Aren Cambre's Blog

Responsible citizens should be passionately indifferent about for-profit companies unless there is something in it for them. Activism without a quid pro quo…

1. …disrupts the free market system’s feedback mechanisms by irrationally rewarding or penalizing companies. This can create undeserving winners and losers. A great example is American automakers, which are still around mainly because of consumers who irrationally ignore better alternatives to almost the entire domestic vehicle lineup.
2. …unethically saps resources from charitable nonprofits, which are the only entities that deserve uncompensated activism.

I recently directed my activist zeal towards a for-profit company by publicly and forcefully supporting a developer’s for-profit project, and I did it without violating my ethical code.

How do I justify this undeserved activism? Here’s why:

1. Should the project be built, it will increase property values and desirability of my area.
2. I get the experience of taking a forceful public position on an issue.
3. Someday I may benefit from lessons learned.
4. I am exposed to leaders and “the way things worked” in ways otherwise impossible.
5. I develop contacts and meet people I would have otherwise never met.
6. I was pissed off at reactionary, anti-development zealotry, and this experience was cathartic.

Even though I ended up on the losing team, the experience was worth it.

Since 2000, I have used Intuit’s TurboTax Online tax filing system. It was a great, affordable online tax preparation utility that slashed tax preparation effort. My finances are straightforward enough to use TurboTax’s $20 product, which is now free!

They screwed it up. See the two buttons on the bottom of this page?

If you click on Maximize My Deductions, that $0 product magically becomes $50. Not only does this surcharge buy you a gimmicky extra, you can’t “undo” it. Worst yet, you get no warning that you’re about to be soaked $50. It takes multiple clicks to get from this page to anything advising you of this charge.

Deduction Maximizer is a “gimmick” because all it really does is phrase deduction questions somewhat differently. Unless you’re a financial moron or have really bizarre finances, this feature won’t affect your taxes.

I checked throughout TurboTax’s system to see if I could undo this, but no such option was available. Then I tried to chat with an online assistant, but that entailed a 20 minute wait.

Thankfully, TurboTax doesn’t make you pay until the very end. Presumably because of this, the online product’s “satisfaction guarantee” is simply that you don’t pay until you’re satisfied. (Of course, you can’t see your forms, get final data, or file electronically until you pay!)

Fortunately, enough information was available so that could go back through the system and pull out all the key information. Slapping that into paper IRS forms only took an hour. TurboTax’s tax refund estimate was within pennies of what I got doing it manually.

I am dissatisfied with TurboTax, so they didn’t get my money.

A few weeks ago, I replaced my flexible dryer vent with a rigid kind.

One of the premises is that the flexible vent increases fire risk. While I think that premise is way overblown, I changed the vent anyway to be on the safe side.

I now know that better dryer venting can dramatically reduce your clothes drying time! Drying a full load of jeans used to take 90 minutes. The new dryer vent cut that to 50 minutes.

Drying clothes costs real money, so this dryer vent replacement will make a welcome dent in my utility bills.

Ronald Reagan, a great conservative.

According to a Religion News Service article, a recent book, Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism by Syracuse University professor Arthur C. Brooks, confirms something I’ve always suspected: as a group, conservatives are less selfish than liberals.

According to the article, “conservatives who practice religion, live in traditional nuclear families and reject the notion that government engage in income redistribution” are the most generous, and “secular liberals who believe fervently in government entitlement programs give far less.” (source)

It goes beyond finances: “liberals give less than conservatives in every way imaginable, including volunteer hours and donated blood.” (source)

That neatly sums up my lifelong observations.

Why is this? A simple answer is that liberalism is a theology of theft and laziness. I say “theft” because liberals fund their favorite social programs with funds stolen from their neighbors, using the government as their instrument of theft. I say “lazy” because liberalism is a mindset of “don’t bother me, I’m paying someone else to do good works.”

Nancy Pelosi, vomitous liberal.

Those who see their political liberalism as a expression of Christian identity are acting on a fundamental hypocrisy.

I have never read where Jesus or any Apostle said, “Blessed is he who pays someone else to do good works, using booty stolen from his neighbor.” What I see again and again are exhortations on, “What are YOU doing with YOUR time and YOUR resources to do God’s work?”

Conservatives get it.

Disclaimer: GUESS WHAT? There are exceptions to the rule! I shouldn’t need disclaimers, but I’m sure a few people will get bent out of shape over this. The disclaimers:

1. Yes, I know I am talking in black and white terms: conservative versus liberal. I am also talking about a huge aggregation, and some exceptions exist. I know some left-leaning people who are among the most generous I have ever met, and I know of exceptionally selfish conservatives.
2. Even if you could weasel some Biblical passage that counters my above Biblical summary (i.e., passages that say that Christians should hire others to do their good works for them), they would be grossly overwhelmed by verses passages supporting my view. The mandate to do good works is a huge theme of the New Testament.

I found this Dallas Morning News article about the future of IT especially salient. (If prompted to login, get a username and password from www.bugmenot.com.) In a nutshell, Gartner says IT workers must broadly diversify skills or get steamrolled. Gartner further predicts major IT upheaval by 2010.

I had a similar revelation shortly after getting my BS in Computer Science in 1999. Even back then–the middle of the tech boom–skills taught just ten years ago were already becoming irrelevant or commoditized. In plain terms, that means it can become cheaper for your employer to purchase what you do from another firm than to keep you employed. Before my undergrad days, I lived near the Johnson Space Center in Houston, and I saw how people with dinosaur skill sets were often the first to be laid off. They were also the last to find a comparable replacement job.

These revelations are part of what led me to pursue my MS in Computer Science, and they continue to push me towards my in-progress Engineering Management degree.

These revelations are also a motivation (not the motivation) behind my involvement in community organizations. And by involvement, I am not just talking about essentials like pounding nails and folding newsletters. These are important jobs, and I help with them, but I go beyond that and work within the system to motivate others to pound nails and fold newsletters even better. When I help out in this way with Boy Scouts or with my neighborhood association, I am honing life and career skills. This is part of my education. I think that few people realize the immense value one gets from the lessons learned from going that extra mile in community service. Such involvement benefits you as much as it benefits the community.

These revelations also why I try to diversify my skill set beyond what I can get in a classroom. The above-mentioned community service gives me opportunity to test management skills learned in my degree program. My praxis topic allows me to deeply explore a controversial aspect traffic engineering that also has implications for politics, ethics, and economics.

All IT workers should ask themselves three questions:

• Are my skills only the basic skills for 2006?
• Do I have knowledge that somehow goes beyond the bachelors-level? Can I do many things that freshly-minted graduates cannot do?
• Are my skills a “one hit wonder”? Is my overall skill set highly specialized?

An IT worker who answer yes to any of these questions should be gravely concerned. To survive in this industry, they must fix the problem or quickly plan an exit strategy.

The writing is not only on the wall, it’s etched on the stone outside and tattooed on your forehead. In the IT field, those who get ahead are those who learn and adapt. Many of those who don’t will not have gainful IT employment in as soon a a few years.

Typical compact
fluorescent bulb.

Over the past two years, I have gradually replaced most my light bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs.

Many claim these bulbs save a ton of money, but they cost a lot. Try $8 for a new compact fluorescent bulb that is equivalent to a $0.50 100W incandescent. Do they really pay off?

Here’s the math:

Two assumptions using this math:

1. Electricity costs $0.0841 per kWh, which is the 1998-2003 average according to the US Department of Energy (link).
2. “typical usage” is 8 hours a day: 2 hours in the morning and 6 hours at night.

Regardless of one’s typical usage, it is abundantly clear that, even after accounting for the initial cost, compact fluorescent bulbs overall cost about a tenth to run as traditional bulbs. Most of this is due to their lower energy usage, but part is due to their dramatically increased life span.

90% of the energy consumed by incandescent bulbs are kicked off as heat. This calculation does not catch two things related to that:

1. If you live in a warm climate, you run the A/C far more than you run the heater. If you create more heat in the house, guess what happens to your electricity bills? They go up because you have to use the A/C even more.
2. Even if you live in a cold climate–where you run the heat far more than A/C–you are still better off running compact fluorescents unless you have a house exclusively heated by electricity. Gas/propane/oil heating cheaper than electric heat, so while the incandescent bulbs could slightly reduce central heater utilization, you are effectively supplementing a “cheaper to operate” heater with a more expensive one.

CF bulbs have even more advantages. By reducing demand, they can extend the usable life of lower capacity electrical systems that are common in older houses. Thanks to lower heat output, they are safer, especially in lamps or in older houses where certain exposed light fixtures are installed in locations where they wouldn’t be allowed today.

Compact fluorescent bulbs definitely pay off!

While redoing our landscape, we ripped out a nonfunctional gas lamp because it had rotted at the base.

We weren’t sure whether we want to restore the gas lamp or convert to an electric lamp.

I like how gas lamps look. They look far better than the typical electric-conversion gas lamp.

Gaslite America West’s Gaslight Specifications say that a 2 mantle gas lamp consumes about 1.5 MCF (thousands of cubic feet) of natural gas per month. I checked with someone who recently installed a gas lamp. Comparing his Sept. 2005 gas consumption to Sept. 2004, 1.5 MCF appears reasonable.

Coincidentally, my most recent gas bill is for 1.5 MCF. Using an average of Department of Energy-calculated annual natural gas prices over the prior 6 years (1999-2004, link), and adding on the taxes and surcharges in the Dallas, TX area, natural gas is about $10 per MCF. This means that a gas lamp costs about $15 per month to operate.

Gaslite America West and other sites say that a 2 mantle gas lamp generates the same light output as a 100 watt incandescent light bulb or a 25 watt compact fluorescent bulb.

Calculated from a DOE spreadsheet (link), 1998-2003 US electricity prices averaged $0.0841 per kWh. A 100 watt bulb consumes 0.1 kWh per hour. If I ran this light 12 hours per day, 30 days per month, that would be 36 kWh per month. 36 kWh per month is about $3.00, tax included. If I ran the 25 watt compact fluorescent watt bulb, that would be a measly $0.75 per month.

Note that the prices I quoted above are average. Energy prices are currently high, although natural gas’s current percentage increase far more than electricity, even if you factor in upcoming 24% electricity price hikes.

According to a post at Google Groups, there is a device that can throttle down gas lamps during the day. I have not found any other reference to such a device. Even if it was for sale, a best case scenario may be around a 25% consumption reduction. (You can’t totally shut it off.) Even at that consumption level, the gas lamp would still almost 4 times as expensive as the 100W incandescent or about 15 times more expensive than the 25W CF.

Conclusion? It’s expensive to run a gas lamp. You’re looking at around $180 per year just for a 2 mantle gas light. Is that worth it? Probably not for me.

Congress granted a new deduction for 2004: the sales tax deduction. Taxpayers can now deduct income tax or sales tax–not both. Since Texas has no income tax, the sales tax deduction finally puts us on a level playing field with most states. This deduction only lasts through 2005, so I hope Congress extends it!

My wife went through all of our 2004 receipts and split out each transaction in Microsoft Money so that they had sales tax as a separate line item. Here’s what I mean by “split out”: suppose you spent $4.32 at a restaurant for a meal. Normally you would just enter $4.32 and categorize it all under Food : Dining Out (this syntax means that Dining Out is a subcategory of the Food category). Now that the sales tax is deductible, it needs to be tracked separately. In splitting the transaction, the $4.32 has a $3.99 Food : Dining Out component and a $0.33 Taxes : Sales Tax component.

This splitting screws up our budgeting. A while back I established a monthly spending guideline in Money’s Budget feature for the Food : Dining Out category. Before 2004, the entire $4.32 would go into the Food : Dining Out category. During 2004, with the sales taxes split out, only $3.99 went into that category. Now it looks like we are doing better with our budget than reality.

Anyway…

After going though all of our receipts–we probably lost only about 2% of all receipts–we had Money tell us how much sales tax we spent in 2004.

The IRS allows you to deduct either your actual sales tax expenses or calculate an estimated annual sales tax expense based on your income. You still get to add to the IRS estimate sales taxes on major purchases such as vehicles.

Surprisingly, the IRS estimate was around a third higher than my actual sales tax spending! I figure that either 1. the IRS is generous with this estimate or 2. the IRS figures that the average taxpayer spends far more of his income on taxable goods and services than me.

Given this revelation, I am no longer splitting out sales taxes on each transaction. There is no way I could beat the IRS sales tax estimate unless I radically reduced my savings and non-taxable spending (e.g., charity, mortgage).

IMPORTANT NOTE: This article is not an anti-Social Security article per se. It is a criticism of the dishonest way the American left have falsified a huge part of the Social Security debate, leading us to believe that there is a huge trust fund that in fact does not exist.

The Social Security “Trust Fund” is one of the biggest lies of American liberals. It is just a fancy accounting trick, a la Enron and WorldCom.

Consider this analogy:

Sam sets aside money for a future expense, suppose for replacing his house’s A/C that will die next summer. Sam sets aside $200 per month towards this expense, and he puts it in the piggy bank on his dresser. At the same time, he “borrows” this monthly $200 so that he can live more lavishly: eat out more, buy more clothes, etc.

Suppose the 12 months have passed, and, as predicted, Sam’s A/C conks out. Sam needs that $2400 he saved to buy a new A/C system. He opens his piggy bank and only finds 12 $200 IOUs. The A/C repairman only accepts dollars, not IOUs. Sam can’t magically produce this $2400, so he has to take out debt to pay the repairman.

Woah, what happened here?

If you look at Sam’s savings and borrowings as completely separate activities, then yes, we can legalistically say Sam “saved” $2400. But only an idiot would look at it that way. Sam is one entity. The only way Sam can save money is if more cash comes in than goes out. That obviously wasn’t the case: Sam spent that $200 “savings” as soon as he got it.

What would happen if I replaced “Sam” with “Uncle Sam”?

Uncle Sam sets aside money for a future expense, say for a date about 13 years away when its senior retirement system starts paying out more than it brings in. Uncle Sam sets aside billions per month towards this expense, and he puts it in the piggy bank on his dresser. At the same time, Uncle Sam “borrows” every last penny of these monthly billions so that he can live more lavishly.

Suppose the 13 years have passed, and, as predicted, Uncle Sam needs to pay out more senior retirement than it takes in. Uncle Sam needs to spend those billions he saved. Uncle Sam opens his piggy bank and only finds 156 IOUs. Seniors need dollars, not IOUs. Uncle Sam can’t magically produce these billions, so he has to take out billions and billions of additional debt each year to pay the seniors. (Or he can stiflingly raise taxes or drastically reduce spending.)

That piggy bank is the mythical “Social Security Trust Fund.” Sam’s piggy bank and Uncle Sam’s “trust fund” are both full of worthless IOUs.

Instead of “IOU,” I could have written “federal bond.” The concept is the same, however. When you owe money to yourself, it’s an IOU. If the federal government buys its own bond, that is also an IOU. You can’t enforce debt you owe to yourself, so an IOU is just an accounting trick.

How does the government “invest” in its own bonds?

A payroll tax finances the Social Security system. Right now this tax pulls in more than the system doles out in retirement benefits, leaving a surplus. Social Security technically “invests” its surplus into US bonds.

Who issues US bonds? What is the Social Security part of? The answer to both questions is “the federal government.” So the federal government is buying bonds from itself!

You can’t owe money to yourself. Again, that is an accounting trick. A more realistic way of looking at the big picture is that Social Security surpluses are diverted to Congress to pay a chunk of our $2 trillion annual federal budget. Congress has become dependent on this chunk to maintain current spending levels. (See http://archives.cnn.com/2001/ALLPOLITICS/08/28/budget/)

US federal government indebtedness is in two major parts: the “accounting trick” IOU debt and externally held debt, which is are bonds owned by private individuals, foreign governments, corporations, state and local governments, pensions, and mutual funds.

When it comes down to it, the externally held debt is all that matters. A single bill of Congress can legally wipe away all internal debts; again, remember that internally held debt is just IOUs, paper tricks, accounting shams.

A recently published figure is that all US indebtedness is over $7,300,000,000,000 (source). Of that, about $3,800,000,000,000 (52%) is internal debt, the IOUs. The true United States indebtedness, i.e., debt held by external entities, is “only” $3,600,000,000,000.

What is going to happen between now and 2018? Social Security’s payout will gradually increase to where it is 100% of payroll tax revenue. As this happens, Social Security can transfer less and less money to Congress, so we will increasingly see combinations of these three outcomes:

• Taxes will increase.
• Spending will go down.
• External indebtedness will go up.

When 2018 finally hits, when Social Security transfers $0 to Congress, it just gets worse. Plain and simple, there is no simple fix.

Irresponsible American liberals conveniently treat the Social Security system as a separable, independent unit of the US government. That kind of legalistic accounting is total bunk. It’s the kind of paper trick that got Sam got into his mess. If Uncle Sam doesn’t wise up quickly, he will also be in the same mess.

We’ve got to start treating the federal government as one entity. It has various forms of income: income taxes, payroll taxes, tariffs, fines, etc. And it has various forms of spending: military, welfare, Social Security, etc. We will never solve Social Security’s problems until leaders start taking such a holistic view.

EDIT: Since writing this article, I have found several sites with a similar stance:

• http://www.heritage.org/Research/SocialSecurity/bg1802.cfm#myth2
• http://www.fee.org/vnews.php?nid=4569
• http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2548/is_223/ai_54738961
• http://www.conginst.org/socialsecurity/problem/myths.html
• http://www.socialsecurity.org/daily/06-22-00.html
• http://www.adamsmith.org/blog/archives/000261.php
• http://www.spokesmanreview.com/news/letters.asp?date=122404&id=l23843
• http://capmag.com/article.asp?ID=1145
• http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig5/hale1.html

Here is what I do to make the most money for my items on eBay:

• Use the 10 day auction. For only $0.20 more, it’s worth it to give buyers a few more days to bid on your auction.
• Start the auction at $0.01. Starting low means you’ll get more bids as initial bidders nickel and dime the auction up to a reasonable starting amount. An auction with more bids appears exciting and attracts more visits. Do not worry about the final price: if your item is really worth anything, and you described it well, it will garner a fair price by auction close. Only use a higher starting price if your item is truly one of a kind, prospective buyers are rare, and final selling prices on prior auctions are inconsistent. (Chances are exceedingly high that nothing sold by a reader of this blog is “one of a kind.”) A preferable alternative to a high starting price is a reserve price. What this means is that if the final auction value does not meet or exceed the reserve price, the auction is not binding.
• Only charge actual shipping costs. Sellers who pad shipping expenses are dishonest imbeciles. Furthermore, buyers will gravitate towards sellers who have cheap shipping. (If you don’t believe that, consider that Amazon.com does not charge shipping on orders above $25. What effect does that have on their sales?) Charge only what it costs to ship the item, and do not charge any “handling” costs unless this item’s shipping procedure is highly unusual. Provide shipping materials gratis. (This requires prior planning on your part: grab discarded boxes from work, save packing materials, buy when the are on sale, etc.) eBay has a handy feature where if you provide the dimensions and weight of the item beforehand, buyers can see the exact cost to ship the item to their door. This leads me to…
• Package the item beforehand. First, this gives you an opportunity to weigh the item. That way you can really know what it will cost to mail the item. Packaging adds weight; I’ve lost money on more than one auction when I failed to consider this. Second, what happens if you sell the item, receive payment, need to ship it the next day, but have no packaging? You have to make an expensive trip to the local office supply place and purchase packaging at full retail. What a great way to eliminate your profits! Had you prepared in advance, you may have been able to acquire boxes and packaging for free or cheap.
• Give a detailed, concise, and straightforward description. List all technical details about the item, accurately describe its condition, and be honest and open about defects. Do not use lots of fonts, colors, graphics, or other distracting junk. Keep the auction plain and readable. Your item will sell itself if you described it accurately.
• Do not be a used car salesman. Do not pad your description with chintzy text, graphics, or other crap. For example, “one of a kind,” “extra special,” “can’t miss,” etc. Give me a break. Do you want to make yourself look like a dishonest moron used car salesman? Nobody likes those retards anyway, so don’t shoot yourself in the foot by emulating those asses.
• Lots and lots of good pictures. Include many detailed photos. Give close-ups of problem spots and good spots. Do not use fuzzy shots or ambiguous shots (for example, poor lighting that prevents the user from seeing the item properly). I can’t tell you how many car listings I have seen that probably would have gotten higher final auction values if the photos weren’t horrible. If you screwed up the shot, 1. get off your lazy ass and retake it, and 2. learn how not to make the same mistake in the future.
• Have a good feedback rating. I recommend a rating of at least 15 positives with no neutrals or negatives. Otherwise you will have a puny track record. Sellers with minimal, zero, or negative feedback often get horrible final auction values. You may need to make some purchases to get positive feedback.
• Be honest, be honest, be honest. Dishonesty will hurt your feedback rating, and long-term it will just cause more headaches than it’s worth. Don’t be like eDrop of Wichita  (additional link).
• Use PayPal. PayPal has steep fees, but it’s much easier for buyers to pay you if you use PayPal. Look at it this way: if you didn’t use PayPal and eBay, would you have been able to sell the item in the first place? And if you were able to sell the item (probably at a garage sale), would you have gotten this much?

With these tactics, I have had many surprisingly lucrative auctions. I’ve sold a broken Holley carburetor for $150 (the problem was accurately described), a Testors model for $80, and two new PDAs at a slight profit.