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Monday, April 20, 2009
Shut Up Rich People I really, really have no patience for rich people complaining about their money situation. I know it's fun and all to bitch and moan, I'm an expert in complaining about things, but it's another thing to let yourself to be used in a widely circulated publication as an example of how "tough" it is for the rich. Today's exhibit A for rich people complaning "woe is me" (Isaiah 6:1-8) is this Yahoo/WSJ article with people making more than $250,000 complaining that they don't feel rich. Since I read all these articles, I can always tell a hack writer when they don't really explain why these people are so hard up despite making a crapload of money. It invariably indicates that the writer is looking for a "theme" piece and is willing to scrape together any example, regardless of their merits, to fit his foregone conclusion. Here, the writer buries it in the penultimate paragraph of the piece: For the Parnells, their perception of themselves is based on the math.I love that he opens with that sentence. Like, "hey man, this is fucking science. You can't argue with this shit." The value of their house is down $60,000.Wow, cry me a river. You're doing better than most. How much is it worth now? Who knows, they leave that out. They do say that it's a family of five in a "2,500-square-foot home." Gosh, how can they survive at only 500-sq-foot per person? How horrible. Ms. Parnell says the couple's gross income last year was about $260,000. Taxes, premiums for medical care and deductions for Social Security and their 401(k) contributions cut the gross to about $12,000 per month.That's $144,000 a year. That's great. But working backwards ... if she and her husband max their 401(k) contributions, that's pre-tax $31k, or we're at $174k. This works out to about 67%, or 33% to taxes and healthcare. Again, welcome to the rest of America. Move to Denmark and then start complaining (although they like their high taxes just fine). The family tithes $1,300 a month at their church.Hel-lo. What do we have here? For those doing not doing the math at home, that's 6% of their gross income out to their church, or 10.8% of their take home. I don't really begrudge them what they spend money on (I do, but shhhhhh), but if you're dropping that kind of money on church, don't go complaining to the WSJ that you feel poor. That's a signficant voluntary expenditure. Their mortgage, second mortgage and payment on land they bought is nearly $4,000 a month. Zing! I'm going to make a big assumption here and assume that they bought into the big housing bubble and shortsightedly took out a second mortage to buy some land that's not worth a hell of a lot now. $4,000 is a lot of money to pay out on a mortgage, a second mortgage, and "land," but whose fault is that? "I blew all my money on the dog track and now I don't feel so RICH anymore! Waaaaaaaah!!!!" Shut up rich people. You may not "feel" rich, but it's because you're blowing your money on shit. People make bad investments all the time, but those people, like these people, should not be used as examples of how $250,000 isn't all that much. It is a lot, but won't feel like a lot of you spend a ton of it unwisely. Other expenses, including their family car payment, insurance and college funds, as well as basics like food, utilities and donations to charities, leave them with about $1,200 left over each month.I don't have any grief with the $5,500 they spend a month on this stuff, but remember, $1200 a month is what they have free and clear after all of this. This is money they can spend on any dumb crap. A lot of people would love to have $14,000 to spend a year if everything else they could possible need was already covered. It's not the end of the world. Moreover, that $1200 is less than what they give their church every month. Christians all want to be good Christians (well, maybe not...), but they need to think about whether their church deserves more money a month than they have to spend. Back to the larger point, these people don't feel rich because they're spending almost half their take home salary on elective expenditures and bad investments. That's not the fault of the $260,000 they make a year. That's their own dumb fault. Anything over $250,000 is a lot of money, and people survive on far, far less. If it doesn't feel like they are rich, then maybe they should step back and reevaluate their finances. In any case, no writer should be wasting everyone's time devoting space to the woes of these rich people. Sure, writers love to be counterintuitive, but it's really quite nauseating to read about people that have no business complaining. One other thing from the article: San Jose, Calif., Mayor Chuck Reed calls a family living in Silicon Valley earning $250,000 "upper working class." That is about what two engineers working at a technology firm can expect to make, but "a family earning $250,000 a year can't buy a home in Silicon Valley," he said.Is that because $250,000 isn't a lot of money? No, it's because the price of homes in Silicon Valley has been insane. Thankfully, for people looking to buy, house prices are tanking. Obviously, not good for home owners. Once some reasonableness is brought back to the housing market (it's still declining and I'm still standing by 2011-12 for bottom), then $250,000 will feel just fine for buying a house in Silicon Valley. In any case, I do feel greater sympathy for people in real estate bubbles like Silicon Valley. What To Drink Now The Wall Street Journal has an article, here, about the decline of vodka and rise of other alcohols per Food & Wine magazine's annual drinks collection, "Cocktails '09." As I mentioned last summer, elderflower is showing up all over the place. Also mentioned in this article is cachaça, which is my new non-traditional alcohol of choice (i.e., not gin, vodka, tequila, etc.). With it, I like to make caipirinha, which is cachaça, lime and sugar. In other words, I just pour in some Minute Maid limeade with the cachaça. Obviously, fresh limes and sugar are better, but some of us are lazy. On my recent trip to Mexico, the bartender where we were staying made the best caipirinha I've ever had. His secret was a few dashes of Angostura bitters.
Monday, April 06, 2009
The Worst Show On Television (that I actually have watched) WCG Ultimate Gamer. I watched the first episode tonight, and if you haven't seen it, I'll refer to another show you may not have seen to describe it. It's structured like Top Chef, but for video game players. It's been on for a few weeks, but I caught the first episode tonight. The game of the show was Rock Band 2, so naturally I had to see what was going on. The point of the show is to find the "ultimate gamer" for WCG tournaments (a Top Chef). Who knows what an "ultimate gamer" is, but whatever, let's just go with it. They picked 12 people to live together in a big apartment (Top Chef) and the show is a mix of "competitions" and life back in the apartment (Top Chef), along with interviews throughout the show that are pretty much identical to Top Chef. The first half was a "real life" Rock Band where the 12 contestants were split up into three teams. They then had to learn how to play one of the songs in Rock Band 2 on real instruments and then perform in front of the actual band (I'm dispensing with "spoilers" because "spoilers" implies I'm giving away something good that you want to find out for yourself first hand. There's no way to spoil a good or interesting facet of this show so there can be no spoilers). The next step is that the teams are again divided into three bands, but now they play Rock Band 2. The person that was in the worst 4-some twice is up for elimination. The #1 person, who was in two #1 4-somes, gets to pick a person to go against the worst person. The 12 contestants are all pretty damned good at a wide variety of games. But very few of them are good at more than a couple games. And this is where the show completely falls apart. In the first episode, the dude that was up for elimination was a Guitar Hero champ. The dude that was put up for elimination was a guy who is unbelievable at Madden. The final challenge: a head-to-head competition, for one song, on guitar in Rock Band 2. Now, this was a strategic choice by Mr. #1 to get rid of his competition (Madden Guy), but the structure of the game demonstrates what an embarrassment it is. In no other "reality TV" would you have such a nonsensical mismatch. It's like an Ultimate Athlete Competition where you have a wide variety of athletes and the final competition is between an all-star QB and an all-star forward in a competition of football throwing. What's the point? Or Ultimate Musician where it's a cellist versus a trumpet player on the trumpet. You stack the deck so strongly against one competitor that it's a complete waste of time. There were plenty of places they could have tried to level the playing field. Put them on vocals. Put them on drums. Pick a game that they both sucked at. Anything. But instead, you have a GR champ versus a Madden champ playing guitar in RB2. And the structure of the show permits these mismatches. You don't have these situations in any other "reality" competition. And it just goes to show how brain-dead the producers are. After lifting the structure of Top Chef, they really couldn't figure out how to come up with a video game competition from it (it might be the same producers for all I know, but then they're showing a lack of imagination). There are lots of other things wrong with this show, but this aspect of the game's structure demonstrates who fundamentally flawed it is. I haven't seen a show in a very long time where the producers are so obviously clueless. It's startling to see it in action. To see how pervasive this idiocy is, I checked out episode summaries for later shows and for example, a former national champ at StarCraft was booted in a DDR competition. WTF?
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Believe Me Now Some of my "must reads" are probably pretty suspect and I'm throwing a lot of them out there lately. But Matt Taibbi's take down of DeSantis here, I think, speaks for itself. I almost feel bad for writing anything. Better to waste your time reading Taibbi than my nonsense. It's interesting to me that, I believe independently, a lot of people discussing DeSantis start off with bullet points of his argument as I did below. Interesting that was the first inclination of a lot of people.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
"Did all professional journalistic reporters catch idiot cancer overnight?" Another "go read" ... Wonkette. And watch Robert Gibbs deal with the most inane questions you can possible imagine. Questions about why the President horrors didn't call on the "big newspapers" and about teleprompters. Good lord. I also enjoyed the comments such as this.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Call the Waaaaaambulance In today's New York Times, there's a "resignation letter" from an executive vice-president at AIG, Jake DeSantis. This letter was such an embarrassing spectacle, I expected pretty much unanimous derision except for small pockets of wingnuts. Not so! I checked out a poll at Consumerist, as well as comments, and it appeared that a greater percentage of people sympathized with this WATB. Basically DeSantis' argument boils down to: (1) I might have been in AIG-FP, but I wasn't in the group that fucked everything up. (2) I have been working for the past 12 months in the group dismantling the unit for $1. (3) I came from humble roots, received a scholarship to MIT, and now I'm here. (4) "The profitability of the businesses with which I was associated clearly supported my compensation." (5) Not my fault the company is bankrupt. (6) Leave me and others like me out of this shit. (7) You screwed us! (8) "As most of us have done nothing wrong, guilt is not a motivation to surrender our earnings. We have worked 12 long months under these contracts and now deserve to be paid as promised." (9) "I know that because of hard work I have benefited more than most during the economic boom ..." (10) "On March 16 I received a payment from A.I.G. amounting to $742,006.40, after taxes." (11) But I'm awesome so I'm donating it all! I hate these people and let me tell you why. AIG is insolvent. Has no money. Bankrupt. Kaput. Hasta La Vista. Zero. Done. It's liabilities outweigh its assets. When a company is in this position it doesn't pay people! You are out in the street with the pictures of your family that you hastily gathered before security escorted everyone out of the building and the locks went on the doors. Sad, but true, this is happening to a lot of folks these days. People who don't make $742k a year after taxes. Good, honest, hardworking people that didn't do anything wrong. Yes, people with contracts, but now there's no money so they're out hitting the bricks looking for work. But wait! AIG is too big to fail! The U.S. government steps in with billions of tax payer dollars to keep AIG afloat. Not out of love in its heart, but because if AIG goes under, it takes too many people, companies, and financial institutions with it. So it gives AIG billions, and this is important, so that these bad potential outcomes of an AIG failure don't happen. The U.S. government isn't giving AIG money to make sure DeSantis is paid. It's giving AIG money (allegedly) so the rest of us don't get screwed. Executives at AIG knew exactly what this money was meant for, but decided to funnel it back to pay themselves under various rationals. One of those people that got paid is DeSantis. The whole situation is like an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond. (No, I didn't really like the show, but it's relevant here.) Raymond's brother is out of money and bitching and moaning about his financial straights. Over a lot of hand-wringing, Raymond gives his brother money to pay a whole bunch of bills. Instead, the brother ignores the bills and goes off on vacation. Raymond, of course, goes ballistic and the brother is like, "hey, fuck you. I can spend the money any way I want!" Obviously, AIG is the brother, and the administrations (Bush and Obama) are the dumb Raymond who didn't put any legal requirements of what to do with the money. DeSantis is the beneficiary of the government's stupidity and has turned to the New York Times to tell the world, "hey! Fuck you for making me feel guilty about going on vacation! You all SUCK!" DeSantis is no dummy and he's obviously rich, which makes him going to the New York Times to whine about it all the more douchey. First, he made a fuckload up to this point, he admits as much. 99.9% of people in the United States, literally, are worse off than this guy. I can't help but think of all the people in the country who had contracts, but their companies weren't too big to fail, so they're just plain old out of work with no money. They don't have the New York Times to host their pity party. They're out there trying to make ends meet while he's complaining about being guilted out of his huge pay day. Too fucking bad. And he has to know he's being a jackass, but he doesn't care. He's obviously smart enough to know that when a company goes under, it doesn't matter if your group is doing well. You don't subdivide revenue, assets, liabilities, etc. into groups. When a company is out of money, it's out of money. The Ford Mustang sells pretty well, but the folks putting them together aren't claiming, "leaves us alone! Those guys in the Flex plant can suck it." They're all in it together. Hell, he was in a sub-group of AIG-FP, so even if the unit was spun off, he'd still be mixed in. In any case ... He also knew what a shambles the company was in when he took the contract. In fact, he was in a group dedicated to dismantling a portion of the company. He took a big risk with his compensation, and he knew it, but he still felt the need to go to the New York Times to complain when his roll of the dice came up "SOL." But isn't that representative of the whole situation? These financial guys take some big risks, here, DeSantis accepting a contract from a troubled company, and when it doesn't pan out, they come complaining for tax payers to bail them out. I hate these people. But no. Mr. Personal Responsibility-Please Bail Me Out, refuses to return the money that he should have never had in the first place. He'd rather spend it on "charity" so he doesn't come off as big douche for keeping it, but makes his big stand against "the system" that's screwing him. Consequently, I marvel at people talking about the sanctity of contracts (and poor Mr. DeSantis). That, in and of itself, is a quaint notion, but in this context, where AIG is basically taking advantage of a massive loophole, it's shocking where some people's sympathies lie. Come hell or high water, some rich dude must get paid! What the fuck?
Monday, March 23, 2009
Role Models Finally saw "Role Models" Friday night (yes, I'm behind the curve). Since this coffee situation is so close to my heart, I had to post it: I'll note that I only order "Large" in Starbucks, not "Venti." And to their credit, I've only been corrected 50 times, but never refused service! Great!?
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Thursday, March 19, 2009
6 Years I was just going through the archive of my posts around the start of the Iraq War back on March 19, 2003 (sorry, can't seem to make them accessible generally). And, as I suspected, and contrary to a lot of revisionist history, a heck of a lot of people knew this was going to be a fiasco. In particular, I thought this Paul Krugman article was on point. Going through the posts, I was reminded of the relatively quick end to the straightforward military confrontation and the crowing from the rightwingers about it being a cakewalk. It was amazing how little they understood about what it meant to topple a government. Or, to paraphrase Colin Powell, what it would mean if we had to buy it after breaking it.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Bookmarking a Classic You've all seen the Stewart v. Cramer match-up, but I'm posting this for my own records and so I can find it easily in the future. The uncut interviews: Irrelevant Is it me or have Republicans gone from "The Opposition" to "Embarrassing Knuckleheads" in a few short months? I think the trigger was the nomination of Palin and the fact that Republicans supported it that really crystallized how unserious they were about anything. Funny Guy I'm always surprised at how naturally funny Ricky Gervais is. He, for me, is a constant crack-up. Yet I didn't imagine he would be funny watching The Office. I've been following the Twitter feeds of several comedians that are pretty good, and it's amazing how not really funny they are. And it's also interesting to see how they all follow the same paradigm of making up weird shit that they're doing for jokes ("I'm doing coke!"). They're absolutely interchangeable senses of humor that rely on random juxtapositions. By contrast, Gervais seems to have the ability to make things actually happening, funny. I guess that's sort of the what is going on in The Office and Extras. In any case, here is Gervais with Elmo (funnier than it sounds!):
Monday, March 09, 2009
QFT Nouriel Roubini: "Those who believe in a second half recovery this year "are delusional" he says." Recession Will Probably Last 36 Months Tough Darts I mentioned a little while ago about the problems universities and colleges are going to have now that they can't milk their students and the students' parents as much as they used to because of the crashing economy. Yesterday, the NYT discussed the situation and problem for these schools now that their "business model" is halfway out the window. Like I was saying: Colleges have been in the catbird seat for the past decade or so. As the number of high school students swelled, applications rose, allowing colleges to be more selective. And families benefiting from a flush stock market seemed willing to pay whatever tuition colleges charged. I'm sure I'm not the only one that has zero sympathy for these assholes. To be clear, the "assholes" are in the administration of these schools. I have no beef with the instructors and the vast majority of those associated with these schools.
Thursday, March 05, 2009
Watch The first ten minutes (or so) of last night's Daily Show is why it is a national treasure. It should be mandatory television in schools. Watch it!
Wednesday, March 04, 2009
"No one knew this was coming." These are words that are almost invariably untrue. Someone (*cough*) shared an article that attempted to address the current financial situation and the emotional response to it. Here's the link to the original. The first item of the numbered list is: No one knew this was coming. I know that there are all sorts of folks claiming to have known, but really, no one knew. It has been one surprise after another. It might seem obvious now, but that is only with the benefit of hindsight.This is so incredibly wrong, it makes me question the truthfulness and intelligence of the original author. It reminds me of Condoleeza Rice's statement that "I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, that they would try to use an airplane as a missile." It either indicates she's a liar, or a moron. I won't go so far as to say that about the original blog poster, he's not (AFAIK) someone in a position like Condoleeza Rice who is paid to know this stuff. He might be just be genuinely ignorant of the fact that many, many people predicted this. For example, November 5, 2005, on a blog I read frequently until it was shutdown (to start a new one), the author said (check the linked title): Then of course there's Peter Schiff who has videos all over the place predicting exactly what we're going through. Or in that obscure rag, The Economist from June 16, 2005: House prices(emphasis added) This was not unforeseen. What is more problematic is that the phrase "no one knew this was coming" is typically meant to be exculpatory. That is, "don't blame me for this massive fuck up. Nobody saw it coming!" If you can't be blamed, you can't be punished. In fact this idea is being pushed by many guilty parties in the financial industry. The the use of it, vis a vis the financial system, tends to increase the likelihood that these "financial wizards" will be found blameless by society for what they have done. Indeed, if they are found blameless, they can keep their ill-gotten gains and return to the behavior that got us all into this situation in the first place. The original poster here might actually (and innocently) believe that no one foresaw the financial problems we are now facing. Nevertheless, it is sentiments like that that will make it more difficult to resolve a lot of issues that we have at the moment and permit the guilty parties to escape their deserved punishment. Somewhat Zeitgeistian Of Me This is an odd coincidence. Last week I posted my thoughts on some research and my thoughts regarding Facebook and the "Dunbar Number." Here. Today, Lifehacker has a short post to a BBC article all about the application of the Dunbar Number to Facebook. (the link in the side bar to the BBC article calls it "Friendflation". I like that a lot) However, like real reporters, they actually asked people, including Robin Dunbar, about the numbers and "core" friends and such. Once again, I think the article sounds about right since it backs up my general, anecdotal impressions. Some blurbs of note... First, this isn't something I was discussing before, but interesting: "A study of 10,000 US students over a period of 35 years suggests the wealthiest people are those that had the most friends at school. Each extra schoolfriend added 2% to the salary."I find that very hard to believe based on my experience. My experience is clearly not indicative of anything though. Rather, the people I've known in my life with the most friends are making the least, or near the bottom. Conversely, the people that I know who make the most tend to be not particularly gregarious. Not social outcasts, but not exactly the center of social circles. The following is the exact point I was trying to make in my last post: The average number is about 150, says leading anthropologist Robin Dunbar.Again, "150" really isn't a lot according to the way Dunbar defines "friend" and the wide range of relations that it covers. The following, I think, gets to the heart of my issue with Facebook. There's a limit to how many close friends like this you can have and it's probably between six and 12, he says.Indeed. And, despite what people tell me, I simply don't believe people can actually have close friendships with all the people on their friend lists. All the evidence points the other way and indicates that people are just adding endlessly, but to no real end other than bloating their total number of friends. Facebook is like a fire hose watering down the "concept of friendship." Lastly, here's an interesting observation that reaches the conclusion, as provided in my previous post, of the research conducted by Facebook about the amount of contact people have amongst their friends lists. "First email, then mobile, and now social networking sites like Facebook have made it much easier for people to grow their circle of friends beyond their immediate inner circle," says digital media expert Dan Clays of BLM Quantum.(emphasis added) The bolded bit is essentially what Facebook's research showed. But maybe we're too fixated on numbers, says Mr Vernon.Zing!
Sunday, March 01, 2009
8 Years Of This Shit Never forget. This idiot was the president for 8 years. And a lot of dumb fuckers love(d) him. The following is from January, but now that you've sort of acclimated yourself to what a real president should sound like, I thought this Letterman clip serves as a strong reminder of how fucking stupid GWB was, and how really fucking stupid his fans were.
Friday, February 27, 2009
Can You Hear Me Now? One of my ongoing disputes with my wife is that I listen to everything too loudly. The receiver for our home theater, helpfully, has a numerical reading for the volume instead of only the big nob that gives you very little indication of the volume. She and I tend to have different default levels. My higher level translates into the claim that the volume is "TOO LOUD!" And I'll go deaf or some other thing. Consequently, I'm a little insecure about how loud I listen to music. Do I listen to music too loudly? Is it going to damage my hearing? How the hell should I know? You might be surprised to learn (or not) that I think about this constantly since I commute to and from work listening to music with my iPod. In any case, Clive Thompson, the guy who continues to piss me off for posting what I wish I was clever enough to post, has information on iPod listening levels, combined with different types of earbuds, and what sound level will damage your hearing. Check it out. Luckily, it covers the headphones that I use. I always listen at 50% and, according to the chart, I can listen basically forever at that volume and not damage my ears. I can even crank it up to 60% and I'm no worse for wear if I don't listen for more than 14 hours, which never happens. If you go to the original source page, it's interesting to see that across 5 different MP3 players, the output is pretty much the same and gets closer as the volume increases. Sounds About Right I won't revisit my repeated criticisms of Facebook, other than to briefly note that I found that it to be, on the whole, a big waste of time that tended to be little more than an accumulation of "friends", but little more than that. It wasn't much of a communication tool to build those relations. Via MajorNelson (yes, the Xbox guy, go figure), Facebook's in-house sociologist has some stats: The average male Facebook user with 120 friends:The sociologist summarizes the data: “Humans may be advertising themselves more efficiently. But they still have the same small circles of intimacy as ever.”Ex-actly. Reading a bit more on this topic (no, I didn't read "Tipping Point"), there is "Dunbar's number." "Dunbar's number is a theoretical cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships."While the most frequently cited number of 150 makes it sound like you can have quite a few "stable social relationships", it also includes a broader number of people that I personally wouldn't put in that category: I think Facebook is interesting in that it allows people to actually reacquaint themselves with these peripheral characters in their life. Nevertheless, if "space" is reserved for these people, it means there's a level of diminishing returns as you move on in life. Similarly, it puts downward pressure on the number of people that you can have meaningful relations with via Facebook. The Facebook sociologist ads, "People who are members of online social networks are not so much ‘networking’ as they are ‘broadcasting their lives to an outer tier of acquaintances who aren’t necessarily inside the Dunbar circle..." |