How To Get a Car For (Relatively) Free

Did a little car shopping over the break and the whole financing thing comes up. Sometimes you'll hear someone argue for the benefits of a car lease. The only benefit I see is buying more car than you can afford. Here is a simple example of the math on a lease based upon my own experience owning my car for 15 years.

Car lease cost - $300 a month. This is neither cheap or expensive. I think you can get a cheap car lease for $200, but it's common to see people paying $400 a month.

Car lease cost = $3600 a year.

Assuming you took that money and put into the stock market instead at a modest 5% return per year, it'd accumulate to $85,166. About $27K of that in interest alone.

I think you can buy a new car for $27K, or, that is the amount of interest accumulated from not leasing.

*Granted this is comparing apples and oranges, assumes one has enough money in the first place to buy a car outright vs leasing and perhaps there is additional pleasure to be gained from driving a new car every 3 years vs being stuck in an old one. But it also demonstrates how one type of behavior leads one into spinning ones wheels like a mouse in a cage whereas the other one can enrich you, if that were a personal goal.

Various and Likely Incoherent Thoughts As 2017 Comes to an End...

Obviously, it was the year of Trump...and it seems to me to have gone much better than many of the pessimistic prognosticators predicted. No new wars. In fact the opposite: the destruction of ISIS. The stock market went gangbusters. And the meritocratic elite with their PC-corporatist values got put on notice that their power and hold over the American culture knows limits. Cleary, with Trump, things could go wrong in the future and the increasing of the national debt is worrisome - but it's not like Bush, Obama, or any electable national politician would've been doing something about the debt, either. I didn't vote for Trump, nor would go back and vote for him again. My basic assessment that he's too "risky" a figure stands. But that's not to say I don't think his presidency could end up being a rather good thing. How I hold these two seemingly contradictory beliefs, I hope, is evidence that I hold a first rate intelligence.

On another note: Trump seems to have been quite productive in a number of areas. He satisfied conservatives with his judicial appointments. He reset the negotiating terms on a number of foreign policy issues (which may be good or bad, it is way to soon to tell). He passed a sneaky good tax reform, that as a competitive poker, board, and fantasy game player, I sort of admire. He did five things with his tax plan:

1) Political - Positive Action: Passed legislation that will give tax cuts to 80% of Americans and therefore be welcome. For better or worse, this is the best thing Republicans represent to Americans (myself included) -- being the party of tax cuts. We can go 'round and 'round whether this is a good thing or not, but this is one of the few "winner" political issues for Republicans.

2) Political - Negative Action: Screws his political enemies in NYC and CA (which include me) via the mortgage interest deduction limitation and other disincentives to itemizing. As a strategy board game player, one must admire the cleverness of such a move.

3) Policy Action: Undermined Obamacare through the backdoor when he couldn't get rid of it. Also, very clever, using Obamacare's poorly constructed design against itself.

4) Policy Action: Making a move towards a simplification of the tax code.

5) Policy Action: Encouraging the value of business vs. the value of property. Probably a good thing.

Logging

The Last Jedi - felt like I was watching a mixed tape of Star Wars, which beats listening to a cover band (A Force Awakens). Rogue One is the best one since the original series, IMO.

I, Tonya - biggest delightful surprise of the year.

3 Billboards - my favorite movie of the year.

Downsizing - I missed significant portions. Felt not totally well put together, but I don't get the hate for the film. Strikes me as more interesting than Get Out, which is getting praised as the best film of the year.

Dunkirk - strikes me as only worth seeing in IMAX. And quite worth it.

Get Out - fell asleep 3 times before completing it.

Simultaneously Annoying and Correct

Interview between Jeffrey Goldberg and Nikole Hanna-Jones re public schools. She nails it here re: liberals:

Yeah. But what you want is a majority-white school with a small number of black kids and a good number of Latino, a good number of Asian. That makes you feel very good about yourself because you feel like your child is getting this beautiful integrated experience. The problem is that the public schools in New York City are 70 percent black and Latino.  

So, for you to have your beautiful diversity, that means that most black and Latino kids get absolutely none. The tolerance for increasing particularly the percentage of black kids is very low, and even lower if those black kids are poor. No white parents in New York City mind having my kid in their school because they feel like I’m on their level. But if you get too many of kids like mine who are black but poor, there’s very little tolerance.

When I was in high school, I flirted with the idea of banning private schools because it would force public schools to be better. Now that I'm older, I'm highly skeptical any such project would work and that we benefit from having choice - it moderates public schools, which could easily otherwise deteriorate into DMV-like conditions.

Here's a thought for someone who's primary goal in life is the advancement of African Americans (this is not my primary goal in life, that is why I suggest it for someone else) -- instead of trying to improve outcomes for ALL African Americans across the entire country by trying to shame liberals into big, huge, sweeping political changes, just go to one of these so called "lousy" schools with majority African American / Latino children and turn it into a great school. I don't think this would be rocket science. You could easily get the money and resources to do it. Because you just need one local example. I can almost guarantee you'd have white families banging down the doors trying to get their kids in the school IF it were providing a good education. And if not...then a) you'd have a good evidence whites are racists and b) you'd have a great school and wouldn't really care.

If it worked, Control-Copy-Paste elsewhere.

So Much Winning

Why didn't the "Arab street" protest the Jerusalem announcement?

My guess: they have more important things to do with their time and American and European Liberals are painfully ignorant about what Palestinians and other Arabs actually think and feel.

Badass

A US squad stationed inside East Germany in case the Cold War went hot.

Good Point

For those attracted to relativism:

"If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so."

Imagine

If Trump pulled off a Middle East peace deal.

I know years of focusing on the Palestinian issue hasn't gotten anywhere, so to shift the focus to confronting/making a bulwark against Iran may not be such a dumb idea at all.

Machado De Assis 

These NFL anthem protests are beginning to resemble a Machado De Assis aburd novella.

The incoherence of all parties is beginning to turn comic. None of it makes any sense whatsoever. Nobody even knows what is being protested anymore.

Everyone should read The Alienist.

Fake News

ABC suspends senior news correspondent for "not properly vetting" the story about Flynn testifying against Trump.

For all the hysteria about Trump, it'd strengthen the case against him if he didn't end up being right so often.