Slope of Hope Blog Posts

Slope initially began as a blog, so this is where most of the website’s content resides. Here we have tens of thousands of posts dating back over a decade. These are listed in reverse chronological order. Click on any category icon below to see posts tagged with that particular subject, or click on a word in the category cloud on the right side of the screen for more specific choices.

Civil Servants

By -

I really should know better by now, but I still get amazed when I see the obscene salaries that bureaucrats and civic employees get. I can’t imagine anyone less motivated, industrious, or clever than a government employee, and yet thanks to their unions, they get salaries that far exceed the average compensation at Goldman Sachs (or Apple or Google, for that matter). The truth value of these employees is, I am highly confident, about 66% less than they are paid.

There’s a crummy little town near Palo Alto called Redwood City – – it’s a real shithole, except for a few good taco joints – – that spends over $100 million for its government. This is a “city” of 82,000 people, and one glance will show you the largesse that they’ve granted themselves…..

0426-one

(more…)

Titillating Tax Tease

By -

It goes without saying that what has transpired in the market recently has bugged the holy hell out of me. Once again, it seems that a wallet stuff full of cash was resting on the boardwalk deck, and as we bears bent to grab it, a kid behind a corner yanked on the string and the wallet was gone.

Allow me to illustrate by way of the Russell 2000, which only last week looked beautifully poised to enter into a hellstorm of drop-i-tude:

0426-rut

(more…)