September 24, 2023

Woohoo! $627 per month for me!

I just checked my checking account and my first Social Security check has been deposited! Lot's of people said that SoSec was sure to go bust before I'd get anything. I didn't believe it, but it's still a minor shock to see my account credited.

How did I end up with such a princely sum? Enough to pay for all my monthly vices!

Well, I paid into the program for the exact minimum required number of quarters: 40. I haven't paid anything for the last 33 years since I spent most of my career in government jobs that provided a pension, but didn't pay into SoSec. My 40 quarters included minimum wage summer jobs in the 70's, as well as the first 7 years after I got out of college, the lowest paid of my career. Next, because of the mis-named Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP), the $1100 per month I was supposed to get was slashed down to $627 because I was receiving a government pension. I guess it would be unseemly for a government worker to seem too comfortable in retirement.

Anyway, my wife and I just went out to lunch to celebrate. She has another 8 years to wait for hers.

August 9, 2018

Voting won't mitigate climate change ...

or any of the other negative human impacts on the environment: water pollution and overuse, elimination and degradation of natural habitat, etc, etc. Only widely-adopted and significant changes in personal behavior will make any difference:

?Minimizing the number of gadgets, vehicles, appliances & clothing items we have - repairing rather than discarding & replacing.
?Sacrificing personal comfort - leaving the A/C and heat off unless absolutely necessary, and making do with a few hundred square feet of living space.
?Rejecting single-use products and packaging.
?Eliminating travel as amusement.

Basically, nothing will significantly improve for the environment until Americans broadly reject consumerism. Is any politician advocating that?

June 13, 2018

Is that true?

If you buy a bond, the issuer agrees to pay a certain interest rate at certain intervals (the coupon) and then, after the bond matures, you get the par value. No matter what happens to interest rates, none of this changes: the coupon value, maturity period and par value remain the same.

Your bond value declines only if you try to sell it before it matures, in which case you aren't a bond investor (who wants regular payments and then the par value), you are a bond speculator (who bought a bond at a certain price and wants to sell it at a higher price).

I'm principally a bond investor. I only invest in bond mutual funds that hold many different bonds with different interest rates, maturities and par values; I don't invest in individual bonds. I've read several analyses that show (using historical data from increasing-interest-rate periods) that even when interest rates are going up, someone who invests in bond mutual funds might lose money if they try to sell their funds, but if they simply hold them for the long-term, within 2 or 3 years they come out ahead because even the old, lower-interest bonds continue to pay and the new bonds that the fund buys are at a higher interest rate so your dividends go up, eventually making up for whatever hit your bond fund price took.

Bottom line: If you invest long-term in bonds or bond funds - invest, not speculate - you come out ahead, even in an increasing interest-rate environment.

June 9, 2018

None. The costs of $94 to $232 per ton of CO2

removed from the atmosphere are simply the costs to produce concentrated CO2:

The paper speculates that the concentrated CO2 could be used to produce fuels, but provides no costs for this step or even a process to do it:



Remember that conventional fuels (like gasoline) are "hydrocarbons" which means that they need a lot of hydrogen to add to the carbon from the CO2. That whole process of producing or providing hydrogen, and reacting it to combine with the CO2 is not shown, presumably because it is already technically feasible and understood.

EDIT: Nowhere does this paper claim that the process will be "cheap". The complete process of taking atmospheric CO2, providing a source of hydrogen, plus other necessary fuel additives, and cooking all those raw material streams into transportation fuel would require a facility that would look a lot like a modern oil refinery. The only entities with the resources and expertise to actually pull something like this off is "Big Oil".

May 28, 2018

The government should do that here, but we

shouldn't wait for them to take action. Don't use plastic straws, reject plastic cutlery, take your own reusable bags when shopping and your own Tupperware when you go out to eat and expect leftovers - leave some in the car so you don't forget.

It doesn't take government action to reduce plastic waste - it takes people action.

March 18, 2018

It's true. The most "amazing" thing about the internet

isn't how much information we have at our fingertips, but rather how almost everyone I'm in e-contact with reads the same limited number of articles and opinion pieces and sees the same videos, gifs, etc. If someone asks me, "Did you see that article about blah, blah, blah, yesterday?" The answer is probably, "Yes, I did." (against all odds since there were probably millions of articles published yesterday).

The worst part, as this article suggests, is how so many people will entirely dismiss any thought or opinion, without considering it critically, simply based on where is was published or who produced it. I see it every day here on DU.

March 16, 2018

It doesn't to me for 2 reasons:

1) We know that every state has plenty of people with plenty of medical problems that are untreated or inadequately treated because those people can't afford medical care. If medical care is suddenly "free", then it makes sense that not only would the state have to pay for all of the care that is currently provided, but also pick up the tab for all the care that didn't previously happen because it wasn't affordable. In other words, the cost for the state to provide medical care isn't the same as the current cost of medical care, it is potentially much, much higher.

2) On top of the additional cost of 1), there's a possibility that people outside of California who can't afford medical care may decide that it would be worth it to move to CA, find the cheapest housing possible, then wait as long as it takes to qualify for "free" medical care.

February 21, 2018

First, ban all government agencies and their

employees on US soil from possessing NFA weapons (fully-automatic firearms, short-barreled rifles, suppressors, etc). Also, no "destructive devices" (explosives, etc). No exceptions, with violations punishable as felonies, and do it on a federal basis, of course.

After all, the government has no legitimate interest in killing as many Americans as possible as quickly as possible. To the extent that police agencies "need" military weapons, it is because they have adopted tactics based on overwhelming firepower, rather than containment, negotiation and patience.

Then, once government agencies have been stripped of these weapons, demonstrating that these weapons are not necessary, I believe that a lot of the copy-cat demand from the public will dry up.

If that works out, ban the government from having magazines with greater than 10-round capacity, semi-automatic pistols and rifles, etc BEFORE trying to do it to the public.

After all, government agents don't carry weapons to protect you, they carry them to protect themselves, and that's how they almost always USE those weapons - to eliminate perceived threats against themselves.

As long as government agents are allowed to carry any weapon under the sun and as long as they are clearly using them for their own self-defense, it's a losing argument that the public shouldn't be entitled to the same level of protection.

Disarming the government is the only realistic path to general US disarmament.

February 4, 2018

Regardless of the tax situation, companies typically have

growth and/or profitability targets for their manufacturing and retail facilities. If a retail store consistently under-performs - because of high operating costs (rent, security, labor, etc) or low sales - it gets closed. Similarly, if a manufacturing facility under-performs, it gets upgraded, re-purposed or closed.

The tax situation doesn't affect this fundamental process of chasing growth and profits.

January 26, 2018

I can't let this go. There is no such thing as a

zero-emission car. A pure electric car includes significant emissions involved in the manufacturing: all of the production and transportation emissions involved in making the parts, putting them together and also associated with the labor and sales force that makes, markets and sells the car. In addition, if it gets its power from a power plant, that power plant takes fossil fuel (in CA it almost always natural gas) and burns that fuel to generate electricity at an efficiency that could be as low as 30% for an older plant. In other words, you need to burn 1 cubic foot of natural gas for every 0.3 cubic foot worth of actual electricity that is generated.

Is a zero-emission car actually less polluting overall than a conventional car? I don't know; that would be a complicated analysis involving every step of production, sales and operation. But I do know that "zero-emission" is a lie that doesn't even come close to reflecting reality.

The only zero-emission car is the one that doesn't exist.