Tag Archives: money

Apple Makes As Much Money As All Of New Zealand

Posted by apt46 on May 10, 2012 None comments

A cool new infographic shows exactly how ridiculously successful Apple is. Keep in mind that when Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, the company was weeks away from bankruptcy; now it’s the most valuable company in the world:

  • Its annual revenue is on par with New Zealand’s GDP
  • It has over 100B$ in cash, with which it could buy T-Mobile, Nokia, Netflix, Adobe, Twitter and RIM (who makes Blackberry).
  • It also could use that money to build and run a station on the moon for 8 years, buy all their employees mansions, buy everyone in the world a meal at McDonald’s (including dessert), end world hunger for three years, hire the Russian military for two years, or buy all the sports teams in America and pay for the Olympics.
  • 30% of smartphone users have an iPhone
  • There are 600,000 apps in the app store, and they’ve been downloaded 25 billion times

 

From Sortable, via iMore

Suprisingly, NFL Players Are Woefully Underpaid

Posted by apt46 on May 7, 2012 None comments

ESPN has a list of all 278 professional, major-league sports teams in the world, ranked by the average player’s salary. The list includes teams from 10 countries, playing 7 sports, totaling about 8,000 players, each of which averages 2m$ per year. Yet the first NFL team on that list, the Pittsburgh Steelers, is ranked a whopping 75th with an average of 3m$ per player per year.  The last NFL team, the Cincinatti Bengals, is ranked 184th, averaging half that salary — 1.6m$ per player.

Meanwhile in soccer, which claims 7 of the 10 highest spots, salaries range from the 1st ranked Barça at 8.7m$ per player to tenth ranked Inter Milan (5.7m$/player), to dead last on the entire list – Columbus Crew with an average of 89k$. American soccer of course has no fans, so the LA Galaxy tops that subset of the list at #219, with 555k$ per player. But, there are three American teams in the top 10 so that we can at least save face: at #5, the LA Lakers (6.3m$/player), followed by NY Yankees (6.2m$/player) at #6, and the Philadelphia Phillies (5.8m$/player) in 9th place.

 

CC Sabathia is the highest paid pitcher in baseball history

 

One thing to keep in mind is that these numbers are averages: a few star players make a lot more, and most make a lot less. Having said that, the cheapest NBA team — the 66th ranked Indiana Pacers — pay more per player (3.4m$) than the NFL’s wealthiest, the Steelers. Average baseball salaries have a lot more variance: their highest salaries are comparable to the top NBA ones, but their lowest are on par with the lowest NFL salaries. For example, the cheapest baseball team is the Oakland As, who are ranked 164th and pay 1.8m$ per player — marginally more than the aforementioned Bengals. (Incidentally, the 2011 movie Moneyball told the story of how the As did very well in the early 2000s, despite having no money, by analyzing their players using a statistical system called sabermetrics.)

 

So the average salary for every NBA player is higher than every NFL player, but baseball spans them both. And it makes sense that basketball players make more money, since there are fewer of them on the team. It also makes sense that baseball players make more money, since their season is longer and they play dozens and dozens of games per season instead of the 16 in the NFL. But football players get punished like in no other sport and they deserve more compensation than the soccer and basketball players that fall down and grab their shin at the drop of a hat; especially the much-ignored linebackers.

In other news, college football players are still glorified slaves who bring in millions to universities, and in return are paid absolutely nothing.

The entire list is available on ESPN’s website.

From ESPN, via NPR

 

Spoken Language Correlates To Long-Term Choices

Posted by apt46 on February 9, 2012 None comments

An associate professor of economics at Yale wrote a very interesting paper (PDF) in which he compares good future-driven behaviors with not speaking a future-aware language. He noted the distinction between languages that have a strong future-time reference (FTR) requirement and ones that have a weak one: for example, English ranks as a strong FTR language because the language changes significantly when talking about the future (“It will be cold tomorrow”) compared to talking about the present (“It is cold today”). Contrast that with Finnish, which barely changes to account for the future: “Tomorrow be cold” vs “Today be cold.”

Most languages have a strong FTR: all Romance ones, most Slavic, Turkic, Iranian, etc. The language families that tend to have weak FTRs are Germanic, Chinese, Japanese and Sundic. (English, while a Germanic language, has been so heavily influenced by Latin and French that it has a strong FTR — the only other Germanic language besides Afrikaans to do so.)

Charlize Theron's first language is Afrikaans

 

The paper then compares this language trait with data that indicates a concern for the future: savings accounts, heavy smoking, physical activity, obesity. The idea being that if you smoke a pack a day, have 47$ in your bank account, spend your weekends on the couch and ate a cheesecake for dinner last night, you probably aren’t too concerned about the future. It turned out that speakers of languages with weak FTRs (like the Germans and Japanese) are a lot better about future-oriented behaviors:

Weak-FTR speakers are 30% more likely to have saved in any given year, and have accumulated an additional 170 thousand Euros by retirement. I also examine non-monetary measures such as health behaviors and long-run health. I find that by retirement, weak-FTR speakers are in better health by numerous measures: they are 24% less likely to have smoked heavily, are 29% more likely to be physically active, and are 13% less likely to be medically obese.

So there is correlation between how much a language emphasizes the distinction between present and future and how much speakers of that language prepare for the future. This is evident in the current economic situation in Europe: Germany (weak FTR) has to bail out Greece, Spain and Italy (strong FTRs). The author’s hypothesis is that speakers of languages like Finnish, in which present and future are pretty much treated the same, are more aware of the future because to them the future is now — so they tend to smoke less and save more. Whereas the French see the future as this far-off thing, so they smoke more and save less.

 

But is there also a causation between language and behavior? That’s a much harder question to answer: it could be that the language influences behavior, and it’s pretty unlikely that behavior influences language — people would have to migrate on a scale that’s probably a lot larger than observed. But it could also be that a third factor, like culture, influenced the way the languages developed, as well as the behavior. If, thousands of years ago, the Germans as a people were concerned about the future, maybe they didn’t care to make the distinction between present and future, but cared to save their gold. The author himself notes that it appears that language and culture both independently influence future-driven behavior, and that language doesn’t directly cause that behavior, but that it may affect it through an intermediary.

In marginally-related news, having a name that’s easy to pronounce has been correlated to being more likely to be promoted. That explains why Mitt doesn’t go by Willard.

From Yale (PDF), via Motherboard and Slashdot

Actually, You Probably Are The 1%

Posted by apt46 on January 17, 2012 4 comments

A World Bank economist figured out that an income of about 34,000$ per year, per person, after taxes makes them one of the richest 1% in the world. Half of those people come from America, another quarter from Western Europe, and the rest is split between Latin America, Australia and East Asia (Japan, Korea, Taiwan). China, India and African countries didn’t make the cut. And even the poorest Americans still make more money than two-thirds of the planet.

 

From CNN Money, via Neatorama

The Anglosphere Is Very Charitable

Posted by apt46 on December 21, 2011 None comments

Besides being #1 at jailing people, the US is also number one at charity: the Charities Aid Foundation did a survey (PDF) in which they asked people if they donated money or time, or helped a stranger in the prior month. While America won the prize, the interesting thing is the top ten list:

  1. USA
  2. Ireland
  3. Australia
  4. New Zealand
  5. UK
  6. Netherlands
  7. Canada
  8. Sri Lanka
  9. Thailand
  10. Laos

Besides the Dutch, who pretty much universally speak English, the top seven countries are all the English-speaking former colonies of the British Empire, collectively known as the Anglosphere. Given their histories, if members of the Anglosphere are cultural brothers, the Netherlands is a close cousin.

Also, how charitable a country is has nothing to do with how wealthy it is: only 5 of the 20 richest countries made it into the top 20 most charitable. Here are the top ten global economies, along with their charitableness ranking:

  1. USA: 1
  2. China: 140
  3. Japan: 105
  4. India: 91
  5. Germany: 26
  6. Russia: 130
  7. UK: 5
  8. Brazil: 85
  9. France: 80
  10. Italy: 104

Looking at their economies per capita, countries with richer individuals tend to give more to charity, but it still doesn’t explain why countries with very low per-capita income like Sri Lanka, Thailand and Laos are very charitable, while ones with richer citizens, like France, Italy and Japan, are not. Religion doesn’t seem to play a role in it either.

A bone to the dog is not charity. Charity is a bone shared with the dog, when you are just as hungry as the dog. (Jack London)

From The Charities Aid Foundation (PDF) and NPR

Mindsets Of The Rich And Poor

Posted by apt46 on November 7, 2011 None comments

The book Secrets of the Millionaire Mind was recently featured on the personal finance blog Get Rich Slowly because it has a list of 17 ways rich people think differently than poor people. The common thread is that rich people tend to truly believe they are going to be rich (i.e., not mere wishful thinking), and so they think and act wealthy: they take good care of their existing money, they constantly look for ways to make more money, and generally think they’re in control of their financial future:

  1. Rich people believe: “I create my life.” Poor people believe: “Life happens to me.”
  2. Rich people play the money game to win. Poor people play the money game to not lose.
  3. Rich people are committed to being rich. Poor people want to be rich.
  4. Rich people think big. Poor people think small.
  5. Rich people focus on opportunities. Poor people focus on obstacles.
  6. Rich people admire other rich and successful people. Poor people resent rich and successful people.
  7. Rich people associate with positive, successful people. Poor people associate with negative or unsuccessful people.
  8. Rich people are willing to promote themselves and their value. Poor people think negatively about selling and promotion.
  9. Rich people are bigger than their problems. Poor people are smaller than their problems.
  10. Rich people are excellent receivers. Poor people are poor receivers.
  11. Rich people choose to get paid based on results. Poor people choose to get paid based on time.
  12. Rich people think “both”. Poor people think “either/or”.
  13. Rich people focus on their net worth. Poor people focus on their working income.
  14. Rich people manage their money well. Poor people mismanage their money well.
  15. Rich people have their money work hard for them. Poor people work hard for their money.
  16. Rich people act in spite of fear. Poor people let fear stop them.
  17. Rich people constantly learn and grow. Poor people think they already know.

From Get Rich Slowly

20% Of Americans Believe They Will Be Millionaires

Posted by apt46 on September 22, 2011 1 comments

And not just whenever, but in the next decade. That’s about 4 times as much as the actual 5% who are millionaires, and more than twice as much as the number of British people that think they’ll be millionaires. It’s actually not that difficult to be a millionaire: a 25 year-old saving 450$/mo would have a cool million by the age of 70. But of course, by then a million will be worth a lot less.

From CNBC, via Neatorama

Netflix Has Jumped The Shark

Posted by apt46 on July 15, 2011 2 comments

The New York Times’ technology reviewer, David Pogue, talked to Netflix about the recent 60% increase of their DVD + streaming plan, and Netflix’s explanation is not what you’d think. Everyone thought their costs have been going up because the contracts they sign with media companies have been getting more expensive since streaming video has really taken off in the past couple of years. That’s not the case at all: Netflix’s costs haven’t changed much. Which makes you even angrier, right? Nothing in reality has changed in the past several months, but the price went up anyway. It’s like if Toyota suddenly decided to charge 32k$ for the Camry instead of 20k$. Not because the cost of producing it went up, but because they felt they could make more money.

Samsung Blu-Ray player with Netflix support

 

Apparently what Netflix wants is a paradigm shift away from the one they willingly introduced: “Free streaming. Awesome.”  It’s how you boil a live frog: put it in cold water, then slowly turn up the heat. First they had the DVD mailing service — this is how Netflix made it big — but no streaming. Then they introduced streaming. At first no one cared about it, because there was nothing worthwhile to stream and also, it was a pain: you either had to watch it on your computer or hook your computer up to the TV, which was then a pain to control. So because of that, it was free but limited to an hour per dollar amount of your bill (if you paid 20$/mo, you got 20 hours of streaming). But then they got a bunch of TV shows on the streaming side and got some set-top boxes (Wii, XBox, Blu-Ray players, etc) to support streaming and it started taking off. This was back when they cared about customers, so they increased their prices only a couple of bucks in exchange for unlimited streaming — awesome! They also added the 8$/mo streaming-only option which seemed nice of them, but which turned out to be the reason for the current price hike.

Photo by Andrew Magill

 

What that streaming-only option did was change the paradigm of what you were paying for: before, it was mainly a DVD at a time plus a poor streaming selection for 10$/mo; after, it was 8$/mo for a decent streaming selection plus 2$/mo for a DVD. So now streaming, which is hugely profitable for Netflix, took center-stage and the DVD service was just an add-on. And then someone made the following realization: “wait a second, people are only paying 2$/mo for DVDs, when they used to be paying 8$ for them! Go get ‘em, accountant dogs!” So they walked themselves (and us) down this road from DVDs costing money and streaming being free, to streaming costing real money and DVDs being cheap, to “well, they both cost real money.”

What’s even worse is that, as Pogue points out, they still don’t have real competition. Even with the price hike, all the other services are worse:

  • Netflix: 1 DVD at a time for 8$/mo, unlimited streaming for 8$/mo
  • Blockbuster: 1 DVD at a time 12$/mo, expensive pay-per-view streaming (a lot more expensive than Netflix)
  • Hulu Plus: no DVDs, 8$/mo for unlimited streaming (same as streaming-only Netflix, probably worse selection)
  • RedBox: 8$-9$/mo for DVDs, no streaming (assuming you only keep the DVDs for one night each, but you also have to go to and from the machine; on the plus side, if you don’t watch that many movies, the cost will be a lot lower per month)
  • Amazon: no DVDs, expensive pay-per-view streaming — or 80$/yr (i.e., 7$/mo) for  unlimited streaming via Amazon Prime (more on this below)

So now their new price structure makes more sense: even with it, they’re still the cheapest, best option around. And they already have all your movie watching data and an excellent recommendation engine, which means they can make good suggestions for you to watch — something none of the other services can do. But they have still jumped the shark: it used to be Netflix was a no-brainer because they were cheap, had an excellent selection between the DVDs and streaming, and they were awesomely customer focused. Now they’re obviously just screwing customers as much as they can get away with (e.g., they took into account customer defection before the announcing the price hike), they’re not that cheap anymore, and their selection isn’t that much better. So what used to be an awesome company took a sharp turn for the mediocre.

For proof, the best value isn’t even their 16$ 1-DVD + streaming plan; instead it’s their 8$ 1-DVD plan + Amazon Prime‘s 7$ streaming plan for 15$. That’s the new no brainer because on top of the cheaper unlimited streaming, Prime also gives you unlimited free two-day shipping with no minimum purchase. If you buy 3 things a year from Amazon and save 4$ at a time on shipping, that’s another 1$ off every month: now it’s 2$ cheaper than Netflix. And you get your stuff in two days. And you still have Netflix, so you can still rate movies and get its good recommendation engine. And Prime video is available on the TV via a bunch of Blu-Ray players. What’s available via streaming is an open question, and it would be nice if someone made a comparison between all of the different streaming services’ selections, though Amazon likely has one of the better libraries.

But at the end of the day, this move by Netflix definitely means the end of days for dirt cheap streaming. On the bright side, for people that only care about either streaming or DVDs — but not both — your price just went down 2$/mo, so good for you.

Via The New York Times

2016: The Beginning of the End of the American Age

Posted by apt46 on April 27, 2011 3 comments

Yahoo! Finance has an article saying that by one measure of economic size — purchasing power parity (PPP) — China will surpass the US in 2016. That’s what’s predicted by the IMF, and it’s a lot sooner than the mid-2020s that most people thought. However, America will still be ahead of China by a different measure: that of exchange rates. The problem is that using exchange rates is flawed because China is still the Soviet Union’s rich cousin, and currency is not traded on the free market like the US dollar: it’s controlled by the Chinese state, and severely undervalued.

Purchasing power parity on the other hand, is what’s used by the CIA’s own World Factbook to rank countries in terms of the size of their economies. By that measure, the American economy was three times as big as China’s a decade ago; last year, it was about one and a half times bigger. The US has been the largest economy in the world for well over a century, and therefore the enormity of this milestone cannot be underscored enough. Before taking the reigns as the biggest economy, the only country America ever beat down was Mexico; after, Japan and Germany — at the same time. So what all of this means is that whoever gets (re-)elected in 2012 will be the last President to run the US as the undisputed leader of the world.

We could say that the British — from whom America took the economic lead at the end of the 19th century — did well for themselves… but then again, the US is as close an ally as the UK has. The relationship between China and the US however, is a much different animal — like if early 1900s Imperial Japan took over from Britain — and it will be interesting to see what the world will look like under Chinese economic hegemony. But, hopefully the Illuminati have some craziness up their sleeve to keep the West in power.

From Yahoo! Financial

Money CAN Buy Happiness

Posted by apt46 on April 19, 2011 None comments

Get Rich Slowly has a two-part article on how to buy happiness with money. It’s true, money can’t buy you love or friendship, but it can still make you pretty happy if you spend it the right way. The article is a summary of a research paper called “If Money Doesn’t Make You Happy Then You’re Probably Not Spending It Right” (PDF), which  says that people are very poor judges of what will make them happy, and they end up spending their money on all the wrong things. The paper is written by a trio from Harvard, University of Virginia, and University British Columbia, so presumably they know what they’re talking about. Here’s what they suggest you do your money, instead of blowing it on your retirement like you know you want to:

  • Buy experiences, not stuff. After a month, that t-shirt or couch or stainless-steel fridge/washer/dryer combo won’t do anything for you. Instead, spend that money hanging out with your friends, or going on an awesome vacation, or both. And take pictures. In a few years, all you’ll remember is the good parts of what you did, and it’ll make the experiences seem even better. Stuff on the other hand, just ends up owning you with its constant demand of being paid off, cleaned, fixed, and upgraded.
  • Help others. If you’ve ever given a good gift, you know what this is talking about. Doing one thing to make someone else happy will make you happier than doing a dozen things for yourself. So buy people good gifts, give bums change, and help people out whenever you want. Maybe all those major religions were on to something.
  • Buy less expensive things more often, rather than just saving up for big ticket items. Do both if you can, but if it’s one or the other, ten dinners out at Applebee’s will probably make you a lot happier than one super-fancy one at Ruth’s Chris. And a cup of coffee from Starbucks every morning will probably make you happier than a new lamp.
  • Quit worrying about stuff. If it breaks, it breaks: unless you’re an emotional mess, you’ll deal with it and it won’t be the end of the world. And if you set up insurance for everything, you won’t enjoy it as much because you take it for granted. Obviously get insurance for stuff you absolutely need (like your car and house), but not for your Wii. It’s a waste of money for one thing, and it makes you appreciate it less for another.
  • Wait before you buy. If you just buy everything you want when you want it, you won’t appreciate it, and you’ll spend a lot of money on stuff you’ll never use like… lets see what’s on my desk: ah yes, an M&M Dispenser. And if you wait for a while, the anticipation makes it even better. Like waiting for a Christmas gift.
  • Beware the downside. Everything comes with good and bad sides. An awesome ski trip comes with a long flight, hauling a snowboard around, and sore muscles. A new puppy comes with all kinds of barking and cleanup and having to come home every 5 hours to feed it. Make sure the downside of the stuff you buy is worth the upside.
  • Beware comparison shopping. You look at two phones, and you want something that has a big screen and feels nice, and has all the apps you want. But they all do that, and before you know it you’re spending 100$ more on one that has integrated face recognition, which two days ago you didn’t even know existed, and two days from now you won’t even care about.
  • Ask the audience. If you want to go to Greece, see if other people loved Greece. If you want to go see Sucker Punch, don’t: it sucked. If you want to buy an iPhone, ask your friends if they love it. How much other people like something is biggest predictor for how much you’re going to like it.

Via Get Rich Slowly