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PoliGAF 2013 |OT2| Worth 77% of OT1

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The Autumn Wind
GhaleonEB said:
I have a 401k and a separate retirement fund from my employer, but they do the latter instead of a 401k match. It works out pretty well. And yeah, I feel pretty damn lucky.
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Yeah, my company also matches up to 5%. This compared to my old job which only offered a 401k with no match. Needless to say, I feel pretty good about the career move.
 
P

PhoenixDark

Banned
Tamanon said:
Wait...he thinks the fact that the "war" would be unpopular gives him leverage to do something just as unpopular?

Boy, I can't wait to see that argument!
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War benefits Obama more than Boehner, assuming the house votes to authorize force. It would be suicide to shut down the government during a military operation.

However, what if the house passes a CR with increased military spending and an Obamacare ban. Even that seems unlikely to work.
 
T

The Librarian

Banned
The Bowen Effect
1. “The dominant goals of institutions are educational excellence, prestige, and influence.”

2. “There is virtually no limit to the amount of money an institution could spend for seemingly fruitful educational ends.”

3. “Each institution raises all the money it can.”

4. “Each institution spends all it raises.”

5. “The cumulative effect of the preceding four laws is toward ever increasing expenditure.”​

Here’s the good news: that implies that universities could be spending far, far less than they are now without any corresponding decline in educational quality. Hooray! On the other hand, it implies the moral character of college and university administrators may be somewhat lacking, to put it politely. They’re not raising tuition because they’re forced to do so. They’re raising tuition because they want the money.

...

The market around soda is a good example of an experience good market that works well. I don’t know what Sunkist tastes like the second before I taste it for the first time, but I do know the second after; its quality is unknown before purchase, but evident immediately thereafter. Many consumers buy soda a lot, and are not going to buy a brand if it’s low quality, so producers have a strong incentive to produce quality products.

None of that’s true about higher ed. The quality of college isn’t completely evident during freshman orientation. People overwhelmingly only get one undergraduate degree, so colleges and universities don’t have to worry as much about satisfying repeat customers. And there are more than two parties to the transaction. There’s a student and a college, sure, but there is also the student’s parents, and the government, and even the student’s future employers. Those all end up mattering for the financing of the product in question. It’s a really, really messed up market.

And colleges and universities can exploit that. In the absence of first-hand knowledge of colleges’ quality, students are forced to glean that information from various signals. For a handful of students, things like US News rankings are important. But because the overwhelming majority of students go to nonselective schools that aren’t mentioned in such publications, that’s really a trivial part of it.

The main signal that you can use is price, and in particular sticker price. The theory is schools that cost more will deliver a better education. That means schools have a real incentive to push up tuition for its own sake. And if the Bowen theorem is right, once tuition goes up, so too does spending, making it harder for the effect to be undone.

“It sets in motion some really bad incentives,” Martin says. “The first is that consumers tend to take their cue on quality from how much each institution spends. Even more damaging is that any institution that tries to compete on the basis of cost, consumers are going to construe that to mean they’re cutting quality. So you don’t have cost competition, and you thus don’t have a competitive pressure to reduce cost.”​
 
P

PhoenixDark

Banned
GhaleonEB said:
I thought we did? Wasn't observing movement around a chemical weapon depot part of the case for proving they were used?
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Those alleged areas are near residential areas, which poses a problem for airstrikes. Secondly we don't know how much, if any, of their chemical weapons are stored underground.

The United States would be embarking on a dangerous fool’s errand if it attempts to wipe out Syria’s chemical weapon capability, according to a new peer-reviewed study by the RAND Corporation, a respected global policy think tank.

But the study, which provided an operational overview of the situation on the ground, also concluded that U.S. air strikes have the potential to reduce the regime’s ability and its incentive to deploy such weapons in the future.

“In spite of often casual rhetoric about ‘taking out’ Syria’s chemical weapon capability, the practical options for doing so have serious limitations, and attempting it could actually make things worse,” write authors Karl P. Mueller, Jeffrey Martini, and Thomas Hamilton.

RAND’s findings serve as a reminder as the risks and limitations facing the U.S. as Congress debates whether or not to approve President Barack Obama’s call for a limited military strike against regime leader Bashar al-Assad, who according to U.S. intelligence launched a sarin gas attack in the suburbs of Damascus on Aug. 21 that killed hundreds.

The study warns of “substantial” collateral damage if the U.S. attempts to destroy Syria’s chemical weapons, arguing that locating and striking the relevant facilities would require “very precise and detailed intelligence.” It concludes that the prospects for scrapping Syria’s chemical weapons via air strikes alone “do not appear promising” and “would require ground forces” in order to have a realistic chance at success.

The authors find, however, that air power — given the right intelligence and execution — has potential to deter Syria from using chemical weapons in the future and diminish its ability to do so.
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http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2013/09/rand-study-syria-obama.php
 
C

cooljeanius

Member
sc0la said:
Don't forget @readingisforsnobs (oblivion), I am @scolasanti but don't tweet super often, and almost never about politics.
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I didn't find anything when I searched for that first one... Anyway, I'm @cooljeanius on Twitter, and I don't really tweet often, either, but I suppose I'll throw my handle out there anyways...
 
Z

zero shift

Banned
Cyan said:
Defined benefit vs defined contribution.

With a pension, you will be paid $x/month after retirement by the company you worked for, where x is defined based on what you were paid at the company, how long you worked there, etc.

With a 401k, the company you work for will (usually) match some portion of the contributions you make, while employed, to a retirement plan. Your contributions come out of your salary, and the company's contributions do not.

A company pension would generally entail the company putting aside a certain amount of money for future payments, based on how many employees they have, how long they've been working, what investment return they think they can get on what they're putting aside, and actuarial tables. They then invest this money (they will have a large pension asset on the books, to go with the pension liability from promised future benefits), and use it over time to pay off pension expenses.

The 401k is owned by the employee rather than the employer, and they can invest it in a limited number of mutual funds that are chosen by the plan administrator, usually an outside company. If the employee is fired or quits or whatever, they can take their 401k money with them, including whatever portion of the employer's contribution isn't subject to vesting. After retirement, they can access their 401k funds without penalty and use them to live on, but there's no guarantee of what amount they'll have available to them.

This is all a long way around to saying that the fundamental difference between the two is that the pension puts all risk on the employer, and the 401k puts all risk on the employee.
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Oh okay. I sort of get it now. So with pensions the company saves up money for you on top of your salary. While with 401K it takes out the money out of your salary and puts it into a savings account?
 
Z

zero shift

Banned
^^^Why not just have the government due an early Social Security program? Like if you work X years for a certain profession you qualify for Social Security five or even ten years earlier than other people?

Too expensive?
 
X

xnipx

Member
zero shift said:
Its one of the few issues that I'm further right about.

Pensions are a ridiculous idea with the exception of few select jobs. Want retirement? Social Security and/or save your money.
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zero shift said:
This may sound embarrassing but what are the main differences between pensions and 401ks?
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Why do you feel like its only the government and employees responsibility to cover their retirement after giving 30 or more years of labor to a company? Pensions are a tool used to reduce turnover and create company loyalty.

But I agree the ability to survive post retirement should be stripped from emplpoyment and 100% the responsibility of the government. Social security payments should be equal to the living wage where someone lives at the minimum and any contribution made to a retirement account either employee or employer funded should be an added bonus.
 
B

Black Mamba

Member
thezerofire said:
wait hold up, how did I not know that Oblivion was Reading Is For Snobs?
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I've been posting there occasionally as well. When it's signed as Black Mamba, that's me. I should post often and will try.

I have a twitter but I only really tweet NBA-related stuff and generally just use it to grab news/stories.
 
Z

zero shift

Banned
xnipx said:
Why do you feel like its only the government and employees responsibility to cover their retirement after giving 30 or more years of labor to a company? Pensions are a tool used to reduce turnover and create company loyalty.

But I agree the ability to survive post retirement should be stripped from emplpoyment and 100% the responsibility of the government. Social security payments should be equal to the living wage where someone lives at the minimum and any contribution made to a retirement account either employee or employer funded should be an added bonus.
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I don't feel that its the employers or employees responsibility but society's.
 
W

Wilsongt

Member
Department of Justice being just a little awesome today.

Married Gay Veterans to Receive Benefits

Married gay and lesbian veterans will now be eligible for the same benefits afforded to married straight veterans, according to an announcement from Attorney General Eric Holder today.

The federal government will no longer enforce language within Title 38 of the U.S. Code, which forbids the Department of Veterans Affairs and Department of Defense from recognizing as legal any marriage other than that of one man and one woman.

Today's announcement is the latest in an ongoing series of statutory and procedural changes arriving as a result of the U.S. Supreme Court's historic ruling on June 26 in Windsor v. U.S., striking down a key segment of the so-called Defense of Marriage Act that prohibited the federal government from recognizing any same-sex marriages, even from states that had embraced marriage equality.

“Although the Supreme Court did not directly address the constitutionality of the Title 38 provisions in Windsor, the reasoning of the opinion strongly supports the conclusion that those provisions are unconstitutional under the Fifth Amendment,” wrote Holder in a letter to congressional leaders obtained by The Advocate. "Like Section 3 [of DOMA], the Title 38 provisions have the effect of placing lawfully married same-sex couples in a 'second tier marriage,' which 'departs from [a] history and tradition of reliance on state law to define marriage.'"
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I can see the genderless dystopia on the horizon.
 
B

B-Dubs

No Scrubs
So apparently there was a little more to the Weiner blow up than we thought.

Weiner Heckler Made ‘Married To An Arab’ Comment (VIDEO)

New York City mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner's campaign has released a longer video showing his confrontation with a man at a Brooklyn, N.Y. bakery on Wednesday.

In the 6:38 minute video, Weiner's heckler can be heard saying "married to an Arab" moments before Weiner called him a "jackass." Weiner's wife, longtime Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin, grew up in Saudi Arabia.
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P

PhoenixDark

Banned
Tamanon said:
If he's stepping aside, then he'll raise the debt ceiling with no real fuss.
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I agree with this. It's hard to imagine him crashing the world economy and then retiring to play golf with his recently ruined corporate friends. He'll wait it out as long as possible, hoping 2011 Obama returns, and when that doesn't happen he'll call Pelosi and line the votes up.

He's dealing with people who still don't believe or understand that a default is nothing to play with. I can't blame him for wanting to leave crazy town.
 
T

thepotatoman

Unconfirmed Member
Here's a neat little article about when people use simplified economic theorems and mindlessly apply it to real life.

But the “Coase Theorem,” a term coined by Coase’s University of Chicago colleague George Stigler, took on a life of its own. Economic policy analysts on the political right began treating “zero transaction costs” not as a heroic simplifying assumption, but as a plausible policy goal. For example, one Heritage Foundation blogger invoked the Coase Theorem in 2010 as supporting the proposition that “the government has to define property rights and then get out of the way and trust the market.”

Coase himself hated this. “I never liked the Coase Theorem,” Coase said on the EconTalk podcast last year. “I don’t like it because it’s a proposition about a system in which there were no transaction costs. It’s a system which couldn’t exist. And therefore it’s quite unimaginable.”

Coase believed that high transaction costs sometimes justify government regulation. “There is no reason why, on occasion… governmental administrative regulation should not lead to an improvement in economic efficiency,” Coase wrote. “This would seem particularly likely when, as is normally the case with the smoke nuisance, a large number of people are involved and in which therefore the costs of handling the problem through the market or the firm may be high.”

Yet Coase argued that government regulation wasn’t a panacea, either. “There is a further alternative, which is to do nothing about the problem at all,” Coase wrote. “Given that the costs involved in solving the problem by regulations issued by the governmental administrative machine will often be heavy, it will no doubt be commonly the case that the gain which would come from regulating the actions which give rise to harmful effects will be less than the costs involved in Government regulation.”

Of course, this subtle argument — that transaction costs can be an argument either for or against regulation — isn’t pleasing to ideologues at either end of the political spectrum. Maybe that’s why the vulgar interpretation of the Coase Theorem has become so much more widely known than the argument Coase actually made.
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I wish he gave more detail about that last bit though. I'd like to know if he's talking about theoretical extremes or if he's talking about real life economic debates that we're having today. The writer acts like the left doesn't account for the costs of regulation at all, which I'd like to see examples of cause I don't know of when that ever happens like it does for libertarians.
 
T

The Librarian

Banned
Samarecarm said:
Well, the other issue is that most people don't pay directly out of pocket for college; they're paying at least partially through student loans or financial aid.

Schools have every incentive to keep increasing tuition as long as student loans/financial aid will pay for it. And student loans have to keep increasing to cover tuition and "make college affordable." The student kind of gets cut out of the process and is left holding the (student loan) bag in the end.
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There's nothing conclusive about that.

Also, here's a comprehensive list of where member of Congress stand on Syria.
 
J

jamesinclair

Banned
RE: Syria

Words of wisdom from Facebook


I am deeply troubled by this. I am not the kind of American that doesnt usually believe that we must stand up to our word or commitment but all I read stinks of fould play. I fear this is Obamas master plan. Trying to drag us in to a place of war to further weaken us. I fear that our standing in this could back fire on us. I am against this until I know more and right now I dont have enough hard facts...
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The rebuttal:

Same. I'm not sure if this is his master plan, but God does it stink of the worst kind of politics. Is he doing it so he can sign executive orders while nobody is looking? (He has) Is he doing it to detract from the sinking obamacare ship? Who knows... he could have gone it alone and he backed out at the very last second, which makes me think he is just trying to save face and an incompetent. Frankly, with the direction he has steered this country in the last 5 years, I can't decide if it's better if he is evil, or just incompetent.
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B

B-Dubs

No Scrubs
jamesinclair said:
There will be bans in that thread.

Also, how long is the cheese out for? The toys r us thread knocked him off.
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There's just so much insanity in that thread, from the needlessly inflammatory thread title to everything else. I'm shocked it hasn't been purged yet.

I suppose that depends on the post, I can't see Cheese having said anything that would result in a perm. He'll probably be back in a week or two. EDIT: Maybe a month or two.
 
T

Tamanon

Banned
I had one fly-by post on Facebook about President Obama reading Zakaria's (excellent) book Post-American World, and talking about the two muslims conspiring to shape the world in their image.

Good stuff.
 
T

The Librarian

Banned
Tamanon said:
I had one fly-by post on Facebook about President Obama reading Zakaria's (excellent) book Post-American World, and talking about the two muslims conspiring to shape the world in their image.

Good stuff.
Click to expand...

I'm over a year without a Facebook account, and the more time passes, the more glad I am about deactivating it.
 
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