OT: As Gasoline Heads Toward $2, the Benefits Start to Trickle Down

DOOMED!

Guess I'll have to step in until Steve gets back. Maybe Steve.dot will weigh in on income inequality.

From center-right publication "The Economist" Nov 2014:

"The really, really rich get much, much richer
On the other side of the spectrum, the fortunes of the wealthy have grown, especially at the very top. The 16,000 families making up the richest 0.01%, with an average net worth of $371m, now control 11.2% of total wealth—back to the 1916 share, which is the highest on record. Those down the distribution have not done quite so well: the top 0.1% (consisting of 160,000 families worth $73m on average) hold 22% of America’s wealth, just shy of the 1929 peak—and exactly the same share as the bottom 90% of the population. Meanwhile the share of wealth held by families from the 90th to the 99th percentile has actually fallen over the last decade, though not by as much as the net worth of the bottom 90%."

I changed the fucking decimal point onya again Dougsteer. Now it's 0.01%.

I think Zipman (who is on a role) said it best: there's no objection to inequality on TUSCL because the TUSLers think they are the oligarchs. For example, Dougsteer things he's Mark Zuckerberg (or maybe that's Paris Hilton).

Oh, and for those that did not grow up on a farm, here is the definition of a steer from Websters:

"Definition of STEER

1
: a male bovine animal and especially a domestic ox (Bos taurus) castrated before sexual maturity "

things == thinks

As gas prices head towards $2? You mean to tell me gas prices are going to rise over 24 cents per gallon? Man, they are going to try to rip us off if they raise gas prices that much.
I think in Greenville I saw gas last weekend at @ $1.72
That would mean a 28 cent increase.

Actaully Iwill be a contrarian. Here in South Carolina, the dot says they need ver a billion a year to bring roads into good condition instead of merely repairing some of the potholes. Our governor changed her mind about no gas tax increases if our income tax drops 2%. a 10 cent gas tax increase would bring our 4th lowest gas tax in the country up to equal Georgia's gas tax and raise $300 million per year. If that jumped by 30 cents and our roads got fixed, I would be happy. For that matter, Icould afford even 2.10 a gallon gas if our roads got fixed.

I am so DOOOMED I can't afford to drive my Honda Civic any more. I'm goi g to have to sell it to pay for a bbbj

720-471-6533 call her . She is a hot bitch that offers extras and nuru

Absolutely DOOMED! Because we did not listen to Libertarians and Ayn Rand. And because Stevie-girl and The Economist said so.

@Dougster, So usually when the economy starts to heat up, gas prices start to go up. You could say that gas prices keep it in check.

So what will happen to your "genuine boom" of 2015, we did make it to 2015, when gas prices start to go up to the level you would expect? Could it be that we are just about at the breaking point for this 2015 boom? I mean all these things really is booms in speculator confidence anyway. So once some of your friends see that gas prices are going up, I suspect they will cash out of the boom. I certainly would. But then again, I don't engage in such fiscal speculations.

SJG

@SJG: I have looked at in much depth (I usually go with financials or tech, not oil), but I did see someone showing that the economy will usually boom once oil rebounds after a crash.

It's not clear if it is rebounding yet or not. I'm in oil stocks, and someone here pointed out that the futures structure in oil contracts is improving.

Also I'd be suspicious of an argument like "it was always this way in the past, therefore it will be this way in the future". It's not airtight logic even if your claim was true which I don't think it is.

I'm sticking to my position that the boom, far from being near an end, is just getting started.

Your seem like a decent fellow, SJG, and you, of course, will choose your own path, but it would be a shame to see you miss out on the boom because you are trying to bring about a revolution (starting with hookers) that nobody gives a fuck about and won't appreciate your efforts. Now would be a good time to just get established, build up a little money, IMO. Then take on the social crusades if you still feel like it later. But again, you're a big boy. Your call.

The following is entirely fictional and is in no way based on real persons. It occurs in a city somewhere in the US.

So I am driving down the street and I notice a car. Is that a Rolls Royce? I see the sign on the office and it says, "Financial Planning".

So I say, why not, lets go and find out. Maybe there is something happening that I don't know about. Wouldn't want to miss out.

So I walk up to the door and on the shingle it says, Dougster, Financial Planning. So I open the door and enter, and I see oil paintings on the walls and a secretary wearing a necklace of real pearls.

I am shown in to see Dougster. He stands up and shakes my hand firmly. He is impeccably dressed in a blue suit with a red tie. He is wearing a gold ring with a diamond as big as a lima bean.

He says, "We are right now watching the beginning of the 2015 boom. This is not just another bubble, this is to be a genuine boom which should last for 20 to 30 years. You do not want to miss out on it!"

So he starts showing me tables and graphs, and explaining about how things are looking great in Europe and Asia and about how the petro industry always leads the booms.

All of his graphs show either a rather linear upwards trajectory, or an exponential upwards trajectory. Otherwise they really could all be the same, just with the axes relabeled.

I pick up which looks like it is heading down. I say, "But when oil prices rise, won't consumer confidence drop?"

Uh, oh your holding that the wrong way. So he takes it out of my hand and rotates it 90 degrees and puts it back into my hand. "As the oil industry is recovering, so the boom is beginning. I'm in oil stocks myself."

So I pick up another one, "But isn't there already a huge bubble on Wall Street, and doesn't this mean that we are all just waiting for the next crash, which could happen any time now?"

He says, this is not a bubble, this is going to last for 20 to 30 years.

Then I see, he has diamonds in his cuff links too, and in his tie clip.

He says, "You sound like someone who needs to get better established, and to build up some money. You should not be crusading over social issues."

So I look at that big diamond ring, and I think about the Rolls Royce, and I say to myself, this guy couldn't be wrong.

"Okay Dougster, I agree. So how do I get in? Can I take out a second mortgage? Can I do cash advance on my credit cards? Should I liquidate my pension plan or just borrow against it? How about this, will you let me become one of your agents?"

"This is the to be the biggest boom of your life or mine. So you should do all of those things. And yes, we are recruiting new agents everyday. Just come to our weekly meeting this evening and I'll be your upline."

SJG

A revolution starting with hookers:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3w_x2r8…

Lol!

I read somewhere that dollar cost averaging works very well along with asset allocation to achieve good results in the market. Of course this assumes the market will always go up over your lifetime. There are also those lifetime funds that move more of your funds to safer fixed income type of funds as you get closer to retirement.

Sadly many people like to invest in individual stocks or etf's instead of being forced to follow the rules of the company they are working for and get stuck with limited choices, orders that only get executed at the end of a trading day instead of letting you set a price to buy or sell. On top of all that instead of letting an individual choose how to invest their own lifetime savings, they impose fees and restrictions unless you follow their very specific rules. Plus you can't take your own money out or roll it over into your own Ira unless you quit or change employers or become unemployed. They claim IRS rules. Just think of how much money the government could collect if they allowed rollovers from 401k's into Self directed Roth IRA's while someone was still employed. I would be limited by how much extra taxes I could pay.

I'd also need a different type of online calculator if our government allowed larger contributions to Roth iras if the source was a 401k. Soemthing about taxes owed in retirement versus untaxed gains in a Roth Ira. Assuming democrats control the government for years, I expect our taxes to go to the moon for everyone until either we get in a depression or someone else gets elected. Of course someone like Pelosi would never understand so I don't even bother trying to explain.

I forgot what the topic was. lol

Out of curiousity if only 40 million Americans moved 10,000 a year from a 401k to a Roth Ira on top of the former Roth Ira limits, they might pay an extra 2500 per tax year totalling up to an extra 100 billion tax dollars per year. In only 10 years,this idea could generate an extra 1 trillion in tax revenue. Of course new laws would need to be implemented to allow workers to do this while still employed. Then it would become a guessing game whether you could earn more in a Roth Ira versus paying taxes on it after retirement in an regular Ira. If people moved twice as much, then the number could be 2 trillion in extra tax revenue over 10 years.

"orders that only get executed at the end of a trading day instead of letting you set a price to buy or sell."

About this I agree. I remember once at night time I wanted to sell something and of course the markets were closed and a broker told me that nothing was moving. Well, yes, there are no trades. But oil tankers can still run into rocks and pesticide factories can explode.

I have always bought and sold with a price limit. And in fact, I usually like to do it early in the day, so that I can be sure nothing is pending overnight.

SJG

^^^ you bought into the ponzi-scheme bubble using limit orders? I thought you were out completely and just spend the money on school and hookers.

It wasn't the main dotcom bubble, it was some people I was working with. It was more than just an "investment", it was putting my money into the things I and my associates were doing ourselves. This is what I like.

I plan to be using my own money to start companies that I and my associates work in. Of course our women will be there in the loop too. Not there yet though.

Thom Hartman talks about starting 7 businesses and making money with 6 of them. With one of them he talks about selling it to the employees.

But the place I would first go to is this:
http://www.amazon.com/Growing-Business-P…

SJG

But it was still publically traded and subject to speculation and bubbles and hype?

Gotta admit with Josh about tusclers and oligarch

Yes, it was publically traded and hence subject to speculation and bubbles and hype. But as an executive and board member, I knew the truth. Also, as most of the money was completely internal, zero hype was being generated in order to raise outside money. While I was a share holder, no significant amount of hype was generated, beyond that which is usually used to sell product to perspective customers, or to hire new employees.

It was an unusual situation, a kind of a turn around. Otherwise it would not have already been public. And it is unlikely I would do it again. The companies that I and others plan to form will be internally funded. Going public will be something for much much later, and as a way of rewarding the employees. Going public would be delayed, as it is not for the purpose of raising expansion money or rewarding the founders, it is for rewarding the employees.

Remember that Bill Gates delayed taking Microsoft public for a long time. It was the employees who pressed him. It started with one guy sending a message by wearing a tee-shirt which said, "Fully Vested". That Gates would wait so long, clearly meant that he was not himself interested in cashing out.

When Google went public it was via reverse dutch auction. This is an unusual method, and it was being done in the shadow dot com crash. That method makes sense when a company wants to gradually transition to being public, but it is not in urgent need of more capital as it is already clearly in black ink.

People start businesses in different ways, and they do it for different reasons. People think that the most speculative and most hype driven ways, and the machinations of firms like Kliener Perkins, are the only ways. These certainly draw the most attention, but they are not the only ways.

KP has a 90% failure rate. Yet mom and pop businesses have a much much lower rate. And, if they are shipping product, the failure rate approaches zero.

KP firms will often continue to increase their monthly burn rate, going up several fold, for no real reason, and while still in red ink. The rationalization is that they are trying to hit a market window, and so they need to spend what it takes to move fast. Often there is a great deal of reality distortion at work here. Success could be had many ways. The KP way is not the only way. But with KP and the firms like them, the type of product was already determined by the VC's own formula for what they invest in. "The downside is limited", of course means that the upside is unlimited. They want to take great risks, because they know that some of the ventures will pay back 1000 to 1. So for those who can gamble at the highest of stakes, and who have no other interest in this than the money, it works.

But for the people who actually do the work, this stinks. They want to be paid, but most of all the want the satisfaction of having done something of real value. When the KP gambits work, it is because they have been able to exert control over a market niche. They have been able to force everyone to do it "their way". In fact, that particular way of doing things had been selected because it was amenable to being implemented in such a manner.

But for the most capable people who actually make the company and its product go, market control is never the objective. The objective is to do something which serves real need, not just to put other people out of business. This is more consistent with open competition and long term strategies, than with short term control gambits.

Thom Hartman talks about starting 7 businesses and making money with 6 of them. He talks about transitioning out of one of them be selling it to the employees. Well probably the employees ran it for a while and then either took it public or sold it or merged it with another company.

My point is that not all cash outs, mergers, or sellouts are for the purpose of making money from something extremely speculative, or for controlling a market.

In fact, once you stop worrying about what index or indicator is up or down, and stop going along with the idea that we even have one "economy", or that any of these indices matter, then you can start to look at specific needs and at the types of creative and responsible people who would be able to meet them. At that point it becomes possible to start building responsible businesses. :)

SJG

Rolling Stones
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QE7Vl5ea…
Love You Live