Friday, October 31, 2008

Trickle down econmics of food (part II)

Now let's see why I think Supply Side Economics is right in US. Let's assume we don't use money, we use food as way of exchange wealth.

When food is not a concern, the wealth comes from people's creation. The more people create, the more wealth we have. For example, If you have enough food for the year, and a lot of extra, the extra food doesn't do you any good (no real value to you).

Now let's assume someone could make the food taste better. All the people with extra food would give food to that guy in exchange for him to cook a meal. Now the food that is rotten in your backyard has extra value for you!

That is called wealth. Your extra junk can give you something you want. The more stuff you want, the more value your extra food has. People's desires match with material is wealth. If someone who can create stuff others want, and others have the material in exchange for return, that creates wealth.

Now let's step back to our world. There are certain things that we are too lazy to do for ourselves, and it is to our common good to do it as a group. So there is the government and taxes. The more the government does for us, the less we need to worry. Sounds good but everything come at a cost. All service we receive comes at a cost (could be hidden cost). The services we receive from government has a hidden cost. and the bigger the government, the far removed we are from it, the bigger the cost. Sometimes the cost is not so hidden (i.e the bridge to no where ), but because it is too far removed from us, no one cares.

The taxes that lay on you and me, each of us maybe only paying $10 a month, has tinny effect to us. But the tax that are paid by industries could be huge, and those money could cost us the next google.

My suggestion will be, a flat tax (or better, fair tax) on everything. Only hit rich people with extra progressive tax/regulations if that guy has became a monopoly.

Trickle down econmics of food (part I)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trickle-down_economics

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply-side_economics

Economics is very complex, and no one understand it totally. That is why the stock market is a gamble ground for most people, because no one can understand the entire economics situation.

Trickle down economics is the idea of reducing taxes of rich people and hope it will flow down to everyone. It is basically people who hate rich people call Supply side economics.

All economics ideas works to a certain extend. For example, if our food supply can't met demand by a large amount, most of the governments in the world will melt down, and people who survive will be depend on "Loot economics", basically the strong will win.

Now assume the food supply just meets demand. At this point, the most important thing on everyone's mind will be food. All the other stuff (Gold, entertainment) doesn't matter. The best type of government will be communist government. Because if someone became rich, that riches could mean death to others.

In case of food supply far exceeds demand, i.e. modern US/EU. There is a balance. It is better to have a progressive tax system so riches pays more, but it is hard to calculate how much. I think it is best to determine by experiment, but start from lower brackets. One thing you need to avoid is, never tax too much. Taxing has a effect of stamp creation. Most of us are honest people, and no matter rich or poor, we deserve the same treatment. To me (or the libertarian thinking), as long as the rich man's riches doesn't affect you physically in anyway, let them be rich. The more the wealth are created, the more the chance you will get some of them, and you might be rich one day too. However don't put your hope too high, because the system will always be pyramid shaped, the only difference is in developed countries, the bottom layer is actually enjoyable while in not so developed countries, even the middle layer could be rather bad.

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Why you should vote for Bob Barr

This is related to http://brokentoys.org/2008/10/28/as-political-a-post-as-you-are-likely-to-see/#comment-40385

The Demos and Republicans are both corrupted. Both of them are not interested in working class people any more. They court leechers instead. There are 2 school of leechers, the demos courts the poor welfare mothers with 8 kids, and republicans courts failed wall street execs.

Don't tell me someone is not working because they can't find a job. Millions of illegal immigrants come to this country, they can support themselves and their family overseas. A lot of them don't even need to work full time.

Republicans pour billions to failed (and stupid) executives who should be bankrupted and broken right now. And they tell us it is for our own good. If we don't want it, they will try to scare you.

The best way to share wealth is lower taxes, let the good people create wealth, let the bad ones bankrupt and their wealth will be managed by more capable people.

Want to lower debt? instead of raise taxes, stop pork first! Those in Washington will prefer to spend what ever amount is raised first.

Under Bush, the government has expended so much. We can safely call Bush a Marxist. Palin is not so conservative on spending either. The only thing she did to education is increase spending (the easy way to go). The only good candidate is Bob Barr, not perfect, but better. http://www.nolanchart.com/article3849.html

Monday, October 27, 2008

Geting vots for my candidate

And that is Bob Barr. The minute I told that to my parent and my father in law, they all laugh at me. They told me it is wasted vote.

Well it is not. This is how democracy works. If more people do this, the major parties will stop fooling with us and get serious to what we want.

My parents, with their doctors degrees, is going to vote for Obama, no matter what I do. All credit on that goes to Bush though. I have finally able to get my father in law to vote for Bob Barr, after explain to him the difference between the parties.

We will see how it goes.

Thursday, October 23, 2008

paypal stupidity

My primary email used for paypal is now full of junk mails. So I created another one and added/verified the second email, and make it the primary.

Too bad when someone donate something, the notification is still sent to the old email account.

Turned out the button I created is locked to that email. Now I have to create new buttons ....

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

So long, suckers. Millionaire hedge fund boss thanks 'idiot' traders and retires at 37

This post truly made me laugh. It does takes longer (usually 3 generations) in capitalist countries to rotate riches vs revolution, but at least it is bloodless.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/oct/18/banking-useconomy

Truly remind me some of the idiots on the internet who thought higher taxes is good for you. 75% of them must be from rich families who has never feel the pain of earn their living.

Joel on Software

This is a great read, taught me a few new tricks :-)

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/CamelsandRubberDuckies.html

Monday, October 20, 2008

Teaching kids is hard stuff

Yes, especially when it is voluntary job.

Me and wife attended Sunday school teacher's meeting last Sunday after classes, and the group of us talked about problems/solutions.

Since I am new, a lot of those ideas are new to me.

Some parents just put off their kids to us, they don't want to take any responsibilities at all. Epically the bad ones. Turned out just one of those bad students in a class can ruin the entire class. In most of the classes they have to select a "Class Mother", who will coordinate some parents as assistants in the class.

Several teacher said they wish to see what the trouble maker and their parents' reactions are when their parent is in class, or when the parents saw their kids making trouble. But their parents usually won't be able to make it, for various reasons.

Friday, October 17, 2008

Burned out

I am a little bit burned out. This week I beat a big dead line yesterday, got all offsets for WOW 3.0.2, completed midterm for my Sunday school students, installed extra power plug on attic (for all my ethernet connections upstairs) and the ether net connection in guest room. It sounds simple but there were so many mess in between.

I will relax this weekend, hopefully play some WOW :-)

Thursday, October 16, 2008

Black Silicon

Got this news http://www.tomshardware.com/news/black-silicon-photography,6485.html from toms hardware.

Looks like I might get a much better camera in a few years :-) I hope it is not too expensive. I love good SLRs. You have to have a SLR to full enjoy the beauty of digital photography. Fast response time, artistic impressions.

Final touch on wow 3.0.2

Last night I released the new bots, both fighter and fisher, because there is a tiny bit of not so often used information that is changed in WOW. I hate to do that when I have to bump the version number and let everyone re-download the bot, it is a huge waste on the bandwidth, and it forced fisher to be re-downloaded as well, even though it has nothing to do with fisher.

And today someone has found one more offset is bad, and it is fixed now. So I hope I can forget about those offset for now.

One more thing, since all the points has been refunded, it will be a major headache to pick what to do with them now :-(

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

WOW 3.0.2 again

I did manage to update most offsets yesterday night before wife's argo kick in. Looks like a new bot is also necessary due to some WOW client changes.

Right now zoloFighter should work on 3.0.2 clients, with some broken functionality. I will try to squeeze some in today, but since that will require a recompile of both figher and fisher, it will be a pain for sure.

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

I am so lucky!

Just got home form busy work, the amazing thing is, I didn't miss a thing. Blizzard still haven't up the realms yet, so I will go help wife with her projects :-)

This is actually good, as it shorten the gap between US/EU and asia updates.

WOW 3.02 is out

And this patch is released one day before the due date of a big project at work. Can't blame Blizzard on that one.

The up side is, at lease Blizzard didn't release at the same time my Sunday school student's mid term. Nothing kills a inexperienced teacher faster than pressure.

I will try to work on it as soon as possible, depend on what time I could go home from work. One sure thing is I will receive complains about bot stops working, first from US then aboard. No matter how many times patch happens, some people never seems to have a memory of it.

Monday, October 13, 2008

DOW is up

I have already posted that I am expecting the stock might seen the bottom, too bad I was too busy and didn't get in on Friday. All the bad news from media should be a cue that we are bottom out now, becase after all, the rich guys need to pay them to scare off all other investors so they could make money!

But anyway, it is not too late. I have increased my 401k when the dow first sink, and increased again last week with all the bad news. I don't expect stocks will go back to where they once were soon, depend on who the next president is and what he does, it might be another 10 to 20 years before all the funds make some good investments. But that is not important, the important thing is, I can wait :-)

I finally recovered a bit after last week's frentic struggle with my sunday school's midterm, it took me 3 days to finish, and hours after hours of typing to finally make it up. That is why it almost break my heart when one of the student's parents need to pull her son our for something else. After all it is sunday school, not official class.....

Wednesday, October 8, 2008

More on teaching

Turned out my ways of teaching is not as good as I thought. My last assignment turned out to be too tough for the 9 to 11 year old and instead of making them interest, most of them pretended that they lost the homework!! Also I got scolded by wife because I didn't teach enough basics.

So last week, I went back to the material on the book, and the kids was bored and wanted to get out as soon as possible.

Part of the blame is on me, because I was not experienced, too busy to create some interesting topics for their material and a bit too soft on the students.

I have to prepare an exam this week, I am praying I could come up with sometime to do more preparation.

And on the bail out and stock market. Even with the 700b bailout, market is crashing. It shows that the money is not been used yet, or if it is used, not been used effectively. I think a lot of the companies who needs cash has to sell some of their stocks to raise cash while the people in DC trying to figure out how to spend this massive amount of money.

There is an interesting post by bughunter on PTSOFT, he think we might be near the bottom now. I have to agree with him though. There might be an inflation down the road with all that money, but most people will be happy to get out of this sink first.

Friday, October 3, 2008

Bail out is passed

http://money.cnn.com/2008/10/03/news/economy/house_friday_bailout/index.htm?postversion=2008100309

I admit that I don't have a full understanding of the current crises, and I don't know what's in this bill. I don't even have a position on if we should have a bail out or not.

The upside: With the current situation of banks, if there is no bail out (or fresh money), lending could freeze and a lot of people could be out of their jobs.

The downside: The rich men who screwed up (who are supposed to be knocked out in a free market) are now in charge again and possibly got richer. The entire country could slip further into socialism.

Thursday, October 2, 2008

Bad news all around

All bad news.

At work we just discovered that because some other messed up, we got about 15 days to complete a task or risk losing big money for our company.

At home because some situation, it is a mess and no one had time to fix anything.

Wife also got a big one on her plate from her boss.

And I was told I had to make the mid term exam for my Sunday school students... So I can't have much fun stuff for my students this week, I will have to prepare them for the exam, which leaves small space for me to put some fun and interesting stuff in there. You just can't have as much fun when things are limited.