"That could be things like social security payments,..."

The very fact that you, a thinking and knowledgable adult, believed that social security payments (which are funded by cashing in existing treasuries held by the Social Security Trust Fund, and thus is debt neutral) would have been affected by us hitting the debt ceiling, tells me that one of the real problems here is that the current Administration has completely failed to effectively communicate the current state of financial affairs in Washington D.C.

(Social Security holds treasuries, so to send out a check for $1, they would cash in one of their debt treasuries for $1--which the Treasury department would then sell to someone else for $1. The total debt stays the same; it's just that the $1 of debt would be transferred from the Social Security Trust Fund to some bank in China. Thus, Social Security payments would not be effected unless someone in the Administration decided to stop paying Social Security as a sort of political "fsck you" to get seniors riled up about whomever (Eastasia, Eurasia) we're at war with.)

By failing to effectively communicate the current state of financial affairs, this has increased the risk on the economy (because I bet you're not willing to spend $100,000 on new hardware for your plant if you can't figure out what is going to happen tomorrow in Washington D.C. because all our leaders--Democrats and Republicans alike--are acting like spoiled children rather than the dignified leaders of one of the most powerful countries and powerful economic forces in the world today), and this has lowered tax receipts and the non-governmental GDP. And by failing to effectively communicate Administration intentions during a crisis point to the banks and to Wall Street, holders of Treasuries were uncertain if the Administration was even going to be making the latest wave of debt payments on current (income yielding) treasuries, or if they would cashing in existing debt instruments, since rolling those over involves creating new debt. And there was no clear guidance if, in the event there was a defacto balanced budget enforced by the debt ceiling what administration priorities would be when having to choose what to fund and what not to fund.

In other words, by failing to effectively communicate clearly what Administration intentions are, setting a set of fixed goals, and moving in a deliberate and careful way to those fixed goals, we've lost S&P's confidence that we can even pay the bills like mature adults.

Well, and given the angular resolution of most people's eyes, honestly unless you have a very large big-screen TV and plan to sit very close to it, most people won't notice the difference at all. The human eye can differentiate to around 1 minute of arc, which at 14 feet (the width of my living room) translates to 1.24 millimeters, or about 20 pixels/inch. An HDTV has a resolution of 1920 pixels wide; at 20 pixels/inch this yields 96 inches--which means for a TV set smaller than 8 feet wide, the pixels don't contribute anything when I'm sitting 14 feet away, unless I have exceptionally good eyes. (I don't.) Even at 480i, with 720 pixels horizontally, at 14 feet distance, a 42inch monitor will have roughly 20 pixels/inch, which is right at the hairy edge of many people's perceptions.

Now if you stand right in front of the monitor (or have a 23" computer monitor with a resolution of 1920 by 1080), you can see the pixels. But you're not staring at the thing from 14 feet away.

So it's not just a matter of the average person not caring. The extra pixels are also being wasted on most people.

We're assuming from the article that the problem was these guys paid themselves too little salary. But I wonder if what happened was that these guys didn't pay themselves their business profits correctly. That is, I wonder if they paid their "profits" at the same time as the "salary", rather than waiting to close the books at the end of the quarter or the year.

If that's the case, it's not a matter of paying themselves enough salary. It's a matter of actually waiting for the profits to be computed in a profit and loss statement prior to disbursing the profits. And it's a matter of having the corporate bylaws set up so that the appropriate form can be defined and observed.

Unfortunately I don't think we have enough facts from the WSL article to make any judgement here.

What I'd want to know is if the CPA followed the correct form when handling disbursements of "profits." Did the "profits" get paid out as part of each paycheck? Or was it paid out quarterly or annually after the P&L (profit and loss) statement was computed for that period? Was a P&L even done? And was the profit sufficiently at risk so that it is conceivable that they could have received no profit in a particular tax year, or have the profit diverted to business use instead of paid out to the S corp owners? (In other words, were the S corp bylaws appropriately drafted?)

I'd bet that part of the issue here is that the IRS would really like to go after S corp owners who are using this trick in order to avoid paying FICA and Medicare--but I have a sneaky feeling that these CPAs screwed up how they handled the "profit." So I'm not all that clear that this case has the far-ranging effects that the WSL article suggests. (Though if I was Mr. Watson's client, I'd be shopping for a new CPA.)

The reason why Steve Jobs' $1 salary is safe is because Apple has much better CPAs and tax attorneys working for them.

Can we also reintroduce rote memorization of things like multiplication tables and addition tables, please?

I went to a store where a young woman accidentally pressed the wrong button on the cash register, the proceeded to hand me back the wrong change. (In my favor by about 4 dollars.) I tried to point out that the change she was handing me was incorrect; I shouldn't get about 8 dollars back on a 6 dollar purchase when I hand her a 10--but she pointed to the cash register, insisting that the cash register was correct. What really bothered me was when I said "but 10 minus 8 is not 6", I may as well switched to ancient greek given the blank expression on her face.

I believe we should not introduce calculators until we get to trigonometry--and then only to calculate sines and cosines. I wish we could reintroduce slide rules instead; to understand how to use a slide rule for sines and cosines requires basic knowledge of certain trigonometric relationships--and using a slide rule would reinforce those relationships every time the student sees the C, D, S and T scales.

Newer technology makes it extremely easy to automate doing of certain operations. But the problem is if you don't have the multiplication tables (up to 12x12) in your head, and you don't have an intuitive sense of numbers and trigonometric operations that you get from having used a slide rule or doing certain operations by hand, then how can you possibly know if the answer is correct, or if you didn't just punch in the wrong thing?

The same thing with history: I'd happily exchange the "feel good" movements in history and social studies for rote memorization of dates and facts (to help pin major events in a fixed historic framework), then augment understanding of these periods through historic tellings of relevant periods of history. And emphasize the core historic events, don't just pull selected (but historically minor) incidents out of the timeline just so you can make different racial groups feel good about themselves. Teaching history is about giving a sense of what came before, not about some sort of nihilist "self esteem building" exercise.

Bottom line: The cold hard reality is that the fifth graders during Laura Ingalls's period got a much better education than fifth graders are getting today. And with the presence of computer technology in the home, it seems to me there is no reason why fifth graders should have any exposure in the school system until perhaps high school.

If the fine folks of Slashdot ruled the world, we'd have flying cars in about 5-10 years--the time it takes to design them, create the software for automatic piloting, and creating a manufacturing plant to pump them out. The problem is that there is a fourth barrier to success in the way: other people.

The argument that net neutrality is the same as a permanent physical occupation of the private property is a taking under the fifth amendment strikes me as silly.

Take that away and what do you have left? A regulatory taking which reduces the property value of the private property being taken. Well, guess what? My house is being regulated in a similar fashion: I can't just build anything I want--and that arguably reduces the value of my property because I can't use it in any way I so choose. (And while some of those potential usages are silly, some of them would arguably add value to my property--such as building a 3,000 square foot livable basement which would add around $400/sqft to the value of my house.)

And if we're talking about an easement that was added to the property after acquisition, we just passed a zoning which made my area a "historic neighborhood", effectively adding a new easement.

So where is my money?

If the professor wants to go down this route, then there are plenty of examples of regulatory takings where people bought property only to discover after the fact (and after the title search) that the government has decided to turn their property into a wetlands or into part of a private reserve--thereby making it impossible for them to use the property as intended or to sell the property, since it is now worthless. Where is their money?

As someone with an economics bent I'd like to see government regulatory burdens on private property treated in an economically neutral way: to use the takings clause to require additional government impositions on private property to require governments to compensate the owner for the resulting devaluation, unless a mutual agreement is reached. However, that is not how the takings clause is being used. To over-reach here on net neutrality is to abuse how we are currently interpreting the takings clause.

I believe, however, that calculators should only be used after one has learned how to do the math long-hand, and graphing calculators only after one has learned how to draw graphs oneself. The number of people I've encountered over the past few years who cannot add single-digit numbers in their head strikes me as remarkable--though I've almost made a profit off of a few of them when they punched in the wrong numbers into the cash register and don't know that intuitively one shouldn't get more than $20 in change from a $20 bill...

I prefer chalk and chalkboards over whiteboards: less stench.

I know. I'm in Glendale: 68F (20C) at 1pm. I got drizzled on this morning on my bike ride to work, and it was only 62F (16.5C). Normally at this part of the year we'd be in the mid 80's (around 30C). June Gloom is staying rather late this year.

As a matter of fact, yes--in this case it could kill you.

Y'all know a jailbroken iPhone on T-Mobile will only run EDGE, not 3G, right? So debates about how bad AT&T's 3G service is, so I'm going to use my iPhone on T-Mobile are a bit silly, right?

(Not saying that Hadlock is saying this; just making the observation.)

BTW, Never underestimate the power of "oooh shiny!"

Never lived anywhere with a Home Owners Association, have you?

Which makes the whole process of enjoying a 3D movie annoying--I'm constantly having to take the glasses off and wipe them down, or watch the movie through a thin white haze.