The Beginning of the End

"Chalk it up to Swiss affluence. Voters here will decide next month whether all 8 million citizens and legal residents should be guaranteed a generous monthly income, something no country in the world has ever done.
On June 5, Swiss voters will weigh in on a radical proposal that would mandate the government to guarantee $2,600 a month tax-free to every adult citizen and legal resident, and $650 to each child.
The payment would be provided to everyone, regardless of work status, income level, or wealth. It is a benefit few countries can afford. But then, Switzerland is among the world's richest nations, with a per capita income of about $85,000, 40% higher than that in the USA."

This is going to happen. It is going to start in places like Switzerland, then move to places like Finland and Norway, then the UK and Canada and eventually to the U.S.
And when that happens we're done. Why would anyone ever work when a comfortable living wage is provided with no effort required.
Hopefully, I'll be long dead before they start paying everyone just to be alive.

Money Can't Buy Happiness

Maybe I'm going soft in my old age but I actually feel sorry for Markus Persson, the guy who created Minecraft, sold it and pocketed roughly a billion dollars in the process.
Persson, known as Notch to cool people like me, recently tweeted a series of unhappy thoughts about life as a famous billionaire.
"The problem with getting everything is you run out of reasons to keep trying, and human interaction becomes impossible due to imbalance.
Hanging out in ibiza with a bunch of friends and partying with famous people, able to do whatever I want, and I've never felt more isolated.
In sweden, I will sit around and wait for my friends with jobs and families to have time to do shit, watching my reflection in the monitor.
When we sold the company, the biggest effort went into making sure the employees got taken care of, and they all hate me now.
Found a great girl, but she's afraid of me and my life style and went with a normal person instead.
I would Musk and try to save the world, but that just exposes me to the same type of assholes that made me sell Minecraft again."

Half the internet thinks he is clinically depressed and needs medication and talk therapy. The other half thinks he's a whiny little baby who should shut up and realize how good he has it.

But on my little corner of the internet I think he's just a guy going through some things that he doesn't know how to process.
He probably never wanted to sell Mojang (Minecraft), but did so because it would greatly enrich his partners, investors and employees.
He's just lacking direction and purpose in his life right now.
He probably has a great time at these fancy parties and hanging out with his cool famous friends (Zedd tweeted at him and invited him to his show when he plays LA next month) but when he's at home and his friends are busy with work and family, he gets lonely and feels isolated. And in this case he decided to let it out.

This is Markus Persson's house. He paid 70 million dollars for it.

But I think we need to remember that in life you need a certain amount of money to live a comfortable life. But once you have food and shelter covered, and some money to buy stuff and go on vacation, each additional dollar like has a very small incremental impact on your happiness.

So I do feel for Notch, and hope that he can find something to fulfill him, give him worth and help him make meaningful personal relationships.

How Did the Hindus Beat Us?

Fascinating study out from the Pew Forum on Religious and Public Life.
The study breaks down incomes by religion. The highest earning group? Hindus. 65% earn more than $75,000 a year. Compared to only 58% of Jews. But if you take out people who actually practice Judaism from that category, 67% of Reform Jews earn more than $75k.
The worst performing groups are Jehovah's Witness and members of historically black churches like Pentecostals and Baptists. More than 2/3s of those groups earn less than $50,000.
It's an interesting study but I think we knew for the most part Jews are very successful and black people still have less than average incomes -- as a group. But I am not sure if there are any conclusions we can make about cause and effect here.
And I also am not sure what the hell the Hindus are doing to make themselves so rich.
Either running a 7/Eleven is a suprisingly lucrative business or that offensive stereotype I just used is not accurate.

Best Year Ever

In 2010 hedge-fund manager John Paulson had the best year in the history of investing. Paulson's net income from his various ventures, but mostly his own personal investments in his own funds, was more than $5 billion. $5,000,000,000!
This tops Paulson's previous record of $4 billion which he made betting against the housing market in 2007. This time most of his riches came from investing in gold, which rose about 45% during the year.
There's two ways of looking at this: crediting Paulson for his daring and his intelligence and saying it's proof that our system is for the most part a meritocracy where the achievements of the individual are unlimited. Others say the system that allows one individual to profit that much, while others suffer is broken and in need of repair. Especially considering that most of Paulson's earnings are considered capital gains and not ordinary income and will therefore be taxed at a rate of only 15%.

They Don't Call Him Bobby Bucks for Nothing

The following is not an example of the Mets ineptitude:

After Bobby Bonilla was playing cards with Rickey Henderson in the locker room during Game 6 of the NLCS, the Mets dumped him. But instead of paying his $5.9m salary up front, with Bonilla’s permission the Mets agreed to pay him $1.2m every July 1st for 25 years starting in 2011 and going until 2035.

Though that seems like a bad deal Master Bates ran the numbers and the Mets would have need roughly 8% return on their money (somewhat reasonable) to make this pay off for them.

For Bonilla it’s a guaranteed rate of return and large payments well into his later years.

The other angle for the Mets is this: in 2000, at the height of the dot-com boom Wilpon was probably putting all his money with Madoff. He probably thought he could turn $5.9m to $30m in about 5 years, not 25.

But once again, just to set the record straight, amid all the signs of the Mets’ incompetence, this is not one of them.

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