Rent vs Mortgage: Round 2

Way back in 2005, I did a study comparing rent to mortgage interest (both are dead money).

The normal saying is "Rent is dead money", I proved that rent is not dead money if the differences between the rent and mortgage repayments is put into another investment.

Low and behold, the New York Times "Is it better to buy or rent" has investigated just the differences between rent and mortgage interests and come to the same conclusion that after 7 years it is better to buy.
What they didn't cover was the effect of saving the difference.

Note to self, I need to get some funky graphics to demonstrate this in the future.

The other thing which I didn't cover was that houses built after 1985 can be depreciated at 2% per year on the asset value of the house not the property value.

Have Fun

Paul

Unions Battle of Bulge

Facing long term decline in membership and therefore fees to maintain the union staffers salaries lead to the unions in Australia campaigning hard to get Labor into power and get Work choices and a bunch of prior Labor government industrial relation laws rolled back. So we could go back to the union glory days in 1970's and 1980's.

Now the party begins, the unions are beginning their big push to increase their power (and money into their coffers again).
Note: I know a bunch of people who are union members, but most of the anti-liberty scum tend to be union staffers who use their positions to push failed ideologies ... sorry marxist leninist socialism has failed how many times? killed how many 100's of millions of people?

Here we have two examples of indoctrination (from The Australian) these blokes are so up themselves and have been fed their ideas by their union secretary mates that they can say the following,

"One Pluto construction worker, who wants to be known only as "Doug", says he and his workmates are angry that they effectively work 12-hour shifts and only get paid for 10 hours. The other two hours, he says, are spent getting to and from the Pluto construction site."

Questions for Doug:

• How many people in any major capital city in Australia commute to work each day for more than 1 hour each way?
  
• How many of those people earn $150,000 in salary?

"Another Pluto worker, "William", says the strike is about much more than "motelling" - the policy being introduced by Woodside that means workers are assigned a different accommodation unit at the beginning of each four-week shift in Karratha. Woodside says the policy will allow it to house more workers at the accommodation village as it ramps up the Pluto project.

"It (motelling) is a nuisance," William says. "It goes back to the days of the caveman when you would live in the one cave and you would draw paintings on the wall.

"This is about standing up to them, or we will just get walked on again. If the Polish people had stood up to the Nazis when they were invading, they might have been able to repel them.""

Comments for William:

• If you don't like the motelling you could rent a place for yourself in Karratha and your mates . This is a simple solution if you actually thought about it. You accept the conditions that the company offers you and then you complain about your own decision.
  
• If this decision was made by the Union for you, that still doesn't stop you making your own decision, acting your own and renting a place.
  
• The whole Poland Nazi thing... rather than repeating someone's else words do yourself a favour, go and read about the Polish contribution in World War 2. I have a couple of Polish friends who would been tempted to show you how well the Polish fought in WW2.
  

Here is the thing, if you decide to allow someone else to make decisions for you then you are dependent on them. You are a child.
Some areas you have to delegate your authority to someone else but have to right to change who if you want. eg. voting for your local, state and federal member.
Many other areas you are free to choose between allowing someone else to make decisions for you or doing it yourself.
Being independent means you have chosen to accept responsibility for your decisions.

This is the crux of the liberty vs anti-liberty fight. Liberty means being free to make your own decisions and being responsible for them (being an man), Anti-liberty is the opposite, you delegate your responsibility for decisions to someone else. That someone else is historically a power hungry freak who wants to control not only their own life but everyone else's life and is surrounded by many others like that, if given a chance would love that position of power.

Have Fun

Hollywood hates humans

Even though I read some reviews on the film Avatar about its Gaia worshiping, anti-human, anti-marine, anti-business (read anti-US) themes, and still went to see the 3D affects.
The film was in 3D, I was expecting a little more use of the theatre i.e. the use of 3D images which project far out from the screen, however I was a little disappointed.

On the plot, this was a US vs Red Indian guilt trip redone in 2100.

I know it is a movie so it has to play along with the designated ending, but I was waiting for the space launched missiles or some kind of standoff weapon ala artillery or airplane, you know like most wars since 0AD (artillery) or 1916 (airplane). The aim of any commander of note is to cause the most causalities on your enemy for the least number on losses. So this aim as lead to technology which increases the distance between you and your enemy whilst routinely increasing how lethal your weapon is...
I am sorry, the one tree would have been hammered by a space launched kinetic warhead and ditto the holy tree.
The natives had nothing to gain from the Skywalkers? What about stories about a galaxy far far away... or better yet taking them, letting them travel in space.
The happy ending would have been just end of the beginning. Whoops the natives just destroyed the helicopters and big helicopter and space plane.... here comes those ballistic missiles we didn't use before.

You know the different story could have used the same new creatures and had them fighting an tyrant of their own kind or what about invading Predators or Aliens (who are already the "bad" guys). It didn't need the anti-US, anti-business BS at all.

Have Fun