Is College a Worthwhile Investment 28 June 2009
Posted by Lao Tzu in business, economy, sociology, technology.add a comment
As I predicted, soon, in the US, college would end up being a bad investment from a business perspective. There is now a recent article echoing these concerns. Of course, the real value of education depends on the individual and what they do with it, but the economic value must be evaluated from the resulting salary (multiplied by the probability of getting such as job and the years in service), vs. the full cost of acquiring the education needed for the position (including all living expenses and missed opportunity income and years of service). Hence, there will be a point, if it has not been realized already, where a good paying job that does not require a degree (and there are still some out there), will be a better investment (ecomomically) than a low paying 4 year degree.
There are many examples or individuals acquiring wealthy salaries without a college education (some actors, athletes, musicians, etc.). A common joke when fellow engineers make a brilliant accomplishment is, “Now if I could just hit a ball with a stick, I would be a millionaire.” However, this phenomenon is tempered by the low probability of scoring such an opportunity, based on the assumption that these positions are destined for the creme de la creme – which may or may not always be the case, but it is a safe assumption.
On the flip side, a weekend with a Java book will give someone all the necessary skills for a high tech position that would otherwise be reserved for someone with a 4 year degree.
Cashing in on Michael Jackson 28 June 2009
Posted by Lao Tzu in advertising, arts, business, entertainment, media, music.Tags: michael jackson
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So, the day he passed away, I went to YouTube to look at some very early videos (e.g., Ed Sullivan, etc.), and I saved them as favorites. Today, I went to look at them again, and I got this message:
This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by SOFA Entertainment.
Didn’t take long.
Michael Jackson’s Legacy 28 June 2009
Posted by Lao Tzu in arts, entertainment, media, music, sociology.Tags: michael jackson
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If you are my age, or older, you are familiar with the many phases of Michael Jackson’s career. And although he was a bit eccentric at times, he was an icon that had great influence on music and pop culture. Although I am not a fan of pop music, I cannot deny his impact. To watch any of his early performances (e.g., the Ed Sullivan show), he will see how amazing this person was. As for the child molestation accusations, it’s common sense. If someone molests your child, you don’t ask for money – and you definitely don’t forgive for money. If the police were smarter, either case would not have gotten as far as it did. The press made MJ a star, and made him a pedophile. His talent not withstanding, the media built him up, and tore him down. And it was not until his death that any media spoke of these accusations as weak. Truly a shame. I hope he is remembered for his positive accomplishments.
My Windows Vista Experience? 26 June 2009
Posted by Lao Tzu in computers, software engineering, systems engineering, technology.Tags: microsoft, vista, windows
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I just purchased a laptop with Windows Vista installed. The machine is 64 bit and has 4 GB of RAM. When I am not doing anything, the OS is using at least 30% of my memory. WOW! But I could live with that if I were getting some high speed performance as a trade off. Haven’t see it. But that is not the worst part. They have merely amplified everything that microsoft has been doing wrong in the OS business.
The file system (or at least how it is displayed) is insane. There is this folder on the desktop that is named after the computer login name – similar to that useless folder/directory called “My Documents” that has been on the last several versions of Windows. At least they got rid of the space in the name. However, this new desktop folder is very interesting. I am not sure where it “physically” resides on my hard drive. Of course by physically here I am merely referring to the next level of abstraction below this one. It looks like it is under C:/User/Owner/ when I browse from the C drive, but the path is different if I browse from the desktop. In fact, the computer appears as a subdirectory under the desktop. Huh? To make it worse, the actual directory names in the path are different????
In addition, not only did they not fix that eternal problem of having a directory named “Program Files” (it contains a space and the word Files is not necessary), they made it worse by making two of them. There is another directory called “Program Files(x86)”. Incredibly stupid. I always make a directory simply called “Programs” and install everything there.
Finally, there were all these “special” folders preinstalled, like Favorites, Documents, Photos, etc. This is like buying a house and someone else putting furniture in it you don’t like. So I deleted some of these, and that caused all sorts of problems. Now the browser cannot save my favorites, and I have no idea where files I download go to.
Vista is the worst OS I have ever worked with. I do give Microsoft credit for leading the Windows movement (if not inventing it). However, the pioneers must have left the company. They obviously traded sanity for useability here. Microsoft is in desparate need of a systems engineer for their OS.
Metro Tragedy & Economics 23 June 2009
Posted by Lao Tzu in business, economy, systems engineering.Tags: dc, metro, metro crash, plane crash
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We recently had a tragic train wreck here in the DC area, yesterday, where 2 Metro trains collided. Unfortunately, over the 2 days prior to the accident, I had 2 separate conversations with people explaining how I predicted that there would be more plane crashes due to the economic crisis. Unfortunately, I was correct. I have not checked the stats, but it appears there were more crashes on the news recently, and the reasons are related to economic crisis (for the cases where we have a good estimate of the cause). The rationale is straightforward. Airlines are typically running in the red and sensitive to consumer spending trends. They have little room to cut expenses during economic low points. Hence, critical areas get cut – maintenance labor, part replacements, pilot rest periods, training, and selection criteria are lowered to those with failing test scores. It was reported today that the train that crashed was overdue for brake replacements and that the Metro could not afford to keep up with maintenance. Is the same phenomenon occuring here?
No Incentive to Fix Credit 22 May 2009
Posted by Lao Tzu in credit, economy.2 comments
There is a never ending endevour to destroy people’s credit score at every opportunity. The rationale is that low credit scores are justification for higher interest rates. Now, this definitely sounds like ‘conspiracy paranoia’, but let me provide a case in point. If you are late on a bill, but pay it off in full early, the lateness stays on your credit report for 7 years. OK, you might say, that sounds fair. You were still late. But here’s the problem. This means there is no incentive to pay things off early, or pay them off at all.
Taxing Health Benefits 15 March 2009
Posted by Lao Tzu in economy, medicine, politics.Tags: taxes, taxing health benefits
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Many in this country have been against the idea of public health care. The idea of our tax money going to provide health care to the population was repugnant to most. As our children attend public schools and we drive on public roads, the idea of ensuring (with an e) that every citizen had access to health care (diagoses, medicine, treatment) was just too much for some. I never understood their rationale, myself.
Interestingly, the white house has recently stated that it would consider the idea of taxing our health benefits (full story) in order to raise money to help pay for the new health care plan. I assume that is because we are broke from bailing out the banks.
For those that don’t see the irony here, let me break it down. Our free enterprise system implies that we pay for our own health care. But it is too expensive, so we get some assistance from insurance companies. But they end up being too expensive, so we get help from our employers where they pay an ever decreasing portion of the cost of the insurance. All of a sudden, someone sees that as an opportunity to extract more taxes from either you or your employer. So this means that instead of you paying taxes to get free health care, you pay for health care, and you pay taxes for any assitance you get to pay for your health care. Just the opposite of socialized medicine.
What’s worse is that our Government is just blatantly making up new taxes without justification in order to pay for the bailout. When I say ‘justification’, I refer to the fact that a tax must serve some purpose against the thing being taxed, not soley for the sake of bringing in revenue. If this is allowed, there is no theoretical end to this scope.
But the funniest part of this story is where it states, “Those who want to tax benefits in whole or in part make two main arguments. They say the tax exclusion is a generous subsidy that insulates employees from the true costs of health care, …”
I thought that was the whole point of insurance.
The Bailout 2.0 (Why it Won’t Work) 11 February 2009
Posted by Lao Tzu in economy, politics, psychology, sociology.Tags: bailout
2 comments
Let’s see, it didn’t work the first time (for the reasons I mentioned), so let’s do it a second time. Hmmm, what a strategy… Oh yeah, and the majority of the population was against it the first time, they have not yet benefitted from it, so what are the chances that the majority will be behind it the second time? Oh, and did we forget that the huge sum of $700 Billion did not fix anything – we are still declining!
OK, here are some reason why these bailouts will not fix the economy:
- You are putting money into the wrong end of the pump. Giving money to banks is supposed to unfreeze credit. People don’t need credit to get new homes, they need to pay for the mortgage that increased so they can keep their homes. If you lost your job, no one is going to give you credit. Not to mention, our economic system is not designed to run this way.
- Psychology is not being considered. The executives running the banks are in this business for one reason, they like money, and they use these institutions as their personal investment projects. They have absolutely no desire or even incentive to spend this money in the manner that congress would prefer.
- There is no accountability or enforcement. To simply state that the behaviour (described above) is unethical soungds good, but the situation is actually worse than that. It should be illegal. The Government has given these commercial institutions tax money, and they should be able to enforce how that is used.
There is a much simpler solution that will fix the economy immediately, but no one is talking about it. I will save it for another post.
