prosperity

I don't know...the greed-o-meter sounds pretty cool

A sort of selfish point system. Selfish points? Greed points? The greed-o-meter?

In the meantime, maybe you can handle this one: http://bibleforums.org/forum/showthread.php?t=151676

I also noticed that there are an awful lot of "tell me what to do" posts on there.

I'm just curious...why do you hang out in Bible forums? Second Question: Can we post a question about whether God can create a mathematical equation so complex that even He cannot solve it or would that be against TOS?

Uhhh....no. My first question for the Buddhist would be: what is your (or the) 1st premise or proposition of your philosophy?

I dunno...I mean George Washington and Thomas Jefferson are/were pretty famous/well known.

At least there are companies that are standing up and making it a point to say that they will not accept Government money.

The underlying principle here is personal responsibility. I was reintroduced to this idea a few weeks ago working with a small business and trying to negotiate a new health insurance plan. While I wasn't suggesting that they cut benefits to employees, the first thing that was mentioned to me was exactly that...in other words, NOT cutting employee benefits. As is, the company pays nearly 100% of the employee health insurance costs (the only exception being copays). At this point, the general consensus from the employees is that you cannot take that away because it would be "unfair". Now, the company can do anything it wants, if it is willing to pay for it - and it may be worth it for the employer to do something like that for its employees. But, when you give someone something and it is perceived to be free, it is difficult to take that away - ever. When you install a feeling of entitlement, it is near impossible. For Medicare, and Medicaid, you have similar mentalities...though perhaps the elderly don't feel as entitled as the poor. I have witnessed first hand a Medicaid patient in an emergency room demanding services in such a way that you really would think health care was a right and the Doctors were this person's slave. I don't think there is a strong sense of personal responsibility in regards to these programs. If you ever confront someone on medicaid (especially if they have an explicit entitlement mentality), ask them why they haven't taken responsibility for their own life...watch their expression and get ready for an earful.

Why? You are starting from an arbitrary point and trying to make the facts fit the theory if you do that.

I was actually toying with the idea of doing that but I was concerned that throwing numbers at folks might confuse them...but it may be easier to include it. I am so familiar with how it works, sometimes it is easy for me to leave something out that others aren't quite familiar with. If someone was interested in the general idea, I could provide more specifics. Of course, I do have mock illustrations in PDF format showing the diff between an insurance policy and a hypothetical high yielding bank account (or some other account) showing both the effect of taxes and without. You are more than welcome to take a look if you'd like, just PM me an email addy.

I'll try to give as best an answer as I can to your questions. Please keep in mind that these are conditional answers (obviously noted as such by the word "if"). I'm working on an objective theory of financial planning, but it's not complete yet so I'd hesitate to go too far into details about what role these contracts play in one's comprehensive planning...other than to say that in practice, I know that the 80/20 and 90/10 "rule" I alluded to earlier works very well at reducing risk while not eliminating the potential returns found under the more traditional "invest it all and diversify" or the accumulation theory of planning. The short answer is "yes". This is taking into account that the average 401(k) fees range from between 2-3% total (by the time you are done paying for admin fees, mutual fund fees, etc.). They create a lot of drag. I find, many times, that when someone says they are consistently getting 10% returns in their 401(k), they are getting that news from their adviser. The net return before taxes is usually a bit lower, say 8-9% and assuming that their allocations are spit exactly even and IF they are getting 10% gross. The reality is, the blended rate of return for most folks at least according to DALBAR, is much much less than that. My personal experience has told me that if people are diversified well (like they are taught to be), then they are really chugging along at maybe 7-8% before fees and maybe 5-6% after fees...and before taxes. Obviously this is an average. The 4-5% is the illustrated rate. Cash value insurance rates are always quoted as an illustrated rate. The net rate after fees varies depending on the company's mortality experience, how efficient they are in managing assets and paying claims, etc. However, it is easy to calculate the real rate of return based on net cash value vs. premiums paid. In most cases, if you are funding the contract up to MEC guidelines, you will see a real rate of return in the guaranteed column of 3-4% if the illustrated rate is 4-5%. This only applicable for dividend paying whole life policies from a mutual company. The rules are a bit different for other types of whole life and can vary significantly if you are looking at an offering from a stock company. The comparison I made was 7% net of fees for 401(k) and 7% illustrated rate for the whole life. Actually I ran two illustrations: 7% net of fees (for accumulation purposes) and then I also figured it after taxes when illustrating income in retirement. The 401(k) produced slightly more accumulated value than the life insurance policy over a period of 25 years, but produced less income suggesting that the drag of taxation is significant. I assumed the life insurance policy's dividend rate at 7%. This is not the guaranteed rate. This is the rate that is non-guaranteed and assumes that the company is well run and remains well run. Dividends have historically been higher than 7% every year for the last 100-150+ years for the mutual life insurers that I mentioned earlier indicating that these companies have been run very efficiently for the last 100-150+ years depending on the company. However there is no guarantee that the companies will remain so (obviously). I'm not sure exactly what you are asking when you ask about "outflow". Whole life is a bundled financial product. There is technically no way to calculate how much is going to the cost of insurance, except for indirect inference. It's actually designed to be that way and though some people use that as an argument against whole life, it actually works out well for the policyholder. Yes, some of the money is going to buy death benefit and some is going to pure savings. How much goes to which depends entirely on how the contract is set up from the very beginning. Does that answer your question? If not, can you clarify what you mean? In general, yes. Mutual funds were designed to provide easy diversification from small investors. Problem is that when you reach the level of diversification that a garden variety mutual fund offers, you are earning about the same as the non-guaranteed rate in an insurance policy, at least in theory. In actuality, I think the life insurance does a little better IF the mutual fund is in a qualified account and a LOT better if it is in a non-tax preferred account, and assuming that DALBAR's research is valid about their 2-3% long-term average returns. According to their research, 90%+ mutual funds fail to outperform their respective benchmarks. In most cases, this leaves most mutual funds with long-term averages less than 10% gross. Also, keep in mind that anything I'm saying about the life insurance is assuming it is a dividend paying whole life from a mutual life insurance company and that you are funding the contract up to MEC guidelines and all other things are equal when comparing it to an investment account (though, realize that comparing these to investments has to be a loose comparison at best because insurance - at least IMO - is a savings product whereas mutual funds etc. are investment products). Let me know if any of that was confusing or I didn't answer your question(s).

From my post above: Yes, I am challenging that assumption if you are putting the money with a mutual life insurance company and it's a dividend paying whole life policy that is funded up to MEC guidelines. The dividend rates, which are not guaranteed, demonstrate that these companies are fairly well run, and well run for the last 100 to 150 years...think the Guardian, Mass Mutual, Mutual Trust Life, NY Life. None of those companies have had to pay their guaranteed rate ever in some cases and in others for most of their operation. ...the guaranteed rate though, like you said, is more like a CD rate. Typically, 2-3%, though on the mutual insurers, it's more like 4-5%. ...then again, I'm not advocating all of one's money in these...just a good percent. Instead of trying to make 100% of your money earn 10% or more I go at it from the perspective of getting 80-90% of your money to earn 6-7% and then the remaining 10-20% earning 50% or more. About the same return...much less risk. [soapbox] I'm not a big fan of qualified plans. ...keep in mind that these were created as a direct response to the onerous tax rates in the 70's...you are basically saving by permission. Probably the most irritating (at least in my view) is that even if you get beyond the taxes in the traditional qualified plans, the Government has made it a habit to change the rules on qualified plans. In the 90's you were discouraged (through caps and excise taxes) from accumulating to much money and from contributing too much...now you are just discouraged from saving too much... [/soapbox] But in response to your question: Cash value insurance is probably not an option. And, inside of a Government sponsored plan, it's not something I would ever do anyway, even if the life insurance company offered it (and some do). The lure of Government plans is the tax deferral. The trap is that it is simply delaying your tax liability. I wrote an article about it (in my sig) and have a few other ideas concerning qualified plans. In plain English it works like this: If you plan to do well in your 401(k), you are guaranteeing a bigger tax bill (unless the tax code gets thrown out when you are ready to get at that money). Also, most of the time - and definitely if you are not getting a match, you will pay back more money in taxes than you actually saved...usually within 7-10 years, sometimes less. If you don't plan on doing well, don't worry about the taxes, but you will have to worry about what you're going to live on if you need your savings. Of course the alternative is the Roth or Roth 401(k)...but at that point, you are getting the same tax advantages as a life insurance policy except the life insurance is a private contract, has no caps, mandates on withdrawals, or restrictions on the use of the money. If you do consider the insurance option, I'd educate yourself as most advisors either aren't familiar with how to use them for cash accumulation or would rather just forgo the concept of savings and use all investments instead.

This is something that most financial planners tell you to do. It's become something of an undigested slogan. The best way to accumulate wealth is still by using private contracts without Government help or favors like 401(k)s, IRAs, etc. In fact, to test that theory, I recently ran the numbers taking into account current tax assumptions (because, I am operating on the assumption that the best case scenario is that marginal tax rates remain the same for the next 30 years). IF, and this is a big if, IF the life insurance policy is funded so that a minimum amount of death benefit is purchased and maximum paid up additions is purchased (or in the case of a UL the contract is set to "minimum death benefit, maximum cash value"), the whole life or universal life should outperform the qualified retirement account in almost every scenario where the individual has a combined (State and Federal) marginal tax rate of 25% or more. At 15% marginal tax rate, the insurance and 401(k) are about even in net income with the difference being the insurance policy has a death benefit too. The assumption I used was for a mutual life insurer's dividend paying whole life. The dividend rates rarely dip below 7%, and in some cases, they've never dipped below 7% in the 150 years the company has been paying dividends. That's not a guarantee, of course, but the assumption is that they know how to run a decent business and produce consistent returns for their policy holders. The mutual funds that 401(k)s invest in, however, according to DALBARinc show that the average investor earns less than 5%...still, even with a 7% after fees in the 401(k) and 7% illustrated rate in the whole life policy (which is usually before fees), the life insurance policy does much better assuming the above tax implications. The second issue is that of frictional costs. The investments in a 401(k) endure a consistent fee for the life of the investment, whereas the life insurance policy (whole life) guarantees that the contract will become more efficient over time, thus reducing frictional costs. These two components offer probably the greatest advantages. A third could be a life insurance policy's non-direct recognition loan offering. You just can't do that kind of thing with any investment. That being said, I think whole life insurance properly belongs under the category of "savings", not "investment". The magic word(s) for business owners is "executive bonus plan". Or "double bonus plan". It takes a while to get to a point where your taxes will consistently be zero but I think it's worth it.

Re-run your skepticism while keeping in mind that Objectivism also says that knowledge is both contextual and hierarchical as well as relative. That should address the issue of 100% certainty - that something is certain within a specified context. That is why both Newton and Einstein are correct about their theories. It is also something that science - having glossed over philosophy - hasn't picked up on yet.

I'm sure you've heard of arguments FOR Government intervention... ...the one that I run into most goes something like this: Them: "The laws that are on the books must be on the books for some reason" Me: "That doesn't mean it is a good reason" Them: "Well, if there wasn't a good reason, then there wouldn't be a law prohibiting (or enforcing) blah blah blah" So...I was thinking about what a good, yet quick, response for something like this could be. It's not like the majority of folks that I somehow end up in conversations with think profoundly about philosophy... ...and so, I thought about responding with something along the lines of "Government's job is to prevent the initiation of force and protect individual rights, not act as a special type of private enterprise or business with exclusive rights to initiatory force". I'm not sure if this is way over most people's heads though... ...any thoughts or suggestions as to how you handle the "might makes right" arguments concerning intervention into the economy?

Slightly off topic, but did you get your username from "the seven year itch"? ...I'm 29 BTW

This actually deals with, I think, more than one branch of philosophy...but I believe it has significant moral implications. Has anyone else seen an argument against individualism that goes like this: http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/19865 I've seen variants of it, but this article actually tries to assert that knowledge is owned, and that the living owe the dead for it - in some sort of literal sense.

...and the next question is, given that, will the market want to fund such research?

If I remember correctly, Leonard Peikoff was never portrayed in that film. Not even an introduction. That seems strange due to the fact that he met Rand in 1951. Now, to be fair, I never read the book, only saw the movie so I cannot comment as to whether that was left out. Also, the story is supposed to be (from what I gather) about the relationship between the Brandens and Rand. Still, I thought it odd that a MAJOR player in the Objectivist movement was never mentioned.

Yikes. If what you say is accurate, then it doesn't sound like such a good idea.

Along the same lines, and this may start bleeding into ethics...but, would concepts then be considered man-made facts? Or are man-made facts strictly limited to the physical world? The reason for my asking is that on another discussion board someone had brought up the idea of "social debt", and the premise was this: This is clearly a justification for statism, but I am not exactly sure how to confront the "ownership" as it were of knowledge other than knowledge is ultimately derived from the metaphysically given, which cannot be owned by someone. Society, as such, is a concept itself not a special type of organism I understand and not subject to dues owed.

Yeah...I mean having a robot like that is very "I-robot" like. It would be cool to have something like that around to do all the chores, any physical labor, and do all the other "gopher" type work you'd need done. They'd be a pretty good office assistant too...not to mention they could replace factory workers or jobs where people are doing repetitive grunt work. ...of course unions probably would not like that. Workers complain when they get carpel tunnel syndrome or chronic back pain from heavy lifting at work... ...but they might complain when the boss decides to replace them with a bunch of "fem-bots".

Something I thought that would be amazing (not for "girlfriend" purposes, but in general, as an assistant). http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article2023392.ece

So, if used properly and efficiently, the "natural" end product of a nuclear reactor is iron or lead?