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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.
Ok, mod me down but this guy that you people put in charge is a socialist nut case that needs to be tried for treason for refusing to uphold his oath to protect the constitution.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
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.)
performing.' Even learn what mistakes to yet another Is ingesting Man walking. It's THE ACCOUNTING the NetBSD project, Niigers everywhere a popular 'news
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.
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.
those patent threatening disloyal corporate scumbags don't deserve a penny of public funds in campus infrastructure projects
MS is just as shitty a company as enron or worldcom or any of those new york so called investment banks. Over priced garbage for products they pushed using monopoly and cartel strong arm tactics over the years and using every sleazy trick in the book to get out of paying something back to the community on top of that. What has been collectively LOST to businesses and individuals all over the planet due to their insecure code? It has to be in the tens of billions so far. Why the hell they should be rewarded for shipping botnet bait products is beyond me.
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?
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.
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.
The user "Anonymous Coward" is a twitter sockpuppet.
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 $2000, so it works out nicely. How 'bout we all write letters to our congressmen to propose the idea?
You should qualify that further. Some people consider Novell a "Linux company" but it's poison.
Most people would consider a company that works hard to avoid local taxes to be a significant burden instead of the economic contributor people expect. Why is it that more M$ employees don't live in Redmond? Why is it that the 40,000 people of Redmond should shoulder the cost of a bridge on private property? Why should Federal funds be used for such a project? [Hint: they avoid Federal and International taxes with their Irish shell company.]
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
...Microsoft's still employing people. Might as well help a company that we know will still be around in 10 years.
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.
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.
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.
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 space elevator that Google is getting puts this little bridge to shame.
tomorrow who's gonna fuss
'nuff said...
Slashdot ya no es que lo era!