I recently posted a Letter to the Editor to the Early Retirement Planning Insights site entitled Can We Measure Whether Dividend Payments Are “Keeping Up” with Price Increases?
Juicy Excerpt: Is it possible to determine on a year-by-year basis how S&P investors are doing by seeing whether the dividend payout they are obtaining is keeping pace with the growth in the price of the index? Is it possible that there were years in the 1990s in which S&P investors thought they were doing well because they focused on the price of the index to assess where they stood but that they were really falling behind on a price-adjusted basis in the sense that the dividend payout was not “keeping up” with the price increase?
Rob says
I deleted a comment by a poster named “Joe Friday” because it was worded in an unnecessarily argumentative way and contained a personal attack (not the worst I’ve seen by any stretch) against a fellow community member. These sorts of attacks hurt us as a community. They cause others from whom we could learn not to participate in our discussions. I see it as my job to rein that sort of thing in.
That said, the comment also contained a legitimate substantive question. If the comment were reworded a bit, it would be a positive contribution. We would of course benefit from exploring the legitimate question minus the nastiness. I warmly invite Joe to reword his comment and send it along again.
Rob
Rob says
Joe posted a comment saying: “I warmly refuse.”
He argued that: “There was no personal attack, and anything that questions another’s assumptions could always be deemed ‘argumentative.'”
He said: “Rob, I will not have my honest and open dialog squashed by jackbooted thug censors masquarading as niceness-police.” He characterized my policy as “not journalism” but “indulging in an absolutist fantasy.”
I have deleted the post.
Rob