It’s sad to here that Steve Jobs is stepping down, but maybe whoever takes over while he’s gone will start making improvements to their fringe products like iTunes. Just the other day I was using it, as it is my default player, and I realized that Window’s Media Player had a better user interface, though slower and not as pretty. In WMP, if you want to listen to an album by itself all you have to do is double click on it’s art or right-click on it’s title and select play. iTunes doesn’t have this it takes at least 2-5 clicks and some search through different menu’s to get to play just an album, that’s quite a disrespectful use of the the user’s time.

In other news, people have started to look at the education bubble that we’ll be facing in the next few years. John Robb’s article “Industrial Education” has caused a stir, “There is reason to believe that costs of higher education (direct costs and lost income) are now nearly equal (in net present value) to the additional lifetime income derived from having a degree.” I like how he’s done this because his analysis comes toward the same view as my posts from early last year on Social Perception and Personal Economics of education where I discuss the topic, but he also comes up with some great ideas on replacing it.

That’s all I have to say this morning, I’ll be back in a few days with new posts, now that everything is back in working order.

Blogs -

Get Rich Slowly – This is the best blog on personal finance that I have found. J.D. goes over so many different topics and various projects  that this is one of the biggest repositories for personal finance tips, tricks, and information.

Wise Bread – This blog is written by multiple people so there isn’t the same connection as with J.D. The topics can range widely from the writer’s experience and the quality is sometimes lacking. Good information it’s Lifehacker for finance.

Books -

The Richest Man in Babylon – This book is astoundingly in how simple it is too understand and it’s approach of using a story to achieve an osmotic effect with it’s information and your mind. It teaches multiple lessons in how to handle your finances while also having an underpinning in humility. A great read and also a classic from the 1920′s

Rich Dad, Poor Dad – This isn’t necessarily dedicated towards personal finance so much as street wise thinking on finance. This book isn’t to be taken literally but it does off plenty of good advice for business, and investing outside of the stock market. It makes it on the list because of these facts.

Hackers and Painters – I recommend this book not in it’s entirety, but for one essay that is contained within. You can read this essay entitled “How to Make Wealth” at Paul Graham’s website. A much different approach than what we have been ingrained with.

Tools -

Mint - My personal web tool to help chart my monetary flow. I find it fitting for my lifestyle in that it is simple, it easily connects, and implements multiple security measures. Pluses, SMS, nice tagging feature, allows you to break down bills into their subsequent parts, and handles almost any form of monetary trade, from checking, credit cards, and savings to stocks and loans.

Wesabe – This in the personal finance blogging arena comes out on top. It has community support, allows your to set goals, and update manually to keep it balanced. * I had issues with it miscalculating my credit card and telling me I had $245 on the black rather than $70 in the red so it was screwing the debit/credit balance of by $300 .

Geezeo – Another community connected online management tool. This comes out on top in the user happiness it seems. As far as I can tell, it lets you do what the other two do but it seems to be a more complete package haven’t actually used this but I may look into it.

Spreadsheets – Nothing like handling all the pertinent details yourself. Though this isn’t as easy as the others and will take some time out of your day I would at least recommend knowing how to do this either by hand or using software such as Excel, Quicken, Google Spreadsheets, etc.

A man’s wealth comes not from what he carries in his wallet but, what he carries in his heart.

So we’ve all dealt with and continue to deal with the volatile markets of this past week and likely to come back next week though more subdued. Most of us are still probably a bit worried about what’s going to happen in the coming months. I don’t think we should focus on that it’s just not good for general mental health, though we should all be knowledgeable about what is going on around us. I feel like providing some positive inspiration and news for such a down time.

How to Overcome the Fear of Failure – Success Soul This isn’t just about personal failure though it focuses on solidifying oneself. This is something for everyone, we all have our personal pillars that we rely on so that we can keep standing even when we are weak. If our pillars are weak they won’t be able to support us when we fall so we all need to fight the fear and buckle down for the coming months.

What Does it Mean to Be Rich? – Get Rich Slowly A good analysis of what rich is and what it may be. He describes a really interesting situation that he went through recently that makes you think. Even if you feel poor, infact, you may be richer in comparison to the majority of the world?

The Best $20 You’ll Ever Spend – Get Rich Slowly This post is directed more towards people who want to build their knowledge through networking. This is great for people seeking to become independent of the workforce, start a business, or just become a better leader. This is honestly the simplest way’s to enrich you mind of working strategies and new ideas, it’s also inexpensive.

Is All This Paranoia About a Startup Depression Justified? – The Next Web This is an honest explanation of the positive aspects of the collapsing Web 2.0 arena. If your interested in where the boom tech sectors(e.g. Web 2.0, Clean Tech, etc.) are likely to go, this is a great example of what is going to happen during the coming months.

Lastly the story of a sheriff in Cook County, Ohio that is standing up against banks to help people stay in their homes. He’s refusing to do instant foreclosures and giving the families 120 days of leniency.

“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. ” ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

Franklin D. Roosevelt’s First Inaugural Address is still one of the most inspirational speeches to have been given by a president. I beg you to listen to his words or read them as they bear wisdom that may help us turn this situation around. Just look at that jewel above and how the media channels are spouting fear to the masses.

A Responsible bank CEO speaks out about the bailout, the CEO of BB&T discusses 14 points that don’t make sense about the bailout. This may be tinged with a bit of fear but, atleast there are some banks that didn’t deal in the illogical financing, that got us into this mess. We need to find more banks with this kind of respectable handling of their customers’ money.

Today, the seeds of the next big thing are being planted, this is provision for inspiration. It is providing the knowledge of what has happened in the recent recessions and their outcomes. We all have the ability to build the next big thing, don’t quite your day job but, most definitely don’t stop trying to redefine the world of tomorrow.

Tyler Durden’s 8 Rules of Innovation, will help you if you decide that you want to redefine the future. “Your life is ending one minute at a time,” so you better go do what you want before your time runs out. This interpretation of  some of most notable quotes from the book and movie are remarkable.

I hope that they people have read this find this at least a small distraction from the turmoil around us. We need to have solidarity in our lives not instability. Surround yourself with people who can speak honestly about the current environment but still provide us with the strong front that we need.

Social Security is the funds that are taken automatically from workers pay for retirement funding, unemployment,  disability, spousal and children, and widow benefits. All of these, except for the retirement, unemployment, and widow benefits, were not part of the original bill and the widow benefits have changed from lump-sum to the continued monthly payments of the deceased spouse. The original bill proposal was highly controversial in and was opposed because it would result in the loss of jobs. However, some said that this was an advantage as it encouraged the elderly to retire, opening positions for the youth.

The problem is that now the elderly are working longer and are less encouraged to leave, resulting in harder positioning for the younger generations. The fact that this pay comes from the workers who should be the younger generation means that this is impacting their future coverage. The average age of workers is also beginning to go up and at ~15% per worker and at a 5.8:1 worker/retired we are slowly sliding into a Social Security deficit; projections show that the ratio will drop to 3.1:1 meaning that we won’t even be providing half the coverage that’s promised.

While researching this, I discovered that the Social Security spending for the ’07 Fiscal Year was $580 billion, this is annualized process that increases every year. Honestly, we’re worried about the government spending $900 billion just once, sure it was on bad loans, but it’s actually going to help stabilize the country while we prepare for the long run. Social Security is ripping off the future generations to pay for it’s promises.

I propose that we introduce a retro-active grandfather clause that will reduce the rates of which people are accustomed will be receiving.  You reduce funding to anyone who was born since January 1, 1963(45 years old as of 1/1/09) to 70% of what they where promised once they reach 67, regressing the rate by 5% for every subsequent year until age 35. Anyone between the ages of 35 and 30 shall receive 25% and anyone below 30 will recieve nothing.  We have this bill continue until the year 2100 and direct excess funding towards the federal deficit. I would not have a problem having the tax remain in my wages so long as it is going to help sustain the state of the country in the future. This isn’t even as drastic as what we need but, it is an initial idea to help us get it started.

This is just my two cents on my subject, and in fact this would actually be excluding myself(19 years old). Though it wouldn’t matter there is nothing left for my generation or future generations, either way. Please leave some comments on what you think of this subject.

Bryant said he expects that the troubles on Wall Street will likely influence some students to switch majors in the coming months from business to other fields, including computer science. He also urges caution to those students.

These students are obviously in it for the green, they followed it to business and now that it collapsed they’re following it to the next big thing. What we need are people passionate about what they do, not people that are only passionate about money, key examples abound in the Financial Sector right now. I think we should find people who actually want to do these jobs, and not just for the money.

With the economy as weak as it is, if your a small company it’s going to be even more important for you to find passionate people, just read Jason Calacanis’ latest post (recommend signing up to his mailing list), excerpt below.

3. Firing the average people: Again, it’s totally politically
incorrect, but I highly recommend firing anyone who is good or
average. Startups are an Olympic sport and every slot on your team is
critical. You wouldn’t put a “good” swimmer in a relay, would you?
Don’t have one in your startup. Fire the good and replace them with
the great. ~ Jason Calacanis

You know who are probably not going to be average, the people who are passionate about what they are doing. The passionate employee may spend more of their personal time on learning more about they’re area, and be willing to take a pay cut to keep they’re position.

So we need to find a way to deter people from following the money, in the next few years we will see a large rise in un-passionate employees in the Tech Industry. This will hurt companies that invest in people that only got into the area for the cash. What happens when the cashflow slows, or another bubble happens, and how can we stop them now?

Robert Scoble on passionate user adoption and Ubiquity. This is just something that I enjoyed reading especially after using Ubiquity for several hours yesterday. If you want to use it I recommend reading the tutorial and watching the video.

An article, from Business Pundit, on the enlightenment complex that we see stateside also developing in the Chinese culture. A bit of an insight into why my generation, for the most part, feels so damn entitled. Also, suggest why depression is on such a climb.

This is one of several articles that prompted my last post. It is promoting some smart financial advice on steering clear of private lenders. However, it all so shows weak decision making on behalf of the government, in allowing people weakened by the subprime mess increased loans.

A really thorough and thought provoking conversation with Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of ‘The Black Swan‘ and ‘Fooled by Randomness‘, provided by Portfolio.com. It looks into his life and how he removes the noise of now.

As somewhat of a bibliophile this last one is just an amazing list of 50 Essential Novels, provided by Leo Babauta at Zen Habits. It is such a substantial list of both classic literature and current hits that are certain to last for a long while. I recommend checking this list out if you enjoy reading.

I mentioned this in an old post that was originally written in the middle of March, though it focused on only the government subsidization. The issue is not that government shouldn’t assist, but they are hurting themselves and the economy by not regulating school rates. Over a 30 year period they have wasted approximately $2.4 Trillion( with a T) on education. Meanwhile, college rates are rising doubly as fast that of interest rates.

The people who were taking out loans are hurting but if they claim bankruptcy that is only making it worse for everyone else. The students with 30 or 40 thousand dollars in loans are going to find it hard to pay back because of the weak job market, and the parents who took out mortgages are are probably hurting tremendously. Yet, today the NYT’s posted an article on how the lenders should be taking the brunt of this blow. By allowing the students to claim bankruptcy on these funds.

This article is fucking ridiculous( pardon my language) , this will allow for billions of dollars to be wiped from the slate. This leaves the lenders with no capital to provide for the future borrowers and no profit for their services. What needs to happen is a reformation of the collegiate system.

The problems of our current economic tumults are founded upon these 2 systems the collegiate and the lenders. They are the major issues that caused the collapse in the housing market collapse, outside of the pricing bubble. Colleges have been and will be taxing the lending system both private and federal, making it harder to produce revenues to reach the equilibrium needed. College is generally going to cost you more with less job security and lower standards of pay. Lenders are feeding on this fact for interest and fees.

So the point I’m trying to say, is that even if we find a way out of the housing bubble, we still have a huge problem. If we don’t do something to reform college funding we will see this strain the system to a point of another economic collapse. I can see this occuring anywhere from less than 5 years to 10-20 years from now, it will happen if we don’t do anything.

Wednesday, June 23, the Housing Bill was passed through Congress and the House. I’ve reviewed what little information their giving the public and it’s only going to affect a small majority of homeowners, approximately 400,000. The main benefactors to this bill, however, are Frannie, Freddie and other lenders. The fact still stands that overtime the average American is going to be taxed for the problems of others

The bill will offer bailouts on houses up to $550,000 which in most cases would be relatively higher than median pricing in any area, exceptions for a few areas (i.e. California). This is just ridiculous; if you’re going to offer this to former defaulters you’re a fucking retard, or a member of Congress. This is a horrible incentive to be offering, it’s just going to show them that they weren’t responsible for their problems, each party will point the finger at the other.

I think someone should have thought this thing through at 600 pages you would think that it might be worth something, yet nothing except tying the government to corporations. I think if anything we need to bolster economic centers of growth but we can’t be bailing people out for every problem, yeah I’m calling you out Dems, and we need to develop a plan that can actually help rather than just boost morale for a few months. We also need to show that we don’t support weak economic decisions by people, how about starting to teach basic personal finance and economics in our Middle and High Schools.

Our lending market filled itself with greed and ditched common sense; they offered poorly qualified people opportunities that they could never afford. These people only thought about margins and not about the chance that everyone else would be going after the same niche in the market, subprime borrowers. Now we, the American public, get our asses taxed off until we default or our jobs get taxed to the brink and they collapse leaving us jobless and then we default. This isn’t going to help it’s just there to ease the trip down.

So it looks like I’m going to have fun as a responsible spender over the next several decades. Hooray for the assholes back in the 90’s and early-oughts, for flipping me and my generation over and fucking us in the ass. It really fucking stings to know that simplicity and release from branding, no matter how non-conformist, doesn’t help you separate far enough to escape bailing out the people bound to consumption. It’s time to stop praying for the money to come in, and learn responsibility for your actions.

First unto the personal economics, I’m going to defer this to another persons observations. Now of course this is merely a perception on how well you can do with a High School Diploma(HSD) compared to a B.S. The HSD will have roughly a 8 year head start over the BS; as such the BS would have to be putting roughly 2 to 3 times that of the HSD for roughly 1.5 to 2 times longer, just to be roughly even.

Now on to the topic of Subsidized Education. This is the act of the government providing grant money to help students attend college. The government in the past few years has spent around $200 billion annually towards higher education; this can be tracked back for nearly a half century $7 billion in 1965 to $170 billion in 1995 so on average we’re spending $100 billion annually for the last 30 years and with a 60% failure rate. We have wasted $2.4 trillion dollars on education, roughly one-fifth of our national debt. This has caused an effect that has allowed the colleges and universities to raise the price of admission drastically, hurting the middle-class.

Morally, I feel that we should remove subsidies in the education industry. In removing the subsidies and regulating the amount that a school could charge we could gradually reach an equilibrium and prevent the facilities from relentlessly raising tuition rates. In doing this, we would help the economy by stabilizing wages and allowing our country to slowly shift more towards productivity.

Now how do we become more productive. We gradually have more citizens filling the roles of the illegal immigrant laborers, the current state of our nation is that we are a nation of hedonistic intellectuals when our society needs physical labor, not mental. If you were a true intellectual you would develop your skills and let yourself be discovered by others. If you aren’t willing to express your intellectual capacity your have yet to realize any dream requires will and determination.

This is the nation of freedom and dreams that our forefathers fought for, our rights and dreams, with their blood, sweat, and tears. Yet, we have become a nation of daydreamers who don’t have a clue about what true labor is. Working men founded one of the strongest nations and we, their heirs to this land, have become the hedonistic clan to lead the United States down the path of Greeks and the Romans. The greatest empires fall when they believe they are greater than all others, another shall rise with a dream and and prove them wrong.

So do you have the will and determination to follow through with your dreams?