Nobrainer’s Think Tank

I don’t give a flying fuck about your multicultural background.

*ahem*

What I meant to say was, “the value of your multicultural background is dwarfed by the fact that you barely passed basic economics.”

I always thought that class was determined, roughly, by income quintiles. Apparently I’m wrong.

Eliminating the Social Security tax cap without changing the benefit formula could undermine support for the program among the roughly five percent of Americans who earn more than $97,000 per year.
[…]

While Obama has suggested imposing the 12.4 percent [social security] tax on all income above $97,000 per year, Edwards would only impose it on those making more than $200,000 per year. Income between $97,000 and $200,000 would continue to be exempt from Social Security taxes under the Edwards proposal.

“I do think we need to have a bubble above $97,000, probably up to about $200,000 so we don’t raise taxes on middle-class families,” Edwards said at Thursday’s AARP forum. “But, above the $200,000, these millionaires on Wall Street ought to be paying their Social Security taxes.”

It simply does not make sense to me how someone in the top 2-3% of income earners can be considered “middle class.”

I got to go to UVA’s career fair this last week, but this time as a recruiting-type instead of a job-seeking-type. It was mildly amusing.

I think my favorite conversation was with a guy who had been in the military. I’ll refer to him as Cousin Eddie. He isn’t really like Cousin Eddie at all, except for one thing he said: he really, really wanted a management position. Maybe he’ll be in luck, but despite his military experience, I highly doubt with his major that he can find a management position that isn’t in a restaurant. Not that it was a bad major, but I just can’t imagine the situation he’s looking for.

Anyway, I gave him a spiel about the company. I explained what we do (and that, even though we don’t hire managers, we have opportunities for promotion to management). He seemed somewhat interested in what we do and trading in the energy markets. He even mentioned that he had done some investment on his own. He definitely mentioned some real estate investing. And I can’t remember for sure, but I think he said “and some Google.” Which is really kinda funny from my perspective. Saying that you have traded Google stock is about like saying that you had a Coke at lunch. And to me, any person who’s investing strategy is to buy the stock du jur sounds like an idiot. Maybe that’s just me.

But I’m not done with Cousin Eddie yet. He asked about salary, making it very clear that he expected a salary in the 6-figure range.

Good luck with that.

I can’t believe I didn’t laugh at him.

(addendum: way to shun the conventional wisdom about putting family information on your resume.)

Roughly 3/4s of commuters drive alone. In the process they help to absorb 78.2 billion dollars in lost time and fuel.

Of course if we assume that much less than 100% of the population are commuters, the per-commuter price tag would about about $1000. That means that commuters effectively spend about $4 a day to avoid having to be stuck with someone else in an enclosed space. What a bargain!

Our economy is currently faltering because too many people thought it was a fantastic idea to overspend on buying a house.

So presidential candidate Barack Obama is now on record that he wants to enhance the incentive to buy a house.

He is encouraging the kind of behavior that I’m pretty sure he will (or probably already has) swear is a really really bad thing and that the people behind it (neglecting of course power hungry politicians… likely those from his own party, or at least his little supporting coalition) should be punished.

Sadly, this is exactly what I expect from him.

I still don’t think Obama is as bad as John Edwards who I generally try to refer to as Ex-Senator Ass Clown. But from now on I will also try to refer to Senator Obama as B.O or Stinky, if you prefer.

In my last post, written after attending a 7-hour grid-reliability conference, I wrote “If anyone ever tells you anything about the electrical grid, they are probably wrong.” You’ve heard of Google? Well they’re telling people things about the grid. And they’re probably wrong. I could write a huge post on this, but I’ll settle for short, short version.

One of their initiatives is to push plug-in hybrids. That’s fine. I don’t have any issues with that. I do take issue with their claims.

In their FAQs they say

4. Will plug-in hybrids require the construction of new power plants?
Actually, studies have shown that our current electricity grid could power three quarters of the nation’s 217 million passenger vehicles.

They took that number from a paper titled “Impacts Assessment of Plug-in Hybrid Vehicles [PHEVs] on Electric Utilities And Regional U.S. Power Grids Part I: Technical Analysis.”

Let’s look to the paper. In the last paragraph of the Discussion of Results section they say [emphasis mine]:

In the short run, the expected increased utilization scenario will affect wholesale electricity markets as supplies of generation resources remain tight over longer periods. One result could be an upward pressure on wholesale electricity prices, although the persistence of higher prices will induce investments in new generation and transmission capacity. In the long-term, the supply will follow the load to meet the growing demand. The development of a new transportation load may facilitate financing of low cost base load generation and renewables that is currently lacking in the marketplace. The potential for short-term price increases and longer-term price and rate decreases needs to be analyzed further and considered as part of the public policy debate. A fuller discussion of the economic assessment of PHEVs is in the companion paper (Part II: Economic Assessment), which examines impacts to the revenue requirements and the electric rates in a fully regulated utility environment.

In other words the answer to the FAQ is “New plants aren’t required, but you’d be a complete dolt to not build them.”