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...and have a look at female aggression and it's[sic] consequences...

Consequences? Domain registrars with names like "Go Daddy", and urine-colored (to say nothing of the flavor...) beer.

Not sure if misuse of the apostrophe is a consequence of female aggression, though.

I really get frustrated when doublespeak is acceptable. It's like the question, "Are prisoners in Guantanamo being tortured?" If they weren't being tortured, they would be in New York state, sitting in the same jail cells we use for other suspected murderers. The fact that anyone is asking the question is mind-boggling.

It is perfectly normal in a time of war to hold prisoners (or "unlawful combatants") outside of the regular prison system. Torture is a completely separate issue.

Similarly, any company that sets up in a small country that they do no business in is obviously up to something. Otherwise they wouldn't be there.

Up to something? "Something" is not necessarily illegal. There are many perfectly legal reasons to do business in foreign countries, such as a better tax & legal climate.

Why are so many companies incorporated in Delaware? A favorable legal climate in the Chancery courts.

The Netherlands charges low tax on royalties (like music). Setting up a Dutch subsidiary is perfectly legal and above-board. U2, the Rolling Stones, and many others do business there: http://www.finfacts.com/irelandbusinessnews/publish/article_10008939.shtml

However, when Bono starts lecturing governments to do more, it's a bit hypocritical when he is (legally) hiding his assets from those same governments.

True, MS will pay some small amount of tax in those countries, but the vast bulk of tax will be avoided through redirecting business through subsidiaries operating in low or zero tax regions. The European single market then allows these subsidiaries to supply any goods or services throughout Europe, whilst paying tax only to the low-tax rate country the subsidiary is registered in. For example, see Microsoft to hide Irish Tax Haven data of subsidiaries that have saved it billions of dollars in US taxes. Note their comment "Up to 50% of Irish corporate tax revenue may relate to taxes paid on income earned by US multinationals outside Ireland. Microsoft's effective global tax rate fell to 26 percent in its last fiscal year from 33 percent the year before. Nearly half of the drop was attributed to 'foreign earnings taxed at lower rates'"

For more examples of the fun corporations can have with cross-border EU trade and taxation, have a look at the practices of Tesco - they are a notorious tax avoider.

I think someone needs to put together a special day (today would be good) called the Global Tax Anti-Piracy Day!

Tax Piracy is when you have a company in one country, but then setup a sham company in another country so you can avoid paying your fair share of taxes. These Pirate companies plunder the benefits of the real country of origin, taking advantage of all the infrastructure benefits such as schools, roads, and police - but pay for very little or any of what they take by loopholes in their real country's tax system!

Just think of the billions of dollars lost by honest companies, and their lost innovation because of these Tax Pirate Companies. Think of the increased taxes that honest companies must pay. Think of the children who can't go to good schools because Pirate companies plundered the public coffers! This is a threat that must be stopped, and the pirate company's officers punished!

What if the government starts to print lots of money to fund that stuff, creating a large invisible tax on everyone through inflation?

The problem with this is it drives up interest rates. A bunch. If I'm losing 12% a year due to inflation, and I want 3% interest for my risk and profit, I will not loan out money for less than 15%, as it's a losing proposition.

We are in defect spending right now, and cutting services is political suicide. Here's the options:

1) Continue deficit spending. Eventually, that compound interest catches up, and we default. At that point, the US can't get debt as easily, and spending is cut to meet income. What a novel concept.

2) Inflation. Do it too much, and it gets too expensive for us to borrow. If we can't borrow, we're in the same boat as #1. This is effectively a tax on people with money.

3) Cut spending. This is a good thing. Running a house with a vicious cycle of debt never works. Why would it work for a government?

4) Taxes. Lots and lots of taxes. This leads to tax evasion, businesses (and people) leaving the country, etc. Excessive taxation is horrible for business, and places an unnecessary burden on small businesses and the poor (no matter how "progressive" it is.)

Sadly, it looks like #4 is the way we're largely going to go. With all the liabilities we have, we're in for some real pain in the not-so-distant future. This will not work as they think, either.

Here's a quick example:
I run a software company. We are a US corporation, hiring US workers, with US taxes. All of our sales are done in-person, or over the internet. Corporate income tax can be avoided to a large extent through business expenses, leading to an effective tax rate not too much more than the income tax. Company pays employees, employees pay taxes, done. It works out to something like 40%, all said and done.

Now, suppose the tax climate gets really nasty. A company like mine doesn't have to be located in the United States - most of our customers aren't anyway.

So, it is possible to:
1) Set up shop in Panama (who doesn't tax corporations on income derived outside the country).
2) Move to another country (for example, Japan). Japan doesn't tax foreign-derived income for people who aren't "permanent residents". The US exempts the first $80,000. So, the first $80,000 are tax-free.
3) If you can live off $80,000 for a while, you can get paid in options. Provided you meet the criteria, this can end up capital gains. So, your taxes on this ends up at 15%.

So, for a hypothetical person making $150,000 - the taxes would be approx $10,500, or a 7% tax rate.

Large companies can do similar things, like "license" a bunch of technology from a company they own, located in a jurisdiction that doesn't tax them (like Ireland). This lets them reduce their taxable income and funnel the profits to something taxed at a much lower rate. Invest in Irish corp, license _from_ Irish corp, pay 15% taxes.

Yes, closing the capital gains "loophole" would even things out a bit; however, it has a lot of collateral damage; including people renouncing citizenship, reduced investment, etc. Given the credit crunch we're having, it really doesn't make a lot of sense.

Microsoft is already doing it using Ireland, remember?

http://www.finfacts.com/irelandbusinessnews/publish/article_10003995.shtml

What? Airbus is doing well? Really? What school of business did you go to? The only reason they will still be making some planes is that Boeing can't fulfill all the orders.

Hardly. Reports of Airbus's decline have been greatly exaggerated (as were the reports about Boeing's decline a few years before that). Airbus shot itself in the foot with the electrical problems on the A380 en is suffering from the low dollar but both problem are being addressed. Considering that some 35 years after being founded it sells a little more that half the worlds large jet aircraft, I'd say calling it a success is valid.

(Though I'm not sure it ever qualified as a state-controlled enterprise)

Europe doesn't scare me. It's the government that will replace the failing governments that scares me. How long will Europe survive, crushed under its own caretaker-state? 15% Unemployment, a 35 hour work week, 6 weeks vacation and a sense of sniveling self righteousness that nothing is wrong spells an inevitable repeat of the circumstances of the Locarno Pact.

*sigh* the neo-liberal propaganda again. Europe is doing fine. Unemployment in the EU down to a reasonable seven percent (including around 3% for states like Denmark and the Netherlands with very large welfare systems). Growth is healthy and comparable with the US.

I quite fail to see how a 35 hour workweek or 6 weeks of paid leave (not to mention universal healthcare and good consumer protection) are bad things.

Concerning the "sense of snivelling self righteousness" I'd offer a) a request for some examples b) the possibility that it might me justified and c) a mirror/look at the US government.

these are extremely high growth numbers for a country still with deflation, a shrinking workforce, and now a shrinking population. Japan is much further down the population curve than the EU is(especially as a hole).

Now, with no inflation, let's compare this to the EU:

Over the whole year 2006, GDP grew by 2.7% in the Eurozone and by 2.9% in the EU25, compared to +1.4% and +1.7% respectively for the year 2005.

http://www.finfacts.com/irelandbusinessnews/publish/article_10009065.shtml

compare to Japan:
2.7%, 2.9%, 2.6% (real gdp, so adjusted for inflation),

adjust for inflation. japan has had prices coming off as much as 2% per year while eurozone has had inflation for 2%-4% per year. suddenly those stellar growth numbers aren't so great and are definitely lagging behind Japan.

this means at least for the last 2 years, japan has blown the eurozone 25 or 12 out of the water.

Where are you seeing those numbers? From this table, I see, for a "luxury 2-bedroom unfurnished apartment":

NYC: $1998
Beijing: $1528

I've known people who've lived in New York, and that sounds about right. I've never been to Beijing, but I know it's pretty expensive (which is why they keep building up, up, up).

The only numbers in the table that I'd complain about are "music CD". In the poorer countries, a *legit* music CD might cost that much, but if you live in Beijing, you're probably buying illicitly-produced stuff for much cheaper.

I'm sorry that your version of the American Dream relies on such a sense of entitlement.

And as a guy who turns 55 next week, I'm sorry that yours doesn't. If you work hard, you SHOULD BE entitled to the fruits of your labors.

If you're lazy, steal from your employer, go to work drunk, act like a total jerk to your fellow employees then you should lose your job. But to lose your job when the fat cat CEO earns five hundred times what you do so that the company can hire a replacement for you at a lower pay rate, well, that's just plain damned evil.

And for you, as a worker, to believe that this is in any way fair or equitable, or that your employer doesn't owe you a living for your labor, well, that's just plain retarded. If you believe that, you fucking deserve to lose your job.

It's time to quintuple the minimum wage, and then bring back the unions. Bullshit like Circut City never happened back when 75% of workers were unionized. Now that only 10% of us are in unions, they have us by the balls. And it's idiots like you who think it's the UNIONS that are evil that allow this bullshit to happen! Grow a fucking brain, moron.

Sweden's corporate tax rate is just 28%, which is lower than the US. Its effective tax rate on capital is just 12.1%, compared with 37.7% in the US.

http://www.finfacts.com/irelandbusinessnews/publis h/article_10003326.shtml

So the article didn't leave off any small "thinks".

Are there any countries out there experiencing a golden age?

http://www.worldwatch.org/node/4289

http://www.finfacts.com/irelandbusinessnews/publis h/article_10002825.shtml

To quote the above article -

"Nobody beats the U.S. when it comes to the difference in pay between CEOs and the average worker. In 2000, on average, CEOs at 365 of the largest publicly traded U.S. companies earned $13.1 million, or 531 times what the typical hourly employee took home. The corresponding ratio in 1980 was only 42, and in 1990 it was 85."

The norm seems to be for CEOs to help themselves, while they downsize away -

http://www.educationforjustice.org/index.fpl/1200/ article/4995.html

So it will be awhile before we're like the Europeans.

We don't want to be like the Europeans. Generally speaking, the US produces far more and creates much more wealth than most European countries. This is not only good for the economy as a whole, but it's also a good way to increase personal income and purchasing power. Europe knows this, and thus countries like France are starting to repeal some of their Draconian employee protection laws.

The problem in the US is that some employers abuse the strong work ethic. They only see graphs that say More Work == More Profit without properly understanding how things like employee exhaustion and low morale impact their bottom line. They also fail to understand that far more work can be produced by improving working conditions and morale rather than demanding slave hours. Unfortunately, many employees are reticent to change jobs during times of economic uncertainty, and they're also cautious about bringing suits against their employer. Thus some (not all) employers get away with it for a time. However, it can't last, and employers end up shooting themselves in the foot long-term.

Yes, as it happens, both you and your source (Wikipedia) are wrong. Wikipedia is great but don't mistake it for authoritative.

Here is a discussion from December '04, eight months before Katrina, observing the shortfall in Saudi light crude deliveries and the subsequent effect on the spread between Arab light and heavy grades:

http://www.mcdep.com/MR41228.pdf

So the phenomenon that Wikipedia associates with Katrina was about a year old at the time. That is actually more worrisome in terms of peak oil, since Gulf of Mexico rigs can be repaired but it's not clear whether the Saudis can materially increase their light crude production.

On Sunday, September 18, 2005, two weeks after Katrina, Saudi Arabian oil minister Ali al-Naimi told reporters that they had 1.5 million barrels per day of spare capacity and "absolutely no" demand for it. Of course the surplus capacity was Arab heavy grade.

http://www.finfacts.com/irelandbusinessnews/publis h/printer_10003311.shtml

A few days earlier the Saudi crown prince was quoted as follows:

"The current rise in oil prices does not stem from a shortage in crude oil supplies but is due to, as everyone knows, to increased demand for products and a shortage in refining capacity"

http://www.boston.com/news/world/asia/articles/200 5/09/15/oil_over_65_us_stock_dip_stirs_worry?mode= PF

Since there is more than enough supply of heavy crude in the market, the reason Katrina caused a price spike was its effect on refining capacity and infrastructure, not on production.

Martin

Playing the stock market is gambling where you on average get 108 pennies for every dollar you risk.

That's quite an unsupported assertion. How about backing it up. Hint: You won't be able to, because it isn't true.

It's also about 2.2 times the median income of a male your country

Ireland, rank 9 in the world in terms of income per capita. And that was 2004. In 2003, we were at number 11. And in purchasing power parity we are at number 7 in the world. Your ignorance is, well, all there is to say about you really. Not to mention we don't use GBP here, you toolbag. We use euros. Still haven't managed to gather the gonads to sign in? Beh enough troll feeding for one holiday.

Salaries in India to go up by 11.4 percent, possibly the highest in the whole world.

As a small mobile software developer in India currently looking for fresh business and perhaps adding employees other than myself to the business, this news makes me have second thoughts!

Smaller countries need to realize that under unified economic policy, they will benifit from the wealth of the larger states more than they will suffer from less power.

The wealth of the larger states? The smaller states neighbouring larger states in the EU are already wealthier. Predatory economic and fiscal policies (Luxemburg, Switzerland, Netherlands Antilles) and other advantages from being able to use legislation as a competitive instrument are a major contributor to that wealth. A unified economic policy benefits the larger states, while the smaller states benefit mostly from not being bullied by the larger states and not having the larger states close their borders to them.

France has been demanding unified economic policy of its smaller neighbours since the 16th century, and England also has a history of war over economic injustices before it started posturing as a free trade champion.

The entertainment industry is a very specific problem. Language areas are of radically different sizes. If you sell a song or a movie to a few percent of a population that makes you a millionaire in the Anglosaxon language area, while you still need a day job in small language areas. The effect is that Anglosaxon movies for instance outcrowd local products even if people consistently prefer movies in their own language. Here in the Netherlands it is basically impossible to raise more than two million budget for a movie, even though they usually make about half of their turnover in foreign film houses (besides a guaranteed top ten position here) and they won some best foreign movie Academy Awards over the last two decades. This type of budget limits the kinds of movies you can make, and people will still go and see Hollywood movies to see more than five actors on a screen at once. This also explains why we are mainly interested in American movies involving battle, science fiction, fantasy, etc.

A 'unified economic policy' in entertainment will be perceived as opening the gates to 'cultural imperialism' completely. I believe the current combination of fees on blank media and allowing downloading through p2p tends to work in the favour of local artists because foreign products are easier to download, while the money is repartitioned based on sales and performances.

Purcell's golden parachute contains a cornucopia of goodies.

Despite the fall in earnings in the second quarter of the year, Purcell gets a departure bonus worth $42.7 million. The cash payment, which was not in his original contract, is based on a formula that adjusts the bonus up or down depending on the difference between Morgan Stanley's fiscal 2005 and 2004 pre-tax profit. Morgan Stanley's pre-tax profit is down about 6 percent this year.

Purcell gets $34.7 million of restricted stock and an estimated $20.1 million in stock options, based on Thursday's closing share price of $53.34 and he gets retirement benefits with a lump-sum value around $11 million.

In addition to medical benefits, $250,000 in lieu of other benefits and an office and administrative and secretarial expenses every year for the rest of his life, Morgan Stanley will make $250,000 in charitable donations a year in his name. Purcell will be spared writing his own charity cheques.

Given GOOG stock is at all time high, my question is how does Google plan to make money with these free products?

Google can not really commercialize this portal with the fear of getting sued by the news media.

Or does it think that by giving away these freebies, it would attract more users to their search engine which seems to be the primary source of all their profits.

Can anyone justify the price for google stock?

some numbers not quite out my ass:
( http://www.finfacts.com/brands.htm )
CocaCola: $67bn
Microsoft: $61bn
IBM: $54bn
GE: $44bn
Intel: $34bn
Disney: $27bn

so, yeah brands are worth some money. If I was vista I would have waited and made them re-brand their software after the boxes and disks were printed but before they hit the stores ;)
-nB

Eurozone unemployment is at 8.8% and Ireland has the lowest at 4.2%, as of May 2005. Its disgraceful tripe like the parent post that make slashdot what it is today.

And while America is doing slightly worse at 5.0%, some fun facts about those stats...

Although the number of jobs in June exceeded its level at the start of the recession, this is really an indication of how sluggish the jobs recovery has been. In June 2005, the U.S. economy had 1,026,000 (or 0.8 percent) more jobs than it had in March 2001, when the recession began. In every previous recession since World War II the number of jobs at this point in the economic recovery was at least 4.9 percent higher than it was at the beginning of the recession.

May was the 32 nd straight month in which more than one out of every five unemployed workers had been looking for work for more than six months, the longest such period on record. June saw some improvement, with the share of long-term unemployed dropping by 2.3 percentage-points to 17.8 percent. However, such a high long-term unemployment level is unusual when the unemployment rate is low; historically, 5 percent unemployment rates have been accompanied by average long-term jobless rates of 10.7 percent.

Average hourly wages were 2.7 percent higher in June 2005 than in June 2004. But, since the inflation rate was 2.8 percent between May 2004 and May 2005, inflation-adjusted wages actually fell during the past year.

Check your facts before you flame, troll.

http://www.finfacts.com/costofliving4.htm

According to this index, it looks like living in Mumbai or New Dehli costs about 45% of what it costs in New York, and 1/3 what it costs in Tokyo.

Does it really cost 2.29 Rupees for a loaf of bread (I just bought one for $2.29) or can you really rent an apartment in Mumbai for under 3000 Rupees/month?

Hint: When I was in Turkey and the exchange rate was 400,000 lira to the dollar, I wasn't able to get a meal at any restaurant for less than a million lira.

The UK actually has one of the lowest tax rates in Europe. The knee-jerk reaction of many people in this country is one of the main reasons why public services are so poor. You can't have it both ways!

And so the BBC judos their French competition, making the British version of "the facts" more fit to multiply in the global media environment. No wonder "meme" is an English word, too, and English is the global language. If only the French would learn to share more, they might survive the info age.

I looked at some figures, and it seems that Hong Kong is no longer one of the most expensive cities to live - the survey attributes this to the HK dollar being pegged to the falling US currency.

London is in 6th position, so you could definitely say that the UK is expensive, but the most expensive place to live seems to be Japan (Tokyo and Osaka occupy the top two spots).

First of all, an apology. I didn't mean to come trough that way (and I had to look up what jingoistic meant :-).

That said, my statement is not entirely biased, as you undoubtedly don't know, and I will try to prove (mod me offtopic for this :P ):

Uruguay has an iliteracy rate of 2%, while the US has a slightly higher 3%
Life expectancy is similar, with the US being slightly higher at about 76 years to Uruguay's 74
Slightly higher schooling expectancy for US citizens, at an average 16 years to Uruguay's 15 (both well above average, trailing only the nordic countries and Australia)
The Economist, which can be said to be biased, ranked the US at 13th for quality of life, with Uruguay at 43rd, behind Argentina and Chile, in 2005. However, it is believed in South America that Uruguay actually has the best quality of life, as seen in the World Institute for Development Economics Research (maybe less biased than the Economist), which places both the US and Uruguay in the top 20 countries (the US at 2nd, Uruguay at 18th).
Other sources state that Montevideo has a similar quality of life than New York

Sources:UN's statistics page http://unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic/products/so cind
The Economisthttp://www.economist.com/theworldin/inter national/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3372495&d=2005
FinFactshttp://www.finfacts.com/
http://www.wider.unu.edu/conference/conference-200 3-2/conference%202003-2-papers/papers-pdf/Rahman%2 0Tauhidur%20250403.pdf

The French only work 35 hours a weeks. Google is a nice source of extra cash:
http://www.finfacts.com/irelandbusinessnews/publis h/article_1000953.shtml

The french queue to sue google
http://www.finfacts.com/irelandbusinessnews/publis h/article_1000953.shtml

Furthermore, you are totally ignoring the opportunity cost of investing in a house. It looks like you are assuming a $37K down payment. If you rent for those 30 years, you could apply that $37K to some other investment. Let's say you invest in an index fund in order to avoid taxes until you sell. At an average annual return of 11%, you will have $847K at the end of 30 years, and that's just from saving the down payment! If you are paying more on your mortgage and expenses than you would be on rent for an equivalent place, then you also need to consider the opportunity cost of that money as if you had invested it in something with an optimal return. It will easily beat out the equity appreciation of $864K that you listed, and that is even before you factor in the multiple transaction costs that you left out.

All of this is using your questionable assumption that your equity appreciation will out pace inflation. Even so, renting is a pretty good deal. However, if your home appreciates at less than inflation, the numbers get much, much worse for owning. Historically low interest rates have allowed people to pay more for homes that they could in the past, but now that the Fed is returning interest rates to a neutral level at a measured pace, people are already unable to secure the same magnitude of loans they could not too long ago. Every single indicator points to prices being overinflated (which a fall in prices would resolve): historically low interest rates, historically high P/E ratios (purchase/rent), historically low savings, percent increase in median income falling (way) short of percent increase in median house prices, first time buyers priced out of the market, etc.

So? (to use my most common cliche on slashdot) I wasn't kidding when I said that taxes are very low in the US. Most GDP gains ends up in capital investments in business while most taxes are on income. It surprised me when I found out about it.

Hmmm, also I wasn't counting state and local taxes, except to say those taxes can vary quite radically from location to location. Here's an OECD table that shows the US tax burden at roughly 25% of GDP (which compares with other members of the OECD).

Also the public school system in the USA is so bad because it's paid for in a way that has absolutely no direct accountablilty. You don't see these problems in US private schools. To the extent that India uses public schools, thy'll end up suffering these problems too.

Most countries don't have the sort of problems that the US does with public schools. But yes, I agree. Private schools are a lot better.

The value of gold can (and does) fluctuate in regards to other goods, as a minute's worth of research would show.

Maybe you should take a minute and do a little research, as you obviously slept through the portion of econ101 that discussed the gold standard. When the US was using the gold standard, gold had a fixed price, with very few, and very minor adjustments. Check the link http://www.finfacts.com/Private/curency/goldmarket price.htm That is how a standard works (like pounds sterling). You set the value of the commodity, and issue paper to represent a physical amount of said commodity. That is what creates the stability, you can use either the physical or the representative currency, but in no cases can the paper "chits" that are issued represent more than the physical deposits backing the currency, since at any time you can ask the treasury to convert your "chits" into physical property.

Fiat money has a few advantages that gold does not, the major one is that the quantity of fiat money can be expanded and contracted as need requires, leading to a more stable economy.

Are you sure about that? One of the symptoms of an economy that is falling to shit, is the printing of more money. Ask a pre or post WWII german about overprinted worthless currency, or anyone from Argentina in the 80's (ever had a bank note in your pocket with more than 6 zeros on it, and yet you still can not buy a coffee with it?), or maybe a Russian with worthless Rubles. Or wait and ask any American in 10 years. The biggest failing of a fiat curreny is the ability to just run the presses 24/7 until you have the amount of money you want. Of course, the government wants you to believe that just printing money brings stability, when in fact they are ensuring that your fiat money has no real value at all. It is only worth what the next owner of it says its worth. Have you noticed the international movement AWAY from the US dollar? A big part of that is people have no faith that the currency can survive long term, as the treasury just keeps printing more and more, to make up for deficits.

Most of your comments regarding monetary policy are not too far off, but you have obviously been fed a spin that promotes the "It's OK to print currency until it is useless" point of view. One that has proven time and time again to be absolute bullshit.

You're right. The ratio of CEO's pay to average worker's has now gone up to 458 times (as of 2000).

Or to put it another way, the ratio of average CEO's pay to the US President's salary has risen from 2/1 to 62/1 since 1960.

Another version: shows 411 times.

I don't have the figures for armed robbery though.

cost of living in major cities worldwide

Of course, in smaller cities and rural areas, that cost goes way down. So it might just be that wherever you were in England the cost of living was considerably lower than where you lived in the US, and therefore the workers were able to sustain themselves just fine on lower wages.

I could not find evidence of this.

Someone posted this. Get you a good idea of price range.

Of course it's all just numbers... Your experience may vary...

Of course, I went and believed a person from B.C. who told me this and now I look it up and much to my chagrin....... It ain't so.

Intel is the fifth most valuable brand in the world. Intel has something like 85% of the desktop CPU market, even while it charges a substantial premium against the competition. That's the value of the brand, right there. If its brand was less valuable it wouldn't be able to charge a premium while maintaining market share.

I will not trust you on the cost of living because you are in fact wrong. The cost of living index in one survey for Chicago (where I live) is 83.7, for Sydney 62.2. That's not housing, that's not salary, that's the total cost of living.

83.7 vs. 62.2 - It's 25.6% cheaper. Pretty much smack in the middle of that 20-30% cheaper number, eh?

Regarding health insurance, it looks to me from the medibank site that health insurance is indeed available for overseas visitors, and after placing a call to my health provider (BAAB), I have had it confirmed that they will sell private insurance to a person like me if I were to work overseas temporarily.

My priorities are fine. Look back at the first message. It posits a situation that does not exist. The message is that if the local situation is not conducive to a tech industry and conditions elsewhere (especially somewhere pleasant) can be made so, we should vote with our feet.

What about the value of a brand?

• Coca-Cola: $70 billion / 8 chars = $9 billion per character
  
• Microsoft: $65 billion / 9 chars = $7 billion per character
  
• IBM: $53 billion / 3 chars = $18 billion per character

The winner? GE, with a brand value of $42 billion / 2 chars = $21 billion per character.

That's $2.6 billion per bit!

Brand values source: Finfacts