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JerseySmarts.com

Are Young Tech-Millionaires Bored?

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The New York Times ran an article on their website the other day where they talked about Max Levchin, the Founder of PayPal (and the guy who eventually sold it to eBay). Needless to say, Levchin is filthy rich – the kind of rich that the rest of us only dream about. But the point of this article is an interesting one; the New York Times postulates that Levchin, and other young tech-millionaires like him, may be bored. How bored? So bored that they are starting new business and new ventures – in essence, they are in competition against themselves and against each other to hit the next big thing.

I found this to be very interesting. My roommate and I had a discussion the other day about how money does and does not buy happiness. You would think that these guys who have so much money that they no longer need to think about working would be floating on an island somewhere. At the very least, you would think that they are in a low-impact position at some global corporation like Google or Microsoft. Turns out that they’re not – they’re out there trying to make the next Facebook or MySpace.

For my part, I know what I would do if I ever hit it rich. I’d pay off my debts (and my family’s debts, of course) and then I’d set up an annuity or a trust fund that generated about $100,000 annually in interest (I’m assuming that I REALLY hit it rich). After that, I’d give the rest away. Seriously – what’s the point in sitting on tens of millions or hundreds of millions of dollars? Why not go to your local high school or your alma mater and give each graduating senior a free college education? Or go to the local senior center and give them the state of the art amenities.

I just think that there are better things to do with millions and billions of dollars than just sit on them. Hopefully I’ll have the opportunity to prove that one day – but not quite yet! Anyway, the article is a good read – I suggest it if you have some spare time.

Following Up with the Dueling Reports in Mt. Arlington

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Here’s a quick follow-up op-ed that appeared in today’s Daily Record newspaper with respect to finding some way to lower property taxes in Mount Arlington. For those of you that are not up to curve on this issue, here is a previous entry that talks about what the proposal was in Mount Arlington (to eliminate their police force and share services with a neighboring squad). The op-ed as it appears in the Daily Record:

Mount Arlington officials have regrettably caved to pressure and tabled a reasonable idea to seek a cost savings by contracting with a larger town for police services. The plan would have eliminated the borough’s 13-member police force.

Opposition to the idea, which was intense, largely was based on misconceptions, the biggest being a belief that police service in the borough would have been reduced. Officials had no intention of doing that.

Of course, some criticism was legitimate. The report, which was done by former Washington Township Police Chief Ted Ehrenburg, seemed a little light for its cost of $43,500. Also, the council at times irritated opponents by not being more forthcoming with information about the plan.

Notwithstanding those problems, Mayor Art Ondish and the council were right to raise the issue. The mayor says he thinks he was ahead of the curve, and we agree with him.

If property taxes are ever going to be reduced, officials and residents have got to accept the fact that it can not be business as usual. The majority of residents who came out on this issue lacked vision, opting to remain trapped in traditional thinking. And politics being what it is, they got their way.

Over time, however, pressure to consolidate services, or even towns, is bound to increase. We may even see a day when such consolidations are ordered by the state.

“It’s going to happen in the future, It’s just not going to happen with this council in Mount Arlington,” Ondish said. That’s a shame.

Sorry, I had to post the entire thing because these Gannett newspapers are not making their online archives available any more. Rats!

Dueling Reports: What to Do About the MAPD…

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Last week the Mount Arlington, New Jersey, Township Council released a report from an independent consulting firm called Blue Shield Consulting Services. The purpose of commissioning the report was to ascertain whether or not the Mount Arlington Police Department should be merged with one of the surrounding localities. Since I grew up in Mount Arlington and my family still lives there (and I visit there quite often and have even thought about moving back at some point), I have some comments on this issue. But first, the rest of the story….

The report suggested that it would save Mount Arlington multiple millions of dollars to consolidate their police force with an adjoining municipality. There is a grassroots organization based out of Roxbury that disagrees, though (I think it’s Roxbury – the founder lives in Roxbury, but is a former Mount Arlington resident – not sure what the deal is here). On their website (saveMAPD.com), they show that they’ve got around 1140 signatures on an online petition. The problem with this, though, is that some of these petition signers are not Mount Arlington residents, but instead they are former residents like I am.

The folks behind saveMAPD.com commissioned a counter report that (obviously) disagreed with the Blue Shield Consulting Services report. As a side note, this just goes to show you that in the academic and consulting worlds you can get anyone to write you a report using facts that support your case! I think that’s obviously what happened with the saveMAPD.com folks, but I wonder if that’s how the Township Council prefaced their conversation with Blue Shield Consulting Services. Who knows this information besides those who are actually behind closed doors, right?

Anyway, that’s not my gripe with this situation. In fact, I don’t think I have a gripe with the situation as much as I have two comments to make about it all. First, the fact that consolidation of a police department that covers a few square miles is a debated issue has got to have our friends out in the Midwest and South rolling over with laughter. To those folks I say, “Welcome, friends, to New Jersey! This is a state that is made up of 566 fiefdoms that each fight, scratch, and claw for their territory! This is the state of the political bosses and good old boy system. This is – New Jersey!”

My second point is that you have to wonder about the legitimacy of the Township Council’s position on the consolidation. They’ve taken the stance that consolidating will save the township money. Okay, fine. As a student of public policy the very first thing you learn about taxes and local municipalities (and state governments for that matter) is that once they raise a tax rate, they NEVER lower it! Sure, you may have a few extreme examples from around the nation, but the chances of this “saved money” from the consolidation equating to a lower tax rate is slim at best.

So you have to competing sides arguing for two inherently awkward positions. New Jersey should be much more regionalized when it comes to service provisions. If done correctly, this would ease costs and (more importantly for those of us who live in the state) put an end to the abuse of power that is prevalent in the local police forces around New Jersey. At the same time, there will always be people who fight against regionalization because it means that some jurisdiction is going to lose some measure of power. Further, some folks will have hurt feelings about losing fiefdom-specific services.

My issue is that no matter what happens the one thing that you can be sure of is that the tax rate will NOT go down – and THAT, folks, is something worth getting mad about.

Students Loans Make Borrowers Feel Like “Prisoners”

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There are only a few issues out there that I am overly passionate about. Among the highest on my list are student loans and how the great increase in student loans are slowly eroding the very concept of The American Dream. It’s frightening.

The team at USA Today has been on the front line of this issue since before there was any kickback scandal and before it became chic to cover student loans in the weekend papers. Which brings me to their latest offering, published online today.

Student loans sew seeds of economic ills

This story does a good job covering how the cost of going to school has increased while the available funding has only increased in the private sector – where money costs a good deal more than if it were borrowed from the government.

Many people who read about the current student loan crisis often view people in the article (like Ms. Kristin Cole in this article) as complainers or whiners. These folks often say that the people in the articles could have just as easily gone into the military or not gone to school. Well that’s a ton of bullshit. I can sympathize with Ms. Cole and her current plight. Remember, it was only a year and half ago or so that I was featured on the cover of USA Today about my own student loan debt.

The biggest problem that I faced after that article was printed was the problem of projection. People LOVE to project their situation on to your life if you’re covered in one of these articles. It’s pathetic, really. I scoured the internet after my article was printed and aside from the ignorant comments about the school I attended and whether or not I should have gotten a Masters Degree, the biggest discussion I saw was NOT about me and my situation, but rather about the people posting online and THEIR situations!

I got news for you folks, my story was on the front page for a lot more reasons that you read in my article! As I told the young woman who wrote the article, my case is becoming the new “classic” case of hyper-political correctness hurting people who have otherwise noble goals in life. In my case, I was a young, white, smart, middle-class, male who lived in the suburbs and had a list of leadership activities on my college applications a mile long. But because I was a young, white, smart, middle-class, male who lived in the suburbs there was literally no “free” money for me to attend college. Change any one of those variables and I would have gone to school for free; however if you’re in my position it is expected that you have family money to pay for your schooling.

Well that’s the biggest ton of bull crap that I’ve ever heard of. I come from a normal American family – not the Warbucks clan! But while I’m on that subject, let me say that I couldn’t be happier that I come from the family that I come from. Not only are all of my relatives awesome, but I’ve seen spoiled rich kids come to college (and in Grad School) who are so naive and so downright stupid that I would never want their money if being a moron came with it!

So to Ms. Cole in this article – I hear and understand your pains. Good luck!

Getting the Shaft from GameStop

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The last week of August was my vacation and it was a good vacation. I got a bigger bed, my Mother and I adopted a pug from the local shelter, and I got a lot of cleaning and de-cluttering accomplished. I also had some rest and relaxation, had my truck breakdown and wipe out my bank account (again), and was able to sign a few new contracts for Usable Web Solutions, LLC, but those are different posts!

Anyway, as I was cleaning up my room and my apartment I realized that not only did I have a large number of crappy DVDs (Navarro, Van Brunt, Booey, Surfer Jay, and pretty much everyone else that has seen my collection up front will rejoice at those words), but I also had a bunch of PlayStation 2 games that were literally collecting dust. Folks, I’m talking about games that I once bought because they looked like they were fun – and then never played them once. Some games never made it out of the box! Likewise with the DVD movies. I once purchased Suburban Commando just to piss off a roommate that I was living with! Of course, this helps to explain why I had a 200+ DVD collection, but also why I had a ton of crappy movies.

So I decided to bring some of these video games and crappy DVDs to GameStop and trade them in for store credit. Remember, I have a Nintendo Wii and a Nintendo DS Lite and I need games for these systems! I put together 12 PlayStation 2 discs and 18 DVDs and brought them over to the local GameStop.

Guess how much I was credited for these discs.

$200?

$150?

$100?

Nope.

Fifty bucks. I was credited fifty bucks for 30 items, more than half of which were video games. Talk about getting the shaft! Three of four of those DVDs would cost $50 combined! Yeah, I was hot after that, but I looked at it this way. I never played these video games and I never watched these DVDs so what was the purpose in keeping them and letting them collect dust? That would be a huge waste of space.

So I took my shafting from GameStop and hopefully I’ve learned to not spend money on excess video games and excess DVDs. The truth is that if you’re not dying to see a movie or play a specific game, then you probably don’t need to spend money on another game or movie just to fill the void.

After getting $50 for my troubles, consider this a lesson learned the hard way!