Amazing how through 100 years of cinema people were unimportant enough they could go to the movies without a phone... what were they thinking?

I'm not sure it's just having bounced checks so much as having bounced checks and not paid the money back.

LK

You are correct, check cashing places are on par with "payday lenders" as the lowest of the low when it comes to exploiting the working poor.

I have difficulty believing that aside from the most remote enclaves of humanity, the working poor in the US don't have access to banks or credit unions. This is speculation on my part, I admit that, but I would guess that the bigger problem is the lack of financial education for the poor. When you're more worried about where your next meal is coming from, it's less important to compare fee schedules from financial institutions.

Even a $5.00/month fee for a checking account is still better than the $2.00/transaction that they would get hit with by these rip-off cards,

I'd be less inclined to give the banks incentives. If it were my decision(admittedly it is not), I'd mandate that these cards have maximum fees capped at something like $4.00/month per card. Let the banks negotiate with Visa/MC for a little slice of the 2-4% on credit transactions that they'll make on purchases.

LK

I've done both. I've been salary and bi-weekly, semi-monthly and monthly. I don't think there really is a "normal" in this regard. It's just whatever the employer feels like doing.

LK

Agreed. I would opt the hell out of those BS cards. I can't believe that this is even a real thing. The first I heard of it was last week.

LK

Once a month isn't too bad if you're salary. It takes a couple of months to get the budget set up but once you do, it's not much worse than biweekly.

LK

There are seventeen million sole proprietors in the US. Many of those are on-call.

Fortunately if you can run a business, you're smart enough to figure out how to use an app like Shush! and mute your phone.

I don't think these are the people who are causing trouble though. If you have a couple of free hours and cash to enjoy a movie, you're going to do that.

All Your i.+ Are Belong To Us.

Similar experience... I've gone to see some things on opening night and wanted to throttle some people, but I haven't done that in years. I haven't had many bad experiences lately... it used to be more common. I think enough people complain about it that perhaps it happens less often, and when you wait a couple of weeks to see movies in practically empty theaters, there's much less of a chance of there being a complete jerk present when there's only 12 people as opposed to 250.

No. If you're so important you MUST leave the phone on during the movie, then maybe should wait for the Blu-Ray.

... but it would only happen once. Frankly, I like the idea. I actually have very little tolerance for disrespectful, selfish, self-centered, oblivious, inconsiderate #@ckheads who use phones in theaters. Death penalty for violators would suffice.

I love that somebody both figured this out AND got first post.

My guess is they will find good people for less cost than the government program/s.

. After all, it's in many businesses interests to have accurate information

agreed.

and in individual consumer's interests to correct their own info.

Maybe, maybe not. Depends on their goals. Being obscured would suit some (many?) people just fine. It depends what value people assign to different things.

Libertarian theory says that the free market should have a lot of incentive to correct for bad info.

In a free market environment without corporations (government-granted exemptions from liability) and courts that respected property rights this might very well be true. Are you willing to allow that theory to be tested?

and the invisible hand crew will be saying that the market will correct eventually, and stop trying to hurry it along

I can't name a single libertarian who thinks that the government-corporate collusion that's going on to invade the privacy of US residents (and others) is likely to subside voluntarily. Ask Joseph Nacchio how well it works out if you put the interests of your customers over those of the State. And before you say, "but he did something wrong," realize that the entire purpose of PRISM and its ilk is to make a retrospectable list of crimes and prohibition violations that every American commits. You too.

"The invisible hand" is Smith's market-god but Austrian price-information theory and its compliment, game theory, do provide a testable framework for information dispersal in free markets. That requires investigation of mid-to-late 20th century scholarship, though, not ideas that came two centuries before. And also markets that aren't artificially manipulated, for best effect, though the theory does work when such intrusions are counted as costs and losses.

I agree, but go down the road a little farther - it would have to be the tablet based e-readers in case of textbooks with high res color photos and videos; perhaps something capable of a little bit of 3D (I don't know... looking at solar systems or molecules or something). Still - 1/3 to 1/4 the price seems about right. At least half, and that;s with NO discount. This is an absurd waste of tax payer dollars, but hey, I don't have to care because I don't live in CA, right?

I know the summary focuses on the content, though; I'm not sure what people want. Do you want standardized textbooks across the country or not? By the way most people whine about it, god forbid states should come up with their own curriculum.