Will and Beyond - Posts tagged money

01/13/09 @ 1:09PM EST
posted by will

Dear Barack,

Again, congratulations. You had my vote. You also had a couple (small) campaign contributions from me. However, you are no longer Presidential Candidate Barack Obama, you are now President-elect Barack Obama.

As such, I will no longer be giving you money. Why? Because you will very soon be my president, and I will be paying you taxes. You want to raise my taxes, and spend money on things I approve of? Great!

But again, I will not give you any more money directly. I have receieved many emails from you and David Plouffe, and maybe one or two from Michelle, since election night. During the campaign, they were understandable, and from time to time, I would cave, and pull out my credit card. Now they have become a nuisance.

[Comments: 1][Tags: money, video games]

Gold Farming for Development

09/05/08 @ 7:52PM EST
posted by richard

A recent study came out for the Institute for Development Policy and Management. Researcher Richard Heeks is looking into gold-farming in online games as a viable source for real-world production in developing countries.

Gold-farming occurs when an online player gives another player real-world money in exchange for in-game currency. The "farmer" can get gold in a variety of different ways; possibly by killing enemies, selling and trading items, etc. The farmer's main goal is just to gain in-game money and then sell it to people who need it.

Uploaded file

Most game companies discourage this act, as it could possibly lead to in-game inflation. If there are large quantities of players just looking to obtain gold then the supply of gold increases, thus raising the price of goods which could cause new players to become discouraged.

Regardless of whether gold-farming is a legitimate business, the 87-page study by Heeks looks at gold-farming with a much more positive angle. He estimates that the gold-farming industry for all online games and regions is currently at $500 million, but he suspects that the number could easily rise to $1 billion as the business becomes more known and acceptable.

That's a whole lot of money but, I don't see how developing countries could get into this business on a mass scale. Developing countries may not have access to computers or the economy in those countries may not be able to handle the start-up costs that it requires to become an effective gold-farmer. Leveling up or trading requires time and the time would cost money that no player would be willing to spend on a new gold-farmer.

Unless however, that the gold-farming industry in the developing countries was funded by the government, which it probably would be. This poses another problem then, which would be that a mass movement of gold-farming might cause inflation that could cripple online gaming economies.

The study says that this may not be a problem though, citing that online games like EVE and Runescape have actually experienced deflation after a rise in gold farmers. I find that fact very surprising and if I have time I will read the study in its entirety and see if there were other factors that affected these online games.

If gold-farming is actually a viable source of income though, not only would this be an awesome job to have but it could help more people (including workers with physical disabilities) get jobs in developing countries.

Photo: [1]

Poor people farming
what a radical concept
more gold for the rich

[Comments: 5][Tags: money, video games]

Selling Free Items

08/31/08 @ 1:00PM EST
posted by will

How do thieves make money? They steal things, then they sell them, pure profit! How can you take advantage of this strategy legally? Sell items that are free!

Where are is MidnightBox getting the MSRP: $4.99 from? This article talks about how Nintendo was giving away these sleeves for your Wiimotes, because too many people were breaking their TVs.

Wii Skewer

I can vouch for the fact they give them out for free, I ordered four for my Wii, and they arrived without me paying a cent. Shame on you MidnightBox, for preying on the dumb folk.

Godspeed.

[Comments: 5][Tags: money, video games]

Moving Fees

08/19/08 @ 6:57PM EST
posted by will

I really hate the restrictions buildings place on moving in and out. No weekends, only during working ours, you have to schedule it, etc. It annoys me, but most of it is understandable; since you are hogging the elevator more than most people during that time.

Uploaded file

However, what the hell is up with this? Moving fees? $250?! Why should I pay the building this absurd amount of money; are they going to be carrying boxes and loading a truck for me? Hell no, they're not. This won't affect me for sometime, but it's the idea of it that bugs me.

There's no concierge from midnight to 8am at my building, and I can tell you that's when I'll be moving my boxes/furniture because fuck that.

Godspeed.

[Comments: 2][Tags: money, ranting]

Pandora is Doomed

08/16/08 @ 11:46PM EST
posted by will

My eyes swelled up with tears as I read this article. Pandora has been running off advertising and venture capital, and was projecting to finally be in the black in 2009, but the Copyright Royalty Board finalized its decision to double the royalties internet radio must pay.

6 months ago my music listening could be broken down to:
10% Pandora
5% Last.fm*
85% iTunes

But now, I'd say that the rankings have changed to:
80% Pandora
2% Last.fm*
18% iTunes

Given that this affects all internet radio, will any of it last? Last.fm seems to have a better business model, since they have paid subscriptions, and the listening isn't all mainstream, there are a lot of artists who upload their music for free - these factors would reduce their cost per play. But, hopefully they won't go under, they'll figure something out...

Uploaded file

I wanted to make reference to Pandora's box, but I couldn't decide if this would be analagous to the box being opened, closed, or smashed to bits. Because the box contains chaos, yet the service is being shut down... it's too much for me. Any thoughts on that? Anyhow, thanks to merrickmtg for the news (from Twitter).

Photo: Flickr

*Even though I'm not listening to Last.fm directly, all my tracks are still being scrobbled there.

Godspeed.

[Comments: 1][Tags: music, politics, money]

Microtransactions: Good for the Airline Industry and Us

08/05/08 @ 2:50PM EST
posted by will

You've probably been reading about this, it started with Delta charging for a 2nd checked bag, which they were charging $25 for, which was recently raised to $50. JetBlue has taken another step by charging for a pillow and blanket.

Uploaded file

Everyone's reaction to this has pretty much been an outcry of digust. It was for me too, but I sat back and put some more thought into it. I've decided I support the idea. When I take a flight, they offer you a blanket, 99% of the time I say no. However, my flight ticket cost includes that, it's free, so why shouldn't I take it? I don't want it, and I don't want to pay for it, the only way to make me not pay, is to charge everyone who actually does use the blanket.

The same is true for checked luggage; I try and avoid checking luggage. It takes time to go wait at baggage check to get my bags, and it's a hassle to carry around, I'd rather just pack lightly and do carry-on. However, space on the plane is expensive; when there is more weight on the plane, it uses more fuel. Shouldn't people who bring more stuff pay more? Yes!

Uploaded file

If they're making money off the people using all of these extras, they won't have to raise my fares (or at least, as much) to make money. Airline industry, I applaud you, but I wish that someone would explain this to everyone; you could use some good PR.

Photo: Flickr
Photo: Flickr

Godspeed.

[Comments: 0][Tags: money]

Pennies and Autographs

03/08/08 @ 9:48AM EST
posted by will

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson would like to get rid of the penny. I think it's a great idea; they don't do much for the economy in my opinion, and they lost a lot to make. Especially when more and more people are spending money on credit cards. I know that I deal with physical cash a whole lot less than I used to. I'm more annoyed than anything when I receive pennies as change. If you're walking somewhere and you drop a penny, would you really bend down to pick it up? If you even had to think for a second about that, it should tell you something. It's money! Why wouldn't you pick it up? Because it's worthless! We already know what what I think of the phrase "Worth Every Penny".

paulson

In the article where I was reading this, Paulson also said that he keeps dollar bills with him for when people ask for an autograph. Really? It would be kind of cool to have one, but when you see him (assuming you're the type who could recognize him), would you really think to ask him for an autograph? Let alone for him to give you money to autograph?

Photo: Flickr

Godspeed.

[Comments: 0][Tags: politics, money]

Taxing Video Games

01/27/08 @ 6:34AM EST
posted by will

The two certain things in life are death and taxes. I wouldn't be able to write an article on taxes without using that cliche phrase, so I'm getting it out of the way now and not mentioning it again. You may be rightly wondering why I, a chemist, would be writing about taxes.

Moneybag

Among my many RSS feeds are a few video game blogs, including Joystiq. Where's the connection? The article which prompted this was entitled, "New Mexico legislators consider video game tax for outdoor programs". This sort of tax seems that it would be unlikely to pass, so I wouldn't think twice about it. The only reason it caught my eye is because it looked very familiar. I looked back, and sure enough, earlier this month there was another similar article entitled: "Wisconsin politician proposes 1% tax on video games". These articles were written within three weeks of each other. Looking back even farther, I found: "Let's tax games, proposes Texas senator".

Consoles

The push in New Mexico is being proposed by the Sierra Club, who tried for this tax last year unsuccessfully. The taxes in Wisconsin and Texas were proposed by democratic senators. Tiered taxes exist already, for instance here in Washington, DC, sales tax is 5.75%, however in restaurants it is 10%. Most states have added excise taxes (I spent some time on Wikipedia) for cigarettes, gasoline and alcohol. These can also be called Pigovian, or more commonly sin taxes.

IRS

Should video games receive a "sin tax"? Obviously I'm going to take the side against it, since I play them and would rather not pay more. What are the arguments for such a tax? The Sierra Club's tax in New Mexico would have the proceeds go towards programs that "would counteract the negative effects of video games -- lower academic scores, obesity, and increased attention-deficit disorder." In Texas, the argument employed is that "if school-aged kids are spending a lot of money on video games" or parents are spending a lot of money on games for their school-aged kids" these consumers can spend a little bit more in order to improve their school systems".

Outdoors

I support better schools and outdoor programs to improve public health, but why should video gamers pay more than other people to support these efforts?

[Comments: 0][Tags: video games, money, politics]

Worth Every Penny

08/28/07 @ 12:00PM EST
posted by will

Ever heard the phrase "worth every penny"? When you think of that, you assume that the person is happy with their purchase; it was worth 100% of what they paid for it. However, that isn't the only way to interpret it. So what else could they mean by this phrase?

1) It is worth EVERY penny.
They could mean, that is worth every penny ever created. So, what would that be worth? Well, penny isn't the official term for the coin, it's actually just called a "cent". The cent has gone through a lot of changes, so let's just talk about the current version, the Lincoln Memorial Cent. This coin was first minted in 1959. As of 1959, 420,017,088,390 cents have been pressed and put into circulation. That's 420 billion. 4.2 billion dollars worth of cents. It's estimated that about 2/3 of this number has been destroyed by the mint, or lost. So they could mean, "that was worth $1.4 billion."

Lots of pennies

2) It's worth what each penny is worth.
All cents are worth exactly $0.01 as legal tender. However, some cents are worth more as collectors items. For instance, the most valuable cent is a 1943 copper cent. The reason behind this is that in 1943 copper was needed for wartime efforts in World War II, so the cents were pressed with steel instead of copper. However, one sheet of copper was already in the press, so that sheet was pressed. It is believed that there are only about 20 of them still in existence. The most one of these has ever sold for was over $200,000. So they could mean, "that was worth somewhere between $0.01 and $200,000.00." Not quite as valuable, but still pretty respectable.

1943 Penny

3) It's worth every penny's actual value. Well, how much is a cent actually worth? As of 1982, cents are composed of 97.5% zinc, 2.5% copper, and weigh 2.5 grams. Prices of metals fluctuate, but as of 8/27/07, zinc was priced at $1.3943 per pound, and copper at $3.3435 per pound. Cents used to be composed of 95% copper and 5% zinc, but since copper is more expensive, this wasn't very cost effective.

Cost of Zinc in a cent:
2.5g cent * 0.975g zinc/1g cent * 1 lb zinc/453.59237g zinc * $1.3943/1 lb zinc = $0.0074925

Cost of Copper in a cent:
2.5g cent * 0.025g copper/1g cent * 1 lb copper/453.59237g copper * $3.3435/1 lb copper = $0.0004605

Adding these two costs together gives you $0.0079530. Given that one cent is worth exactly $0.01 as legal tender, that means the value of a cent is 79.530% of it's worth. Keep in mind that this number fluctuates with time. So they could mean, "that was worth 79.53% of what I paid."

Melting pennies

4) It's worth every penny - which is nothing. Some people are pushing for the elimination of the cent. Some reasons are that due to inflation, it's just not worth enough to bother with. A more important point however, is that the coin contains about $0.008 worth of metal, but the cents cost about $0.006 to produce, bringing their total production cost up to about $0.014, more than their worth as legal tender. Why lose money like this? So I'm sure that cents will be worth their value for a while, but I can see a point where everywhere except banks stop taking cents. In that case, if you just have one cent, or even four cents, there's not much you can do with it, since you can't trade it into to the bank. So essentially it will be worthless. So they could mean, "that was worth nothing."

Penny bite

This all came to me because the other day I thought of the phrase in my head, and then my head started whirring. Yeah this is how my mind thinks. Hope you enjoyed a trip into the sea of tangents that is Will's mind. My references are below if you're interested. The pages with an (*) are particularly interesting. Aside from the interesting ones, they're in no particular order.

References:
1982-2007 Lincoln Zinc Penny Melt Value - Coinflation.com*
The MegaPenny Project | Two Hundred Billion Pennies*
Penny Composition
United States Mint coin production - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Lincoln Cents - Memorial Reverse
Fun Facts about the United States Mint
1943 steel cent - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Cent (United States coin) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Efforts to eliminate the penny in the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Production Figures - The United States Mint

[Comments: 2][Tags: money]