Banking Best buy - no savings account means more than a brokerage account -the fact that I trade on margin and have stocks isn't even considered and I am turned down becasue of low income even though I can easily float my debt currently, takes $200 a month out of the $600 of Dipsoable income available without considering new job. Didn't look at DI looked at total income. Some of my recent interesting experiences the double charge on a single transaction - 2 $20 charges - while overdrawn 2 $5 charges went through each cost $20 the $20 wire fee from brokerag and $10 from bank of america - every time I do a wire costs $30 in fees the speed of transaction in brokerage and in bank of america. - it takes a minimum of 6 days for money to go from checking to brokerage if it starts on the credit card. Could take less than one day to handle multiple transactions, but every bank wants interest what does it mean to go over limit. Is there a difference between your checkbook didn't balance today, but the money is in the pipeline to pay things versus you just refuse to pay it? why can credut be so different - way Walmart, amazon, and ebay or paypal handles buyer's credit is completely different walmart - store only but cash amazon - credit card paypal - odd only where paypal accepted college student - can't get preferred rate bank of america - can on other card - I 'm the same person in both accounts, but because in one I am labelled a college student which is true I am treated differently turned down from new credit cards for having too many recent credit checks - so even having people check your credit frequently is a bad thing. This seems an odd reason to not be able to get more credit as it has nothing to do with your ability to pay. warning on credit card - for being over and erasing balance - it's not a good thing to ding the credit card and push it over with an interest charge at end of month and then hide this on the statement from the consumer. End analysis of banking fees and structure - The behavior that helps the economy most is penalized and the behavior that helps the ecnomy least is rewarded. The business person or person heavily engaged in many financial activities who has loands drawn out and uses credit and may have money one day and may not have it the next because of bad customers or bad luck is penalized heavily with banking fees making it very risky to have a business or use credit because there is a hidden cost in fees that makes it very hard for someone with money or a new business to use the full extent of the capital. As proposed earlier when someone is over the limit they should be warned and given 2 weeks to pay with only minimal fees if any and have a grey area where banks float the consumer but remind them that they have to pay if at the end of the two weeks they haven't then the penalties should be severe as it becomes negligence and not cash in one hand and goods and IOU's in the other - The people taking out loans and using credit responsible are driving the economy and are at the same time the people most penalized by fees because the bank system as set up does not allow them to safely use the entire extent of their credit line - they have to worry about the wrong bill coming due on the wrong day - this really isn't good. Transaction time speed up - let banks and others get the money and interest after it reaches final source so that when it goes to merchant or to a brokerage where it sits a length of time that company will hold the money and pay the other banks off - a consumer online can mark a final source for the money and have minimal time to get the money to it's final source - very important when say putting money into the stock market from a credit card. Mark a final source for use and get it their in a day even if 4 banks are gone through and then at the final source take out the interest payment to each of the four banks. Get all transatcions down to one day - security maintained by known and holding money at final source. The banking behavior that helps the economy most is rewarded - putting the money in a shoe - just sticking it in the bank or putting it in the banks hands to hold - if saving is desired then bank should make a proiftable deal with consumers for raw cash - like a CD or money market - we need saving so we'll "borrow" cash from consumer market to meet bank demand. Those people who do noth?ing but sit on their money are actually the ones who hurt the economy and don't really contribute to society - their behavior should be the one fees are applied to - not having a loan out - or just putting money into savings - if you want people who actively invest than encourage that behavior by taxing large undemanded savings accoutns of people who are "conservative" with their money - they should be more encouraged to be business owners or active investors and they are not encouraged to do -either gave solution for gaining cash when banks need it - ask for it and give deal to consumers - Right now the people who do the most to drive the economy forward who are small business people and people without money are hit by tons of fees restricting their ability to invest in themselves and other people - redefine true negligence in paying and just not having the right income streams cross. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Transit & housing - The Government needs to step in to break single family home tradition and single person in car tradition You're fighting in the Senate over 2 fairly worthless pieces of legislation both aimed at giving every american a personal car to drive because that is what they are used to - either we don't have tractors and drive really small cars - or we just have to keep polluting - those are the only laternatives your looking at - a third alternative is to have less cars on the road. - trying to combine several ideas of mine into a solution that helps everyone here - and although it's crazy - I think it will work better than the doming of Gaza idea. Americans need to be pushed into considering other options than the single family home - they should still have that option - but a very good thing for big government to do is fund housing experiments and laternatives as the private market has totally screwed up here and offers nothing as every single real-estate firm or developer is scared out of their minds about changing the settlement patterns of americans who swear on a stack of bibles that they need single family homes which they are conditioned to look at as assets - the Northeast could use denser cheaper housing to support a diverse workforce, but can't build it because there is no market in real estate for it. Many knowldege worker or high tech people's lifestyle would be better satisfied by mass transit and apartments than by single family homes and cars. Cars are the biggest waste of time in everyone's scheudle and we do everything we can to encourage them so that millions of amercians spend up to 10% of their day stuck in traffic or even driving around and this is all non-productive time - Americans though are well conditioned to believe single family homes are assets and that they need a car - their own car that can general fit 3 other people at least - but they need their own vehicle to do a repetitive trip 5 days a week. In addition we have this messy infrastructure system where there are local roads and national roads and much of the day a lot of roads aren't used only at peak times - so inefficiency in the amount of space a person reserves in their house, in the travel time to work and everywhere else, inefficiency in having a single care per person driving, and inefficiency in the road /transit system overlapping without any thought. Here's the proposal - Government should back the sale price of multi-unit housing and trailer parks or things like that for knowledge workers or others who really don't want a lawn and a big house but can't find anything in the real estate market because no one takes that risk - everyone builds the house as an asset instead of a liability except in places where there isn't any money. Where there is money we build McMansions even if many people never go into most of the rooms they have - this is very environmentally destructive - to help out new housing ideas attract people to live in them - it will take government funding for the needed experiementation to start to give consumers choice in housing as the commercial market has failed - this is my first very liberal porgram - my experience in archtiecture convinces that the market has failed and this is needed -very small -well designed housing with minimal upkeep close negihbors -easy walking to convenineces - get this into smaller towns with main street and incentive to mix in industrial and housing experiments in neighborhoods and the US government back the real estate prices - to encourage better mixed use in cities and suburbs and perhaps rural - use some of the European and Canadian model where you cluster the housing and commercial and working so that more people walk to work or don't use care - if a person wants a house and a car in the traditional style, it's the US and they can do that - but get more people familiar with the benefits of sharing because US society is selfish in everyone having everything in their own protected house and many redundancies in services exist - every kid gotta have a pool - once some people experience more convenience and see that if their house is treated as liability instead of an asset (size minimized and usage of space maximized) - this fits more with many young peoples lifestyle and they will adapt if this choice is put in the market place and more experiments are done with making good apartments that have soundproof walls for knowledge workers - every real estate developer scared to make this change without help - Democrats this has your name on it - my republican colleagues will call me satan for proposing this - but experiments in lieftstyle through housing architecture need to be funded, the market is not doing it. Transit - it would be nice to have a system where everyone has a GPS device and makes tranist demands and needs - and a system of bikes, busses, ferries and what not is provided bases on dynamic GPS voting - get rid of most personal cars and just have GPS - with more communal housing where more people stop at same place it becomes more vialbe to have a bus drop people off and be ready to accomodate groceries . I shopped at Wal-mart by bus - be nice if the supermarkets made it easier to load groceries onto a bus and then get person nearer to home - their be a revolution in how groceries are delivered - so that packaged orders come to house or to nearby drugstore which is easy to pick up - shop at virtual supermarket online and have groceries delivered to nearby drug store - maybe it only really sells produce - this may put Wal-mart out of business so maybe Wal-mart should try to kill me too - knowing Wal-mart they'll just adapt which would be mosre logical. - But person logs into transit system - linking airplane-bus-taxi - bike rental- and whatever else - based on preferences and needs - are they carrying groceries or picking up kids - the system through sophisticated databases and tons of computer science as travel is an NP-complete problem (very hard computer science problem- the traveling salesman is a classic impossible NP-complete computer science problem) - geyhound to have their system of travel locations and abilities has found a mickey mouse way to solve it at least - you can't technically solve it with a regular computer - but greyhound proves their is an apparent work around possible - but have a very highly linked transit system - that can get consumers from a to b any a to b desired - it will have to know it's time of day limits - cost structure - and limits in transport abilities - eventually it would be really cool if a CTA transit pass worked on MArta or Barta or Metro-North - or in Chicago, Atlanta, San Francisco, or New York - link in planes and busses and give options for all travel in one system - there would have to be a lot of government encouragement to break people out of "needing" a car - with approporiate taxes on cars and SUV's and blatant support of at first city transit and the intrastate transit and then interstate transit - one cost recution - some redundancy in roads and train and plane alternatives - but THINK T?HIS OUT - no more having that secondary highway that sits there unused and paved - if its not need get rid of it - that's why all this should be coordinated if at all possible with mobile roads and mobile architecture - be very nice to think more about having roads and housing that changes location based on demand - and not building new hih ways to make more underused ones - which is currently what happens - all the proposals should serve to cluster housing - and for rural people - it would do a better job not touching fule efficeincy for tractor or a work vehicle where low gas mileage makes sense - save the mileage by killing the SUv soccer mom who DOES NOT NEED A GAS HOG - she needs or he needs - soccer dad - a trnaist system that provides rented car easily and hceaply when necessary - but busing and toher structures desgined to accomodate a family - AMericans need to be broken of their obsession with cars, they can learn to share, I did it for like 9 years it can work - the alternative proposed by congress iether version in the senate of keeping the same number of cars with tons of restrictions on everything seems pretty dumb. Honestly most americans have very superficial views of housing and don'tlook at it practically - watchin own parents and speaking as a former designer - technically intern architect as I never got my license because of the corruption in the field. No architect with license would propose trailer parks or mobile archtiecture - rent-a center or idea of moving person and small amount of perosnal effect to new area and leaving behind most furniture and not transporting it over long distances - but getting new furniture at location - via something like rent-a-center - but if rent-a-center worked way better than it does now - it's like what auctions were like before the event of ebay- be neat if Buckminster's fuller vision were realized and all americans could relatively easily move to a new location of house several times a year if desired because moving would be much less of a hassle if you just pack up a computer and a few things and go and get away from a lot of needles personal attachment - rebuy -reget what is needed in new place on amazon and ebay and don't haord your past life with you. Not editing this but hopefully something to think about - time to do other work Better links between rural and urban areas allowing people more options without cars to get into rural and enjoy it and not forcing rural people to drive into a city and pay high parking - more inter communication between republicans and democrats who in many urgan-rural areas fight each other in regional politics killing several Us city regions in the internal fights - I can think of Chicago and Pittsburgh as examples with intense regional battles between urban Democrats and rural Republicans both dreading the other taking away their toys and their money - so that links between the regions are poor. There can be some redundancy left for security - homeland security in particular - but it should actually be corrdinated and planed at if possible national level - the state and city fights are terrible on tranist options - I wonder if house or representative members shouldn't rotate their constituencies - they're supposedly a national law making body but have tremedous potential for corrupt ear-marks for their little place and becasue of small area they control relatively don;t have to be concerened about bigger picture their websites and blocking of comments from people outside their distrcit in majority of cases reflect their myopic views and thier refusal to admit their national rammifications.