Ben Thomas

If there was ever a time when money did not define the motivations in Congress, I think it must have been in the very early days of the republic. When the founding fathers convened in Philadelphia to write the constitution, they were fresh from 10 years of ineffective decentralized government. They realized they needed a strong central government if the United States was going to work. The constitutional convention wasn’t single-minded about their purpose. They agreed they needed a new form of

If you can believe it I have been buying lottery tickets for years in the hope of winning tens of millions of dollars.  I know other people do this too and no one really expects to win anything significant but I never really took the time to understand just how dismal the odds are when you are playing a lottery game. This article explaining why keno is the worst casino game you can play makes it all so clear now.  The formula for computing the odds in any lottery-style game is so simple I don’t

I remember my granddad always saying, “If you want to get rich, invest in land.  The price of land always goes up.”  But that was before we heard about Global Warming, Granddad.  I bet he would have something snarky to say about that, though.  He was a pretty smart guy.  Maybe he would tell me to buy the kind of land that would still be valuable after all the other land was ruined. Global Warming is crushing the value of land in two ways.  First, it is creating more desert land in North

You may be as confused as the next guy when it comes to understanding stock options, and so like everyone else you go online and search for websites that explain everything you need to know about options.  But did you know there are some myths floating around that are not properly explained?  Here are some examples. Myth: Employee Stock Option Plans Make You An Options Trader I have read on several sites that employee stock options are very similar to the stock options that traders buy and

We always want new ideas for making money.  I keep my eye out for interesting articles about how to change my life in some way.  As a rainy day project I collect ideas for extra income just in case I find myself out of a job.  Here are some of the latest ideas I have discovered. Sell Clothes through Online Consignment Stores Tired of the eBay and Amazon cliche?  Etsy got you down?  Fret not, my friends.  You can dump your old clothes on Websites like Threadflip, Tradesy, and Twice. Build

The environment is important to me because like Peter Quill says in “Guardians of the Galaxy”, “I’m one of the idiots who has to live in it.” Mankind has made a mess of things with the environment.  I don’t blame many generations because for a long time people simply did not know that all the factories and deforestation were destroying the planet’s ecosystem. But all that changed in the 20th century.  The last few generations of man have known that we are harming the planet and they should