yequalsx

95 ms·

841.
by yequalsx 15y ago
Amazon is doing a very good job of enticing people to buy the Kindle Fire. I opted to get a Kindle Touch instead of the Fire or an iPad. What's interesting is that I don't even think about getting an iPad. I would have gotten one had Appl
842.
Brad Delong's Preface to the American Finance System(delong.typepad.com)
2 points by yequalsx 15y ago|0 comments
843.
by yequalsx 15y ago
I can donate money to the government. It would be to my detriment to do so. This does not negate the fact that I think the government needs to raise taxes. This is especially so since companies are sitting on record levels of cash and are
844.
by yequalsx 15y ago
Many of the great inventions/discoveries in the history of science were not made for profit. Newton would not have been a better mathematician had he been paid more. Da Vinci would not have painted better had his profit margins been higher
845.
by yequalsx 15y ago
The comment I made is hardly disputable unless you think that pursing profit is always and everywhere a good thing. I don't know anyone who can't find an example of where the pursuit of profit was evil.
846.
by yequalsx 15y ago
Do you have any data to back up the claim that unprofitable enterprises are more likely to be damaging to the environment than profitable ones? I doubt very much that you can find such data. I'm open minded enough to consider such data. A
847.
by yequalsx 15y ago
But sometimes the value added is not morally obtained. Western countries derive a lot of value from resource rich countries that are impoverished. Unfortunately that value often times comes at the expense of great environmental and social
848.
by yequalsx 15y ago
If you read what I wrote I didn't claim you said that price would increase. Since it isn't necessarily true that the price of education would increase given more subsidies for it then one should argue that this is likely to be the case in
849.
by yequalsx 15y ago
I was replying to the stated belief that increasing funding for education would cause an increase in demand and thereby increase the price of education. I merely posited that this wasn't necessarily the case. Indeed, if one controls deman
850.
by yequalsx 15y ago
It isn't always true that subsidizing something increases its demand and thus its price. So it must be argued that this would be so in this particular instance. By increasing higher education spending, while limiting the number of people w
851.
by yequalsx 15y ago
I think going back on the promise he made in 2008 is more an indication about the entrenched power in the U.S. and the difficulty of making such a proclamation without knowing exactly what it would entail. For him to go back on this now wo
852.
by yequalsx 15y ago
According to the Congressional Budget Office there was a decrease in 2000/2001. According to the NPR story and the original graph you linked to there was a decrease at this time. http://www.cbo.gov/budget/data/historical.pdf According to
853.
by yequalsx 15y ago
I don't know much about the bond market but is a Treasury IOU in the sense you mention really much different than a Treasury bond? I suppose the ability to reneg on the IOU without disrupting the bond market would be a difference. Provide
854.
by yequalsx 15y ago
Actually, we did start to pay off the debt but this was at the very end of the Clinton administration. If you'll look closely at the graph you supplied you'll see this. Note that the first Bush budget wouldn't be until 2001. The debt wasn
855.
by yequalsx 15y ago
A slight nitpick. Your definition should be a number whose proper divisors sum to the original number. Or it should be whose divisors sum to twice the original number.
856.
by yequalsx 15y ago
I've said this over and over again to Germans that I know and they simply don't believe what you say. They really think that they are bailing out profligate Greeks and that there is no benefit to them. Politically, it isn't feasible for M
857.
by yequalsx 15y ago
A great quote from Galbraith is appropriate here. "The markets can stay irrational a lot longer than you can stay solvent." I don't know exactly what you mean by should but whether or not fear and rumor should drive markets the fact remain
858.
by yequalsx 15y ago
Tax burden is not a vague term. They define it in the charts. Total tax burden is the percent of GDP that is tax revenue. The link you gave talks about effective tax rate. This is very much different than the percent of GDP collected in
859.
by yequalsx 15y ago
I think it's quite bad to focus on rates. Given that there are usually loop holes and tax incentives it becomes necessary to look at tax burden as a percent of GDP. The people who make the argument you mentioned are wrong. If lower taxes
860.
by yequalsx 15y ago
The chart says total tax burden so I'm assuming it takes into account state taxes. The one chart indicates an average for the U.S. of around 26%. This would be a 2% increase from what it is today. In a $10 trillion economy this would be
861.
by yequalsx 15y ago
Here are some charts. I don't know how to make links in a comment. http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2011/07/tax-burdens-around...
862.
by yequalsx 15y ago
Raising taxes does work since the tax level in this country is quite low. It has a long way to go to catch up to France, Germany, etc. If raising taxes to the level of Germany would cause such a massive outflow of capital (which could be
863.
by yequalsx 15y ago
The are numerous examples of countries having a larger debt to GDP ratio than the United States who recovered nicely from such debt ratio. In the U.S. taxes are around 24% GDP which is quite low relative to the rest of the industrialized wo
864.
by yequalsx 15y ago
I've tried searching for a list of Stanford's online open enrollment courses and haven't found anything. Is there a website that details their course offerings and a list of planned courses?
865.
by yequalsx 15y ago
The claim I responded to had to do with the randomness of the digits of a number. The person appeared to have the belief that irrational numbers have to have random digits. This isn't true. This isn't true for transcendental numbers eith
866.
by yequalsx 15y ago
No! Consider this number: 0.101001000100001..... (continue the obvious pattern) This number is irrational but there is an obvious pattern to the digits. The pattern is not random. It's an open question on whether or not the digits of pi
867.
by yequalsx 15y ago
Your last paragraph seems to suggest that companies don't make dumb decisions by "killing a good thing". Maybe you think only Netflix doesn't make dumb decisions of this sort but there is a long history of companies making dumb decisions b
868.
by yequalsx 15y ago
My initial reaction to seeing the $20 number was that it was more than reasonable. I thought it inexpensive. Factoring polynomial problems. It's a pain to come up with them. Writing problems where the solution to a quadratic equation has
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by yequalsx 15y ago
You mentioned a $20 figure and this has biased my feelings. It's known that throwing out a figure causes an anchoring effect by which people judge the value of an object or service. I've been teaching for a long enough time now that I have
870.
by yequalsx 15y ago
Netflix is the one recurring bill on my credit card. I like the company and think it has great customer service. I trust the company. I don't want multiple recurring charges on my credit card. The more paid accounts a person has the mor

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