $10/hr. Who loses? The person earning $7 in current times. This isn't a minimum wage phenomenon. It occurs in all wage groups. An accountant without a degree generally earns less than a CPA. The accountant can get a job by undercutting the CPA on salary. But institute a minimum accounting wage roughly equal to what CPA's make and accountants without a degree can't compete. Teenagers have no work history and no skills. Raising the min wage makes it harder for them as now they're competing with people in their 20's who have work history. People who are high school drop outs have a harder time finding work when min wage goes up. Employers get more picky when min wage goes up. Ditto people with criminal records.

Regardless, I don't see the need for a federal min wage in the USA. Canada has no nationalized min wage. It's set by each province. The USA could do the same. 14 states already have higher minimum wages than the national level. 5 states have lower min wages. 5 states have no min wages. The 10 states with lower or none still have to pay the federal level.

2) Relocating. The Vegas to Fargo example is a good one. My sister is a dentist. Here in Houston there are more dentists than there are Starbucks. My Dental HMO plan lists about 50 dentists in a 5 mile range. My sister doesn't work in Vancouver or Toronto or even Victoria. No, she works up in the North West Territories in Northern Canada. There is a shortage of doctors and dentists up there. Why else would anybody want to move there? As far as Vegas vs Fargo goes, where would you rather live?

3) Government tax credits/unemployment. There is no point in pushing for tax credits for workers earning less. They already pay less taxes by virtue of earning less. The unemployment benefits duration is another debate. Both sides have some merit.

I think it really depends on where you live/climate/cost of energy.

When I lived in the Vancouver area, a 2500 sq ft home costs about $1500/year for electricity. That's electric baseboard heat, electric hot water tank, normal insulation levels (20 year old house). To install a heat pump, you're looking at about $10,000. If you save $500/year, that takes 20 years to pay back the heat pump. In that time, it probably needs replacement due to age (more $$$) where as the baseboards would probably still work just as they did when new. A replacement baseboard is cheap. $50? The electricity was cheap (5 cents/kwh). And you heated for 7 months and did nothing for the other 5 months (heat off, variable cooling by opening or closing windows). Air conditioning really isn't needed.

As you go east in Canada (Alberta to the Maritimes) you get colder winter temperatures. This means a heat pump makes less sense than a high efficiency natural gas furnace or a high efficiency wood stove. That's because heat pumps don't work that well below freezing temps. They shift into auxiliary heating mode (electric furnace or nat gas heat) to supplement the heat pump. At temps far below freezing, it's better to shut the heat pump off and run completely on auxiliary heat. That's because running the heat pump would freeze the outdoor condenser. The result being it needs to run a defrost cycle. The defrost cycle consists of running the A/C (to send the house heat to the outdoor unit to thaw it out while at the same time running the auxiliary heat to keep the house warm). Hence why it's better to avoid the defrost cycle by turning off the heat pump. (Switching the thermostat to Emergency heat offs the heat pump and just runs the auxiliary.)

Down here in Houston, we air condition for 11 months a year. Heat for 2 weeks. And get about 2 weeks where you don't do either. You "might" be able to open your windows at night for a month during the winter months when it's cool enough to be able to get away with it. But even when the temp is 60°, if the humidity is running at 90% at night (which it does), there is no point in opening your windows. You need the temps to drop down to about 55° or colder before you can open the windows and not have to deal with humidity.

Even with the 11 months of A/C use, you use less energy than you do in Vancouver. That's because it's all central air (heat pump efficiency) running only 20°F colder temps inside than outside during the peak of summertime use. No defrost or auxiliary cycles exist in cooling mode. Energy bills are higher though due to higher cost per kwh.

Unfortunately, to gain the benefits of high efficiency air conditioners and heat pumps in south Texas, you need to reverse them to become lower efficiency units. Only 5% of people in Houston have heat pumps. It's not worth it to spend more money on a heat pump compared to central A/C and traditional furnace heat for those 2 weeks of heater use. Traditionally heat pumps come with larger coils due to they're being heaters. But here's the real rub. Air conditioning efficiency is measured with a SEER number. A higher SEER number is more efficient. But to get the high SEER numbers (SEER 18-20 for example), you sacrifice humidity removal. You'd have to turn a SEER 18 into a SEER 15 in order to get it to work right in this climate (moderately hot, but extreme humidity)

Higher SEER numbers come mostly from larger coils and higher fan speeds. A larger coil is a warmer coil. A warmer coil removes less humidity. So somebody in Houston who buys a high SEER unit will have to set the thermostat lower to get the same comfort. Killing their savings. If you live in Arizona where you want maximum cooling while sacrificing humidity removal (since there is none), you want a high SEER unit with oversized coil and fastest fan speed (typically 450 cfm/ton)......But in the humid south and south east, it's better to undersize the coil and run at the slowest fan speed (typically 350 cfm/ton. Standard medium speed is 400 cfm/ton)

2 speed fans work well in most of the country. Not as much in the humid areas. That's because the coil is sized for 2nd speed. (maximum heat removal during hot days) But you spend most of the time running in 1st speed. As such, you have an oversized coil for the majority of the time. Again, this is great for non humid climates. But bad for here.

30 years ago, people in Texas often would have re-heat systems. SEER 4 were common. SEER 6 to 8 was considered high efficiency back then. Air conditioners ran their coils so cold that you'd need to add heat at the same time to get comfortable duct temperatures into the room. Obviously running the heater in the summertime is an expensive way to cool your home. Worked great for humidity removal though. In today's world a central dehumidifier does a similar thing. You pay to run it. It heats up your home while dehumidifying it. You then pay to air condition the home to get the temps back down. To me this is a band aid solution to an air conditioner that doesn't take out enough moisture. Central dehumidifiers are more for the north east states that get humidity but not hot enough temps to warrant running the A/C.

Longer run times achieve the best efficiency. If your A/C runs 24 hours a day to keep the temp at 75° (or whatever you have the thermostat set on), you'll have a low bill. If it's cycling on and off to maintain that temp, it's oversized and costing more money than it should. That's because when it first turns on, it's running full blast. The meter is spinning. But it's not getting full cold temps until about 20 minutes later. So the longer you spend in the post 20 minute time frame, the more time you're spending at peak efficiency. Thus why long run times with properly sized equipment achieve lower bills. The longer run times also remove more humidity which means you can get away with setting the thermostat higher.

To give an example of high vs low SEER units. A high SEER unit might blow air that's 12-15° colder than room temp. Say you set the thermostat at 75°. The air will be 58-60° coming out of the air conditioner. Add a few degrees to that for time spent in ducts running through the ceiling. For Arizona this works great. Long run times. It takes little energy to lower the temp by 12-15°. Humidity is nill, so the thermostat can be set high. A low SEER unit on the other hand might blow 22-25° colder than room temp. Even with the thermostat at 78°, you're still getting 53-56° temps at the coil. Takes out much more humidity this way. Sure it takes more energy to run the coils colder. But if you can set the thermostat higher and be dry, comfort will be increased.

House energy efficiency is mostly determined in windows, insulation, and air tightness.

My beef comes from the reverse side of things. The line of cars at a stop light might be 30 cars long. When the light turns green, you get Murtle the turtle up there in car #1 who gently takes off from a stop and mopes his way through the light. Car #2 isn't much better behind. By the time 10 cars go through, the light goes red.

GIVE IT SOME GAS when the light turns green.

If we're going to use the example of a single parent with 2 kids, first of all either drive a used car and pay for a house or else get a new car and pay rent. But don't do both.

With a used car, you're going to have much cheaper insurance due to not requiring full coverage and the fact that the car itself is going to be older. My car insurance is $330/year. If I just went for minimal coverage, it would be $185/year. My wife's car insurance is even cheaper. Let's not forget to factor in about $300/month in after tax money that you'll be saving by driving a paid off used car that you wouldn't have to make in car payments.

Cell phones are expensive. Landlines will do for the majority of people. I don't have a cell phone and don't want one. Most people who have them have expensive $100+/month plans with expensive cell phones. Internet is going to run you $25-50/month. It's cheap entertainment. Cable TV is overpriced everywhere, but most places allow you to choose a lower tier. Fortunately I get 50 channels for free with my antenna and don't need cable. This is location dependent though. I just happen to be in a good area for antenna TV. Better quality than cable and satellite as well.

I'm not saying it's easy. But let's face facts. A single parent with 2 kids generally can't afford an average priced house and a car payment and full car insurance all at the same time. It's been like this for a lonnnnng time.

What vehicle gets 106 mpg?

There really is no excuse to spend beyond our mean when we are not in a recession. if we don't stop over spending in good times, the train will eventually run into a wall.

Alas, the federal reserve's job is to promote maximum employment. Thus spending must be in a perpetual deficit in order to maintain full employment above the natural employment. I don't agree with this. But it's an easy way to overspend without taxing people.

State Direction and conformity and obedience to all public institutions are essential if we are to drive out wanton and undisciplined and unauthorized attitudes and behaviour from society.

Freedom to weed out the undisciplined who are not concentrating on furthering the objectives and desired image of the State's citizens is the first essential freedom.

Welcome to 1984.

The hair will grow back, and he can grow it all summer.

You can't grow long hair over the summertime. And he will be back in school for the other 10 months of the year.

I think that superintendent shouldn't be allowed to wear a yellow tie with a blue shirt. It doesn't "conform" to traditional business clothing.

If I had to get a Porsche.

I'd like to see a simple vote on ALL of the tax cuts expiring or being renewed. Not picking and choosing. Because people will always choose for themselves and pick on somebody else.

People always have their phones out. If they're not talking on them, they're texting. Or playing games. Or waiting for a call. Or simply passing the time. They'll sit on tables. They're passing them around to friends.

A wallet on the other hand is either in the pocket or out just to pay for something before going back in the pocket. It's not about value. Heck, the phones today probably cost more than what people have in cash in their wallets (ignoring in the inconvenience aspect of losing your wallet).

I don't like the air swipe setups because they're not secure. Most stores still use WEP wireless security. It's way too easy for somebody to grab your numbers.

Very few in comparison. I don't even like those air swipe pads for credit cards.

No thanks. Too many people lose their phones as is.

I was surprised to see that Iphones allow you to deposit a cheque to your bank account by simply taking a picture of the front and back and then using the app for it.

Maybe I'm missing something. But they're talking about upgrading the power line. Nothing is said about building a coal plant that also burns used tires as a fuel source being installed anywhere nearby. It's a power line. These blend in with nature no problem.

We had geico, but when we signed up for a Sam's club membership they had some discounts on insurance, so I called about it. We got a policy through Safeco, and for the same amount of coverage we saved about $2000 a year....and we had the military rate when we were with Geico.

Saving $2,000/year? Sheesh, how much was your old car insurance?

With Geico, we pay $705/year for car insurance (2 cars, 2 people). If we went with the minimum amounts, it would be $330/year.

we are thinking of switching to Geico when our current insurance expires in October.. our current company sucks...

I can get a better policy for the same price with Geico...

Why bother waiting? Switch now and cancel your old company.

Geico for me too. The only people who offer lower rates are USAA. But you have to have been in the military or have parents who are military and members of USAA to get it.

Americans view Social Security as a central component of the nation's social contract. It is probably the most popular federal government program. Not surprisingly, when President George W. Bush tried to privatize Social Security — essentially asking Americans to put the security of their future in the stock market — the people considered it a preposterous idea, especially after they had watched thousands of Enron investors lose their savings and saw the stock market lose 38% of its value between January 2000 and October 2002.

The people who worked at Enron and put 100% of their 401k plan money into Enron stock were fools. Diversification is key to any retirement plan. And while the stock market can lose 38% of it's value over a 2 year period, that is only relevant if you had only worked for 2 years. The average person who works for 50 years (age 15-65) would be hard pressed to see their retirement plan go down by 38%. A person who is in their 60's and still 100% invested in stocks is also not thinking straight. You need to move to less stock and more bonds as you reach your upper 50's and 60's.

First of all, SSI is not an investment - it's insurance. Second, the maximum taxable income for 2010 is about 107g's at a rate of 7.65%. So assuming that you're not putting any money into a pretax retirement account, and were earning that max amount this year, your total FICA tax would be about 8g's. The max in 2005 was 90g's with a total FICA tax of about $6,800. The max SSI benefit for this year is $2,346 or about 28g's. Most retirees get paid out more in SSI than what they paid into it, especially if they've been receiving benefits for 20 years. But again, it is not an investment - it's insurance. If God forbid, you become disabled, you will receive SSI. If you, God forbid, die before your spouse does, she receives a benefit.

The only people who benefit from SS are people who paid lower rates on lower taxed income in the past. The very old of today and more so the very old of the past. For the young person or middle aged person today, it's a loss. My grandfather paid into the Canada Pension Plan for 11 years and retired. He lived to age 94. To the argument of disability and life insurance, there are private policies which can account for both of those. And they each have the benefit of not being a tax on working.

Also, social security death benefits are small. A life insurance plan on the other hand gives you the full amount immediately. SS can maybe keep you in your house barely paying the mortgage. Private life insurance can pay off the mortgage, pay off the kid's college, pay off your cars, and still leave you money in the bank. You're forgetting that the total Social Security tax putting aside the medicare aspect of it isn't 6.2% but rather 12.4%.

What was Social Security when it first started? 2%. And 2% of $3,000 earned income max. That's equivalent to about $45,000 of income in today's world. So we have a system today that is taxed 6.2x as high as the original tax rate. And on more than twice as much income too. The future prognosis is to raise the tax rate and amount taxed even more so that we can pay future people less.

There is no private investment that can compete with SSI's benefits because, again, it's not an investment, it's insurance.

Hahahahahaha. It most certainly is not an investment.

Focusing on retirement benefits alone, most workers with moderate and low incomes will receive an annual rate of return slightly in excess of the 2 percent that government bonds typically provide above inflation. For example, a couple with one worker who earned an average income and retires in 2029 would receive an average real rate of return of 3.97 percent. Those with high earnings would receive a lower, but still positive rate of return.

Woop de do. A 2-4 percent rate of return. You're forgetting about the lost income that could have been generated had that money been put into a private retirement plan. Somebody who starts collecting in 2029 would have probably started working around 1979. The stock market from 1979 to 2029 is most certainly going to provide a better rate of return than 2-4 percent. Heck, an ING savings account with no risk was paying 4.75% back in 2007 when I moved to the US. My grandmother bought Canada Savings Bonds in the early 1980's that paid 18% compound interest for 5 years. She doubled her money. Again, low risk.

From the standpoint of taxpayers, Social Security is enormously efficient. Its administrative costs are less than 1 percent of benefits. In contrast, the fees in privately managed investment accounts are likely to reduce the ultimate retirement value of the accounts by 20 percent

20%? This is taking compounding of annual fees to the extreme while solely calculating the current cost of Social Security fees over the course of one year. My 403b plan at work offers an S&P 500 based fund that has a management fee of 0.07%. Besides, you have to ask the question 20% of what? 20% on a million dollars leaves you with $800,000. A far cry from the meager living that Social Security pays you.

Samsung PX2370 computer monitor for me. (23" LED screen. It's niiiiiiiice). It does 1920x1080p, but I use the 1280x720 setting most of the time anyways.

Ask your Italian friend why they charge you more money to drink coffee sitting down than they do if you stand up.

Maybe they'll build more nuclear reactors then.

Professional sports is the biggest rip-off in America. The only way they can pay these players millions of dollars and rake in huge profits for the team's owners is by making the taxpayers of whatever community they choose exploit next build and maintain their stadiums. If the sport was as successful as everyone claims, if it was making the kind of money that justifies the payouts to players and owners, then why do all these teams hang on the taxpayer's teat?

Total agreement. This is simple bailout and subsidization of rich team owners. In Houston, the Astrodome was built in the 1960's. First stadium in the world with air conditioning. In the 1980's, the city of Houston was told by the Houston Oilers owner that the stadium needed to be renovated or else he would pull the team out of the city......The city complied with it. Here we are nearly 25 years later and we're STILL paying for the 1980's renovations on the Astrodome.......Yet the Astrodome sits empty. City still has to pay for electricity, maintainance etc on it. What sits right next door to the Astrodome? The Houston Reliant Stadium. Built by *you guessed it* Houston taxpayers. (The Houston Oilers ended up leaving town and going to Tennessee)

The odd thing is that even in this red as can be Republican city, it was put up to a vote in a referendum about should the city pay to build the new Reliant Stadium. The city taxpayers voted yes. Why? Because that's where the Houston Texans play football.

Now the Houston Dynamo (soccer team) are asking the city to go halfers to build them a soccer stadium. They're saying that it would be cheaper to build a new stadium than to renovate the old Astrodome. The Astrodome could be made into a hotel and science center. (very expensive) Or it simply could be bulldozed and turned into a parking lot.

I personally don't care what sports franchise plays in a building. It shouldn't be payed for by taxpayers.

On a side note, the Pontiac Michigan Silverdome was sold last year for $550,000.... It cost 55 million dollars to build in 1975 (the 55 million being in 1975 dollars). The city of Pontiac couldn't afford to keep up the maintenance on the place. The new owners have talked about either renovating it. Or tearing it down and building a new stadium.

Intergenerational Contract.........Sheesh. First of all, good contracts have the option of being able to read and sign them before they take effect. Even better contracts have the option of letting the person choose to sign them or to pass on the contract. Using the intergenerational contract method, we could just as easily say that the Federal Debt obligation is an intergenerational contract. Each generation can overspend, pay some of it, and pass the rest on to the next gen.

Fortune Magazine Refutes 'Social Security Ponzi' Claim

There is no reason to think that Madoff couldn't have kept the thing going. It only ended because his kids reported him to the authorities. Once the landslide of people came demanding their money back, he didn't have enough to cover it. The same thing happens at banks during bank runs.

Regardless of names and titles, the fact remains that Social Security depends on the next generation to fund it's liabilities. It has to be "saved" over and over again. It isn't honest with people because the majority of people still think that the money they contribute to it somehow is set aside for them. That's why every time the question of should Social Security be eliminated, the answer by people is always "Sure, as long as I can get back my money that I've put in." They don't realize that the money they put in is gone the second they put it in there.