Slashdot Mirror
Silicon Valley Has Learned to Love the Bust
An anonymous reader writes "Fortune's David Kirkpatrick interviews scores of valley execs who have stopped worrying continued innovating. He writes: 'The underlying tech boom that began the bubble actually has never stopped. It just stopped paying off. Says Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, the company that has emerged as the head of the new class: "If anything, the rate of innovation in technology has increased in the past couple of years. But that doesn't necessarily make it a good business. The beneficiaries are the end users." Agrees Rob Carter, the CIO of FedEx: "The sound we heard wasn't the bubble bursting; it was the big bang."'"
the bust was bound to happen. what goes up must come down, and the faster it goes up, the faster it seems to come down. but at the same time, there was no danger of the technology disapearing. its not like i'm typing away on a typewriter, or a pen and paper, or a rock and chizel. the bust was just economical evolution, shaking off the weak and wasteful companies that wouldnt have made it very far. fp
YOU SUCK BALLS!
I love how all the quotes come from the top 25% (nay, even the top 1% in many cases) of the food chain. Hogwash.
Certainly the unemployed fledgeling DBA who never gets interviewed does not love the bust.
By contrast, the grunt workers, of whom most are Americans, will need to scramble for the next job. In this climate, the next job does not appear for more than a year. When a potential job does arise, the grunt worker will need to fend off droves of H-1B workers.
But then all that big-bang innovation will make up for the months of unemployment ....
on wall street.
there the ones giving these CEO and CFOs all the ideas that they must increase profits and growth at unatainable/unsustainable rates.
Now, I have never been to business school, but even I know that companies can't expect to increase forever at insane rates.
The bust will give these people time to grow at a slower rate, while not worrying so much about what some dork on the street thinks.
Sent from your iPad.
So a few companies have managed to survive once the investors pulled out. General economics tells me that these survivors are the few that actually have a viable product (i.e. google) and also that these were what should have been invested in and not the ones that just had a good domain name. Great, I'm happy this is how real innovation in capitalism works.
Now I'm being told that these remaining companies still aren't making money (you're going to have a hard time convincing me that google's owners aren't happy with their current financial situation). To innovate a company must do at least the following: do something, test that thing, pay the people who did that thing (got to eat, no matter how much you like who you're working for), and advertise (what's the point of something new if noone knows about it?); How does one do these things without at least some income? If anyone knows how this works please tell me, I have no money and would love to do something with it.
Devil Ducky
MY peers would get out of jury duty.
and, at first thought it was a piece about how the herion chic was out in silicon valley, and an actual womanly shape was in.
Then, of course, I realised that it would be about pr0n firms locating in Silicon valley.
I think I need time off, away from a computer screen.
When something happens, just point to it and claim that it really didn't happen. That, in fact, the exact opposite just happened and everyone is just looking at it wrong. You're bound to get headlines and your very own slashdot story. No, abandon all your critical thinking skills and embrace all ideas as equal.
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." - Epictetus
So, yes, the engineering grunts are having a hard time. Read "Will code for food" by C|Net. The CEO of Google and the CIO of FedEx are living incredibly well on their million-dollar salaries, but the grunt American engineer is not doing well at all. There's mortgage payments, clothes for the kids, insurance bills, etc. The high-tech sector of the overall American economy is going through its worst recession in almost 3 decades.
No. We don't need any more H-1B workers.
There was no bust. What is this I'm hearing about a bust? There was no bust. The infidels are committing suicide on the gates of Silicon Valley. Everything you are hearing are all LIES, LIES, LIES! I triple-guarantee you that there was no bust in Silicon Valley.
You can accomplish anything you set your mind to. The impossible just takes a little longer.
No, I am not bitter that the job I just took is far beneath my skill level and pays less than half of what I am used to making. At least I can work from home at my new job. This allows me time to work on my own company. God willing, I will never be at the mercy of accountants again. Long live the geek!
I left a permanent position when the bubble burst to become a contractor and I am finding work just fine, and less headaches trying to park since people left.
For those people who think they have an idea what Silicon Valley (and San Francisco) is like "post-bubble":
It's just recently that you really start to see "for rent" signs in San Francisco, in the way you see it in *normal* cities, like Boston or New York. It's not a ghosttown, it's just normal.
There are plenty of VCs who have money. They're just not spending it so crazily. Not everyone is crying 'poor me'. Not everyone blew all their money here. The media makes it out as if there are 25 year old millionaires sitting in the gutter outside a bar with a suit on, homeless and whining. Far from it. It's not like the area is Flint, Michigan or anything.
Maybe my experience is the exception. Sure, work is not crashing on my door, but I have had thus far an ok time finding work in the area of expertise I had during the bubble.
To sell magazines and to sell advertisements. When one of the officers at my company was featured in Fast Companies, my company was bombarded with Fast Companies subscription offers, Fast Companies free samples bookmarked to the article in question, and Fast Companies advertisement requests.
Fortune Magazine is probably more subtle than Fast Companies, but the same agenda remains -- whoever pays the bill gets to decide on the content.
has learned to love silicon ;)
Another example would be the ones I can't remember because they're gone now.
I don't know what silicon valley is thinking. I've been loving the bust for many years now. When I was in high school I was fascinated with especially large blouse bunnies. But once I dated a girl who overflowed a DD bra, and those things were all over the place when you set 'em free. That sent me scurrying off in search of less robust busts, so to speak. I later dated a girl who was a competitive figure skater. She was very skinny, and had no bust to speak of. My man teats were larger than her breasts! I found the lack of breasts to be totally unsatisfactory, so after that I set my sights more on girls with b or c cup breasts. Since then I've been quite satisfied.
It does make me wonder though, who DOESN'T love the bust?
Breasty nature aside, I have found a womans shape rarely has any baring on her level of insanity. It seems MOST of them have insecurities and worries, and many of the same troubles we all do.
Kikoman doesn't judge people by their appearance. Unless they are wearing jeans that are far too large, and hang down halfway off their hips showing off their underwear. In this case Kikoman judges these people to be pathetic idiots, and hopes their pants fall down while running across a busy street, causing them to fall and possibly to be run over by a cement truck or maybe seven motorcycles.
KIKOMAN!
blame VCs.
they were throwing gas onto the flames of an inflated economy.
keep doing that and you'll get burnt (as well as many other innocent/not-so-innocent bystanders (stockholders, retirees, etc)).
Bottom feeders like me are eating it up - I just bought an SGI Indigo2 for $96 - that's with the monitor, vid cable, remote control, internal 2g scsi disk w/ Irix 5.2 (or was it .3?), external 2g scsi disk, owners manuals, spare drive sled, microphone, audio, 128Mb ram, etc - boots and runs fine. Then I picked up an Octane with 6.5.14, 512Mb memory, SE graphics, etc - $250. Jeebus, these were over $20,000 machines at one time, now they're giving them away at surplus prices.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Perhaps its my utter ignorance, but I would think it is a great time to start up a new company. Yeah, there's less money floating around, but VC's are in a bind. They only make their money by pumping in money into startup companies likely to succeed. If you have a credible business plan, and there are no major flaws in your management team, I can't see why you'd have a problem finding investors. (Unfortunately, I don't possess that surefire idea that would make me want to quit my job.)
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
I guess that it's a matter of perspective. We've got plenty of work, just no money to hire people - so I wouldn't say that it's a boom, either.
Now will somebody please hire me? I'm running out of money to make house payments.
It's good to use your head, but not as a battering ram.
My sig? Nobody ever comments my sig, how nice of you.
It's a german poem about love and angels.How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
Von uns freundlich babelfish (nicht ein babelpoet): Who during lifetime on ground connection after death an angel will not become good the view towards skies asks you then why one it to see can only if the clouds schlafengehn can one us in the sky longs we to have fear and are alone God white I wants no angel to be you to live term sunshine separately from us infinitely far it to have to stars claws (completely firm) thereby it not of the sky to fall only if the clouds schlafengehn can one us in the sky let us long themselves we to have fear and are alone God white I wants no angel to be only if the clouds schlafengehn can one us in the sky let us long we to have fear and are alone God white I wants no angel its
It was not a tech bust but a VC funding bust, and the ones that went bust did not have 2 brain cells to rub together between them. The Tech boys wore out there vapour-ware welcome. You can only promise the sky and deliver dirt so many times before even a moron with too much money and not enough brains will wise up and stop giving you cash.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Not only does the author get Moore's Law wrong, but somehow manages blame the doubling of computer power every 18 months to crappy dot-com's with no viable business models going bankrupt.
Umm Silicon Valley?.. Bust?.. Must ... Not ... Make ... Obvious ... Comments ... Here ...
"why do people waste mod points on ACs anyway?"
/. easier.
Because they are new moderators and eager to waste their points reducing 0s and 1s instead of boosting "Gems" to +2 and beyond to make reading
There was nothing wrong with my posts for instance. They are on topic, just another way of looking at things.
Why slashdot? Why not?
"The sound we heard wasn't the bubble bursting; it was the big bang."
;-)
And here I thought that noise was Bill Gates breaking wind.
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
Why does it happen that when the journalists write about anything that you know at least a little about, you understand that it's bullshit almost 100% of the time?
The whole article consists of random facts collected to support the idea they a priori had. Oh yes, "Adobe Acrobat has brought the same benefits to sending documents over the Web". How insightful. Look what we found! That is surely a sign of things to come...
It's no different from any article written during the dot-com boom. They first decide what they want to write (and what their subscribers want to read) and then dig up the facts to support their preconceived ideas.
This is not research, just a lame article that is not worth the magnetic particles that it is stored on.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
It's a song by Rammstein, godamnit! Stop trying to run it through Babelfish and post a link to an MP3!
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
thanks for volunteering, now bend over
He who is good in his lifetime on Earth
:refrain
will become an angel after death
(after a?) glance to the heavens you ask then
why one cannot see them
refrain:
Only if/when the clouds go to sleep
can one see us in the heavens
We are [anxious/afraid] and alone
God knows I don't want to be an angel
They live behind the shining sun
Separated from us by an indefinite distance
They have to clutch at the stars very firmly
To keep from falling from the heavens
God knows I don't want to be an angel
(refrain)
Do I look like an AC troll?
I'm a Karma burning regular.
Now I know why Silicon Valley went bust, you are one of their model employees, aren't you?
Why slashdot? Why not?
On the worker side, everything important that gets done gets done by contractors because the tech employess who are capable, competent, and arent lazy are few and far between.
Fedex has used its "high tech" image basically as a bluff to its pilots to keep them from unionizing. They have threatened in the past that if their pilots unionize they would quit delivering packages and be a tech company. However, the truth of the matter is that as a tech computer they would sink faster than any dot bomb. The pilots however, fell for it.
Never overestimate the end user. -jeramy b. smith
I've always believed Heinlien had it right - you know that the economy is in danger when too many of the 'little people' get directly involved.
Sure, you have some issues with economic power being concentrated in a few institutions, but I'd rather have 1K investment houses than 10M sheep using online trading.
I've seen a tech office where every manager had an online trading program running in the background so he could make trades based on the latest Nortel ticker news. Of course, all the other sheep watched the same ticker, and made the same decision - making uninformed decisions based on other sheep's uninformed decisions was a recipe for disaster.
The sound we heard wasn't the bubble bursting; it was the big bang.
... Not to mention Black Holes and more Dark Matter than it might be practical to shake a stick at.
Plenty of everlastingly expanding nothingness between the bright bits then
which nearly killed the classic dividend-paying stock model in favor of the far riskier growth stock model.
Most stocks are supposed to pay dividends. In effect, dividend-paying stocks act like bonds with greater risk in exchange for potentially higher payouts (good companies can and will increase their dividend payouts over time; really good companies do so steadily) and not having to pay back any principal. The company can cut its dividend if things go Bad, which is a risk for the investor but can help keep a wounded company from flatlining; a company financed with debt instead of equity would go straight to bankruptcy court.
So most new companies either go with the growth-stock model (which demands growth rates that are rarely plausible) or the debt-financed (junk bond) model (which imposes a crushing payment schedule). All because the American tax code is so fscked up.
Dividend payouts are also a concrete sign of financial health. It's way harder to cook the books when investors are expecting their quarterly checks to clear.
Of course, the odds of Congress actually killing the double-tax (by either letting companies tax deduct their dividend payouts or letting investors receive their dividend payments tax free, not both as is the case today) are slim, because the average lefty journalist and congresscritter thinks it would strictly benefit The Rich (tm).
Anyhow, human greed combined with the bubble-prone growth stock model caused the financial havoc of the past few years. Most of the putrid tech IPOs of the 1990's (literally half of which were dumped on the market by Goldman Sachs, run by Democrats like Sen. Corzine and ex-SecTreas Rubin) couldn't have made it as dividend-paying companies, public or private (and private makes a lot of sense when your capital expenses are small and you're just trying to retain techies), which in retrospect was a major Clue.
Distinguishing those with the aptitude and those without for this industry is virtually impossible using the classical resume/interview approach. You *must* be networked, and folks who work in the tech industry aren't "Let's Do Lunch" types.
The bigger problem is that people in the tech industry have poor project management skills. Either too many people launch in with their pet ideas and agendas or management can't buy a clue. E.g., a friend got me an interview with her sister at a nice company in Cincinnati after I passed along my resume. Interview went very well. Days turned into weeks into months. Finally, after a couple of calls and e-mails, they confessed that they couldn't fill the position because they couldn't hire anybody for new projects. Seems they were having trouble completing projects they already started. In other words, a clusterfuck.
That guy that wants to put in a 40 hour week and dosent build / hone there skills dosent belong in this business period.
Don't mistake a man with priorities for one who rejects subservience. Again, if the emphasis was put on getting shit done instead of the perpetual feature creep, 40 hours a week would make perfect sense. Sure, your average Slashdotter could show a little more sack, but why is the prevailing sense of the tech industry I read here so fatalist? A lot of folks used to love the art of the hack, and they're railing in the dust these days. So much of what we do now has nothing to do with hacking. The creativity has escaped out into the vacuum of the business world unless you're one of the privileged disallusioned (read: CEO, CIO).
You're right about tech work as a hobby. There's no better way to learn the trade. It's what drove so many of us to this point. Yet if programming for a living were anything like programming as a hobby, nobody would be complaining about work weeks in excess of 40 hours. Instead, I'm told I can't work over 40 hours a week, because I would accrue too much comp time. Additionally, I am told I have to use what comp time I have when I go on vacation despite having 150+ hours of vacation time.
It isn't the technical, geeky half that is the problem. It's the other 90% that sucks.
Where did Heinlein say that? I remember that it's bad when people are rude to each other, or need to carry ID cards...
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Do not miss the fact that Google is part of this article. The IPO of Google will make the beginning of the next tech boom cycle, already the ground work for the tech story changing postive is in the works...
Onward to the Aether Sphere!
- The market is finite.
- At some point, someone will come up with a better equation (to selling), displacing the current market leader.
- Arrogance in a large corporation, in conjunction with utter greed, two negative virtues that have a tendency to come to those in power, will cause the downfall of even the most powerful entity.
One day, people will figure out the sorry fact that what goes up must come down.Some corporations in silicon valley have figured out what small business owners have always known and used to their advantage: In a time of economic bust, one of two things happen:
- You go miserably out of business.
- You innovate so that when things turn around, you have a head start against the competition.
Don't worry, though... They'll forget this lesson long before the next economic downturn.Every day I get literally dozens of offers.
Most of them offer lucrative business opportunities from the comfort of my own home. I can make up to $6000 per week, working just a few hours a day, for just a small investigative investment!
Other offers are seven-figure partnerships which often involve travel perks to exotic locations such as Nigeria.
With so many offers coming into my email inbox *without even looking for them*, times have never been better. How can folks say things are tough out there?
Wall Street Has Learned to Love the Shapely Derrière.
This is sad. But True...
If ever having left someone's prescence, you feel as if you lost a quart of plasma, AVOID that prescence -W.H.Burroughs
Depends. Do you have big hooters, a tolerance for pain and O faces, and a video camera?
I've never said that.
How many of you are working the same job for less pay/perks/compensation than during the 'bubble'? Why is your work so much less valuable now than it was then? I'm making twice as much as I did in 1997 but then again I was 19. How about the rest?
I'd like to propose that the VCs who still have all that money invested, one way or another in technology already got their cake and are now getting to eat it for cheap.
Step 1: Put out a lot of money to create a new industry
Step 2: Make a lot of money off of IPOs and idiot public traders. Pull out of the market.
Step 3: Call the bubble over and tell all your now barely surviving companies you can't afford to give them any more money, after you've made such a huge killing the year before.
Step 4: Create huge savings by cutting huge numbers of employees and cutting out all the perks. Bring down that 'burn rate'.
Step 5: Make longterm gains off the overworked proceeds of a 'recession'.
Well it may not completely accurate but I think it applies to some of the venture operations.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
i've always loved the bust AND the valley, and i dont mind if it's silicon. What was that about a big bang? I'll be back in fiv^D^D^Dtwo minutes
|---------------|
practically an AC
Silicone.... Busts....
Must surf.
I'm too stupid to preview.
I have worked 35 hours per week for the last 5 years.
I don't plan to change that, unless I take one of the many offers I keep receiving from headhunters and move to an industry in which my contract demands 40 hours per week, in which case I will work the fabulous amount of 40 hours per week.
I am amazed about how many people will demand contracts to be respected with the only exception of a contract that regulates the relationship with their own employer, in which case they are willing to be humilliated and disrispected as much as they can endure and then a bit more.
If you are contracted to work 40 hours/week and need to work 50 or 60 hours per week your company forgot to hire somebody for a half time position.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Regularly outclass Western universities in science and mathematics competitions.
I would be more worried about those funky universities that sprout in the US like mushrooms.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
The objective of a company is to make profits, not to increase their share value.
Some of those profits should be given back to shareholders as dividends, wom of those profits should be reinvested.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Innovations are beneficient as long as they provide some benefit (usually economic, or at least measurable in economic terms, such as my pleasure from blasting Outcasts in Freelancer, which I value at approx. $50/hr).
In a well-functioning economy, consumers and firms provide feedback to the innovator via their wallets - a good innovation increases consumer benefit and/or reduces producer cost (and some of this benefit can be reaped by the innovator in terms of profit). This feedback loop is essential and repetitive - lesser innovations combine, stack and mutate with every iteration, until true and substantial innovation is achieved.
However, in the bubble economy, the feedback provided by consumers through their purchasing behavior was ignored, because "profits would come in the future". Thereby the companies were sending "false" feedback to each other, and tremendous resources were sunk into irrelevant and/or unviable innovation. Now that "the economic laws of gravity are back, expect innovations to be more useful to the real world.
I often see references to people not having ability. I am wondering how to qualify this state.
For the sake of simplicity, let's assume that no real ability is a colloquialism: What specifically does no real ability imply?
In all seriousness:
..sayeth the people who still have jobs.
I made a PHP/MySQL library that prevents SQL injection & makes coding easier!
Tech booms and overall development are not the point. The point is that investment excesses and perverse cultural expectations can destroy the sensibility in anything.
... by design.)
People could walk around anywhere, night and day without fear of assault.
After a snowfall, you couldn't hear anything disturbing during the cleanup, because not only were there no snowblowers, but shovels were made of wood.
... your involvement -- your concern and skill, not your money.
The money thing is ruining technology and making it an inhuman pipeline * for making more millionaires (and the Mahatma warned us about achieving "wealth without work").
Technology is more of an end than that, not just a means.
In order to continue to sensibly expand useful technology, we need a wholesale change in cultural attitude. You'd have to be able to talk with your neighbor, who exclaims how he "made" 2000 dollars last month from day-trading, and simply not care. You'd have to say "well good for you Fred" and then get back to your gardening.
Why do I say this? Well, a prior neighbor of mine who was in her 70s had told me about how it used to be. Farmers would come down into the city and sell fruits and vegetables right off their trucks. (The supermarkets killed all that
And more to the point, she said that people didn't care what other people "made".
Now we do care; and to fulfill this desire, society is being ripped apart with nothing at all to replace it. Greed is NOT GOOD, despite the implied philosophy in the movie "Wall Street". Greed is a perversion of the Human need for property, and we have a long history of events that demonstrate how this perversion cannot be satisfied and ultimately requires a lot of destruction.
We can get away from greed and still invest in technology that doesn't destroy itself in the end. Technology still needs investment, but it requires more personal investment
* This reminds me of one of my frequent sayings: in college I was just a "pipeline between a bank and the university".
[You have a stable society when some nut guns down a schoolyard and the law doesn't change.]
Right. Next we'll be hearing about how Internet Appliances are going to be the next big thing.
but instead nurture as to why I love silicon busts...
A hand up and a foot on every chest...
go read Nickle and Dimed, by Barbara Eihren-something... Even if you disagree with her politics or writing style, her citations are bulletproof. There's a threshold wealth which is necessary to "succeed", and a lot of people don't have it. These people don't have a chance, unless they're just plain lucky.
I could say I'm self-made, but that would be total bullshit. There are a lot of factors involved that don't count against my net worth: stable childhood, decent schools, a family I can fall back on if I need to ('taking risks' is bullshit if you can couch-surf for years if necessary), a degree, access to transportation, access to the 'net, etc.
I don't disagree that coming from money can certainly help. I don't have that luxury myself. I don't even have a college degree, thus, I HAVE to do it on my own.
My wife and I worked full time jobs, did computer repair on the side, and setup at a flea market every sunday for FIVE years before we opened our shop. We worked our ass off. We bought everything from Sam's club in 5 gallon drums. We lived very much on the cheap, coupons and the whole bit. Once a week, we went to a Mexican resturant that had a free taco bar with a two drink minimum on Wednesdays. That was our one big night out. Five years, and saved 40,000 that way. Then we opened our shop, and the real sacrifices started. That was 5 years ago.
I work as a contract employee running a marketing dept. for a small manufacturer, she runs the shop. This has turned more lucrative than the business itself. No one helped us financially, ever, through the thick and thin.
The reason most people do not get wealthy is they spend what they have, and they are not willing to make the sacrifices needed to make the next jump. There are exceptions, but overall, this IS the case. Instead, they site at home complaining on slashdot. Me, I have an office at home now, and two in town. So I can work on earning money while listening to losers cry how unfair the world is, wirelessly from my patio.
We still base our lifestyle on 35k a year, and we live in a slightly more expensive than average area. This means sacrifice. The rest goes into the bank. Some months, its a wad. Some months, we have to pull out. Most months we have more in the bank/invested than we did the month before. Some years we save more than we spend. On average, we do quite well because we live below our means. Its not an accident. Its not luck. 9-11 cost me well over $20,000 to my business. Because I live below my means and SAVE, it hurt, but did not criple me. Life is a bitch. I got over it.
I just get tired of whiners who cry how unfair it is. That is bullshit. I have a high school education, that is it. No one handed me anything. I spent all my time learning computer networking (i am 38 now) and developing skills that were marketable, including in sales and marketing. It was not easy, and it requires more than 40 hours a week.
My point is NOT "look at me, Im successful". My point is "anyone can do it if they are willing to make the sacrifices necessary". THAT is the rub. No one wants to sacrifice. I am not some genious, Im just willing to work hard and take chances. What I am doing is done all over America every day. Many of them eventually get quite wealthy. Most do well enough. All have a sense of accomplishment because it was earned.
Main point: Bitching about 'rich' people insures you will never be one. As long as people spend time complaining how unfair life is, they will never succeed. As I said earlier, thats ok, we need ditch diggers too.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
The Dividend tax cut is going to save me around 20 cents a year if that. Woo hoo! Now I can finally get that kidney transplant!
The average out of work techie does not have any high dividend paying stocks because if they did they might still be able to afford to pay rent. Anyone who tells you that this isn't a payout to the wealthy is using that famous "Voodoo" form of economics.
You ever notice that all the trends today are technology to support other technology to achieve the same result while all the trends 10 years ago were technology to improve the result? Instead of online banking it's moving the online banking from a phone line to a wireless phone line. Instead of making bigger software it's making the same software with a different billing cycle. Why doesn't anyone write about that?
Look, you're not rich, ok? You're a rich guy wannabe. There's a difference. You will never be in the top 25 percent, much less the top 1 percent. You are a mildly successful local entrepreneur. Alright? Not rich. Not in the top class. Not even close.
Wanna know what would make you top-shelf? Wanna know what would make you one of the boys?
For starters, you better be liquid, and I mean you better have a few million laying around ready to spend.
Second, you'd better have at least a million coming in annually, CEO-style.
Third, you'd better be all over the stock market, and have some heavy connections.
Fourth, you'd better be a landowner. And, I don't mean some dinky little high-ranch out in the burbs. I mean, LAND. Acreage. Second and third homes, and a vacation property. Cars in all locations.
But the REAL test is: do the rich invite you to their parties? Been to the Hamptons in the summer? Been to any serious charity benefits in NYC, the black-tie affairs the governor and mayor attend?
Get the picture yet? YOU'RE LITTLE PEOPLE. Just like us.
You're middle class. Your income is up and down like a friggin' yo-yo, you said that yourself. You don't even have as much action as a fucking family doctor. Why are you arguing on behalf of the rich? They aren't your friends. They aren't even going to be inclined to golf with you, much less give a shit what you think.
God, if I had a nickel for every small-town shop-owner I've had to listen to over the years who decided he was "Wealthy" because he owns a store and his own double-wide, I'd be rich myself.
Man, you really, really need to get your feet back on the ground.
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
According to the IRS, the top 25% make over $55,225 for the calander year 2000.
The top 10% of taxpayers are people who make $92,144 or more for the calander year 2000.
The top 5% of taxpayers? To qualify, you have to make $128,336
Now, to be in the top 1% of all taxpayers, you must make $313,469, a pretty good jump. Thats a difficult club to join. Once again, all for the calander year 2000.
Surprised? Its all at the IRS website. Why do people think that you have to make a million bucks to be in the top 25%, or even top 1%? That should tell you how BAD most people are doing, very often by their own bad choices. You probably work hard, and are in the top 25% easily, but just did not know it. Most hard working people who get laid off find good work again, the cream always rises to the top.
The middle class IS the top 25% of income tax payers.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
An AC wrote: " go read Nickel and Dimed, by Barbara Eihren-something... Even if you disagree with her politics or writing style, her citations are bulletproof. There's a threshold wealth which is necessary to "succeed", and a lot of people don't have it. These people don't have a chance, unless they're just plain lucky.
I could say I'm self-made, but that would be total bullshit. There are a lot of factors involved that don't count against my net worth: stable childhood, decent schools, a family I can fall back on if I need to ('taking risks' is bullshit if you can couch-surf for years if necessary), a degree, access to transportation, access to the 'net, etc."
Absolutely true! Even those of us who are working and middle class generally came *FROM* some background that made our lives possible. My parents were blue collar, and I inherited their work ethic and their basic protestant values (e.g. thrift, honesty, honor, etc). From the friends I had in college, I developed the ability to fix nearly anything, from phone circuits to pickup trucks. The people we interact with create us in a sense. The difference between rich and poor, though, is that the rich also pick up wealth and power, and a frame of mind that lets them believe that they are somehow superior to the rest of us.
Ah, well. I'd rather drive cross-country with a blue-collar gearhead like me than some rich doofus. If something goes wrong, at least the gearhead and I will be able to do something about it, and be back on the road before dark. If the rich doofus is out of cell-phone range of a tow truck, he's basically fucked. Just like in the slasher movies!
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
Let me use altavista, and some long ago high-school german:
Whoever, during their lifetime, did well on earth
will become, after death, an angel
The view from heaven asks you
why one cannot see you
Only if the clouds were to go to sleep
Could one see us in heaven
we have fear and are alone
God knows I do not want to be an angel
They live behind sunshine
separately from us infinitely far
they must hold onto the stars (completely firm) so that they don't fall out of the sky
Only if the clouds were to go to sleep
Could one see us in heaven
We have fear and are alone
God knows I do not want to be an angel
Only if the clouds were to go to sleep
Could one see us in heaven
we have fear and are alone
God knows I do not want to be an angel
One point - you're talking taxable income. The rich don't have taxable income. And the taxable income is reduced - capital gains are reduced to the taxable 20% before reporting as taxable income.
A few examples of tax-free income - Income from inheritance. Income from tax-free munis. Soon dividends. Income from accounts in the Cayman Islands. Income from corporations paying your expenses.
sigh. Inheritance over 600k IS taxable. And these where 2000 numbers, so dividends don't count. Jesus christ.
Yes, rich people are evil. This conversation is getting quite boring. You hate everyone who is successful, and I am trying to be more successful, lets just leave it at that.
Now go to your room and cry over how unfair this big old world is, by yourself.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
Tech/IT gives profit by:
1. Reducing cost (Fedex,IBM),
2. Providing valuable services (Google -- intranet search, not internet search,IBM), and
3. Creating Monopolies (Microsoft, IBM)
Guess for whom would I like to work?
For me, the Bubble never burst as IBM, Oracle are still discontinuing the support on old versions of their software at a rate that urge me to curse!
The conversation is boring because YOU are boring. Boring and delusional.
You can drum up all sorts of silly arguments about how you're "rich" because you make more than 55K, but you're still totally wrong and completely misguided.
When I was in high school, I knew kids who were REALLY rich. One whose father owned a collection of chemical companies. One whose father owned a large interest in Procter and Gamble. One who, at seventeen, had her own apartment on fifth avenue and her own maid, doorman, and etc. Ok? I think we define "rich" very, very differently.
You are not rich. At best, you are mildly successful.
Trust me on this. I have known many truly rich people. I was one of three "poor" kids who went to my high school on scholarship. In my junior year, one kid's father bought him the Indianapolis 500 pace car as a graduation present, ok?
You don't know what you're talking about -- you're dreaming, and totally, shamelessly flattering yourself.
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
These guys that own google & salesforce are doing great. A few years ago they would pay $50k for someone with a BS in CS. These days they can get away with paying $50k for someone with an MS in CS. Technology is still improving, it has always been and will continue to do so. Hopefully the economy picks up enough to where the unemployment rate for engineers is no longer an embarassing statistic...fortunately I have been part of a company that's been doing well over the past few years but ugh...today would be a dismal time to enter the job market.
...for over a century. Markets overly skewed towards growth stocks have been a problem for only a small percentage of that time.
The parent is quite correct in two of his assumptions: The problem was a market which cared too much about asset-appreciation and not enough about dividends; and taxation of dividends does skew the market towards growth stocks and away from dividend stocks.
But the skewing towards growth by taxing dividends is small (increasing the value of a growth stock by 6-10 percent). In order to have a bubble/crash cycle you have to have a much great skewing, which usually requires two things: Too much money looking for a place to be invested and a means of getting around regulatory restrictions on misstating money received as investment as income.
In the '90s we had both. Baby-boomers were entering their post-childraising-pre-retirement years (the period when most people have the most to invest). And a few companies figured out a way to use stock options to distort their financials. This skewed dot-com results, but the two companies which used it the most were Microsoft and Enron.
The poster of the parent obviously has a political axe to grind and a policy agenda. But the truth is that both parties have their hands dirty on this one. Sen. Joe Lieberman and Pres. George W. Bush should be the poster children of the Crash of 2001. (Phil and Wendy Gramm were so conspicuous in their corruption that it's hard to believe they didn't believe everything they were saying. Never assume venality when incompetence suffices.)
"Double" taxation is not uncommon. If you follow a dollar long enough, it will be taxed more than once. And, if you have an agenda against one of those taxes, you can call it "double taxation." Everyone reading this pays income tax when they earn their money and sales tax when they spend some of it. Opponents of "double" taxation would be far better off advocating the end to sales and value-added taxes than taxes on dividends.
If you end taxes on dividends, you create a class of people who pay no taxes on their income. Do you really believe that a trust-funder playboy who does no productive work should pay fewer taxes than you do? The wealthy have options which allow them to have some of their income come to them in dividends (some more than others, but ordinary people have almost no option in this regard).
It is true that taxing dividends skews the markets toward growth stocks. But this also skews them toward growth. Which is a good thing. They can become overly skewed toward growth, but don't blame dividend taxes. Blame investors who don't watch the fundamentals and congresscritters who chastise regulators for trying to enforce valid accounting procedures. Blame politicians who tax capital gains at a lower rate than dividends.
BTW, the IRS never allowed the misstating of income the SEC was forced to accept. So, those companies reporting outrageously overstated profits in the '90s never paid taxes on the "profits" they reported to Wall Street. (Well, "never allowed" is sort of overstating the matter. Of course, the companies never tried to overstate their profits on their tax returns.)
Eternal vigilance only works if you look in every direction.