“If you invested in a very low cost index fund - where you don't put the money in at one time, but average in over 10 years -you'll do better than 90% of people who start investing at the same time.” PeopleIfsYearsCostLowsInvestingAverageFundOne TimeIndex Funds Author:Warren Buffett
“Unfortunately, in rich-world health, innovation is both your friend and your enemy. Innovation is inventing organ replacement, joint replacement. We're inventing ways of doing new things that cost $300,000 and take people in their 70s and, on average, give them an extra, say, two or three years of life. And then you have to say, given finite resources, should we fire two or three teachers to do this operation?” PeopleWorldWayGivingShouldYearsTwoThreeGivenEnemyRichFireTeacherCostResourcesInnovationAverageOperationsExtrasThree YearsOrgansNew ThingsFiniteJointsInventingReplacementsYears Of LifeWorld Health Author:Bill Gates
“The Mars Polar Lander cost the average American the price of half a cheeseburger. A human lander would cost the average American more - perhaps even ten cheeseburgers! So be it. That is no great sacrifice.” HumansHalfSacrificeCostTenAverageMarsCheeseburgerGreat Sacrifice Author:Jonah Goldberg
“All life produces waste. The act of living produces costs, hazards and disposal questions, and so the (Environment) Ministry has found itself in the center of all life, mitigating, guiding and policing the detritus of the average person along with investigating the infractions of the greedy and short-sighted, the ones who wish to make quick profits and trade on others' lives for it.” PersonsFoundWishEnvironmentProduceCostWasteTradeAverageProfitMinistryGreedyHazardsAverage PersonInvestigatingShort Sighted Book:The Windup Girl Source: The Windup Girl
“Index funds have regularly produced rates of return exceeding those of active managers by close to 2 percentage points. Active management as a whole cannot achieve gross returns exceeding the market as a while and therefore they must, on average, underperform the indexes by the amount of these expense and transaction costs disadvantages.” WholeAchieveReturnAmountCostManagementRateInvestingAverageActiveManagersFundExpensesGrossPercentagesDisadvantagesTransactionsIndex FundsActive Management Author:Burton Malkiel
“Properly measured, the average actively managed dollar must underperform the average passively managed dollar, net of costs. Empirical analyses that appear to refute this principle are guilty of improper measurement.” PrinciplesCostDollarsInvestingAverageGuiltyAnalysisMeasurementActive Management Author:William Forsyth Sharpe
“What does it mean when Republicans and Democrats alike warn us about the 'pain' involved in cutting government spending - in their spending less of our money? For the average citizen, what pain is there in his keeping more of his money to invest it the way he wants? Taxes cost people. Tax cuts do not cost government.” PeopleWayWantMeanDoeGovernmentPainPoliticalPoliticsCuttingCitizensInvolvedRepublicanCostTaxesDemocratAverageSpendingTax CutsGovernment SpendingSpending Less Author:Theodore J. Forstmann
“Assuming that a tax increase is necessary, it is clearly preferable to impose the additional cost on land by increasing the land tax, rather than to increase the wage tax - the two alternatives open to the City (of Pittsburgh). It is the use and occupancy of property that creates the need for the municipal services that appear as the largest item in the budget - fire and police protection, waste removal, and public works. The average increase in tax bills of city residents will be about twice as great with wage tax increase than with a land tax increase.” NeedsTwoUseCitiesFireLandCostTaxesWasteIncreasePoliceBillsAssumingPropertyAverageProtectionAlternativesBudgetsItemsResidentsRemovalPittsburghTax IncreasesPolice Protection Author:Herbert Simon
“Ending up-front fees should make it far easier for all students to go to university as they will no longer have to pay up to /1,125 out of their loans at the start of each year. Student loans will also rise to meet average living costs.” ShouldYearsPayFrontsStudentsEasierCostUniversityAverageLoanFeesStudent Loan Author:Anne Campbell
“Half of NYC's homeless populations are families.Homeless people have been ignored for too long. I'll just say this: If you are a family on the brink of eviction you are 80% less likely to get evicted if you have legal counsel. However, there is no right to legal counsel in housing court.It would cost the city $12,500 to grant that family legal counsel. Meanwhile, the average stay for a homeless family in a shelter once they have been evicted cost the city $45,000. So not only does it seem like the right thing to do morally, it's also the right thing to do fiscally.” PeopleIfsLongDoeHas BeensSeemsCitiesHalfCostCourtAveragePopulationThings To DoRight ThingGrantsShelterIgnoredHomelessHousingNycHomeless PeopleEviction Author:Paul Bettany
“Politics, under a democracy, reduces itself to a mere struggle for office by flatterers of the proletariat; even when a superior man prevails at that disgusting game he must prevail at the cost of his self-respect. Not many superior men make the attempt. The average great captain of the rabble, when he is not simply a weeper over irremediable wrongs, is a hypocrite so far gone that he is unconscious of his own hypocrisy.. a slimy fellow, offensive to the nose.” MenSelfGamesStruggleGoneDemocracyCostOfficeFellowsMereAverageSuperiorsNosesHypocrisyUnconsciousSelf RespectDisgustingCaptainsOffensiveHypocriteProletariatSuperior ManFlattererSo Far Gone Author:H. L. Mencken
“You can't make people happy by law. If you said to a bunch of average people two hundred years ago "Would you be happy in a world where medical care is widely available, houses are clean, the world's music and sights and foods can be brought into your home at small cost, traveling even 100 miles is easy, childbirth is generally not fatal to mother or child, you don't have to die of dental abscesses and you don't have to do what the squire tells you" they'd think you were talking about the New Jerusalem and say "yes."” PeopleIfsThinkingWorldYearsChildrenSaidTwoHomeCareLawMotherDiesHouseEasyTalkingCostHundredYears AgoSightCleanAverageAvailableMedicalMilesBunchChildbirthJerusalemMaking People HappyMedical CareDentalSquires Author:Terry Pratchett
“Infertility costs an average of about $16-20,000 per procedure, and you don't always get pregnant the first time. I had to go through it seven times. And adoption and surrogacy are not covered through insurance companies.” FirstsCompanyCostFirst TimeSevenAverageCoveredPregnantAdoptionProceduresInsurance CompaniesInfertilitySurrogacy Author:Cindy Margolis
“Since the late 1970's, the main focus of prisons has been punishment, not rehabilitation. It's hard to believe, but you would be hard-pressed to find a meaningful violence-prevention class in a federal or state penitentiary. And 'we the people' are footing the bill to keep these folks imprisoned. It costs on average $46,000 a year to keep an adult incarcerated in California and about the same for New York State.” PeopleYearsBelieveHas BeensHardStatesWould BeClassFocusViolenceNew YorkCostLateAdultsBillsPrisonAverageFolksMeaningfulPunishmentCaliforniaPreventionRehabilitationHard To BelieveNew York State Author:James Fox
“The reality is, the way we've used phones and the amount that we've used phones has changed radically in the past five years. When phones were first marketed in the 1990s, it cost, for car phones, $3000 to buy a phone and the average person did not use it that much. They were very, very expensive.” WayYearsFirstsPersonsUseRealityPastUsedFiveCarChangedAmountCostAveragePhonesFive YearsExpensiveAverage Person Author:Devra Davis
“In Indiana, the Affordable Care Act will raise the average cost of health insurance in the individual market by an unaffordable 72 percent.” CareIndividualCostPercentRaisesAverageAffordableIndianaAffordable Care Act Author:Mike Pence
“A $1.7 billion average increase in electricity costs is estimated to result in a $1.3 billion decrease in personal income and a loss of 13,000 more jobs in the region.” JobsLossResultsCostIncreaseTransformationAverageBillionsIncomeRegionsElectricityDecrease Author:Greg Walden
“perhaps I possess a certain Midwestern sensibility that I inherited from my mother and her parents, a sensibility that Warren Buffet seems to share: that at a certain point one has enough, that you can derive as much pleasure from a Picasso hanging in a museum as from one that's hanging in your den, that you can get an awfully good meal in a restaurant for less than twenty dollars, and that once your drapes cost more than the average American's yearly salary, then you can afford to pay a bit more in taxes.” EnoughSeemsMotherCertainBitsParentPleasurePayShareCostTaxesTwentiesDollarsAverageMealsRestaurantsMuseumsSensibleSensibilitySalaryBuffetsDensGood MealsWarren BuffetDrapes Author:Barack Obama