All Forum Posts by: Vikram C.

Bryan, if the value of a product is not determined by a free market, I do not call it "earning" it. I believe your proposal was for some government agency giving subsidies or financial incentives to kids who do well. I object to that because (a) the government never does anything well and (b) it will become politicized soon and we will be giving money to kids based on variables related to votes instead of merit.

Instead, if we get rid of all the government involvement in education, we will have schools that award merit and need-based scholarships, and we will also have non-profit organizations that start doing similar things. This is similar to getting into top universities, which is very expensive for those who can afford it but free for the deserving and needy students who get scholarships.

My point is that we should let the market and individual private organizations determine who gets what instead of the government.

$60,000 is sufficient to start with fix and flips even in CA if you select the less expensive areas. You will need to use hard money to augment your funds. I think that would be a better and less risky strategy for you than to try to do a long-distance flip.

But you will need to be very thorough in evaluating the property, the market and managing the rehab expenses. With just a little capital, it is quite easy to have a good part of your equity wiped out if you screw up.

I always thought Tom was just kidding around with his posts so I suspect he is neither offended nor needs an apology.

Regarding giving subsidies to good students - I am totally against any government involvement in education and would not want to see a new bureacracy that determines who deserves a hand-out. As we all know, bureaucracies have a way of growing over time and becoming massive and costly and it is best to let the free market determine who gets what type of education.

Frankly, there are a lot of children who will benefit more through vocational education and specific skills training than through the normal liberal-arts type of education that we have today for everyone.

It's hard to tell. I personally feel we are pretty close to the bottom here in Phoenix but mine is a minority opinion. The market is somewhat soft right now and people think it is a continuation of the downward trend while I think it is a seasonal thing.

Mike, I do not think there is anything wrong in watching talk shows or listening to radio if you find it entertaining. In your case, it is not harmful either because it is quite clear from your posts that you have an independent mind and form your opinions carefully. But there are some people who seem to buy their beliefs as a "package deal" from talk show hosts and they do sound quite stupid on these forums.

BTW, I am one of those people who doesn't care for these talk shows but have watched a few. I am just too busy normally to have time for TV and find that it is far more efficient for me to obtain my news from printed material - mainly because I can select which articles I read instead of having to listen to what someone has to say. I have also not found any TV news source that is as high in quality as the printed sources that I read.

Yes, but schools will come up that charge less than they do today. Private schools today are considered expensive because they have to be expensive in order to survive - they are competing as a premium product against a free product of mediocre quality. Once the government is out, market forces will get us schools of different types with different costs. It will not happen overnight, of course, so the idea of vouchers for poor people as a temporary measure may be a way to transition to a new system.

Bryan, we can have the government just get out of the education system altogether. Let people send their kids to private schools at their own expense. Taxes can be reduced due to the elimination of public schools. This also achieves another important goal, which is to eliminate the teachers unions.

Bryan, I agree that people should have a choice. But I suspect you are referring to vouchers while I want to see the entire public education system dismantled. Once schools are all private, parents will be able to choose schools and schools will be able to choose students.

Jason, that post was hilarious. I started reading it before seeing that you had posted and figured it was Tom Cullen who was writing one of his usual things.

Back to the subject of the thread, I do not see why we should even have the government involved in schools. The government really should not be involved in anything that can be done by the private sector.

Mike, it is true that scientists do not know everything. If they did, we would no longer be able to have discoveries. It is also true that scientists have been quite wrong in the past. That will continue to be the case, although modern scientists are trained to be less dogmatic than the "scientists" from midieval times.

The question for us is how we wish to form our opinions about things. Do we wish to form opinions that are consistent with the judgment of experts in a field, or do we wish to form our opinions based on our personal feelings or that of a TV talk show host?

While it is possible that the talk show host can be right and the experts wrong, the probability of that being the case is lower than that of the opposite. I like to form my opinions (and business decisions) based on the most likely outcomes instead of the least likely ones.