I can't speak to the part about wealth coming from the toiling of poor people, but I can say that I find the immense advantages derived from capital over labor to be unfair.
Basically, I can sit at my desk, and in one action, move some numbers from a cash account into an equity security. In doing so, in one day, I can increase my wealth by an amount that it would take a full-time minimum-wage worker a little over 2 weeks to earn. It's one data point, but it definitely challenges the notion of what's fair.
To extend this further, with technology, the inequities of capital over labor will only increase with time because of how technology scales and amplifies an individual laborer's output. The people who will be left behind will be people working in industries that cannot or will not scale.
Is the solution then to make sure that everyone is capable of joining the information/automation economy through education? Do we decide that a universal basic income is the best approach to take? I honestly don't know.
I did find the lowering of barriers that would impede access to education like providing free meals, free transportation, and access to free babysitting to have been really helpful. In a way, it's like lowering the activation energy required to get motivated students into an environment where they can flourish.
I feel that the desire for an education is intrinsic. If you want to learn, you will (as evidenced by the study gms was talking about). Simply having access to all those goodies won't lead to motivation. Unmotivated students in that cushy environment would just lead to them being happier and more content, not make them work harder.
Don't focus on what it doesn't do for the unmotivated. Focus instead on how it can improve the motivated. A smart, hardworking student who is hungry won't learn much. A smart, hardworking student who is exhausted after walking miles to school in winter on an empty stomach will learn even less.
In the mid-80's I went to an NYC public school that used to be one of the best and by the time I went there, it was... Well let's just say it was quite subpar. The school had an honors program where I spent almost all my time, and I didn't really think it was anything special, just OK. Never had to work hard to get A's. Then Senior year they realized I couldn't graduate without taking Music Appreciation(!) and the only way to do it on time was to take that class with the "regular" students.
Bedlam would have been calmer. It was simply impossible to learn anything in that class. There were students constantly screaming, throwing things, walking in and out of the room all the time, etc. Maybe 5 people out of 35 paid any attention to the teacher. Hell, once he realized I was one of the better behaved ones, he guaranteed me an A just for coming in and cleaning the blackboard every day and then sitting there quietly. I'm not an idiot; I did it and got my A.
I could go on, but suffice to say that one experience opened my eyes to the difference in classes in the same school. I shudder to think how some of the really bad schools were.
I understand that its easy and important to pour resources into educating the already motivated. The justification is clear, they want to be there, they want to learn, they "deserve it".
Yet, unless I'm misreading your comment, it appears as if a majority of students in the worse schools appear to be in the "unmotivated" class. Heck, even in my middle/upper-middle class suburban high school, that same divide between the "honors" and the "regular" kids was there.
I think the bigger societal issue is finding some way to get this majority interested in learning. That would have a far larger impact than giving more to the already motivated (if only due to sheer numbers). I realize this is a HUGE issue to tackle and unfortunately, its something that I have no answers for.
Neither do I. I think it starts with group psychology: even among the non-honors students I knew quite a few who were working as hard as they could and wanted to learn. But in the larger group, they are put down because they're not doing what everyone else is doing, so the first problem is how to break the cycle of groupthink and allow people to do their own thing.
One thing we (favorite teacher and me) observed (this with 30+ year-old memory) is that one or two students in the large student body being recognized academically motivated others to work hard to get the same recognition. I graduated before I could see how far this went, but it was showing promise.
At some point, a long, long time ago, people had to have made discoveries and learn from that without teachers or materials. The education we have come to take for granted didn't just appear out of thin air.
You might be reinventing the wheel, but it's still a great achievement. The lack of teachers and materials isn't going to stop anyone who wants to learn.
Really? because the article directly contradicts you. These people were totally capable of learning, and demonstrated a willingness to learn, but they were not educated.
How do you define education? Something as simple as learning how to interact with people is something that anyone in the presence of other people (which is most people on the planet) can do. Maybe you can't learn computer science in rural Africa, but that's not really what I'm talking about.
Again, the article contradicts this idea. As the course went on, aggressiveness and threats were used less often in arguments, and the debates became more civil. Interpersonal interaction was one of the skills that these people did not pick up in all their years "on the street", but learned in the class.
So you would say that aggressive and uncivil contact was not a learned behaviour?
If I was without teachers and materials and I discovered the square wheel, does the fact that people with teachers are aware of the round wheel discount everything I achieved? I think not. It is still amazing, even if others can do it better.
I guess I'm just not quite seeing where you are coming from. It's not a question of what kind of materials are available, it's the idea that learning is impossible without them. The fact that these people could carry on any kind of interaction, even if done poorly by our society's standards, speaks to me that learning does occur despite what is available.
> So you would say that aggressive and uncivil contact was not a learned behaviour?
I would say it is uneducated behavior. Yes, everyone learns naturally; that's what it is to exist. Education is eduction--the drawing out--not mere "learning".
But you only have so much energy and learning takes energy. I know from personal experience that the more stressed I am, the more time and energy I had to put in to getting enough calories this week the less I have to spend on learning. Being hungry or sleep deprived makes everything harder. It can be challenging just to summon the energy to make basic day-to-day decisions, much less reach out and learn new things. It's why free school breakfasts and lunches do such good things for educational outcomes.
The easier it is to learn the more people will be able to get over the hump. It won't ever be everyone, but it's basic behavioral economics: the easier it is to get the same payoff the more people will do it.
I've always enjoyed reading Buffett's remarks in Berkshire's shareholders reports because of those very reasons. There's no BS; he just tells it the way it is, covering both successes and failures. And when he talks about the overall economy, he puts it in terms that people can readily grasp the concept without being swamped by gobbledegook.
He also puts on a great shareholder's meeting every year, where he and his #2 Charlie Munger spend a lot of time just answering questions. And of course, there are the discounts at Dairy Queen and Nebraska Furniture Mart. He even supports local independent businesses like The Bookworm.
I can really identify with the sentiments lined in this post as one of the things I've added to my life is trying to learn the piano, an instrument which seemed all but impossible since I'm not a very coordinated person, especially when playing with both hands.
So far, I'm two weeks into it and progress has been surprising. Sure, I have difficulty getting both hands to work together, but it's coming together rather nicely and my brain is getting a workout as it's trying to coordinate the two hands. Add to that the confidence it gives me in not only approaching a task where I can potentially fail, but transforming those failures into the grit and determination to succeed. I can definitely see this learning process paying back through the confidence it gives me.
Crunchyroll has gone a long way towards providing a legitimate avenue for fans to get access to anime and I hope things can only get better with time.
That's not to say there aren't any problems that need to be ironed out though. Off of the top of my head, my two biggest complaints with CR stem from the consistency of their subtitles, which can range from decent to atrocious, and the lack of availability of titles that I had been looking forward to watching. Obviously, they won't be able to get their hands on every show that's out there since they're competing with the likes of Funimation, but it'd be nice if they could wrap their arms around a greater percentage of titles each season.
It'd also help too if the Japanese studios would try to embrace the internet rather than constantly resisting against it. Sometimes, I get the feeling that they're so stuck in the PPV television rut and aren't confident enough to start releasing episodes online.
Sergei Rachmaninoff should be added to this list since I've yet to encounter any pianist who didn't have a glowing reaction to any of the Rachmaninoff Piano Concertos. Especially Piano Concerto #2 which ranks up there as being one of my top 10 favorite pieces of music.
How is this different from sinking 6 years of your life into a startup? Are the skills you acquire from running a startup more transferable to other businesses, and therefore makes it okay even if you fail and learn that you're not that good at running your own gig?
Is this service for the 85-90% of people who have simple returns consisting of a W-2, a few 1099s, and a 1098? My question is how it'll handle issues like multi-state tax returns, oodles of K-1s, and tracking the basis for those, and figuring out stuff like foreign tax credits? Would the designated Preparer know to ask such questions and wholly handle everything on their end?
(I'm guessing that for those complex issues, you'd still stick to a live accountant, and this service isn't geared towards that particular segment of the population.)
Ask your tax professional to signup as an agent. Free for him/her and then you can work with them through the app. For their own customers, agents can start using the service immediately.
2. Let us assign a tax agent:
Tell us more about your requirements, we can assign agents who is suitable for you.
All agents are mandated to list their PTIN number and phone numbers so that you can call and talk to them.
So anytime, if you are not satisfied, we can drop you from the customer list of a particular tax professional.
Though I started in 2008, I didn't really make any attempts at monetizing until late 2009 and started with Adsense, then linked all the albums reviewed to two online stores that sell the CDs in question. All told, it took me maybe 3 months to make my first dollar and even longer for affiliate commissions to come in. I didn't make my first sale until maybe February 2010.
Obviously this isn't a product-based project, so it's not representative of the webapp stuff that others are producing.
If you're using Wordpress, try one of the Twitter integration plugins. You can choose hashtags when creating a new blog entry and it will be auto-posted to a Twitter account. You should see a bump in traffic after each post.
I've actually been doing manual updates to my personal twitter account after each post with a blurb about the latest article. Each tweet is customized rather than a generic auto-update message. I'm just not sure whether this is the best way of going about it or if I should take your suggestion and completely automate it. Maybe create a separate twitter account and do both?
> Maybe create a separate twitter account and do both?
No reason not to. :)
I had a few blogs (well, "autoblogs") go from $5-6/day on 400-500 unique visitors to $10-12 after installing and configuring Twitter Tools. A human touch generally results in higher yield than automation with most marketing stuff, though.
> A human touch generally results in higher yield than automation with most marketing stuff, though.
Do you think that's because readers recognize it as being "more human" and are more interested, or because humans are better at making copy than automation, or a combination of the two?
Probably more of a combination of the two. Automated posts are pretty obvious, even to the less technically inclined. Lots of people will use something like "spyntax" (stuff like "This is {awesome|cool}, {take a look|check it out}!") to generate reusable copy, but it still generally feels fake. That's about the extent of human touch most people will give things if their goal is complete automation.
If you're writing posts/excerpts/replies manually, it's way more authentic and believable. Language is obviously super important in marketing (especially online), and it's one area where computers still have lots of improvement to make.
That's not necessarily a bad thing. I've always been rather fond of pg's quote which says something to the effect that "if I had to choose between bad high schools and good universities, like the US, and good high schools and bad universities, like most other industrialized countries, I'd take the US system. Better to make everyone feel like a late bloomer than a failed child prodigy."
I'm pretty sure our children will be talking about how pg was thoroughly proven wrong in this. What percentage of americans go to college? pg's quote seems to assume most will but I suspect it's the exact opposite. This means you are getting a small percentage of "late bloomers" and a lot of people who's only education was appallingly bad. Your late bloomers aren't going to do you much good when the majority of all people who vote are ignorant.
Basically, I can sit at my desk, and in one action, move some numbers from a cash account into an equity security. In doing so, in one day, I can increase my wealth by an amount that it would take a full-time minimum-wage worker a little over 2 weeks to earn. It's one data point, but it definitely challenges the notion of what's fair.
To extend this further, with technology, the inequities of capital over labor will only increase with time because of how technology scales and amplifies an individual laborer's output. The people who will be left behind will be people working in industries that cannot or will not scale.
Is the solution then to make sure that everyone is capable of joining the information/automation economy through education? Do we decide that a universal basic income is the best approach to take? I honestly don't know.