I love this guy’s writing. From Berkshire Hathaway’s
annual report:
People thought it was good news a few years back when housing starts – the supply side of the picture – were running about two million annually. But household formations – the demand side – only amounted to about 1.2 million. After a few years of such imbalances, the country unsurprisingly ended up with far too many houses.
There were three ways to cure this overhang: (1) blow up a lot of houses, a tactic similar to the destruction of autos that occurred with the “cash-for-clunkers” program; (2) speed up household formations by, say, encouraging teenagers to cohabitate, a program not likely to suffer from a lack of volunteers or; (3) reduce new housing starts to a number far below the rate of household formations.
Our country has wisely selected the third option, which means that within a year or so residential housing problems should largely be behind us
20100304 @ 1441
the left: objects to their tax dollars being used to kill people
the right: objects to their tax dollars being used to save people
it is not complicated
20090817 @ 1533
If you haven’t already seen it, check out the Washington Post’s graph showing how McCain and Obama’s tax plans compare, broken down into income groups.
If you make under $111,645 per year then you will get a bigger tax cut from Obama. If you make less than $226,981 per year then you get a tax cut from Obama, but a slightly larger one from McCain. If you make more than $603,403 per year… I don’t imagine you’re worried too much about money.
The WP sums it up nicely:
Obama’s plan gives the biggest cuts to those who make the least, while McCain would give the largest cuts to the very wealthy.
If everybody voted for their own financial self-interest then Obama would win by a landslide in November. Personally I think there are many other great reasons to vote for him.
Update: even better, here’s a version of the same graph that
chartjunk adjusted to be to scale based on the number of people in each income bracket:
20080911 @ 1059
I’ve just gotten back to my Paris hotel room after having dinner at Le Grand Véfour. The dinner was very French - small, luxurious portions served with incredible attention to detail. I appreciate the chef going out of his way to accommodate my vegetarian diet - something that seems like it must be less common in France. As fantastic as the meal was, the most amazing aspect of the dinner were my dining partners - Dr. Robert Kahn, Louis Pouzin as well as Dr. Kahn’s wife, Patrice.I’ve had a few dinners with Bob and Patrice lately as I’ve been traveling with them for the last week or so. We’ve been talking about the Handle System and the Digital Object Architecture with various European groups such as ITU and UNESCO, but it was really amazing to hear these guys who changed the world casually talking about the “old times” and their work to bring packet-switched networks (ie the Internet) into a world dominated by entrenched telephone companies who entrenched in a world of circuit-switched networks. It is also amazing how normal and humble these two guys are.I’m trying hard to keep this experience fresh in my mind.
20080204 @ 1905
