I’m not disagreeing - but I doubt there is a reason the service departments can’t be merged.  The Mazda dealer I bought our 6 is part of a single ownership group that also has a Chrysler/Jeep/Ram, Chevrolet, Mitsubishi, and a BMW dealership all in the same general location.  Each has its own dealership building and 2…

“Good luck out there if you’re an investor!”

S&P 500 at least has some logic and standards. If you want more strict logic, go to the Russell 1000.

What really makes no sense is the Dow Jones Industrial Average - a ridiculous index where Apple having a stock split can result in ExxonMobil being kicked off the index.

The guy so incompetent he looked at what Bob Woodward had written before, thought “I can change his mind”, then proceeded to agree to a series of recorded interviews where lied, admitted he lied, and now is trying to sell us on the idea that Woodward set a trap and is lying about his record.

Student Services only accounts for 5% of overall spending.  According to their definitions, that includes student activities, career services, and financial aid staff.  So yes, there is some “fun stuff” thrown on, and it has grown by a fair amount.  But its still just 5% of overall spending.  Not exactly driving the…

I wonder if the buyer of my old Camry ever found the Raisin Bran box I used to fix the HVAC system?

No, seriously - I did that. Of course, it was a perfectly decent solution - the vents simply wouldn’t stay in position as the plastic had crept over the years. Pop the deflector out, use the box to make some shims to…

That’s the direct cost of actually teaching at the school - cost of the teaching faculty, cost of the supplies for the rooms, etc. It excludes the cost of the buildings, libraries, administration, and other similar features. They’re controlling costs to some extent by switching to non-tenured adjunct faculty, who are…

If you’re managing your taxes properly, you don’t have to wait until the next april to get the reward.

A few years back, I had solar panels installed on my home. That was an ~$8k tax credit. The installation was done in May, but I signed the contract in late March. Before I got paid in April, I adjusted my withholding…

3rd:

I can’t wait to read the Tesla Board of Directors’ rationale in telling shareholders to vote against requiring a report that would show transparency as to how the company is treating its employees... a report that would cost them less to put together than one of Elon’s brain dead tweets costs them..

anyone with a brain?

One local school district here tried imposing a new health insurance plan a few years back on its employees. The plan was stupid simple - they’d pay any provider 30% above medicare reimbursement rates, paid all bills within 5 business days (no waiting 6 months for reimbursement), and they had…

yep - as I pointed out before, my primary care doc has a practice where they typically have 2-3 doctors working and a dozen working in billing.  Its absurd.  We’re doing this the least efficient way we can.

Maybe med school should be cheap and lifetime wages commensurably lower then?

Of the top 10 professions in the US by mean annual salary, all 10 are doctors. #11 is CEO. #12-16 are also doctors. There are technicians, therapists, and nurses that are lower, but the only “doctors” lower than #16 are podiatrists and…

Not as much as many people think.

Per the National Center for Education Statistics, here is the spending breakdown for 4 year public colleges and universities per student, and % growth in spending (over prior baseline, not as % of overall spending) over the past decade in each area, in constant dollars:

Instruction:…

Yep. Its just a question of efficiency of covering the costs.

We’re horrid here. Just god awful at it. My primary care doctor’s office typically has 2 or 3 doctors working and a dozen people working in billing. Think about the cost distribution there..

And then we charge doctors a fortune for their education, leading…

These cases are ones I use to prove to people that, while it had plenty of flaws, there was good in “Obamacare”. Most people who had cheap insurance policies that ended up being cancelled by their carrier had ones with low annual and lifetime limits on benefits. If the insurer never would have to pay out more than…

1st:
“The haves flock toward pricey SUVs and trucks, while the have-nots have to make do with an increasingly small selection of small sedans and hatchbacks.”

That’s a bit of a gross oversimplification.

Monday I went to the bank and sat in line at the drivethrough (all transactions were done through the drivethrough) to…

Stupidity of investors is all this means...

At this price point, TSLA has a market cap higher than the entire rest of the western world’s automakers combined, minus Toyota. They’re marked at almost 2.5 times the value of Toyota.

That’s simply insane. There is no logical justification for ANY of that.  That’s pricing in…

Not only do I dislike that picture because I hate traffic and long commutes, but I just shake my head at the massive level of inefficiency it represents. The amount of money we throw at paving, repaving, expanding, expanding again our system of roads when you could build mass transit at a fraction of the cost and land…

Bum badum bum bum bum bum....

The metro areas have often done reasonably well (hell, even the Detroit metro area has done well, though Detroit clearly has suffered).  But the small towns are the ones still devastated....  But the exact same thing is true in the sun belt - small towns where you once had fabric mills and other smaller facilities are…

Because the sun belt is still suckling at the teat of tax transfers from the rust belt to the sun belt?