HDL: 65
LDL: 139
Total: 271
Triglycerides are up.


Last june, they were:
HDL: 69
LDL: 179
Total: 279

The answer to this question (what is a share of stock?) seems obvious to some, but isn't quite so obvious to others, so it's important to cover "the basics" here...

A share of stock represents limited ownership in a company.  Owners get to select the Board of Directors and, if the Board of Directors approves, share in profits.  Owners own the company's assets and are responsible for the company's liabilities.

Now... how much is a share of stock worth?  Theoretically, a share of stock is worth the present value of all future profit for the company at its point of liquidation divided by the number of shares outstanding.  Let me try to say that a little easier... over time, a company is expected to earn profit.  If you sum up all of the future profits and then extract from those values the expected inflation rate in order to state the value in present-day's terms, you calculate what the entire company is worth today.  Now divide that amount by the number of pieces that the company's ownership has been broken into (i.e. the number of shares of stock), and you get the value of a single share of stock.

An example...
Let's say that company A is going out of business today.  They have $2,000 in assets and $1,000 in liabilities, and they divided the company into 1,000 equal pieces ownership.  To calculate all future profit, subtract liabilities from assets (leaving $1,000) and divide that by the number of shares.  Each share should receive $1, meaning that each share is worth $1.

A more complicated example...
Company B is going out of business in exactly one year.  They have $5,000 in assets, $3,000 in liabilities, and they are expected to create and sell $20,000 worth of services over the next year, incurring expenses of $16,000.  During the next year, we also expect roughly 1% inflation, so if something is worth $1,000 in one year, it has an inherent value today of $990.10 today ($1,000 divided by 1.01).  So... in one year, the company will have $4,000 profit ($20,000 in revenue less $16,000 in expenses), increasing their assets to $9,000 ($5,000 today plus $4,000 next year).  Once they pay off their $3,000 loan they'll have $6,000 left over.  The $6,000 in one year is worth $5,940 today, so a share of stock is worth $5.94.

Now... different independent valuations of the same company can use a whole bunch of different underlying values.  Let's say that, in the above example, someone else thinks that the company is going to have a particularly good year and have revenues of $25,000 with expenses of $19,000.  Their valuation for the company would be that in one year they would have an $8,000 liquidation value, so today a share of stock would be worth $7.92.  That's quite a difference from $5.94, so the person who valued the company at $5.94 might be very willing to sell their shares of the stock for $6.50, and the person who valued the company at $7.92 might be very happy to buy a share at $6.50, so they might strike a deal, and that is precisely how the stock market works.

Something important to note, here.  Let's say that in the above example, the company was divided into 100 shares, not 1,000 shares.  That means that each share might have a price of $79.20 rather than $7.92.  While $79.20 is certainly a higher number than $7.92, the actual number provides absolutely no information about the worth of a company.  A company with a share price of $50 isn't necessarily more valuable than a company with a share price of $10.  A good example of this is to compare GOOG (Google) to MSFT (Microsoft).  Google's share price is about $484.50, and Microsoft's is about $25.00.  Does Google have 19.38 times the valuation of Microsoft?  No!!!  Google has been divided into 316,570,000 shares of stock, while Microsoft has been divided into 8,930,000,000 shares of stock.  That's right, Google's share of stock represents a much larger part of the company (28.2 times the size, to be exact).  So when we do the math, Google, as a whole, has a "market capitalization" of $484.50 * 316,570,000, or $153,378,165,000, while Microsoft's capitalization is $17.00 * 8,930,000,000, or $223,250,000,000, more than Google's valuation.  So clearly, the actual price of a stock isn't as relevant as how much that price changes on a day-to-day basis.

Here's some information on my stock acquisition process.  It's not new info, but it's consolidated from several sources...

On selecting companies:

• Select companies that make products you believe in, i.e. you would sorely miss if the company folded.
  
  • Many companies are conglomerates and produce a wide variety of products.  If you select a company based on a product, try to find out what percentage of that company's revenues come from the sales of that product.  If it's a small percentage, consider how you feel about the other products and their risks.
• Do not invest in your employer.  If bad things happen to the company, you may lose your source of income _and_ your investments.
• Try to keep diversified such that no more than 25% (an arbitrary number) of the value of your investments is invested in a particular industry or geographic location.  The geographic location is often overlooked: what would happen to your California investments after an earthquake?
• Occasionally, select random companies that you've never heard of for further research.

On researching a company:

• Read the company's financials.  What is their profit margin?  What is their return on assets?  How fast has their revenue been growing, and is that rate sustainable?  Are their current assets larger than their current liabilities?  Do they pay dividends?  Does anything odd jump out at you, like a particularly bad or good quarter?
• Read the company's last few quarterly and annual reports.  Does management sound sane?  Have they identified anything that warrants special consideration?
• Once you've found companies you like, do not buy the stocks.  Watch the stocks for a while.  Read their press releases and any news about them.  Get a feel for how the stock price fluctuates over time.
• DO NOT follow your instincts.  Instead, let your instincts guide your research.

On buying stock:

• Have a plan.  Know what price you want to buy the stock for and what price you want to sell the stock for (based on your research).
• Figure out a total dollar amount you're willing to invest on the company.  Set aside that cash, but don't necessarily buy all your stock at once.  Do some staged buying, if the price drops a little.
• At your target price, sell enough shares of stock to make up for your initial investment, transaction cost, and taxes, even if you think the stock is going to go up further.  Once you do this, the shares that remain invested are pure profit, and you can sell them later.  Even if they take a huge bath, you've made money.
• Continue researching the stock, now that you own it.  If fundamentals start to change, systematically reconsider your target price.  Again, do not follow your instincts, but let your instincts guide your research.

Shaina and I awoke in Las Vegas and had a leisurely morning.  We left for the Hoover Dam mid-morning.  Took a _ton_ of photos of the new bridge arch, which was complete and suspended by only one cable which they were in the process of removing.  One side of the bridge had all the cables removed.  I think the bridge would have looked better with the temporary towers and suspension cables, but oh well.  It's just going to be an arch and a flat roadway, so when you drive over it you won't get to see much at all.

Shaina and I parked and walked across the dam, taking plenty of photos, still.  We then went back to get tickets for a tour.  I opted for the most expensive tour because it actually took us inside the dam.  While it was nifty to see, it was so short that it wasn't really worth it.  I'm not sure that the less-expensive tour, which just shows you the generator room, would be worthwhile, either.  Anyway, the Hoover Dam was impressive and neat to see, as was the bridge.

On the way back to Vegas, we stopped in Boulder City at their local brewery and enjoyed a pint.  They had some _tasty_ beer.

Back to the house to retrieve my computer, so I could share photos with Rich.  And then back out toward Henderson (Pecos Street) for happy hour at a local Mexican restaurant/bar ($2 margaritas) with more of Shaina's friends.  On the way, I grabbed a 20-inch eggplant parmesan sub from Carpiotti's, which I intended to enjoy on both Thursday and Friday.  Once happy hour ended there we walked across the parking lot to PJ's happy hour (half-priced drinks).  We had a mostly good time.  I did really well shooting pool until I sank the 8-ball while my sister wasn't watching.  I figured she'd notice eventually and she'd be happy she won and she'd continue to enjoy shooting pool against her brother, so I didn't tell her.  She found out when I scratched a few shots later, though, and she pulled the 8-ball as well.  We returned home and slept.

Just curious... do people actually read in here anymore?  I know a few of you do (and if you post regularly in LJ, there's no need to reply to tell me that you are still active on LJ (jkusters, ysengring, ...).

If you do read here but don't post in here anymore, are you facebooking?  If so, do you have access to your history of updates or, if not, do you care?

**note** I'm still sorting photos from Zion - I took many, and am trying to select the few that exemplify my travel.  Check back here if you're interested in seeing them; I'll put up photos soon.


We awoke in the Best Western Bryce Canyon Grand hotel, a new hotel in Bryce Canyon City, a community which changed its name from Ruby's Inn in 2007, which explained why _finding_ the place was so challenging.  Anyway, once found, it was very comfortable.  I think Shaina and I slept well.  We got up for the hotel's complimentary breakfast (which was a good deal more than just a simple continental breakfast!) and then headed back to a different section of Bryce Canyon to hike.  It was supposed to be an easy hike, and I suppose that if we'd stuck to just that hike it would have been.  We headed back into a canyon with a running stream and found our destination, a mossy cave, however a beautiful waterfall, not on our trail, became a no-brainer to visit.  We climbed to the top of the waterfall, and then Rich and I noticed that there was a steep path up a hill to a "window" through the rocks, which I had to climb.  It was maybe another 50 or 100 feet up, so I took it slowly, and getting up wasn't much of a problem.  The problem was getting back down.  At one point, my legs slipped out from under me and I twisted back, stomach first, onto the path in order to prevent myself from going down the hill and off the cliff below on my butt.  I'd mis-estimated the danger of the slope pretty badly, but obviously figured out how to get back down in one piece (_slowly_).  There was just a bad patch of gravel where I just couldn't get a grab on anything that was firmly stuck to the hill.

And then we drove to Zion.  At first, I thought that we'd give Zion a pass considering the beauty of Bryce, but Lola had convinced us that she'd liked Zion more than Bryce so we should give it a look-see.  Wow.  I'm so glad we did!  Bryce _was_ spectacular, and Zion was a completely different kind of spectacular.  Driving into the canyon on Highway 9 through the tunnel was a winner.  Spectacular views above of rocks.  But then, once you're in the canyon... wow.  Surrounded by cliff faces between 1500 and 3000 feet above, in spectacular colors.  I was too tired to do more hiking in Zion, so we just took the shuttle loop up the canyon and back.  It was enough.  Zion is awe-inspiring.

The drive home was relatively uneventful.  The Virgin River Gorge isn't exciting after Zion.  We stopped in Mesquite, Nevada to find dinner, and I had some really crappy pasta alfredo which I cut with tomato sauce to improve.  And then back to Las Vegas to sleep.

Woke up.  Got out of bed.  Dragged a comb across my head.

Okay, maybe no comb.  Anyway, we pack for an overnight trip and hop in the car to meet up with Lola and Rich (and his 42-foot RV) at a Denny's on the north side of Las Vegas.  Once together, we begin the caravan up I-15 through southern Nevada, into the canyonlands of Arizona.  I really hadn't expected that, by the way.  At one point in Arizona, there's a large cliff and the freeway appears to go straight into it (because you can't see that there's a canyon from the angle you're driving).Sure enough, the 1600+ foot cliffs have a very narrow canyon to permit the Virgin River to pass.  Driving through the Virgin River Gorge was awe-inspiring, and, sadly, blew away any previous river gorge I'd seen (i.e. the Snake River in Idaho).We continued up into Utah and drove to Bryce Canyon City to get situated at our hotel.The hotel was hard to find because it and the name of the city are so new that they didn't appear on GPS.  Anyway, following this we entered the Bryce Canyon National Park (I bought my America the Beautiful pass for $80 (park entrance was $25 otherwise)) and hiked the Navajo Loop, a 1.3 mile loop through the Bryce Canyon hoodoos with a 550-foot de/ascent.  It was challenging; I didn't think I could make a hike like that...  I had to take it very slowly, but I managed.  I took about 200 photos during this hike.
Then back to the hotel for a swim and then a fajita dinner in the RV courtesy of Lola (and Rich?).  Then back to the hotel room for some sleep.

So we wake up, hop in the car, and head out to Pahrump, not having the slightest clue what's there.  Long before we get there, we are in awe of the beautiful geography/geology:which is virtually identical to the rock I found outside of Zzyzx, excepting in grey rather than in a pale mineral.  Definitely volcanic, but I'm at a loss as to what it is.

Crystal, NV, happens to be home to several brothels, which we passed when turning around to continue on our trip.  We made our way to Highway 95 to head to Beatty/Rhyolite, and saw some ruins on the right, which we pulled off to see, driving up another rocky road.  I found ruins of an old mine and hosue, there:however I made that trek alone, due to the rattlesnake warnings:even though I didn't see a single one.  I did see some other critters, though:

Not usually very proud of my photography.  This one I like:

Shaina and I drove from Las Vegas down to Boulder City (about fifteen miles) for a brunch.  Food was decent, not extraordinary.  The little downtown was cute, though.
Boulder City was built as a community for the workers who built the Boulder Dam to live.  And as you all know, Boulder Dam was later renamed "Hoover Dam"...

From there we drove down to Searchligh, NV because neither of us had the slightest clue what we might find there.  We found pretty much nothing, though this was an interesting site to see right along the main road:This is the structure right over the entrance to the first gold mine in town.

From there, we drove to Cottonwood Cove, which is a beach/boat launch on Lake Mohave:Yup.  The Colorado River wends its way right through here, and with a dam just south of here, the lake is four miles across and sixty miles long and a beautiful blue between the beautiful deserts of Nevada (in the foreground) and the mountains of Arizona (in the background).  The water was warm, by the way.

On our way back to Las Vegas, we saw another old mine, which I enjoyed exploring:

I estimated that I'd be in Las Vegas at 7pm if I hopped into the car at 8am, giving me two hours to explore Calico and one hour to explore Zzyzx.  I was off my an hour in two ways.  First, the drive with a stop in Calico and Zzyzx would get me into Vegas at 8pm (it's a solid nine-hour drive), and second I left at 9am.

To make up for time, I skipped Calico, especially considering that it's

• a county park
• a well-maintained ghost town
• semi-commercial
• probably a fun thing to visit with my entire family at some point

Zzyzx, on the other hand, isn't really a touristy spot.  In fact, when I stopped there, I was the only person there for the entire hour.

So... Bear Creek Rd. to CA 17N to CA 85E to U.S. 101S to CA 152E to I- 5S to CA 46E to CA 99S to CA 58E.  A stop in Bakersfield for fuel and water.  CA 58E to I-15N.  Exit Zzyzx Rd., and stop in Zzyzx at 4:30pm.

Zzyzx wasn't _at all_ what I was expecting.  On the left is a large alkali flat (Soda Lake?) which I skipped on this trip.  I was actually planning on just scouring the rocky terrain for arrowheads for an hour.  I got out, took care of my hydration needs, put on my gloves, and started walking into the hills.  Lots and lots of nifty rocks all over the place!  Pieces of broken granite in greens and greys.  No arrowheads.  Well, I'm sure there are tons of arrowheads, I just didn't look long enough.  I considered the terrain and tried to imagine what it was like 500 years ago in order to figure out where the critters would be (and where the Native Americans would be) in order to figure out where the arrowheads would be, today, and that took me to a large wash/gulley right next to a ridge.  The ridge looked very different from the rest of the hills around.  It was smaller, and pointier, or at least it appeared so from afar.  As I got close, I found a very, very odd rock.  It was white and severly cracked and sharp and pokey.  I still have no idea what it is, but I kept it as a specimen and here is a photo of it:
Let me know if you can identify it.

Anyway, I looked around and found more rocks like that one.  Lots more.  In fact, the entire hill was made entirely of them (and they're sharp, so I couldn't do too much climbing!).  Looking around, I did find two small pieces of obsidian as well, so I'm positive that these rocks are volcanic minerals in nature.

Zzyzx Rd. back to I-15N to NV 215W and surface streets to Shaina's.  Arrived in Las Vegas at 7pm.  Rested for an hour, and then Shaina took me to Green Valley Ranch to meet up with a few of her friends at Reggae night.  I met Nicole, Rich, Michael, and Lola.  And trust me, Lola _is_ a "show" girl.  Anyway, an enjoyable evening was had.  Plus, on the way in, I grabbed a Capriotti's eggplant parmesan sub, which is great stuff!

Home at 11:30ish and to sleep.

I ran a server in my garage up through February, 2007.  I hosted Ricochet Robot and also a collection of  important photographs (primarily Raziel's first 17 months) on the server.  I planned well.  The server ran Gentoo.  It had three SCSI hard drives: one 18GB drive with the operating system, and two 36GB drives which were kept as a RAID mirror for data storage (important photos need mirroring).  The main hard drive died in late February.  I powered it down.

I let the system sit for a year, and then decided to buy a networked RAID mirror for my photos and backups.  I tried to boot the old system using a LiveCD, however the SCSI controller could no longer see the CD-ROM drive, so booting became impossible.

I received, as a present, an identical system this week.  This morning, I burned an image of SystemRescueCD (http://www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page), popped one of my mirrored drives into the drive bay of the new system, and booted.  The system came up, I configured networking, mounted the drive, and copied all of the photos off to my network RAID mirror.

All is well with the world again, though, frankly, I think I'm going to burn a few DVDs for storage in a fireproof safe, just in case.

Let's see where this goes...

Dear Gregg,

         I have a secret. I'm so afraid that if I tell the secret to someone, bad things will happen to me and to other people, so you're the only person I can tell. I'm telling you now, because the pain of the knowledge I hold so closely is getting too great. I need to console myself somehow. I can't even tell this to my best friends, not even my wife, so here I am, writing it to you.
        Someone once told me that writing a diary could be comforting, but it seems unnatural to me, writing to an inanimate object. "Dear diary". So, I'm addressing this to myself, and perhaps, if I need a response, I might even do that.
        My secret is that I know parts of the future. All I have to do is think about someone, and if I focus hard enough and in just the right way, I can know just about anything I want to about what will happen to them in the future. Death is the easy one, and the one I tend to focus on, because it happens to everyone. All I have to do is think about that person and think about them dying, and I'll see when it happens (by visualizing how old they are, it's not like I see a calendar) and how. I can't use this ability to get unfair advantages in sporting events and stock markets. It's just about individual people.
         My ability leaves me as an emotional wreck, generally. I don't want to know these things. I try to put the ability out of my mind, most of the time. As I said, I have to focus in the right way, so I avoid doing that, but sometimes, usually when I'm listening to music that strikes me emotionally or when I'm dreaming, I just drift into that focus state and I learn things that I just don't want to know.
        This morning, on my commute to work, I turned on some music instead of listening to NPR as I usually do, and the music really touched me. Without intending to, and while driving along, I slipped into that focus state and got to see how and when my wife will die, again. I hate that. Perhaps I should explain why it makes me afraid, because I'm sure you're wondering why I don't share this secret. First, if other people knew I had this ability, I'm afraid they'd try to make me use it. I don't know what use they'd get out of it, but I'm sure someone would misunderstand and think that I can tell the future for anything and then hurt me because they think I'm holding out on them. I'm also afraid that if I tell the people I trust how they're going to die, they'll try to change it. I don't know if it can be changed. I don't know if the act of trying to change it causes their death. I'm afraid to experiment. Heck, I'm even afraid that they'll all think I'm nuts. I may be, but not about this.  I'm not paralyzed by my fear, though.  I just know and keep to myself.

        I don't deal with death very well, when it happens to someone I'm close to or know.  I'm fortunate in that it hasn't yet become a major factor in my life.  A few people I've known have died.  A few distant family members.  All my grandparents.  A good friend, when I was twelve.  A good friend's child.  My wife's grandparents.  It's normal.  Everyone has some death around them at some times.  I get kind of morose when it happens to me, though.  And it comes back, even after so many years.  I mentioned that when I was twelve a good friend died.  His name was Eric Valiquette.  I didn't really mourn his death, back in 1985.  I mourned him in 2008, for some odd reason, just days before the birth of my daughter.
        Maybe I don't deal well with death because I have no faith.  I don't know if life is like a candle, and once it's snuffed, that's it, or whether perhaps life is more like the life cycle of a butterfly, and death is a soul's transformation into something new.  I don't have any evidence, and so it's easiest for me to assume that once it's over, it's over.  When death happens around me, I get gripped with loss and emptiness and sorrow.  I get gripped by unmet potential.  It's exactly the same when I learn how or when someone is going to die.  I get that same gripping feeling, just years or decades ahead of time.
        Thank you, diary.  Thank you, Gregg.  I'll write you more soon.  If something comes to mind, I hope you'll write back.

                Gregg

A 2.1 quake just rolled through, epicentered six miles north.  Heather and I both heard it, but felt nothing.  Just a low rumbling.

I'm filthy!  I spent the day installing an irrigation system.  I drilled a 7/8" hole through 4" brick and got covered in brick dust.  I dug out the planter in order to feed the tube through the brick and got covered in dirt.  I ran 124 feet of that darn irrigation tubing, installed eighteen sprinkler heads, and got covered in dirt and then water.  I took apart and rebuilt the brick retaining wall, and thank goodness I didn't get covered with the largest black widow I've ever seen.  The abdomen was the size of my pinky tip and with its leg span it was easily an inch and a half across.  I used a circular saw with a cement blade and cut a nice, straight line across my driveway (one more to go so I can run tubing across it) and got covered in asphalt dust.

I'm just dirty.  Time to shower.

Today, our federal government thought best to increase minimum wage from $6.55 to $7.25.  I think this is a bad idea, but, of course (because you know me...) not for the same reason that conventional conservatives think.

I believe that most employers look at the minimum wage as a baseline for pay, and that's a dreadful mistake.  Having a minimum wage justifies paying people the minimum wage, even if that minimum wage isn't enough to live on.  If you're the kind of person who can pretty much only get a minimum wage kind of job, it doesn't really matter if you stay in your job or move a competing job, you'll pretty much be paid the same.  If there were no minimum wage, however, employers would have to actually pay attention to what they were paying their employees instead of saying, well, this is the minimum that I'm allowed to charge and that's all you'll get from me.  If employers set their own wages, there'd be a lot more differentiation between jobs, and some of those employers might actually stop and think, "Hrmmm.  How much do my employees actually need in order to live around here?"

Besides, raising or lowering a minimum wage doesn't always have its intended consequence.  Raising a minimum wage may help a lot of minimum wage employees out, however (let's put on our economist cap, once again) the employer really only cares about its bottom line: how much profit will it make?  If the input costs of a product increase, in order to maintain a constant amount of profit, the price of that product must necessarily go up.  Alternatively, the employer might choose to try to maintain a constant amount of profit by also maintaining a constant input cost, i.e. decreasing the amount of labor.  The end result is that either unemployment goes up or prices for goods and services goes up.  Neither of these is a particularly good consequence.

But of course, if the government is to have a minimum wage, the government would look utterly foolish if that minimum wage was so out of line with reality that it would be completely impossible to survive on it.

If you ask me, the best solution, as far as human equity, is to get rid of minimum wage in entirety.  It doesn't really help anyone as much as pure competition in the labor market would.

Okay, first off, I need to be clear here.  I'm a Google employee, however I'm writing this entry, this analysis, from the perspective of an observer.  These are not Google's words, they are mine.  The information I've used to come to these conclusions is all public.  If you're looking for some special, secret knowledge about Google, you're not ever going to find it here.  That being said...

About a year ago, I excitedly read the releases about Google's new open-source browser, Chrome, and downloaded a copy for myself.  Most importantly, I read report after report about how Google was doomed to failure in a head-to-head battle with Microsoft.  How foolish it was to be developing a browser when the market was already entrenched.

Now, I'm seeing the same sorts of reports.  Google is taking Microsoft on head-to-head with a new Operating System.  Chrome OS is destined for failure.  Google is overreaching.

I call bullshit.  I call bullshit on the Chrome naysayers, and I call bullshit on the Chrome OS naysayers.  I am not a frequent Chrome user (primarily because I use a Mac), however I can tell you, simply by using the latest version of my preferred browser, Firefox (3.5), that Chrome (and Google) has already won.  Shortly after the release of Chrome, Microsoft, Apple, and Mozilla all came out with new browser updates which all focused on improvements in performance.  It's my theory that this was Google's primary intention: browser development was too slow and in the "wrong" areas, so by developing a browser that was nothing if not fast and then opening up the source code so that everyone could see how it was made to be so fast, it forced the hands of all other browser manufacturers to hasten their Javascript engines and their HTML rendering.  In less than six months, it was clear that Chrome had already reshaped browser development across the boards, and in doing so, Chrome won whether it gained market share or not.

So here's a prediction and a speculation.  The speculation: Google doesn't necessarily care about capturing market share on netbooks with its new Chrome OS; it just wants netbook performance across the boards to be fast.  I've read reports from some people using very early versions of Chrome OS, and the one thing they all have to say is that it's fast.  I speculate that Google wants this because the faster the net is, the more the net is used, and the more the net is used, the more information gets placed out there, and the more content that is placed on the internet, the more people are going to need to _search_ for that content.  And finally, when people search, they are indirectly looking for advertising which is Google's bread and butter.  The prediction: by pre-announcing their desire to enter the netbook Operating System fray with yet another open-source software release, Google is automatically a winner, because all it really wants is to help guide and shape the development of this technology, setting a minimum bar in netbook performance.  If Intel and Apple and Microsoft all react to Google by focusing on making their own netbook Operating Systems more customer friendly, more usable, and faster, Google wins even before their open source SDK is released.

What's more, the winner isn't really Google.  From my perspective, Google is just increasing the competition in markets that seem to be slow to respond to users' desires.  Ultimately, the winner will be all of us.

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/introducing-google-chrome-os.html

My head asplode.

I am for universal healthcare and against school vouchers.  Anyone who knows me knows that this is 180 degrees from my position of only a few years ago.  I was for vouchers and I was against universal healthcare.  I had a very libertarian stance that the government should butt out of anything that could be handled privately.  In my mind, healthcare and education are very comparable subjects.

The problem is that I now realize that when these things are handled privately, they reach an economic efficiency which limits access and quality for people without wealth.  Let's look, for example, at what vouchers would do to the public school system:

Let's say that we take the entire budget for all school children and divide that by the number of children.  The end result is the amount of money that is spent on that child in public education.  Instead of giving that money to a school, let's give that money to the child's guardians and tell them that they must spend it on their child's education.  No, wait.  We can't trust everyone with money.  Instead, let's trust them with a piece of paper which they must give to a school, and the school can then collect that money.  And that piece of paper is called a voucher.  So now we have a voucher system in place.

Now, let's just throw out some random numbers here.  Let's say a voucher is worth $6,000 a school year, and that this is roughly the amount that gets spent on each child in public schools.  Of course, private schools generally start in the $7,500 a year ballpark for religious schools, and they go up from there.  Some even cost $20,000 and up!  But now, a parent has a voucher worth $6,000 which they can give to a public school, or if they can wrangle $1,500 a year, they can give that cash and the voucher to the local Catholic school.  Wrangling $7,500 a year just wasn't possible, before, but now, $1,500... a lot of families will begin to be able to afford that.  So demand for lower-end private schools goes up significantly.  Immediately, the supply will remain the same, however, so people will get wait-listed.  In fact, people who used to wrangle $7,500 will get wait-listed just the same as those who only have to wrangle $1,500.  But it's no harder for them to wrangle $7,500 now, so maybe the kids who could previously only afford that $7,500 private school can go to that $13,500 school.  And just like the parochial school, the middle-grade private school now has increased demand, and begins to wait-list.  And, in the end, the high-end private schools will see an increase in demand without an increase in capacity.

Now, I know there are some folks out there reading this who actually studied economics.  So what happens when you increase the demand for a good or service without increasing the supply of that good or service?  Say it with me, now: "the price increases."  Suddenly, $20,000 a year private schools cost $25,000 a year, and why shouldn't they if the parents of their students are willing to pay.  And the same things goes for every level of private schools.  People have more money they're willing to spend, so the price goes up.  The parochial, non-profit schools probably won't jack up their prices much, though.  Anyway, the end result is that the cost of the vouchers will partially go straight to private schools in the form of tuition increases.

But we haven't looked at what happens in the public schools.  Suddenly, the public schools are full of two kinds of people: people who can't afford $1,500 a month for parochial school, and people who can but are wait-listed.  In all, there are fewer people in public school, now, so public schools don't take in as much money as they once did.  Sure, they have fewer students, but economies of scale came in to play when there was a huge student body.  Now, not so much.  Public schools start shedding teachers and facilities.  Public schools start to provide a somewhat lesser quality of education, as a result.  No more band.  Hell, no more PE.  The schools can only focus on the core subjects, now.  But wait!  The school shed qualified teachers and facilities!  Someone has a bright idea!  Form another private school, and take care of some of those kids who are wait-listed!  Brilliant!  Now, there are even fewer kids in public schools, so the public schools shed more jobs and more faciliies.  Eventually, most of the wait lists work themselves out (either by increased price or increased supply), and public school is attended _only_ by people who can't afford the small differential for private school.  These students don't get much of an education.

Vouchers lead to a pretty bleak future for public education.

A system for which there is universal need and by which there is a minimum standard, paid for by everyone regardless of use, benefits everyone.  It shouldn't be the only option, of course.  Those with wealth should be able to pay for a better quality or better access.  So it goes with healthcare; people should be able to purchase supplemental insurance for varying degrees of service.  I don't think public healthcare will be particularly good, but I do think that it will set a minimum threshold which is much, much higher than what is available to those who don't have much cash or benefits through their employer.  I think there are going to be lots of people who will want to purchase private insurance as well, resulting in shorter waits to receive treatment and, possibly, the ability to see a better class of doctors.  Mind you, there will be some fantastic doctors as part of the public plan, as well, just as there are some fantastic teachers in the public education system.

I haven't spent much time explaining how everyone benefits when everyone's basic needs are met with a guaranteed minimum.  This is a bit more challenging to explain, however let me try with education.  Because public schools exist, economically poor people have a place to send their children to get educated.  It's possible that one of these children has the will and the intelligence to do great things, and having the opportunity of an education is all they need to hit the ground running.  And with healthcare.  If a person has the ability to see a doctor, they might just do so, and get the antibiotic which prevents further transmission of their disease.  It's all a bunch of hypotheticals, really, however I'm positive, I have faith, that there's an alternate universe in which we are all worse off because someone who started off poor stayed uneducation, and I also have faith that there's an alternate universe in which enough people who got sick visited their doctor to prevent a major disease outbreak.


And now, to make everyone think I'm a _total_ socialist... I think I have to extend my belief to _all_ universal needs.  Basic food, basic housing, basic healthcare, and basic education should all be paid for by everyone.  Basic food, basic housing, basic healthcare, and basic education will all probably be pretty crappy, but if things go really, really wrong for any one of us, we can at least be assured that we're not going to have to die of starvation or freezing to death on a sidewalk while sleeping.


I don't think I'm a socialist, though.  I hope that having a net to catch the fallen enriches everyone, and that, with decreased demand, private systems begin to differentiate on quality, which is what happens when people don't want to lower their prices.

And for all the other things that we don't need but want, well, the government should keep their filthy paws out of it.