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Bill › Comments
Cost of Wedding - How much does a wedding cost where you live? - http://www.costofwedding.com/
Tim Costantino, Amiram امیرم, Justin Korn and 30 other people liked this
Plug in your zip code to see the average. The disparity b/w Palo Alto and say, South San Francisco, is somewhat astounding :)
- Ana
from Bookmarklet
'On average, couples that live in [zip code] spend between $34,575 and $57,624 for their wedding. This does not include cost for a honeymoon or engagement ring.' The first time I looked at this site I almost died.
- joey
Flat nothing where I live - I can't get legally married.
- Sparky
How do they get their data, though? I never told anyone what my wedding cost.
- Stephen Mack
My zip code says between $25,854 and $43,091. I'm not buying that at all.
- Rochelle
Mine was $137, cost of paperwork only.
- Tsali, The Native of FF
In my zip code is says $40,235 and $67,058 DAMN
- Shevonne
$19,735 and $32,892 in a little town outside of Austin. Wow...that is insanity.
- aden
Stephen, just a random guess, but I would assume that they would survey the vendors out there in a certain area and then add it up? The average cost of a caterer in my zip code plus the average cost of a florist plus the average cost of a venue, etc.
- Rochelle
ours was JOP and home-made food. i think we spent less than $600 on the honeymoon.
- Joe Silence is not Santa
Louisville, KY 40220 spend between $13,922 and $23,203 for their wedding. - Never known anyone who spent that much.
- Tsali, The Native of FF
@Joe plug in your zip code in the link
- Shevonne
Whoa! I was married at my mom's house in Palo Alto. The range there is $66,090 and $110,149!!! We didn't spend that much, and I still thought our wedding was costly!!
- Georgia Diehl
I don't suppose they subtract the value of the cash and gifts given
- LogEx
Rochelle, why don't you buy that?
- joey
@Shevonne: between $16,828 and $28,047. that's insane.
- Joe Silence is not Santa
we were broke when we moved to the US from NZ and weren't about to go into debt for our wedding. my parents paid for our honeymoon trip as a gift.
- Joe Silence is not Santa
I definitely see destination wedding if I ever get married
- Shevonne
The answer is too much.
- James Ferguson
Our wedding is a little on the high end...about $20k to $21k for my area. Range is $13,769 and $22,948
- Alex Scoble
the wedding? about 6 grand. since the breakup? $1,550 a month. for 8 long years.
- Morgan Haley
Joey, it just seems like too much. When I was doing my planning and all that, I don't think it would have been that much even if we had paid full price for everything. I guess it really depends on what kind of wedding you have and where you have it. Cake/punch in your church hall is going to obviously be less than plated dinner at a hotel downtown.
- Rochelle
that sucks.. its does not take canadian zipcodes
- Peter Dawson
Morgan, how many children do you have?
- Georgia Diehl
Georgia - Just 1.
- Morgan Haley
Wow! I had no idea child support was that much! Although, I guess I'm just assuming that's what you were referring to!
- Georgia Diehl
Child support? Try 'spousal support' aka alimony. But divorce is expensive because it's worth it.
- Morgan Haley
The site's figures are based on survey results from people who've paid for weddings and not based on polling of vendors according to the site.
- Alex Scoble
the 3 'rings' of relationshits: engagement ring. wedding ring. suffering.
- Morgan Haley
$14,993 and $24,988. Thank you Rochester :)
- Benjamin Golub
Hello 100k for Mill Valley California
- Bill
*gags*. Holy gucamole. In this economy?????
- Roberto Bonini
from iPhone
We saved a lot, Roberto, that's how.
- Alex Scoble
Well, that's most certainly better than borrowing the bulk of it :)
- Roberto Bonini
from iPhone
My mom wanted us to have a larger wedding (200 guests), so i told her fine, as long as she was willing to pay for it. She did...
- Georgia Diehl
That's all crazy talk - we spent about $3k-5k on our wedding. $10k+ for a one-time event is ridiculous!
- Jesse Stay
That's more reasonable Jesse. But there is no accounting for taste. :) my parents got married and had the reception in the back yard.
- Roberto Bonini
from iPhone
Reasonable-shmeasonable...my catering bill alone, including alcohol is like $7500 and frankly, that's reasonable.
- Alex Scoble
Roberto, nothing wrong with that - it's where we had ours. It was still decorated beautifully, people still had fun, and we still got married. We made a lot of our food, and ordered Sams club for the rest - nicely decorated most people don't even notice the difference.
- Jesse Stay
It's like I've said before, once you get in to the traditional wedding industry, there is no cheap.
- Alex Scoble
Exactly what they did. I will probably do that as well. I'd rather spend that big money on the honeymoon.
- Roberto Bonini
from iPhone
...and don't get us started on the diamond cartel ;)
- LogEx
Roberto, oftentimes you (the groom) have no say in the matter, hehe. If you aren't already in a relationship, choose wisely. :)
- Alex Scoble
This is an interesting site (and again an uncannily timely post) 8^)
- Chieze Okoye
Duly Noted, Alex. Some of my friends are getting married next year and that's what's happened :) Poor guys.
- Roberto Bonini
from iPhone
That's why I love my wife :-)
- Jesse Stay
Hehe, Jesse...unfortunately, sometimes you fall in love with someone despite the fact that they want a big wedding. C'est la vie. :)
- Alex Scoble
My falling in love was all about the wedding ;-)
- Jesse Stay
Such is life. Indeed. :)
- Roberto Bonini
from iPhone
ROFL...unfortunately, I fell in love with Cassie because she's intelligent, passionate, caring, cute, delicious, hard working and some other odds and ends as well...only later did I find out that she like Country Music, Christmas, Disneyland and big weddings...You have to take the good with the bad, hehe.
- Alex Scoble
It happens..... :)
- Roberto Bonini
from iPhone
There was someone here on FF (I don't remember who, but it was a guy?) who said his wedding budget was $100k and his honeymoon budget was $50k and thought that was totally reasonable and realistic. I was O_O
- Rochelle
haha
- Chieze Okoye
<Sheldon Cooper> The horror...... <Sheldon Cooper/>
- Roberto Bonini
from iPhone
Nice .... I'm sure that honeymoon was memorable in more ways than one :)
- fatima
Mine cost zero in 1967 - church wedding, homemade dress, reception at aunt's house. In 2009 dollars that would be...
- m9m, Crone of FriendFeed
Holy shit! In Los Gatos, people spend between $64,866 and $108,109 (!)
- Bret Taylor
What recession? :-)
- Piaw Na
People make lots of money off weddings and funerals. Sometimes it's really sad. In Las Vegas, I contributed $40 for a car wash, when I heard that the reason they were washing cars was to cover the funeral costs for a friend. Elopement maybe?
- Mitchell Tsai
It says $11-18K where I live. I think my wife and I spent around $8K.
- Jason Huebel
Mine cost $16 at the county building. It was still fun.
- Jeremy (cropmarks)
I think people *greatly* underestimate the cost of their wedding because they mostly look at recent bills after the event, but so many expenses, like deposits/stationery happen so far in advance. People also tend to not bundle-in related costs, like gifts for the wedding party, etc. If you think about it, if you host your reception at a hall w/ a catered dinner (which is what most people do), the food/beverage costs alone are like $100/person, so it's pretty easy to imagine how the average gets up to +$20k.
- Ana
@Mitchell Be wary of funeral car washes. Frequently those are scams.
- EricaJoy
My brother and his gf have ditched their idea to marry in the UK, instead of £10-13k they can spend £2-3k in Greece and get *everything* paid for. It's no contest, so we all off to Greece in a couple of years. :-)
- Kol Tregaskes
$16 around.
- ★ Soner Gönül
Tehran; Around $30k
- Darth Farhad Sama
My home town in Pittsburgh: $46,966 and $78,277 --- Woah Nelly!
- Tim Costantino
Dog + roomba = fun
Hutch Carpenter, MVB (Grinch of FF), Rachel Lea Fox and 3 other people liked this
poor Loki
- Marci Golub
Doomba?
- Bill
VIDEO!!!
- Rachel Lea Fox
I'll take some video next time
- Benjamin Golub
from iPhone
Loki is completely used to the Roomba now. She just ignores it.
- Benjamin Golub
Time spent downloading a page (in milliseconds) dropped considerably after switching my blog to Tornado from webapp/Django
Fabrizio, Sandeep Kalidindi, ffcode and 33 other people liked this
If you ever decide to post that code anywhere, I'd really like to see it. How different is Tornado from Django, anyway?
- Keith Bourgoin
I'm not done yet but: http://github.com/bgolub...
- Benjamin Golub
They are pretty different. One similar area are templates. Tornado templates look a lot like Django templates but they let you run arbitrary Python inside of the template. I love being able to do simple things like list comprehensions inside of templates.
- Benjamin Golub
What are you measuring this with?
- Bill
Ben: Thanks!! I didn't know that was there.
- Bill
yes, thanks Ben for posting the source to both blog implementations, I'm considering using tornado instead of webapp for my next app engine project, and having both to compare is quite nice
- Karl Rosaen
Are you planning on doing the same for rssmeme?
- Mick
Mick: no, would take too long, my blog was only a couple hundred lines of code
- Benjamin Golub
Does tornado have to use nginx or are you using this with apache?
- Hari
This is running on App Engine using Tornado's WSGI support (http://www.tornadoweb.org/documen...). Tornado does not have to use nginx. You do not have to put anything in front of Tornado if you don't want to. Read more at http://www.tornadoweb.org/documen... and http://www.tornadoweb.org/documen...
- Benjamin Golub
Thanks for sharing, this is awesome!
- Hameedullah Khan
I can't find a way to see this graph/data in Google Webmasters Tool, can you help me to point to this?
- Jeremy
Click on Diagnostics and then Crawl stats
- Benjamin Golub
Ok thank you, I am not able to see this as my site is not at a root level.
- Jeremy
You know what's uncomfortable and unpleasant? A nerve conduction study. Do not recommend.
sorry :( Hope the news is good, though.
- Susan Shepard
Oh yeah, I hear those suck hard.
- Daniel Dulitz
at least I have the info. even though it's not as positive as I would have hoped. I'm reassured that I am conclusively not a hypochondriac. (i never never want to be a hypochondriac)
- Jenna Bilotta
Info is a start. Good luck, Jenna. Pulling for you.
- Louis Gray
Yes -- very much not fun. Did they hit bone? That was always the worst.
- Bill
eh. it was mostly just uncomfortable until they shocked the nerve that's already damaged. that hurt quite a bit.
- Jenna Bilotta
Wired 6.11: What If Cold Fusion Is Real? - http://www.wired.com/wired...
Mark Essel, Luis Martín Vallejo, Enver ALTIN and 9 other people liked this
"While JET's 15 European sponsor-nations have paid about US$1 billion for their hardware, and the US government has spent $14.7 billion on fusion research since 1951 (all figures in 1997 dollars), Storms's apparatus and ancillary gear have cost less than $50,000. Moreover, he claims that his equipment works, generating surplus heat for days at a time. Storms is not an antiestablishment pseudoscientist pursuing a crackpot theory. For 34 years he was part of the establishment himself, employed at Los Alamos on projects such as a nuclear motor for space vehicles. Subsequently he testified before a congressional subcommittee considering the future of fusion. He believes you don't need millions of degrees or billions of dollars to fuse atomic nuclei and yield energy. "You can stimulate nuclear reactions at room temperature," he says, in his genial, matter-of-fact style. "I am absolutely certain that the phenomenon is real. It is quite extraordinary, and if it can be developed, it will have profound effects on society.""
- Paul Buchheit
from Bookmarklet
This article is from 1998. I wonder what the latest news is from all the researchers mentioned. It seems unfortunate that people are so resistant to researching more "fringe" areas of science.
- Paul Buchheit
"In a huge, grandiose convention center I found about 200 extremely conventional-looking scientists, almost all of them male and over 50. In fact some seemed over 70, and I realized why: The younger ones had bailed years ago, fearing career damage from the cold fusion stigma. "I have tenure, so I don't have to worry about my reputation," commented physicist George Miley, 65. "But if I...
more...
- Paul Buchheit
You should read: http://www.amazon.com/Things-... The author discusses cold fusion research in much more depth and discusses the scientists that are currently in these fringe areas, what they have found, how they are going about research and the criticism they face.
- Bill
Also (from this year) http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog...
- Nick Lothian
A non-fusion theory on what's happening: http://www.slideshare.net/lewisgl...
- Ray Cromwell
And nice to see you back paul..... long time no see.
- Roberto Bonini
< 24 hours to asia
Have fun and take lots of pics!
- Bill
Verde Tea Espresso Bar (3/5) - http://www.yelp.com/biz...
"I'm not a fan of pearls in my tea, though I bravely tried this strange stuff again here. Hmm. The next time I came back, I tried coconut milk tea, and it was moderately tasty but the flakes of…"
- Adam Lasnik
Adam have you tried Tea Era in Mountain View? I believe it is just around the corner. My favorite place for milk teas in the area.
- Bill
Yep, I did. I'm thinking this stuff may just not be to my taste overall, though. I don't really care for the texture of the pearls. And the milk tea, though tasty, tends to be a bit sweet for my tastes (regardless of where I get it). Hmm.
- Adam Lasnik
Vernazza, Cinque Terre - http://www.flickr.com/photos...
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Are you going Andrew? It is awesome!
- Bill
Your moment of zen for today... in HD http://vimeo.com/5606758?hd=1
kent williams and Iain liked this
That is stunning
- Iain
Great find .... Where is the largest?
- Stephan Romeo
Awesome -- Anyone want to go to Monterey Bay Aquarium -- or fly to japan to see this one?
- Bill
It turns out that the world of web hosting is optimized for PHP. This is a problem for innovation and a business op for someone.
Sebastian, abacab, John μller and 7 other people liked this
What would be your desired stack?
- Bill
hmmm, if you mean managed hosting or shared hosting, yes, it is optimized for php, because it's what the consumers wants. However, those are for the little guy or for people that don't really know what they are doing. Real innovation comes from companys who can manage theirs own servers, thus being able to install whatever stack they want.
- Diego Sana
As some have mentioned, the PHP is actually optimized for the world of web hosting. While true, it's not so fun for someone trying to run Rails or Python and abstract the application management piece.
- Jason Shellen
Apache could do a lot better here. mod_python is awful, and Apache could easily include fastCGI or some evolution of it, to spawn off a smaller number of "heavy" processes that could be RAM-bound and persistent, and do a threaded or async "lightweight" frontend for http to handle hundreds of connections. (At least, this is why I'm running nginx instead of Apache right now.)
- Michael Herf
If you want to run Python, AppEngine is a good option. There are Rails specialists too, eg Engine yard
- Kevin Marks
Apache and mod_python are painful enought that I don't get why folks don't use nginx and fastcgi -- much more flexibility and speed with none of the Apache bloat (edited to hopefully make sense and not smell to bad grammar -wise)
- bear (aka Mike Taylor)
Lots of reasons not to use Appengine. We do use it in places for simple stuff. But reasons it won't work for us for starters: Django is an older version, authentication is through Google or through a Google Apps domain, and sockets are disabled through Appengine - all non-starters for us. Sub-processes, threading and some third-party libraries are not available either. :(
- Jason Shellen
The web is optimized for HTML. Use google web toolkit to code in java, and output platform agnostic javascript and HTML.
- Dan Douglass
from Nambu
"web hosting is optimized for PHP", yes, because the great majority of "hosted" web sites simply do not need (at all) a difficult-to-mantain stack like J2EE or .NET. The mininum required to run a site is PHP, MySQL and a CMS. There's nothing wrong with that... to move on, you need to "shake the foundation", remove Apache, stateless HTTP and begin from scratch by another paradigm.
- Claudio Cicali ♋
Python's caught in no-mans-land there, a bit. It doesn't have the wide support of PHP, or the specialist providers like Ruby/.NET/Java. Is that a factor of popularity?
- Nick Lothian
The advent of passenger (mod_rails) has bought Rails hosting to the shared hosting world. Systems like Heroku are providing amazing free services in the Rails space as well. For more specific requirements, you can get a good-enough-for-development "slice" from Linode or Slicehost for next to nothing.
- Toby Hede
FitBit - wireless sync with a Mac/PC. Basically tracks your movement 24/7 (including your sleep). http://www.fitbit.com/ . As the iPhone announcement today showed, I think body monitoring tools that keep track of your body vitals and movement (and the social networks that develop as a result) are going to be huge.
Mike Child, Jay Clark, Tom Searing and 21 other people liked this
Will it alert the paramedics if I've fallen and can't get up?
- Jack (a.k.a. Jeber)
Wow. That would be nice for kayaking and hiking. Exercise in general.
- Mathew A. Koeneker
Jack: yes, it will also send out an alert tweet to a predefined distribution list of your Twitter followers as well..haha
- Mike Bracco
Still not available...
- Todd Hoff
Todd: yeah comes out this summer. I'm waiting for mine.
- Mike Bracco
Does anyone have a fitbit? I was excited when first announced but have yet to see a second wave of excitement.
- Bill
oh i forgot about those!
- Susan Beebe
Arizona State Snubs Obama - The Daily Show - http://www.thedailyshow.com/video...
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Jonathan Le Plastrier, Nelson Cheng, Michael Muller and 10 other people liked this
This is the funniest Daily Show clip I've seen since the Wasilla small towns one.
- Ana
from Bookmarklet
Gold.
- Bill
ah! so PAINFUL!!!!
- Ryan
I have drunk way too much of the ASU koolaid to have enjoyed the skewering. Then again, it's true, there are some really dumb undergrads here.
- Ryan
Nice try, Ryan. Don't think I didn't noticed how you misspelled "then" in your previous comment, and then, many hours later, went back and changed it ;)
- Ana
FF feature request: There are 108 comments on a post in my feed. Two friends commented on it. What they said will determine whether I want to engage with this post. But I am not expanding 108 more comments just to see theirs.
Laura Norvig, Mark Trapp, j1m and 5 other people liked this
Also, if there are 10 comments since the last time I saw that post, can I just see those straight up? That would promote more sustained engagement with long threads. I just don't want to see yet again the same old 100 comments as last time.
- Daniel Dulitz
Yes, we've been thinking the same thing (in terms of adding a link to expand just recent or just friend comments).
- Paul Buchheit
Just friend comments would be great...
- Bill
I'd prefer just recent to just friends, but if you can implement both...
- Jandy, ConcertMaven of FF
I don't even think you need a link. It relates to the underlying subscription philosophy: if I've subscribed to someone's posts -- I get their tweets by default for heavens sake -- shouldn't I also get their comments on other posts by default? Definitely higher value than tweets. And if showing their comments leads me to hide the post they're commenting on, that's fine.
- Daniel Dulitz
As far as recent is concerned, you know when I last scrolled a post off of my screen and what comments I was seeing at that point. The next time I see that post, I'm much less interested in the old comments than in new ones. And if I previously asked to see all comments, then you're free to assume that those are less interesting to me than the new ones.
- Daniel Dulitz
Yeah, this is all right, one of the peskiest things about ff is all the clicking I have to do to expand and unexpand comments -- the behaviors Daniel describes are the right ones.
- j1m
Extreme Hibernation: The Water Bear - http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs...
"The microscopic animal can essentially shut down and, during that time, endure some of the most brutal environments known to man. It can survive temperatures near absolute zero and above 300˚F, go a decade without water, withstand 1,000 times more radiation than any other animal on Earth, and even stay alive in the vacuum of space. Under normal circumstances, the water bear looks like a sleeping bag with chubby legs, but when it encounters extreme conditions, the bag shrivels up. If conditions go back to normal, the little fellow only needs a little water to become itself again."
- Chris Prince
"The secret to the survival of both organisms is intense hibernation. They replace all of the water in their bodies with a sugar that hardens into glass. The result is a state of suspended animation. And while the process won’t work to preserve people (replacing the water in our blood with sugar would kill us), it does work to preserve vaccines."
- Chris Prince
See also "cryptobiosis": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki...
- Chris Prince
Sweet! Tardigrade finally getting some love.
- Bill
Flying in this today!
Darren Heydon, Kay Designer, Kevin Fox and 2 other people liked this
Do you have any pics? Sounds like fun. I keep seeing it circle over our building in Critt
- Bill
Pics (crappy iPhone ones anyway) now on my feed. I enjoyed it, might even do it again with visitors from out of town. Or I might take instruction in it -- a morning of ground school followed by a flight from the left seat is available for people who have a pilot's license and a valid medical.
- Daniel Dulitz
Robert L. Borosage: Taxing Matters - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-...
Piaw Na, Brian Sullivan, Eric Johnson and 19 other people liked this
"The Institute for Policy Studies details the staggering contrast to the Eisenhower years. In 1955, the top 400 taxpayers averaged about $12.3 million in income (2006 dollars) and paid, after exploiting every loophole imaginable, 51.2% of that in federal income tax. A half century later, the richest 400 average a breath-taking $263.3 million in income each, and pay a mere 17.2% of that in federal income taxes. (A lower tax rate than paid by most of their secretaries). If those 400 taxpayers had paid at the same rate in 2006 as a half century earlier, the federal treasury would have collected $35.9 billion more in revenue, or enough to double the energy and transportation budget combined."
- Bret Taylor
from Bookmarklet
And that would be a good thing...why? Entrepreneurs and successful (read: rich) businessmen create the wealth in this country. The federal treasury is where wealth and prosperity go to die.
- Stefan Moluf
Nobody should be taxed at 51.2%. I personally believe that it should never go above 25%, but that's just a gut feeling at the moment, no math to back it up.
- xero
I do not agree with the assumption that bringing capital gains tax rates back to the levels they were at during the Clinton administration would prevent people from investing. It just doesn't add up. There was plenty of investment during the Clinton years. I basically think rich people have more influence over tax code, and Bush lowered taxes for rich people at the expense of our country and wage earners.
- Bret Taylor
interesting....
- Bill
"[US] government at all levels will collect 30.8% of the nation's income for 2008" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki...) vs. "[France's] tax burden in 2007 [accounted for] 43.3% of GDP" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki...).
- Jérôme Flipo
I am not pro-taxation or anything. I just think the tax code is (un)surprisingly biased towards taxing incomes of wage earners, and almost all recent tax decreases have benefited an extremely small, wealthy percentage of our population disproportionately. We have been arguing about it here since I posted this, and it is difficult to make causal arguments about tax code, but I am still skeptical, given our deficit, that Bush's cap gains tax cuts have helped our economy.
- Bret Taylor
Yeah, there's basically no way that Bush's tax cuts (or anything he did) helped the economy. Note in particular the way the economy was very good when he got it and very bad when he finished with it.
- j1m
I don't think Bret's point is that we should return to Eisenhower-era tax rates for top earners, or that there's not a tradeoff between the long-term capital gains tax rate and its effect on investors and entrepreneurs. But does anyone here seriously believe it's sensible that top earners could possibly end up paying a lower tax rate than their own secretaries? That's absurd on its face, and arguing about whether taxes should be higher or lower in general is irrelevant to that question.
- Joel Webber
Bret has hit it on the head, IMO. since the Reagan era, tax burden has shifted *away* from non-wage income. this is not only bad for wage-earners, it's unsustainable. the recent bubble shows what a tax system that rewards investment at the expense of earnings does for the economy. secondarily, by favoring, even sheltering investment income the result is to solidify/promote the existing class stratum - even into subsequent generations; quite un-American, IMO. thus we have the ever-growing earnings gap.
- MikeAmundsen
Bret I couldn't agree more on capital gains taxes, its free money and should be taxed. That said, I've often considered a more long term scaled approach as Chris describes. Short term capital gains can stand high taxes, mid-term lower to encourage investment, and over a period of several years longer term gains taxed at an even lower rate. Not only would this encourage investment, but incentive for success in business. I've seen too many examples of investors reaping profits and getting out quickly.
- jcunwired
For me it's pretty clear-cut: sucking private wealth out of the economy is destructive, whether it's from wage-earners or the wealthy. Because governments make political, not economic decisions, they end up destroying wealth in their charge. They should be funded to protect our individual rights, and then step aside.
- Stefan Moluf
jcunwired - I think that misses a more fundamental question. Why should I be taxed for anything in the first place? It seems like you're saying that a person who possesses wealth should have it appropriated by the government for no other reason than they have it.
- Stefan Moluf
@Chris: all forms of earning have some risk. 'at will' laborers know that all too well. seems to me the rewards are commensurate with the risk. i'm not clear on my investors deserve diff treatment on their earnings. doesn't the market sort that out without the gov't tweaking the tax code in favor of one or the other?.
- MikeAmundsen
@Chris: i see your point. my POV is if all earnings were taxed the same (including munis), the market would be the final arbiter of risk and reward, right? that's a good thing, right? why tweak that? what are we admitting about the market model that requires adjusting tax rates for investment over wage-earning?
- MikeAmundsen
@Chris: yep, and i'm asking you why this is 'bad.' are you making the case the the gov't should alter the market risk/reward model for selected investments? is there any reason, then, to start altering the risk/reward model for selected wage-earners? and when these changes are made, isn't this polluting the market in the same way the recent CDO and other rules polluted the market to the point of collapse?
- MikeAmundsen
@Chris, the Dow was at about 10587 when Bush took office. When he left it was worth about 7949, which means it lost about 25% of its value. For reference, the stock market very rarely loses value when measured over long intervals like a presidential term, so it's hard to find a similar record, but during Bill Clinton's term it gained 225% -- in other words it more than tripled.
- j1m
Aren't you the guy who exercised all his microsoft options without selling them? Yeah, Bush doesn't get the blame for that one.
- j1m
:-)
- j1m
Sorry to bring this thread back to life again, but I hadn't followed all the commentary before. @Chris: I'm completely with you on the need to encourage (or at least not discourage) capital investment. But are you actually saying that capital gains should be taxed *less* than the earnings of individual wage-earners? Does that mean that you think a flat tax would be too progressive? Just trying to make sure I understand your argument.
- Joel Webber
Jim, that's the excuse used for killing the estate tax. Lots of things get taxed twice, including things such as sales taxes, etc. As someone who paid 17% effective federal taxes for 4 years in a row, I'm in favor of increasing the capital gains tax. Even when it was 25% or 28%, it didn't stop anyone from investing --- it just set a higher hurdle for investments, which isn't a bad thing at all.
- Piaw Na
If an investment is sound, it will gain in the long term. A 25% capital gains tax just means you need an effective annual interest rate of 4/3 the inflation rate to break even. With inflation being where it is these days, that's hardly a big hurdle. Businessmen don't "create wealth"; they create economic trade, from which they skim off wealth and claim it for themselves in exchange for that service. The federal treasury is not "where wealth goes to die" - not as long as you're running a deficit, anyway.
- Karl Knechtel
That's what mutual funds are for. And why I said "in the long term". Mutual funds are sound because they average things out. Index funds are fine, too. In any given 40-year period, the stock market is a winner.
- Karl Knechtel
Typically, any 15-year period is a winner for stocks, present interval possibly excepted (only time will tell). I'd argue that index funds are better in the long run than actively managed mutual funds. As for capital gains, it shouldn't have preferential tax treatment over income. Short-term gains should be always taxed at the highest rate, we want investment not speculation.
- LogEx
Over the last 20 years, treasuries would have beaten the stock market. I think it's backwards to tax wages, which are a result of work than to tax capital gains --- I'd rather give everyone more incentive to work and less incentive to retire and live off investments --- as a society, I think that's a better choice.
- Piaw Na
A wealth tax doesn't sound like such a bad idea to me. It would only likely cause a big hit for quite rich people: a lot of non-homeless people have negative net worth, after all. It'd be a quite low amount - for most people, some fraction of a reasonable return on investment (adjusted for inflation); for the very rich, more than that ROI - such that they have to work very hard to keep their money, but wouldn't see it depleted beyond, say, $10 million.
- Karl Knechtel
A wealth tax (meaning regularly taxing assets) makes no sense. Let's say I own a house or company or artwork or whatver, outright. It loses value over time due to the tax (which, by the way, I have to pay with liquid cash that I may not have).
- LogEx
It makes no sense for normal people. For the very rich it is meant to keep their capital in circulation, where it can stimulate the economy. Perhaps the first few hundred K, maybe a million would be exempt.
- Karl Knechtel
A company does keep capital in circulation. But why is it fair to impose a cash tax on a less liquid asset that someone bought with money that was already taxed?
- LogEx
Is it true that they were taxed at 51% of their income or at a _top marginal rate_ of 51%? Because 51% is very high - higher than the top tax rate in Australia, and even Scandinavian countries that have a top marginal rate around that use progressive taxation. (OTOH, back then the tax bands could have been so low most of their effective income was indeed taxed at that top rate - I don't know.. )
- Nick Lothian
It turns out that property tax was due April 10. 10% penalty + $20. Do not pass go. :(
MikeAmundsen, Mark Trapp, Daniel J. Pritchett and 3 other people liked this
:( indeed.
- Josh Haley
Oopsies?
- MVB (Grinch of FF)
tax-reminder dot com?
- Charlie Anzman
I'm doing my part to help with the tax revenue shortfall.
- Paul Buchheit
WHY?
- Bill
maybe this is your answer to the question about what to do with $ you don't need
- j1m
:( that sucks
- Karen Padham Taylor
ouch! sorry to hear that!
- Edwin Khodabakchian
Been there, sent the check :-(
- Ken Sheppardson
Ouch. Ours was due Saturday (April 10) and I paid online for $15 extra with about 2 hours to spare.
- Louis Gray
@j1m -- I tend to agree, there must be a connection. @all -- the second installment of CA property tax is due on March 1st. April 10th is the end of the grace period.
- ǝuǝƃnǝ
I would've "liked" this if it were a good thing. I'm in the exact same position.
- Scott Loganbill
Actually April 12 this year. But I missed, too. You now sort of have until June 30.
- Patrick Breitenbach
I take that back. Friday, the 10th it was. No wonder I was late!
- Patrick Breitenbach
Actually, now I'm not sure. Friday was a holiday. I'll be on my way now.
- Patrick Breitenbach
renting FTW ;-)
- Chris Heath
I'm sorry...
- Helen Sventitsky
My property taxes are due Dec. 12 and Feb. 12. That's annoying as hell to me.
- Admiral Anika
I pay a little extra to my mortgage company every month so they can put it into escrow and pay my property taxes on time. Never missed a beat!
- Daniel J. Pritchett
I jut put a reminder on google calendar for April 1 to pay property tax.
- Fedor Karpelevitch
oops!
- Susan Beebe
:(
- Anne Bouey
yep, me too. ouch.
- metalerik
Sorry, dude. I'll try to remind you next time.
- Jeanine W.
sku / friendstream / source — bitbucket.org - http://bitbucket.org/sku...
Thanks!
- Bill
i need a meta-friendfeed that combined friendfeed threads, twitter @ replies, and facebook feed
Tweet Feeds, Jeremy Hylton, Shakeel Mahate and 4 other people liked this
I think that's just FF, not meta-FF, you just want those two things added as services.
- ⓞnor
+1 on the twitter @ replies
- Bill
If I understand her correctly, what she wants would be FF if FF correctly bunched related things together into single threads, like twitter @ replies.
- Andrew C
Andrew: the problem is comment fragmentation; once you broadcast a post to FF, Twitter, and Facebook, you get replies in all three places from different groups of people.
- Tudor Bosman
Can't I use, like, glue or industrial solvents to turn those 'different groups of people' into one massive homogenous hive-mind?
- Andrew C
What Andrew & Tudor said (in reply to ⓞnor). It would be FF if FF also added the feature where the comments from the various places were combined together into a single thread.
- niniane
and Backtype. =)
- Andrew C
But Twitter @ replies aren't threaded, you have no idea what (if anything) they're in response to. (Even as a human, this is often difficult.) So how could they be reaggregated into comments? I figured you just wanted all these things to show up as items in FF.
- ⓞnor
In an ideal world, I think everything would be threaded!
- Andrew C
If you hit the "arrow" in Twitter to reply to a comment, it'll add a "&in_reply_to_status_id=[nnnn]" to the URL. I imagine this allows Twitter to thread tweets (but I bet most replies are manual and not made with that URL parameter).
- John μller
In an ideal world, fewer people would be trying to have conversations on Twitter :)
- Adam Lasnik
BaconCamp - http://baconcamp.org/
grant fox, guruvan (Rob Nelson), Steve Lacey and 6 other people liked this
"BaconCamp is an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment about bacon."
- Gary Burd
from Bookmarklet
I will bring the maple syrup
- Hayes Haugen
Yes!
- Bill
I've loved bacon all my life, so I'm a bit taken aback that suddenly in 2009 everyone's finally realized that it's the most awesome food ever.
- j1m
Think how I feel, j1m, I've loved bacon my entire life also, AND my name is even pronounced the same.
- Andy Bakun
@j1m, you have Mona to thank for the revived love for bacon. http://friendfeed.com/monasfe... and http://pixelbits.wordpress.com
- mjc
Sparky?
- Rochelle
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