Category Archives: General

General, Liberating Thoughts

Dinner Party

I was listening to the Thomas Jefferson Hour this past weekend and the question was asked about what four people Thomas Jefferson would have for a dinner party. The select party was Isaac Newton, John Locke, Francis Bacon and Maria Cosway. An interesting group to be sure.

That leads me to wonder who I might invite. I think I will start with a longer list and then try to trim it down.

    Plato
    Socrates
    Confucius
    Eleanor of Aquitaine
    I Newton
    F Bacon
    J Locke
    T Jefferson
    M Twain
    C Darwin
    A Huxley
    GB Shaw
    J Maxwell
    A Einstein
    O Wilde
    T Roosevelt
    E Roosevelt
    B Cosby
    B Fuller
    F Nietzsche
    FL Wright
    HG Wells
    Cleopatra
    Hammurabi
    Sun-Tsu
    L Da Vinci
    C Sagan
    I Asimov
    D Parker

Start a list like this and there is always someone else bubbling to the top. Time to stop it and trim

General, Politics

Some Daunting Numbers

I was just checking out the Census Bureau Population Report on Households. We are up to about 114M households in the US today, with about 2.55 persons per household. (Read the report if you want to see how they breakdown household compositions.) Of course, another Census Bureau report says we are at 116M households with a average of 2.56 people per household. I’m sure it all depends on what their definition of a household is, related vs non-related, etc.

With the National Debt at about $10,000,000,000,000, that runs to about $87K per household. The $700,000,000,000 bailout Rescue Plan that Congress is reviewing at present would add another $6K to average household debt. The median household income per year is about $50K per year. All that means is the 58M households make less than $50K per year and 58M households make more than $50K per year. So our national debt could be paid off in less than two years if nobody spent any money and just paid down the debt. In the meantime, the operating budget of the US for the next year is budgeted at $3,107,000,000,000, or $27K per household. (that doesn’t include the bailout figures). But US Households will only have to pay ~$19K each, for $2,200,000,000,000; $500,000,000 will be paid by other income sources. (Corporate taxes are expected to gather up to $339,000,000), and the remaining $400,000,000 will be tacked on to the debt. (Good ol’ Republicans, leaving their legacy ever deeper.)

I am finding it very difficult to find an ‘average’ household income. Everyone wants to list the median income. Whether the average is relevant, I am not sure. Incomes in the 5th quintile can be very skewed.

Economics, General, Politics

re: Executive Compensation

I have been hearing a bit that, as a result of the current financial meltdown, the salaries, the golden parachutes and the exorbitant compensation many (if not all) financial executives receive should be reduced due to their incompetence and malfeasance, especially if they expect the fed to bail them out.  On the other hand, the company/corporation and its shareholders are the ones that set the compensation and they are the ones that pay it out.

I would suggest that any annual compensation in excess of the US President’s salary be treated as taxable profit for the corporation.  So the corporation can still pay an executive $1M, $10M, $100M, but everything over $400,000 is taxed as pure profit. ( I also suggest that the President’s salary be no more than 10x the average household income in the US. )

I’m sure that these executives will try to  find a way around this limit – like ‘personal service contracts’ a la sport compensation packages – and I will leave it to the legislators to figure out how to deal with this violation of the spirit of the rule. Maybe something as simple as “executives can’t be contractors”. From my limited understanding of the corporate structure, executives are the ones that can commit a corporation to liabilities by signing a contract or agreement.

The other area of compensation that gets really outrageous is bonuses. I don’t know if bonuses can or should be tied directly back to the salary tax, but I would suggest that bonuses be deferred. An executive’s bonus should be based on how the company is doing 5, 7 or 10 years down the road, and not on what has happened in the past quarter or the past year. If a bonus is premised on an increase stock price, then let it be the stock price 5 years from now.  If the executive is no longer with the company, big deal, they, or their estate, still get the bonus.  Give the executives an incentive to lay a solid foundation for future growth rather than trying to game the system for a short-term spike in the market. That is a call for the board of directors and the shareholders, but maybe we can motivate them to go in that direction.

General, Liberating Thoughts, Politics

Trying to make history : AFA professor eyes run for Lamborn’s U.S. House seat

Trying to make history : AFA professor eyes run for Lamborn’s U.S. House seat : Local News : Local News : Colorado Springs Independent : Colorado Springs.

I had a chance to meet Hal last night. He is a very engaging speaker – recounting his adventures up at the DNC in Denver. And he has some good ideas on what Congress needs to be working on, check out his web site –

It’s the Alexander Hamilton bit that worries me…I tend to be more Jeffersonian…

Economics, General, Politics

The New Colonialism

China | The new colonialists | Economist.com

Not all observers, however, think that China’s unstinting appetite for commodities is super. The most common complaint centres on foreign policy. In its drive to secure reliable supplies of raw materials, it is said, China is coddling dictators, despoiling poor countries and undermining Western efforts to spread democracy and prosperity. America and Europe, the shrillest voices say, are “losing” Africa and Latin America.

I read this paragraph and immediately thought “How is this different from what the US has been doing for the past 100+ years? ” I might include the Europeans as well, after they had to relinquish their empires – coddling dictators indeed, setting them up in the first place, that’s what they were doing.

General

A Winter Morning

While I was sleeping, it gently snowed in Colorado. It was the big, puffy snowfall that falls steadily but lightly. The snow had limmed the leaveless branches of the cottonwoods and the shrub oak and had frosted the pine trees. Everywhere I looked, it was a winter wonderland.

As we drove out of the valley this morning the snow was still gently falling. I remarked to Elaine that if I had longjohns and a camera I would spend a couple hours just wandering around taking pictures. Thank goodness I don’t have any longjohns, it was cold and damp as well.

And the winter wonderland continued as we drove into town. The trees by the roadside, the B-52 on its pedestal, the fences, all with a thin coating of snow on one side. It was like the shadow they put under graphics to make them stand out, except these shadows were white.

As we got closer to town, it got uglier, the snow was heavier there and the limbs were bending under the weight. And the roads were slushing up with the brown/gray slush found on commuter roads.

It’s melting now and the snow is sloughing off the trees as the temperature gets above freezing.

According to my Accuweather forecast, there wasn’t supposed to be any snow last night. It is supposed to be arriving tomorrow night. I am disappointed with the overall accuracy in Accuweather this year. I am not sure they could forecast the short-term weather if they were sitting in the eye of a hurricane. So I have removed their addon from my FireFox and will need to pursue another weather info site. Elaine keeps saying Weather Underground is good one, but I can’t find a Firefox addon for them.