Slashdot Mirror
Four Outrages Techies Need To Know About the State of the Union
Mr.Intel writes "Last night's State of the Union Address contained ten things (and four outrages) technical professionals need to know about the President's plans, and how his policies might affect you, your employer, and your family well into the future."
The same old tired promises we've been hearing since 2007. Where's the beef?
I read the article, I don't see anything specific to techies. Actually that whole article headline sounds like an article out of People magazine. What's going on here?
tldr
Too bad the Slashdot redesign didn't include new story editors.....
Wow, I didn't even bother to read past the first page. You Mr Gewirtz is an idiot. The era of being able to provide for your family by standing all day pushing a button, getting off at 4pm and drinking all night with buddies is over, Industrial revolution, is over. Your ideology is stupid. I think you are afraid that with out mfg jobs everyone will be a geek like you, and you wont be soo freaking special, you looser.
How can we out innovate when large corporations are selling technology to foreign countries? Think GE selling jet engine designs to China so they can get some short term profit. True, that's stuff that's already been "innovated", but unless you can know and sustain your rate of innovation you should not help the competition.
Outrage 8: I was outraged at Outrage 2 (and some other stuff!)? Is this guy serious? The whole article just seems to be some incoherent and ill-constructed rant. As a Non-US citizen, is there some deep and meaningful message in the drivel that I'm not understanding?
Sorry, but why should I care so much about David Gewirtz's take on the state of the union? But thanks for that deep insight on Boehner's choice of color for his tie.
wat
I must be blind b/c I couldn't find the link to the article. I googled the post's title and found this article: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/government/10-things-and-4-outrages-techies-need-to-know-about-president-obamas-state-of-the-union-address/9930 In case someone is equally blind as me, I hope that helps.
...was the President's jest that a benefit of high speed rail was the absence of a pat down. If he realizes this bothers people... why not actually address privacy rights and the out-of-control TSA in his SOTU speech instead of bringing it up and throwing it aside?
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
Boehner’s tie was purple. As in red and blue mixed.
I read nothing that should cause "outrage".
I am troubled by the wording of the headline. Am I alone in this regard?
Self awareness - try it!
The speech was fine I guess. Nothing that made me want to vote for him in 2012.
3d printers and open source hardware designs will make cheap labor irrelevant.
Why do we care what David Gewirtz thinks?
His big ideas seem to be "smart" power (or smartness in general) and clean energy. In other words, the same nonsense fluff you've heard 10000 times.
I cannot wake up in the morning with the same amount of outrage this guy seems to have. Seriously, just take a breath and relax
We need to out-innovate, out-educate, and out-build the rest of the world
Can't we just try to work with the rest of the world to try to make things better for everyone? I don't care if America is #1 in x y or z if the world as a whole is not advancing.
I can't decide if the new /. UI is more distracting or the dubious article selections today. Kind of a lose-lose situation.
That article is an opinion piece. Just because that crap is on ZDnet doesn't make it news of nerds.
Our nation's colors are red, white, and blue. So what's with Boehner's tie?
I agree! It really clashed with his orange face.
That is all.
I don't agree with his politics and absolutely none of his "outrages" were that outrageous. The speech is long and boring as it is, to include enough info so the author wouldn't be "outraged", it would be a month long speech. I hope he at least has some broken pieces of furniture or hole sin his walls where he can point to as evidence the he's really outraged. Otherwise it sounds like he's mad a s hell and not going to do anything about it except write about how mad as hell he is.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
At 27, I'm a "millennial." My generation and Generation X are looking at a bleak future because of what is being done by the Boomers.
I have a simple solution: take away the Boomers' Social Security and Medicare. All of it. Keep the Boomers' parents on it. They paid in and didn't give us this situation. They passed on the baton of leadership to the Boomers around Bush Sr. and the Boomers hit prime time in the Clinton and Bush years.
I say "f#$%" them, as a generation. They want to be able to default $500k mortgages and enjoy generous pensions and Social Security when they won't even let my generation discharge a few 10s of thousands of dollars in student loans **in bankruptcy court**. They want to turn Generation X into beasts of burden to fund their benefits while my generation wallows in disproportionate unemployment?
Screw them. The revenues from taking them off the potential Social Security and Medicare rosters would more than pay off our debt in under a decade.
and now he’s going after big oil.??
Oh puleeeze! Pull the other one.
So much bullshit... And the zombies nod their heads... *GAG!*
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
Yeah that reminded me why I dont pay attention to anything published by ZD or "tech republic" anymore. 0% content and 20% opinion that is designed to get ad clicks.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Is he legalizing marijuana yet? I haven't listened to him since his election speech where I went from "the voice of a new america" to "one of those crazy on-line people".
I know, wacky idea, right? It's not like we could legalize it, tax it at a dollar a gram, and have 7.5 billion dollars in extra tax income. Plus a reduction of costs in fighting the "war on drugs". Plus, if Amsterdam-style coffeeshop laws are implemented, it would revitalize businesses. No, none of that would happen.
Wake me up when we are a real civilization. (Type 1 or above.)
The author of this is an idiot. He may have said something reasonable in the rest of the article but:
"First, if Americans are traveling in volume via high-speed rail, then those systems will need as much security as air travel."
Anyone who thinks this is a fucking idiot and needs a strong dose of Bruce Schneier.
Education has two functions:
(1) Give children sufficient information to make them better (as people and citizens of communities, cities, states, nations, and the world) than the prior generation.
(2) Give children the information required to enter the job market.
Education, and the children and teachers within, are not nor have they ever been tasked with shouldering the burden of the most in-debt and luxury-addicted nation in the world. They way education is being sold today, and now solidified by a president who's desperate to get support from the money-minded, is that we can create a Uber-WorkForce by hyper-educating, hyper-tracking, and hyper-testing our children.
"Invest in the most profitable areas of education now and we'll be rich in the future! MONEY!!!! LUXURY!!!"
This is genuinely impossible. Education cannot be treated as a competition ("Race to the Top", "Pay According to Results") and be expected to stay honest. Without honesty, we can't tell if new ideas are working. Moreover, children will eventually become normal, ordinary people with interests in love, humor, entertainment, politics, history, music, and so on... their K-12 over-education in science, technology, engineering, and math will not change them into a new generation of work-slaves.
Putting the pressure, money, and focus on such a goal will be a complete waste. Focus on making them good *people* first and foremost (education in *real* history, philosophy [including religion], sociology) while also educating them in the various ways they can earn sufficient money to live their happy lives and the rest takes care of itself.
And for the sake of cutting off some argument at the pass, I'm not advocating the cutting of STEM funding-- I'm saying that STEM subjects should not be over-invested... particularly at the cost of the education that is there to create a better society. Maybe one that doesn't allow itself to get into the mess we're in right now.
The goal of education is make good people who can be productive in the job market, not workers who are passable human beings.
Looser, said the Loser.
for all of you subcontractors and government workers, in the end, this boils down to less pay for you and more pay for people in emerging technologies.
most non DHS offices live on a very tight budget as is (hence the constant subcontracting), and this move is only going to tighten the belts of the average worker, not those at the top.
government agencies that actually provide a service/product are going to lose funding so that it can be given away for social services; given to people who have no product to provide.
the hiring and salary freeze from 2 months ago already hit our office, as people are declining gov't jobs to stay as contractors. in the end, this is bad for the nation, as the gov't is now not getting the best people. contractors will come and go, and those with the best/most experience are turning down jobs because they can still get a small raise through their contractor.
OMG, you mean a politician might not be living up to his promises?!?!! Holy shit!
When will people learn to stop believing politicians from the beginning instead of pretending like it is some sort of surprise that they let you down after you bend over and vote for them?
There is exactly one qualification for becoming an elected politician: a deep, all-consuming lust for power. That's it.
Politicians (of any party or none, it makes absolutely no difference) make promises for exactly one reason: to help them get into and maintain power. The only incentive they ever have to keep a promise is if for some reason their propaganda machine isn't working properly and they feel a need to impress a few voters.
If you want a politician that isn't going to fail you, then the only recourse is open source governance. Your other alternative is to keep voting for politicians and wondering why they keep screwing you over.
I don't have much time for fiction these days. I've come to the realization over the past month that politicians and news services don't care about truth. If they can't select facts to support their views, they will bend facts. If they can't bend facts, they will make up new ones. I don't know if this is an immutable human problem, or just a symptom of the current sad state of our world.
I would get involved, but I'm an engineer. If you don't give a damn about truth there's nothing I can do for you.
Yeah, read it an concluded WTF? I am traumatized by this outrageous title!
I RTFA and apart from the fact that it was pretty much a waste of time, I urge Mr. Gewirtz to consult a thesaurus and find some other words to use in place of 'outrage'.
http://www.acetonestudio.com
Now exactly why much of that matters to most "techies" is beyond me. Really most of it doesn't mattter to most techies.
However it does draw eyes to the website. And I noticed there was a Michele Bachmann ad here on slashdot last night, and this seems to go well with her sales pitch as well. Since president lawnchair has already caved to everything that the GOP has asked for to date, they need to find something to get excited about for the future.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Thanks for telling me how I should feel about political issues, but go fuck yourself.
So far I've thought Obama has been a tool for most things, but useful for some. The irony of it all is, theres always someone telling me he's a bad guy for it, the only factor that determines which things are bad is the political orientation of the source.
I, nor does anyone else, need zdnet to tell me what to get pissed off about. If you weren't already upset about this things, don't be. You were ignorant before a zdnet manipulated you by carefully feeding you portions of a speech in order to promote their view point, you should stay that way. Get the truth if you can find it, but that often means you have to keep an open mind and carefully consider the source and their political agenda, but we'll all end up a whole lot better off if we start voting for politicians who actually DO what we WANT them to do, rather than telling us they'll do one thing or someone else telling us they'll be the right guy for the job.
If you want to be pissed off about what you think he's doing, fine, listen to the address and make your own decisions, but for the love of god don't go read some manipulative spew from some (especially in this case) opinion article publication presented as if its a public service announcement for the dangers coming at us from the president.
I'm not saying he didn't make some douchebag statements, but you need to make the determination about what makes him a good guy or a douche bag yourself, not because ZDNet told you too. People voting because of what someone else told us to do because of a newspaper, magazine, or TV endorsement because they are lazy and ignorant are part of the problem that put us in the mess to begin with.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Here are my thoughts on the matter.
First off, the biggest obstacle to American success is China and their unfair trade practices. By keeping their currency pegged to the US dollar at artificially low rate they are creating trade barriers to real free trade. One argument to let them get away with it is that they are a developing nation. This is false, even before they opened up to western trade China had a huge infrastructure developed. They had railroads, canals, heavy industry, chemical plants, and universities producing large numbers of well trained engineers and scientists. They had advantages many nations in Africa would envy. They need to be treated as a first rate economic nation. Another side effect that China's policies have is that it can drive down wages and development in true developing countries by under bidding them on products. I don't think this is what anyone intends. China must be forced to change.
Another obstacle is NAFTA. The theory behind NAFTA was that Mexico would provide low end goods to the US and Canada at wages better than the Mexicans had had before NAFTA. The US and Canada would sell expertise and high end manufacturing equipment to help US manufacturing. One provision Mexico had to meet before signing NAFTA was "land reform". This land reform threw some 1/3 of the Mexican farm labor force off the land, who then headed to the border cities such as Juarez to work in the factories or the US as illegal immigrants. The brutally drove down the cost of labor in MEXICO and the US. Mexican factories merely substituted cheap labor for more efficient manufacturing. And since this "land reform" occurred before NAFTA was signed the disingenuous argument is that NAFTA had nothing to do with this effect. NAFTA must go, all it did was enrich corporations and not people. NAFTA is a poster child for globalization's failure.
I have been questioning now is the conventional economic wisdom that the tight coupling of economies since this latest financial crisis. We are in a situation now where a crisis in one country can affect a host of others. Much like mountain climbers roped together, if one climber falls the entire string of climbers may plunge to their deaths. There needs to be "firewalls" between nations to prevent, slow, or buffer the effects of a crisis. Some may argue that this may be inefficient, I will argue that destroying the global economy is even worse.
Overall I think that Capitalism and conventional economic theory has failed. We need to revisit the basic assumptions of how economies must be run. Two things I think we should do are
1) have economies and financial systems that serve people, not vice versa
2) With my respects to Mr. Dubcek, develop Capitalism with a human face. Corporations are not people and should not be treated as such, and the people running the corporations should not be allowed to hide behind the corporation. There must be accountability.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Can't read this story due to problems with the new layout, I wonder if this will even post?
"...it feels like we’re conceding manufacturing prowess to other nations. Since manufacturing fuels jobs, that’s a serious problem."
I disagree, the old manufacturing jobs were people manually assemble things just aren't going to be worth what the US expects as a good salary nowadays. We need high value jobs like engineering, IT, and medicine where training and education can shine through.
of joblessness. The only way we can compete for manufacturing jobs that currently go to other countries is to do them more efficiently by automating them. In other words productivity must increase by an appropriate amount or we aren't going to win the job. So a job that at one time required 1000 people in the US is now being done by 1000 people in China for 50% of the cost to do it in the US. In order to win it back we're going to have to do the job with 100 people. That's still a net loss of 900 but it's better than nothing. We are going to have to create brand-new highly profitable work-intensive industries in which the US has a competitive advantage (education, infrastructure, etc) in order to get the jobless rates down.
You need to realize that grouping all people of a certain age into a "generation", and accusing all of them is silly.
I have disagreed with a lot of the stuff done by the government for over 40 years. It's not my fault.
When did /. turn party political? Don't you normally put some sort of crap warning when you're promoting your political or business aims? I assume you've had a back hander from the republican party and fox news for this one?
Montoya: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
.
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
It took me a while to decide that the techies at a company called "Four Outrages" doesn't know about the thing.
The headline should be written as "Four outrages which techies should know ..."
You see what I did there.
All I am hearing is my butt hurts.
"The laws of science be a harsh mistress." --Bender
Why is this listed as news? This is entertainment at best, and pretty poor entertainment at that. If I wanted useless drivle like this, I would be watching any of the major TV channel tabloidainment shows instead of reading slashdot.
Cmdr Taco owes me 10 minutes.
If you haven't read the prince, you're missing out. People who have read it are manipulating you.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Completely agreed. This shouldn't be on Slashdot. This shouldn't even be on ZDNet.
<Insert comment about shoddy state of journalism here.>
No one cares about your lousy opinions, especially about politics.
This isn't news, it is blogspam.
If you take away medicare and SS, what do you expect will happen to us? If you don't care, then I sure as hell don't care what you think.
No one EVER reads TFA anyway. The new layout and changes simply filters the links to TFA out to allow for more white space.
Opinion:=TMyOpinion.Create(Me);
Your outrage seems to be directed at an entire generation -- the vast majority of whom you know nothing about -- instead of the elite few at the top of the pyramid that actually made the decisions.
Way to bark up the wrong tree!
Also, that one minute could be just enough to make it before the red light that will add more time - possibly in a cascading manner if other hazards/blockades occur between the two times (like semis backing into driveways in front of you).
I have to disagree with the article writer about how trains would require as severe security.
While yes, trains can be dangerous (as that Denzel Washington movie's inspiration demonstrated) there is a fundamental difference between trains and planes: Planes have to freely maneuver in 3-D space to transition, trains are locked to rails. Yes, they can cause damage, yes, they can be hijacked, but they cannot be turned into arbitrary missiles.
Course, that's what set Sept 11th into such a shock, turning the planes into missiles rather than just taking hostages or diverting the plane. My response for both: secure the control room, and the worst the attacker can do (barring sabotage) is destroy the cargo.
And with trains, if there is an issue, you can stop the train. Yes, that may block traffic for the rest of the rail system, but at the very least people can evacuate providing the train has enough time to decelerate.
Out sourcing and fat payments to CEO's. So when do we as countries go down hill. Answer when CEO's send jobs off overseas to pump up the wages of the people who manage and don't produce.
Money in the hand of a few does no good at all. Support the middle and working classing. Get over health care it works (look at Australia) and start pulling together instead of pulling apart.
The crap that Government should not be in there helping is wrong, look at China they have over taken you. In Australia we have the CSIRO and you pay them each time you use wifi.
My two cents worth may the flames begin...
that was my biggest WTF line. obama sold the US on cutting taxes for corporations. sure, he preceded it with close tax loop holes... but i seriously doubt these corporations' tax gurus are going to relent avoiding paying as much taxes as per usual. given the mood of the country you'd think he'd continue his reigning in of big business. obama has always been on their side, but i thought this statement was egregious.
DAMNIT DON'T YOU GET IT!!!!!!!!! EVEEEL REPUBLICAN WAS WEARING THAT TIE BECAUSE HE WAS A RACIST HOMOPHONE HELLBENT ON TAKING YOUR HEALTHCARE AND INTERNETS!
Geez, the guy is partisan hack (The article author) who had nothing to write about other than slamming a Tea Party member and a the Republican House leader while tossing odd softballs across Obama's lap.
Really, the tie was probably the only interesting thing about his article.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
*snore* Shouldn't you be sexting someone?
No, *most* people face a bleak future because of people like you who view everyone as vast, monolithic blocks who think in lockstep. You are not unique. You are not original. You are tiresomely, wearingly typical.
I'm 45, so I've been paying in to the system longer than you've been alive (first paying job at 15). If you want to pay me back (with interest) what has been sucked out of my wallet over all those years, fine, get rid of Social Security. Anyone not an innumerate ideologue realizes it's a dinosaur anyway. Sorry if I don't fit your precious little profile. I bought a house where the mortgage was easily managed and I never factor SS payments into my retirement plans. I'll probably be able to retire between 50 and 55. Don't worry, I might retire overseas so you and your ilk (of all generations) can live in your happy utopia of intellectual squalor.
All I heard was "salmon". :P
Why does everyone love to quote The Prince, a book about running a tyranny, but no one quotes Machiavelli's Discourses on Livy, an equally insightful book about running a Republic?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
You need to do some research. The only high speed rail the USA has is the Acela line, which is run by Amtrak. It brings in an absolute *ton* of money. It is full all the time, self sustaining, and brings major profits to the states it runs through. The cost of getting this type of line through the entire USA is negligible for the amount of money (and jobs) it would bring to each of the states. While not as fast as those in Europe and Japan, it is being upgraded to those speeds and will allow for more passengers (and profit). There is zero credibility to any claims made that high speed rail in the USA would be unprofitable, rarely used, and a money drain. The only example we have is the Amtrak Acela line, and it is huge success in every aspect.
What's the alternative to competing? Hiding? Fortress America? Invade and force your personal preferences on them? Protectionism that forces your neighbors to give up on cheaper goods and services? Pretending there's a secret Star-Trek-like utopian answer that's one more law or one more billion dollars in government grants away? Humanity all at once deciding to give up on our nature and act the way that fits your emotional needs?
It's not "logic" that causes the need to compete. We need to compete to survive and prosper. Denial is a coping mechanism, but when you're done coping, you still have the same problems to solve.
Really? This tosh on Slashdot? You've got to be kidding. This article has the feel of Perez Hilton bitching it up to get geek attention.
This had little to do with 'nerds'. A trip to the grocery store applies as much to 'nerds' as this opinion piece.
After reading this article, I wanted the last few minutes of my life back. What an absolute waste, both in taking the time to read it and in Slashdot wasting the electricity to pass this garbage along.
C'mon boys you can do better than that.
The Social Security Trust fund has a balance of 2.5 Trillion dollars. [i.e. debt that the federal goverment ows]
That bieng said, the Federal Goverment does not count that 2.5tn as part of the 14tn debt owed.... Have to love national accounting.
Because most of us spend our daily lives working in a tyranny, not a republic.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Please do not demean the suffering of those who live under real tyranny by comparing what we've got to what they've got. It makes you appear as though you have no empathy or understanding of the suffering of others. You do not live under a tyranny. The very fact that you can freely post "Because most of us spend our daily lives working in a tyranny, not a republic." without consequences is proof you do not live under a tyranny. I know things are bad, but seriously, get a grip, you aren't helping make your case when you use such over the top hyperbole.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
another speech where Obama tosses around more lies. sorry he got his 4 years of running the country into the ground and making healthcare worse. time to let someone else do it wrong. i dont care who you vote for as long as there in some corps back pocket things will never change. at least tea party got it right for a change and the fact manufacturing needs to be restored in the usa. same thing for oil we have plenty of are own we can get heck we do in some parts but what do we do ship it overseas to be refined. will it happen probably not at least not until the corps milk the economy dry and we go into a depression. ideas are not jobs companys like google dont employ millions. tell oboma what if ideas are jobs send me a check for a million dollers for every idea i come up with good or bad,
Am I the only one that initially read that as "Four Outages Techies need to know about...."?
I'm probably overworked. Oh look, another server is down...
Amazingly the liberals are already attacking Obama themselves. It took at least three years for Bush to be regularly attacked by his own party.
...knowing won't change the outcome. They're going to do it with, or without your consent.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
How can we out innovate when large corporations are selling technology to foreign countries? Think GE selling jet engine designs to China so they can get some short term profit.
Let me start by saying that I am naturally skeptical of this sort of deal. However let me offer the logic that may be behind this decision ...
Basically GE has competition and believes that if they decline the offer then a competitor may accept it. In this scenario they lose in both the short term and the long term. To prevent the tech transfer GE and its competitors must essentially establish a cartel and coordinate their actions. The problem is that cartels almost always fail, some member almost always cheats. The "cheating" may not even be greed based, one member may be losing in the market and about to fail so it sells off its tech (or itself) to avoid going out of business. The cartel not only has to coordinate to prevent tech transfer but it would also have to coordinate to keep all members at some minimal level of health. So it is highly likely that someone is going to transfer the tech. GE's logic may be that since someone will most likely do it, they might as well be that someone.
Essentially they may believe that the long term is already lost and that the short term is the only potential win.
Personally I agree with the philosophy that decision makers should be thinking long term except when short term survival is in question. However what does one do when the long term options seem to all be bad? Emotionally I want to say that GE is being dumb or greedy but I can't honestly say that this is the case, a lot more info is needed.
Easy. Reduce patents and copyrights to 5 years or less. You'll then see an increase in innovation like you've never seen before, guaranteed.
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
Why is this listed as news? This is entertainment at best, and pretty poor entertainment at that. If I wanted useless drivle like this, I would be watching any of the major TV channel tabloidainment shows instead of reading slashdot.
Cmdr Taco owes me 10 minutes.
You must be new here. He owes me at least 2 years of my life back.
It doesn't work that way. This is a civil society. You pay for things from which you don't immediately benefit. I pay property taxes to support a public school system I neither support or want. Should I "get my money back" as well?
Of course not. Even though my leanings are distinctly conservative-libertarian on most issues, I recognize a higher duty to my society here to not exact my last pound of "what's owed to me."
Here's a simple fact. Your "entitlements" are not sustainable. They're just not. No right-thinking person who actually looks at the numbers believes they are. It sucks to know you paid into a system which needs to go away to save our economy and government. It sucks even worse being forced to pay in and become indebted for that system now that you know it is impossible for it to survive.
I'm a Boomer. Born 1962, and I'm a local government employee too. I also think that there should never have been any pensions in the first place. I do not have a pension waiting for me when I retire. My city government employer does not do pensions. Instead, we get to pay into a state municipal employees retirement system, very much like a 401k plan for public employees. From time to time, the city has put in matching contributions up to a small percentage when times were better, but in the past years there have been none of that. All the money that goes in, is deducted from employees' paychecks. In other words, I am paying for my own retirement by putting away a portion of my own earnings into the retirement system account. I am also in favor of ending Social Security cold-turkey. It is a ponzi scheme and is in the process of failing. I'd much rather add the money I'm forced to pay into SS, into my own retirement account instead.
The real outrage that everybody needs to know is right on the surface: how can this be, it feels like a twilight zone, why are so many people not outraged MORE about what is happening in USA?
Late last week the Federal Reserve Bank has declared that it will no longer count its losses on its balance sheet the same way, instead these losses will shown as liabilities and the losses are shifted to the US Treasury, so all those bad loans and mortgages and credit card debt 30 year US treasuries at 4% and 10 year US bonds that the Fed is holding, all of those are not going to show as losses on the Fed's balance sheet.
Isn't THAT an outrage? The Fed is holding all the toxic assets from all the banks and financial institutions that were sold to it by all those institutions before they 'paid back' the TARP money (and the US gov't is telling you that those made money for US gov't.) Don't you understand that all of those toxic assets are still toxic?
WHY ARE YOU NOT OUTRAGED?
Do you not understand that the inflation causes the interest rates to rise and that those 30 year 4% treasuries and 10 year bonds will be losing money once the rate passes that threshold? And that would mean that the US Fed is insolvent, but because of this PR stunt that the losses are on US Treasury balance sheet, while US Fed is showing these as liabilities this tricks you into thinking US Fed is solvent? What do you think you can get from the US Fed if you come to their bank and ask them to redeem that Federal Reserve Note that you have in your wallet? You think you are going to get some of those Treasuries or foreign holdings, or do you perhaps think you will get the gold, that the US Fed and Treasury are still valuing at 35 dollars an ounce? THIRTY FIVE. You think they are obligated to redeem the bank notes? They are printing them every day, billions, they are counterfeiting the money, they only are allowed to mint coins and that doesn't even mean they can actually print money at all.
WHY ARE YOU NOT OUTRAGED?
What about the spending?
At the end of 2006 the total debt held by the public was 4.9 Trillion dollars. According to the Treasury dep't the average interest paid on that debt was 4.9%
So Annualized interest payment was 240Billion dollars
At the end of 2010 the publicly traded debt was 9.3 Billion dollars (that's 87% increase in 4 years)
The average interest rate was only 2.3%
So Annualized interest payment fell to 213Billion dollars
So average interest was 2.3% in 2010.
But in 5 years the publicly traded debt will be 15Trillion dollars. if interest rate is even only 7% at that point, then 50% of all revenue will be spent only to pay the INTEREST on that debt.
Now think about that. 7% is actually very very small amount considering the speed at which the long term interests on US gov't bonds are rising today.
I actually think that by the end of 2011 the interest on public debt will be 5% easy.
WHY ARE YOU NOT OUTRAGED?
The gov't grows during the 'good years' without looking at all at the fact that the rate of its growth is unsustainable, it does not correspond to the growth of economy, so why isn't gov't CUT during the bad years much faster than the rest of the economy is cut organically?
What about all those unfunded liabilities and all those pensions that are promised to the Federal and State and Municipal workers? What about the fact that all those pensions are "funded" with US bonds - debt?
What about the fact that SS and EI and Medicare and all other programs are funded with US bonds - debt?
What about the fact that USA is in wars ALL THE TIME?
WHY ARE YOU NOT OUTRAGED?
What about the fact that today it is MUCH MUCH easier to do business in China than in USA and that is why all the capital is leaving? The rules and regulations and taxes are destroying the production in USA. The unions and minimum wage laws distorting the market, but OK, fine, forget about those. The inflation and corporate bailouts and stimulus are destro
You can't handle the truth.
You used tyranny first. I was just replying. The prince is about running a principality. An authoritarian regime where ultimate power resides in one individual over all others, the same mechanism used in most corporate offices today.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
"sorry he got his 4 years of running the country into the ground and making healthcare worse. time to let someone else do it wrong."
Obama has only been in office two years (and a week).
The whole idea that we need to manufacture more domestically is simply not an option. We will always make some things in the US-- those items that are too prohibitive to transport.
However, we will never be able to compete on a national scale due to the lack of true "fair trade" treaties. Fair trade, as it stands now, simply is not. Developing countries have an unfair trade advantage in that they can pay workers less, work them for more hours, fail to provide benefits, and provide unsafe working conditions. International trade will only be fair trade once all countries adopt some basic labor standards. Until that point, those that can get away with slave labor will have an unfair advantage. The US can not compete with that.
Oh, I get you. I thought you were saying America is a tyranny, a surprisingly popular opinion amongst the less intelligent these days. Sorry. Yes, corporations are tyrannies and I'm guessing everyone who is anyone in management has read The Prince.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Ah, yes, sorry, I was not talking about America. I can see how it would be read that way.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
The truth that China's dictatorship and America's multinational corporations don't want you to know
The overall PISA scores of American students are lowered by the poor results for blacks and Latinos, who make up 35 percent of America’s K-12 student population. Asian-American students have an average score of 541, similar to those of Shanghai, Hong Kong, Japan and South Korea. The non-Hispanic white American student average of 525 is comparable to the averages of Canada (524), New Zealand (521), and Australia (515). In contrast, the average PISA readings score of Latino students is 446 and black students is 441.
As for college, the claim that Americans must catch up with the more advanced Chinese is absurd. Chinese students yearn to study in American universities -- not vice versa. Twenty-five percent of Americans graduate from college, compared to only 5 percent of Chinese. Yes, that’s a large number in absolute terms, given China’s population. But American CEOs who offshore production have no right to complain that too few Americans are going into science and engineering. Why should young Americans commit career suicide by entering occupations that are going to be offshored?
http://mobile.salon.com/politics/war_room/2011/01/25/lind_myth_china/index.html
You've answered the question yourself - it's out of control. It would take somebody very brave and very well prepared to get off that homeland security tiger and put it down. There are tens of thousands of jobs that just should not exist in that organisation but condemning that many people to sudden unemployment is a hard decision to make. There is a lot of corruption and a lot of powerful people making a lot of money for effectively nothing who will make a lot of noise if there is any chance to flow of cash will be cut. Then there's the angle that anyone that attempts any form of direct control or cuts will be labelled a terrorist, unamerican, and a pile of McCarthy era insults.
If you think the health care fuss got people angry then consider it would be nothing compared with an attempt to cut back any little corner of Homeland Security - even the TSA. There is so much money being drained from the economy to feed that beast that there will be such a huge outcry from everywhere when the money flow is cut off - jobs will be lost everywhere and people will not understand that many of those jobs are purely parasitic.
I don't think a first term President is going to go after such a beast. They will not be ready and they will destroy their chance at a second term. Meanwhile the TSA and similar will push the envelope to see how much they can get away with before a President is prepared to destroy their career to stop them. I expect things will get worse for a long time. It's possible that after a few decades large numbers people from that uncontrolled department will be running the country in a kleptocracy similar to what you see with Russia now.
So many people who failed 3rd grade math
Be sure to order your word salad without any cover up dressing.
Using the words over and for
"1.2 trillion cuts over 10 years"..................
that means in 100 years we get rid of 12 of the 14 trillion dollar debt or 120B per year
1.2T cuts for 10 years means in 10 years 12 of 14T are gone.
You people need to ask your boss for a raise......you're too poor to pay attention.
The truth that China's dictatorship and America's multinational corporations don't want you to know
The overall PISA scores of American students are lowered by the poor results for blacks and Latinos, who make up 35 percent of America’s K-12 student population. Asian-American students have an average score of 541, similar to those of Shanghai, Hong Kong, Japan and South Korea. The non-Hispanic white American student average of 525 is comparable to the averages of Canada (524), New Zealand (521), and Australia (515). In contrast, the average PISA readings score of Latino students is 446 and black students is 441.
As for college, the claim that Americans must catch up with the more advanced Chinese is absurd. Chinese students yearn to study in American universities -- not vice versa. Twenty-five percent of Americans graduate from college, compared to only 5 percent of Chinese. Yes, that’s a large number in absolute terms, given China’s population. But American CEOs who offshore production have no right to complain that too few Americans are going into science and engineering. Why should young Americans commit career suicide by entering occupations that are going to be offshored?
http://mobile.salon.com/politics/war_room/2011/01/25/lind_myth_china/index.html
That item in bold right there is a fallacy. If you enter in science and/or engineering and remain with baseline, comoditizable (sp) skills, then yeah, you will be offshored. If you have talent and become specialized, you will not. Period.
As it stands, we do have a saturation of software developers (not so much with other engineering and science fields.) We have been having it (as well as a lowering of CS standards) since the dot-com guacamole. So it is natural with declining standards and saturation that software developers will feel the brunt of offshoring more than other engineering and science disciplines.
The risk of offshoring is permanent, but not so necessarily real if you work your skills. If you don't enter a career because you fear the Chinese or Indians will take yar jab, then you probably weren't a good candidate for that career anyways. If you are a good candidate, you'll go for it, you'll make it work for you, and you'll develop your skills into specific technical, hard-to-offshore niches... and those niches do not have to involve RF circuit design or rocket science.
I've yet to see engineers that work for the DoD, DoE being offshored. No way no how. Same with health care. I'd like to see HIPAA-regulated jobs (including software) being offshored.
Besides, what would the option be for science and engineering? Management? Incidentally, the number of MBA graduates from a local university was like three times more than all the graduate level science and engineering graduates combined two years ago. That's a localized picture of what's wrong with this offshore-boogie-man fearmongering. We are not going to MBA it out.
There are other careers that are hard to offshore: medical, dentistry, nursing, pharmacy, agriculture, energy. Of course, none of those will be options for the majority who are too concerned with being offshored if they go into science or engineering. Being offshored is not a strong fear for people who really, really want to get into engineering and sciences (which is the type of people we want in those fields.)
The article does have a point in saying that American CEO's don't have a right to complain for a lack of scientists and engineers... but it points it out for the wrong reasons. There is no shortage (at least quantitatively speaking.)
Hollywood isn't paying tax and service industries don't bring in any money from overseas. Engineers are there to design new stuff to build - if nothing new is built the engineers are laid off, and if nothing much is being built anyway they change careers completely. Medical tourists are not going to bring in anything because they can go to Asia and see US trained doctors there for a lower price. Some people think the US economy can be built on "IP", but the rest of the world is not buying that unless their arms are twisted very hard. The USA just is not selling much that the world wants anymore. iPads and similar are irrelevant because very little of that money actually gets into the US economy - it just vanishes into a very small number of bank accounts and the Chinese government probably gets more of it to spend on infrastructure than the US government. Without somewhere to get money for to maintain infrastructure it will be just circling the drain with increasing costs to do anything at all.
You're talking out of your ass.
David Gewirtz has called out Democrats time and again for their failures (and he's done the same with Republicans).
Obviously you feel qualified to spout your uneducated opinion of the author, but if you don't know *who* the author of a piece is, it's generally not a good idea to make assumptions without verifying them first.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Have you seen what the those chaps in Jipang are doing with trains of late?
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I found nothing of value in the article and can't imagine any other reason for writing it but to grab eyeballs with a catchy headline. Rob
Here are my thoughts on the matter.
First off, the biggest obstacle to American success is China and their unfair trade practices. By keeping their currency pegged to the US dollar at artificially low rate they are creating trade barriers to real free trade.
Try thinking about this situation in real terms, i.e. comparing the resources available to a country vs. the resources it is able to consume. Because the Chinese government keeps buying US$, the US is able to import cheap goods from China, which means that the US, as a nation, is able to consume more resources than it normally would be able to. If I were the US government, I would be happy about the Chinese policy!
It is true that this competition causes US manufacturing jobs to disappear. However, that's not a bad thing at all, because it means that those workers are freed up for other, more advanced and useful tasks. They can help raise the living standards for US citizens even beyond what they are used to today.
Of course, actually making use of this opportunity would require a government that isn't stuck in neo-liberal economic thinking. For example, it would require a government that realizes that idle resources can simply be employed via higher deficit spending in programs that advance public purpose. In other words, it would require a government that understands Modern Monetary Theory.
In the meantime, those of us who do have an unobstructed view on the fundamentals on how monetary systems and the economy function are keeping up the facepalming in light of the supreme idiocy that comes out of our politicians on both sides of the Atlantic.
My generation and Generation X are looking at a bleak future because of what is being done by the Boomers.
I have a simple solution: take away the Boomers' Social Security and Medicare. All of it.
OK. We'll be taking away your computer, iPod, iPhone and the Internet, since we created those things as well.
All jesting aside, I think you are a bit short sighted. Every generation has to clean up the sins of the previous generation, but benefits from the advancements of the previous. Believe it or not - your generation will create quite a mess for your children and be surprised when they complain about how stupid and horrible your generation is for doing that to them.
Place nail here >+
The USA had no net new jobs during the past decade, but the GDP grew 40%. What is the country going to be like after another decade of that? That's what being "competitive" has brought us already.
How is the average worker going to compere with tireless robots with artificial retinas balancing pencils all day, or IBM supercomputers that can play Jeopardy, or voluntary social networks ont he internet, or just better design and better materials for longer lasting products that are easier to assemble? And compete at that all while demand is limited by Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and by an emerging environmental ethic of Reduce, Resuse, Recycle? And still hope to have adequate wages with 10% or more unemployment for years leaving people desperate to take jobs that pay anything at all, even without benefits?
In short, they can't. Obama's economic advisors are fighting the economic battles of the 1930s, but in the early part of the 21st century. His speech just completely ignores the current unique situation. To survive as a democratic society, we need a mix of a basic income, a gift economy, democtratic resource-based planning, and improved local subsistence production.
See my post here for a summary of alternatives: http://www.journal-of-nuclear-physics.com/?p=360&cpage=6#comment-20270
Or see this knol I put together for more on that theme at length: http://knol.google.com/k/paul-d-fernhout/beyond-a-jobless-recovery/38e2u3s23jer/2
Or see Marshall Brain's story "Manna".
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
I agree that innovation is not a sustainable strategy. So given that as a strategy, you must not help the competition. Once they catch up it's an even race. GE is selling engine tech to China because China does not yet have it. However they're obtaining it by making the big players compete for some short-term business. We're teaching them to fish rather than selling them a fish because we're too greedy. We're focused on tactical deals in an economic game of strategy.