Open Source Study Included In US Stimulus Package

gclef writes "Buried deep in the details of the US stimulus package is an interesting provision that might go a long way toward helping Open Source software break into the medical area. It says that the Secretary of Health and Human Services should study the availability of open source health technology systems (PDF, page 488), compare their TCO against proprietary systems and report on what they find no later than Oct 1, 2010. Slashdotters may also be interested in the language that starts on page 553 of that PDF to see just what the final package says about broadband." The stimulus plan was approved by the Senate on Friday and is expected to be signed by President Obama by Monday.

Comments

What open source health technology systems?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously.

Re:What open source health technology systems?

[what about]

I did use this to manage image storage http://www.pixelmed.com/ Of course I had to change the actual undelying storage mechanism to implement zipping an entire study othervise the CT scan images would have chewed the filesystem inodes in a second. (The customer knows that it is OpenSource, he is and end customer) There is plenty of work that can be done using OpenSource and there is plenty of work generally. What I see in the closed source badwagon is the idea that you "do something" and then you "milk the customer". I find it far more ethical to be paid for the work I actually do.

Re:What open source health technology systems?

[houstonbofh]

Well, define "health technology" but VistA (not MS) comes to mind. http://worldvista.org/

Re:What open source health technology systems?

[koutbo6]

its probably bigger in the UK than it is in the US. this might help:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_open_source_healthcare_software
mind you, some of the research on open source I looked at considered openoffice a healthcare office suite.

Re:What open source health technology systems?

[M. Baranczak]

Here's one: http://www.indivohealth.org/

Re:What open source health technology systems?

[drsmithy]

Some of our Radiologists use (and love) Osirix.

Re:What open source health technology systems?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does this count? http://gnumed.org/

Re:What open source health technology systems?

[gravos]

The good: they're only studying health services, they've set a reasonable deadline, and all health technology systems should be open source anyway to make auditing simpler. The bad: This is debt-financed spending.

Re:What open source health technology systems?

[Tubal-Cain]

Ubuntu has in it's Add/Remove Programs:

• GNUmed
• Polyxmass
• AMIDE
• SOFA

Re:What open source health technology systems?

[tukkayoot]

The good: they're only studying health services, they've set a reasonable deadline, and all health technology systems should be open source anyway to make auditing simpler. The bad: This is debt-financed spending.

I see it more as a debt-financed investment. Which isn't to say all of this deficit spending isn't scary and possibly quite unwise, but it is encouraging to see at least a portion of the money is being used in ways that might ultimately save the government money and allow the economy to work more efficiently.

i'm-sure-that-makes-us-socialists-somehow dept.

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact that the story has red graphics was the first clue for me personally

Re:i'm-sure-that-makes-us-socialists-somehow dept.

[zappepcs]

Yeah, but no matter what it makes us, the US population in general will not know about it till well past 2010. It will take that long for our legislators to actually read the damn thing. Sure there will be watchdog groups who have read it before then, but like those that nay-sayed on the DMCA and US PATRIOT Act, they will be ignored until we are suffering the bad and unintended consequences of caveats in this bill.

Re:i'm-sure-that-makes-us-socialists-somehow dept.

[Anonymous Coward]

They're never going to read it. Why read it after you already voted on it? It'd be like a student faking a paper based on cliff notes and wikipedia then going back and reading the book after he turned it in.

Re:i'm-sure-that-makes-us-socialists-somehow dept.

[houstonbofh]

It will take that long for our legislators to actually read the damn thing.

Read? They don't need to read... They didn't read this bill before passing it.

Re:i'm-sure-that-makes-us-socialists-somehow dept.

[Zonk (troll)]

Yeah, but no matter what it makes us, the US population in general will not know about it till well past 2010. It will take that long for our legislators to actually read the damn thing. Sure there will be watchdog groups who have read it before then, but like those that nay-sayed on the DMCA and US PATRIOT Act, they will be ignored until we are suffering the bad and unintended consequences of caveats in this bill.

You know, this bill is a perfect example of why we need DownsizeDC's Read the Bills Act. It is unacceptable that Congress votes for legislation they haven't fscking read. Please contact your Representative and Senators about that act.

Three other DownsizeDC campaigns that this bill perfectly shows the need for are:

Enumerated Powers Act - "It's time for Congress to, "Cite it, chapter and verse." Where do they derive their authority? When they pass new laws or spend taxpayer money, they should be required to point to specific language in the Constitution. The Enumerated Powers Act would require them to do precisely that."

One Subject at a Time Act - "Congress routinely passes unpopular laws by combining them with completely unrelated bills that have majority support".

Federal deficit causes Congressional pay cut
Federal deficit causes Congressional pay cut - "Congress needs incentives to Downsize DC. H.R. 500 would provide such an incentive. If the federal government runs a deficit, then Congress will suffer a cut in pay. Tell your elected representatives to sponsor H.R. 500."

Re:i'm-sure-that-makes-us-socialists-somehow dept.

[Anonymous Coward]

The "One Subject at a Time Act" is foolhardy. "Subject" will never be sufficiently defined.
It's a nice idea, but unimplementable.

Re:i'm-sure-that-makes-us-socialists-somehow dept.

[daath93]

"I was elected to lead, not to read."

Slashdotters?

[Sybert42]

Oh please. It's the same as Diggers and Redditors. Nerds. Internet nerds. We're all atheist. We're all mostly libertarian. On and on.

Re:Slashdotters?

[pembo13]

I am actually none an atheist, thank you very much.

Re:Slashdotters?

[neokushan]

That's unpossible.

Re:Slashdotters?

[binarylarry]

It's a perfectly cromulent assertion.

what stimulus package?

[Anonymous Coward]

you mean the 800 billion (larger than any US budget prior to 1983) in miscellaneous pork? They're already planning on a second stimulus since this one is expected to be a total failure.

Re:what stimulus package?

[Anonymous Coward]

you mean the 800 billion (larger than any US budget prior to 1983) in miscellaneous pork?

One definition of pork is spending designed to stimulate the economy in a particular congress person's district. In that sense, as long the pork is evenly distributed throughout all the congressional districts then that's exactly what the US economy needs.

Another definition of pork is spending that doesn't have long term economic benefits. For example, if you spend money on a road, at the end of the day you have a road to use whereas, if you spend money on exotic dancers, at the end of the day you don't have anything other than pleasant memories - and the theory goes that roads make the economy more efficient while pleasant memories don't.

The original stimulus bill tried hard to spend on projects that were likely to lead to long term economic efficiency (infrastructure and education). Some Republican pork (e.g. tax cuts to spend on exotic dancers) may have been included in order to get the necessary Republican votes but the original stimulus tried hard to avoid being pork.

Re:what stimulus package?

[Anonymous Coward]

$800 billion is ~$420 billion in 1982 dollars (using the GDP deflator; the other metrics give much smaller numbers). You have to account for inflation whenever you're talking about very large amounts of money since even a few years can make a 5-10% difference. Measuring Worth has a good calculator.

Re:what stimulus package?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why only for very large amounts of money? Wouldn't $800 be ~$420 in 1982 dollars, or does it stay $800?

Re:what stimulus package?

[CrimsonAvenger]

Some Republican pork (e.g. tax cuts to spend on exotic dancers) may have been included in order to get the necessary Republican votes but the original stimulus tried hard to avoid being pork.

Umm, no. None of the Republicans voted for the stimulus bill. All the pork in it was Democratic pork.

Re:what stimulus package?

[Anonymous Coward]

hey if we get all those unemployed construction workers who are supposed to be building houses working on roads and stuff. we might be able to fix this. since the housing construction industry has slowed to almost nothing then we have the job side of the housing slump fixed.

Re:what stimulus package?

[MacEnvy]

You conclusion does not follow. Just because Republicans didn't vote for it (in the House, not in the Senate) doesn't mean that no Republican pork was added. They knew it would pass and in committee they DEFINITELY added their own pet projects to the bill under the guise of "improving it so that they could possibly support it". However, when it came down to the *political* aspect of actually voting for the bill, they chose to make a partisan statement rather than follow up on their previous talk of "possibly supporting it with these changes" (i.e., their pork that was added). Whatever, it's just politics, and almost none of what the Republicans have said publicly about both the bill itself and their own intentions has ended up being true. For the record, considering the size of the bill, there is an incredibly small amount of actual pork in it. But you'd have to actually look at some of the provisions to understand, rather than parroting big-mouthed right-wing pundits.

Re:what stimulus package?

[FiloEleven]

I'm a bit taken aback that tax cuts are considered "Republican pork." I always sorta thought that tax cuts let me decide what to spend my money on instead of being forced to spend it how the government would like me to. Sure, I could blow it on exotic dancers, and then I'd have nothing to show for it, but isn't that my call? Personally, I'd use it to pay for a new furnace, because the one in my house is gonna blow within a year or two, but I guess the roads in Arkansas or this bullshit open source study are more important things that I have to pay for because somehow, someday they might affect me, assuming I survive when my furnace starts blowing carbon monoxide.

(I would have said "the roads in PA," as that's where I'm from, but I'd be kidding myself if I thought PennDOT was anything more than a black hole for money.)

Re:what stimulus package?

[jcnnghm]

Not a single Republican in the House voted for this. Only the 3 RINOs in the Senate voted for this. The House Minority Leader threw the bill on the floor of the House after calling the Democrats out for breaking their promise to provide 48 hours to review the bill. Just out of curiosity, how many of the 1,073 pages have you read in the ~36 hours the bill has been available? Did you notice all the handwritten changes.

Re:what stimulus package?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are those American exotic dancers ? In that case, it helps the economy just the same, the girl will spend the money eventually on things like food, gas, education, skimpy clothes etc.
So do YOUR part in helping the economy !

Re:what stimulus package?

[Abjifyicious]

Very well put. The Republicans have been saying things like "the stimulus bill has too much spending in it." What do they think stimulus is?!

This is basic economics, and it's not hard to understand. If the government gives someone a tax cut, they might spend the money and stimulate the economy, or they might just put it into savings. If, on the other hand, the government spends that money directly, they are guaranteed to stimulate the economy.

The best way for the government to stimulate the economy during a recession is government spending. Period. The Republicans aren't opposed to it because they think it won't work, they're opposed to it because they're afraid it will, and they'll do anything to try and bring down their opposition.

Re:what stimulus package?

[Anonymous Coward]

I always sorta thought that tax cuts let me decide what to spend my money on instead of being forced to spend it how the government would like me to.

The general model for government spending is that there are certain things that are more efficiently provided to the general population as a whole rather than purchased individually (e.g. roads, national defense, etc.). In that sense, taxes are payments for services provided to the general population by the government: taxes are no more your money than the money you pay for groceries. The suggestion that the money you owe for groceries should somehow be given back to you to spend on yourself is failing to understand the nature of that transaction at a fairly fundamental level.

At the moment, the government is borrowing to provide the stimulus but eventually the stimulus is going to have to be paid back as either tax dollars or devaluation of the US dollar. Does the general population of the USA want to buy you a new furnace or is a new furnace something that is best purchased by each person individually? To the extent that the primary benefit accrues to you personally rather than to the general population, using tax dollars to buy you a new furnace would be pork.

Back to the original point, though, for short term stimulus, it doesn't matter that it's pork. What matters is that people are spending the money rather than stuffing it into their mattresses (saving it). The problem with tax cuts is that much of the money will be going to rich people who don't need the money now but who will indeed save it to provide more of a cushion for later. The stimulus will be much more effective if it can be injected into poor communities where it continues to circulate because the poor people are, by necessity, continuing to spend it.

Re:what stimulus package?

[iluvcapra]

Arlen Specter said as much to the press, you can hear the audio here. A lot of Republicans wanted the stimulus to pass, but were afraid to have their "fingerprints" on the legislation. The Republicans are simply to cowardly to face down the Club for Growth and Dear Leader Comrade Rush.

The bill is the biggest single tax cut in history and the Republicans still wouldn't vote for it. This is a party run by people who mail tire gauges and silly putty and bricks to their enemies and getting good soundbites on the news when they should be writing good laws. A party completely obsessed with appearances and run by media celebrities.

Re:what stimulus package?

[aurispector]

One definition of pork is spending designed to stimulate the economy in a particular congress person's district. In that sense, as long the pork is evenly distributed throughout all the congressional districts then that's exactly what the US economy needs.

This is the purest bullshit I've read in a while. It should be painfully obvious to anyone with half a brain that the economy would be much better off if the government never took the money as taxes in the first place. The administrative costs alone involved in collecting and redistributing the money are astronomical. Since when does congress know better than everyone else? Here we have a group of professional whores funneling all the stolen cash they possibly can into their districts to insure re-election. The fact that they're selling it as "Stimulus" is galling.

Another definition of pork is spending that doesn't have long term economic benefits. For example, if you spend money on a road, at the end of the day you have a road to use whereas, if you spend money on exotic dancers, at the end of the day you don't have anything other than pleasant memories - and the theory goes that roads make the economy more efficient while pleasant memories don't.

Who the fuck are you, or congress for that matter, to decide how to spend my money? Sure, road building is great if it isn't an 8 lane highway to nowhere through the congressman's district. How can you say spending the cash anywhere else isn't just as valid, if not more so? If a million dollars pays the salaries of say, 25 exotic dancers, they're going to go out an buy cars and houses and food and clothing, etc.. Spend it to support something that doesn't really have a market - look at congressional funding of ethanol fuel for an example - and ultimately the money is wasted if the industry fails. And the industry WILL fail if there isn't a real market for the products.

The original stimulus bill tried hard to spend on projects that were likely to lead to long term economic efficiency (infrastructure and education). Some Republican pork (e.g. tax cuts to spend on exotic dancers) may have been included in order to get the necessary Republican votes but the original stimulus tried hard to avoid being pork.

Ah, you expose yourself as a purely partisan Obama-zombie. I'd suggest you think before you speak but using your brain doesn't seem like one of your strong points. I'm willing to give Obama the benefit of doubt with regard to the realities of what is possible, but he certainly hasn't earned a rubber stamp. Get the stars out of your eyes - this "stimulus" is basically a guarantee that the US will never get remotely close to getting out of debt - and it's your kid's money they're spending.

Re:what stimulus package?

[xenocide2]

The tax cuts that satisfy Republicans are always income tax, and their favorite is the upper bracket. Recall trickle down economics, where the theory goes that rich people will invest money in the economy, providing jobs and rah rah rah. It just doesn't hold though; investors this year have plenty of write offs to work through before they even care about taxes. Many are sitting in treasury bonds rather than corporate equities or bonds.

In contrast, payroll taxes rarely get touched. In part that's because they fund things like Medicare and Social Security, the golden cows of the AARP. But there's a worry that the working poor won't contribute to the economic recovery either; there's a lot of consumer debt out there and it's unlikely the top tax bracket has most of that. Paying off credit cards might slightly alleviate the banking crisis via balance sheet improvement, but it's not going to directly create new demand. Especially in a downward economy, a lot of them will be saving more and spending less. Can you remember what happened in 2002 with the early Tax Refund insanity?

Everyone, rich or poor, thinks the banks are bankrupt on paper, while Washington is hoping America can spend its way back to higher real estate prices and avoid a severe reckoning with those agents of failure that brought us to the brink. Republicans simply think private investment can restore it, while Democrats argue that the government is the only body that can raise enough capital to take the necessary action (I'll note that it can also do it very cheaply).

It's worth noting that the free market suffered from a widespread principle-agent failure. Management approved risky transactions like Credit Default swaps because they didn't fully understand the risk they exposed shareholders to, but liked the profit they were earning in the short term. Credit rating agencies also failed to solve the information asymmetry problem. Mortgage brokers made loans they'd never consider holding, and quickly fell apart when their market for shitty debtors dried up. What's going to solve this isn't more jobs or more demand for housing, but a significant rewriting of the social contract between management and investors. I wish Republicans had the balls to bring that up instead of asking for tax cuts for the companies and businessmen that fill their campaign coffers. It'd be far more interesting than people demanding executives dispense with their private jets and fly coach.

Re:what stimulus package?

[jcnnghm]

Specter is a RINO. If it wasn't for him, the bill wouldn't have passed. And this isn't a tax cut, it's a tax deferral. If the Republicans wanted the bill to pass, they would have voted for it. You can't spin it the other way.

Re:what stimulus package?

[Anonymous Coward]

he bill is the biggest single tax cut in history

LOL, who are you listening too? It's all tax deductions. There's no tax rate cuts in the damn thing. "Tax Cuts" is a term the Dems. are using to try and make this pork bill sound so good.

And simply said, it's a testimony to how shitty our political system is when a true honest-to-goodness bill is needed to stimulate the economy and every fucking political adds this little pet project and that pet project.

There should be simple major projects in this bill with TRUE tax cuts. Infrastructure spending. Education spending. Lowered tax rates for everyone.

Just wait and see. This massive bill will do nothing more than put a small blip on the economic radar because giving some fucking lobbyist $500,000 isn't going to help those who lost their job. It's just going to keep the elite people in Washington giving the lower and middle class money to their elite friends. The thing America really needs is a political revolution. But that won't happen. Too many sheep following their shepherds.

Re:what stimulus package?

[icebrain]

You conclusion does not follow. Just because Republicans didn't vote for it (in the House, not in the Senate) doesn't mean that no Republican pork was added. They knew it would pass and in committee they DEFINITELY added their own pet projects to the bill under the guise of "improving it so that they could possibly support it".

"The Democrats did everything right and pure, did nothing wrong, only the evil Republicans added bad pork!"

Perhaps it escaped your notice, but the Republicans were completely shut out of the negotiations for the bill. Pelosi's new rules completely barred Republicans for offering any amendments whatsoever to the stimulus. It was written and negotiated behind closed doors, by Democrats, without Republican input at all. And yet you want to blame them for bad content in a bill that they had no part of? Hell, even Obama was willing to talk with them, but power-drunk "I'm above the law" Pelosi didn't care. She wanted it passed her way, and broke her own promises to allow the bill to be read, because she wanted to go to Europe.

And then, they voted on the bill without even reading it.

Transparency and bipartisanship my hairy ass.

Re:what stimulus package?

[iluvcapra]

Specter is a RINO. If it wasn't for him, the bill wouldn't have passed.

And Collins. Don't worry, you'll be able to primary them both out, get ideologues on the ticket, and see moderate dems defeat them in the general. If you want your party to actually be staffed by nothing but wingnuts, and to perpetually represent 40%, this is a very effective approach.

And this isn't a tax cut, it's a tax deferral.

By that standard the Bush Tax Cuts of '01 were a tax deferral. Nobody seriously cuts discretionary spending, I just belong to the party that's honest about it :P

Re:what stimulus package?

[Abjifyicious]

None of the Republicans voted for the stimulus bill.

That is absolutely incorrect. Three Republican senators voted for it. This may sound insignificant, but without these Republican votes, the bill could not have passed. Because of this, the Democrats ended up making quite a lot of changes to a bill that they could have otherwise just pushed through on their own.

Re:what stimulus package?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, didn't you hear? Oh yeah, the mainstream media ignored it, so probably you don't know.

1. The bill was originally written by a group of Democrats. Not even all Democrats, much less a Republican.
2. The bill passed the House without a single Republican vote and minus 10 Democrat votes.
3. The bill passed the Senate after 3 Republicans formed a coalition with Democrats to trim down the stimulus and these 3 same Republicans helped to pass it without any other Republicans voting yes.
4. The bill went back to the Congress to be reconciled with the House version behind a closed door by Democrats. The Capitol Hill staffs didn't even see the bill when asked by the reporters since the lobbyist of the K Street had them.
5. The bill passed the Senate with the help of the same 3 turncoat Republicans. And not a single Senator, Democrat or Republican, would read the whole 1000+ pages of it in a day though the House previously unanimously passed a bill saying that the stimulus should be available to the public for 48 hours before the vote. Is it a prudent and responsible thing to vote yes on a bill you haven't thoroughly read especially a bill of this size and implication and with the money borrowed from the next next generation? The Dems pushed it so hard that they violated the bill just voted hours ago.

But you'd have to actually look at some of the provisions to understand, rather than parroting big-mouthed right-wing pundits.

Did you? Not even the Senators can actually take a close look of the bill in the time frame. Do you know that there are grants for a mob museum, endangered salt marsh harvest mice. And oh, the STD stuff is back. Maybe you should take your own advice and look at the provision to understand. Unless, you actually think that money slated to be spent in 2011-2012 has nothing to do with 2012 election and can actually stimulate the current economy that is badly need stimulation right this minute or else it's a catastrophe. Then there is really not much to talk about since you are obviously an ideologue.

Re:what stimulus package?

[sumdumass]

I think your a little confused. The republicans had no part in shaping this bill until after it failed. Pelosi and the democrats whipped it together and thier "republican input" were nothing more then their interpretations of concerns expressed by republicans with sound bytes taken from the congressional record and/or TV shows. They talked to a few "republicans" who were economists but not legislatures. Pelosi said, they won the election, this is what the election was about, and it didn't matter. Obama has even claimed that they "invited" the republicans to come but none of them showed up when making the bill. That's because they didn't make the bill in the house or senate where the legislature is supposed to be.

Now a problem with this is the pork. There isn't a small amount of pork, there is a large amount of pork. You see, items not traditionally called pork is pork in this context because it doesn't follow the intentions of the bill. Money for streamlining the medical system is a good objective but it's pork in this case because the bill is supposed to create jobs tomorrow not cause long term spending or enact new spending, all of which needs the proper debate and consideration that they are attempting to completely avoid with this bill.

The house democrats have basically just voted for a bill that most of them have no idea what it says, not because they were lazy or complacent but because the leadership didn't give enough time for it to be read before the bill would have been voted on. From the introduction to the vote, you would have had to read, comprehend, and understand 2.5 pages per minute just to account for the time between the introduction and the vote. If that doesn't scare you, the premise that legislators cannot even read what they are voting on because someone is afraid it wouldn't pass if they could, then you deserve what is coming.

Re:what stimulus package?

[dangitman]

Not a single Republican in the House voted for this. Only the 3 RINOs in the Senate voted for this.

How convenient. Three Republicans in the Senate voted for it, but because they voted for it, they aren't actually Republicans, but "RINOs" - even though they are, you know, registered members of the Republican Party.

Re:what stimulus package?

[rtb61]

Interestingly enough, spread out the stimulus package distinctly favours open source. The main reason is does, is of course the money invested and the benefits gained tend to be far more wide spread and can reach into every community. The catch with proprietary software is it ends up favouring one on two communities only. So favour and invest in Linux and other open source suites and the benefits are spread across the whole country.

Favour and invest in M$ windows et al and you end up wildly biased to one company, in one city, in one state and you are specifically excluding everyone else and not only is it costing more, a huge chunk of it ends up being wasted as profits for billionaires and that's not 5 percent or 10 percent, that's around half of it.

Re:what stimulus package?

[jcnnghm]

Specter has been a Republican in Name Only since at least 2004, when conservative Congressman Toomey ran against him in the primary because of his liberal voting record. Collins and Snowe have been considered RINOs because of their liberal voting record since 1999, when they voted to acquit Clinton. Nice try though, but as with almost everything, as a Democrat you're uninformed.

Re:what stimulus package?

[orangesquid]

You make a good point by bringing up the concept of balancing short-term and long-term benefits (and consequences). I have some thoughts on how this concept plays into the philosphy of government.

You mention an obvious short-term benefit from what your personal expenditure destination would be. Human life is obviously valuable from the standpoint of providing a labor supply, to speak nothing of the ethics involved, so not subjecting your health to a carbon monoxide risk is obviously important, for you and anybody in a similar situation. Most steps taken to improve health and safety have long-term benefits as well, and in your example of furnace replacement, might have energy savings in the long term.

My thoughts follow. I do not intend for my words to be incendiary, though I know they shall appear as such to some, like any opinion ever spoken by a human. Also, I'm being lazy hereafter and writing 'you' when the correct designator should be 'one'; my opinion is a reply to the parent comment but not criticism directed toward its author.

You have to remember that people are not given equal educational opportunities, cannot change their systems of behavioral response instantaneously, and have a finite capacity for gathering information from their environment. (As hyperbole, you could summarize this: people are ignorant, stubborn, and won't listen.) In an economically-ideal world, we would all be born with vast depth of wisdom, respond quickly to changes in our environments, and be able to research and communicate to whatever extent is necessary as to understand the decisions we face.

Your use of the money would be helpful to both yourself and others, as death and disability remove able-bodied individuals from the labor pool. However, not everyone thinks carefully about how to spend money.

There's a very good reason we aren't a direct democracy, letting every able citizen vote on every issue, but rather a representative democracy, requiring citizens to instead choose qualified individuals to make most important decisions for us. Most humans are not well-versed on the many facets of life; in fact, this is arguably good, since we can choose to devote our resources to becoming experts at specific, narrow fields (division of labor). Being able to spend more time learning what interests you instead of having to learn a little about everything comes at the price of not knowing much about many things, obviously.

It would be nice if we could trust the media to give provide wisdom and minimally-biased, accurate news, with the right balance between local affairs and national and international affiars, and the right balance between human interest stories and information concerning the well-being of society, so as to inform and educate the public. However, the vast majority media relies on sensationalism and the mingling of opinions with facts so as to sell papers and increase viewership of their programming and subsequently the included advertisements, all to ensure that can stay in business and make a profit.

Putting the media in the hands of the government is no better, as it's just another self-serving source.

Ultimaetly, the population at lrage is probably never going to be in a position to always make wise decisions so as to balance the short term and long term. Our present strategy of having advisors keep our elected officials informed about the short-term and long-term effects of any issues at hand and on the ball in terms staying well-informed and making a good effort to use critical thinking is better solution but far from perfect.

There's too much appointing of these advisors in ways such that the public has no direct control. Even the process of getting appointees reviewed by congressional committees and oversight and watchdog groups is flawed due to some of the wily processes by which the committee members are chosen and the self-serving interests of the watchdog groups.

However, the more compex the selection of advisors becomes, the more inefficien

Re:what stimulus package?

[sumdumass]

As if the troll mod makes it go away. Lol..

When will some people understand that ignoring reality doesn't make their views right or correct.

Re:what stimulus package?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks, the obvious is rarely stated so clearly, and people need to keep hearing it, Thanks

Kinda depressing, actually

[Anonymous Coward]

The cited language constitutes the entire two instances of the word "open" in the entire 575-page document.

Maybe we would be better off open sourcing the entire government.

TCO and open vs closed source

[Calindae]

The only down side is medical professionals are going to have a difficult time implementing either closed or open source technology by 2010, let alone doing *both* and comparing. Don't get me wrong, I love the use of technology in the medical field and I fully support our new overlord (much better than old Bushy), but that seems a but rushed, IMHO.

Re:TCO and open vs closed source

[Ostracus]

I have the link somewhere but it appears the issue with medical systems isn't so much lack of technology, but uniform standards. Also the only open source health technology system that comes to mind is the one the VA is using.

Re:TCO and open vs closed source

[Calindae]

Yes, uniform standards would go a long way in helping streamline and cut costs. I'm pharmacy technician and if every doctor used the same tech to submit scripts to us we could probably increas our workload by at least %10. Include insurance companies in standardization of their information and we could up our output by another %10. But insurance companies aren't in the business of paying for things, so they like it when you can't submit claims...

Re:TCO and open vs closed source

[ForrestFire439]

At face value it doesn't seem like such a bad idea. But if you think about the long-term costs of running the system (administrators, maintenance, hardware upgrades, software upgrades) it's not a job that the government is going to be able to perform efficiently.

Then you have the privacy concern. As it stands, if somebody wants access to my medical records then I need to explicitly authorize their release. In my opinion, this is the way it should be. I'm against anything that makes it easier for a third party to get my records without consent. There needs to be very strict language protecting the consumer's privacy.

Then you have provisions that have NOTHING to do with streamlining medical record transfer. Quoteth wikipedia:

"The National Coordinator of Health Information Technology, will monitor treatments to make sure the doctor is doing what the federal government deems appropriate and cost effective so as to reduce costs and âoeguideâ the doctorâ(TM)s decisions (p.442, 446). Hospitals and doctors that are not âoemeaningful usersâ of the new system will face penalties by the HHS secretary, who will be empowered to impose âoemore stringent measures of meaningful use over timeâ (p.511, 518, 540-541). The Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research ($1.1 billion)[26] (p.190-192) will slow the development and use of new medications and technologies because they are expensive. Medicare would apply a cost-effective standard set by the Federal Council for the elderly (p.464).[27] Drugs "that are found to be less effective and in some cases, more expensive, will no longer be prescribed." It approves or rejects treatments using a formula that divides the cost of the treatment by the number of years the patient is likely to benefit. Treatments for younger patients are more often approved than treatments for diseases that affect the elderly, such as osteoporosis.[28]"

That's right folks! They're using this bill as a means to regulate the treatment your doctor provides. They, in their infinite wisdom, will decided whether the treatment your doctor is giving you is worth it. Got cancer? Oh, but you're 80 years old. Sorry. We've got more important people to take care of.

This is what you should expect because whenever the government gives you something they expect you to bow to their demands to make sure the money isn't "wasted." It's just like how people who have been convicted of drug-related offenses have trouble getting college grants. It's historic really, going back to the big city democrats in the early 1900's. They give you your meal ticket, you give them their power.

Re:TCO and open vs closed source

[Anonymous Coward]

The % sign is supposed to come after the number, not before.

Re:TCO and open vs closed source

[Ostracus]

"That's right folks! They're using this bill as a means to regulate the treatment your doctor provides. "

Three words. Medicare, Medicaid, HMO. As long as someone else is footing the majority of the bill (employer, government) then you'll have someone else calling the shots. The only system where you're calling the shots (within reason and legality) is all the money comes from your pocket.

Re:TCO and open vs closed source

[Deanalator]

The problem is that the FDA needs someone to fuck over in the case that a medical device glitches out.

The device we were working back when I had a job was only a class 2, and still the restrictions were insane.

http://www.fda.gov/CDRH/devadvice/3132.html

Even beyond code version control, we needed to have every aspect of the design and even testing under version control, which was constantly monitored, along with email communications, by FDA auditors. I even had to get FDA approval for tools I was using like nmap, webscarab, and wireshark.

I always thought how great it would be if there were more medical devices that were open source, but after working on this project, I can see why it's not so popular. Even if a team of brilliant hobbyists wrote the cleanest and most useful open source apps for hospital usage, it would never be allowed into hospitals because it could never get FDA approval.

I don't think there exists free tools that allow you to leave an audit trail detailed enough to please the FDA. They have to start following you at the beginning of the design cycle, and the moment they think something is out of order, they can shut the project down.

Re:TCO and open vs closed source

[EastCoastSurfer]

Yes and no. My grandfather is old and is on medicare and VA benefits. His doctors clearly call the shots (keeping him extra nights in the hospital just for observation, etc...).

Daschels own book talks about limiting care to old people to save money and he was the first choice to fill the position that is over the NCHIT.

Re:TCO and open vs closed source

[sumdumass]

Then amend the bill to have the effects only on Medicare and Medicade. The HMO is a contract between you and your provider and if they want to allow non-standard treatments or if they allow you to visit a clinical trial for a condition, then that's up to them and not the government to claim is wasteful or whatnot. I would also argue for a standard of care in Medicare and medicade seeing how I/We are paying the bills.

Now I didn't mean amend the bill as if you supported it or anything. I meant it as if the bill should have specifically said what it applied to instead of appearing to be applying to everything under the sun. I'm willing to bet that's how it would be applied without the specific connections.

This portion basically is a step towards the Universal heath that they ran on during the primaries and almost forgot about during the national elections. This is also a reason why they didn't want the house to have time to read the damn thing before requiring it's passage. I suspect the bill is loaded with goodies like this and it seems that every day, someone finds something else.

When the government want to act now and think later, you should be worried. When one party does it at the objections or in spite of the other party (parties) you should be scared.

Re:TCO and open vs closed source

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh Puhlease! I could bang out a medical record system in 2 weeks using MySQL, Apache, and PHP. Hell maybe one week by just adding custom fields to VTiger... People are so retarded!

Re:TCO and open vs closed source

[Anonymous Coward]

That's niche that you can 'call the shots,' but the truth is that especially in health issues, you don't have any bargaining power whatsoever. The insurances have, medicaid has, but an individual can either pay or suffer. But it's a good thing that it's your own choice.

Re:TCO and open vs closed source

[jellomizer]

Yea keep telling yourself that.
So what do you know about Medical Billing, Digastondics Coding, Transcriptions and record keeping. You probably don't even know the Difference between a PM an EMR or even what HL7 is. It would take you 2 weeks just to understand the basics before you can go and collect the specs.

Even if you did write a crappy PHP App you will need the doctors to like it. And they are not easy or nice people, they will tare a basic HTML form to shreds, they want the best and they have the money to buy the best. Not a hack job done in a few weeks.

What and how

[binkless]

Just what is this supposed to stimulate and how?

Just thought I'd ask

Re:What and how

[Calindae]

Most likely it is used to stimulate the decreasing of costs in regards to the health care. Lowering costs=increase profits=strong economy=you, happy.

Re:What and how

[tjstork]

Most likely it is used to stimulate the decreasing of costs in regards to the health care.

No its not. It's just a big political grab bag for constituencies of the Democratic Party. They've been waiting for 30 years for their big federal lootfest, and now they are going to get it.

Re:What and how

[jamie]

If you make health care more affordable by increasing its efficiency, fewer Americans will be spending money on health-care overhead and bureaucracy, which means they'll have more money to spend on other things.

Re:What and how

[Calindae]

Yeah, it's just very well disguised as helping the country (which it will do, oddly enough..) Those dirty rascals!

Re:What and how

[n6kuy]

But then the people who work in the health care system will have less money to spend....

The only way to get more (real) money into the economy now is to borrow it from the future.

Re:What and how

[Anonymous Coward]

It's just a big political grab bag for constituencies of the Democratic Party.

Do you have any idea what a stimulus is?

Clearly you do not. So shut your pie hole and do some book-learnin'.

The Republicans of course did absolutely zero "lootfesting". Just ask Blackwater.

Re:What and how

[RiotingPacifist]

why cant they just use the old techniques, like going to war while your family own shares in the biggest item on the military budget?

Re:What and how

[jcnnghm]

I thought Democrats didn't believe in trickle down economics.

Re:What and how

[JoeCommodore]

"They've been waiting for 30 years for their big federal lootfest, and now they are going to get it."

Not much of that left after the big corporate/republican federal lootfest, which was shortly after the even bigger American public lootfest, that got this country into this mess in the first place.

I see a lot more work in investing inside the US in the cities and people then I do with the previous admin. All it seems that was invested in in the last few years are secure bank accounts for the wealthy few.

Re:What and how

[iluvcapra]

All it seems that was invested in in the last few years are secure bank accounts for the wealthy few.

Hey, be fair. We bought at least a trillion dollars worth of craters and tortured people in Iraq, too.

Re:What and how

[Anonymous Coward]

It's true that not everything in the bill will be stimulative. Some of it is the inevitable result of compromise, such as suspending the Alternative Minimum Tax for many so-called middle-income wage earners (they probably needed to keep that to get the three critical Senate Republican votes). There are "safety net" transfer payments to the unemployed, and "neighborhood stabilization" funds to clean up foreclosure blight that - I would call these necessary hygiene rather than stimulus. But they are necessary.

If you look at the list, though, there's a lot of good stuff. Many are long-term investments and capital improvements: highway and bridge construction, high-speed rail, money to clean up hazardous waste sites, research in alternative energy tech, money for NASA ($1B). These are great because 1) they provide a stable target to attract private investment; 2) jobs for American workers, both blue and white collar; and 3) USEFUL work, not New Deal-type boondoggles.

Sen. Gregg showed lack of understanding when he said the stimulus was supposed to be "temporary and targeted". A "temporary" blip in spending by either the govt. or consumers does not attract investment... it just allows some businesses to hang on a little longer.

I'm especially psyched by the money for rail improvements. I would've liked to see a really big bet placed on next generation rail (both passenger and freight) - just think of bullet trains criss-crossing the Midwest and upper Southeast, as well as the Northeast corridor. Industrial production would go through the roof, and we'd have a big piece of a 21st century transportation system. But $10B in the bill that passed for all types of rail (including commuter rail) is a nothing to sneeze at.

Re:What and how

[rdoger6424]

You mean Xe.

Re:What and how

[rdoger6424]

Trickle-up, not trickle-down.
Poor people won't have to spend $1,000 every time they go to the doctor. They'll spend that money, since research shows that the savings rate is dramatically lower for poorer people than richer people. They'll spend it on stuff that happens to be sales taxed.

Re:What and how

[sumdumass]

If it was well disguised, people wouldn't be crying foul and discussing it's merits right now.

Perhaps you can get them to cover it up a little better.... Oh wait, that's what some who oppose it want, they want the discussion that is normally applied to things like this in order get it passes so it will by law either help the country or be removed.

VistA on GT.M - Check it out...

[Anonymous Coward]

The open source health management stack that runs on the open source GT.M, it is called VistA. It is used by many healthcare providers here in the US and Mexico.

Props to Osirix...

[jkrise]

An excellent PACS viewer solution; unfortunately runs only on Macs; but is amazing. Developed by a set of dcotors who got fed up with Direct X and the quicksand that is WDDM and DRM nonsense.

Fully Open Source.

http://www.osirix-viewer.com/

Re:Props to Osirix...

[Anonymous Coward]

Developed by a set of dcotors who got fed up with Direct X and the quicksand that is WDDM and DRM nonsense

Maybe they were fed up with Direct X, but all things considered, the rest of that sentence is nonsense. WDDM really? Are they bundling a display driver with that program too? Don't get me started with the DRM crap that you don't have to use...

Re:Props to Osirix...

[drsmithy]

Developed by a set of dcotors who got fed up with Direct X and the quicksand that is WDDM and DRM nonsense.

These had nothing to do with the creation of Osirix.

Re:Props to Osirix...

[drinkypoo]

You don't even have to use DirectX to do graphics on windows. Vendors still ship OpenGL. So does SGI, if you don't mind an older version (plenty for most visualization tasks.)

Re:Props to Osirix...

[rsborg]

Osirix also runs on the iPhone.

So you could say it's platform limitation is OSX.

Waste of money

[Anonymous Coward]

Wonderful...that will help the economy.

Here are the results of the study

[Anonymous Coward]

* Open source is worse than proprietary systems
* We shall continue to use proprietary systems

Don't be obtuse

[fm6]

That's kind of a dumb question. (I might be excused from inferring your agenda from your question, but I'll refrain — we already have too much of that.) Anything that causes money to be spent stimulates the economy. The issue with the stimulus bill (including this part) is not whether it will stimulate the economy, but whether it will stimulate it enough to justify adding most of a terabuck to the national debt.

As for this particular question, have you been following the news at all? Part of the stimulus is building up our technical infrastructure. Do I have to explain how software fits into that? You may not agree that this will work, but how it's supposed to work should be obvious.

Re:Don't be obtuse

[garett_spencley]

"That's kind of a dumb question. (I might be excused from inferring your agenda from your question, but I'll refrain -- we already have too much of that.) Anything that causes money to be spent stimulates the economy. The issue with the stimulus bill (including this part) is not whether it will stimulate the economy, but whether it will stimulate it enough to justify adding most of a terabuck to the national debt."

Here's a question: If you take money from person A and give it to person B, have you stimulated anything ? Person B will have more to spend, admittedly, but person A will have less. The net effect on the economy is null. Unless you buy into the theory of competition which states that government will never be as efficient as private industry. If you agree with that principle then you can see that not only has the government not stimulated anything, the odds are more likely that they've generated a net loss.

Re:Don't be obtuse

[amorsen]

Person B will have more to spend, admittedly, but person A will have less. The net effect on the economy is null.

I guess economy isn't your strongest subject?

If you e.g. take money from the poor and give it to the rich, you will be slowing the economy down. The poor person would have spent that money almost immediately on essential things like food, whereas the rich person would have put a substantial amount into savings. (This kind of reverse Robin-Hood is often good for the economy overall). The same thing works in reverse, and therefore when unemployment is high or the industry has unused capacity, it is often a good idea to move money from the rich to the poor.

Another alternative is public spending, which is guaranteed to create activity instantly.

Re:Don't be obtuse

[koutbo6]

for an economic model with two people I agree. But what happens if you add a person C as a bank, who's lent both A,B, to buy houses from builder D. Having made a quick buck, D borrows more to build homes that he expects E,F,G ...etc to purchase ... but hey.. these guys never showed up.
A & B house value declines because of all these houses in the market which D can't sell. Since the houses were collateral for everyone's loans, they figure its better to walk away and let C reposes them since its more cost effective for them to take the hit. Now everyone is bankrupt, and C is sitting on a lot of homes with no cash.
There, fixed that for you.
The model is now a closer representation of reality.
Now what were u saying about government stimulus?

Re:Don't be obtuse

[garett_spencley]

"I guess economy isn't your strongest subject?"

Funny. After reading your post I could ask you the same thing.

When a wealthy individual puts his/her money into savings they either put it into a savings account in a bank or they invest it. The 3rd option is that they could literally hoard it in a mattress or a safe in their home, which is the only scenario that gives your argument a leg to stand on. But only an extremely small fraction of misers do that.

The money goes into a savings account and the banks keep a small percentage for reserves and lend out the rest. So while a small fraction of the savings does get held by the banks, the majority goes back into the economy. If you consider that in a healthy economy banks will be making wise investments then the reserve is rendered moot because the banks capital grows through good loans which employs more bankers.

Every penny that the rich have goes to creating employment, either directly or indirectly. When Paris Hilton buys a Gucci bag she's indirectly employing the shop keeper who then spends that money to indirectly employ her grocer who then spends it at the gas station and indirectly employs the attendant etc. When the rich put the money into savings they're still indirectly contributing towards employment. And when all is said and done, when the rich decide to withdraw their savings down the road, they will have that much more capital to spend on creating new business ventures or on personal consumption (which, as I illustrated, is still a form of employing). Which is why, traditionally, capital is created by savings, not borrowing! It's this debt lifestyle that not only the public but the government has gotten itself into that has enormously contributed to the current contraction (which is always just a massive and sudden change of behaviour in the way that people handle their savings, and that naturally sorts itself out over time unless it is made worse by encouraging people to put themselves into further debt instead of liquidating their debt and saving).

Government taking from the rich may not necessarily do immediate harm, depending on how they spend it. However, it will never create a net surplus of employment and history has clearly shown us that government is extremely inefficient with money on the whole.

Re:Don't be obtuse

[garett_spencley]

The solution in that case would be for all parties to liquidate their debt and have C learn from the lesson of making bad loans. Rather than redistributing wealth in inefficient ways and encouraging people to borrow more.

When did we start to look at capital as debt rather than savings ? The problem isn't that we need people to borrow more. We need to change our attitudes, liquidate our debt and starting saving again! Banks made these bad loans because the government (Fannie Mae) was securing the mortgages. That was part of FDR's New Deal. He wanted to encourage people to buy homes so he chartered Fannie Mae as this new thing called a government-sponsored enterprise in order to purchase mortgages from banks in exchange for securities.

That created the scenario that you just described.

Lending and borrowing is fine when the risks are properly calculated. The problem is when the government, in an attempt to think of those who the private sector will not lend to because they're considered bad investments!, secures loans which encourages banks to take risks that they otherwise would not have done. The result was a housing bubble and now there is a correction. However, instead of changing our habits and getting out of this debt mentality we're just getting more of the same. Redistribute capital, print more money and lend more to banks so that they make more bad loans. In computer science we would refer to all of this market manipulation as "a series hacks upon hacks upon hacks".

Re:Don't be obtuse

[koutbo6]

well .. in computerized systems, we usually make the hacks because its easier than rewriting the whole system from scratch, and in certain situations it is impossible to stop the system so u have to work with what you've got.
I am not with or against government stimulus, but I wonder if the solution u suggested is possible. I mean, how would you liquidate the debt and be fair to the majority of people who continued to make their payment on time? and if you let the situation take it's course without intervening, I think being fair would be the least of our concerns.
Maybe the solution is an intervention from the government, and a change in attitude about savings so things could stabilize over the long run?

Re:Don't be obtuse

[garett_spencley]

I'm not saying that it's fair to the people who will loose. I'm not saying that it's entirely their fault and I'm not even saying that we (the public, not government specifically), should stand back and do nothing.

There is so much blame to go around. It's not fair to blame just the banks or Wall-Street, it's not fair to blame just the Republicans or the Democrats. This is a problem of gradual, systemic tampering with the way in which people trade and do business with one another. Consider that every thing the government does to assist one group must automatically be at the expense of another. In our mixed system of capitalism, welfare, corporatism and general interventionism we see government supported monopolies (via tariffs, licensure and regulations that make entry into industries very difficult), artificially reduced interest rates (through debt financing by the Fed), a deficit that's in the trillions (according to Ron Paul's book "The Revolution: A Manifesto" the US national debt is accruing 1.4 billion dollars per DAY in interest!) and a general tax on the entire public via the government's program of inflation.

So I'm not saying that we should do nothing to help the individuals who are on the loosing end. I'm just saying that governmental assistance is something to be extremely weary of. Because everything that I just listed is a result of "good intentions" on the part of government. Here's a radical theory: maybe if we cut the income tax and cut government spending to accommodate, and the government was honest with the public that the majority of their economic problems are a result of artificial market manipulation, the result of people being able to keep 100% of what they earn will stimulate them to being more charitable.

I encourage everyone to speak with their elders about what times were like when they were younger. The US has only had a fiat currency since 1913. It's only started to expand a world-wide military empire (that costs an estimated 1 trillion dollars per year that comes straight out of the productive areas of the economy) since the 1950's. HMO's and medicaire etc. are also relatively new and today we see virtually no pro-bono doctors or charity-run hospitals anymore. There used to be an abundance of them and no one was turned away because they couldn't afford treatment. Don't take my words for it, read some of Dr. Ron Paul's writing where he talks about what the health care system was like when he was a young practicing obstetrician.

So all I'm asking is for people to really examine ALL of the effects that government spending, in general, has on the entire economy as a whole instead of just looking at the short term effects. Nothing short of revolutionary reform would cut all governmental intervention but people, at the very least, need to be asking these questions and having these debates. Every time the economy goes sour, or there's some other catastrophic event (9/11, hurricanes Katrina and Gustov) people get a revived sense of dependence on government. It's a belief structure that's based around the idea that government, through means of forceful coercion, can take from the most productive areas of society and use those takings to somehow save the unproductive areas (sometimes their goals are successful but we never ask at what cost ? What new industry was indirectly destroyed because a dying industry was saved through governmental assistance and was the result for the better or for the worse ? And how would we know ?).

We should all feel compassionate and do what we can to help those who have found themselves on the loosing end. All I'm saying is that forceful coercion and governmental assistance never accomplishes the goal of economic prosperity. If we've seen prosperity in the past it's been in spite of intervention, not because of it.

On a lighter note, but one that helps illustrate the unintended side-effects of government hand-outs, the Ludwig Von Mises Institute web-site published an article recently titled Bailing Out the Red Light District that is worth a read. If for no other reason than to give you a good laugh.

Re:Don't be obtuse

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you sure "fractional reserve" always works that way?

From Wikipedia entry "Fractional-reserve banking"

When a depositor deposits $100 into the bank under contract that the money can be withdrawn at any time, the bank could implement fractional reserve banking by either 1) loaning $80 of the original $100 without creating any more money, or 2) creating an additional $400 out of thin air and loaning out that newly created $400. In the first case there would be a total of $100 (the original deposit), whereas in the second case the money supply would be inflated to a total of $500.

It's the #2 that worries me.

Re:Don't be obtuse

[garett_spencley]

Yes, fractional reserve directly contributes to inflation. Because when a bank lends out money the person who gets the loan has money to spend but that money also, technically, belongs to the person who put it in his/her savings account. However, when loans get paid back that new money that was created is destroyed and deflation takes effect and prices go down and you have an overall correction.

The important part here is that the banks need to make wise loans. If the banks get themselves into trouble then they risk a bank run and are forced to borrow from another bank to meet it's obligations. The Federal Reserve was supposed to solve this problem by being a lender of last resort. However, during the great depression they failed massively in their task (Milton Friedman accused the Fed of causing the depression) and since we saw banks collapse in 2008 as well it would appear that the Fed is not living up to one of their intended purposes.

I was opposed to the fractional reserve system for a long time for the inflation reason. However, inflation is not inherently a "bad thing" as long as deflation is allowed to occur. The problem is when you give a central authority the power over the creation of money, and over monetary policy. It becomes too tempting to keep printing more and more. The public doesn't like deflation because they see the short-sighted impact of their wages getting cut (cost of living goes down accordingly as well, which is little comfort psychologically). The last time we saw a government-supported program of deflation was in the 70's. It's largely believed to be the only reason that all confidence has not been lost in the dollar yet.

Re:Don't be obtuse

[iluvcapra]

The money goes into a savings account and the banks keep a small percentage for reserves and lend out the rest.

The problem at this moment is that the banks aren't lending, because they're insolvent and are unwilling to cop to that fact. When a rich person puts their money in the bank today, the bank is turning around and buying Treasuries with it. They aren't lending it out because the assets they were using to back up their reserve, loans and derivatives of loans, are, in fact, worthless.

This theory you spell out requires banks working properly, and it all falls apart when banks conduct fraud on a scale that dwarfs the GDP of the actual country hosting the credit market.

Re:Don't be obtuse

[garett_spencley]

That's a good point, if it's true.

Also, if the banks are buying treasury bonds then the government could use that money to pay off it's debts to the fed, which would deflate the pool of money thus causing prices to come down. Heck, they could liquidate any of the national debt with the money from those bonds which would help matters greatly.

You're pointing the finger at the banks, and they definitely do deserve a share of the blame, but so should the government and so should people who chose to take out loans that they couldn't pay back. This isn't a problem with capitalism, it's not a problem with the republicans or the democrats. It's a problem of government printing money, securing loans and giving hand-outs to special interest groups and those group taking whatever they can get and running with it.

Re:Don't be obtuse

[Anonymous Coward]

You said that banks invest the money. What happens when there is too much inventory because of extremely low consumption and thus too much investment. How does more investment help? And Paris Hilton does not spend as reliably as hungry people or government programs so that argument is worthless too. The problem is lack of demand not lack of investment. You create demand by spending not cutting taxes for the rich.

Re:Don't be obtuse

[ndelta]

Capital is debt. It has been we left the gold standard. It will continue to be that way until someone comes up with a better way to create money than digging it up or from lending.

Re:Don't be obtuse

[iluvcapra]

I don't know if I can accept the total balance of commercial debt outstanding as a suitable proxy for amount lending. I'm also not very likely to take my econ information from a website that photoshops people's faces onto cereal boxes; this would tend to indicate they're in need of a distraction.

Your argument, essentially, is that there is no credit crisis, and that it's a conspiracy of government, bank, and media types. Yet for some bizarre reason, we had four bank failures yesterday, putting us at 13 for the year and 26 since late 2007. Home Equity lines of credit have been frozen by most banks since February '08. Mortgage insurance guidelines are getting stricter and Fannie/Freddie are larding on fees and points for anyone with credit score not in the 90th percentile. Credit card companies are reducing credit lines, which must go down as one of the biggest barn door closing after the cows leaving in history. Of course, now things have swung in the completely opposite direction from where we were in '06 and everyone in the banking industry is all conservative, just when we need growth the most! Have you tried to get a home loan recently? I have. You can get a good rate but you have to have over 800 FICO and the fees are ridiculous. Meanwhile the houses are usually a least 30-50% off their last sale prices, particularly if those were in the last 5 years, and short sales/REOs are something like half of all the places I'm seeing. These lenders are slowly drowning.

Let's say you're right and the credit markets are returning to normal. Are you actually suggesting the banks are not insolvent? What evidence do you have that their MBS and loan assets have any value whatsoever, and they've simply become zombified and are only able to fulfill depositors withdrawals by getting TARP money? They have no positive NAV at this time in history aside from what TARP is handing them, and any lending they're doing right now is off those drafts, and grudgingly at that.

I think what you're also seeing on that chart you cited is interbank lending, not lending to any productive activity. The banks are all still pretending to each other they're holding good paper, just don't make them print any more of it by loaning out to deadbeat consumers or businesses!

You're going to need more than the Mises Institute (I'm sure they have no interest in proving some hobby-horse dogma!) to convince me there isn't a credit crisis :P

Re:Don't be obtuse

[iluvcapra]

Also, dumb question, is that chart of Debt Outstanding marking-to-market the value of the debt outstanding, because a lot of that debt is probably defaulted but the MBS shell is obscuring that.

Re:Don't be obtuse

[garett_spencley]

"You said that banks invest the money. What happens when there is too much inventory because of extremely low consumption and thus too much investment. How does more investment help?"

I said that banks LEND the money. It's up to the market forces to determine how that money will be used.

To employ your own logic: how does the government know better than the natural market forces what products or services will be in high demand ? How do we know whether the energy of tomorrow is going to be nuclear or solar ? To put into better words: how does the government know what industries are worthwhile investments ?

ESPECIALLY when you consider that the government invests other people's money. How on earth can you expect a government to spend wisely on technologies or industries of the future when it's not risking it's own savings ? When it's proverbial rear-end is not on the line. When it won't be forced to learn a hard lesson and admit it's mistakes and correct them, like every individual entrepreneur is forced to do ?

"And Paris Hilton does not spend as reliably as hungry people or government programs so that argument is worthless too."

I have no idea what you mean by "spend as reliably". My only point was that a rich person's monetary wealth gets put back into the economy which employs people. Whether they spend the money on personal consumption or put it into a savings account. And that people in general are much better at deciding where to spend their money than the government.

"The problem is lack of demand not lack of investment. You create demand by spending not cutting taxes for the rich."

Your first sentence is the only part of your post that I agree with. There is a surplus of supply and no demand. The housing market is the most obvious example. The bubble was a result of government intervention into the housing market in an attempt to encourage people to buy homes because the belief was that owning a home was the foundation for future individual economic prosperity. This created an artificial housing bubble and now we have more homes waiting for an owner than we do prospective owners.

People are also liquidating their debt and saving their money. Further lack of demand. BUT THIS IS ALSO A GOOD THING! It is a market correction. As a result prices will come down to reflect a lack of demand. Products that HAVE NO CURRENT VALUE will be sold off at extremely low prices or disposed of and businesses that OFFER NOTHING OF VALUE will close. This is a contraction of the market but it is short term. Gradually confidence returns. People will have paid off large amounts of debts, will have some savings and will be looking for things to purchase. There will be wage cuts and unemployment and people will have to figure out how to cope. Some will pursue career changes. Others will accept a wage cut somewhere else. But costs of living also come down and if the correction is allowed to take it's course, it will be temporary.

You asked me how more investment would solve the problem. I never said that it will. My only point was that a rich person being rich does not make a poor person poor. That taxing the rich and giving to the poor does not generate greater prosperity for everyone. When there is overall greater prosperity you still have a lower class but the standards of living for that lower class are much, much greater than they are in a sick economy. This is a fact that has been proven time and time again throughout history. Western worlds that adopted a capitalist system had classes but the standards of living for the poorest were exponentially greater when compared with the standards of living for the poor in socialist and communist countries.

You also implied that I said something about tax cuts for the rich. I endorse tax cuts for EVERYONE. Because the market is much better at using money efficiently than government is. History proves this. Think about this: the income tax accounts for roughly 40% of the government's national revenue. If you cut t

Re:Don't be obtuse

[garett_spencley]

You mentioned mortgage backed securities and their value. My question is: SHOULD they have any value left ? There are those who believe that the securities created the housing bubble to begin with. And it makes perfect sense because governments securing loans only exists to encourage sub-prime lending in the first place.

If banks are insolvent right now then it is because they made bad loans. And banks who make more bad loans than good SHOULD fail. I don't see how we ever got into this belief that capital is debt rather than savings. Economists throughout history have said that capital comes from savings. In this past century we started financing everything with debt.

My original point was that when a rich person (or any person, class is irrelevant at this point in the debate) puts their money into a savings account the bank uses part of it to make loans. OK, so banks are insolvent. They'll use the money to either pay off their debt or buy treasury bonds instead. If people (and banks) started saving their money and liquidating their debt, and government started cutting spending and liquidating it's debt, then the habits that got us into this mess in the first place will start to be undone. If government stops securing loans and printing money, and people put more into savings (instead of trying to finance all of their living through debt), then banks will be forced to make GOOD LOANS on people with good investment history and viable business plans, rather than lending to people who stand an excellent chance of defaulting.

Taxing everyone so that we can encourage banks that made bad loans to continue doing so and pump everyone's money into industries that the market is rejecting is only going to make things worse.

With regards to the Mises institute web-site, I encourage you to at least read about it and who Ludwig Von Mises was and what contributions he made to economics. I agree with your point about the silly pictures, but their contribution to the field of economics is immense and there is so much to learn from their publications.

Re:Don't be obtuse

[mrlibertarian]

What happens when there is too much inventory because of extremely low consumption and thus too much investment. How does more investment help?

In economics, there can never be a such thing as 'too much inventory'. In fact, the entire point of all economic action is to create as many goods as possible. Sellers merely need to lower the prices of their goods in order to get their inventory to move. Yes, the sellers may end up selling at a loss and going out of business, but that is how the market corrects itself. The error during the boom was that businesses bid costs up too high, diverting production into lines that turned out to be unprofitable. Now, those prices must fall, so that production will be diverted back into profitable areas.

Investment is the key, because consumption can not happen without investment. If we invest more today, we will have more goods to consume tomorrow. It's that simple.

The misunderstanding that most observers have comes from being focused on adjusting the consumer to meet the needs of businesses. Obviously, businesses want consumption: The home builders want more home consumption, the oil companies want more oil consumption, etc. However, the point of the economy is for businesses to adjust to the needs of consumers. The fact that a lot of businesses are closing, and a lot of employees are being laid off, merely tells us that a lot of mistakes were made during the boom, and now a major adjustment is necessary. The best thing to do is to allow that adjustment to take place. If we continue to fight the adjustment, we'll only have less production and become more impoverished.

Re:Don't be obtuse

[iluvcapra]

And it makes perfect sense because governments securing loans only exists to encourage sub-prime lending in the first place.

This I will not contest, there's this unfortunate moral thing in the US about buying a house, but I think you'd find that if the government incentives to home-owning were removed that'd be the last act of that government. It a very popular aspect of our law and people in this country regard home ownership as basically an American tradition. They do this regardless of the economic consequences.

My original point was that when a rich person (or any person, class is irrelevant at this point in the debate) puts their money into a savings account the bank uses part of it to make loans. OK, so banks are insolvent.

You're right, but putting money in an insolvent bank is throwing bad money after good. There's nothing structurally different on the balance sheet, and it's not clear that people would be able to save the amount of money necessary to right the ship. This is tens of trillions of dollars were talking about. Thus...

They'll use the money to either pay off their debt or buy treasury bonds instead. If people (and banks) started saving their money and liquidating their debt, and government started cutting spending and liquidating it's debt, then the habits that got us into this mess in the first place will start to be undone.

You're right, but you have to get to the destination, and it's not clear to me that the road there, in time of contraction, leads through fiscal austerity. You can save all the dollars you want but if the banking system collapses, to wit "banks who make more bad loans than good SHOULD fail," and this happens to not merely cause a bunch of equity investors to have a bad day but for every depositor in the United States to find his checking account suddenly unavailable, this would, admittedly, be an organic part of the working of the free market, and people would make the rational decision of no longer using dollars, and would transition to bartering or foreign currencies, and onward we would trudge to a second dark ages as faith in any depository institution collapses. These things have a certain velocity, a dynamic characteristic to them, and I think where you believe people will reassess from day to day what they should do, I think they'd just panic and make a lot of destructive decisions.

Taxing everyone so that we can encourage banks that made bad loans to continue doing so and pump everyone's money into industries that the market is rejecting is only going to make things worse.

How does taxing people encourage banks to make bad loans?

With regards to the Mises institute web-site, I encourage you to at least read about it [mises.org] and who Ludwig Von Mises [wikipedia.org] was and what contributions he made to economics. I agree with your point about the silly pictures, but their contribution to the field of economics is immense and there is so much to learn from their publications.

I just don't like them calling me a reactionary dupe for respectfully disagreeing with them :)

Re:Don't be obtuse

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Here's a question: If you take money from person A and give it to person B, have you stimulated anything ? Person B will have more to spend, admittedly, but person A will have less. The net effect on the economy is null.

Actually, the main cause of the great depression and a big factor in the current economic problem is not that we don't have enough wealth, but the disparity of distribution. 50% of the wealth is in the hands of a few percent of the populace. 50% of the populace has a net wealth of zero as a group. When half the population has no wealth and no realistic prospect of having wealth, who are banks supposed to be loaning money to? They have been loaning money to that 50% despite economists knowing there was little or no chance of it being paid back without federal aid. That can go on only so long before foreclosures start redistributing the wealth radically back to the top in the form of seized homes and assets and exorbitant interest on short term loans. Worse yet, wealth is destroyed in the process, not just transferred. Houses become unoccupied and fall into disrepair losing value and the lack of home ownership drives the value of housing down. It is the rapid and unpredictable changes more than overall returns that causes a depression. Even during the depression the average return on stock investments was positive... it was just unpredictable and erratic.

Of course the economic stimulus package is not a solution only a short term band-aid. It is designed to halt the spiraling collapse where lack of funds and frightened investors make the problem worse. It is not a long term solution by itself. The real trick is to change long term tax policies to shift more of the tax burden to the top to stop the wealth from continuing to consolidate and increasing socialist programs such that there is more upward mobility for those on the bottom to move up. Currently those at the top are paying less of their income as taxes than those in the middle and huge amounts of foreign debt are being incurred. Neither is sustainable and both lead to just this kind of instability and collapse.

Re:Don't be obtuse

[Anonymous Coward]

The solution in that case would be for all parties to liquidate their debt and have C learn from the lesson of making bad loans.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by "liquidate their debt" but the banks basically loaned out a whole bunch of money, in the form a of mortgages, to people who simply aren't able to pay it back. Ordinarily, that wouldn't be a problem because they banks could get their money back by foreclosing on the people who can't pay.

In this case, though, the value of the real estate is much less than the money owed on the mortgages. This means that the banks owe their depositors (e.g. old people with retirement savings) much more than the banks can possibly hope to repay. If the banks were to declare bankruptcy and nothing was done then the savings accounts of people all across the USA would be wiped out. You'd basically have a whole generation of old people with no retirement savings. The alternative is for the fed to print up a bunch of money out of thin air and give it to people who would otherwise have their life savings wiped out. That devalues the dollar and is effectively a tax on everyone who holds dollar denominated assets but the alternative is arguably worse.

Re:Don't be obtuse

[drinkypoo]

I'm not saying that there's no credit crisis, whatever that means, but when a given bank folds has little to do with reality and more to do with "the powers that be". A bank is declared to be insolvent by the FDIC...

Re:Don't be obtuse

[garett_spencley]

"How does taxing people encourage banks to make bad loans?"

I could have worded that sentence much better, admittedly. It's the process of government securing loans, which it can only do if it has the money to make good on those securities. Although obviously there's lots else the government can do with tax revenue too.

You mentioned the prospect of total bank collapse and the resulting lack of confidence in the dollar. I think this speaks volumes to one of the other sources of our problems, that we've ignored while discussing the specific issue of banking: fiat currency. What I would like to see is the abolition of restrictions on the public using gold and silver for currency. People should start buying hard assets (which is kind of what the banks are doing by purchasing treasuries, of course in the worst case scenario the government goes bankrupt and then the future looks *really* bleak while we sort out the resulting revolution) and if there is a loss of confidence in the dollar then we have something to go back on. There's no reason why gold and the USD can't both exist and compete with one another. Gold would end up winning out since it has, you know, value.

Of course if we abolish the Fed then the risk of bank runs increases (in theory, in practice the Fed has done very little to be the lender of last resort that it was supposed to be). Friedman didn't like going back to gold because it proved to be unstable. However, if you look at the stability of the fiat dollar the comparison becomes laughable. I'm not really sure what the best solution to preventing bank runs and the risk of a resulting recession or depression is. But I do think that in response to your scenario of massive bank failure and a loss of confidence in the dollar: introducing an alternative makes a whole lot of sense.

Re:Don't be obtuse

[amorsen]

When a wealthy individual puts his/her money into savings they either put it into a savings account in a bank or they invest it. The 3rd option is that they could literally hoard it in a mattress or a safe in their home, which is the only scenario that gives your argument a leg to stand on. But only an extremely small fraction of misers do that.

There isn't much difference between whether the money is stuck in a mattress or put in a savings account; the national banks try to keep the money supply somewhat stable, and if people stick money in mattresses, the national bank will just print more. It's as if the money was lent to the national bank instead, at 0% interest.

As to banks, some of what they lend goes towards investment, and some goes towards consumption. However, most rich people go for the investment option directly, not the banks or the mattress. In a situation with low demand, investment is useless. If the car manufacturers doubled their output right now, we'd be even further in trouble than we are already.

Re:Don't be obtuse

[EastCoastSurfer]

The problem at this moment is that the banks aren't lending,

That's BS. Watch the bankers testimony that was on last week. One of the guys rattled off just how much money the lent last month alone.

Anecdotally, I have numerous friends who recently bought houses and had zero problems getting loans. Others are refing because the banks are calling them. I spoke to a mortgage broker the other day and she said loans are not a problem at all, and haven't been for a long time.

Oh wait, you must mean banks aren't lending to people who have no down payment or the ability to pay back the loan. Barney Frank, is that you? BTW, lending to people who can't pay back the loan is what got us here in the first place.

Re:Don't be obtuse

[Anonymous Coward]

The money goes into a savings account and the banks keep a small percentage for reserves and lend out the rest. So while a small fraction of the savings does get held by the banks, the majority goes back into the economy.

Psst, buddy. I think you need to stop parroting the economics lectures you've been hearing on talk radio, and start paying attention to what's going on in the world economy right now.

---------------------
TARP: Banks Promise Loans But Hoard Cash
Liz Moyer, 02.03.09, 05:05 PM EST
Data shows funds piling up in accounts at the Federal Reserve.

Bankers have done the equivalent of stuffing the mattress in the last few months, despite being prodded by the government to lend the hundreds of billions in cash being pumped into the banking system by the Federal Reserve and other regulators.

They've been hoarding cash at the Federal Reserve, some $793 billion of excess reserves as of the end of January, which is more than double the amount of money doled out or pledged to financial companies through the Treasury Department's $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program.

The data support the anecdotal evidence that lawmakers on Capitol Hill have railed against: Banks are hoarding the bailout money, even as they promise to make more loans.

It highlights one of the biggest problems facing the financial system right now: balancing the political need to loan out taxpayer funds and ignite the stalled economy with demands to shore up their balance sheets and insure survival during the riskiest lending environment in a generation. "They are nervous," says Mark Zandi of Moody's Economy.com.
---------------------

Re:Don't be obtuse

[Wildclaw]

Government taking from the rich may not necessarily do immediate harm, depending on how they spend it. However, it will never create a net surplus of employment and history has clearly shown us that government is extremely inefficient with money on the whole.

Oh god, shut the fuck up. That is just pure bullshit. High margin taxes has historically meant higher growth and decreasing unemployment. And no, the goverment isn't especially inefficent with money. Most of the successful economies in the world has large goverments for a reason.

If anything, it is the private sector that is inefficent with capital. Creating a financial sector that employs huge amounts of people to basically just gamble with money and even more people to convince other people to buy overpriced products of questionable quality and lots of people to convince people to take loans that they can't afford in the long run.

This is not saying that the private sector doesn't have its advantages. It is especially successful in allowing for small innovative companies to prosper and innovate which is good for the economy. The goverment is far more static in its behavior which makes it poor to adept. But the kind of anti goverment bullshit that is going is just sickening.

Re:Don't be obtuse

[Boushley]

One example of how this money will be wasted is the Broadband initiative. Do you know why those unserved areas don't have broadband... because its not profitable. If there was money to be made there the commercial companies would have done it. But instead all of us are going to have to foot the bill for everyone to have it, and still have to pay my own internet bill... Doesn't really make sense, and due to the higher taxes that are going to have to come, my spending will have to decrease. Thats just a fact.

Re:Don't be obtuse

[fm6]

I don't happen to agree, but that's actually another argument. Obviously when you spend money stimulating the economy, you'd rather spend the money on something with long-term value than on something that just keeps people busy. The point I was making is that spending money stimulates the economy whether it's doing something useful or not.

The thing I find really ironic is the right wing poo-pooing this concept when they were actually proclaiming it just a few years ago. After 9/11, a lot of people got all patriotic and wanted to quit their jobs in order to enter the military or become part of the national security establishment, or something else that they saw as combating terrorism. (Even going to Afghanistan and delivering economic aid counts; the Taliban hate western aid workers more than they hate the western military.) People who wanted to do this heard the same thing from multiple source: the Bush administration, right-wing pundits, their bosses when they tried to quit their jobs: Don't quit. The most patriotic thing you can do is keep working and stimulate the economy by going shopping.

When "stimulating the economy" meant buying useless crap in order to make big business even bigger, they were all for it. But now that it means spending money on actually stuff we can (maybe) use, it's a dirty word.

Re:Don't be obtuse

[Anonymous Coward]

"a series hacks upon hacks upon hacks".

LOL! Well done!

I wish this didn't pass

[hackstraw]

I'm all for the Open Source stuff and all, but every economist that I've read says that ironically, that massive layoffs are the beginning of the end of an economic downturn, and that it appears as though things will be back into shape around the end of 2009 or the beginning of 2010, and none of their arguments are contingent upon a stimulus package. In fact, none mention it.

I think that the spending on the infrastructure and unemployment benefits and the like are sufficient. Both will help in the short term and long term, but tax cuts are BS. Ever since I've been alive every politician has cut taxes, yet they always seem to go up. I'm not complaining. Our taxes are low in the US. I'm stating the facts. The only people that seem to benefit from tax breaks are those that are unaffected by their tax burden or any financial burden whatsoever.

Yes, I voted for Obama, and I don't regret it, but I think the effectiveness of this bill does not warrant the cost.

Re:I wish this didn't pass

[fm6]

The key words in your post: "that I've read". The stimulus is classic Keynesian economics. Not all economists buy into this model, but many do.

Re:I wish this didn't pass

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever read Keynes? How about Krugman? Robert Reich? I am not saying these economists are right or wrong. Keynes would be a good read though because he seemed to have the most complete understanding of recessions and how to avoid or recover from them.

Re:I wish this didn't pass

[garett_spencley]

I'm going to run through some very elementary principles of economics. For more information I suggest you read "Economics In One Lesson" by Henry Hazlitt.

Cutting taxes only works if government also cuts spending. However, since 1913 (when the Federal Reserve Act was established) the government (or more precisely the Federal Reserve, which is actually an independent corporation which was chartered by the government and not part of the government at all) has been in charge of the creation of money.

Why cut taxes, which will anger the public, when you can spend by just printing more money ?

However, most people realize that while the government can print money there is a catch. The catch is that prices go up. What happens when the Fed says that it's going to "slash interest rates" is that it manipulates the rate at which banks borrow from each other by purchasing bonds from the banks. This gives the banks more money to lend out, and naturally banks encourage borrowing by cutting their interest rates. However, the most important part of the equation is that the Fed creates the money to purchase those bonds out of thin air.

So now there's more money in circulation. The people who do the most borrowing get the money first and get the benefits. Since they have all of this extra money they can bid more for what they need. So the businesses that they contract to raise their prices. Now those businesses have more money and they in turn bid higher and so on until the new money has spread through the economy.

The act of adding to the pool of money is inflation. Rising prices is the symptom.

The effect that this has on the population as a whole, and hardest on the poorest who do the least amount of borrowing and purchasing, is literally the same as raising taxes. More specifically it's literally the same as if the government went into your bank account and took out money. Because it devalues the currency. This is a clear case of big business getting benefits at the expense of everyone else. It's not a case against laissez-faire capitalism, because government-controlled fiat currency is anything but laissez-faire. It's interventionist to the extreme.

These stimulus packages are almost always financed through inflation. There's 3 ways that the government can finance anything: 1) they spend tax dollars 2) they borrow the money from another nation and 3) they print more money (pretty much the same as raising taxes for the reasons I just explained).

Now, since you mentioned that you believe that the stimulus is going to be sufficient (I guess you haven't bothered to ask yourself why the last bailout bills haven't been), consider what I just said about the way that government finances spending. In order to spend anything the government has to take first. Government does not generate wealth. They merely redistribute.

Most people who support the bailouts / stimulus packages feel that it's going to work because it's going to take from the rich who can easily afford to pay more taxes and give to the poor. However, that's a very short-sighted view. Because while class-envy is natural and understandable, every penny that the rich spend on personal consumption is indirectly contributing to employment. When Paris Hilton buys a new Gucci bag she's indirectly employing the shop keeper who sold her the bag. The shop keeper is then indirectly employing the grocer who sells her her groceries and so on. So all of this talk about stimulus is rather absurd. Government can not create jobs. Every government dollar spent is a dollar taken from a productive area of society. In other words: an area that is currently employing people.

I hear some people raising their hands and saying "but people aren't spending right now! The rich are hoarding their money and not employing!". However, unless they're hoarding their money literally in a mattress or safe in their home they're still employing. They keep their money in savings accounts or they invest it. Which both contribute to production

Re:I wish this didn't pass

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not complaining. Our taxes are low in the US. I'm stating the facts. The only people that seem to benefit from tax breaks are those that are unaffected by their tax burden or any financial burden whatsoever.

No. Our personal income tax is low. Our corporate tax rate is really high. This allows politicians control over companies by giving them loopholes and tax breaks. It also makes it much more difficult for small businesses and generally more difficult for large businesses to compete internationally.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Income_Taxes_By_Country.svg

Re:I wish this didn't pass

[PeeAitchPee]

Our taxes are low in the US.

Check your facts. US corporate taxes are the second-highest in the world behind Japan. Personal income tax is in the upper part of the bottom third right now compared to all other countries but that will be changing as the Dems do away with the Bush tax cuts and mess with payroll and capital gains tax in order to "spread the wealth around." Most state taxes are on the rise too in a desparate attempt to allow them to keep spending money (we have both a state and county income tax here in MD, and together they're an extra 6-11% depending on your income). You can call US taxes a lot of things, but "low" is not one of them, especially considering the services what we get from the government in exchange for the taxes we pay. And if you're fortunate enough to be self-employed and have to pay both halves of social security (an extra 7.65%), you really get fucked.

So no, I reject your statement that in the US, our taxes are low.

Re:I wish this didn't pass

[Ostracus]

An interesting post except for the problem that economic systems are global and linked. Remember not all countries we do business with subscribe to Keynesian economics. I think CSmonitor did a story pointing out that the solution needs to be global. Not just a US effort.

Re:I wish this didn't pass

[KenSeymour]

Before I recently looked it up, I remember there being a 90% tax bracket in the US. But that was a long time ago.

Then I looked it up. In the early 1960's, that was when the top tax bracket was slightly more than 90%. Now, the top tax bracket is 35%. So if you are on the top end of the US
income distribution, your taxes have been going down for the last 50 years.

So if you are quite wealthy, your taxes have been going down down down for 50 years. When
politicians say "were going to have tax cuts," guess who gets the biggest share?
God forbid a politician say he is only going to raise taxes on people who make more than $200,000!

Somehow, the right has gotten most of us to identify with the wealthy and act as if their taxes are our taxes. Maybe its because as Americans we can all imagine starting a business and
becoming a millionaire. But most people don't. Even most business owners don't make a million.

It seems to me that cutting taxes for the wealthy to create jobs for the rest of us has been
tried over and over again and where are we now?

Many economists think that creating jobs though public sector jobs is less efficient than through the private sector. But this approach has been tried over and over since the 1980 Reagan revolution and where are we now? I say lets give public sector job creation a chance.

The private company I work for gets nearly all its money from the public sector.

Re:I wish this didn't pass

[garett_spencley]

I'm not really sure what your point is. Each sovereign nation needs to adopt it's own policies, and I agree that economics is a global issue and other nation's policies will have an effect. That effect mostly comes in the form of trade. If your domestic production is flourishing but (somehow) you're the only nation and the rest of the world can't afford your exports then you'll simply have to do without importing anything (since exports pay for imports). Or you'll have to lower your prices. Either way this will have the effect of causing your domestic production to shrink, since you'll have less, overall, capital. But is that relevant ? All this does is to point out the truth that when there is overall greater prosperity everyone benefits. And when there is overall contraction everyone contracts. That doesn't say anything about what kind of policies the US should implement domestically.

Re:I wish this didn't pass

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm going to run through some very elementary principles of economics.

Golly gee- thanks dad!

Cutting taxes only works if government also cuts spending.

Thanks for the clarity right up front. "works"...? Works how? What are you talking about?

Why cut taxes, which will anger the public, when you can spend by just printing more money ?

What? Since when does cutting taxes anger the public?

It's not a case against laissez-faire capitalism, because government-controlled fiat currency is anything but laissez-faire. It's interventionist to the extreme..

Money is a abstracted tokenization of our collective sense of value. When you Ron Paullians go off on fiat money, I still don't see how it matters whether currency is defined by government fiat or not. In fact, I see many advantages to having a Fed vs. not.

I also don't understand this notion that the Fed creates money "out of thin air". The Fed creates currency in response to activity in the overall economy-- if real (or perceived in the case of a bubble) value has been created out there in the real world, the Fed can issue currency in order to make that value transferable in the form of money. They can also use the power to issue currency to try and effect overall economic stability and growth. I don't see the problem. Creating a note that reflects value "out of thin air" is no more magical than me creating an I.O.U. "out of thin air" when you borrow my TV set or a promissory note to pay you (in goods or services) for mowing my lawn. It's no different than the way banks used to create notes before the central bank was created.

In order to spend anything the government has to take first. Government does not generate wealth. They merely redistribute.

Even assuming that the government does not create "wealth" (however you want to define that-- they certainly create value which can be reflected by wealth. A town with roads, police, and a fire department is more valuable than one without), they have the ability to move resources through time by investing/spending money (using its considerable credit) now, which will have a greater return in the future.

The government also has the advantage of being able to spend in a way that benefits the whole in a way that self-interested, non-governmental individuals would never do. The classic example of this is a kind of prisoner's dilemma known as the "paradox of thrift"-- in a recession, everyone-- people and businesses- tighten up on their spending-- they save up money, cut extraneous expenses, and generally do not participate in the economy as much as they need to. This in itself keeps the economy in a sinkhole. If you used to buy coffee and you suddenly stop, the coffee companies lose marketshare. If you cut out your bottled water at the office, the bottling company fires some employees. Now the bottlers and coffee growers cut their spending, and so it goes.

The "paradox of thrift" is that everyone is self-motivated to save. But the economy needs everyone to spend. Demand has crashed through the floor. Enter the government. The government can spend, and that can create jobs, which people will spend, money flows, which will bring life back to the economy. *No One* BUT government will do this, because only the government is looking out for the economy as a whole.

As the economy grows, the amount the government spent in the recession (that is, the "wealth" spent) to get things going again is nothing compared to the "wealth" that would otherwise have been lost from a tiny, unproductive economy in a prolonged depression. Especially if deflation takes hold, because then the relative value of the national debt would skyrocket as the value of the currency deflates. (e.g., imagine if I owe $100 when I'm making $10/hr (good economy), vs. owning $100 when I make $1 an hour or worse am unemployed (bad economy) -- it's a huge difference).

In this way, government spending *DOES* create wealth. They

Re:I wish this didn't pass

[Kjella]

I'm all for the Open Source stuff and all, but every economist that I've read says that ironically, that massive layoffs are the beginning of the end of an economic downturn,

And if we're nowhere near the end, businesses would be... hiring? Just saying it's a lousy indicator, usually the economy recovers after a round of layoffs but if it doesn't you'd see exactly the same.

Re:I wish this didn't pass

[ForrestFire439]

I don't know where I stand on this. I work for a mid-size construction contractor and the just yesterday I took out a look out in the yard and there were upwards of 20 trucks just sitting there. Each of those trucks represents a worker not working and property taxes and insurance being paid without a return on investment. We're starving for work and we're not alone. Furthermore, those workers aren't paying income taxes and that's sustaining the cycle of budgetary shorfalls which are making it so hard to find work (because most road construction is publicly funded). Contractors are taking LOSSES to win bids just to keep shovels digging and hammers flying. That means that now is an excellent time to invest in infrastructure as you're going to get a lot of bang for your buck.

At the same time, however, you have to ask yourself if the ends justify the means. Does the federal government even have the money to invest in infrastructure? No. They're printing more money to pay for these projects which could lead to hyperinflation (think Germany at the end of WWII).

Re:I wish this didn't pass

[PeeAitchPee]

Now, the top tax bracket is 35%

Again, you're conveniently leaving out state & local taxes, and another 7.65% in social security those of us pay who are self-employed. In NY and NJ, for example, someone who's self-employed and in the top federal and state brackets has a total tax burden of way over 60%. No wonder people are fleeing the tax-crazy Northeast states and California in droves.

God forbid a politician say he is only going to raise taxes on people who make more than $200,000!

But it's not $200k . . . the latest "stimulus" starts to phase out the tax credit for those who make more than $75k a year. If you think $75k / year makes you wealthy, you're gravely mistaken.

But most people don't. Even most business owners don't make a million.

I'm a small business owner, and I'm certainly not a millionaire. Obama's proposed changes to payroll taxes will make me personally pay more into social security by increasing the contribution cap. It will also be more expensive for me to employ people (again, in part, because the social security contrib cap will be raised), so I'm incented to hire fewer people and work the ones that I have harder instead. Or, even better, I can get a bunch of 1099 contracters and work them all part-time at 25 hours / week, so I don't have to pay any benefits at all. How exactly does his plan help small businesses in the US if it's more expensive to have employees?

Having said that, I'd like to cut taxes for everyone, not just the wealthy, and reduce the size and SPEND of Federal and state governments dramatically. Neither party wants to do this, because they don't want to give up their current stranglehold on power. Cutting taxes doesn't work without also reducing spend (Bush II's biggest mistake), and unfortunately you can't spend your way into prosperity -- only debt.

Re:I wish this didn't pass

[KenSeymour]

The comparison I made 91% top federal tax rate to 35% top federal tax rate. You seem to be
adding current local taxes and your double social security (aka self employment tax).
They had state and local taxes in the 1960s too.

Our government doesn't not cut spending because of politicians stranglehold on power.
Government spending does not get cut because government spending is popular.

Some voters say "don't cut education, we need to invest in our future."
Some voters say "don't cut defense, we need to be strong in a dangerous world."
Some voters say "don't cut farm subsidies, we need to save the family farm."
Lots of voters say "don't cut Social Security, I paid into that for years and I deserve my share."
Some voters say "don't cut police and fire."

Voters hate taxes. Voters love their favorite government program.
Many people think there is this magic "government waste" which is really someone else's
favorite program.

One thing you and I agree on is that neither party reduces the National Debt.
Reagan and GHW Bush tripled the national debt. Did you complain about it then?
Suddenly Republicans are worried about the debt. They didn't seem too worked up about
it from 1980 through 1992. They didn't worry about it for the last 8 years.

I have been a 1099 contractor before and have paid the self-employment tax in the past.
Now I am an employee and my employer has been doing "more with less" even when he got the Bush
tax cuts. I know him on a first name basis. I appreciate the risks he takes to keep the
doors open. But I don't have the same point of view as either him or you.
I have been paying my taxes for almost 30 years now and you don't see me crying martyr over it.
Man up.

If taxes are raised, small businesses will have a harder time hiring more people and keeping
the employees they have. If the Obama Administration and Democrat controlled congress did not spend money on a stimulus bill like this, small businesses would still shed employees because people have less credit, are scared and spending less.

I live in California and I'm staying put. There is plenty of infrastructure to work on here
and I will be paid to do my part.

Re:I wish this didn't pass

[PeeAitchPee]

Your state is $41 billion in the hole. When people like you tell the rest of us to "man up" who choose not to live out there, it really pisses us off. We're sick of carrying your broke-ass state every five years because Ahh-nold and the rest of your retard politicians can't quit spending money they don't have and won't stop paying for people who aren't supposed to be in the country in the first place. Learn to balance your budget like the rest of us have to in reality land, and then you'll have a right to talking about "manning up" and paying taxes. It's easy to be loose with someone else's money, isn't it? You do realize that people and companies are fleeing California by the THOUSANDS (144,000 last year alone) right now because of high taxes and cost of living and shitty quality of life, don't you? I've lived out in California and while I still love to visit occasionally, I'd never EVER live there again, in part because of all of the arrogant folks who think they know what's best for everyone else and our wallets. I got smart and moved far, far away eight years ago, and am considering moving again because my home state of MD is unfortunately headed down the same deep blue, manure-filled path to permanent Federal welfare. Good luck, comrade.

Re:I wish this didn't pass

[sjames]

When Paris Hilton buys a new Gucci bag she's indirectly employing the shop keeper who sold her the bag. The shop keeper is then indirectly employing the grocer who sells her her groceries and so on.

>p>Of course, when the money Paris was going to spend on a Gucci bag is given to the poor, they tend to spend it on food which supports the grocer, truckers, farmers, etc and everyone they hire.

In turn, that means Paris has to get the money for the bag from the tax sheltered overseas bank account and put it into the U.S. economy instead.

Moving markers around on the board may not seem productive, but at the same time, there's little substantial reason for a recession or depression in the first place. One day everyone's partying, the next day they lose their jobs. Same available workforce, same tech, same demand, same natural resources, same everything, but a marker moved on the board so everyone does without.

Ultimately, it does come down to confidence. Interestingly, a strong social safety net is the best way to maintain confidence. If everyone knows that laid off or not, they'll be just fine, they keep spending (and moving the economy). The result is that fewer people do get laid off, and those that do have an easier time getting a new job.

Meanwhile, doubling or tripling taxes that Paris pays (well, that her DAD pays) in order to provide a meaningful safety net won't likely deter her from buying that new bag. It will make the rest of us confident enough in our future to keep the economy moving.

Re:I wish this didn't pass

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah yes, Henry Hazlitt, the darling of the conservatives who expounded the charming "Broken Window Fallacy" many decades ago. His book is a minor classic and a joy to read.

But not very relevant to the situation we're in. For one thing, Hazlitt didn't consider the "marginal propensity to consume" - if you lower taxes, people will spend some of the difference, sure, but they'll also sock away some (perhaps as much as 40 pct) in the bank or passive investments. The latter will not help the economy get out of its slump. Whereas government spending is 100 pct spending, by definition (although admittedly not everything in the stimulus bill that just passed is "government spending"; there are also tax cuts, and transfer payments to individuals).

And banks today do not fear bank runs - we have something called FDIC which insures the first $250K of each person's deposits in any one bank. What banks fear is that they are now holding vast repertoires of "non-performing" loans, i.e. loans which they now have serious doubts will be repaid. And these problem loans are across the board, including commercial real estate, home mortgage, credit card debts, business, etc. But underneath the whole thing is the coast-to-coast cratering of the once-booming housing market that ended the "flipping" exit strategy, and is now causing more and more mortgage holders to be underwater with respect to their obligations. That led to the near-collapse of the real estate and construction industries, followed by the banking sector. Now that banks are so deeply mired in bad debts they are in a bad position to make loans, so we have a credit crunch.

So the US has at least two big problems:

- jump-start the economy (the stimulus)
- fix the banking system to end the credit crunch (the bailout)

For the Fed. government to sit back and do nothing, or just cut taxes and spending as you (and many Republicans) suggest, would be like an obese person deciding that sitting on the couch was the best solution b/c an exercise program might lead to a heart attack or injury. LET'S GET MOVING, man, and then we'll start to be in a position where good things can happen. In the stimulus case, the government will see more tax revenues coming in, and the Keynesian multiplier will kick in on the spent items (construction workers will have more money to spend, etc.). Yes , it will take time to see results, just as the fat person won't be entering cycling competitions right away. All the more reason to get started now.

Re:I wish this didn't pass

[Anonymous Coward]

When politicians say "were going to have tax cuts," guess who gets the biggest share?
God forbid a politician say he is only going to raise taxes on people who make more than $200,000!

and

Somehow, the right has gotten most of us to identify with the wealthy and act as if their taxes are our taxes. Maybe its because as Americans we can all imagine starting a business and becoming a millionaire. But most people don't. Even most business owners don't make a million.

There is a significant difference between those who make one million or more and those who make 200 thousand.

Re:I wish this didn't pass

[EastCoastSurfer]

What's funny is that when I was in college (90s) Keynesian was thought of to be crap. We learned it and saw many examples why it doesn't work. I was amused to see all the economists coming out of the woodwork to support it now.

Regardless if Keynesian actually works or not, it will never work in OUR situation because of one fact. It requires that in the good times you raise taxes and CUT government spending. No way that the dems (or republicans for that matter) are going to cut government spending in the good times.

Re:I wish this didn't pass

[FiloEleven]

The NPR show This American Life recently did an episode on Keynes and his theory. The reason for doing this now, according to them, is because with the stimulus package, Obama Gives Keynes His First Real-World Test (transcript).

It's a very interesting read, and it was an even better listen. They do a good job of explaining Keynesian economics, the various schools that cropped up after Keynes' death and the ascendancy of interest rate manipulation by the central bank to control the economy.

This view held sway until a month ago â" Dec. 16, 2008, to be precise. That's the day the Federal Reserve tried to stabilize the economy by lowering the interest rate all the way down to zero percent. The Fed can't go lower, but the economy has kept worsening. The one effective tool seemed to have stopped working.
[...]
Economists and policymakers started looking around for some other way to fix things. They dusted off some old books and found that there's one guy in particular who'd given a lot of thought to get out of a situation like this.

That guy being Keynes, of course. Even if you're a fan of his theories you have to admit that this is a huge gamble.

I believe that Austrian economics are the closest to the mark, and my sole disappointment with the show is that the Austrian model, which runs counter to Keynes, the Chicago school and supply-side economics, is never mentioned. Though it doesn't have a huge following it is not a fringe school, and it is the Austrian economists who predicted the current crash. Still, what the show covers it covers very well, and it is well worth your time.

Re:I wish this didn't pass

[Wildclaw]

I would go so far as to say that pretty much no country subscribe to Keynesian economics. If you want to prove me wrong, please point me to the countries that raise taxes, lower goverment spending and pay back debts when the times are good.

I see Austrian economists screaming that this crisis is the fault of Keynesian policies, but I have yet to see any evidence of actual Keynesian economies in US politics for a long long time. Calling the stimulus build Keynesian is like calling a mass murderer humanitarian because he donates to the red cross.

Re:I wish this didn't pass

[fm6]

What's funny is that when I was in college (90s) Keynesian was thought of to be crap.

Did you go to University of Chicago by any chance. Regardless, you obviously went to a school where Keynsianism was out of favor. As it was in government during the anti-liberal Reagan and Bush/Bush administrations, and also during the We're-Not-Really-Liberals Clinton administration. But it was never totally rejected, and lately it's been gaining respectability again. Can you guess why?

The thing that really bothers me about economics is that it's supposed to be a science, but a given economist always seems to be able to use this "science" to back up whatever politics or ideology he's affiliated with.

Direct link to paragraph in bill text

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's the paragraph:
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h111-1&version=eas&nid=t0%3Aeas%3A4129

Re:VistA on GT.M - Check it out...

[Anonymous Coward]

There is also a GUI front-end called OpenVista CIS that's developed by Medsphere (it's basically a re-implementation of CPRS, except it's portable to Linux and Mac). They're an open source development company, and they contribute a lot of code to upstream open source projects like GTK+ and Mono.

CPRS is what a lot of hospitals currently use, but it kind of sucks and it of course limits you to Windows. CIS presents the opportunity to shift the terminals in the hospitals to Linux as well as the servers that run GT.M.

The Slashdot circle jerk

[basementman]

I'm all for open source software, but it seems like Slashdot is the great open source circle jerk. We spend all of our time going omg open source software might appear in Project XYZ. In the end it never does, but even that glimmer of hope is enough for us to reach climax. If the average slashdotter's spent half the time working to promote open source to the average consumer, instead of jacking off, propriety software might be in trouble. Instead we stay in this relatively obscure internet community patting one another on the back when in the real world open source is getting it's ass kicked. Not a comment on the article I guess, but just something that I had to say.

Re:The Slashdot circle jerk

[ritcereal]

Yea, but most of us make our livelihoods by using closed source proprietary code at our places of business. Realistically, open source creates fewer jobs than a closed source solution. Not that I'm complaining, I am all for open source, but for that just doesn't seem to fit in my book for maximizing job creation...

Re:The Slashdot circle jerk

[couchslug]

"If the average slashdotter's spent half the time working to promote open source to the average consumer,"

The average consumer can afford Windows, learned on Windows, and does not need to invest the considerable time to learn anything different.

When there are replacements for everything they use on Windows that run on both Windows and Linux Joe Sixpack _might_ give a shit.

Re:The Slashdot circle jerk

[moosesocks]

Yea, but most of us make our livelihoods by using closed source proprietary code at our places of business. Realistically, open source creates fewer jobs than a closed source solution. Not that I'm complaining, I am all for open source, but for that just doesn't seem to fit in my book for maximizing job creation...

This is true. However, as it stands, the healthcare industry in the US is massively bloated and inefficient. Increasing the efficiency of the system should reduce costs, prevent mistakes, and allow doctors to spend more time with patients.

Healthy people are good for the economy.

Of course, this all lines up nicely with the Dem's vision for universal healthcare. If the government's going to be paying for it, they're going to want things to be as streamlined and inexpensive as possible.

Re:The Slashdot circle jerk

[IANAAC]

When there are replacements for everything they use on Windows that run on both Windows and Linux Joe Sixpack _might_ give a shit.

There pretty much is an equivalent to most things, excepting games and very specialized software. Joe Sixpack doesn't know about any of them (well, maybe a couple). But good office apps? Yes. Good browsers with plugins? Yes. Good email? Yes. Good multimedia? Yes. And they run on both platforms without any problem.

Re:The Slashdot circle jerk

[JoeCommodore]

"We spend all of our time going omg open source software might appear in Project XYZ. In the end it never does"

You mean like the industry wag about optical processors, holographic storage, cell phone competition, lowered broadband prices, higher connectivity, modular windows OS, fair competition, etc, etc. There is a lot of hot air on the commercial side that promises a lot of solutions but the problems just seem to remain.

Re:The Slashdot circle jerk

[EastCoastSurfer]

Sounds like brain crack!

Re:The Slashdot circle jerk

[Anonymous Coward]

One reason healthcare is bloated and inefficient is the various government laws, rules, regulqations, mandates and standards imposed on the healthcare insurance companies, employers, the healthcare industry and individuals. Universal healthcare will not necessarily improve the overall industry, but it will inevitably result in rationing healthcare by whatever standard the government wishes to impose and that will start with cost, As in Britain and Canada those in turn will reduce or remove the individual's ability to determine the best course of treatment in consultation with his or her doctor. Need a hip replacemen - well yu can wait 2 or 3 years. Want a particular therapy or medicine - sorry that's not on the approved government list. Read Daschele's quotes from his book that have been circulating particularly those about the elderly. I'll trade some inefficiency for the freedom to opt for the best treatment I can afford.

More importantly, for a community that has roundly criticized the surveillance tactics of the last administration, there seems to be no concern about the privacy implications of a centralization of medical information. The prospect of the government having all of our medical information at its disposal is quite frightening.

What's your definition of failure?

[Anonymous Coward]

you mean the 800 billion (larger than any US budget prior to 1983) in miscellaneous pork? They're already planning on a second stimulus since this one is expected to be a total failure.

Ah, the fact that they can't seem to recall where they "misplaced" the first $300 billion that went out the door already, I'm curious how you define "failure"...Seems to me it's gone well beyond failure to total and utter fuck-up.

Re:What's your definition of failure?

[sleigher]

I guess that depends on who you ask. I am sure that there some people who think the fact that $300 billion "disappeared" is a complete success. If we could find out who they are then we might see some success.....

Thanks to BushCo, Cuba is ahead of US

[Bushido Hacks]

Not to troll anything, but under the Bush Adminstration (BushCo), much of the government's computers were running an outdated version of Microsoft Windows. (Like Windows ME.) Computers crashed, things didn't work. Thus when the Obama Adminstration showed up, they were floored that the country that is suppost to be this technologically advanced nation was still using CRT monitors, hadn't updated any of its software, and many computers weren't being used.

Now comes word that Cuba is working on its own Linux distro. Cuba, whose nationalized education system seems to have florished unless you do a search for "dissent", is gaining up on us since Mexico, Canada, and just about every other Latin American country does not have the trade restrictions that we still have here in America. What the hell were we doing protesting about US-Columbian Free-Trade Restrictions the same way the Cubans have critized the U.S. on many of their websites over five prisioners we are holding? It says to me, Bush was still feeding his crack habit.

The use of the word Free Trade is definitely not the same as Free Software.

America has been resistant technologically for over a decade. Still messing with Coal, Nuclear, Oil, Television, and Microsoft. Entities that have fought to keep the world in the 1980s where greed and drugs florished. We are now closing the first decade of the third millenium, where Wind, Solar, Hybrid, The Internet, Google, and Linux MUST REPLACE the archaic and destructive entinties that are now obsolete and are devistating our livelyhood.

The naysayers will have their marketing misinformation and obsolete disinformation, telling us that the new technology "is not as profitable" as the old technology or "is not selling so it is not popular". You can't sell hybrids if they are twice as expensive as the gas guzzler. You can't sell us alternative energy when it is used in an area where there is overconsuption of energy rather than neighborhoods or schools.

We can not afford to be lied to by the naysayers. Let's get this done!

Re:Thanks to BushCo, Cuba is ahead of US

[east coast]

So flat panel monitors are a sign of how advanced someone is? And can you quote me a source that shows that the Bush administration was using Windows ME?

I'd also like to question your lumping Google in with companies we should just go to. Google has a pretty shaky record at this point and most of it's cool factor is still mostly untested by government standards.

I think you need to work on your theory here before making sweeping statements than "The naysayers will have their marketing misinformation and obsolete disinformation." If anything you've completely failed to provide any real information.

Re:Thanks to BushCo, Cuba is ahead of US

[will_die]

Buzz and thanks for playing.
Go back and read the complains of obama administration, they were complaining that Windows XP was being used not Vista.

Re:Thanks to BushCo, Cuba is ahead of US

[Anonymous Coward]

Bush was still using XP. Obama bitched about it when he came in office.

Re:VistA on GT.M - Check it out...

[houstonbofh]

The open source health management stack that runs on the open source GT.M, it is called VistA. It is used by many healthcare providers here in the US and Mexico.

Would adding a link have killed ya? http://worldvista.org/ I mean you don't want readers to have to google it for themselves, do you?

Along with redundacy

[jlebrech]

What about the government forcing companies who make their employees redundant to open source any software that they have.

Yeah.. uhm... sure...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, like the first that comes to mind when I think about our government is "cost effectiveness"...

I'm sure they're really going to study those TCO figures... lol

Wake me up when it's over, would ya? ......

just out of curiosity

[Scrameustache]

every economist that I've read says that ironically, that massive layoffs are the beginning of the end of an economic downturn, and that it appears as though things will be back into shape around the end of 2009 or the beginning of 2010

What were those same economists saying this time last year about the economy at the end of 2008 and beginning of 2009?

Broadband (p553...)

[egcagrac0]

I, like the citizens of Precipice, am willing to forego videophone service, so long as the bandwidth is there.

999-999-9999....

Obama email

[ocularDeathRay]

A friend of mine knows a guy who hacked Obama's blackberry.
It seems he just sent an email to Linus and rms. It was a short message:

all your source are belong to U.S.

Not sure this is a troll : FDA == $$

[Mathinker]

I'm not sure this is really a troll post. IMO it costs $$ to get certification from the FDA so that your software can be used for medical purposes. At least, for medical equipment and for diagnosis. And I don't think a lot of open-source projects shell out for this certification, especially since (it seems to me) they'd have to pay for every version they want certified.

Broadband Census?

[Lorien_the_first_one]

Could be. Check out page page 563:

"The Assistant Secretary shall develop and maintain a comprehensive nationwide inventory map of existing broadband service capability and availability in the United States that depicts the geographic extent to which broadband service capability is deployed and available from a commercial provider or public provider throughout each State."

Re:Broadband Census?

[GaryOlson]

Depends on where the data is obtained. If obtained from monopoly telcos, the data will show the monopoly telcos need more government funding to "build out their networks". If the data is obtained from local county and city halls (who we hope will obtain the data direct from the citizens), we could get a more accurate picture.

Fun fact to confuse supply-siders

[Anonymous Coward]

Arthur Laffer credits Keynes (and Ibn Khaldun, a 14th century Muslim polymath) for what came to be known as the "Laffer Curve".

For even more head-exploding fun, he describes this in an essay archived on heritage.org.

But seriously, afaict, the consensus is that the basic notion of a curve is correct, but that we are far on the "left" side of the curve (less than optimum tax rates for maximum revenue); and furthermore, it seems that revenues don't go to zero at effective 100% taxation (Soviet Russia for example).

We need (MUCH) more gov't spending, not less.

[Anonymous Coward]

...every economist that I've read says that ironically, that massive layoffs are the beginning of the end of an economic downturn, and that it appears as though things will be back into shape around the end of 2009 or the beginning of 2010, and none of their arguments are contingent upon a stimulus package. In fact, none mention it.

I don't know where you're getting your news, but most economists I've been reading (Krugman, Reich, Roubini, Galbraith, Taleb, etc.) say we're at the beginning, not the end, of a massive downturn. That the stimulus is not only necessary but nowhere near big enough to fill the demand gap created by this crisis. We need about 2 trillion in direct, massive government spending. We're getting only 800 billion (so far), of which a huge proportion is political garbage like tax cuts which are not very effective, AMT stuff which will not create jobs, etc.

Note that these are the same economists who long warned this crisis was coming. We ignore them at our peril.

Seg3D

[Anonymous Coward]

Seg3D has similar viewing capabilities and is cross platform and open source. However it's focus is more on segmenting the datasets rather than just viewing them. (For example classifying out heart tissue or tumors).

Seg3D website

Feature Not Bug

[iluvcapra]

The concept of the thing was to get as many paychecks printed as physically possible in the next 18 months. I guess you could call that "pork," but I think your problem is with Keynesian theory and not waste-fraud-abuse.

Here's the current job losses, in absolute numbers and percentages. These people can work, but aren't being asked to essentially because banks aren't lending. Banks aren't lending because they're D-Bags who spent the last 5 years defrauding each other and calling shitpiles gold. Even if the gov nationalized the banks tomorrow, most of them are still insolvent and the shock of that fact would probably cause a run on the dollar. The bad paper has to be gotten rid of, and it's better people be paid doing something instead of getting welfare or starving to death while the banks straighten out the incompetent. fucking. house.

If it means breaking every window in the country, the gov is going to do it to keep people working, because intact windows are less important than starving kids.

Re:Feature Not Bug

[EastCoastSurfer]

My problem with Keynesian theory is that it doesn't work in reality. Part of the theory says that in good times you raise taxes and CUT government spending. Problem is that once you get a government program going it will never be cut. That right there means Keynesian theory is a useless way to manage our economy.

This all assumes you agree with Keynesian theory to being with. It's not something I'm completely sold on.

Now what's also in the budget?

[Anonymous Coward]

A $1000 tax "credit" for families with children who are too poor to even pay taxes. In other words, a bribe to continue breeding a new army of Democrat voters complete with kung-fu handout-receiving action.

Re:Now what's also in the budget?

[Anonymous Coward]

What I never understood, though, is why with one hand the Democrats encourage such people to breed at an ever increasing rate, while with the other hand they encourage them to abort their children who - let's be honest with ourselves - would probably be inclined to vote Democrat. I guess they just want to try to have it both ways and give handouts to minorities while at the same time feeding the abortion machine and appeasing feminists by telling them that inflicting violence upon the most innocent of citizens is somehow an exercise in choice.

No man is more hated that he who speaks the truth. - Plato.

Re:Now what's also in the budget?

[Anonymous Coward]

The beauty of fallacy: "see that deep quote down there, it means I'm right, and when I'm dead, you'll thank me for it."

Many very worthy people died this way.

Ver... oh, who am I kidding, this is the last death wish of most destructive ideologues and totalitarian leaders.

Re:Now what's also in the budget?

[Anonymous Coward]

So tell me - how does that poopy dick taste, faggot?

And, double check the facts

[namespan]

US corporate taxes are the second-highest in the world behind Japan.

Is that statutory rates, or effective rates?

Also note that we're pretty solidly on the low end in personal income tax.

You can call US taxes a lot of things, but "low" is not one of them, especially considering the services what we get from the government in exchange for the taxes we pay.

If you want to argue that we could potentially be getting a better return on our tax dollars, then I'll agree. If nothing else, the example of per-capita public health spending comes to mind -- for a smaller amount, many other countries pull off universal insurance coverage. And I'm sure that aside, there's always work to do -- I think it'll be a long time before either by active policy study or by the evolutionary algorithm of competitive markets we've discovered most of the easy efficiency gains.

But if you want to argue that the U.S. isn't a pretty good place to live or do business, or if you want to argue that tax contributions to that are negligible, I'm off that boat.

Re:And, double check the facts

[PeeAitchPee]

But if you want to argue that the U.S. isn't a pretty good place to live or do business, or if you want to argue that tax contributions to that are negligible, I'm off that boat.

It's not as good as it used to be, and the massive amount of debt we're undertaking is just going to make things worse. If I were stating a new business and weren't restricted on where I had to live by family commitments, Ireland, New Zealand, and several Southeast Asian countries would be at the top of my list.

RedHat is already onboard.

[hydertech]

A bit of time with the Google reveals Red Hat Enterprise Healthcare Platform which likely is the reason for this being included.

A quick review of the literature shows that several hospital software vendors have been converting their offering to run on a RHL backend.

That's likely where the main open source offerings will appear, replacing mainframes with cheap linux server solutions, and some database apps.

Tax credits for individual open source programmers

[heroine]

It'll never happen, but there will be tax credits for large banks that use open source.

Typical Politics

[nurb432]

If you cant smell the pork all over this package, you need to get your nose checked.

FUCK USA

[Anonymous Coward]

It's utterly ludicrous how legislation in USA works. The nation of freedom and democracy and other bullshit.

LOL @ America

-1 Disagree

[Anonymous Coward]

Strikes me that getting people using free software will make them spend less and cause the recession to get worse. (Money saved is just that. Saved. Saving won't help the current problem.)

Its not pork

[dj245]

You've got your stimulus spending in my pork package! No, you've got your pork package in my stimulus bill!

It's almost as if a bunch of senators got together and hired a marketing department to rebrand their pork. And for everyone defending it, enormous spending packages are always full of pork- unless it's YOUR pork. Then suddenly its not pork, its economic development and stimulus.

you don't represent slashdot ..

[viralMeme]

I'm all for open source software, but it seems like Slashdot is the great open source circle jerk

You only speak for yourself here ..

"If the average slashdotter's spent half the time working to promote open source to the average consumer"

We all can do something in our own small way. For example, a friend of mine phoned up and asked for advice on how to fix errors in Vista LiveUpdate. I'm going round next week and installing Linux MCE ..

--

'we must cultivate our garden'

closed source jobs ..

[viralMeme]

"Realistically, open source creates fewer jobs than a closed source solution"

How does using the Microsoft product translate into increased revenue for a company. It doesn't and in fact does the exact opposite.

Re:closed source jobs ..

[ritcereal]

Since when was this a Microsoft vs Linux argument? There is tons of software developers out there besides Microsoft. We are talking about Hospital management software, not operating systems.

And how does someone buying Windows increase revenue for a company? It doesn't, but it lets some guy at Microsoft keep his job instead of being laid off. Now, put that in terms of not Microsoft, now your keeping some software developer off the streets who happens to work on Hospital Management software.

Why does everything have to be Microsoft or Linux? There are tons of software developers besides those two groups!

No accountability in GPL

[EmbeddedJanitor]

Health care loves accountability and professional liability insurance etc. The GPL very definitely goes against that with: "THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR THE PROGRAM, ...."

If a patient dies while the software is running then the health provider IT manager will get it in the neck.

Sure, you could start with GPL and add a testing service/wrapper to that but unless there is a good way to insulate the IT manager from the risk then this just won't happen.

Re:No accountability in GPL

[pfleming]

Closed source has the same disclaimers.

elastic lad

[Elastic Lad]

It is ironic that an open-source proposal was placed in a huge bill that was converted to pdf format in order to make the bill inaccessible.