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"Bridge To Microsoft" Gets Federal Stimulus Funds
theodp writes "Among the first to benefit from the investment in roads and bridges from Obama's stimulus plan is Microsoft, which has $20B in the bank. Local planners have allotted $11M to help pay for a highway overpass to connect one part of Microsoft's wooded campus with another. Microsoft will contribute almost half of the $36.5M cost; other federal and local money will pay the rest. 'Steve Ballmer or Bill Gates could finance this out of pocket change,' griped Steve Ellis of the Taxpayers for Common Sense. 'Subsidizing an overpass to one of the richest companies in the country certainly isn't going to be the best use of our precious dollars.' Ellis called the project 'a bridge to Microsoft,' alluding to Alaska's infamous 'Bridge to Nowhere.'" A White House spokesman said this bridge project is still under review.
Unless it is a toll road which Microsoft owns completely, there is nothing wrong with using public money to build the road.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Just read, it is going to help with the trafic flow, nothing wrong with that.
Before they lay off US workers, then they ask them money back, then they ask for more H1B to import more foreign workers (from Hairyland), then they suck .gov money to build their own infrastructure.
It will really boost the economy.
Film at 11.
There is no problem with this.... so long as they are required to close all of their tax shelter shell companies in Ireland and the Bahamas and be taxed properly. Otherwise, its a bridge too far.
Public works projects as a way of recovering from a recession has never worked. It didn't work for the Japanese in the 90's, they spent 10 years building roads and bridges and wondering why nothing was happening. It didn't work for us in the 30's. And it will never work.
We need to stop listening to Keynesian and socialist economists who don't have the first clue what they're talking about and are trying to give solutions based on theory instead of what's been shown to work.
You want to turn this economy around? Cut taxes to 20%, max. Reduce regulations on small businesses \ cut the red tape.
The government cannot create jobs except government jobs, and government jobs do not build an economy. All government can do is get out of the way, and keep the playing field fair for the players.
"I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist"
Give it to someone more deserving, like small business. Like the summary said, this is just pocket change for Microsoft.
I would say something about Microsoft being more interested about building bridges and software, but I wouldn't be surprised if they fail at this too. It seems everything Microsoft builds has shaky foundations. XP
Land owners profit from improvements in infrastructure, so they should pay for it.
Unless it is a toll road which Microsoft owns completely, there is nothing wrong with using public money to build the road.
Have you never heard of allocation of resources according to priority?
It may technically be a public road, but all it's going to benefit is a few Microsoft workers.
Just like the bridge in Alaska was only going to benefit a few people in a remote location already served by ferry.
Do you honestly think there's nothing better to do with $30 million than helping a few thousand Microsoft employees travel across the campus a little faster?
If Microsoft feels they need this for productivity, let them build a Monorail.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It's Micro$oft!!!!11eleven!
Do you know how many american babies they will have to sacrifice per square inch of that road? /sarcasm
I didn't think so!
Hey... how about the view-point that Microsoft is actually paying for half of that road - which WILL NOT BE MICROSOFT PROPERTY ONCE BUILT.
Or... the fact that it appears that the community actually needs that overpass.
Easing Congestion
The city of Redmond says the overpass will relieve congestion on other streets and support a big employer in the region, though one cutting jobs lately.
Microsoft said in January that it's eliminating as many as 5,000 jobs, including some from its Seattle-area workforce of 41,480.
"This project is a mobility improvement for the area as a whole," said Lou Gellos, a spokesman for Microsoft.
An existing bridge a few blocks away is congested and a nightmare for pedestrians and bicycle riders, he said.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
"This project is a mobility improvement for the area as a whole," said Lou Gellos, a spokesman for Microsoft. An existing bridge a few blocks away is congested and a nightmare for pedestrians and bicycle riders, he said.
So, we have the relatively common phenomenon that commercial development has outgrown the infrastructure. Big deal. Usually the government handles this as part of its own work, without direct commercial assistance. In this case, MSFT is offering money to help solve the problem. They deserve kudos, not punishment, since they could alternatively be lobbying/strongarming the relevant government entities to foot the bill at 100%.
Even if you hold the (inane) view that MSFT should foot the bill at 100%, they don't have the authority to just build a bridge over any highway they want. So you need some kind of legislation anyway.
Bandannarama
What do you mean Keynesian economics doesn't work? It kept FDR in power, didn't it? It justified a huge increase in government power, didn't it?
Keynesian economics are only a failure if you care about actual prosperity instead of duping people into letting you run the country.
-- Support a free market in the field of government
How much does Microsoft pay in local property taxes? I would hope they have paid in a lot more than the cost of this project. Local governments are almost always willing to make concessions to businesses that make up a large part of their tax base by contributing to property taxes, state income taxes (by providing jobs), and sales taxes (which Microsoft pays very little of, not being a retail business). I would expect them to do similar improvements for a shopping mall, why not a tech firm? If the local government is giving them a free ride on property taxes AND subsidizing this improvement, then yes, local taxpayers have a right to be pissed off. But since a good number of people in Redmond owe their livelihood to M$ either directly or indirectly, I'd expect most of the taxpayers to keep their mouths shut. Plus, doesn't this overpass benefit everybody by keeping some cars off of the main highway?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
How about putting that money into improving the deplorable roads of Seattle proper. Despite not using salt come snowy conditions, the roads and especially the highways are full of pot holes. No wonder why everyone actually drives speed limits here, if you go faster parts of your car will start falling off.
Your failed ideology's shelf date ended two months ago.
No one wants to listen to your idiotic babble.
I hate Microsoft as much as the next guy - but last time I checked, the folks working at Microsoft were taxpayers too, and so deserve to benefit from federal spending related to infrastructure.
I am NOT a fan of the stimulus package as passed. I am in favor of the concept (I lean Keynesian, not Austrian School); but it seems to me a very large chunk of this smells more like opportunistic pork-barrel politics. To pick an example: Funding for diabetes education. I think as part of the normal federal budget this is a very good use of federal funds - but its benefits are all down the road, and have absolutely nothing to do with stimulating the economy in the short term. Funding these sorts of things with intentional deficit spending is only making the situation worse.
#DeleteChrome
Let me tell you that traffic congestion is terrible in the Seattle area, specially the east cost, a trip that should take 15 minutes could very easily take up to 2 hours. For me it seems as if much of the problem is that the city of Redmond and Bellevue couldn't keep pace with Microsoft's growth and now the streets are overwhelmed.
If this really will eliminate most of Microsoft employees commute then let it be, and if you want to complain about it I invite you to experience the joy of driving in the east side.
Were this any lesser company, 100% of the cost would be paid for by tax dollars. That Microsoft is contributing half is either a sginficant act of generosity on their part, or a major triumph of democracy over corporate greed and corruption. Either way, it's a victory for taxpayers.
It was a similar situation when Disneyland wanted their own exit on the I-5 in Anaheim. There were significant reasons from the taxpayers point of view to do this - it greatly improved traffic in that section of the freeway, and throughout that part of Anaheim - but Disney still ended up paying for a significant portion of the cost. (In their case, it was a damned good investment in their wholly owned subsidiary, the city of Anaheim.)
Really? I fail to see how instituting socialist economic policies is equivalent to treason, or even violating the constitution. Is there some other incident on your mind?
No, knee-jerk reactions in cases that you have not even a small part of the facts... That's nuts.
The government are not creating jobs. That is simply a side effect. They can't realistically fly over American towns in helicopters and drop dollar notes, though that would probably be as effective.
What they are doing by performing useless public works is transferring private debt to the public purse. The government borrows and spends, the spending pays off the private debts.
Deleted
You obviously don't live in the area or drive on the 40th street overpass. I do. I don't work for Microsoft, and I would use that road several times per month just in the course of travelling to various entertainment venues. What we have here is a non-story about a project that is useful, estimated to cost between 15-36M, and which Microsoft has already dropped $11M on. Show me how many Seattle businesses are willing to put extra cash of their own (in addition to tax base they already supply) on the line to dig their fancy tunnel. Oh yeah, the only people in Seattle that regularly write checks for public works are retired Microsoft employees...weird.
This country was built on a foundation of a Republic. Anything that works to undermine/undo that is treason.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
You know, the whole idea of building highways on government money was though up by Hitler! And then immigrant Nazi scientists got the same wasteful highway projects approved in the good old US after the war. Stopping all that "public roadway" nonsense was the only decent thing Bush ever did.
Plenty of facts out there if you take the time to remove the blinders and look. ( and then use your brain afterwards )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Why so much attention for a questionable road when that road only takes a small portion of the money that is allocated? What about the rest of the money? how about focusing on the larger picture?
Real FOSS nerds would just build a catapult, a flying car, or teleporter to get across. Green engineers would have demanded that 2 UNDER-passes be built, one for humans to bicycle across, and another for critters that live in the woods to have corridors connecting their shrinking landscape. Apple or Google would plan on building light rails or trams that will eventually connect all their campuses and stores. IBM would just hire only illegal Mexican workers skilled at running across highways. Obviously Seattle isn't the most innovative regional planners they purport to be. Wimps.
As the article states, this project was approved by Redmond in 2006 and at the time Microsoft agreed to kick in 70% of the costs. Given that this construction is public property and not Microsoft's property generally the government would be footing the entire bill. It was determined recently that the costs of the overpass would exceed the estimate and the city of Redmond decided that instead of asking Microsoft to contribute more that they would seek Federal funds via the stimulus bill.
So,
1. This project was in planning for at least two years.
2. This project will alleviate traffic congestion on public roads in Redmond.
3. Microsoft volunteered 70% of the costs whereas they are neither obligated nor expected to contribute at all, beyond normal corporate and property taxes.
4. The roads, overpass and highways are all property of Redmond, not Microsoft.
5. When the estimate was determined to be too low Redmond decided to not request additional funds from Microsoft.
6. Redmond decided to seek funds from the Federal stimulus bill. Microsoft made no such request.
Of course this has to be all Microsoft's fault because this is Slashdot.
This money could be put to any number of better uses. How about homeless shelters for all of the people M$ has put out of business?
*ducks*
... and let me tell you, this will help more than just MS. The freeways and roads in the area are actually surprisingly limited. During rush hour you can expect 3mi+ backups just to get off the freeway. The current on-ramps and overpasses for 520(which is the freeway i'm assuming this will go over) are also pretty limited. Just getting from one side to the other is a pain in the butt, and a lot of that traffic is just MS workers or their shuttles going between buildings. If all of the inter-MS traffic can be re-routed somewhere else, it frees up the roads for the thousands of residents and other workers in the area.
A website that depicts Microsoft as the embodiment of the Borg collective, the Empire and the army of Sauron all in one, what else do you think would be the outcome? Hmmm?
How come nobody's complaining about this?
"Republic" refers to form of government.
"Socialism" refers to an economic system.
Setting aside for the moment the fact that Obama's policies don't come close to actual socialism, it would be quite possible to have a republican (small r) form of government that supported socialist economic policies.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
I live a block down the road from the Microsoft Redmond campus (it used to be 12 blocks, but they metatasized), so I walk by all this each day. But I don't work at Microsoft, so all I have is just sidewalk testimony.
The older Microsoft campus was confined to the east side of highway 520, with dozens and dozens of properties rented and scattered all over Redmond, Bellevue, and other places in the area. Lately they have been building an absolutely HUGE property just across the highway from the old campus, where they will consolidate all that rented office space.
Only 7 new buildings? When I walk by there, I can see at least 14 or 17 structures going up, but I can't tell what will be in them. Some of them are titled buildings number 97, 98, 99, and by that they mean Microsoft Redmond campus literally has that many buildings. The city of Redmond has a height limit on its buildings. I don't know the exact rules, but no skyscrapers. The Microsoft buildings are all about 4 or 5 very tall stories, so they are forced to sprawl rather than go up. When they dug the hole for it all, it seemed to be about 6-12 blocks on a side. Huge, huge hole for that 4600 car parking garage. Then they put up more of those big construction cranes than I've ever seen in such a small space - at one point they had 9 or 10 of them.
With that huge parking garage right next to the highway, they should have just let Microsoft have highway entrances directly out onto 520 and keep all that traffic off the local streets. That would make perfect sense to me. But it exits out onto NE 40th Street, which is a relatively small cross-street, which has relatively small entrance and exits to 520.
There is already a bridge across 520 between the Microsoft campuses - the NE 40th overpass and intersection with 520. Also, Microsoft has a huge fleet of hundreds of shuttle buses and cars that transfer people from point to point in the Microsoft sprawl. My reaction as a local to the idea of a car and pedestrian bridge for Microsoft is that, while it would be beneficial to the locals to keep some of the terrible Microsoft drivers off the local streets (a lot of them are from India!), Microsoft should foot the entire bill.
Ok, mod me down but this guy that you people put in charge is a socialist nut case...
Socialism. It's probably one of the most confusing and misunderstood terms in the US. Partly this is because it is a political movement separate from it being an economic method. Party this is because there was a huge propaganda campaign in the US to spread fear about it as part of a campaign against Asia in the cold war.
Listen to me carefully. Every president ever has been a socialist. Every economist is a socialist to a fair degree or they are insane. Socialism has always been part of our economic system and trying to eliminate it entirely would destroy the economy. Every stable economy in the world is a balance of socialism and capitalism (and communism, but there's no need to get into that right now).
The highway department, post office, military, police, fire department, public schools, NASA, and the FDA are all socialist programs. Socialist programs were established as part of our government from day one. Obama is working to increase the level of socialism in the US. That makes him moderately informed about economics and is pretty much what every reputable economist says is required to reduce the volatility of our stock market and return wealth disparity to sane levels. He's advocating policies that have worked in numerous other countries. Sure it is socialism, but you have to understand socialism is nothing new and not some bogey monster. If we're going to get our economy back on track, socialism coupled with more progressive taxation on the high end is pretty close to the only viable route. You can't lower taxes for people who aren't paying any now. They can't gain wealth starting from their current state. (Try playing monopoly where you start out with $5 and the other guy starts with $50000, but is willing to loan you enough to get started, provided he gets 2/3 of any profit you make. Sure, you could win, but it isn't likely and if you play every day, you will lose overall.)
So, do you have a sane counter proposal or are you just a extreme capitalist nut case with no real understanding of the problem?
You continue to believe that and continue to worship that bastard... You are a lost cause and i'm finished here.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Give the guy a break; he's been out of office for nearly 2 months and you still can't let it go. Oh wait, were you talking about Obama?
"A republic is a state or country that is not led by a hereditary monarch but in which the people (or at least a part of its people) have an impact on its government." (from Wikipedia)
This concept is not mutually exclusive to elected representatives instituting socialist policies. You're mixing orthogonal concerns.
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
At least we're not expending a few billion government dollars to make the B&M Foundation Campus of Giving even more grand, in order to provide a more comfortable workspace for the folks who will spend their days deciding which poor people to help. That would be tragicomic.
Or are we?
Help stamp out iliturcy.
How is it MS needs to lay-off employees but can throw 36.5 million on this?
The state should not give tax payer money to a monopolistic company damaging the local economy by laying off people when clearly they didn't financially need to.
Would a Microsoft Bridge be a complete waste of taxpayer money? No. Are there other projects that would be more beneficial to the public? Yes.
Redmond (the city) better darn well be getting taxes from Microsoft. So if Redmond (the city) has traffic issues, why are THEY not paying for new roads, in conjunction with Microsoft?
How about YOU pay for some overcrowded surface road in my city that sucks during rush hour? No? Well then.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
That's a lot of jobs. When you realize that some cities would fork over hundreds of millions in annual tax abatements just to get that many jobs, pitching in on a bridge is not a bad deal.
This is my sig.
And to answer your question from a more philosophical point of view, we all pay for roads to be built all over the country so that we have the freedom to know that we can drive wherever we want to.
That's a great description of why the federal government should help pay for a national highway system.
And a damn poor one of why the FEDERAL government should pay for local surface roads and not the community in which the roads provide service to local residents.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You obviously don't live in the area or drive on the 40th street overpass. I do.
You obviously don't live in Alaska on a small island where you have to take the ferry all the time.
That's pretty much why I say, if you don't like the traffic YOUR CITY should pay for an upgrade. Not me. Federal highways, fine, we all need to support a countrywide network of roads. Local traffic? Not my issue, just as I don't expect YOU to pay for the traffic problems of Denver.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I have a better idea: let's take the $10 million and hire programmers to fix the open bugs in Wine. There are about 5000 open bugs, and the stock estimate for cost of fixing the average bug is $2000, so it works out nicely. How 'bout we all write letters to our congressmen to propose the idea?
But regardless of opinion on Microsoft, they do bring in quite a bit of money on exporting software.
I'm certainly not their biggest fan either, (even insulted one of them personally for destroying "MSN") but Microsoft losing marketshare and efficiency is actually A Big Deal.
Why do you think FTC never split them up?
The "Washington Policy Center" (a right-wing thinktank) and TCS are cynically taking advantage of anti-Microsoft sentiment.
It's insulting. I bet they know very little about why many of us dislike Microsoft.
Okay, twitter:
1) Microsoft still pays huge amounts of taxes to the locale so it is certainly not a burden. You can bicker about whether it's as much a boon as it should be but there's no question it's a boon to the city.
2) Why don't more MS employees live in Redmond? Are you serious? Where do you live where everybody works within 3 miles of where they live.
3) This "bridge" is not on private property. It's on public property. It's not only to serve Microsoft. It connects two points in Redmond that happen both to have Microsoft offices. It also benefits, for example, Nintendo and Boeing. And everybody in Redmond.
4) The 40000 people of Redmond should fund the basic public infrastructure of their city because that's the role of the government of Redmond.
Then the Ireland thing comes completely out of nowhere.
If you lived in Redmond, WA, you'd know why the article's author is full of shit. Try commuting from main campus, and with a company that has had significant expansion over the last few years, commutes are painful, streets are crowded, and traffic is always challenged either with going to or coming from work. There are traffic studies done ALL THE TIME in Redmond, and if you only felt the pain of the congestion in this small town, you'd know that MS didn't have to offer to pay for anything for this bridge, but they are.
Alright twitter, I work for a healthcare company whose primary product runs under Linux, specifically Red Hat. We have a custom database-backed application that does exporting for reporting to MySQL, and a web interface built on top of Apache, PHP, and the Zend Framework. Internally, we also use MediaWiki, ht://dig, and many many other open source applications. We hold no patents, let alone any that would be used defensively. Better?
Your link makes claims along the lines of the belief that Microsoft should be funding the 520 bridge, because so many MS employees use it. I notice it doesn't claim that Nintendo of America (which has an offshore parent, if you want to talk about tax minimization) should be funding the same bridge. I think that anyone that claims that MS is a "significant burden instead of the economic contributor people expect" has a very biased viewpoint. I'm sure most of the local business owners would agree, as MS makes a point of using local catering for business meetings, local haulage firms for moving, etc, etc.
Asking why more MS employees don't live in Redmond is a silly question. Why don't more SV business employees live in SV itself?? See my point? The 40,000 people of Redmond are footing the cost of a percentage of the bridge, because of the benefit TO THEM afforded by reduced traffic ON THEIR roads. MS is actually contributing in the order of FORTY PER CENT of the cost of the bridge.
About here is where I should roll my eyes, I suspect, and remember who I'm talking to.
I am in favor of the concept (I lean Keynesian
Too bad there is ZERO scientific evidence for Keynesian stimulus...
However, a revised estimate of the cost was somewhat higher than expected. The City of Redmond (not MS) decided to ask for stimulus money to offset this. After some initial talks, Redmond chose not to ask Microsoft for additional funding until they had pursued federal funds, which were assigned. (Redmond did not make up the difference itself because it cannot afford it.)
This is not a case of MS pushing Congress into funding their campus development. This is a case of Redmond deciding the project costs were a good investment for the city, and asking for stimulus money to make up a shortfall.
Note also that MS is expanding its campus in a huge project. The overpass is a small, small portion of what the company will ultimately spend. This is good for Redmond's economy, and the city wants to encourage the expansion.
I don't know why, but this just popped into my mind, where some poor guy says he commutes with some Microsoft employees and you say "it must be sickening".
Serious question - how much of the sponsor payout to Schestowitz' annoying little operation goes to you? 10%? 5%? Just curious, really.
With all this money, wouldn't it make more sense to use electric trains, monorails, buses for employees to get around the campus? Who needs the pollution from all these private cars making it from one side to the other? Put in a big parking lot on each end, close the roads to auto traffic, and shuttle the people around to where they need to be. The generated good PR would be worth a big investment on MS's part, certainly better than the sketchy nonsense ad campaign they've run lately.
how much of the sponsor payout to Schestowitz' annoying little operation
I forgot the link. Man, you guys are really off the deep end.
Oh, and just in case someone doesn't know who you are, info.
Is rail going across Lake Washington...
The US govt could always claim tax on earnings hidden away in tax havens by Microsoft to pay for their bridge, and keep the surplus for the US people. That way it'd benefit Microsoft as they'd get their bridge (although they would have to pay taxes they've successfully avoided so far) and the US people would have more money to spend on other investments. The same rules would also need to apply to all the US corporations who hide in tax havens and have petitioned the government for cash.
How can Microsoft be expanding their campus when some of the 5000 people they are letting go are in the Seattle area?
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
I wonder.
In 1930 Redmond's population was 430.
1930 Census: Population of Seattle tops 365,000 and that of King County tops 460,000 in 1930
In Seattle Boeing introduces the 247 in 1933. Eddie Bauer, the goose down parka in 1936.
The parka is a little closer to the truth about the Pacific Northwest in the thirties.
It was far from being an industrial power. Far from being an agricultural power.
So what drives the change?
The only answer that makes sense is government spending. Military spending. Water and Power. The Grand Coulee Dam.
The Grand Coulee alone represents a ten year investment in infrastructure.
Government can think and act beyond the next quarter. It is the borrower and the lender of last resort, the employer of last resort.
The O/S division is on one side of the highway and the network security group is on the other. This may explain why Windows is full of vulnerabilities. Perhaps if the two groups actually cross the bridge and speak to each other......
Have gnu, will travel.
I think it's rather hilarious that anti-MS emotions run so strong around here that former MS employees have to prove their open source credentials to feel comfortable expressing an opinion and even then people accuse them of working at a company that's not anti-MS enough.
Why not evaluate comments on their merits rather than dismiss them if they come from people who don't agree with your philosophy?
What constitution are you referring to? Certainly not the US one.
...Microsoft's still employing people. Might as well help a company that we know will still be around in 10 years.
Politically in the US, Socialism has been branded as Communism-light and Communism has been equated with "the guys that want to drop the atom bomb on us".
Unfortunately for Republicans, these terms don't resonate much with anyone under the age 40 who don't have experience living through the cold war. Instead, it's just another political term that they missed on their exams.
You lean keynesian? Keynesian policy is foolish and will result in continued inflation, erosion of the dollar and the American economic power, and eventually will result in the collapse of the United States economy because we can not borrow our way out of this problem. This short term stimulation of the economy that you want will only result in long term disaster.
This problem is a debt problem. We, both as individuals and as a nation, owe too much money and borrowing more will not fix things. You can't dig your way out of a hole by digging deeper and that is all this bloated blivet of a stimulous package is doing, digging the country deeper into debt. It is so bad that China, the country that is funding our government, is getting nervous about it. If China decides we are a credit risk and stop buying our bonds, which are worth less every day, then NONE of this gets funded and the U.S. goes bankrupt.
This is entire economic meltdown has been caused by the shipping of jobs, especially manufacturing jobs, overseas. The high wage "knowledge worker" jobs never materialized in large enough numbers because of off-shoring and H1-Bs. That, combined with executive level greed resulting in stagnant to negative wage growth for most workers has resulted in this debt mess.
If one wants to fix the economy, one must resume manufacturing in the U.S. because manufacturing is the creation of wealth. One must increase the mean wage by forcing a decrease in executive level pay while increasing worker pay. One must get healthcare costs under control.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
makes as much sense as getting elephants to fuck pigs
In the last decade, Europe retired something like 15 paper currencies, only one of which had been run into the ground.
For some reason, fiat currency nutters want to state that all paper currencies have failed. They do this by stating that all the ones that are gone are by definition failed and the ones that are here just haven't failed yet. But the first isn't true (and even if it were, it would be true of many gold-backed currencies too) and the second isn't provable, it's just a fatalist statement.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Bridge to Microsoft, report to the transporter room in your red uniform.
This is entire economic meltdown has been caused by the shipping of jobs, especially manufacturing jobs, overseas.
You realize that US manufacturing output rose over the last 10 years (until last year). We've had decreasing manufacturing employment because US manufacturing has become more and more efficient (i.e. mechanized). US minimum wage laws make it impossible for the lowest skill manufacturing to be done here (some people think that is a good thing.)
I think you have the causality backwards. The meltdown has decreased US manufacturing over the last year. US exports have also been rising over the last 10 years, until the most recent crisis.
I believe the cause of the most recent crisis is the bursting of the real estate bubble, period. It was a bubble created by tax rules on mortgage interest deduction, the implicit and later explicit government guarantees on Fannie and Freddie, and the private sector forgetting that mortgages should be limited to 80% loan-to-value because sometimes house prices do go down, and if you don't have a 20% cushion, your borrowers will default on a house that will need to be sold for at a loss to the lender. This tremendous shock is working its way through the global economic structure, and it will take a while for the global economy to rebalance jobs away from house construction and finance.
Money needs to be an economic good in order to be used as money. In other words, it has to have value as used as something *other* than money. Because it is a medium of indirect exchange.
This is not really true. Using an economic good for money is simply a form of direct barter--I have gold, you have cows, let's trade. You can substitute any kinds of goods (salt, pepper, etc) into that sentence and it will still work. Direct barter works just fine when parties are free to negotiate the terms of the barter. This would be relevant to your argument if you were arguing for using actual weights of gold for money.
A currency is an entirely different animal. It simply provides a standardized unit conversion for the negotiation of a barter. So instead of talking about ounces of gold vs. pounds of cow, we convert the value of those ounces or pounds into dollars first and then try to agree on a number of dollars to represent the exchange. The obvious advantage to this is that it allows separation of the two sides of the barter--I can sell my gold to you now for dollars, and then use those dollars to buy cows from someone else a month from now.
Note that this is different from using a tangible good, which would be a direct barter. The essential difference is that a currency has no intrinsic value of its own; it is simply a marker of value that resides somewhere else. This is what makes it a currency transaction and not a barter. A currency has more in common with the concept of a check or IOU than it does a piece of gold. In fact a dollar bill is literally a piece of debt--by law it is an obligation of the U.S. Treasury.
The gold standard is unstable because it locks the value of that IOU to one single tangible good, whose intrinsic value can change. In addition to random inflation or deflation that would be caused by natural fluctuations in the gold supply or demand, it opens up the currency to more easy manipulation. And it does absolutely nothing to prevent government manipulation of the money supply since the government could just re-price the gold standard as easily as it can change the discount rate or conduct open-market operations today.
The fundamental basis for the value of any currency is society's trust in the government to fulfill its promises. The gold standard does not change that.
The US dollar is worth about 3 or 4 cents compared to what it was in 1913, when the Federal Reserve was created. Giving a central authority, even if it's the government, complete control over the creation of money always results in runaway inflation. Every single country in world history that has tried paper money has run it into the ground. Every single one.
To start with, almost every nation on Earth today uses a fiat currency, and most of them have economies that continue to function, even in a severe recession. The day when you can't buy gas with dollar bills anymore is the day I'll start to take statements like this seriously. As it stands today, fiat currency has not stopped standards of living from rising for decades throughout the world.
Your comment seems to imply that you think that currency should hold value over the long term. But that is silly; everyone knows that it is dumb to stuff your mattress with $100 bills. Currency is never a reliable store of value, gold standard or not. Currency is used to complete transactions in the short-term and it only needs to hold its value over the short term. Over the long term, inflation just needs to be kept at or under the rate of economic growth. Since 1913 the United States has seen tremendous growth in wealth and standards of living.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Correction: You are a lost cause and the American electorate is finished with your brand of bullshit. Please stock up on canned beans, and join the other 30% of Americans who believe in that crap, lock yourself in a fallout bunker and leave the rest of us alone. Thank you.
> I like being called "twitter" by you idiots.
http://slashdot.org/~SockDisclosure/journal/214377
You're right. That boycott novell site is so batshit is kind of funny
http://boycottnovell.com/2009/01/18/irc-log-17012009/#tJan%2017%2021:09:00
twitter: It's like the secretary in Hitler's bunker. She heard everything but never felt responsible.
schestowitz: People are easy to program
twitter: People want to believe their leaders and employers no matter how brutal and wrong they are.
amd-linux: hmmm lets not compare MS with Hitler - as a German I have difficulties with that
schestowitz: That's what makes us just high-class chimpanzees
amd-linux: I mean MS is ruthless, but they did not kill 6 million people...
schestowitz: More
schestowitz: There are also the wars
twitter: they push patent law and deprive the world of life saving drugs
schestowitz: Some nations are still invading other countries
schestowitz: And people are taught that they "Do the Right Thing"
twitter: As an American, I have a lot to learn from people like Hitlerâ(TM)s secretary
schestowitz: WT*? Look at this headlne: http://www.techflash.com/microsoft/Microsoft_faces_long_â¦
twitter: I am responsible for Iraq and Gaza.
Microsoft = Hitler. Microsoft employees are like Hitler's secretary. And oddly enough twitter is like her too, responsible for all the evils of the Bush admin.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
http://boycottnovell.com/2009/01/15/irc-log-14012009-1/#tJan%2014%2015:08:09
http://boycottnovell.com/2009/01/24/irc-log-23012009-1/#tJan%2023%2004:04:12
http://boycottnovell.com/2009/01/24/irc-log-23012009-1/#tJan%2023%2004:54:29
This stuff is bizarre. That whole site is completely surreal.
The highway department, post office, military, police, fire department, public schools, NASA, and the FDA are all socialist programs.
Completely fucking wrong.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism
The things you listed are all services provided by the goverment. They are not "the means of production" nor are they part of an income redistribution system.
Socialist programs were established as part of our government from day one.
Wrong again. The original government had no welfare program, no income tax (that is no wealth redistribution) and damn few services. The Army and Navy, coining money, that sort of thing
Obama is working to increase the level of socialism in the US.
True. at least you are not lying about that
If we're going to get our economy back on track, socialism coupled with more progressive taxation on the high end is pretty close to the only viable route.
For fucks sake, how much do you think you can get from them? The high end already pays the vast majority of income taxes in America.
http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2008/04/the_rich_and_their_taxes.html
So the top 5% pay 60% of all the income tax paid in America and that's still not enough for you?
If you jack the tax rates up, why would those top end rich people keep playing the game? Why would they run companies? They are already super rich, why not just live off their current riches instead of trying to make more money?
YOU CAN'T DO JUST ONE THING. If you jack the tax rates, you don't just raise tax revenues. You also discourage business. New businesses won't start up. Old ones will shut down. Tax revenues will not go up as fast as the rates, and the total revenues may even fall.
And the socialists won't care. It is more important to punish the rich than to collect the revenues. Ask an honest socialist whether he would support lowering the tax rates on the rich even if it meant greater revenues (a smaller piece of a much larger pie). He won't want to answer (he will say something like "that will never happen") but if he does answer, he will say "social justice is more important than the money" or something like that.
By the way, I'm not rich. Obama promised a tax cut for me and my whole bracket. So I'm not arguing to serve my own selfish interests here.
Try playing monopoly where you start out with $5 and the other guy starts with $50000, but is willing to loan you enough to get started, provided he gets 2/3 of any profit you make.
That's not remotely like how life is like in America. America is where the poor are more likely to be fat than starving... compare with India, where the poor really are starving. In America there are so many programs to help the poor. And most of the rich people are self-made, not just inheriting their wealth. (Not 100% either way... Bill Gates comes from a rich family but his vast wealth was self-made.)
So, do you have a sane counter proposal or are you just a extreme capitalist nut case with no real understanding of the problem?
Your use of loaded terms here reveals that you are not interested in hearing opposing ideas. I'll give you my idea anyway:
When a country is in debt, it should borrow less and save more. The Bush administration was wrong to push for an almost trillion dollar bailout. The Obama administration was also wrong to push for another almost trillion dollar bailout. A trillion here and a trillion there and pretty soon you have spent real money.
The whole country is in pain over the economy. The government should share the pain.
That money will go to real people who build roads. This is so obvious, it shows how trapped inside your little worlds you people are. And by "you people", I mean anti-Microsoft dorks who think "good for MS, must be bad". Yawn.
how about using stimulus money to encourage companies to locate jobs in mass transit accessible (real mass transit, not those once an yhour bus lines for the cleaning staff at the office parks)
of course, that would actually be a good idea,
A lot of the time, 'bonuses' are simply a way for a company to take part of what they pay people (and, of course, only those who make 6 figures can afford to accept this) and delay paying it for 6-12 months at a time.
Some of it may be performance based - meaning they can tweak *part* of that bonus based on performance - but the bulk is really just what their salary should be.
All so the company can squeeze 6 months of interest out of part of what they pay some people. Seems more trouble than it's worth, but it's more common than you would think. There may be other benefits to the company too - reducing unemployment insurance and medicare deductions, etc. Not certain about that. And they can get more 'creative' with salary adjustments.
My God! He really is insane! Hilarious!!
A working class man with an education gets a better paid job for himself. Which benefits him alone.
A corporate class (C*O) man with an educated workforce get a more efficient workforce. He benefits slightly from each working class man's education.
With more to lose, the army protecting the land benefits the rich landowning man more.
With more to protect, the police protect more money from the rich man than the poor one.
With capitalism, the rich man gets access to more power than the poor man.
With capitalism, the rich man is listened to by the police, the government etc. The poor man is ignored.
And if all you need to live on for eating, shelter, heating is $10,000, the rich man is far more wealthy at $200,000 pa than the poor man at $15,000. Tax the poor man at 35% and he's destitute. Tax the wealthy man at 90% and he's solvent.
A White House spokesman said this bridge project is still under review.
which, the bridge to nowhere or the MS bridge?
Interesting, and it makes sense from that perspective, although I take issue with your use of the word "should". The implication seems to be that they are worth that much to the company, and based on my experiences in the corporate world I must disagree. It is my considered opinion that companies survive despite upper management, not because of it.
My counterargument is that the structure of these arrangements encourages decisions that maximize short term personal gains to the detriment of the long term health of the company.
That all being said, in the case of AIG, the management failure is spectacular and very public. This situation is not anywhere close to the typical manager taking cost cutting measures that hamstring the company in ways that don't become apparent until a year or two after they've collected their bonus and moved on to another company. This move by AIG dispenses with even the pretense of executive compensation being based on performance or value to the company.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
1. The overpass was planned before the stimulus package and before MSFT announced layoffs.
2. The overpass is not on private MSFT property. It connects two public roads. For those who have never been to Redmond,
MSFT is not located on a single contiguous piece of land.
3. Traffic in Redmond is terrible. This will reduce traffic along two of the main streets in the Redmond/Overlake area.
4. MSFT is already running a shuttle service to and from Seattle to compensate for the sad state of public
transportation on the East Side.
5. The Federal government pays for road and highway projects all the time. That's not MSFT's fault.
If they were really the evil company everyone here makes them out to be, they'd cut down all the trees and do it that way while building R&D child labor camps along the road.
The highway department, post office, military, police, fire department, public schools, NASA, and the FDA are all socialist programs. Completely fucking wrong. The things you listed are all services provided by the goverment. They are not "the means of production" nor are they part of an income redistribution system.
You seem to have some conceptual problems. How is, for example, construction of roads by the government qualitatively different from socialized healthcare? They are both industries that in some places are strictly private and for profit, but in other places are run by the government as a service to the people.
Socialist programs were established as part of our government from day one.
Wrong again.
Army, Navy, Post office, all socialist programs. All can and had been done as private businesses in the past and are done as private businesses today (Xe, FedEx).
For fucks sake, how much do you think you can get from them? The high end already pays the vast majority of income taxes in America.
Well, we could raise taxes on the high end to levels they were 20 years ago when the economy was stable. Sure the high end pays most of the taxes, but not as much proportional to the amount of wealth they control. People taking in a million bucks a year can absolutely afford another $100K in taxes to balance out the fact that they have been constantly gaining ever larger shares of the wealth in the US. The goal should be a sustainable system where wealth is not constantly moving in one direction based upon inheritance instead of who works hardest and smartest.
So the top 5% pay 60% of all the income tax paid in America and that's still not enough for you?
No it isn't. It will be enough when the economy is stable. 60% is still not enough to balance out the earning power advantage their wealth brings them.
If you jack the tax rates up, why would those top end rich people keep playing the game?
They don't have a choice.
Why would they run companies? They are already super rich, why not just live off their current riches instead of trying to make more money?
Because they are greedy. If they want to just live off their current wealth, that's fine. Other people will run companies and progressive taxes will mean over a few generations that wealth will disappear and go to people who actually work and create benefit to society.
YOU CAN'T DO JUST ONE THING. If you jack the tax rates, you don't just raise tax revenues. You also discourage business.
So trickle down economists have claimed, but the data has not backed said assertion. Taxes on individuals at the very high end have not been shown to discourage their investment in US business.
And the socialists won't care.
See, here's your problem. You have an irrational and emotional response to the word "socialism". What is socialism, other than the government paying for goods and services with tax dollars instead of running it via private business. Every country in the world engages in socialism to some extent or their economy collapses. You're not being an economist and looking at what the appropriate level of socialism to stabilize our economy is. You're just emotionally rejecting anything associated with that word and trying to disassociate it from current programs where the government collects taxes and pays for services for the people. If we call it Quigglepop will that make you feel better? We need more Quigglepop in our economy, where the US implements services like the post office or military, but applied to the healthcare market. Does that sound better to you?
It is more important to punish the rich than to collect the revenues. Ask an honest socialist whether he would support lowering the tax rates on t
The space elevator that Google is getting puts this little bridge to shame.
tomorrow who's gonna fuss
Listen to me carefully.
No, you're a fucking moron.
Every president ever has been a socialist.
No, words have meanings - try looking them up. The fact that a government with any level of taxation cannot be described as 100% free (as in freedom or free of coercion) in no way implies that words lose meaning. One is a "socialist" in contrast to a "capitalist" (the political kind, not the business person) and yes one can be both just as you can be "straight" "gay" or "bi". Because you once thought a guy was cute that maybe you didn't know was a guy at the time does not make you a raging homosexual. Nor does it make you a socialist, although clearly you are a fascist as redefining language is a favorite pastime of theirs.
No, you're a fucking moron.
Interesting how everyone is an anonymous coward when they reply in argument.
No, words have meanings - try looking them up.
Every president to date has advocated a significant amount of socialism... the economic term. They are socialists in that regard. They have not been socialist as in members of that political party, but then that has nothing to do with the economics we were discussing.
'nuff said...
Slashdot ya no es que lo era!
How is, for example, construction of roads by the government qualitatively different from socialized healthcare?
Mainly because it is easy for two doctors to set up shop and compete, and it is harder with roads. Hard-core libertarians claim that the private sector can do a good job of providing roads, too, but I'm conservative enough that I'd just as soon keep doing things the old way unless I see a big problem. So, granting government a monopoly over public roads seems okay to me.
There's also the point that other countries with socialized medecine programs have some real problems that we don't have. If you break an arm or something in a socialized medecine country, it's pretty great. If you get a rare form of cancer, or anything else really off the wall, you will probably die before they figure it out. The big problem is that we all want an infinite amount of time and money spent on us when we are sick, and when the government controls everything, it rations out the care. The only reason why England and Canada work as well as they do is the escape valve that people can always go somewhere (like America) where they can pay for good health care.
America also has spiraling health care costs, but that is largely due to overregulation (it's insanely expensive to get drugs approved by the government) and out-of-control lawsuits. I don't have any magic answers, but I will claim that socializing everything is not the solution.
Army, Navy, Post office, all socialist programs. All can and had been done as private businesses in the past and are done as private businesses today (Xe, FedEx).
You are trying my patience. I gave you a link to a discussion of just what "socialism" means. It's government control of the means of production, and it's redistribution of wealth. None of your examples fit.
Extreme libertarians (anarcho-capitalists) claim that the free market can solve all problems, up to and including the national defense, so we don't even need government to give us an army. I'm more moderate, and I do consider the national defense a legitimate function of government. And it's certainly something that America has had since Day One, although it was much less of a standing army then and more of a militia.
See, here's your problem.
Sorry, wrong. You don't even seem to know what "socialism" means, and you don't have any clue what my problems are or are not.
I don't think you understand the purpose of the bailouts and stimulus. They have not been handled ideally, but they are not intended as fixes for the economy. They are bandages to slow the hemorrhaging so a fix can have time to be implemented and take affect.
They were sold to us as such, but I'm dubious. The Obama stimulus plan is looking more like the "Democrats won control of the government, so now they get to spend lots of money" plan.
You think "the government" can be punished into doing better by having less to spend? I don't see it. I think you're anthropomorphitizing the government.
Why can't you see a simple point? In tough times, people have less money to spend. They are forced to economize. Maybe they wanted to fly to Europe for a vacation, now they don't.
In tough times, government collects less in the way of taxes. Yet our leaders don't economize. They borrow or print more money and spend MORE than before, not less. Every year the government spends more than the previous year. That was true under Republican presidents and under Democrats, going back decades. It is just irresponsible but there it is.
Cutting taxes for the few who can afford to pay more doesn't help this situation. They're aren't going to invest that money where it is needed. They just put more of it in safe places and overseas while the majority of people suffer.
I agree that they will hide their money rather than investing it. Yet earlier you said the rich "have no choice" but to run companies. You are contradicting yourself.
If a rich
Mainly because it is easy for two doctors to set up shop and compete, and it is harder with roads.
That's the qualitative difference? So since it is easy for rival mercenary groups to compete for the same service the military is socialist, but road construction is not? I reject your definition.
There's also the point that other countries with socialized medecine[sic] programs have some real problems that we don't have.
Sure, and also lots of advantages we don't have, like longer lifespans and overall better coverage. It is better in other countries for the majority of people. They also have advantages like lower wealth disparity, lower crime, and more stable economies.
If you get a rare form of cancer, or anything else really off the wall, you will probably die before they figure it out.
Interestingly, if you get something rare in the US you're pretty much screwed too. I know, I've been there, with some of the best healthcare available to the middle class I still dropped $20K out of pocket and Mayo Clinic and several other "prestigious" institutions were basically useless. I looked up the numbers If you have something rare, in the US your average time for a correct diagnosis is 4 years.
The only reason why England and Canada work as well as they do is the escape valve that people can always go somewhere (like America) where they can pay for good health care.
The UK's healthcare is among the worst of socialized healthcare systems in the industrialized world. Canadians rarely ever come to the US for non-cosmetic procedures.
America also has spiraling health care costs, but that is largely due to overregulation...
Nice assertion, but the evidence to date has not supported that conclusion. In any case countries with much more strict regulation (Japan) or socialized systems seem to be getting better results for the price. We haven't even touched on the other societal benefits such as the economics benefits the gain.
I don't have any magic answers, but I will claim that socializing everything is not the solution.
Of course not, extreme socialism is just as unstable as extreme capitalism. The problem is we've moved away from socialism in recent years and our economy destabilized as the wealth disparity that resulted went out of control. Returning to previous tax policies is probably the only viable solution and new, more efficient socialist outlets for that income are the most efficient way to restore the balance.
You are trying my patience. I gave you a link to a discussion of just what "socialism" means. It's government control of the means of production, and it's redistribution of wealth. None of your examples fit.
Government controlling the production of roads, for example? Sorry, you're the one that doesn't understand what socialism is. Redistribution of wealth is not an inherent property of socialism, just the main reason it is used in conjunction with progressive taxation to stabilize economies.
Extreme libertarians (anarcho-capitalists) claim that the free market can solve all problems...
So, none of them are competent economists. Fundamentalist christians claim we shouldn't fix the economy because it speeds the coming of the rapture. That doesn't make it a good idea to take their advice.
Why can't you see a simple point? In tough times, people have less money to spend. They are forced to economize. Maybe they wanted to fly to Europe for a vacation, now they don't.
The economics you learned in 8th grade for managing a home budget don't really apply on the national scale, especially when you completely misunderstand the problem. We don't have a wealth shortage. We have a distribution problem.
In tough times, government collects less in the w
Every president to date has advocated a significant amount of socialism... the economic term. They are socialists in that regard. They have not been socialist as in members of that political party, but then that has nothing to do with the economics we were discussing.
I did not imply they were socialists of a political party. Some terms are or can be mutually exclusive. Furthermore, you really ought to provide a reference for the BS you spout. The fact that - by some definitions - most government activity can be regarded as socialism, in no way implies that they were socialists or "advocated" it. As for AC, the difference between you and me is that I have not agreed to a bullshit ToC. I simply have no registration. Now, in addition to all the homework you have (evidence of every president being a socialist) you also must define your terms. Keep in mind, the words most still have meaning when you are done. If you define black and you define white such that they are the same, then you have failed (again).