Don’t Quit Your Day Job – Personal Finance, Economics and Investing

What can be said about this book that hasn’t already been said? Even if you disagree with Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism, her book Atlas Shrugged, published in 1957, predicted a great number of the extraordinary economic events that have occurred in recent months.

This article will share with you a few quotes from the book which hopefully will inspire thought – either for or against – her philosophies. Enjoy.

Yesterday, California started to issue IOUs (technically, registered warrants) to creditors since it is ensnared in a major budget impasse. California has taken this step before, most notably in 1992, but they also issued IOUs during the Great Depression.

Since the warrants are unavoidable at this point, I’ll shift my focus to another issue- constitutionality. Is what California is doing legal under the terms of our Constitution? And what is a ‘bill of credit’?

The Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control is a newly-enacted federal law that gives the FDA regulatory power over the tobacco industry, among other provisions that attempt to dissuade misleading advertisement on young and old smokers alike. The law was signed into effect on June 22, 2009.

There were two major advertising provisions contained in the law. The first was that over 50% of the front and back of every cigarette pack must be warnings with a giant ‘WARNING’ in capital letters . The second, and maybe more important, is the banning of the use of words ‘light’, ‘mild’ or ‘low’.

I’ve written plenty about gasoline lately, but only about gas taxes. Let’s shift gears a bit… Do you think gas prices will increase? If gas prices increase, is there a way for you to hedge against that increase so it doesn’t affect you? Of course!

Everyone’s got prison on their mind!

With Bernard Madoff in the news due to his 150 year sentence for running a massive ponzi scheme, the floodgates have been opened in terms of the number of prison related articles in the news. In this article I’ll share with you some of them I found most thought provoking, and maybe I’ll even throw in a few thoughts of mine. Today I offer you this offbeat post about prison.

The article “If You Don’t Have One… Get One” has been featured in the 211th edition of the Carnival of Personal Finance! Check out the carnival, and the hosting site, Green Panda Treehouse. The theme is a good one too…

“Of Risk and Men”, an article about the state (and the state of the budget) of California, was featured in the 71st edition of the Money Hacks Carnival. Check out the carnival, and the host, The Canadian Finance Blog.

If I told you that increased fuel efficiency leads to more fuel consumption, what would you think?

Jevon’s paradox states that increases in the efficiency of the use of a resource lead to the increased usage of that resource. Throughout history, examples of this effect in action can be found. This brings me back to the topic of the gas tax. If you are of the belief that we need to reduce our consumption of gasoline, increased efficiency (and attempted legislation to increase efficiency) alone will only lead to more gasoline usage. If less gasoline usage is the goal, only a tax on gasoline will make it happen.

In my mind there are two issues that need to be addressed in any successful health care overhaul. First, costs have to come down so health care stops costing $7,900 per person and increasing at a rate faster than inflation. Second, access to health care needs to be expanded to include the 21 to 46 million people without insurance. Since it is my opinion that the health care system needs an overhaul, what should that overhaul look like?

Government participation in the private insurance market is a trojan horse for a single payer system.

The debate that needs to happen is not private options versus a public option in insurance, it’s private options versus a single payer system. No, private insurance will never go away completely, but any public option will soon become much larger then originally planned under a public option. Private insurance will become relegated to supplemental programs which build on top of (and react to the inefficiencies of) a government run plan.

No matter what the final estimate for Health Care reform is, it will cost a lot more.

The bills being written already carry price tags so high it’s mind boggling… $1 trillion over ten years, even $1.6 trillion over ten years. A large number like that seems to convey honesty and straight-talk, yet probably only scratches the surface of what will be a much higher bill. Recall: Social Security was sold to the American public as a 1% tax on the employee and employer, scaling up to 3% on each in 1948. How close are the rates to 3% now? Well, employers and employees both pay 6.2% in tax and Social Security is now the largest expenditure in the federal budget.