Re: Stop giving ex-wives these undeserved millions, says Baroness Deech

In article <MPG.252774c3a58a248f989907@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Mark Borgerson <mborgerson@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

In article <marek1965-55E48F.20223425092009@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
marek1965@xxxxxxxxxxx says...
In article <MPG.252679c62a0a335b9898ff@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Mark Borgerson <mborgerson@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

In article <marek1965-9ACCDB.23005024092009@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
marek1965@xxxxxxxxxxx says...
In article <mxwum.9916$_W1.2484@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
"Ranting" <ranting@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

"Heidi Graw" <hgraw@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:Shwum.44948$Db2.18992@xxxxxxxxxxx

"Ranting" <ranting@xxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:_Xvum.41472$xn1.37638@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
(snip)

Ranting wrote:
You forgot something very important, while you were 'doing it
yourself'
you could have been working at a job that pays more

Let's dispense with the *could haves* and keep our attention
on *what is.*


You can't dispense with the "could haves" when determining if you
saved
money by doing it yourself because hours are not an infinite item

A funny example of this happened recently. We were moving and needed
carpets cleaned. The carpet cleaners had a special: $120 or something
like that.

But... on the other hand we could rent a cleaner for $50 and did. We
got it done in about 4 hours total.

Of course, it can be argued that we could have worked that time, right?

But... what about the time it takes to look up the service, to wait for
them to arrive, to watch what they do, inspect their work, etc?
Indeed,
many justifications for alimony was that the tennis wife "supervised"
her personal servants. Fiddle dee dee!

Seriously though: Sometimes there's a savings and sometimes there's
not.
In addition, much of the work women did just didn't NEED to be done but
was rather about her standards. That brings to mind Rant's observation
below that not only does alimony work on non-free market rates and
non-comparables, but often services the WOMEN chose to buy much like
you
going to a restaurant them giving you all kinds of extras you didn't
order, or want, and then them hitting you with the bill.

Continuing:

and therefore when you cleaned it yourself at your assumed value of
$20
an
hour (which btw is way above the going rate),

Much depends on where and who. In my area, trying to find a
cleaner
is really difficult. The rates can soar up to $50.00/hr due to the
competitive
market...demand outstrips supply. Within my own social circle, of
all
the folks I know who have cleaners come in, they pay anywhere from
$25.00 to $35.00/hr.

Ill-educated immigrants tend to get paid below minimum wages until
they
learn they've been exploited by their employers. There's also the
problem
of claiming someone is only getting $1.60/hr when in fact the cost
of
room
and board should have also been calculated into that wage.

But, again, no matter how much the actual wage, the point is that
cleaning
is a marketable skill. It has a market value.

Heidi


Yes it does have market value that is my point though, it's value is
actually determined by market forces , but when a divorce happens ,
someone
shouldn't be able to unilaterily determine what that market value is
because
you claim above that demand outstrips supply and that is true BUT
only if
the person is willing to pay that $50 an hour and "MAKING" someone
pay it
afterwards is wrong, they were never given the choice to get a low
education
immigrant to do it and plus it appears no one is willing to factor in
how
much of that house work is 'caused' by the wife (cleaner in this
case)

It is kind of like saying that "I am selling my car , a person says,
I
might
be interested in it and two months later the person selling the car
demands
a payment of $5000 because they believe it is the going rate", what
people
like you want is to FORCE the person to buy the car at the rate
determined
by someone else NOT by the person buying the car , even taking away
the
right NOT TO BUY THE CAR in the first place.

Hahahaha! This has a lot to do with the HOUSING market! :-) I LOVE
watching homeowners proclaim that since they paid a half million for a
1
bedroom condo on a rat infested river and their neighbor sold it for
that price 3 years ago, then they expected the same thing.

By definition, as I said in another post, if the services such women
had
were that real market value then they would be selling them and
wouldn't
need alimony in the first place! You don't need to force someone to
take a great deal!

Alimony works by ignoring the benefits the women enjoyed such as
housing
she magically lived in, bills that were magically paid (including
hospital in the states), etc. Just as "matriarchy" and women's
equality
only works when all the stuff that white males in western nations do to
keep them "equal" and well-to-do.

I just love the global warming hysteria about how they can just
magically make oil and coal disapper with magical solar and wind power.
Yeah, let's see how that works out for 'em. Like in rolling blackout
California...


Umm---there is good evidence that the rolling blackouts in Calfornia
had little to do with an aversion to coal power plants and a lot
to do with market manipulation by power companies and brokers:

"California's utilities came to depend in part on the import of excess
hydroelectricity from the Pacific Northwest states of Oregon and
Washington.[citation needed] California's groundbreaking clean air
standards favored in-state electricity generation which burned natural
gas because of its lower emissions, as opposed to coal whose emissions
are more toxic and contain more pollutants.

Er, yeah, Californian's opposition to coal had nothing to do with a lack
of coal fired plants in the region. This is obvious proof of market
manipulation! :-)

Is this sarcasm or not? What is your point here?

My point, MarkB, is that your response at that stage in the paragaph
only strengthened my point and weakened your counter claim.

It's unclear, in part, because the prevailing winds in Southern
California would move most of the pollution to Arizona and Nevada.
(Arizona has already had it's own problems with coal-fired plants
contributing to decreased visibility in the Grand Canyon area.)

The small number of coal fired power plants in California
probably has more to do with lack of any coal reserves in
the southern part of the state than anything else.

Now I will concede THAT point. Certainly if it's cost effective to
train in coal to fire 'em up that would explain it although you should
have said so in the first place.

THAT SAID, it's funny that economic factors weren't taken into
consideration with flower-tree-hugger power such as solar and even wind.
While there are areas where wind make a lot of sense (such as the drive
along Palm Springs where I worry about my car getting blown off the road
because they're so strong), for the most part the granola eaters have
been unrealistic about the economic benefits of their "green power".

Also in the news, presence of rain has nothing to do with people getting
wet...

In the summer of 2000 a drought in the northwest states reduced the
amount of hydroelectric power available to California. Though at no
point during the crisis was California's sum of [actual electric-
generating capacity]+[out of state supply] less than demand,
California's energy reserves were low enough that during peak hours the
private industry which owned power-generating plants could effectively
hold the State hostage by shutting down their plants for "maintenance"
in order to manipulate supply and demand.

Er, perhaps the state shouldn't have "deregulated" the industry which
allowed producers to charge what they like while setting prices for
consumers?


Are you arguing for more strict regulation of utilities? That would
seem contrary to your other attitudes about government.

Er, no. Allow me to educate you:

I put the term "deregulated" in quotes to emphasize that it wasn't
really deregulation at all. While you may disagree with my point, it's
clear that my intent was to emphasize that the government's own
regulations were responsible for the problem.

Also in the sentence, I said that the government "set prices" which also
implies regulation.

In addition, hint, a lack of local plants due to California relying upon
tree-hugger magic bean power and getting it from the grid from hundreds
of miles away adds costs and environmental impacts of their own. Are
you aware that electrical lines have resistence?

Well, except for superconductors they do have resistance

Of course. How many of these are set up for use by power companies in
the USA or even worldwide?

Tee hee. You probably could propose setting them up right now and some
Californian bureaucrat would fund you to start construction. :-)

Do you know
that the cost of transmitting electricity at high voltage on the grid
is a small fraction of the production or retail cost?.

"Long-distance transmission of electricity (thousands of kilometers) is
cheap and efficient, with costs of US$ 0.005 to 0.02 per kilowatt-hour
(compared to annual averaged large producer costs of US$ 0.01 to US$
0.025 per kilowatt-hour, retail rates upwards of US$ 0.10 per kilowatt-
hour, and multiples of retail for instantaneous suppliers at unpredicted
highest demand moments).[13] Thus distant suppliers can be cheaper than
local sources (e.g. New York City buys a lot of electricity from
Canada). Multiple local sources (even if more expensive and infrequently
used) can make the transmission grid more fault tolerant to weather and
other disasters that can disconnect distant suppliers."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_power_transmission

Two cents out of 10 cents comes out to 20%. Even a 1/2 cent is 5%.

And do you pay 10 cents pre KW for your power? That was about what I
remember paying in California (probably more now hence I'm glad I moved)
but I pay a nickel here in Virginia. My co-worker told me that he lives
near a power plant and he pays half of that so apparently it's not as
small a fraction as you, or this page, likes to claim.

Also, as you and I both know, overuse of the grid can cause rolling
blackouts:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_grid
"Electricity generation and consumption must be balanced across the
entire grid, because energy is consumed almost after it is produced. A
large failure in one part of the grid - unless quickly compensated for -
can cause current to re-route itself to flow from the remaining
generators to consumers over transmission lines of insufficient
capacity, causing further failures. One downside to a widely connected
grid is thus the possibility of cascading failure and widespread power
outage. "

I don't know the economic balance between shipping the fuel to a plant
closer to the consumer and the shipping of power to the consumer from
a plant closer to the fuel.

If you look at the map at :
http://www.eia.doe.gov/neic/brochure/electricity/electricity.html

you will see that California is the only state West of the
Rockies where electricity costs more than $0.10/kwh. All
the rest of these states have much lower costs. I don't
know if the prices in the Northeast are so high because they
are paying a lot to ship fuel to local plants or because
they are paying a lot to ship power from plants
in Canada, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

Actually, MarkB, there is a coal-to-liquid program that is much more
realistic than superconducting grids:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/05/28/MNG3BQ2HNG1.D
TL
"In Congress, Democratic and Republican lawmakers from coal states like
West Virginia, Kentucky, Montana and Illinois are advocating a crash
program to develop coal-to-liquids, in which coal is converted into
synthetic gasoline or diesel. Even presidential hopeful Sen. Barack
Obama, D-Ill., is a supporter, although he recently bowed to
environmentalists by saying he backs only the most experimental coal
technologies that emit less greenhouse gases than gasoline -- and are
much more expensive."

Nonetheless, I concede your point that coal power, for California, may
not be cost effective due to shipping it directly versus the grid.
Regarding the NorthEast, once again, I'm unsure but from what I have
seen they are also NIMBY adherents including Kennedy who scuttled
windmills off of Martha's vineyard.

These critical shutdowns often
occurred for no other reason than to force California's electricity grid
managers into a position where they would be forced to purchase
electricity on the "spot market", where private generators could charge
astronomical rates. Even though these rates were semi-regulated and tied
to the price of natural gas, the companies (which included Enron and
Reliant Energy) controlled the supply of natural gas as well.
Manipulation by the industry of natural gas prices resulted in higher
electricity rates that could be charged under the semi-regulations."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_electricity_crisis

Indeed! It's amazing that Enron was regarded as a failure of the market
to protect stockholders from badly designed companies wasn't it? A
company that makes lots of money! What wants to invest in that! :-)

This paragraph seems to lack both wit and logic.

Hahahahaha!

MarkB, you have little authority to judge someone else's lack of humor.
:-) Your posts are so dry that I have to throw water on my flatscreen
to keep it from cracking.

(That was a joke. Oh, and I know that throwing water at flatscreens is
a bad idea.)

Is it supposed to
be factual or sarcastic?

Well, duh, it's quite sarcastic. Clearly Enron's basic business model
was quite successful. Commodities trading can be quite lucrative
especially when the government allows power companies to charge what
they like and then engage in NIMBY further constricting supply. It's
like becoming a OJ commodities trader after Florida bans orange grove
farms...

Who regarded Enron as a failure of the market to protect stockholders?

I typed that EXACT phrase into google. Feel free to read the results
including the top return:

http://www.google.com/#hl=en&source=hp&q=Who+regarded+Enron+as+a+failure+
of+the+market+to+protect+stockholders%3F&aq=f&aqi=&oq=&fp=69ff31901b811ad

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WD4-4JGJJ91-1&;
_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStr
Id=1025173392&_rerunOrigin=google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion
=0&_userid=10&md5=e1a45200c81a9dad8196da5c1b0bf12a

"Abstract
This article looks at the Enron affair in terms of what investors and
experts fail to take into account to being able to predict Enron
collapse."

Enjoy!

Who or what wants to invest in a company that makes lots of money until
it goes bankrupt? (Perhaps the same people that bought million-dollar
houses in Phoenix as investments! ;-) )

Mark Borgerson

I honestly know more about real estate than Enron. It's my
understanding that they have a parellel in that they both are profitable
but apparently investors overestimated their returns. After all,
housing and energy are what most people need and use everyday.

Housing isn't "bankrupt". The luxury houses in Phoenix do still have
value. Just not as much value as their investors bet on.

regards,
PolishKnight
.

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