Re: farm subsidies/amtrak
In a message dated 8/8/02 2:46:06 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: << Regarding the support of the public for farm subsidies etc. here is another example. The Washington Post reports in a poll that support for Amtrak subsidies is very strong - and it is strong regardless of Amtrak use. Here is the link and some key sentences. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A43767-2002Aug4.html >> >From following politics, presidential politics, intensively I have become wary of any polls conducted on behalf of major American news media organization. I've noticed in contest after contest media polls fairly consistently overstate support for the candidate percieved to be more liberal by 5-15%, and I suspect the same polling biases that distort those polls support similar polls asking questions of government policy. Even if we were to accept the results of the poll on their face, it's not clear that they have much to say about support for agricultural subsidies. Urban dwellers and suburbanites often have strong anti-rural biases (the reverse applies as well) and in congressional politics the people who most support most of the welfare-regulatory state, urban Democrats, almost never demonstrate much if any support for agricultural subsidies. The main proponents of ag subsidies, typically rural Republicans, almost always demonstrate hostility toward non-agricultural welfare programs. It may well be that Americans, if they really so support Amtrak subsidies, do so even if they haven't used it because they can easily imagine using it, whereas most Americans don't imagine themselves receiving ag subsidies (not knowing about the likes of Sam Donaldson, whose mohair farms receive subsidies designed to provide World War I US Army uniforms). I'd like to see a poll, or a series of polls taken over a decade or two, conducted by Zogby the one pollster who consistently avoids the liberal bias contained in most American presidential polls, before I draw any conclusions about whether American voters support ag subsidies (or for that matter, Amtrak). Sincerely, David Levenstam
RE: efficient markets ...
The late Al Frank had a newsletter, the Prudent Speculator, which was ranked very highly on return for 10 & 20 year periods (some 23% annual avg.) He's a long term investor (avg 6.5 years), fundamental value. NOT day trading! Here's a bit from an interview with its current author: You recommend that your readers carry fairly large portfolios. Diversification is so important to our strategy. In a million-dollar portfolio, we think you should have 100 stocks, minimum, representing more than 20 different industries. In a $100,000 portfolio, we'd like to see 30-35 stocks. When you get below 30 stocks, the Worldcoms can really kill you. No matter how much homework you do--and analysts still did a lot of research on Enron and WorldCom--you can get caught with your pants down. I find this level of advice useful, but also frightening; I don't have even $10 000 to invest now, so maybe I'm better off staying out. Or just buy some ShareBuilder dollar cost averaging; not going to subscribe to a newsletter ... Tom Grey http://www.forbes.com/pushfiles/ipaq/0628adviser.html is the article http://www.sharebuilder.com/ looks like a good program for newbies, and poor folk (like me). -Original Message- From: Bryan D Caplan [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Monday, August 05, 2002 6:24 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: efficient markets ... Koushik Sekhar wrote: > > How many of you (of those in thes US) who believe in efficient markets are > investing in US equities now and have invested in them in the last 2 years ? > If your answer is NO then why are you not investing in US equities because > if markets are efficient all bad news must be priced into the stock prices > .. right ? I am. I am increasingly convinced that crowd psychology plays some role, but changes in crowd psychology don't seem any more predictable than anything else.
Re: farm subsidies/amtrak
While it might be true that urban dwellers don't support direct farm subsidies to the same extent as rural dwellers (though my bet is that the support is still large) what they do support is food stamps which are another form of agricultural support - the quid pro quo between ag. subsidies and food stamps was always recognized in the political sphere. Alex Tabarrok
Webcast "radio" stations
With broadband's use and availability increasing, especially within office environments, why haven't we seen significant web-"radio" stations that "broadcast" solely over the Internet? They'd get around FCC regulations and the oligarchy that exists now and could reach a global audience. It seems like there are many less barriers to entry, but we still don't see any notable ones -- certainly not on the scale of cable TV channels. Ideas? --Dan Lewis
Re: Webcast "radio" stations
> With broadband's use and availability increasing, especially within office > environments, why haven't we seen significant web-"radio" stations that > "broadcast" solely over the Internet? Well, there were a number of very popular web-"radio" stations, but the Copyright Office has imposed prohibitively expensive royalty requirements on internet radio, and they've mostly shut down. See, e.g. http://www.saveinternetradio.org/ The politics behind it all is complicated, but the cynic might notice that the oligopolies that control radio and the recording industry have little interest in allowing alternative (i.e. not-controlled-by-them) distribution channels. - Joel
Re: Webcast "radio" stations
There are some internet "radio" stations. I use launch.com where you can watch music videos and listen to music. It is free and you can cusomize your own radio station. A guy who I work with has used shoutcast.com and is now using musicmatch radio. For musicmatch he pays a small (~$3/month) fee and gets cd quality music. I'd agree that there really aren't that many big ones. The biggest problem I see (and have) is the web traffic/buffering issue. The guy across the hall says that he doesn't have any problems getting music w/o interuption. Maybe paying a small subscription fee would work better than selling "airtime" for internet radio. Bryan >From: Dan Lewis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >Subject: Webcast "radio" stations >Date: Fri, 09 Aug 2002 13:59:02 -0400 > > >With broadband's use and availability increasing, especially within office >environments, why haven't we seen significant web-"radio" stations that >"broadcast" solely over the Internet? They'd get around FCC regulations >and the oligarchy that exists now and could reach a global audience. It >seems like there are many less barriers to entry, but we still don't see >any notable ones -- certainly not on the scale of cable TV channels. > >Ideas? > >--Dan Lewis _ Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com
Re: farm subsidies/amtrak
In a message dated 8/9/02 1:37:25 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: << While it might be true that urban dwellers don't support direct farm subsidies to the same extent as rural dwellers (though my bet is that the support is still large) what they do support is food stamps which are another form of agricultural support - the quid pro quo between ag. subsidies and food stamps was always recognized in the political sphere. Alex Tabarrok >> Traditionally the small and indirect impact of food stamps on ag commondity prices has been utterly swamped by the large and direct impact of commondity price supports. I grew increasingly disillusioned with politics during my years in Iowa and for the last few stopped following what happened with commondity price supports; I know that under the Contract With America Congress passed a multi-year phaseout of the price-support program that would have had them all phased out by now (it didn't apply to the separate programs for tobacco, and the indirect federally-enforced milk and fruit cartels). Even if the ag price supports have been fully phased out, the food stamp program still has almost no impact on retail food prices, much less ag commodities, and of course urbanites don't think of food stamps as ag subsidies. What makes you suspect there's strong urban support for ag subidies (and would that include tobacco price supports and the government-enforced fruit and milk cartel arrangements)? I see little evidence for such support in the voting patterns of the reprentatives in Congress. David Levenstam
Re: farm subsidies/amtrak
Sen. Robert Torricelli's Republican challenger has apparently decided to make the Torch's support for the latest farm bill an issue in this campaign, judging by this press release they put out after Torricelli apologized for his ethics violations. --James - My fellow New Jerseyans, I've let you down. I never should have accepted illegal gifts from a campaign contributor, nor acted as his Ambassador to foreign governments, nor denied ever doing anything at any time to betray the trust you placed in me. And I'm sorry. While we're at it, I never should have demanded that the CIA handcuff its field agents and make it tougher for them to penetrate foreign terrorist cells. And when virtually every intelligence professional said the CIA should rescind that policy, I should have agreed with them, rather than continuing to defend it. And I'm sorry. I never should have introduced legislation to raise the cost of prescription drugs by $11 BILLION in exchange for a measly $50,000 soft-money contribution to a campaign committee I controlled. I never should have voted for a $191 BILLION farm subsidies bill that will cost New Jersey households $4400 every year in higher taxes, just because I coveted $100,000 from out-of-state agribusinesses. And I never should have voted to keep toxic nuclear waste right here in our backyards, just because I lusted for $200,000 from Nevada special interests desperate to keep it out of THEIR state. And I'm sorry. My fellow New Jerseyans, there's a lot more I need to apologize for. But I've only got sixty seconds in this ad, and there's only so much special interest money I can grab. So for now, I'll leave you with this thought: next week, to erase any lingering doubts, I'm going to take the lie detector test recommended by my former colleague, Senator Lautenberg. Stay tuned.
Re: farm subsidies/amtrak
--- [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: "I've noticed in contest after contest media polls fairly consistently overstate support for the candidate percieved to be more liberal by 5-15%" That's interesting. Two serious questions. First, do I recall correctly that the last presidential polls were predicting something pretty close to a dead heat? (I wonder if there is a past poll database out there somewhere) That's not to contradict your observations, I really don't follow polls much so it's a vague memory. Second, do you think political pollsters are more accurate than media pollsters since their reputations (and paychecks?) hinge on closely tracking actual results? (Or are they more accurate at all?) Curiously yours, jsh __ Do You Yahoo!? HotJobs - Search Thousands of New Jobs http://www.hotjobs.com
RE: efficient markets ...
--- Grey Thomas <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: "'...we think you should have 100 stocks, minimum, representing more than 20 different industries.'" Is is true that a major strength of diversification comes from the fact that stock prices have a log-normal distribution, i.e. percentage change is normally distributed, so that when a stock price goes up by x%, and then up by x% again, the gain in dollars is greater than the loss in dollars when it goes down by x%, and then down by x% again, thus, spread over a whole bunch of stocks going up and down, this effect translates into "free" money? Or something like that? So intstead of "merely" protecting you if but one of many firms tank, it also creates a sort-of money pump? If this is so, or if it isn't, couldn't you just spread around $10,000 for the same effect--or would brokerage fees eat up all the gains in that case? Curiously yours, jsh __ Do You Yahoo!? HotJobs - Search Thousands of New Jobs http://www.hotjobs.com
Re: farm subsidies/amtrak
In a message dated 8/9/02 8:28:26 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: << --- [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: "I've noticed in contest after contest media polls fairly consistently overstate support for the candidate percieved to be more liberal by 5-15%" That's interesting. Two serious questions. First, do I recall correctly that the last presidential polls were predicting something pretty close to a dead heat? (I wonder if there is a past poll database out there somewhere) That's not to contradict your observations, I really don't follow polls much so it's a vague memory. Second, do you think political pollsters are more accurate than media pollsters since their reputations (and paychecks?) hinge on closely tracking actual results? (Or are they more accurate at all?) Curiously yours, jsh >> The last election led me to say "fairly consistent;" it was the anomaly during the period in which I'd comparing polls to elections results.I think that, contrary to the way that some of statist-liberals and their allies within the new media view Bush (or perhaps cynically tried to portray him) he hasn't been seen as particularly conservatives by the electorate, and for many voters did not present a clear-but alternative to Gore. Many conservatives simply didn't vote for Bush; many news stories made much of the Nader impact on the election, but so far as I could tell they uniformly ignored the fact that Buchanan got more votes than the margin between Bush and Gore in states like Iowa (which Gore won). Furthermore I'd veture a guess that more conservatives simply stayed home than voted for Buchanan. Nor I think were many of the left-liberals particularly thrilled with Gore (whom many saw as a pawn of Big Business), and while a few of them did vote for Nader, I suspect many of them too stayed home. Thus a campaign that seemed to start out largely as a referendum on Bill Clinton seemed to end up largely as a personality contest between the frat-boy and the tree. Sincerely, David
Re: farm subsidies/amtrak
In a message dated 8/9/02 7:14:44 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: << Sen. Robert Torricelli's Republican challenger has apparently decided to make the Torch's support for the latest farm bill an issue in this campaign, judging by this press release they put out after Torricelli apologized for his ethics violations. --James >> Thank you for this timely bit of evidence reinforcing my hypothesis that ag subsidies generally do not play well with urban voters. David
