Tag Archives: economics

New Anti-Candidate Positions Posted

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The “Anti-Campaign” continues. This week positions on the environment and the economy went up in the forum; they’ll go on the web page at the end of the month.

On the environment, after noting what physicist Freeman Dyson had to say on environmentalism as a religion:

Here’s our article of belief: “The Earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof.” (Psalm 24)

We are stewards. As such, we should be careful not to cause more harm than necessary as we use natural resources.

Meanwhile, thank us for our SUVs: they’re keeping the next ice age at bay. 😉

Here’s the position on the environment.

On the economy,

We’re not rich. We’d like to try it sometime, but the “tax the rich” rhetoric we hear all the time kind of cuts down on the incentive. We won’t be releasing our tax returns; we’d rather you laugh with us than at us. Finally, money is a tool; it’s always good to have more tools in your toolbox; and when you loan this tool — whether to the government or anybody else — good luck getting it back.

Be forewarned, though: if you got a subprime mortgage, don’t read the position on the economy. It’ll just make you mad.

So again, if you don’t want to vote for any of the real candidates, vote for the GrayMan! He can’t do much worse than the politicians.

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Publishing and Venture Capitalism

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Sat in on a meeting this week chaired by a partner in a local consulting and venture capital firm, and at one point he made this observation: out of every 1000 business plans they receive, they read only about 100 (“because the other 900 are garbage,” he said), and of those 100, they only fund about 3.

I told him at the break that those statistics were very similar to the publishing world. Baen, for example, makes it clear to everyone who reads the guidelines that fewer than 1% of the manuscripts are accepted.

But almost more fascinating was this tidbit: of the 3 business start-ups they fund, they expect to lose money on 2 of them. If they’ve done their research well enough, though — and no doubt they’re very thorough — that last one will make a mint and cover the losses on the other two.

I don’t think any publishers would willingly take that approach. Some books don’t earn out their advances, true, but I believe most publishers won’t take a chance on a book that they don’t expect to sell through a print run.

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More AUDACITY

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I was very confused by this passage on p. 177 of Senator Obama’s THE AUDACITY OF HOPE:

…FDR recognized that we would all be more likely to take risks in our lives — to change jobs or start new businesses or welcome competition from other countries — if we knew that we would have some measure of protection should we fail.

That’s what Social Security, the centerpiece of New Deal legislation, has provided — a form of social insurance that protects us from risk.

I guess I don’t understand this because the fact that I have a Social Security account that I’ve been paying into for the last umpty-ump years doesn’t enter into my calculus on whether to change jobs or anything else. Nor do I see how Social Security protects anyone from risk. If you lose your job, or your business fails, you don’t start drawing Social Security — in fact your overall Social Security status is hurt because you’re no longer paying into the system.

So if someone could explain that to me such that it makes sense, I’d appreciate it.

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Bankruptcy Notice

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Some disappointing news today: the furniture store I used to work at,* C.J. Woodmaster, closed this past weekend and will file for bankruptcy.

The announcement was in Saturday’s News & Observer (second item).

The CJ Woodmaster furniture stores in Raleigh, Cary and Fayetteville have closed. Those three stores, plus the one in Durham, which had already closed, will file separately for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in a few weeks.

I drove by the plaza on Sunday afternoon and it looked dark, but it was just a little after what would’ve been opening time so I didn’t think much of it. I hadn’t seen the newspaper article; one of my old associates called me this evening and let me know.

That’s too bad. I worked there a little over a year — the longest I’d ever worked in retail — and knew they were having trouble when they let me go (right before Christmas last year). I’m sorry to hear that’s how it ended.

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*Apologies to the grammar ninnies: “at which I used to work.”

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