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Non-Tech : Kirk's Market Thoughts -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Glenn Petersen who wrote (4849)	6/12/2017 4:00:59 PM
From: Kirk ©	Respond to of 26612

Thanks for the comments. I didn't want to pollute your good thread with my political thoughts and growth as I churn the ideas and think about this. I almost always fall back to my youth where I was smart but lazy... so the idea for me was to work as hard as possible to gain capital to invest and eventually have the money working for me. That meant good grades to get into a low cost, quality university (UC Berkeley) and then get good grades in a job I would enjoy that ALSO PAID WELL. I figured that out in high school algebra when my Algebra teacher, Mr. Lew, explained compound interest. I started clearing tables at Farrell's Ice Cream Parlor. Quit after six months to play soccer and Varsity tennis, then in the summer I got a job at a car wash for better pay. The manager at the car wash said he'd hire me if I promised to show up, not come late and not quit. I quit after a month after offering him the option to match the job offer I had at Montgomery Wards for about 50% more money.... I worked there through my senior year in high school saving for college and as a summer job the first summer. Then I got a better summer job at a bank the next summer where I found I was two or three times more productive than the day job workers who were only there to work as hard as it took to look busy and not get in trouble.... The next summer I got a summer intern job at HP then worked there for 20 years.... always arguing for higher pay to match higher performance. With a basic income where I could maybe fish, drink and hang out with friends... would I have felt compelled to work as hard? Two of my best friends skipped going to college and got jobs at the SF Mint making bicentennial coins for a HUGE government salary... but when those jobs went away, they both eventually went back to college where one is a Dr. now (after first trying art school....) and the other got an MBA and lives in Florida working for a telecom company. If goods are in tight supply, such as housing in the SF Bay Area, my guess is giving everyone $50K a year so they can afford to live here would mean rents would go up by $50K and the cost of a new home by whatever amount that $50K would translate into a higher mortgage payment. I almost think we need more Chinese style central planning where every new job brought here should come with 2.5 housing units to house the worker plus the support people and have those housing units on the same plot of land to reduce commuting. But others want the NY and Hong Kong model where they cram millions more per square mile, build high rises and make it impossible to drive... so we'll see.

To: Glenn Petersen who wrote (4849)	6/12/2017 4:09:44 PM
From: Kirk ©	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 26612

One big problem with this: A modified targeted basic income could be paid directly to those individuals who require assistance. Those payments could serve as a substitute for the myriad of means-tested programs currently in place. You would eliminate the cost of the paternalistic government bureaucrats overseeing most of the programs and give the recipients the dignity that comes from the ability to prioritize those needs that are most important to them. It could be cost neutral. You could also structure the program to provide incentives to the recipients to seek employment, either by not penalizing them for earning additional income or at least not reducing their basic income on a dollar-for-dollar basis as their earnings increase. Is when you are low income, you do a calculation on if the incremental amount of work is a good return. Consider being a 60 yr old, self employed worker shining shoes and making $25K a year and getting $700 a month from ACA that vanishes if you double your income to $50K a year. Not only do you jump in State and Fed tax brackets AND have to pay the payroll tax on both sides, but you lose that ACA subsidy. There are probably many other subsidies like PG&E's and water company lower rates for low income plus free phones.... So double the number of shoes you shine and take home less than 50% of the extra revenue.... and you might decide it is better to drink beer or windsurf.

To: Glenn Petersen who wrote (4849)	6/16/2017 11:39:39 AM
From: Kirk ©	4 Recommendations Recommended By dan6 Glenn Petersen mary-ally-smith rdkflorida2 Respond to of 26612

Jeff Bezos: "Alexia, buy me something at Whole Foods." Alexia: "Jeff, I got it all for $13.7B. The market likes the news and your stock went up $14.6B so you get it for free!" Originally posted at facebook.com

To: Glenn Petersen who wrote (4849)	6/28/2017 4:53:08 PM
From: Kirk ©	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 26612

Does anyone have a a site that ranks USB Flash Drives for speed? I kept two 128GM thumb drives to do hourly and daily backups plus an external hard drive. I take the hourly backup thumb drive with me when I leave the house for fire and theft protection. I'd like to find out which one is "faster." They were nearly full so I bought a cheap 256GB drive but it is fairly slow (SanDisk Cruizer Glide 3.0 - up to 90 MB/s) and even shows the speed is at the low range of USB 3.0 Speed. I'd like to use this for my daily backup (10AM daily) and perhaps buy a more expensive drive for the hourly backups. So far, the "fastest" I've found is this amzn.to Up To 400MB/sec Read, 300MB/s Writ Assuming reading and writing to the SD drive limits my speed, not reading my C Drive on what was a very fast computer two years ago... Fast would allow me to backup my current work quickly before removing it to leave the house. Thanks