Not a lot huge going on. Oh, Trump announced potential tariffs on Mexico unless they do something about their immigration problem.
1. I am not a fan of this move. I did hear the CEA for Trump on CNBC this morning saying that they have a list of things they want Mexico to do in order to slow the flow of Central American immigrants in Mexico, through Mexico, and into the US. Despite my conservative leanings, I am not a huge anti immigration guy. In fact, I don't mind immigration. I would love for US to invest in building a better wall/digital surveillance, apprehension, and deportation system. But I would also like immigration reform, DACA reform, increase legal inflow of immigration, more efficient systems, etc. BUT, I would also want a logic based system. You eff up, you're judged on almost AI and then you are out. I don't have a lot of problems with immigrants. Most of the immigrants I know, hate illegal immigrants/aliens as much or more than most of America. Their children however feel differently. I think using Tariffs seems like a ridiculous move. I understand that it is a point of leverage, but if you leverage enough, your adversary may buckle, or solve that problem so that you don't have it in the future. So you want to hold onto that leverage until you absolutely need it. I don't think this was one of those times.
2. Antitrust Law. When I went to law school, I took the class Antitrust Law with Professor Thomas Lambert. Phenomenal Prof, exceptional class. I loved Antitrust Law as it is the backbone that protects capitalism and it is essentially 3 pages of statutes. The most brilliant minds created most of the case law in Antitrust. They didn't think about the case at hand, but how their ruling would affect future businesses. Something I think most legislators, judges, politicians don't do. When I was in law school, I learned that there were maybe 20 true Antitrust Attorneys in the US. It's a very small niche. So I knew that I wouldn't get into it, and I went to Patent Law instead, which was my original intention of law school anyways. After the crash in 2008/09. I told my colleagues that Antitrust Law would be the biggest boom in the next 20-30 years. I think we started that process. It took a while to get going, but lets look at the past 3 years. 1. AT&T DOJ battle. 2. T Mobile Sprint 3. Disney FoxSports 4. Apple Qualcomm., 5. Apple/Appstore 6. DOJ looking into Google. 7. Facebook. There are huge cases coming down the pipe. And I think we are just in the infancy. The Qualcomm case came out this past week and I kind of disagree with the ruling. Here is a biased, but informative article on it. I disagree with the ruling on a couple points, but I understand the ruling about Qualcomm doing some anticompetitive business practices. I don't think the court can tell you that you have to sell to a company and can't hold your Chips as leverage. You absolutely can do that. The thing is, you may not like what Qualcomm did, but it is hard to feel bad for whining by Apple who has over $200 Billion in cash on hand. Now as I read that article, I look at how Apple does their business practices (which I complained on here before) and I think that in the end, Apple is going to regret this order and pushing the FTC to pursue this action. I could see this order cited against Apple on about 20 different software and hardware practices that they perform. Now we have DOJ looking into Google. I think this order could be cited against Google on their Ad platform. One of the issues is Google withholding YouTube from Amazon's Alexa Show because Amazon won't show the banner ads on the YouTube vids.
3. 8 Way Tie for Spelling Bee. This is ridiculous. Get some more words. I expect this to become more of the norm. One of them was from DFW which is pretty normal. Do those $50K scholarships, can they be used for high school tuition, because they kid from DFW goes to St. Marks, which is $31K/yr. So that $50K doesn't even cover 2 years.
4. There has been a lot of focus on Student Loan Debt lately. Liz Warren wants to forgive all of it if you don't make much money. I never understand this mindset that we just give to those who don't achieve. I understand that student loan debt is a problem. Here are some of the issues I see. 1. A person who pays their student loans can only deduct up to $2500/yr that's per person, or PER family if you are married joint filing. That's right, you get punished for getting married if you both have debt. How about that's the first thing we do, increase the cap for married who both have student loans. 2. We should increase the cap anyways. $2500 is a joke. If average person is about $50K in debt. Then the average person pays about $5K per year. Most of that is interest in the early years of the loan, which is coincidentally when the person needs the deduction the most. Now if you go to grad school, you get no extra help even though you go into a ton of debt. My first few years out of law school, I paid well over $10K in interest each year. 3. The phase outs are pretty low. I think it is $60K-$80K for single, probably $130K-$160K for married. Those are too low. Additionally, if you make more, but are paying way more, then you should still get some tax deduction benefit. 4. The interest rate is ridiculous. I pay 3.25% on my house and paid 6.550% on my student loans. In 2009, you could give up your house, file bankruptcy, and discharge all your mortgage debt, even if you were way under water on house. On student loans, you cannot get rid of them. I am not asking to allow them to be discharged, if that is the case, then no one would loan the money. I am just asking for more of a market rate, rather than a government set rate (thanks to 2005 student loan law). 6. Why is tuition going up so quickly? States cut funding, but also colleges increased costs. SO Missouri gave the state school system about 14% less than they did in 2001. This was while student population grew by about 45%. SO the state deserves part of the blame here. This equates to about a $130M shortage. It calculates to about $3700/student. But tuition went up considerably more than that. You also have Cost of Living increase, at 2% annually, that's about another $1K/student. SO that means tuition should have increased at most $5K. It has increased by about $6500. So as you can see, the state is a large chunk of it, but the school is also a big part as well. Another way to compare is versus private schools and they have increased by about the same percentage as state schools. SO what contributes to this? You have a large population with easy access to capital. And those schools can get it. Let's look at housing when you had a large group of people with easy access to capital who received money that they really shouldn't have? It created a bubble and ultimately a disaster. NO matter what you think who caused it or what, we need to do something.
What is the goal here? The goal is for these young alums to have buying power so that they can buy houses and start families if they want.
I think quick fixes are: lower interest rates, increase caps, increase phase outs.
Other fixes are you need to force states to pick up the tab more. So the government needs to reduce access to capital, make it harder to get the loans.
There are a lot of things that need to be done, and do them now. I think just cancelling student loans and making public college tuition free is idiotic. You will basically turn college into high school education systems, filled with a lot of people who don't care to be there and the quality dips. As such, the super rich just go to private schools and the inequality increases exponentially.
5. 2020 update. Big news is that many expect AOC to endorse Liz Warren. I don't know if this is good or bad. I think Bernie can win the nom with AOC's support. I am not sure if Warren can. I do respect Warren for putting forth policies, but that generally hurts a candidate's chances. Remember all the plans that Bernie and Trump put on the table in 2016? Me either. They just made grandiose statements. Recent polls have Biden up big, then Bernie, then either warren or harris in a huge distant 3rd. I predict that Biden does not get the nomination. It will be depressing, but interesting to watch.
1. I am not a fan of this move. I did hear the CEA for Trump on CNBC this morning saying that they have a list of things they want Mexico to do in order to slow the flow of Central American immigrants in Mexico, through Mexico, and into the US. Despite my conservative leanings, I am not a huge anti immigration guy. In fact, I don't mind immigration. I would love for US to invest in building a better wall/digital surveillance, apprehension, and deportation system. But I would also like immigration reform, DACA reform, increase legal inflow of immigration, more efficient systems, etc. BUT, I would also want a logic based system. You eff up, you're judged on almost AI and then you are out. I don't have a lot of problems with immigrants. Most of the immigrants I know, hate illegal immigrants/aliens as much or more than most of America. Their children however feel differently. I think using Tariffs seems like a ridiculous move. I understand that it is a point of leverage, but if you leverage enough, your adversary may buckle, or solve that problem so that you don't have it in the future. So you want to hold onto that leverage until you absolutely need it. I don't think this was one of those times.
2. Antitrust Law. When I went to law school, I took the class Antitrust Law with Professor Thomas Lambert. Phenomenal Prof, exceptional class. I loved Antitrust Law as it is the backbone that protects capitalism and it is essentially 3 pages of statutes. The most brilliant minds created most of the case law in Antitrust. They didn't think about the case at hand, but how their ruling would affect future businesses. Something I think most legislators, judges, politicians don't do. When I was in law school, I learned that there were maybe 20 true Antitrust Attorneys in the US. It's a very small niche. So I knew that I wouldn't get into it, and I went to Patent Law instead, which was my original intention of law school anyways. After the crash in 2008/09. I told my colleagues that Antitrust Law would be the biggest boom in the next 20-30 years. I think we started that process. It took a while to get going, but lets look at the past 3 years. 1. AT&T DOJ battle. 2. T Mobile Sprint 3. Disney FoxSports 4. Apple Qualcomm., 5. Apple/Appstore 6. DOJ looking into Google. 7. Facebook. There are huge cases coming down the pipe. And I think we are just in the infancy. The Qualcomm case came out this past week and I kind of disagree with the ruling. Here is a biased, but informative article on it. I disagree with the ruling on a couple points, but I understand the ruling about Qualcomm doing some anticompetitive business practices. I don't think the court can tell you that you have to sell to a company and can't hold your Chips as leverage. You absolutely can do that. The thing is, you may not like what Qualcomm did, but it is hard to feel bad for whining by Apple who has over $200 Billion in cash on hand. Now as I read that article, I look at how Apple does their business practices (which I complained on here before) and I think that in the end, Apple is going to regret this order and pushing the FTC to pursue this action. I could see this order cited against Apple on about 20 different software and hardware practices that they perform. Now we have DOJ looking into Google. I think this order could be cited against Google on their Ad platform. One of the issues is Google withholding YouTube from Amazon's Alexa Show because Amazon won't show the banner ads on the YouTube vids.
3. 8 Way Tie for Spelling Bee. This is ridiculous. Get some more words. I expect this to become more of the norm. One of them was from DFW which is pretty normal. Do those $50K scholarships, can they be used for high school tuition, because they kid from DFW goes to St. Marks, which is $31K/yr. So that $50K doesn't even cover 2 years.
4. There has been a lot of focus on Student Loan Debt lately. Liz Warren wants to forgive all of it if you don't make much money. I never understand this mindset that we just give to those who don't achieve. I understand that student loan debt is a problem. Here are some of the issues I see. 1. A person who pays their student loans can only deduct up to $2500/yr that's per person, or PER family if you are married joint filing. That's right, you get punished for getting married if you both have debt. How about that's the first thing we do, increase the cap for married who both have student loans. 2. We should increase the cap anyways. $2500 is a joke. If average person is about $50K in debt. Then the average person pays about $5K per year. Most of that is interest in the early years of the loan, which is coincidentally when the person needs the deduction the most. Now if you go to grad school, you get no extra help even though you go into a ton of debt. My first few years out of law school, I paid well over $10K in interest each year. 3. The phase outs are pretty low. I think it is $60K-$80K for single, probably $130K-$160K for married. Those are too low. Additionally, if you make more, but are paying way more, then you should still get some tax deduction benefit. 4. The interest rate is ridiculous. I pay 3.25% on my house and paid 6.550% on my student loans. In 2009, you could give up your house, file bankruptcy, and discharge all your mortgage debt, even if you were way under water on house. On student loans, you cannot get rid of them. I am not asking to allow them to be discharged, if that is the case, then no one would loan the money. I am just asking for more of a market rate, rather than a government set rate (thanks to 2005 student loan law). 6. Why is tuition going up so quickly? States cut funding, but also colleges increased costs. SO Missouri gave the state school system about 14% less than they did in 2001. This was while student population grew by about 45%. SO the state deserves part of the blame here. This equates to about a $130M shortage. It calculates to about $3700/student. But tuition went up considerably more than that. You also have Cost of Living increase, at 2% annually, that's about another $1K/student. SO that means tuition should have increased at most $5K. It has increased by about $6500. So as you can see, the state is a large chunk of it, but the school is also a big part as well. Another way to compare is versus private schools and they have increased by about the same percentage as state schools. SO what contributes to this? You have a large population with easy access to capital. And those schools can get it. Let's look at housing when you had a large group of people with easy access to capital who received money that they really shouldn't have? It created a bubble and ultimately a disaster. NO matter what you think who caused it or what, we need to do something.
What is the goal here? The goal is for these young alums to have buying power so that they can buy houses and start families if they want.
I think quick fixes are: lower interest rates, increase caps, increase phase outs.
Other fixes are you need to force states to pick up the tab more. So the government needs to reduce access to capital, make it harder to get the loans.
There are a lot of things that need to be done, and do them now. I think just cancelling student loans and making public college tuition free is idiotic. You will basically turn college into high school education systems, filled with a lot of people who don't care to be there and the quality dips. As such, the super rich just go to private schools and the inequality increases exponentially.
5. 2020 update. Big news is that many expect AOC to endorse Liz Warren. I don't know if this is good or bad. I think Bernie can win the nom with AOC's support. I am not sure if Warren can. I do respect Warren for putting forth policies, but that generally hurts a candidate's chances. Remember all the plans that Bernie and Trump put on the table in 2016? Me either. They just made grandiose statements. Recent polls have Biden up big, then Bernie, then either warren or harris in a huge distant 3rd. I predict that Biden does not get the nomination. It will be depressing, but interesting to watch.
