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Texas Jeff

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Everything posted by Texas Jeff

  1. For those of you worried that your kid did not make CS at UT ... don't worry ... a job awaits the kid who loves to code. UT Dallas and Texas A&M are good state school alternatives to UT Austin. I've interviewed a ton of students straight out of undergrad or a masters program and I was surprised how many of them could not think logically about a problem or code the correct solution after 4-6 years of school. Those that can stand out. In my experience, most large companies have a standard entry level package. It does not vary by school, although schools with larger pools of STEM majors are likely to have more companies interviewing on campus. So a UT Austin grad is likely to make about what a UT Dallas grad makes, at least to start. So .... code, code, code, code .... learn some interviewing skills .... code some more ... get an internship ... keep coding ... work on teamwork skills ... keep coding ... and you'll land a job no matter where you went to school. Once you get a job, put away the damn phone and code. Getting your second job will rely more on what you did at your first job than where you went to school.
  2. Texas Jeff

    Tax reform

    I have no doubt that there is a tremendous gap between those at the top and those at the bottom in today's society, even within the same company as this person describes. It's important to have a middle class and provide a living income for those who want to work and all children should have a stable home. IMHO, we should strive to provide everyone with those things as much as we can. However, once you introduce math in the conversation I am intrigued ... are those numbers correct? I did a quick 1040 for a $35k head of household filer. If the person has one child and is filing head of household with about $35,000 in income, they have a taxable income of around $17,000. Tax on that is $1,771, however a combo of the child tax credit and the earned income credit means that the $35,000 head of household should receive back a refund of around $1,075 with zero withholding. Now, this person also has to pay SS tax (around $2170) and Medicare tax (about $500) but if you add all of that up this person is paying about $1600 in income tax + SS + Medicare. This person also lives in California, so there is some CA income tax, maybe 2% of income above a threshold, I'm not familiar with CA state tax. So maybe $700 in CA tax. I'm not sure where the $6000 tax is coming from but it would be nice to know. If Rep Katie's tax calculation is off by $4,400, that's $366 of the $567 shortfall. There are other taxes like sales tax, property tax, car registration fees, and so on but it's hard to find the extra $4,400 in tax. Maybe MY math is wrong, but I'm not sure this theoretical bank teller is paying $6000 in taxes. This bank teller is in a rough spot, but it's always going to be tough to be in that spot. In theory, this person is a single parent with a six year old kid working an entry level job in a state with a high cost of living. The other parent, in this case, is providing nothing. The job, bank teller, is a candidate for automation and might not exist 5-10 years from now. The market-clearing price for that job is minimum wage, and it may drop to zero once physical banks go away. Part of the problem is income inequality but part of the problem is bad decision making leading to a tenuous existance. We need to work on both.
  3. Crazy idea for that one penny local option in Austin: * Step 1: Ditch Cap Metro * Step 2: Give the penny to Austin ISD * Step 3: Don't tell the lege about this so they can't take it as part of Robin Hood * Step 4: Well, I'm not exactly sure how to fund a bus system at this point but maybe the city council could think about that one ... a problem for another thread! That one penny is worth $231 million per year to Cap Metro, for the entire service area ... which is mostly Austin. Round Rock ISD would probably get part of this pile since they are partially in Austin, as would other districts like maybe Del Valle and Pflugerville. But, Austin ISD might walk away with something like $160 million per year from the penny sales tax. Austin ISD spends about $670 million on salaries today, so that would give them 23% more revenue to work with.
  4. This could be a pretty dangerous thing if rates rise back to "normal" rates of 7-8%. People might be able to afford to stay where they are because their rate is low but they might not be able to find a buyer for their house at a higher interest rate without coming down in price. And since no one wants to take a loss, people may just stayed glued to what they have hoping the market will eventually recover. I think the "tax-free cap gain on your house" policy plus low interest rates have been pushing up home prices for a while. No one wants to pay property taxes, but reducing property tax rates may cause additional upward pressure on home prices, so long as rates stay low. In the early 90's, most of my co-workers used a rule of thumb to buy a house between 2x and 3x of annual salary. Anything above that was considered to be too much debt. This was with interest rates around 8-10%. People today seem to have no problem buying houses that are 5x or more of their income, which is enabled by low rates and encouraged by the idea of potiential tax-free gains.
  5. Bikers/Scooter people can't go 1000 feet west to 1st street, a bridge that has bike lanes on both sides of the bridge and cantilevered lower bridges for walking and biking attached to each side of the bridge, in addition to the bike lanes? Does every crossing need sidewalks and bike lanes and car lanes? Just a question... Personally I would rather spend money on more pedestrian bridges like the one by the Lamar bridge, maybe a bridge from where Trinity street ends on the north to somewhere on the Statesman site on the south. The Pfluger pedestrian bridge near Lamar totally changed the feel of that crossing, from OMG I am going to die crossing this bridge to hey this is a cool place to hang out for a while.
  6. Well, maybe none if your employer just pockets the money .... but if they do some other employer might want to talk to you about a new job with a raise. Also, lots of folks who have enough to stop working but need the healthcare might quit, making space for younger people to move up the ladder. Some others might quit because they've always had some idea of a business to start, but the need for healthcare coverage kept them at a big employer. With the link between employment and healthcare severed, you might end up at an innovative startup. So, no guarantee of a higher paycheck but I think you'll see eventual higher pay and more innovation once companies don't have to think about healthcare for their employees.
  7. Just because our government is currently run by septuagenarians does not mean that we should discount the ability of younger Americans to lead our country. Thomas Jefferson was 33 when he wrote the Declaration of Independence. James Madison was 36 on the day he walked into the Constitutional Convention. At age 29, Meriwether Lewis set off to explore the continent. At age 38, Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. If elected, Buttigieg would be 39 on the day he takes office, over the hill compared to that group. We often see our predecessors through dusty portraits made long after their contributions. Don't let that view cloud your judgement of what is possible.
  8. Software takes time to jell, especially life-critical software. If they knew that the first airplane was just missing a feature that was already developed and tested they could just turn on the missing feature. An actual software change would easily take months to identify, develop, test and deliver a fix to a real problem.
  9. I am calling them the One-Handed Generation because they will not let go of their phones. If they can't do it using a phone it is unlikely to happen.
  10. Well, just a guess here but I suspect he had Russian "investors" who were propping him up after his casino failures, and those came with strings attached. They are discussing the strings and how we don't want to tell anyone else about the strings. Trump seems to have respect for Putin either as a leader or as someone who has information that could be used against Trump.
  11. It's possible that Trump is not guilty of collusion because he is a moron. Trump on the campaign trail mostly held rallies where he belittled people to the cheers of the crowd, attended debates where he belittled people to the cheers of the crowd, and tweeted deragotory stuff about people to the cheers of the twitterverse. He also wore a hat. That seems to be about the extent of his efforts. There were others around him who were smarter and more devious and were trying to help him win so that they could affect policy at the highest levels of the US government. And, to their surprise, they won. And, then they had to govern, which was probably boring. Trump returns to the rallies again and again because that's his thing, ranting to a friendly crowd and looking powerful by firing and insulting others. It's entirely possible that he is not guilty (but others around him are) because he just was not plugged into the mechanics of the campaign, because he is a moron.
  12. / Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro
  13. The NY Times had a graphic that showed 220,000 different scenarios, each one either with a tax cut or a tax hike. About 75% of the scenarios resulted in a tax cut, but the average overall cut was about a dollar a day. You can hover on the graphic and see the scenario behind each dot. Some folks got a cut and some got a hike, and the effect is more extreme with higher earners.
  14. “I prefer astronauts who actually land on the moon”
  15. Man, Austin's water reeks right now. In theory this was caused by a two-inch layer of zebra mussels on the water intake pipe, but we have gone from zero to super smell in 24 hours and it does not seem to be getting better, although Austin Water has said it should be over soon. Anybody understand how this could suddenly happen? Did they clear out the pipe and cause a ton of zebra bits to flow into the system?
  16. Trump brought a 10 year old cancer survivor who smiled, waved, and according to the photo above stayed awake. We know he wants $5 billion for a wall ASAP and he's willing to shut down the government to get it. But in his speech he also proposed $500 million in new cancer research over the next ten years. I thought at the time he mis-spoke. Surely curing cancer, especially in children, merits a bigger number. I thought maybe he was supposed to say $500 billion over the next ten years. I checked the transcript and googled a bit to see if he misspoke. He did not. He brought that little girl to the speech and then proposed $50 million per year to help her, in a country of 325 million people. I am no fan of Trump but a call to action to spend $50 billion per year to eliminate childhood cancer would have impressed me. That is an audacious goal I could get behind. A gift to humanity like antibiotics and vaccinations. That's still around $150 per person per year, less than fifty cents per day per person. Fifty million per year seems like window dressing, a token payment for a nation that could do more.
  17. BTW this is a cheddar cheese warehouse in the UK. Why does England need this much cheddar? Why do they suck at stacking it? England, stop eating so much cheese -- you are endangering people!
  18. Casis/O'Henry/Austin High is fine today, but I can understand why people choose another path. A lot of parents feel they have to "make a move" in 5th grade so they go private or try a magnet, but the regular track was fine for our kids. O'Henry is shrinking a bit in population but is becoming "wealthier" because they are mostly losing low-income kids. The band program is great at O'Henry and Austin High. O'Henry does needs some major repairs or a complete redo, like many AISD schools. The AISD master plan has it slated for a "full modernization" in a future bond package, planned for the next 6-12 years. Austin ISD voters are putting up big bucks to improve schools district wide and improvement is really needed.
  19. What makes Anderson different than any other area HS? Test results, demographics, other measurements look similar.
  20. What could possibly go wrong? Is school also shut down? After 9/11, I remember National Guard/Army guys with weapons at checkpoints, something I had only seen before in Europe. We have come a long way...
  21. You would probably first have to explain that there *is* a Big Bend ... start with the basics.
  22. We just passed the mid-point of the eclipse
  23. Live tracker here, if you want to see what phase of the eclipse is happening now: https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/lunar/2019-january-21
  24. The Earth is going to get between the Moon and the Sun tonight, starting in about an hour or so. Skies in Austin just cleared and the Moon is about to go away for a bit. I think it starts around 9:30 and the maximum eclipse is around 11:12 central time. This is a "blood Moon" so it might turn red or orange during the eclipse.
  25. Unfit Mitt Slovenly Romney
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