Early Retirement Extreme Forums

<t>@dpilot, regarding the claim "So the thing that government subsidies really do is artificially increase the value of land."<br/>
I think that is only strictly true if you view farmland as a fixed quantity. I think like as dragoncar mentioned earlier that might not be a correct assumption. While ...

<t>Smoking isn't something I think is a priori bad, but often my issue is more with how the habit is typically done/portrayed. Smoking the way MikeBOS describes it is kind of how I picture an 'ideal' smoking habit. As it's been previously compared to overeating. There's nothing wrong with having a ...

<t>Ah, so if I'm understanding you you want more fine control over your investments. For an common or index investor they might be ok with using specific indexes or even funds that target specific sectors as their method of diversification. They might just want control at that level, and not want to ...

<t>If an index is no different than 1 stock, then by that reasoning shouldn't even owning ten individual stocks still be like owning 1 stock? <br/>
So is what you're saying that there's no difference between owning one or many stocks, that the only way to diversify is to be in non-stock investments ...

If it's not too nosy, is there any particular reason you have such a big swing in monthly income?

<t>@AlexOliver There's a difference in copyright between reading an article and republishing it. While you don't have to get permission from the original author/publishers to read it, if your professor wants to republish the material, they'll have to get permission (read: pay some kind of royalty ...

<t>First off wow they're spending a lot in... everything.<br/>
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Also the article is a bit disingenuous it claims that they family is 'in the red' in some cases, yet they're squirreling away over $40k in college and retirement accounts. So they're actually doing better than the 'typical ...

<t>Is the idea more palatable if instead of insurance people compare it to other things like fire/police services (these are things that also essentially amount to a 'tax on living')? As a society, we say that we value police services for everyone, rather than each person paying 'protection money ...

<t>If your first paragraph was in response to the recent firings, I find I generally disagree. What exactly made what either of those people said (and got fired for) "American"? I guess jingoism and xenophobia are parts of our culture, though nothing I'd be overly proud of.<br/>
In a broader sense I ...

<t>It's not even recently that politics and economics have kept us on our rock. We've had Project Orion since the 50's, which can actually attain reasonable fractions of c. But people would seem to prefer to use nuclear bombs to blow ourselves up rather than drive a space ship. I'm still optimistic ...

<r>@George, regarding your real examples with PG and JNJ, why do you continue to expect them to out perform the index? I don't think that statement can be made without some research into the companies, otherwise that same line of advice/thinking could easily have you buying into a bubble. Without ...

<t>How much deodorant do people tend to use anyways? I find that a $3 stick lasts me at least half a year, more usually. Am I just not putting on enough, though I feel like tossing on more would just lead to gobs of it hanging around. Also my girlfriend managed to convince me to shave awhile ago ...

<t>@HSpencer<br/>
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What parts of evolution do you see conflicting with the Bible? The only way I can think that it directly contradicts is if you take the literal interpretation of the Genesis story as the Young Earth Creationists do. Also I'd think you'd have to discard other branches of ...

so I've always wondered about things like ashmax, is that just a pyramid scheme or do you actually do anything other than just resell the same 'oppertunity' to other people?

<t>If you want to get an education and good grades at the same time, you might try taking the easy classes for credit hours/grades and auditing (basically just sitting in) on the harder but interesting ones. I especially loved sitting in on some of the evening grad classes, not to mention my TA was ...

<t>@The Dude<br/>
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Firstly, I think you might have a mistaken impression about just how rare fossilization is. The dinosaurs (as an entire group) roamed the earth for several hundred million years, and how many fossils total have we excavated? Put it this way, according to a quick google search ...

<t>Apologies if I seem belligerent on the subject, but it does push my buttons a bit when people start putting out claims that evolution (and even climate change) is a conspiracy. Especially when such imply that 'the government' is forcefully putting out these conspiracies. To me I often see ...

<t>I'm kinda confused, both your link and wikipedia seem to suggest a 'carriage house' is the old-timey equivalent of today's garage, some place to park your transportation vehicle. The structures seem fairly permanent/immobile, so I'm not sure how this aids in making relocation/geo-arbitrage easier ...

<t>I was never really sure why it's an either/or, even if evolution is dead wrong, why does that make creationism useful? Or why couldn't god have 'created' evolution, the same way we now accept that stars and planets can form naturally, but god may have 'created' the Big Bang. God can keep ...

<t>Hmm a few unsolicited comment/questions.<br/>
Make sure to check if you need approval to sublet your space, laws may vary for you, but I know out here you need approval for subletting from the landlord, otherwise it is possible grounds for eviction/other legal trouble if they so choose.<br/>
Is ...