Category: Money Matters
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Are We Here to Amass Wealth?
Whatever we are here for, if anything, we are not here to pile up loot. Unfortunately, our predicament is such that we cannot even agree about this!
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Why Are Italians So Good at Personal Finance?
Why are Italians and Americans of Italian extraction 'over-represented' — to use, sarcastically, an ambiguous word whose very ambiguity endears it to the politically correct — among the fiscally responsible? Ten reasons. Sadly, two highly-valued male friends of mine, one a philosopher who does not hike and the other a hiker who does not philosophize,…
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Amazon Pricing
I just purchased via Amazon Prime Australian Realism: The Systematic Philosophy of John Anderson Paperback – March 19, 2009 by A. J. Baker (Author), Anthony Quinton (Introduction) I decided on a new paperback for $27.41 plus tax rather than a used hardcover. The used hardcovers start at $2,336.86. Even considering how vastly superior hardbounds…
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Arizona and California Gas Prices
Big road trip last weekend: Phoenix, Barstow, Bakersfield, Santa Barbara and back by a different route. The Jeep Wrangler runs on unleaded regular. Paid $3.349/gal on 9/27 at Quartzsite, AZ off of I-10, one of the last Arizona gas-ups enroute to California. Wait 'til Blythe on the California side of the Colorado River and…
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Automotive Frugality
Keith Burgess-Jackson is one frugal dude: I've had only three vehicles in the past 31 years: (1) a 1976 Oldsmobile Cutlass, purchased from my brother Glenn in May 1983; (2) a 1989 Pontiac Grand Am, purchased new in August 1989; and (3) a 2007 Honda Accord, purchased new in February 2007. How many vehicles have…
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Automotive Frugality and Manual Air Conditioning
This is an old post rescued from the old blog, dated 20 May 2007. Some things have changed. But all the details were true then. ……………………. There are some people with whom I would not want to enter a frugality contest. Keith Burgess-Jackson is one of them. I seem to recall him saying that he…
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Philosophy and Livelihood
A reader asked about this and about 'going maverick.' Here is a post from five years ago, and it links to another. The comments may be of interest too.
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The Fifty-Year War Against Poverty
An excellent piece by the editors of NRO. Excerpt: The war on poverty has been conducted partly in earnest and partly self-servingly. No doubt programs such as Head Start were launched with a great deal of idealism, but as their ineffectiveness became apparent, it was not idealism that sustained them but political self-interest. Providing at…
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Financial Advice: Short Form and Long Form
Source. Excellent advice, except for the last item. But the advice is incomplete. For a rather more complete analysis, see Some Principles of a Financial Conservative wherein I proffer advice that is rock-solid, absolutely free, and that also has the interesting property that few will follow it due to the social and moral decline of…
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The World’s Criterion of Worth
Something is worth doing if and only if one is paid to do it. The theme is developed in Work, Money, Living, and Livelihood.
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April 15th
Did you settle accounts with the Infernal Revenue 'Service'? If yes, then celebrate with The Beatles, Harrison and Clapton, and Tom Petty. No, I am not opposed to paying taxes. I am not anti-tax any more than I am anti-government. We need government, and we need to fund it somehow. It does not follow, however, that…
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Why the Government Underreports the Inflation Rate
An excerpt from an instructive article: Of course, the low inflation rate also provides the government with breathing room on the fiscal side. Low inflation keeps a limit on the increases that federal agencies are required to pay out to beneficiaries of programs such as Social Security. With the budget so tightly constrained by huge…
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The Household Analogy
I saw someone on TV who claimed that comparing a deeply indebted household with the deeply indebted U.S. government is a false analogy. Why? Because the government, unlike the citizen, has the power legally to print money. No doubt that is true and a point of disanalogy, but what surprised me was that neither the speaker nor…
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Work, Not Welfare, Uplifts the Poor
Our aptly appellated (by Newt Gingrich) 'food stamp president' really ought to read this excellent piece by Peter Cove. Related articles The 'Bread' in 'Bread and Circuses' It's the Welfare State, Stupid Nearly 15 million households on food stamps More Welfare Recipients Above Poverty Line than Below It
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Bad Economic Reasoning About the National Debt
When I study the writings of professional economists I sometime have to shake my shaggy philosopher's head. Try this passage on for size: $16 trillion is the amount of Treasury debt outstanding at the moment. The more relevant figure is the amount of debt the federal government owes to people and institutions other than itself.…