Income, Wealth distribution: A few interesting numbers

I saw this video a couple months ago. It presents some very fascinating information about wealth distribution. Now some of the statistics they provide are open to debate - for instance I have seen Wealth numbers for the 1% ranging between 30% and 50%, a pretty significant variance. But most numbers put the 1% as controlling 46 of the wealth in the US. Expanding the scope to the world, the 1% control roughly 38% by most reports I have seen.

I don't disagree with his suggestion that the top 1% control too much of the wealth, or receive too much income (there is a difference between wealth and income, the top 1% receive 10% of the income). The disparity is obscene.

However, I was left feeling like I didn't have enough information. The graph is pretty and all, but graphs can say what you want them to say. So I tried to do a little math with some of the numbers.
 My assumptions: (drawn from a number of sources, mostly from the top 1 to 10 hits on Google.

• US population = 318 million
• US wealth = 52,8 trillion
• US 1 percentile average income=$717k
• US 99 percentile avg. income = $51k
• US Households = 120 million

 Given those numbers

If the one percent were to liquid all their assets and redistribute the wealth, every person in America would get a one-time payout of $76k. That is a petty good chunk. Of course it needs to be understood that a moderate portion of that wealth is timed up in Business. So to obtain that wealth for redistribution would mean shutting down, or at the very least significantly curtailing Apple, GMC, Microsoft... I am guessing a fair number of small businesses and start-ups would also have to close shop, as many are relying on investments, which also make up a portion of that wealth. So realistically, keeping all the current "lights on", every American would get a $10k to $30k one time payment. How far is that really going to go?

If the one percent were to give up their income and redistribute it, every American would get a $7k pay raise. Average salary would move from $51k to $58k. Okay, that is a per person measure, and so were are confusing kids in that mix. So if we redistribute by household, then each household gets and additional $20k per year, roughly. Again, realistically many of the one percent-ers have harder than average jobs, so they do deserve to be compensated accordingly, so the practical number is more likely to be somewhere between $8k and $15k per year. That would still be a nice number, though for most, it won't be particularly life changing.



 But let's take a look at the people we are depending on to do something about this...

 President Obama's income is around 1.7 million
roughly 11% of congress are in the 1%
US House, Senate Avg income = $174k


They are all above the average. Not sure they can be counted on. What about the celebs?

Jay-Z: $450 million
Kanye West: $70 million
Alec Baldwin: $65 million
Michael Moore: $50 million

I haven't seen any of them making the first move, have you?

I can think of four ways the inequality can be fixed.
1. The wealthy voluntarily redistribute their wealth.
2. The government forcibly redistributes wealth
3. The non-wealthy revolt and forcibly redistribute wealth
4. The non-wealthy peaceably protest.

Numbers 1 and 2 aren't going to happen. Let's be honest. People tend to look out for themselves.  Most everyone think they are under paid, that they don't make enough to support a decent lifestyle, and that the "others", get more than they deserve. Our current leadership have been seen as champions of this cause, and under their tenure the gap between rich and poor has grown at a record rate.

Number 3. is an option, but it is generally ugly and  bloody, and it usually leads to everyone being worse off than before.

Number 4, is the possibly the ideal option, but almost impossible to implement. Here's how it works: Stop supporting businesses owned by the 1%. That means shop local small businesses, buy local grown food. That also means doing without things (most brand-name products, movies, sporting events, big concerts, etc...). You don't have to completely abandon them, but if everyone cut their current investment by half, the one percent-ers would feel it, and would have to respond, either by reducing their take, or eliminating jobs. If the former, then hooray! Mission accomplished. If the latter, then it is up to the 99% to dig in and create wealth producing jobs for those people, which further reduces dependance upon products provided by the one percent.... Any takers?

Any other suggestions?


P.S.
It is also interesting to note that while there are 11 million listed as unemployed in the US, there are 4 million listed job openings. Certainly some of this can be explained by issues of compatibility, or training, or emotional or physical disability, but... all of it? Is it really fair to redistribute wealth to someone who is unemployed because... he is waiting for "the right job" ?

Is meetme.com a playground for pedophiles?

Since I ended up with a meetme.com account, I decided to poke around a bit, and see what it was exactly. It was a rather educational journey. I was fairly careful not to monkey with the account too much, well, other than giving the kid a new profile pic.

But that is the extent of my vandalism of the account, and I mostly did that to see if I could get one of his friends to come out of the woodwork, so I could confirm his legitimacy.

Anyway, I did learn a few interesting things about meetme.com

It is populated primarily by 14-20 year olds, 15-17 being the most prevalent ages listed. It is less focused on communication and more focused on building connections.There are three main strategies I observed the accomplish this: Q&A, Blind Date, and Secret Admirers.

Q&A is fairly obvious. Someone asks you a question - any question, and you answer it. The questions I saw ran the gambit from "What is your favorite band?", to "You are cute!"(yeah, I know), to "Can I have your number?"(Danger Will Robinson! Danger!), to "........."(censored due to X-rated content).


Blind Date is a fun little game, which selects 4 random profiles, and asks you multiple choice) questions previously answered by them. Three questions for each "profile", if you get two right, you are considered a match, and and make a connection. If you get it wrong, you don't. Except, you can cheat. meetme.com has its own virtual currency, which you earn for correct answers, and which you can then spend in the blind date game to get extra guesses, or to peek at the answers. Oh, you can also by meetme.com currency with paypal....


Secret admirers is a simpler game, it starts by looking a profile pic's and "admiring" them. The admiree is notified that they have a secret admirer, and is then presented with a group of... I think it was 16 photos. They have five guesses to pick the one who admired them. If they get it right, they get to make a connection. If they get it wrong, they can spend meetme.com currency to get more guesses.

So a smart person with cash to blow through, can pretty much own the place...

Something to think about.

Hacking Teen Sneaks and Questioning Google's Wisdom.

A few weeks ago, I started noticing weird messages in my inbox. First, there was a series of messages in french, which appeared to be coming from facebook. I don't speak french, and didn't feel motivated to do anything about it at the time. I just assumed it was a phishing scam. and ignored it. Then a few days ago, I started getting emails from meetme.com about admirers, and chat responses, and acceptances of friend requests... Somethings up.

So I pop into gmail on my computer. up in the header of the message is a spot that says "to me" with a little down arrow next to it.

Clicking on the arrow brings up some additional detail.

Interesting, the name is not mine (I have redacted it, because I don't know the individual or his/her motives, so for now I will try to respect their privacy).

The email is almost identical to mine. with one small difference. Mine has a '.' in it (instead of emailaddress@blah.com, mine is email.address@blah.com. (okay it isn't "blah.com" it's "gmail.com". I wonder how many other providers have the same issue though...

I found the following support doc from google here:
The interesting bit is under the heading
"Your address is similar but has more or fewer dots(.) or different capitalization."
Below are a few relevant snippets...
---------------------------------------------
Sometimes you may receive a message sent to an address that looks like yours but has a different number or arrangement of periods. ...  don't worry: both of these addresses are yours.
Gmail doesn't recognize dots as characters within usernames. ... In short:

• homerjsimpson@gmail.com = hom.er.j.sim.ps.on@gmail.com
• homerjsimpson@gmail.com = HOMERJSIMPSON@gmail.com
• homerjsimpson@gmail.com = Homer.J.Simpson@gmail.com

All these addresses belong to the same person.
----------------------------------------------------------------

okay, first blush this sounds like a convenience, people can mispell your email address, and you will still get the email. How sweet of them.

In this case, a teenager (or two or...) is(/are) using this as a tool to create accounts on social sites, without tying a legitimate email address to it. For what purpose? To increase anonymity for nefarious purposes? To keep it hidden from  their parents?

It appears to the service be a legitimate email address, and if it had been a stale account (i.e. if I were not checking it  once in a while), or If I had just continued to ignore those messages as spam, it mostly would have worked. (The facebook account would probably have died, I think after awhile facebook prevent you from seeing your page unless you respond to an acknowledgement email.Though I can think of at least one way to get around that as well).

At any rate, Google really should have stopped to consider the potential abuse inherent in their email address helper. I wonder how many such fraudulent accounts are out there? And what all are they being used for? Some poor schmoe who hasn't used his email account for a few years could suddenly find himself getting busted for child-porn trafficking or terrorist activities (he might not be checking his email, but the NSA is). I'm thinking Google should probably reconsider this feature.

So now, what am I to do about this? Technically it is identity theft, they are using my email identity for their social activities. But since their is no money involved. I don't see any enforcement agency getting involved. I pursued a scam letter which specifically was a financial fraud not too long ago; I contacted the FBI, the Postal Service (it was a snail mail scam), the police, and the two banks which were listed. Nobody would give me the time of day.

Well, since I have the email account associated with them, I went to the sites, and activated their forgot password service, which sent me an email allowing me to reset the password. They are out, I am in. I poked around a bit, trying to identify "friends" who might be "In Real Life" (IRL) friends, and messaged them, to see if they are in fact friends. My goal with that is to determine if the person does in fact exist, and is in fact who they say they are. There are cases of people building fake profiles for various nefarious purposes. If it is fake I will report it, if it isn't... I  may report it anyway.

But I have learned a couple interesting things from this excursion.
First, I found a phone number of a 16 year old girl. She sent it to the doofus that created this account - he asked her for it in a chat, and she responded. What if I had been a pedophile or serial killer? Just a thought but perhaps teens should be a bit more careful with their phone #'s. Just because you know someone doesn't mean they aren't a doofus.

I also discovered a selfie of a 14 year old (in her "about me" section, or 15 year old (in her profile, directly above the "about me"), posing provocatively on a bed in her bra, with a poster on her main page saying "If you laugh at this I get to have Sex with you!". I won't quote the first conversation on the page, as it might get my blog banned.

Just a suggestion... but parents... might want to become more involved in their kids lives. It might be a good idea to make sure the computer is out in the open, and it might be worthwhile to reconsider the decision to allow a young child to have a personal smartphone.

Follow the prophet?

It has been interesting the past weeks, what with the Church's recent post of a study aid on Race and the Priesthood.

All kinds of people struggling to make sense of it. A few having full blown Crisis of faith experiences.

Me, I found it to be a relief. First it was nice to get some of the information brought together to a single location. It was nice to have the Church officially correct a few misconceptions regarding the churches position on heritage and "pre-mortal worthiness". I feel I am able to breathe a little more easily when it comes to people talking about Brigham Young too, which is nice. I feel a little less concern about discounting some of the things he has said, that I questioned the validity of.

Of course that is probably the source of many of the Crisis of Faith experiences others have mentioned. "He said something that wasnt' true! He must not be a prophet! My world is collapsing! etc..."

I didn't experience that. Prophets saying/doing stupid things is nothing new.

Look at Jonah. god told him to go preach in Nineveh and he ran for it.

Moses, tried to get out of speaking for the Israelites who were in Egypt, claiming a stutter (That's why Aaron went along as a spokesman).

Then in 1 Kings 13 there is this really messed up story about a young prophet going to call the King to repentance, with strict instructions to say his piece and get out of the country, only an old prophet heard about the young prophet, chased him down, Lied to him and told him the God told the old prophet to invite the young prophet to dinner, then chastised him for accepting the dinner invitation, after which the young prophet went on his way and was eaten by a lion.

Peter denied knowing Christ three times in one night.

Dig around, you will find more. (No, I don't think King David counts, he was a King, not a prophet).

Prophets aren't perfect. Just because they are prophets doesn't mean they suddenly stop saying or doing stupid things. That is why we are expected to develop a close personal relationship with our Savior. That is why we are supposed to study the scriptures, especially those that present the life the Christ, so that when we receive new revelation, we can by comparison determine if it is in harmony with Christs teachings, and so that we can through prayer, receive a direct, personal confirmation.

<joke> If there had been room for an 11th commandment it would have been "Thou shalt Think" </joke>

The second crisis is "I thought the God wouldn't allow a prophet to lead the church astray!". Well, first of all, I have never actually found a scriptural reference to confirm that statement. I can find a few statements where Prophets express that sentiment as an opinion, but no firm scripture, or prophetic utterance.

There is an interesting scripture here, which suggests that God want all of us to be prophets (making a distinction between position of prophet and position of church leadership). Clearly, if all church members had a sufficiently close personal relationship with God they could not be led astray.

If you recall the Story of Moses post-egypt. God presented 10 commandments to the children of Israel. They botched that, and thus wound up with the more specific Mosaic law. It included all this detail about  if your neighbor cut your hand off Justice required that his hand be caught off... eyes for an eye, tooth for a tooth, etc... because apparently "thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not lie,... were somehow not clear enough. In fact, the ten commandments were themselves a more detailed version of the prior two commandments (1. Love God and 2. Love thy neighbor as thyself. Seriously it isn't obvious that is you love your neighbor you won't kill him? rob him blind? take his stuff? Well, clearly it isn't, look at the volumes of law we have created on those subjects).

In other words, what I am suggesting is that maybe Brigham Young's pronouncement of a limitation on priesthood worthiness wasn't what God wanted, nor was it that Brigham young led anyone astray, but rather the congregation in whole or in large part, wasn't ready to accept what God wanted, Just as the Isrealites were given the Mosaic Law because they weren't ready to accept the higher law. What if the membership of the Church had been more in harmony with the Saviors vision?

In other words, I am suggesting the Blacks had to wait for the priesthood because the members of the church were operation under an incorrect belief system.

So that begs the question. What blessings are we missing out on today... what blessings are others missing out on... because of our misperceptions... Our attitudes, values, beliefs and behaviors which are not in harmony with the gospel of Jesus Christ?

Passwords on Paper

In a previous post, I said I would show you a way to safely write passwords down...

You should never write passwords down, right? There are few things worse than leaving your password on a sticky note attached to your monitor , or under your keyboard.

Let me show you a way around this....

First, you need to create one good password of length of 8-10 characters, which you will commit to memory. This needs to be a good password. It should not contain a dictionary word, it should ideally have letters, numbers, and symbols. But it needs to be easy to remember. Since it is the only one you are going to have to commit to memory, that shouldn't be too difficult.

For this example, I am going to use M2bh@fn4. 
I built that from the phrase "My bologna has a first name". Using the first letters of every word gives Mbhafn. I then counted the letters in the first and last word(My=2, Name=4), and put that number after the respective letter (M2bhafn4). Finally, to get a symbol in there I replace the 'a' with '@'.

Now, as a matter of good security practice, you would write this password down on a piece of paper, seal it in an envelope, and put it in a locked file. That way it is recoverable in the event of a tragedy (memory loss, or an incapacitating illness or accident, requiring a close relative or friend to access your systems for one reason or another). But apart from that, this password DOES NOT GET WRITTEN DOWN ANYWHERE!


Okay now we get to the individual systems. For each individual account, create a 8-10 character password, which you will write down on a slip of paper. You will keep this slip of paper in your purse, wallet, or planner...  Something that you already carry with you and protect because it contains credit cards, cash, and other important items which you don't want stolen. This slip of paper will look something like this...

Chase bank - 1whD6&fk
gmail - rej8(fhkl
facebook - weh903Ldm


Again, for reason of security, you should make a copy of this, and lock in in a file. Now here is the trick. What you have written down is only half of the password. The part you have memorized is the other half. SO your password for Chase bank would actually be:

M2bh@fn41whD6&fk

and gmail would be

M2bh@fn4rej8(fhkl

Those are 16-20 character random passwords. They are unique for each account due to the part you have written down, and easy to remember due to the part you have committed to memory.

What if someone steals your slip of paper? They will only have one half of your password. They will still have to brute-force guess the other half. And since you will quickly become aware that your password slip is missing, you will be able to go home, get your backup copy,  log in and change all your passwords within a day or so, rendering the old list useless.

Pretty cool huh? There is still one point of risk to consider. What if someone were to steal your password slip, copy it, and return it without your knowing? Then they gain more time to try cracking your password. The ways to reduce that risk are as follows:

1. Take extra special care of that piece of paper. Never let it out of your site.
2. Make the memorized part longer, say... twelve to twenty characters long (the longer the password, the longer it takes to guess).
3. Continue to follow the best practice of changing your passwords frequently (every 90 to 360 days. This isn't so painful, since little to no memorization is involved).

And there you have it, your passwords: unique, complex, safely written down... managed.

A Happy Thankgiving(?) present from the company: Uncertainty stinks

Yesterday we got called in to an emergency town hall meeting a work. Thermo Fisher is in the process of acquiring Life Technologies. The European regulators decided that would make too large a company, and have required the company to divest itself of one particular business line.

That line is roughly 1/2 to 2/3 of what we do here in Logan. I.E. they are going to sell off half of our business unit.

what does that mean? We don't know. Most likely a new company will take ownership of that business and continue to operate it, and everyone will continue to have jobs, get paid, etc..., just half of us will now work for a different company. Probably a competitor. But we won't know until the buyer is selected, and the transaction is completed.

For some of us, it is less certain. Working Information Technology, I cover both sides of the business, so what will happen to me? Which side will end up taking me? Or, since these two business units, belonging to two different corporations - are now half the size they were, will neither side choose to keep me? Or will this be my opportunity to "pursue other interests" (That's what they call it when they kick you out the door).

I hate uncertainty. I hate not knowing what things are going to look like tomorrow, next week, next month, next year.

That's life though. Nothing is certain. And we have more warning than you typically get from... say... a Tornado, or Hurricane, or an Earthquake. And with a higher probability of a positive (or at least a non-negative) outcome. Who knows, maybe this is my opportunity to change my career to Computer or Software engineering (Aligned to my degree). Or maybe this is my chance to keep doing what I'm doing, only slightly less, so I can actually take my days off every year. Or... Who knows... Indeed...

Uncertainty...

Bleh....

Happy Thanksgiving.

Why?

I saw a share on facebook quite awhile ago, from this mommy blog, titled "My Kid's are not the center of my world".

I though most of her most of her points were good, though I expressed concern that perhaps us "old-timers" didn't necessarily have a good grasp on some aspects of modern day bullying. With the advent of social everything, and with a general social trend toward sarcasm and meanness (It is hard to find a sitcom that isn't primarily an insult tennis match), Bullying has become much more sophisticated, coordinated, and focused. Many such incidents are more reminiscent of brainwashing and psychological torture techniques than the bullying I remember seeing.

A couple days ago, I saw this news write-up of the blog post. Reviewing the comments, I think I am a minority opinion on the subject. Lots of responses about kids needing to toughen up, stop being whimps... about parents needing to stop hovering, stop being over protective... a few comments about overreacting to "kids being kids".

And while I don't disagree with the sentiment that many need to be a little less sensitive, that parents need to let their children take a few knocks, and that we need to accept that people will sometime misbehave...

As I was walking out to my car to drive home today, I thought about the "Kids will be kids" line, and found myself thinking.... Why?

Why do we just accept that kids are going to be mean to each other? Why is that normal? In many places now, home security systems are a standard feature. Millions (Billions?) of dollars are spent on security systems, cameras, sensors, alarms... for what purpose? What useful value do they serve? None! We buy them to protect us from thieves, robbers, home invaders. But why? Why is this an industry? Because theft is so common. We just accept it as a normal part of daily living....

Why? Why do we accept this as "The norm?", Why do we talk act, behave as though this is how it was, is, and always will be? Why will "boys be boys"?


In the Book of Mormon, Helaman, Chapter 6, there is a story about the Gadianton Robbers - a crime syndicate. They were the Mafia of the time. They would rob, plunder, bribe, extort... They would even assassinate government officials in order to place their own in positions of power. They wreaked havoc on the people in the Americas.


Then it tells us in verse 20 of this chapter

 20 And now it came to pass that when the Lamanites found that there were robbers among them they were exceedingly sorrowful; and they did use every means in their power to destroy them off the face of the earth.

and then in verse 37

37 And it came to pass that the Lamanites did hunt the band of robbers of Gadianton; and they did preach the word of God among the more wicked part of them, insomuch that this band of robbers was utterly destroyed from among the Lamanites.



Why can't we do that? Is it really, truly not possible for us to expect better? Can't we at least try? Am I asking too much?