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Dear Mona,It seems like homeownership is a common data filter in the social sciences. But nearly everyone I know who “owns a home” is paying a mortgage. How many “homeowners” have actually paid off their houses?John, 34, Mount Vernon, Washington Dear John,Your question is an important one, not only because home ownership can have big consequences for the economy, but because 56 percent of all the housing units in America (that includes trailers, apartments and houses) are owned by the people who live in them.According to last year’s American Community Survey, one in three of those owner-occupied housing units doesn’t...

Every 10 or 20 years a series of watershed events come together that change the face of the international energy picture. The Saudi-led war on crude oil prices is one of these pivotal situations. And while others fret about what the OPEC production move means, I'm actually meeting with the guys who made the decision. I can tell you that what's unfolding here in the desert will have a decisive impact on producers, end users, and government/corporate policymakers worldwide. Of course, I've been involved in a fair share of all of this for over 40 years, from both the public...

The costs of solar energy are plummeting, and now are about on par with the electricity generated at big power plants. This new reality intensifies a long-running business and regulatory battle, between the mainline electric utility companies and newer firms that provide solar systems for homeowners' rooftops. Sometimes the rivalry looks more like hardball politics than marketplace economics. The way rooftop solar typically works, the homeowner leases rooftop panels from a company that owns and installs them. It can be an expensive proposition, but the homeowner saves some money by drawing less power from the utility company's electric plants, and...

Not everyone has a name like “Jethro,” so it only makes sense that the guy who played Jethro Bodine on The Beverly Hillbillies would want to cash in on such a famous moniker. That’s why he’s ticked off right now at CBS, claiming the network breached a contract he had with it by allowing an Iowa restaurant chain to use the Jethro name and character. Actor Max Baer Jr. played Jethro on the show about a family of hill dwellers who struck it rich and moved out to Califor-ni-a, and snagged a deal with CBS in 1991 allowing him to...

Fifteen years ago Dr. Dre wondered aloud whether people had forgotten about him. If there was a question then, it has certainly dissipated throughout the next steps of a career filled with highlights—most recently the sale of Beats, the company he cofounded, to Apple for $3 billion. Dr. Dre took home $620 million this year before taxes, thanks largely to that deal, making him the world’s top-earning musician of 2014. More remarkably, that number also marks the largest single-year haul of any musician, ever. “It’s safe to say headphones is a good business,” said DJ Khaled, one of hip-hop’s top...

A pro-life group in Illinois has placed an abortion autopsy image depicting a woman killed from legal abortion on a poster they hold outside a local abortion facility. The picture comes from the national pro-life organization, Life Dynamics, Inc. which has uploaded it to the website SafeandLegal.com. In addition to the autopsy image, the page documents hundreds of deaths of women killed from legal abortion and highlights the abortion-related deaths of 18-year-old Marla Cardamone and 24-year-old Tonya Reaves as well as their unborn children. Safe and Legal Prochoice Death List When Marla was killed having an abortion, her mother, Deborah,...

Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL  ) reported its fourth-quarter earnings on Oct. 20, impressing investors in all areas except for iPad sales. iPad shipments fell year over year for the third consecutive quarter, dropping 13% to 12.3 million units. iPad revenue ($5.3 billion) also came in lower than Mac revenue ($6.6 billion) for the first time in years.Three days later, Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT  ) posted its first-quarter earnings, revealing that sales of its Surface tablets had more than doubled both year over year and sequentially, to $908 million. Microsoft attributed that surge in demand to "strong interest from students, professionals, and increasingly enterprises for...

SEATTLE: Microsoft expects to have its new Windows 10 operating system on the market by autumn 2015, slightly later than previous comments had suggested. Chief operating officer Kevin Turner told Japanese news service Nikkei on Wednesday that the new system would be released "early next fall." Microsoft has not publicly set a firm timetable for the release of Windows 10, but only last week suggested the possibility of an earlier release. "By next late summer and early fall we'll be able to bring out this particular OS (operating system). That's the current plan of record," Turner told the Credit Suisse...

Oil is crashing. On Thursday, WTI crude oil was falling again, moving back below $61 a barrel. Much has been made of the "breakeven" oil price for the world's drilling projects. This is the level at which the price of oil covers the cost of extracting the oil.A simpler way to look at when the biggest oil players will start feeling the squeeze from lower prices is the "cash cost.""Without OPEC action, an outage, or other response, cash cost is the only true floor," Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Longson said.Cash cost is basically what it takes to keep oil production...

I don't know too much about Jim Rickards, just found this to be an interesting video about the overall economy and some tidbits about what our government agencies are up to. The video is a 45 minutes long interview of sorts and discussion. Just posting in the event other are interested.

A left-coast writer named Mark Morford thinks that gas prices falling to $2 a gallon would be the worst thing to happen to America. After all, he says, the wrong people would profit: oil companies (why would oil companies profit from lower gas prices?), auto makers, and internet retailers like Amazon that offer free shipping. If falling gas prices are the worst for America, then the best, Morford goes on to say, would be to raise gas taxes by $6 a gallon and dedicate all of the revenue to (boondoggles) “alternative energy and transport, environmental protections, our busted educational system,...

“Notorious piracy website The Pirate Bay was taken offline yesterday, as part of a raid by Swedish authorities,” Electronista reports. “The server raid in Stockholm, which took place yesterday morning, is said to be performed as part of a large operation to protect intellectual property, with several servers and other computers seized for further examination by the police.” “Yesterday’s event joins copious others in the history of The Pirate Bay where authorities have attempted to reduce piracy,” Electronista reports. “It also occurs just over a month after co-founder Fredrik Neij was arrested in Thailand, after fleeing Sweden following his 2009...

Classic battles: Ali vs. Frazier. Yankees vs. Red Sox. Toddler vs. iPad? Well, not exactly. CNNMoney gave two nursery school classmates a brand new iPad Air 2 and let them loose in our studios for a (very) non-scientific stress test. Good news for iPad owners: You can literally throw the device from the top of a 12-foot staircase and see it survive. (A note: CNN's newsrooms have a thin layer of carpeting, but the iPad endured nearly a dozen such plunges.) We mistakenly thought that when the toddlers grew tired, we'd see how well the tablet withstood a full-blown tantrum....

Following the catastrophic Oct. 28 failure of Orbital Sciences Corporation Antares rocket on a critical resupply mission to the space station for NASA, the company is seeking to quickly make up the loss to NASA by announcing the selection of the venerable Atlas V rocket built by United Launch Alliance to launch Orbital’s next Cygnus cargo ship to the orbital science lab.

The technologies of the past, by replacing human muscle, increased the value of human effort – and in the process drove rapid economic progress. Those of the future, by substituting for man’s senses and brain, will accelerate that process – but at the risk of creating millions of citizens who are simply unable to contribute economically, and with greater damage to an already declining middle class.

There is a form of derangement to which professors at highly competitive elite institutions are vulnerable. Jonathan Gruber of MIT (Economics PhD, Harvard) is much in the public eye right now, but Ben Edelman of Harvard Business School (Economics PhD, Harvard, along with a Harvard Law School diploma and a masters in statistics) is beginning to join him in the ranks of infamously arrogant. Hillary Sargent of Boston Magazine gained access to an email exchange between Professor Edelman and a Chinese restaurant, which he believes overcharged him, based on the prices in their menu that was part of their...

Apple today released iOS 8.1.2 which includes bug fixes and addresses a problem where ringtone purchased through iTunes Store may have been removed from your device. To restore these ringtones, visit Restore Ringtones on your iOS device. iOS 8.1.2 is compatible with the following iOS devices: iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, iPhone 5c, iPhone 5s, iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus iPad Air 2, iPad mini 3, iPad 2, iPad (third-generation), iPad (fourth-generation), iPad Air, iPad mini, iPad mini with Retina display iPod touch 5G The iOS 8.1.2 update is now available as an OTA download.

OAKLAND, California (AP) — A billion-dollar class-action lawsuit against Apple will likely continue, after a 65-year-old Massachusetts business consultant read about the plaintiffs’ floundering case online and volunteered to represent consumers in the suit. A federal judge said she’s tentatively satisfied with a proposal to add Barbara Bennett the new named plaintiff in the lawsuit over Apple’s iTunes software and the price of its iPods. Bennett, who sometimes used her iPod to listen to music while ice skating, boarded a plane early Tuesday and flew to California at the request of lawyers who are suing Apple Inc. on behalf of...

Chris Hughes and Sean Eldridge have always been entitled brats. And now the media finally noticed. How swiftly things change. In just the past two months, one half of this pair managed to single-handedly destroy a storied journalistic institution, while the other suffered a crushing electoral defeat in New York’s 19th Congressional District. Last week, the 31-year-old Hughes forced the resignations of both the editor and literary editor of The New Republic, whose 100th anniversary he presided over last month at a star-studded gala in Washington, D.C. In protest of the magazine’s newly ensconced CEO’s plan to transform TNR into...

Many who embrace the new status quo in toys claim that gender-neutrality would be synonymous with taking away choice, in essence forcing children to become androgynous automatons who can only play with boring tan objects. However, as the bright palette and diverse themes found among toys from the ‘70s demonstrates, decoupling them from gender actually widens the range of options available. It opens up the possibility that children can explore and develop their diverse interests and skills, unconstrained by the dictates of gender stereotypes. And ultimately, isn’t that what we want for them? However, late-century marketing relied less on explicit...