Category Archives: Business

December 20, 2017

Taxes = Happiness

By Anony Mole

Name the happiest people in the world.
Name the highest taxes paid by people and corporations in the world.

Guess what? They (tend) to be the same people.

This is a simple plot (R code below) of 108 countries plotted by their “happiness quotient” in relation to their combined personal and highest corporate tax rate.

happytax

That line means that, in general, the higher the tax rate, the happier people reported to be (see cite below). This has been documented before. And a new report is due soon that will further elucidate this relationship.

The bottom line? If you take the recent US Republican tax bill that passed (Dec 2017), then what these fools have done is slid the United States BACKWARDS on that line. By reducing taxes (they say) across the board, they effectively want the Citizens of the United States to be more miserable than they are now.

Happy Holidaze!

[R Code]

lmod <- lm(happiness ~ taxrate, data = happytax)
plot(happiness ~ taxrate, data = happytax, pch = 19, 
 main = "happiness vs. taxrate", 
 xlab = "taxrate",
 ylab = "happiness")
abline(lmod)

[Cite:]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_rates
https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/personal-income-tax-rate
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Happiness_Report

12 Comments   |  tags: , , , | posted in Business, Finance, government, Programming, Society

November 29, 2017

Calorie Commute Cost

By Anony Mole

What is your commute worth?

Don’t ask me. I work from home. My commute is about 10 feet. But, if I had to commute what would it be worth?

Why are we doing this? Primarily, I wanted to figure out what would be a reasonable value to charge to drive someone to and from work, say, if you had a fully automated vehicle and wanted to share it with everyone who could afford it – like Uber but without a driver. What could you charge? And, also, I wanted to know, if I have to get a on-site job, what would be the cost I’d have to add to my paycheck to take such a job.

Let’s start with a few numbers.

  • 20 miles to work site, 40 miles round trip.
  • 100 calories burned by the average human body walking one mile.
  • 500 calories that can be purchased (on average) for one dollar.
  • 40 mph average speed of a “commute” vehicle.
  • $40 dollars per hour cost equivalent lost while driving.

[Now, I know I’m mixing my metaphors here – human calories and vehicle speed – but I’m just looking for ballpark here. I could got with gas + maintenance + vehicle cost, but that would vary just as much.]

Energy:
It would take 4000 calories for a human to walk that far (round trip).
At 500 calories per dollar (see cite below) that’s 8 dollars round trip.
Time:
At 40 miles total at 40 miles per hour that would be $40 per day wasted in traffic.

So we have:

  • $8 * 250 days = $2,000 / year (energy)
  • $40 * 250 days = $10,000 / year in time (time)

If we double the dollars per calorie cost (more reasonable given today’s food costs) then the price per year for energy goes up twice to $16 / day or $4,000 / year. Just for energy.

At this point we have $14,000 per year cost to commute.

Now, the time would still be a factor in using a fully automated car, but the $16/hour cost to pay for the travel (energy + rent the vehicle) is really low. There is no way to rent a car out (and pay for fuel) at that price. And even twice that at $32/hour — during rush hour — would be inadequate — regardless of time considerations.

[What does Uber cost? Apparently about $2/mile which would push the cost up to $80/day to use Uber as a commute solution. Which oddly enough is pretty close to the $32 + $40 that we’d spend in travel+time. But sheesh, who wants to pay that?]

So, realistically, by NOT commuting, I’m saving between $14,000 and $18,000 per year.

How do you feel knowing your commute costs you over $15k per year? Imagine telling your boss that having to sit in that little beige cubicle, within shouting distance of her, costs you personally, fifteen thousand dollars a year! Bloody hell! Let me work from home!

What about the investment concept? If a fleet of automated vehicles could operate efficiently at a cost between about $30-$50/hour  then such a solution “could” possibly be an economic winner. ‘Course, you could try and ride the bus…

~~~

Cite: http://efficiencyiseverything.com/calorie-per-dollar-list/

3 Comments   |  tags: , , , | posted in Business, Cost models, Economics, Society

November 25, 2017

Societas absurdum

By Anony Mole

At what point does society become absurd?

Humans need water, food, clothing, housing to survive. But today, for some reason, (Boredom? Compressed competition? Neurosis?) society has fixated on the most absurd quasi-competitions. And I’m assuming it is a competition of sorts. And all of it results in the most absurd behavior.

  • Cuisine is absurd.
  • Fashion, absurd.
  • Home decor, absurd.
  • Rarefied water, absurd.

When an entire media network has dedicated itself to absurd food fetishes (Food Network) society must have devolved into some backwards image of itself, some alt-universe, twisted mirror vision where Bobby Flay must pull the hair from Guy Fieri’s head while stirring a omelet made from Rachael Rae’s and Giada De Laurentiis’ peeled facial masks. (Eww!)

Here’s a suck omelet. It’s food. Eat it for cripes sake!

CrappyOmelet

No, no, no. It must be a savory, delicate fold of creamy eggs and chives. To eat an omelet any other way would be barbarous! Heathens! Ovum Infidels!

PerfectOmelet

Fashion? Hell, this has been absurd for centuries. Why? It must have to do with $$$ (but certainly not MY $$$ — I haven’t spent money on clothing for years). Maybe it’s what the Absurdly Rich do with their Absurd Billions.

What are we now, New Guinea Birds of Paradise competing for the three remaining females (or males) on the island?

BirdOfParadise

SQUAWK!

Fashion

Home decor — oy vey! Like the world needs more bizarre sculpture, furniture, fixtures, lighting, stairways, fireplaces, brickwork, aluminum windows and indoor topiaries. If it’s art — that’s OK. But if it’s edgy for the sake of being edgy…

Sheesh! Would you want to try and relax in this prison?

housing

Water. WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE?

Water

Society has become absurd has it not?

What is the cure for this absurdity? I know, but I’m not telling. Alright, ow, that hurt! Society needs to have its priorities reset. How? GLOBAL CATACLYSMIC DISASTER of course.

 

 

 

 

5 Comments   |  tags: , | posted in Business, Culinary, Psychology, Society

November 9, 2017

Logical maximum pay

By Anony Mole

I like creating simple algorithms to solve complex social issues. My 28th, 29th and 30th Amendments, FED tax schedule, college tuition, inequality tax and dividend maximums, among others, are examples.

One of the bizarre social numbers out there is CEO pay (or corporate executive pay). Generally, these numbers are incomprehensible.  Some examples (BI):

Name Company Salary
Steve Wynn Wynn Resorts $28.2 million
Leonard Schleifer Regeneron Pharmaceuticals $28.3 million
Ginni Rometty IBM $32.3 million
Jeff Bewkes Time Warner Inc. $32.6 million
Brian Roberts Comcast Corp. $33 million
Robert Kotick Activision Blizzard Inc. $33.1 million
David Zaslav Discovery Communications $37.2 million
Bob Iger Walt Disney Co. $41 million
Les Moonves CBS Corp $68.6 million
Tom Rutledge Charter Communications $98 million

What is reasonable? Certainly not $100 million a year! Some say that executive pay is necessarily high as it needs to attract the best (the best sociopaths…) who are willing to take the heat and dish out the sometimes oppressive company actions that keep a corporation healthy.

Yeah, right!

But as I asked, what is reasonable? What is a logical maximum salary? What simple algorithm could we create to deduce this? How about this. I’ll admit that someone might be:

  • twice as smart as me
  • twice as skilled as me
  • twice as educated as me
  • twice as experienced as me
  • twice as industrious as me and
  • twice as lucky as me.

(Twice being 100% better. “Me” being the average Joe.)

That’s 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 = 64 times “better” than me.

If the median household salary is $59k (US Census Bureau 2016) then:
64 x $59k = $3,776,000

That is the maximum logical pay anyone could possibly be paid based on the reasonable comparison of people’s abilities. $3.7M is a pretty hefty paycheck in my book. Plenty, I’m sure, on which to live a lavish life.

But there are 482 CEO’s of the S&P 500 paid more than this number.
(cite: https://aflcio.org/paywatch/highest-paid-ceos)

The highest, Sundar Pichai of Google fame, gets $100M. That means that he’s effectively 1694 times “better” than me.

Boy, that sure is one-hell-of-a-lot better! I’m sure he’s worth it.

6 Comments   |  tags: , , | posted in Business, Economics, Finance, Psychology, Society

October 2, 2017

My Five Stars

By Anony Mole

Are we the same?

Of course not. So, why would my preferences have any influence over your choices in life? They shouldn’t. Unless of course, we’ve established some sort of commonality between us.

When we see this somewhere on the web:

FiveStars

We think to ourselves, “hey, it must be good!” right? But, who are those people who liked that thing, whatever it might be (book, movie, electronic device, candy bar, restaurant, car, etc.) Are they like you or like me? Doubtful. What if everybody who really liked “X” were all penthouse-owing, world-tripping, elitist oligarchs, a bunch of self-declared aristocrats? Or what if they were all children in an Icelandic grade school? How much do you have in common with either of these? (You might, I don’t know, but that’s not the point. Or rather, that IS the point.)

Or what if you see some sad item for review with no stars. Some poor, dejected thing which nobody liked, everybody hated:

NoFiveStars

Again, who were these people to have rejected, outright, the efforts of whomever created or offered this item for review? Maybe it was wicked great, but reviewed by a whole slew of folks who had NOTHING in common with the creator. Nor did they have ANYTHING in common with you. Maybe YOU would love whatever that thing is.

And maybe you’d HATE that thing the kids in the Iceland school loved.

My point here is that reviews are treated as omniscient, but in reality they should be treated, organized in such a way that when you examine a reviewed item you see the reviews of ONLY those people who are as similar to you as contextually possible.

Who are these people? See, that’s the problem. That’s the golden prize at the end of all of this sociality. If you had a tribe of cultivated, curated people around you, people who held similar tastes in a high percentage of topics and ideals, you could trust those people’s reviews, their opinions would come much closer to yours.

This is what’s missing from facebook, twitter, google, linkedin, instagram, snapchat, et al. These “friends” or associates you have gathered in your time online, they do NOT represent a reflection of you. They’re a hodgepodge of people you’ve collected over time with vastly disparate views and morals, likes and dislikes.

Five stars? Zero stars? They mean nothing without knowing WHO rated them; without knowing if those people were anything like you.

Solve this problem, and you create a truly successful social experience.

3 Comments   |  tags: , , | posted in Business, Entertainment, Philosophy, Psychology, Society

September 22, 2017

Sheesh, Capitalists!

By Anony Mole

“Here’s What Stocks You Want to Own in the Event of a War With North Korea”

https://www.thestreet.com/story/14316270/1/north-korea.html

What a load of aristocratic horse hockey! Cramer’s TheStreet is trying to tell you “Hey, here’s how to make money on the up coming end-of-the-world — get in now while you still have air to breathe!”

  • Do these people even realize how like human scum they are?
  • Is there a more despicable slice of humanity than capitalists?
  • Do capitalists even have souls?
  • What do you call 1,000,000 capitalists at the bottom of the sea?
    A good start. (an oldie but tasteless joke).
  • Are there conscientiousness capitalists? I guess… I’ve never met any. They “say” they are but most likely would read an article like that and, if it made sense, take financial advantage of the information.
  • Do I despise capitalists? No. Only those who own capital.

 

8 Comments | posted in Business, Doomsday, Finance, Psychology, Uncategorized

September 4, 2017

Apocalypse for charity

By Anony Mole

What if you could prepare for the Apocalypse while donating to charity at the same time?

Imagine this:

For $100 a year Calamity-Charity delivers to your door a five-gallon (or more) bucket of various survival goods. Inside you’ll find 20-30 kilos of rice, beans, oats, wheat, and assorted flavorings and dried vegetables and proteins.

Now, in all likelihood, you probably won’t be using any of the contents in this bucket. And in fact, it behooves you to NOT use it. Because after six months, Calamity-Charity will delivery to you a NEW bucket, and take the old sealed bucket away. If you renew your yearly subscription, every six months you’ll get a brand new bucket of survival food.

But not only that… Because you DONATED your first sealed bucket you get to write off its cost of $50.00. If you renew your subscription you get to write off ALL $100 as a charitable donation. AND STILL get to keep your third survival bucket (which gets replaced on your anniversary and then again… and so on and so forth.)

And here’s the bonus part: that food that Calamity-Charity carted away after six months? Yeah, it went to FEED THE POOR! It went to homeless shelters, emergency food supplies for natural disaster victims — it didn’t get thrown out — it got used by those in need.

And if, by the extremely unlikely scenario you need to use the food? Well, you’ll have guaranteed fresh grains ready and waiting for your use.

Sounds like a pretty good business model no? Get in on the Apoca-porn industry, provide a potentially life saving service, and create a charity system all in one!

 

 

 

3 Comments   |  tags: , , , , | posted in Business, Culinary, Doomsday, Society