Father Xmas

Really? Cause when I look at the figures in that first article I don't see a major shift.

I was born in the early 1960s. According to Table 3 the 1% had 31.8% of the wealth in 1962 and in 2007 it grew to a whopping 34.6%. And again, this is wealth, we tax income nationally and wealth, at least property such as homes, cars and boots, locally. At least where I live.

What I find interesting is Table 1. In 1983 the 1% had 42.9% of non home wealth, in 2010 it's 42.1%. Yes the poorest 80% had their wealth reduced from 8.7% to 4.7% but that went to the 19% in between, not the 1%. But let's look at 1995, 1st term of Bill Clinton. The 1% had 47.2% of non home wealth and it was the middle 19% that lost out.

As for income Table 6 shows that in 2006 the top 1% had 21.3% of total income, the next 19% had 40.1% and the bottom 80% had only 38.6%.

Actually the only point I take away from the UCSC article is the obvious conclusion that you only accumulate wealth when your income exceeds your basic needs. The more money you earn, the wealthier you become.

Of course I never take a single source to draw conclusions from so lets look at the CBO report on 2007 and 2009 income tax distribution. From this we have in 2007 the top 1% having only 18.7% of income yet pay 26.7% of all income tax. The next 19% account for 35.9% of all income and paid 41.1% of all income tax while the remaining 80% had 45.4% of all income and paid 32.2% of all income tax. Sadly that paper doesn't list where the income break is between quintiles (20% groupings of equal number of members) or the breakdown within the top one, just the average income within each.

My point is when people say "we're only out to get the 1%", they actually mean the 20% and if you and your SO have been out of college for 10 years each with an employable degree, or you are in a successful trade, you are likely in that 20%.

See now you are talking wealth, not income. They are two entirely different things.

The Buffet's and Gate's and Job's of the world may be ridiculously rich on paper but a lot of that money is just that, on paper or in assets that aren't easily liquidated. The actual wealth is tied up in stocks, real estate, bonds and not Scrooge McDuck vaults full of cash, jewels and precious metals. A Ferrari, a thousand shares of stock in Apple or a classic work of art isn't going to be able to fund a homeless shelter or soup kitchen if they aren't converted into cash first. And you can't do that if there aren't anyone around anymore who could do so.

As for the military, I would rather see us spend money on force multiplier weapon systems than resort back to WWII level requirements of service for the 18-35 crowd. You think five to 10 thousand US deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan were tragic, and they are, but in WWII we had what would be nearly a million deaths today or 85 thousand from Vietnam, both of which were shorter wars. Wars aren't a planned expense, we wouldn't borrow the money we use to prosecute a war for regular programs. It would be like "hey the furnace didn't break this year so lets all get new clothes with that money we weren't forced to spend." There is no such thing as a peace dividend beyond not having young men and women die on foreign shores.

If the tax laws weren't so complex that only the wealthy and large companies could afford people who could figure out ways to minimize their taxes you wouldn't have examples of the very rich paying a lower effective percentage in income tax. However 10% of a million dollars is a lot more than 20% of forty thousand. In my case I've recently paid off my condo after 25 years, on paper I'm now "wealthy" but if I sell it I may be considered rich but I wouldn't have a place to live either.

Did you miss my "Sure, senior management needed to join in" comment?

The problem I have with the 99% crowd's attitude is that everything will be alright if we just take all the money (through taxation or paycuts) from those rich people. All social programs will be funded that the world will be a utopia. There isn't enough rich people to do that. NASA funding isn't all that large either, or the Dept of Education or NPR or foreign grants to other countries (to balance the argument).

In this case it's "those damn rich executives". In a way that's true since they couldn't seem to run the company in a profitable manner. But why? Were prices to high (compared to Little Debbie version yes). Were sales off due to fight against childhood obesity led by the First Lady? Maybe. If if sales are off you have to cut expenses. Reduce production but that works only so far since fix costs remain and I would hazard a guess that the union contracts didn't allow for reducing hours or shifts which would then put labor costs over into the fix cost part of the equation thus raising the cost per unit of each twinkie, cup cake, etc. which reduces profits. Raising prices may simply, in this tough economy, encourage people to switch brands or forgo them entirely which then also doesn't help being profitable.

It's a simple equation. There is a sweet spot in price and demand that makes the most sales revenue. You need to be able to meet that demand of product while spending less than that sales revenue, otherwise you go out of business. Yes the devil is in the details but that's what executives are paid to handle. I know it's easy to wonder what those guys in suits are doing in their offices, earning what they earn while not participating in the direct creation, sales or distribution of the product a company makes but they do have an important job to do. Yes in the case of Hostess it doesn't seem that they were doing a good job, at least not one where they would get bonuses for a job well done, but those bonuses weren't going to significantly change the company needed in labor concessions to keep the bill collectors off of the company's back.

If both sides what to keep the company open, stop playing chicken with freight trains, honestly look at the costs that need cutting and do what needs to be done.

Don't forget that the Teamsters of all people aren't all that pleased with the baker's union. From a CNN article;
Now the judge sent both sides to mediation. As well as several investor groups or other baking conglomerates looking to buy Hostess up so the great Twinkie shortage should be over sooner than later. Last I looked a box of 10 were selling for around $10-15 on eBay but most of those auctions are over now.

Failed because for one reason or another didn't pass the paymaster's "Product Review Committee" or "Milestone Review Committee" that they touted in their investors relations slideshow. It could have been design concept, art style, animation, story, sample content or whatever but it didn't impress the people in the home office. Maybe it didn't have enough PvP or large raid content. Maybe it didn't have enough cash item shop potential. Whatever it was, those who controlled the money weren't satisfied with what the studio suggested.

It could be just as simple as the watchdog members didn't like the answer to the question "will it play in Peoria ... and Seoul?" Or it could be that the reasons for the previous project ideas were rejected weren't factored into the next.

I've dealt with Asian clients (as in clients from Japan, Korea and China) and sometimes their must have features list are down right sub rosa during the discussions. It seems that they can take the phrase "it goes without saying" literally at times. This is beyond the standard "the customer can't tell you want they want" that every software designer has encountered, it's as if you are totally blind to what for them is intuitively obvious in the examples they show you. However in this case however you don't lose a client because you can't get what they are asking for, you lose the support of upper management.

Of course, it's "cheap" now.

Not this again. Let me cut and paste.

NCSoft stock has dropped over 25% since the third quarter results came out last week with the volume of stock being traded over 10x normal the first day.

When Aion had it's first full quarter of sales revenue 1Q 2009, it earned more than either Lineage or Lineage II while those games maintained their previous quarters revenues. Year over year 1Q sales went up 50%. YoY 1Q profit went up over 300%. At the beginning of 2009, their stock was only at 55,000 a share. Due to all the positive buzz, by the time the 1Q 2009 report came out, the stock already tripled in price to 179,000 in only five months.

Blade & Soul's first quarter numbers painted a completely different picture. In it's first full quarter, the sum of sales revenue of Blade & Soul, Aion, Lineage and Lineage II was within 1/2 of a percent of Aion, Lineage and Lineage II's sales revenue from the previous quarter. It didn't add any new sales revenue but appear to swipe/shift it from the other three. Not good for a new "home market game".

Guild Wars 2 had higher sales revenue in it's first month than the whole quarter sales of any of the above four games. GW2 isn't necessarily a "home market game". The original Guild Wars did alright when it was pushing out paid expansions but once that stopped it's sales revenues fell dramatically. So I'm betting the analysts are looking at GW2 for only a few years of good sales instead of it being a long term source of revenue.

So institutions and other investors still holding onto NCSoft stock during the decline leading up to the release of the 3Q numbers, hoping they would be great with both new games adding revenue saw that didn't happen so they dumped it after riding it down from it's high in October of 2011 of 380,500. The stock closed Friday at 156,000.

Also Blade & Soul isn't out in the west yet. It's not even in Japan yet.

Sorry I'm old so I prefer the original.

The victim here is the employee who didn't belong to the baker's union or who did and voted against the strike action and is now out of a job.

The choice still boiled down to;

A) Quit yourself because you didn't like the new union contract the bankruptcy judge put into effect or;

B) Remain on strike even though the owners stated that if it wasn't resolved by Thursday evening, the company goes out of business and everyone is out of a job.

In either case you, a member of the baker's union who was for the strike will be out of a job but why should only you suffer for the holidays so you choose B.

They had the option to keep the company open, to keep everyone employed but they, the baker's union, chose to put everyone on the streets.

So the victims here were those who weren't in the baker's union but in one of the unions that agreed to the concessions or were in the baker's union but didn't vote to strike. Those are the people I feel sympathy towards.