Why Does the Subsidized Hardware Model Bother Me So Much?
For reasons I cannot entirely articulate, I find that I have a problem with the subsidized hardware business model. There is something about it I find either insidious or distasteful.
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Mail Bag: Why Would an Investor Ever Buy an Asset Intensive Business?
The question I tackle this time: “If asset intensive businesses are inferior investments, why would any rational investor ever buy one?”
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Mail Bag: Disappearing Blog Posts at About.com
A reader wanted to know about a blog post I wrote on my Investing for Beginners site at About.com back on October 9th, 2008 during the depths of the financial crisis. Thankfully, I was able to recover it and repost it as it had been de-indexed and removed by the network as part of its routine content changes. I doubt that will be possible much longer as so much of that content is simply lost.
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Read the Amazing, Fantastical, Autocratic Bob Jones University Student Handbook
I mentioned the infamous Bob Jones University student handbook in an earlier post after explaining it was the school from which one of the extremist authors I was reading as part of a self-imposed cultural studies program graduated back in 1950. It was the university that famously insisted God didn’t want blacks intermingling with whites and refused…
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Should Government Benefits Be Tied to Behavior and Decisions?
I don’t talk about it very often, but one of the charitable organizations close to my heart are community food banks and soup kitchens. These non-profits collect groceries for those who can’t afford to feed themselves or their children, allowing them to avoid hunger. They resonate with something very deep in my core, maybe because I…
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And I Thought Tim LaHaye Hated Catholics …
A few of you know I’m in the middle of my 1970-1990 counter-evidence study, in which I dive into books on both extremes of the so-called culture wars, reading everything from radical feminists to conservative preachers to understand some of the things that were happening in the United States at the time from the perspective…
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I Believe USA Today’s Money Section Is the Worst Run Financial Publication in the United States
Hands down, I am strongly convinced the single most incompetent source of regularly published financial advice or business information of any major newspaper in the United States is the money section of USA Today. The conclusions are often outright wrong, the understanding of accounting and economics vapid, and the headlines written to achieve nothing more than clicks without leaving the reader better informed than he or she was in the beginning. It is the fiscal equivalent of fluff, only worse because fluff can be fun without leaving an inaccurate impression on something as important as national economic policy.
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The Economics of the Movie Theater Industry Will Be Interesting Over the Next 25 Years
The economics of the movie theater industry are interesting. In many cases, up to 70% of the ticket price goes to the movie studio that created the film and the distributor who sold the rights to it, leaving the remaining 30% for the owners. This creates a situation where most of the profit comes from…
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Homemade Chipotle Burrito Bowls and Guittard Chocolate
We’re working on making our own homemade version of Chipotle’s burrito bowl so we can throw them together fairly quickly (make the salsa in advance, pre-measure the ingredient portions, and all you have to do is a handful of steps in less than 20-30 minutes whenever you want to mass produce them).
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Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics
As an investor, you can make a lot of money if you are adept with numbers. This skill can let you see what is really going on and create mathematical models that maximize your earnings. There is a little known story that Warren Buffett was once in a meeting for Blockbuster, the movie rental chain that is now bankrupt.
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