Civic Planning to Avoid slums: Regressive Property Tax Break

So, the goal of a city is to support its people in making their lives better. One way to improve someone's situation is to make their land property more valuable. There exist cities with slums. These places have not been kept up by their owners. So, to solve this issue a computer program could be written to implement the following according to new laws that are passed:

A regressive property tax for the least valuable property of the city. An owner's property tax will be adjusted downward provided that his property that has been identified as a 'least value property' increases in appraised value faster than the city average appreciation. As long as the property is still identified as a least value property the property owner is eligible for this regressive tax break. So, this should encourage owners to improve their properties to be better than those in other parts of the city. When they surpass other areas of the city in value the other areas of the city will be assigned the 'least value property' status and those owners will be given an opportunity to benefit from the "regressive property tax break".

This rising tide of valuation will lift all ships and make the city a beautiful place to be.

Investing

This year has been kind of weird for the stock market. The traditional summer slide didn't happen.

This site explains the 'Sell in May and go away' strategy based on seasonal changes in the market.

"We discovered that those best days on average are October 16 for the entry into the market for its favorable seasonal period, and April 20 for the exit from the market’s favorable season. However, those are just the best days as averaged over a very long time period. Obviously the market does not begin a rally on the same day each year, or begin to decline from a top on the same day each year."

These dates are consistent with other reports that I'm aware of.

nada

Nothing new to report except that I'm going to a birthday celebration today.

My Car

My other new toy: a Bluestone 2007 Saturn Sky Turbo Redline. Its a great car and a lot of fun.

My Phone

This is my new phone toy. It is a smart phone and I just got my GMail working on it. I may have to write some code for a mobile im solution but we'll see.

Terrorism as a crime

This article explains why Terrorism is best dealt with as a crime rather than an act of war.

ugly stupid people

“optimal genotypes differ between male and female red deer, because a genotype that produces a male phenotype with relatively high fitness will, on average, produce a phenotype with lower fitness when expressed in a female.”

Investment Guidelines

1. Your capital must produce income.
2. Your capital must be absolutely safe.
3. Your capital must be in totally liquid investment. you must be able to convert it into cash at a moment's notice, to handles emergencies.
4. Your capital must not be diminished at the time of investment by unnecessary commissions, or other expenses.
5. Your income must be absolutely safe.
6. Your income must not fluctuate. You must know exactly what your income will be next month, next year and 20 years from now.
7. Your income must be payable to you, in cash, at regular intervals.
8. Your income must not be diminished by charges, management fees or redemption fees.
9. The investment must produce this regular, fixed known income without any further involvement or expense on your part. It must not require maintenance, management, geographic presence or attention due to 'acts of God'.

Chinese Pollution

750,000 people die prematurely in China each year according to a world report.

Hortibot

Danish engineers have created an advanced robot that can weed fields.

Cost: 71000 / robot features described in the above article.