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Friday, February 26, 2010

Updating goals

Save 5k by August not there yet
pay off all credit card debt no debt
make 30k in real estate by the end of the year 0 so far
go on a vacation with Jess still in the works
over pay on car loan for every month march-december just scheduled autopay
become a tsr by May training people to take over my job
be #1 in activity metrics by end of q1 was #1 or 2 this week
read 6 books off my book list reading several
complete the Competent Communicator nope
put up personal records every month on my work out routine did this for feb
pay my car down to 9k on schedule

Saturday, February 20, 2010

I am a fan....

of the way they say this

My Goals for 2010

Save 5k by August
pay off all credit card debt
make 30k in real estate by the end of the year
go on a vacation with Jess
over pay on car loan for every month march-december
become a tsr by May
be #1 in activity metrics by end of q1
read 6 books off my book list
complete the Competent Communicator
put up personal records every month on my work out routine
pay my car down to 9k

Must Read Booklist

Here's what I have so far:

Influence
The Godfather's Revenge
The Laws of Success
The Science of Success
All Marketers Are Liars
The Selfish Gene
48 Laws of Power
Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions
How to Read a Financial Report: Wringing Vital Signs Out of the Numbers
Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High
Driven: Business Strategy, Human Actions, And The Creation Of Wealth
What the CEO Wants You to Know : How Your Company Really Works
Know-How: The 8 Skills That Separate People Who Perform from Those Who Don't
Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done
at least one book on negotiation

Friday, February 19, 2010

I can't believe this guy

But I had fun answering him, anyway:

uh, wow. very interesting post. two things I noticed, while reading this:

1) You're very, very liberal (proud to be a communist?)
2) You don't really understand economics, or how the world works.

here's my answer to your fixes:

1) it was largely Chinese subsidies of oil consumption that led to rising oil prices, but a lot of it has to do with the fact that the vast majority of the oil in the world is controlled my governments. they need to use it to buy votes via social services, and therefore to not invest in additional production capacity, or upkeep. most of these oil fields were built by private companies, then stolen--sorry, "nationalized" by governments. if you really want to solve oil prices, we need to privitise the fields, but I'll look for a post of yours that addresses just this.

2) this would have happened on it's own if we had not bailed out the banks. We don't need to force it, we just need to stop socializing the losses.

3) AT LEAST three quarters is right!

4) You're confusing "education" with "schooling." we certainly don't need to spend the kind of money we're spending to get thousands of 22 year old english or black history majors. we already over value college degrees. we need individuals to be educated in things that make sense.

5) I agree that we should fix the k-12 school system. Let's use a model that already works in LA, Washington DC, and dozens of other cities: introduce competition into the mix. Teacher's unions certainly have a stranglehold now, but that don't always have to.

6) I'm not sure what you're referring to as an "oligopoly." We have large companies, but nothing, to my knowledge, has qualified as what we considered an oligopoly in my econ classes.

7) The real problem is not campaign finance reform. No matter what we do, special interests are going to control the government. If we truly want freedom, we need to take power away from the government.

8) None of these assertions are true. Would you mind providing any evidence? Considering that the top 60% of income earners already pay 100% of income tax, I'm really fearful as to what a steeper progression would look like.

9) The biggest fix on the prison industrial complex would be simply ending the war on drugs. Do we really need to lock up non-violent people for possession of a plant?

10) We agree on the police state thing, too.

11) Actually, as we have seen with nearly every attempt at this, high speed rail and subsidies for the internet actually destroy wealth and make us worse off.

12) The "wasting GDP by not spending" argument doesn't make sense to me. But medical care, like every other product, will become cheaper and better as we give individuals more control over their own decisions. Giving it to government will only make it worse. Think DMV, Social Security, anything else. Even India has free market healthcare and schools, and they both do better than the government ones.

13) You understand that this tax will cancel out, or make worse, the problems you try to solve in your first point? Europe has a 100% gas tax, and it has had very little effect. We'd be talking a tax of $5-10+ per gallon of gas. Offsetting this by a cut in income or payroll taxes would leave close to the same standard of living, while discouraging CO2 creation. Certainly not perfect, but much, much better than any of the other plans being proposed.

It makes sense to me that Krugman doesn't have the answers. He's had to forget so much about economics to get so far as a political hack. These guys have some answers: www.mises.org.

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