I’m working through our monthly cash flow in Quicken while my son bounces a basketball around the family room. I see an expense that I can’t figure out, which happens more often than I’d like when I go through the family finances. “This doesn’t make sense,” I say to myself. “What?” my son asks. “We actually made a little money for once?” He’s so thrilled with this zinger that he breaks into a cross-legged dance around the room yelling “OHHHHHHH! OHHHHHHH!” over and over again. Read more →
EppsNet Archive: Money
Why Craigslist Doesn’t Have Text Ads
The privately held Craigslist has been approached about installing text ads on the site, and the potential revenue is “quite staggering,” [CEO Jim Buckmaster] said. But, Buckmaster deadpanned, “No users are suggesting we run text ads.” — Associated Press Craigslist is an exception to the rule that a lot of Internet companies talk about putting users first, but when it comes down to a tradeoff between what users want and a boatload of money, they go for the money. Read more →
What Has Steve Jobs Done With His Money?
Bill Gates and the Microsoft crowd have been very prominent in charitable circles, saving Africans from disease, etc. By contrast, a Google search for “Steve Jobs charity” or “Steve Jobs donation” turns up nothing except an article on how Apple bought him a $90 million Gulfstream bizjet. So… if Steve Jobs doesn’t give money to charity and doesn’t pay for his own jet, is he doing something interesting with his $billions? — Philip Greenspun Read more →
Lucasfilm Donates $175 Million to USC
Gift continues filmmaker George Lucas’ long-standing support of educational initiatives at his alma mater. — USC news release Read more →
Tequila!
Danny Flores, composer of “Tequila,” a huge hit for the Champs in 1958, has died. He was 77. — Orange County Register Flores died in Westminster, about 20 miles from where I live in Irvine. He had been suffering for years from Parkinson’s disease. He made about $70,000 a year from the European rights to “Tequila” but in one of those “seemed like a good idea at the time” moves that you kick yourself for later, he had long since signed away the rights to U.S. royalties, an error in judgment that the Register attributed to the fact that Flores was — wait for it — a heavy drinker in the early days of the band. Read more →
Boo Hoo! The President Made My Income Go Down
Under Mr. Bush and the Republican Congress, incomes today are $1,000 less for the typical household than during Bill Clinton’s final year in office; incomes for the typical working-age household have declined every year since the president took office. — Howard Dean, Democratic National Committee chairman BOO HOO HOO! The President made my income go down. I’ve never understood the mechanism behind the president or Congress making my income go up or down. Can someone explain that to me? You know who I think makes my income go up or down? ME! I’ve made decisions that made my income go UP, and I’ve made decisions that made my income go DOWN. Who is the target audience for this tripe? People who want to believe they have no control over their own lives? People who need to blame all their problems on others? It’s always someone else’s fault. It’s my boss’s… Read more →
Controlling the Wealth
Women control [all] the wealth. — Tom Peters Don’t worry about it, Tom . . . because we control the women. Read more →
Whatever Happened to Love?
In the old days, greed and covetousness were seen as sinful; now they are encouraged. Jack Welch’s Winning sets the tone. The author grins manically from the cover – despite the silver hair, manicured nails and perfect teeth, he looks like Beelzebub incarnate. But why is “winning” so great? Because, says Welch, it enables people to make lots of money which . . . erm . . . enables them to “get better healthcare, buy vacation homes, and secure a comfortable retirement”. That’s it. Those are the three goals of our mortal existence, otherwise known as more pills, more mortgages and more burglar alarms. Whatever happened to joy, pleasure, brotherhood? Whatever happened to enjoying life? Whatever happened to creativity? Whatever happened to love? — Tom Hodgkinson Read more →
Nobody Likes Us
The educated coastal public thinks that evangelical Christianity is America’s number one religion. They are wrong. It is the Worship of Unearned Riches, and Las Vegas is its holy city. The belief that it is possible to get something for nothing is more potent in our land than the belief that the Son of God will return to rescue mankind. The Religion of Unearned Riches was established here in the desert by organized crime. It has turned us into a nation of slobs, clowns, patsies, and cravens. Las Vegas is what we have become. Is it any wonder that the rest of the world despises us? — James Howard Kuntsler I live a few hours’ drive from Las Vegas. I share the author’s contempt for the place, right up until the last sentence where he suggests that there’s something uniquely American about irrational greed. Other countries don’t have casinos and… Read more →
Why I Don’t Own a Cadillac Escalade
Smush Parker of the L.A. Lakers has a custom Cadillac Escalade that says SMUSHCALADE on the tailgate where it usually says ESCALADE. I say to my son, “I wonder if I could get an Escalade with EPPSCALADE on the back.” “You can’t even afford an Escalade and still have a good financial condition,” he says. “I can’t?” “No, ’cause you ain’t representin’.” “I’m not representin’?” “No, you ain’t wheelin’ and dealin’. You sittin’ on the block while others are out gettin’ their bling.” Read more →
Meet my New Stockbroker
I’m looking at my brokerage account on the laptop, with my son, age 12, watching over my shoulder. “I know your account number,” he says, reading it off the screen. “I’m not sure how that’s going to help you,” I say. “I can hack in and trade stocks,” he says. “‘It’s going up! SELL! SELL! SELL! SELL! SELL! Now it’s going down! BUY! BUY! BUY! BUY! BUY! It’s going down some more! SELL! SELL! SELL! SELL! SELL!’ It’s a trading frenzy! . . .” Read more →
My Kid Asks for Money
“Give me money or give me death! And if you give me death, I’m going to give you death, so I recommend giving me money. “And if you kill me, when Mom gets home you’re going to have to make up some lame excuse like ‘Somebody broke into the house and killed him.’ So again, I recommend just giving me the money.” Read more →
My Retirement Plan is a .45
Over Thanksgiving dinner, my dad is explaining how he’s trying to count up all his assets and figure out if he’s got enough to retire. “But,” he says, “you know what’s missing from all this retirement planning? The one thing you really need to know but you don’t know?” Read more →
Soak the Rich — Colleges!
A core value of American liberals is the importance of redistributing wealth from the prosperous to others, through highly progressive taxes and transfer payments. Which leads to a question: If redistributing wealth is a good idea for workers, companies, individuals, and families, then intellectual consistency suggests it should be equally valid for institutions like colleges and universities. Right? Read more →
HW Solves the Problem of Poverty in America
According to a U.S. Census report released yesterday, the nation’s poverty rate rose in 2004 for the fourth straight year. Read more →
Jesus at a Republican Fund-Raiser
I want to say to the meek: Once we finally get rid of the death tax, you’re not inheriting anything. — Jesus Christ Read more →
Dead and Loving It
Wal-Mart heir John Walton died Monday when his ultralight aircraft crashed after taking off from an airport in Jackson, Wyoming. Read more →
We Don’t Have the Money, So We Have to Think
We don’t have the money, so we have to think. — Ernest Rutherford Ernest Rutherford was an illustrious scientist — the 1908 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, and the father of nuclear physics. His humble upbringing as the fourth in a family of 12 children in rural New Zealand influenced his approach to science, as summarized in the above quote. A recruiter called me today about a job managing an $80 million IT project. How in the world can you spend $80 million on an IT project?! I could put your company logo on Mars for $80 million. Most of the big, expensive IT projects that I’m familiar with, there really was no reason for them to take so long or cost so much. A lot of time and money could have been saved with some upfront thinking. I get a lot of this now — recruiters asking me if I… Read more →
Often-Repeated Lies
A lie repeated often enough becomes truth. — Lenin As the GOP drifts further to the right, and becomes more starkly the party of the wealthy, it is gaining support among the working class. I have never seen a wholly satisfactory explanation for this trend, which now spans two generations. . . . Republicans, of course, will argue that it’s simply the working man’s understanding that the GOP has the better argument, i.e., that the best way to help the working class is to shower the rich with tax breaks. But the Bush administration has been showering the rich with tax breaks for more than four years, and the working class has nothing to show for it. — Timothy Noah, “Conservatism As Pathology” Read more →
OC Real Estate Report
I recently sold a house in Laguna for $3.5 million. It was on about 2,000 square feet of land, maybe a twentieth of an acre, and the house might cost about $500,000 if you wanted to replace it. So the land sold for something like $60 million an acre. — Warren Buffett Read more →