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A Tale of Two Countries
theodp writes "Over at TechCrunch, Jon Bischke is troubled by the growing divide between Silicon Valley and unemployed America. While people who spend most of their days within a few blocks of tech start-up epicenters are enjoying a boom/bubble, the number of unemployed now eclipses 14 million nationwide, labor under-utilization is 16.2%, and the mean duration of unemployment has spiked to 40 weeks. 'Which bring us to an important question,' writes Bischke. 'Should Silicon Valley (and other tech clusters throughout the country) care? After all, as long as people in Nebraska or the Central Valley of California have enough money to buy virtual tractors to tend their crops in Farmville, should the tech community be worried about whether those same people are getting paid to do work in the real world? Is what's best for Silicon Valley also good for America?'"
People who DOESN'T want to work count in those statistics ?
Where should I send a check?
It's hard to call 10% unemployment is Silicon Valley a booming economy...beats 16.2%.
Many people don't need the latest OS, game, communication device, computer, or gadget. If your job is to develop, manufacture, or sell products that millions of people can no longer afford, then that ought to tell you something significant about where you'll be headed if things don't turn around.
The software development, technology, and IT industries have been under attack for quite some time now. Automation, outsourcing, H1B visas, and now the cloud.
It is a testament to the technology-related fields that the workforce keeps adapting and evolving to keep pushing forward amidst adversity.
While I feel for all those unemployed, I have worked very hard to not only stay up-to-date and relevant, but to also keep pushing myself forward. I am not saying I am better than anybody else, but I have more than paid my dues and continue to do so. Perhaps the technology-related fields fare better because it has always been a moving target. Before you had worries about job security you had worries about your tools becoming obsolete or deprecated. The entire mindset is to keep learning new languages, concepts, and technology. Never rest on your laurels.
It's been discussed ad nauseam. The same things were said in the early 80s. Know what happened? People stopped worrying about it and got back to work and the country enjoyed a significant boom in production. What's unfortunate now is we have a president who's completely clueless. So enjoy a Republican in the White House in 2013.
Not to be purely gloating, but finding a job as an electrical engineering student from a decent school has been pretty easy. I personally don't know anyone who has had trouble finding a nice high paying job straight out of school, at places like Silicon Valley or Seattle. The trick of course, is to get some good internship experience on your resume. And finding those internships isn't too difficult either.
The scapegoat is hiding behind that MBA wall over there.
(Serious note: What a troll story. Of course, everyone should care about unemployment rate, but should software engineers (and you Flash idiots) care more than others about it? Probably not.)
I don't mean to be a stickler, but I think you mean the Bush economy. I'm pretty sure that's who you meant.
From my outside (European) perspective, back in eighties during Reagan presidency, US abandoned European-style government assisted social welfare system. In my opinion that was really wrong, there is too little protection for _growing_ mass of angry unemployed potentially dangerous crowd. It will inevitably end in some really nasty situation. Hopefully I am wrong...
839*929
How's that hope and change working out for ya?
A hell of a lot better than MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!!!111!!1 worked out for me.
Maybe you didn't notice, but Obama's continued every one of Bush's disasters. Don't forget that he voted for TARP when he was in the senate, for a start.
I remember back when granddad had a computer. He'd add up all the coins and do the math required for the accounting for the business. Then silly technology came along and now we have "calculators" and "computers". What happened to the real faces behind these jobs?! How many people are out of work that have the skills to do long division -JUST LIKE A COMPUTER-! It's a terrible thing and we should at once do away with progress. It's far too damaging to the economy.
look, no offense.
but a lot of people whose life is a never ending string of relatively well paying jobs, "interesting" work, conferences, tech seminars, etc, tend to lose their ability to empathize with the rest of us losers.
Therefore "both" parties and presidents deserve to be criticised.
Unfortunately this is what "both" sides have wrong. Both "sides" are only one side: the corporatists. The corporate economy is BOOMING, which why none of the middle class problems are going to change.
It would be prudent to move where the jobs are but those of us that got suckered in with a mortgage are now upside down and unable to move. We're locked into living in a dead/dying economy (Michigan) by a mortgage that is sinking further year after year. Those of us mortgage-locked would sure benefit from telecommuting positions but they seem more of a fairy tale than reality. If only companies would realize that they could give us VPN access to their infrastructure and we could do the work from home, we don't need always sit in a cubicle on-site. The lack of true leadership coming out of Washington continues to worsen year after year. Heck, remember last year the state department sending millions of dollars to train middle-eastern country (Pakistan?) Java programming? Why couldn't they spend that money and train us folks here?
So, what is he saying here? Everyone who works in an industry that produces only luxury items should feel sorry for those that dont and devote a portion of their income? That we should immedially stop producing all luxury items until everyone that desires to be employed is? All sports franchises are immeditly disbanded. All Television and Media production is halted. All motor vehicles greater than 20k USD will be discontinued. Yeah, I am sure that will help unemployment.... Yeah, it sucks that the economy is crap and people are unemployed, but does that mean everyone that does have a job needs to start living in a cardboard box? Our social services are designed to keep people afloat until they can find useful work. It may not be just and it may not be efficient, but its better than tossing everyone that missing a mortgage payment out on the street, surely?
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
There are still people with surplus money out there in Silicon Valley?
And as I recall, the weather there is pretty good for camping. Except it gets pretty hot in the summer...
And there are produce fields, and grapes, just down the roads...
Might be time to head back that direction...
Except... Have they done something abut the mosquitos there yet? They used to lurk in bandit swarms around the passes just east of the hills that are just east of Cannary Row...
to dole it out to welfare projects like the B-1 bomber, the space shuttle, and a host of other socialist, big government programs.
sounds like a damn good idea! bring back that reagan guy!
You could reverse this by asking whether people in Nebraska or Kansas should care about Silicon Valley or not.
And yes, both ways it should. The elitism inherent in thinking only "this part of America counts/matters" is what brought about the skullduggery that is "The Heartland" and "Real Americans."
Yes douchebags, thinking you're the heart of America and that you're real Americans while the people living in cities are "fake" Americans is elitist.
He also appears not to have noticed that Bush has been gone for 3 years, and things have gotten worse on his watch, despite the "summer of recovery"
Obama should become some Yiddish idiom for a massive cistern full of empty promises
The central theme of the article is whether or not tech companies should continue try to grow their business, or should they decide to not compete with established industries. A specific cited example is that Apple created a net job loss through iTunes by ruining Tower Records. The summary makes it sound like the article is asking whether or not tech companies should feel bad for the fact people play Farmville rather than look for a job.
I remember that speech, in May of 2003, when unemployment was 6%.
Those were the days.
There are plenty of private charities they can send their money to. Or they can outsource a startup to Iowa - the big state schools do produce plenty of quality engineering talent, and you can pay them less, but it's still less of a headache than going to India.
All in all, America has pushed into a high-expertise economy. No matter where you are geographically, you can do pretty well for yourself with a competent tech background. It's less about Silicon Valley versus Iowa than it is the guy with the BS versus the one with the BA or the GED.
Wow, this was one hell of a crap article. Who does this guy think he is, trying to guilt trip working americans in silicon valley because they are, well... working. I mean WTF?!
Silicon Valley should not only care that there are millions unemployed they should continue working to find better ways to make money off the fact that millions are unemployed. That's the type of caring you were asking about, right?
Sure.
Obama comes in with three wars, Afghanistan, Iraq, and the mysterious War on Terror. The banks have just trashed the economy by selling derivates as actual notes, but NO ONE even to this day, understands their motive.
Obama gets stonewalled wherever he goes, first by the "nyets" covering their wealth, then by the juggernauts that warn that the economy will just keel over into the actual depression if we don't spend quantum dollars.
Yeah, Obama isn't a saint. But compared to the madness of Geo Bush et al, he's fending well. Except for the new Deficit Dummies, the lemming-like freshmen congressmen with all that great experience and God on their side. Yeah.
Corporatists? No such thing. Corporate politics as an unnnamed political party? Absolutely. Well-financed, too.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Actually it's Bill Clinton's economy. Many believe that Clinton presided over some incredible economic times, while in reality he was inflating a very large bubble, with one was in the dot.com stuff and the other was starting in public and consumer credit, as Greenspan took interest rates down to near 1 as a bail out/stimulus, while FHA had quotas for 'affordable' housing go from 30 to 50% over Clinton's administration, all while Rubin was re-mortgaging US debt at low variable rates (and many incorrectly believe that there was a balanced budget during Clinton, which is false, the budget was 'balanced' by another credit card in layman's terms.)
Of-course nobody before Clinton has been better for 100 years....
You can't handle the truth.
No, it's the American economy. Obama might represent it, but he didn't design it.
Bungling a recovery means that the various attempts to rescucitate the economy have gone poorly, as many predicted they would: Keynesians said the stimulus wasn't big enough, while Randians said any stimulus just hurt things, for example. But mishandling an economy in good times with favorable political winds? That's what created the problem in the first place. So the current situation is Obama trying to fix the Bush economy and not doing a very good job at it. Who do you blame for a car which has been running on old oil - the previous owner or the mechanic that's trying to fix it?
What's this? Another weblog? On transit?
Income disparity was what made roman population lose interest, hope and eventually, participation in the roman republic, leading to deterioration of not only state but also culture in just a hundred years or so :
rich were flooding the market with cheap grain, causing the small farmers not to be able to make a living because the crop they produced ended up more expensive in cost than rich, big farm holders. in turn, they had to sell their farms to rich farmers and migrate into cities to make a living. increasingly roman agriculture had come under the control of very few, rich landowning aristocrats. these farms were called latifundia.
since the backbone of the country, the small free citizen landholders were gone, public services and military continually deteriorated. the 'barbarians' (non-romans) who were increasingly conscripted to the army had less incentive than a citizen soldier to defend anything. moreover, the disillusioned citizenry, who could get nothing out of the society at that point, cared much for any intruders - whomever invaded, they were just replacing existing elite with their own, little was changing in the case of ordinary citizens. (except for exceedingly vandal barbarians and similar - vandals were also a barbarian tribe, as a sidenote).
the rich, who held all the resources had little use for anything of the sort like republic or democracy. and when augustus and later emperors started to dismantle last vestiges of republic, noone cared. now, the citizenry had no say or share from society as a whole. and from that point on it all disintegrated.
the irony is, this process started around the peak of roman momentum - late republic era. the very era in which triumvirate (caesar pompei and crassus) were waging their civil war against each other. the empire didnt instantly disintegrate - it had momentum to take itself comfortably forward at least 100 years more. everything then started to directly crumble.
today is no different. back in roman times, the poor had at least the chance to engage in trade and arts/crafts. today, even those fields of life are 'latifundiated' by the rich just like how roman agriculture (then the backbone of economy) was consolidated in the hands of very few elite.
i would like to alert you to the fact that, this situation that destroyed roman empire, had later also become the causes that led to the birth of aristocracy in middle ages and on. in fact, the entire system of feudalism, is a system of property ownership - the difference with our current capitalist system is, now everyone is able to own property (land in this case), while back then, only aristocrats could. however this doesnt change one fundamental fact - this system eventually leads to a minority having and controlling everything (yes, including politics because resource is power - just like how senate had to accept subjugation in front of those who had the funds to muster legions), and ends up in an aristocratic hierarchical society.
in short - yes, they should care. for the sake of their own freedom too.
Read radical news here
people with talent and an ability to communicate get jobs.
Hope for the best for the economy. Plenty of theories and no proof as to what may work. http://www.meatgrindersnow.com/Home.html
let me know how your self motivated learning gets you past the "HR wall" where if you don't have x years of industry experience in language/environment y your resume goes to the trash pile...
When pretty much every entry level job is outsourced and ageism not being unknown in the tech sector, it seems really difficult for anybody in their 30s/40s to "self motivate" themselves into a tech/development career.
If I was trying to get into programming right now and had no prior experience I'd go the app store route: with a reasonable investment (say, a last generation imac + a last generation ipad + a last generation ipod touch, which could be purchased refurbished directly from apple for likely $1.5k or so) you can get in, and if you are able to create some good quality apps it would likely help a lot with the job search.
This said I remember the programs I wrote when I had learned how to program only a year before, and even taking into consideration that in the early 80s there wasn't really nearly as much learning material as there was now, still a year experience is IMHO only good for an entry level position, of which there are nearly none to be had as I was saying above.
And regarding the topic at hand no, I don't think it's good at all to have a "two speed" society where a small percentage of people rakes in the dough and a large percentage of people struggles to survive: that should be self-evident, not to mention the fact that a society where the only jobs to be had that enable a decent middle-class standard of living are "brain-type" jobs doesn't seem balanced either.
Not everybody wants to be an entrepreneur, or to sit in front of a desk all day and stare at a computer screen, other people are a lot better at painting, or woodworking, or construction, or teaching, or plumbing, or building bridges, or all sorts of other job types, and they should have the chance to make a living at what they are good at instead of being told over and over again that unless you have a certain set of skills you'll never be able to live comfortably (I don't mean being rich, I mean living comfortably, which is what a much larger portion of society used to be able to do in the 50s and 60s).
-- the cake is a lie
"After all, as long as people in Nebraska or the Central Valley of California have enough money to buy virtual tractors to tend their crops in Farmville, should the tech community be worried about ..."
Not sure about the central valley of California, but the seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate in Nebraska is 4.1%, less than half the rate of the nation as a whole. Who needs virtual tractors when agriculture and other commodities are booming?
Well, I just think you need to give credit to the progenitor of our current economy. We can't afford a new economy so Obama got old George's used, beat up hand me down economy.
>Obama comes in with three wars, Afghanistan, Iraq, and the mysterious War on Terror.
And he adds a fourth in Libia.
>Obama gets stonewalled wherever he goes,
Yeah, if only he had had a Dem Congress for a while... oh, wait.
>Yeah, Obama isn't a saint. But compared to the madness of Geo Bush et al, he's fending well.
From over here (across the pond) it looks like he is papering over whatever problem arises by printing money.
The banks have just trashed the economy by selling derivates as actual notes, but NO ONE even to this day, understands their motive.
You don't understand the motive, but it really isn't that hard. Where else did you think all the crap loans that the CRA forced the banks to make would wind up, paid off in fairy dust from Nevernever land?
And when the people who wrote and pushed the CRA were told "it's going to break, we need to fix it", and they kept saying "there's no problem, there's no problem" and did nothing, did you imagine that Hansel and Gretel would buy up all the gingerbread mortgages so they could have something yummy to eat?
Obama gets stonewalled wherever he goes,
Like Bush got stonewalled when he wanted to redesign Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and Franks and Dodd and the other CRA architects said there was no problem and thus did nothing?
But compared to the madness of Geo Bush et al, he's fending well.
Other than being a deliberate liar making promises he knew he couldn't keep just to get elected, Obama is doing very well. Now, tell me why it was madness to try to fix the mortgage problem before it exploded and not by simply handing out tons of money to political cronies like ACORN after?
Worse? By what measure are things worse?
f u cn rd ths u cn gt a gd jb n cmptr prgmng
I like to run my car for 20,000 miles without changing the oil and when it breaks I take it to the mechanic. He changes the oil, fixes what he can on the small budget I give him, and them I complain that he made the car worse.
f u cn rd ths u cn gt a gd jb n cmptr prgmng
so, what you're basically saying is that all your leaders (and by extension the political system which produces them) have been clueless idiots living on the never-never for a couple of centuries?
If you'd only asked any other country ever (with the possible exceptions of Greece, Ireland and Iceland), we could have told you that *years* ago.
The defining characteristic of a house of cards is that everything looks great, until it collapses.
f u cn rd ths u cn gt a gd jb n cmptr prgmng
I believe that a casual glance at the U.S.'s Trade Balances will allow one to focus on the problem that needs to be addressed. Why the current administration panders to those countries that maintain an unusually high trade draining the U.S. is information not available to the unwashed like myself. But maybe the current administration is satisfied with existing for only one term? I personally favor a candidate that would crib smother the Bush Tax Cuts, and sharply equalize this countries Trade Balances. I'm grow tired of the help to those who have a petty sense of global community.
This sounds like the same talking points garbage you hear from those Tea Party tools.
Public workers do pay income taxes just like everyone else. From firefighters to cops to administrators to the military.
Not all public sector workers can strike. Despite that there is still a federal workers union. Reason: So they can at least have a seat at the table.
Public sector workers are suffering along with everyone else. Cutbacks, unpaid furloughs....you name it.
There is two countries here though: the super rich and everyone else. The divide widens every day with every tax cut they are given.
Maybe if you pulled your nose out of your master's ass you would realize that.
They'll start to care when they start being killed as food in the streets. In any event, people in the US have no idea what serious unemployment is like. In some areas elsewhere in the westernised world it's headed for the 50% mark and more.
an eloquently enunciated compilation of proceedings of the late republic - early empire roman history, with connections to early middle ages and later, on solid grounds (most of what i have told is mainstream in history scholar circles now), is downmodded. why ?
too irritable ?
Read radical news here
A politician not keeping campaign promises? Unheard of! Stop the presses!
Yeah, he over promised. Find me a pol that doesn't.
The CRA allowed banks to punk FannieMae and FreddieMac really well. Soaked them clean through. And we, the US taxpayers, get the bag. The banks knew the assets were toxic, and that they were "too big to fail". Some of them had forced mergers, but the orgs they were merged into were just as toxic as they were-- they just had more clever accounting to mask the damage.
Trying to tip this out of Geo Bush's barrel is an argument that is difficult to win. Obama or anyone stepping into the presidency had a no-fun situation. But bringing up Acorn reveals your bias. And since that bias begs me to believe that your fingers are in your ears, have a nice day.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Silicon Valley, Boston, and NYC are full of jobs but people who want them can't move there because those cities don't grow, quality of life for their residents aside. Job clusters like those are a natural resource of sorts, not to be squandered by those who live there. Those tech centers appeared as a result of national policies - funding for nearby universities, open immigration, free trade, etc. We should be happy to help any part of the country grow but not if they are going to close themselves off to the rest of us.
OK, this one of the new "Big Lies" that is repeated enough that it might become accepted -- 'that public sector workers don't produce anything, only the private sector does'. Total BS. Examples: When a scientist employed by the Naval Research Laboratories invents a better laser, is something of value produced -- yes. When an employee of the city picks up your garbage, is a service of value performed -- yes. When a SEAL puts a bullet through the head of bin Laden, is a service of value performed -- yes. All examples of public employees producing valuable goods and services. The purveyors of this line of BS need to read some economics and learn the definition of "production". And I've known lots of persons employed in the private sector who produced absolutely nothing of value. If you want to, you could try to make some deranged argument that the private sector could always perform a service cheaper or better than the public sector, which is at least coherent, if not correct.
Not for a couple of centuries. Between 1800 and 1913 USA became the world's strongest economy, largest creditor nation with probably the strongest currency as well, while seeing new technologies being created, innovation and inventions were everywhere and people were really looking for a better, FREER life in USA.
Freedom of 19 century is what allowed USA to become the super-wealthy country, and since the beginning of 20th century, USA has been living on that credit while burning it away with more and more regulations and taxes, fewer and fewer freedoms, bigger and bigger government, which became sort of a separate nation in itself, existing for itself, feeding on the productive part of the economy and society.
The way they did it is by convincing the general public that the law that governs the government - Constitution, was not a law, but a set of loose guidelines open to interpretation. All that was needed was some unscrupulous people, who were willing to take that idea and implement it into reality, so the politicians but also the judges of-course. Another important step was taking over the economy - so more and more regulations and various types of income taxes. Of-course this wasn't enough for the insatiable appetites of government machine, it needed to be able to print money itself and allow itself to get into insurmountable impossible to pay back debts.
The Fed, the IRS, the Treasury and SCOTUS became the tools of self-destruction, not the tools of building the country up, they became the tools of mass destruction and that's where the country is finding itself now, with people being weak, of-course, bought by the impossible to fulfill promises and filled with hate towards the wrong target (the rich, the employers, companies, etc.etc.), all of this to ensure that nobody asks the real question: what's the deal with the two countries - government and the rest?
You can't handle the truth.
"Never had so many worked for so little." That more or less summed up the der Fuehrer Shrub years. Unemployment was low, but alas much of those employed where earning minimum wage, which most would acknowledge isn't a living wage (unless working two or three jobs.) Yes, I still think der Fuehrer Shrub stole the election, TWICE.
I've read some stupid rants on slashdot, but this one stands out as the worst of all of them.
A public sector worker lives off the labor of others? Sacrifice but only for others? WTF?
Let's consider military personnel... they don't sacrifice or risk their lives doing their jobs? Do the produce anything that can be sold? Hm... no, so they don't pay taxes and/or don't produce anything of value, except provide national security that lets everything else happen?
You have got to be the biggest dumbfuck on all of slashdot.
The question "should someone care" is meaningless.
The question is, should they take action.
The effect of caring without doing is the same as that of not caring.
So, what is it that prospering hi-tech startups should actually do about unemployment such that it is in their interest, and not merely charity?
I can't think of it.
When a scientist employed by the Naval Research Laboratories invents a better laser, is something of value produced -- yes.
- the same scientist could be working for a private company, doing the same thing. If government was not destroying the credit, the savings, the capital that makes private companies invest into their business. If government wasn't busy destroying the currency itself, many would be able to invest into their businesses, rather than having to simply search for ways to escape the destruction.
When an employee of the city picks up your garbage, is a service of value performed -- yes
- there should be no government involvement into this at all. This here was Toronto, not US, but the point is valid.
Besides, I said "produce", not "service". Services can be performed by any business, government is definitely not better at it, but mainly worse, they don't have to compete, their monopoly is tight and their unions don't care about the customer.
When a SEAL puts a bullet through the head of bin Laden, is a service of value performed -- yes.
- wouldn't it be great if the government stuck to its role - minimum military for protection, and didn't stick its nose into every hell hole on the planet CREATING the fucking terrorist in the first place?
They create the problem and then they "solve" it. And at what cost? The wars? The dead, that didn't have to be dead? No thanks, you can keep that 'public service'.
All examples of public employees producing valuable goods and services.
- at what cost and to what end? What was not done by the private sector, because the public sector ate the money, the credit, the resources, regulated the hell out of private sector and destroyed a bunch of businesses by subsidizing monsters it feeds off of?
Those are questions very well worth asking.
You can't handle the truth.
Public Sector workers don't pay income taxes?
On the back of what cereal box did you read that? Having worked in various players within the public sector (State, Local, and Federal) - I've been hit with the same unpleasant income tax that anyone else is required to pay. There are no free lunches where income tax is concerned.
I'm guessing you're conflating certain states (IIRC, Vermont, NH, and possibly D.C.) that don't have a state income tax. That doesn't get you out of paying federal income taxes, which are the brunt anyways, and those states and locales that don't have an income tax get the revenue in other ways (10%+ sales tax, $300 to throw away a bag of trash or $500 to park a car on your street.)
Nobody gets away clean.
Also, for what it's worth, I recently left the public sector (State of Wisconsin, of all places) and re-joined the private sector after a long hiatus. I'm up $35,000 year-over-year, even considering lousy health insurance compared to the state, and I'm responsible for much less work in the private sector than was expected of me in the public sector. Increasingly, working for government is a job that only a crazy person would sign up for. You really want the type of individual that sees a value proposition in making half-as-much money for twice-as-much work teaching your kids, writing government software, policing your streets, etc?
But by all means, don't let reality get in the way of ideology.
Precisely what you would expect to hear from a tea party nut that has never worked in the public sector. Thank you. Keep up the good work being a shill for the Koch brothers and their ilk. It is only a matter of time before the super-rich (who are the only ones to truly benefit from Tea Party ideals) come after you and make your life miserable.
887321 = 337*2633
You are a fucking idiot.
I work for the State of California and I pay income state and federal taxes like everyone else. I worked for a small company in the private sector until 2009 and they did wage freezes when the economy went in the shitter. I know people who still work there and the freezes are still in effect. Since I've left and gone to the State of California, we've had mandatory furloughs where I have lost between 5-15% of my pay.. all the while still having to work my full schedule. A wage freeze doesn't look too bad compared to that.
So please don't give me shit about public sector workers not sharing the problems as others. Whether you really believe the shit you are spewing or not, you are still a fucking idiot.
I imagine at the heyday of auto manufacturing in the US, people were saying the same things about Detroit.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Let's consider military personnel... they don't sacrifice or risk their lives doing their jobs?
1. Military is the only legitimate service government must be providing.
2. Military must be minimal, for protection only. Instead you've got a war machine, which is dropped as a 'solution' hammer into every problem, creating more problems than solving.
3. Government policies are the primary reason for the problems, that later are 'solved' with military intervention.
4. By destroying the private businesses, government mis-allocates so many resources, that so many young people have nothing else left to them, but to join the military. It's definitely not something most of them would choose in a working economy, and the government is the primary reason for economy being fucked.
5. The government sector is the only one that's growing and has been growing and spending, but not actually earning and producing anything (and it shouldn't be, gov't is a spending item, not a productive item) for many generations now, and it's happening because you and others like you don't see a problem with that now and you don't even have the presence of the mind to be able to ask those questions.
You can't handle the truth.
Silicon Valley has still not recovered from the 2001 crash. Employment levels are still lower than in 2001!
No, I do mean that public sector workers do not pay federal income taxes.
If you get 100K and 30K are withheld, it's the same as just getting a salary of 70K. It's a scam. There are no income taxes for gov't employees.
Real businesses and people pay money to government that government did not have ALREADY.
It's an illusion created by the government to pretend that gov't employees are paying taxes like everybody else. That's an illusion, tricks they are playing with people. There is no sense in taking tax money to pay to a gov't employee, and then charge taxes back upon that employee. I guess the only reason to do that is to play these tricks, but also to allow gov't employees to make even more money if they can claim various deductions upon that money (like home mortgage, etc.), which I am sure they do.
You can't handle the truth.
Precisely what you would expect to hear from a tea party nut that has never worked in the public sector. Thank you. Keep up the good work being a shill for the Koch brothers and their ilk. It is only a matter of time before the super-rich (who are the only ones to truly benefit from Tea Party ideals) come after you and make your life miserable.
- good arguments all around, a round of applause is in order for this marvelous creation of the mind.
The rest of us, who are not working for a government (and are really insulted by that idea in itself actually) can ask ourselves a question: with all this posturing and talk about some individual millionaires on the part of government workers, how come the government is the only growing industry left and it happens to be also the one that is in power and doesn't have to balance its books at the end of the day to stay in power?
You can't handle the truth.
I always have a hard time watching so many people make so much money producing exactly value. The tech industry in the US is a joke. A few companies are making useful things, and are making money, but from my point of view, most of it is people looking to make some quick VC cash or VC's looking to own the next Google. Living in a tech hub on the East Coast, I see countless tech companies awash in cash, but producing nothing, and certainly not bringing in any cash. Most of them are belly up inside of a year, but the founders walk away with untold millions every time, and go on to start another company that does nothing, whatsoever. At some point, the greedy VC's are going to learn their lesson and invest in functioning companies, and most of these tech people will be forced to get real jobs.
I don't respond to AC's.
Today working in the public sector is profitable, it comes with various perks - the workers are famous, they are swamped by armies of lobbyists, who are working on behalf of those, who are being regulated/taxed/subsidized based on the decisions made in the public sector.
The vast, vast majority of public sector workers are not elected officials. Conflating a Senator or Representative with the clerk who makes sure your grandmother gets her Social Security check is so absurd that it makes it difficult to take anything you have to say seriously.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Why should the government bother to collect taxes from people it pays? It would make much more sense to cut their pay by their effective tax rate for their salary, and save the paperwork of taking that portion of the money back from them again...
SV's dream is to find and develop an idea for a product that's hugely useful to a community. Then they patent it, monetize it, and monopolize it/defend it in direct proportion to its usefulness. Their assembly line takes truly good ideas out of the public sphere and changes them into privately held things that are much less useful but much more profitable. The forces that benefit are mostly the forces that are wealthy to begin with.
If SV cared they would be trying to build systems that took ideas and kept them open and free to be used, shared, and built upon, that enriched the masses and not primarily the wealthy.
Yet the question remains: the only industry that is growing in size, power, spending it can afford and does not have to balance its books is government industry, and you are saying that you don't want to take that seriously, and this is in a story that is talking about "2 countries"?
So why don't you want to think about it seriously? The grandmother has gotten a wonderful deal on the SS (a supposed grandmother, mine has died long ago in a different country altogether.) The grandmother has gotten such a wonderful deal, that early comers into SS have gotten 17 trillion dollars more out of SS than they paid in, while those who are paying today will see nothing out of it but inflated, worthless dollar.
In reality it is much better to stop paying SS to all those grandmother right now, this very second, and save the currency, save your money and stop government from spending altogether, save the capital and restart economy by investing into new businesses. That would really answer the ultimate question in this story - what's going on with the economy and how to improve it?
It's not going to be through charity. If improving economy through charity worked...... that would defy history of human economics.
You can't handle the truth.
I'm a "public sector" employee. After finishing grad school I chose civil service to serve my country. I've got asthma so I couldn't join the military, but I wanted to use the skills I have to go into public [u]service[/u]
So I'm making somewhere around 50-75% less than my classmates who went to work for Google or Microsoft. I didn't even get a cost-of-living adjustment this year (a political decision which I supported fyi). The housing market in & around DC has continued to fall, although not as much as some other places in the country.
And who the hell said we don't pay income tax? If not, then something screwy is going on in payroll; at least a third of my check is gone before I ever see it, so where is the rest of it going? No, we pay income tax to both the state and the federal government, just like every other American worker out there.
I'm not trying to sit here and bitch about my job. I like it. I enjoy it. I'm glad I do what I do, and I do it for my mom & dad, my wife, my family, & my country. I don't mind sacrificing, and think there's probably further sacrifices we could make. But unless you're talking about the smooth-talking politicians and their staffers, or the stuffed shirts & suits filling up the roles of executive positions, this myth of "the luxury of government work" really pisses me off.
Yes, I've got a great job, and good job security. But I also ride crappy public transit, sleep in a crappy one-bedroom apartment, eat lunch in a room of coworkers eating PB&J or last night's leftovers, watch TV on a CRT with the beginning stages of burn-in, and sleep on a crappy freecycle mattress because I had to choose between buying a couch or a bed.
I'm not asking for pity. Hell, I'm not even asking for a raise. I'm just asking people to quit the public-sector bashing.
Traditionally public sector employees enjoy a compromise. They have wages below that of the private sector counterparts and enjoy significantly less prestige. In turn, they enjoy greater job stability and benefits. This is a good or bad thing depending on your personality.
Because public sector employees enjoy greater job stability they tend not to suffer as much loss in a down economy. These people simply chose a safe career path, invested their time and lives in it, and are enjoying the benefit.
Why do you hate people that make reasonable choices?
The main reason we're still seeing high unemployment since the "great recession", is that everyone is still paying back or defaulting on their debts. Before this financial crisis Americans were adding about 1 trillion dollars a year of private debt growth to the demand in the economy. Now the level of private debt is falling rapidly. So instead of having all that extra spending power fueling growth and jobs, we have lots of debts being repaid and a massive reduction in spending power.
It's the 1930's all over again. Well, almost. In the 30's it was primarily businesses who had accumulated large debts, and as they tried to reduce their margins, they triggered a deflationary price spiral. This time around, we don't have that much control over manufacturing, and there's not much room left for prices to drop. We've been pretty ruthless at reducing production costs for quite a while.
But we're going to see high unemployment for a long time to come, as there simply isn't enough cash floating around the economy to pay everyone who was previously employed.
09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
So a teacher in a private school produces something of value while a teacher in a public school doesn't, based entirely on who is employing that teacher. I guess that a teacher at a private school who gets a 20% government subsidy then produces only at an 80% rate. But I'm not an expert in labor's value such as yourself, so perhaps you could describe to me the exact formula to calculate the reduction in labor output given an x% subsidy to the place of employment?
You would hate to live in the place where I live, by the way. There is government-constructed infrastructure everywhere. The amount of public money going into education, the fire department, the public roads, sanitation and so on is just horrendous. It's possible that as much as 50% of funds are going to that, so if we could just move it to private hands, voila! That's a doubling of productivity in this place just by a signature on a piece of paper! In-credible!
We have a name for the places where the government does nothing. It's called the third world. I hear that the productivity there is very different in comparison to the west. You take a guess in which direction.
It's unreasonable for the country to keep this enormous public workers sector at all, their work should not be protected, in fact, the government workers need to be on the chopping block immediately with the worsening economy. I asked a question: why gov't is growing at this time and private sector is shrinking? But of-course I know that those things are linked. The economy is what it is because the public sector has tipped it over by too much of itself. By destroying the freedoms that people used to have in USA, the government has also destroyed the ability of that freedom to provide great foundation for strong economy.
You can't handle the truth.
If you get 100K and 30K are withheld, it's the same as just getting a salary of 70K. It's a scam. There are no income taxes for gov't employees.
Exactly the same thing can be said for private sector employees. Except it isn't the amount withheld that matters, it is the amount the government gets to keep of what is withheld. So, if you are a Microsoft employee and get $100k, $30k of which goes to pay federal taxes, it is the same as just getting a salary of $70k.
but also to allow gov't employees to make even more money if they can claim various deductions upon that money (like home mortgage, etc.), which I am sure they do.
Of course they do, just like the Microsoft employee would. It is, after all, a salary upon which income taxes are paid, subject to the same deductions and allowances as any other salary. And that is what makes this lie about government employees not paying taxes just that -- a lie.
More unemployment (except for soldiers, as we keep starting more "wars", or whatever you call military intervention in a country that has "no hostilities"). Longer periods of unemployment. Credit default.
Those are all measures, right?
So a teacher in a private school produces something of value while a teacher in a public school doesn't
- of-course, because a teacher in private sector exists because economy needs him there, while the teacher in public sector exists because government can tax to subsidize that position.
guess that a teacher at a private school who gets a 20% government subsidy then produces only at an 80% rate
- when a business is subsidized by government is that business still a private enterprise or is it now part of government, as it enjoys profits that come out of taxes (or inflation, when they print money, or debt that needs to be paid out some time in the future, when they borrow)? A business stops being a private business once it starts getting privileges, such as subsidies from government.
As to the rest of your comment - you don't know where I am, what I do, etc., it should not be pertinent to the question.
Is this place filled with people who can no longer ask questions without having their view completely clouded by their ideology? These questions have legitimate purpose. There is a real disconnect between the public and the private industries and there should be questions there as to why that is, that the unproductive part of society is growing, while the productive is shrinking, what will it lead to, how will it end and should it be allowed?
You can't handle the truth.
Actually, public workers do pay income taxes.
Where is this -1 crazy moderation when we need it?
Also: A man chooses, a slave obeys.
I think most people care, and maybe I'm being naive, but the subset that consists of tech clusters probably cares more in aggregate. The real interesting question is, what can be done about it? if you have no power (and the majority of tech people *don't* have much power), then it doesn't matter how much you care. I'd suggest asking the people who are outsourcing jobs and fucking over our economy how much they care, but I'm pretty sure they've already answered that question through their actions.
Nathan's blog
Stupid to ask such a question!
People should take care of himself. Not the rich.
Living well, as long as they do not break the law, does not need to feel bad.
Isn't it written in the Bible too?
The CRA forced banks to punk FannieMae and FreddieMac really well.
There, fixed that for you.
Trying to tip this out of Geo Bush's barrel is an argument that is difficult to win.
Winning any argument with someone who has their fingers in their ears shouting "Bad Bad Bush Hates Bush We Does" is difficult. Once the facts are on the table, though, reason can win.
But bringing up Acorn reveals your bias.
ACORN is a fact. If the facts appear biased, the problem is in your mirror, not with the facts.
If you really believe that the public sector can produce goods and services cheaper than the private sector, let me introduce you to a man named Adam Smith and his book entitled "The Wealth of Nations." I'd suggest you read it before you decide to enumerate exactly how ignorant of economics you seem to be again.
And TBH, the public sector DOES NOT produce much of anything. Examples you cite are services, not products. NASA and NIST are two counterexamples that I can think of off the top of my head.
Unemployment is what happens when you offshore you're manufacturing industry! Intellectual property ownership won't solve unemployment!
Being able to comfortably go most anywhere, trust most goods and services not to kill or hurt you and be safe without a security entourage is predicated on lots of jobs for lot of people with different brain power and different needs.
If we don't have them. life returns to what it was, clan/kin/tribe/gang and violence against outsiders, a scrabble for survival and everything being "No Trust" much of the world lives this way now, so it won't help them but we Westerners will not enjoy it.
Any private enterprise is good, especially if it does end up creating destructive technologies, because after all, wealth is not work, it's things we produce and can then own.
If I was a betting man, I might wager that this statement was designed to provoke a particular response.
It's partly because there are _some_ jobs around, but partly because recruiting companies get paid for finding workers, so they'll call anybody plausible. Being a recruiter is a better job in a good economy than a bad one.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Exactly the same thing can be said for private sector employees.
- wrong.
It cannot be said that a private worker does not pay taxes to government, because government did not have that money already. The private sector worker did a job, which brought him his salary not from the coffers of the Treasury or the Fed, but from other private individuals.
So he did the work and now he is forced to give up part of his work towards the government.
And that is what makes this lie about government employees not paying taxes just that -- a lie.
- no, it's a lie that government workers pay income taxes.
The money that a government worker receives from government is already collected by the government, so it does not make sense for government to collect that, just to give it away, just to collect it again.
The government workers do not pay income taxes, because it is clear that it's just one government department shuffling money to another but in US they sure like to keep the public happy, so they pretend the gov't workers pay the taxes, just like the average Joe. Of-course the average Joe lost his work some time ago, but now he is kept happy by the gov't through various income redistribution scams and his anger is directed by government at some individuals who have more money than he does, but the real trick is to make sure he does not understand why the jobs are really gone and why the money is worth less and less every day.
You can't handle the truth.
This isn't a boom economy, and while there might be a bubble going on, it's a pretty small one. This is a "gradually crawling out of a hole" kind of recovery, not a "VCs throwing us billions of dollars again" recovery.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
A quick Google search claims that Nebraska has a 4.1% unemployment rate while Silicon Valley has a 9.9% unemployment rate.
So... what was the point of your article again?
We must disagree.
You're entitled to your opinions, but not your facts. The same goes for me. We'll be unable to cite facts that support our arguments that we can both agree upon.
The ACORN debacle is IMHO, a distracting argument for the problem at hand. My citation brings up three facts regarding the wars, the banks, and who was at the helm at the time. I don't believe that there is a method to be able to address your concerns.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Pakistan is not in the Middle East. It is in South Asia.
It cannot be said that a private worker does not pay taxes to government, because government did not have that money already.
It is irrelevant who has the money to start with. A government employee gets a salary, part of which is paid to the government in taxes, just as a private sector employee does. How much is withheld depends on the dependents and other status filed on the same W4 for both employees. It is an identical situation: if the money being withheld for taxes was not withheld, it could be paid to the employee.
Now, if you seriously want to argue that government employees do not pay taxes, then you must also deduct the amount that is called "income tax" from their salary when complaining about how large the government employee salaries are. You cannot honestly argue both ways -- "look at how large their salaries are" and "they don't pay taxes!".
The government workers do not pay income taxes, because it is clear that it's just one government department shuffling money to another...
Except for the fact that the money goes through a private citizen first, you would be correct. You do understand, I hope, that the money withheld from a government employee's salary is just like every other worker's withholding. I.e., an estimate of the amount of taxes that will be owed at the end of the year. And that by proper estate planning and other actions the amount withheld can be returned to the employee as a "tax refund" when he files his taxes. That's another example of why your lie that government employees don't pay taxes is a lie.
The US has been swapping trade balance for diplomatic leverage since the end of the second world war. Cold war rivalry led to all manner of one-sided trade arrangements. That pattern of foregoing tariffs to obtain cooperation continues with the drug war, the war on terror, etc. You couple that tendency with the high profitability of exporting manufacturing to nations that have little to no regulation or labor representation at the same time whole new classes of regulation are created back home and you have one inevitable result: capital evacuation.
Google the Harmonized Tariff Schedule (HTS) sometime. Essentially everything that arrives on a pier in California has a code in the US HTS that determines the cost to import. It's an enormous document that attempts to classify every conceivable good that might be imported.
That amazing artifact is the rulebook for trading prosperity for diplomacy. If you bother to look you will learn that unless you're an 'axis of evil' type with enrichment centrifuges spinning away in some bunker, the vast majority of finished goods are tariff free. The rest have comparatively low rates that aren't yet zero only because no one bothers to import non-finished goods into the US in significant quantities, excluding fossil fuel.
Export to Europe? You pay tariff and VAT on the dock. You can't get dirty underwear into Germany for less than 14%. China is the same. They carve out stuff they can't (yet) make themselves (IT equipment comes to mind) and the rest is 8%-12% or more, plus bribes, due on arrival, or they'll call Hillary at the State Department and have your hide tacked to the wall as a warning to others.
US has been bent over and taking it hard up the poop chute for 30+ years. The thing is that these sort of circumstances tend to swing over time; the pendulum really can't go much further to one side, so it pretty much has to start moving the other way.
That point hasn't arrived yet. The US has not yet experienced the sort of trauma necessary to change minds and get out of this self-inflicted disaster. We'll need a good sovereign debt crisis and/or currency crisis to shift the entrenched interests. A couple months of no social security checks and voters will rediscover, in their usual blundering way, the importance of prosperity.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
- of-course, because a teacher in private sector exists because economy needs him there, while the teacher in public sector exists because government can tax to subsidize that position.
I'm pretty sure you are a troll or a young child, but I'm a little afraid you are not. If you are not, I urge you to seek professional help for your mental disorder. That's not a joke, I'm serious - I guarantee that your quality of life will improve by attending to the disorder that is very apparent in what you are writing.
Oh but we haven't gotten to the REALLY nasty part yet! What is the REALLY nasty part? the student loan bubble that is about to burst. For years the pols have pushed "get an education!" while the corps shipped more than 20,000 factories overseas in less than a decade and brought H1-Bs over as fast as they could stuff them on a plane.
Now we have students going straight from graduation to the unemployment line, saddled with debt in all likelihood they will NEVER ever pay back. As these debts pile up they not only put a drain on the students but the economy as a whole and it won't be too long before they turn toxic just like the mortgages. The only way I foresee this stopping will be to take a bath as you have to allow students that have been without work for X number of months to write these things off or drop them to interest free at some token amount like $5 a month to get them off their backs because more and more employers are also looking at credit ratings and bad student loans obliterate credit.
Mark my words when THIS one turns it'll make the housing bubble look like a pleasant Sunday afternoon. Because at least with the bad houses folks could walk away and with the current setup there is NO ever walking away from bad student loans. What we will end up with is the best educated Micky D's workforce on the planet, bar none.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
The housing market in & around DC has continued to fall
- ORLY? That's not what the data says.
And who the hell said we don't pay income tax? If not, then something screwy is going on in payroll; at least a third of my check is gone before I ever see it
- your salary is 2/3rds of what you think it is.
In private sector one produces something to make money off the sales of some sort, the money comes from other private individuals, this money is then raided by the government. THAT is income tax.
In public sector the money is already collected by raiding incomes of others, by borrowing and printing. Now they just have to distribute it, including to their employees. Since it doesn't make sense to give you money just to take it away immediately, they make it look like you are paying a tax, but in reality it's your salary that's 2/3rds of what's on paper.
just like every other American worker out there.
- right. Like all those other Americans, who actually have to work for near half the year to pay their taxes, is that what you are saying? All those Americans who can't have a decent economy, because there are near 30 million people working directly or indirectly for US government? All those Americans who are not allowed to do what they prefer with their money and are forced by the government to give it up for all the things, including SS and Medicare and Wars, while the gov't is printing the money and destroying the savings capital, so that the dollar is truly left being worth nothing, so while they are paying their taxes today in more expensive dollars, when it's their turn to get the SS back, they'll either get nothing (or more likely) will get checks with many zeros on them, but nothing to buy with them?
this myth of "the luxury of government work" really pisses me off.
- happy to piss you off. Hope you get fired, and 99.99% of the others like you too. The sooner you get fired, the better. The sooner you get fired, the quicker the economy will start healing.
The sooner the government is fired, the freer the people will be, the freer the economy will be, the more valuable the currency will be, the more savings there will be and more business will be created.
And you will get fired and you will have to then do something else, something that others in economy will actually find useful. I am sure you think you are doing something important and useful, but as long as you are a government employee, the economy needs to you cease and desist.
Yes, I've got a great job, and good job security. But I also ride crappy public transit, sleep in a crappy one-bedroom apartment, eat lunch in a room of coworkers eating PB&J or last night's leftovers, watch TV on a CRT with the beginning stages of burn-in, and sleep on a crappy freecycle mattress because I had to choose between buying a couch or a bed.
- that's why economy needs you out of that and into something productive.
I'm not asking for pity. Hell, I'm not even asking for a raise. I'm just asking people to quit the public-sector bashing.
- reduce the government to be under 1% of spending, reduce it to under 1% of taxes, then it'll stop.
You can't handle the truth.
The rest of us, who are not working for a government (and are really insulted by that idea in itself actually) can ask ourselves a question: with all this posturing and talk about some individual millionaires on the part of government workers, how come the government is the only growing industry left and it happens to be also the one that is in power and doesn't have to balance its books at the end of the day to stay in power?
This has nothing to do with your alleged failure of government employees to pay taxes.
The answer to your question is simple. The growth of the government is based on the increasing demands of the public upon that government to provide for their personal needs. As in, "I cannot find a job, government, so I expect you to pay me for not working until I can find one". Or "there are no jobs, government, so I want you to dump hundreds of billions of dollars into 'shovel ready' projects that result in jobs that cost a couple hundred thousand dollars to create, each." Or "I'm sick and didn't buy insurance when I wasn't, so now I can't afford to pay the hospital, so government, you do it for me." Or "I decided to have five children even though I couldn't afford it, and now I need you, government, to feed them free school lunches (even in the summer) and breakfast, too, and entertain my kindergarden aged child all day instead of just half a day." Or "I knew there was going to be a balloon payment on my ARM, but I didn't care, and now I cannot afford to pay my morgage so I want a government subsidy to help me." Or "I chose to live out in the country because I like the empty space, but I want broadband access to the Internets, government, so build me some infrastructure so I can read /. all day." Or "I had a baby and don't know who the father is and nobody will pay me to sit at home all day, so government, I want you to pay me...".
The answer to why they don't have to balance the books is easy, too. Just raise the debt ceiling and all will be wonderful again. We can't cut the spending on things people demand, even though it isn't the job of the government to do it. People expect it. It takes government employees to manage the programs.
You want the welfare, AND you expect the people working for the government who manage the welfare programs to work for free, too? What a novel and interesting concept. Do you have a newsletter I can subscribe to?
Eat or be eaten
You haven't touched unfunded pension liabilities yet. Add that into the mix. Please.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
You cannot honestly argue both ways -- "look at how large their salaries are" and "they don't pay taxes!".
- I agree. Their actual salaries are whatever they make, forget the taxes. This is true for anybody, the only reasonable number to compare is after tax income. (I am against income taxes completely, btw., income, payroll, corporate, you name it, if it taxes work rather than consumption, I am against it.)
Except for the fact that the money goes through a private citizen first, you would be correct. You do understand, I hope, that the money withheld from a government employee's salary is just like every other worker's withholding. I.e., an estimate of the amount of taxes that will be owed at the end of the year. And that by proper estate planning and other actions the amount withheld can be returned to the employee as a "tax refund" when he files his taxes. That's another example of why your lie that government employees don't pay taxes is a lie.
- again, it's not a lie, it's exactly what is happening, and the fact that government workers can get that money on top of their so called 'after-tax' salaries, just shows how profitable it is to work for the government, which is my point - government sector is the only sector growing in this economy and this needs to be brought up in every conversation when they talk about taxes or regulations or subsidies or wars, etc.
You can't handle the truth.
Yet the question remains: the only industry that is growing in size, power, spending it can afford and does not have to balance its books is government industry,
Any industry that had as much demand for increased services as the government has would be growing at the same rate.
and you are saying that you don't want to take that seriously,
Who said that? We just aren't taking YOU seriously when you make assinine statements like "government workers don't pay income taxes" and "the workers are famous, they are swamped by armies of lobbyists". Tell that to the DMV person at the counter the next time you renew your driver's license. Or the census worker who stops by your door when you refuse to return your census paperwork. Or the letter carrier. The only thing I don't know, in this case, is which one will punch your lights out first.
In reality it is much better to stop paying SS to all those grandmother right now, this very second, and save the currency, ...
Ahhh, now I know. You want the grandmothers to be first in line to clean your clock. Yes, promise people a retirement program, take money from them for all their working lives, and then refuse to give anything back to them when they need it. You're a swell fellow, yes, you are.
and the fact that government workers can get that money on top of their so called 'after-tax' salaries, just shows how profitable it is to work for the government,...
And the fact that Microsoft employees can get that money on top of their so called "after tax salaries" just shows how profitable it is to work for Microsoft.
Hmmm, seems like an identical situation. Got some other reason to claim that government workers don't pay income taxes?
This has nothing to do with your alleged failure of government employees to pay taxes.
- and do I have to only bring up one point in a discussion, or will you allow me to make multiple points, especially given that this thread is under attack and my comments are being bombarded here with people, who clearly do not like the implications of my questions?
The answer to your question is simple. The growth of the government is based on the increasing demands of the public upon that government to provide for their personal needs. As in, "I cannot find a job, government, so I expect you to pay me for not working until I can find one".
- except that government cannot PROVIDE for the needy, because it does not PRODUCE anything.
Government can and does grow and I contend that it creates the poverty, creates the poor by growing and by mis-allocating the resources from the private sector, so the wealth that could be produced is not, instead the capital is spent on government and thus on foreign production capacity, because local production capacity is destroyed by the growth that is government.
Why should it take trillions to manage basic checks being mailed to people (something that a private company can manage very efficiently with very few workers comparatively speaking, I did a contract with ADP, I know how they do it.)
The answer to why they don't have to balance the books is easy, too. Just raise the debt ceiling and all will be wonderful again. We can't cut the spending on things people demand, even though it isn't the job of the government to do it. People expect it. It takes government employees to manage the programs.
- there should be no programs to manage.
During harder economic times government needs to shrink, not to grow and take up more of the valuable resources, credit and other capital, as well as human resources and generate an artificial class warfare, shifting the eyes off the government itself to some wealthy individuals.
You want the welfare,
- no, I think all welfare programs must be stopped, starting with SS and Medicare. The recipients must be means tested and only those, who can't survive can remain, but must be transfered to actual welfare (which is the same thing with only difference being in nomenclature.)
AND you expect the people working for the government who manage the welfare programs to work for free, too?
- no, I actually don't believe government must grow, it must shrink, and if mailing of some checks need to be managed, a subcontractor, such as ADP has the knowledge and efficiencies to do this.
What a novel and interesting concept. Do you have a newsletter I can subscribe to?
- why, are my /. comments not enough for you?
Are you not entertained?
You can't handle the truth.
Maybe you didn't notice, but Obama was elected three years ago. This is his economy. In that time, he massively increased our national debt, ignored his own debt commission's recommendations, and passed stimulus packages that experts now claim did nothing. Additionally, the Democrats have been running the country without an officially passed budget--in violation of the Congressional Budget Act--for two years straight.
It's the Obama economy.
There aren't really any countries where average people adapt very successfully to changing economic needs. Only fairly exceptional people ever do so.
Europe handles this through a combination of massive welfare for the unemployable, major protections for existing economic needs, and professionalizing virtually every career, which helps keep workers up-to-date. Yet, they've created a systemic unemployment problem amongst the youth.
We'll probably eventually nationalize education and simply pay students to study what we tell them we need. At least then, all the unemployment can be blamed upon some government officials who're doing the bidding of lobbyist who want more unemployed cheap labor in specific sectors.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Agreed. This guy sounds like he bought Ruby Ridge from the Weavers.
Are you trying to tell me you don't know the name of the clerk who makes sure that our friend's grandmother gets her Social Security check is not popular? I follow her on Twitter.
You're entitled to your opinions, but not your facts.
Yes, and I assumed you would try to deny me my facts.
The ACORN debacle is IMHO, a distracting argument for the problem at hand.
That's why it was mentioned in passing and not part of the main argument.
My citation brings up three facts regarding the wars, the banks, and who was at the helm at the time.
Two wars, both of which were approved by the congress at the time, under the control of people quite antithetical to the President you blamed the problem on. Also continuing under another President who campaigned under a slogan of "Anyone but Bush", who spent the first two years with a collegial congress who could have implemented solutions but chose not to, despite telling us what those solutions were and promising them to us prior to the election. You commented on who the President was when the banks failed, but not on who the President was when the legislation was created that was the cause of that failure, or that the President you blame for the problem was stonewalled by the same antithetical forces that he could not simply override and fix the problem unilaterally.
So, yes, some facts are more relevant than others. A fact that you failed to mention is that there were 365 days in the calendar in 2009. This is a fact similar to yours.
I don't believe that there is a method to be able to address your concerns.
I don't believe that you understand what my "concerns" are, so your inability to understand what the resolution would be is understandable.
Yeah, we had it good. And then Bush really went and fucked it up, didn't he?
and do I have to only bring up one point in a discussion, or will you allow me to make multiple points,
I replied specifically and directly to your claim that government employees do not pay income taxes. Make all the other points you want, if they are as ridiculous as the one I first replied to, I will point that out, too.
especially given that this thread is under attack and my comments are being bombarded here with people, who clearly do not like the implications of my questions?
The only "clearly" here is that the people responding to you do not believe your fictions, such as your "fact" that government employees don't pay income taxes, or the howler that they are courted by hoards of lobbyists. The thread isn't under attack, your basic assumptions are, because they are patent nonsense.
except that government cannot PROVIDE for the needy, because it does not PRODUCE anything.
Such as this one. It is basically irrelevant whether or not they "produce" anything, because the public is demanding that they provide for the needy, and they are doing it the only way they can -- by taxing wage earners, including government workers.
- there should be no programs to manage.
That is a different issue altogether. There ARE programs to manage, and the public is demanding MORE and MORE from those programs, so they will expand, just as Microsoft would expand its production system should there be a demand for more and more copies of Windows 7.
Are you not entertained?
No, I, personally, am bored and tired of trying to explain things to you. Continue as you desire.
I swear that sometimes I think Ayn Rand was a prophet...
This headline is almost directly out of one of her books...
As a viable forum for dialog, Slashdot is among the weakest.
I would cite Media Matters as regards ACORN (viz: http://mediamatters.org/search/index?qstring=ACORN&x=0&y=0). You would cite RedState (viz: http://www.google.com/cse?cx=013850339485084395743%3Aernse1bcnr0&ie=UTF-8&q=acorn&sa=Search&siteurl=www.redstate.com%2F).
You would argue that Clinton started it all. I would claim that the economy burnt out during Clinton's era, and we started with NAFTA to export US jobs, causing a slow meltdown that caused housing prices to devalue. That never happened before.
The war on Afghanistan had a bit of justification, as Al Qaeda at the time was thought to be sheltered by the "Taliban". The war in Iraq was strictly about pissing off GB and oil. All else was a red herring. There were no WoMD there; never were.
The "war on terror" was a method to constrain the populace against a tiny faction of highly effective terrorists, all while gaining the enmity of much of the Islamic world. The oil, and the money, was burning thru the fingers of government, and contractors like Halliburton.
The banks, feeling an uptake in the economy, made obfuscating tradeable instruments, while pumping mortgage money out like it was made of thin air-- and it was. Now that the music has stopped, the banks have gotten off largely free from prosecution.
That congress was duped into one war, and underwent a siege mentality for the war on terror, doesn't forgive their actions. The Libyan action is wrong, too, IMHO.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Worse? By what measure are things worse?
Umm, unemployment? You know, the number that the stimulus package was supposed to stop from going above 9%?
This coming from the guy who lives in his utopia of Switzerland is fucking rich. Please don't vote, I like Switzerland. You'll just fuck it up.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
I'm not in the USA so this may not apply, however as a public sector employee I thought I'd give my 2c.
My job is in risk mitigation, primarily around meeting the laws passed by our government, so that pretty much fits the bill of 'not producing anything of value', and in some ways it's a waste of money (but you could say that about a large chunk of middle management too). The flip side is that my job requires the agency to procure certain goods and services from companies, which therefore creates an income stream to them, paid for by your taxes. They pay employees, company tax payroll tax etc and the money just rolls around, keeping the economy ticking along.
Only one other thing to point out - income tax is deducted from my salary - going to a different level of government - and anything that is based on gross income uses that pre-tax dollar figure.
Oh almost forgot to mention - yes salaries in the public sector aren't great, mine seems to be around 75% of private sector in a similar 'permanent' position, however unless something extremely drastic happens, I've got an ok paying job for as long as I want.
Benoit Mandelbrot disproved modern economics. Wall Street is tapdancing on a landmine, secure in the knowledge that when the shit hits the fan, they will already have everything worth having.
Public sector is a forced economy, that's the difference with the private sector. Citizens cannot choose wether they want public goods and services, or not. If a private company offers goods and services to me, i am free to buy it or not. If they offer bad products, they're out of business.
Who says i want public garbage collection? Maybe I want to take care of it myself (burn it in my backyard). I never gave that SEAL permission to put a bullet through the head of bin laden, yet i am forced to pay a part of his salary and that of all public workers and employees. They know that and that's the reason they don't have to care about their reputation or others opinions. Their salaries will always be paid. What follows is a self sustaining system of corruption, bureaucracy and arrogance.
Nebraska and Central California in the same breath...ha. Nebraska is one of the few states that isn't broke. It has a single house of government (rather than the redundant two houses, which get less done). It has had less that 4% unemployment for most, if not all, of this recession. Given the work ethic in that state, perhaps you should welcome your future corn overlords.
Where else did you think all the crap loans that the CRA forced the banks to make would wind up,
So I keep hearing, but where did you think all the crap loans that the CRA didn't force the unregulated non-banks to make would wind up? You know, the 50% of the subprime loans made by mortgage brokers and non-bank companies like GM (ditech.com)? What about all the CDOs that were bought up by investment firms like Lehman Brothers?
If companies that the CRA didn't apply to did it, why should I assume that the banks the CRA applied to did it because of the CRA, and not because everyone else was doing it and making shitloads of money (on paper, which is all that matters on the next quarterly report)?
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
If this is the best you can do? Do you count yourself as "People who DOESN'T want to work" or "People who IS UNEMPLOYABLE"?
Retarded and bigoted is no way to go through life.
How about refusing to work 50+ hour work weeks? 10 employees working 50 hours a week equals 12.5 workers working a 40 hour week. 2.5 less people are employed due to some people being afraid to say "no, I've put in my 8 hours today, sorry".
If unemployment is really going to be so high for years and years - in other words, if there just aren't enough jobs for everyone in the country due to things like automation - maybe we should be talking about reducing the work week to 35 hours or less. It's been 40 hours for a long time, even though productivity has increased quite a bit.
I personally think, that a large portion of jobs I did (unfortunately) did not add too much good to this world. Sure it made someone richer and paid the bills, but in terms of usefulness to society: 0.
Now that said, I would imagine that many of us could do a lot of useful things with their profession, but instead of creating cool and good and dreams, many times it boils down to what pays the bills. Then there is your extra time when you can try and work on your hobby projects.
Then try to explain it to your colleagues and people you know (I prefer to not refer to them as "friends") who ask you why you don't work on something that could make a lot of money instead of trying to build whatever you are building. On this @#$% planet and in this society.
So unless you consider adding to the GDP and paying the bills useful, you could consider most jobs on this planet useless and ignorant behavior.... ahm ..
Yep agreed. The divide between the rich and poor in America is widening into a chasm. And the middle class is dying out ... you're either struggling, or becoming increasingly wealthy. This is a problem that is deeper than party politics. It will require some kind of fundamental changes to the very way the country operates in the long term.
Which let's face it, neither side of politics will do, because most people will oppose large-scale changes (this is simply human nature ... massive change is risky, and there'll always be some segment of the population that 'loses' bigtime). So politicians will play it safe and patch minor things up here and there (e.g. the healthcare reforms, which were so watered-down and half-assed and full of compromise that they won't really do much in the long term to make the health system more efficient and sustainable), because that's the only kind of stuff that actually has any chance of getting through Congress.
But rethinking the fundamentals? Scrapping entire core government systems and schemes and rewriting them from scratch? A brand new tax code? Nah - it's a political impossibility. But it's that kind of large reform that is desperately needed in many areas, I feel. Those changes are easier to do in a smaller, younger, or more centralised country. But America is set in its ways and has a relatively decentralised system of government, so it's tough.
No, the only "Freedom of the 19th Century" was a giant portion of the North American continent available for mining of numerous resources - farming land, coal, expansion land, Indians, animals. With cheap, abundant natural resources a vigorous expansion economy is relatively easy. Take away cheap, abundant resources and you have the US at present.
Rose colored Republican glasses not needed.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
When has any part of the government had any interest at all in REDUCING paperwork?
Your suggestion is however exactly the way income tax is dealt with. Tax is deducted from your paycheque before you get it, and then at the end of the year you adjust the correct amount with the government in case your employer over/under deducted.
It does however require MASSIVE amounts of paperwork, cost billions of dollars, and employ a very large number of people...
So that the people who work for the government are still fully aware of the amount of money that gets taken away from them in form of taxes - the difference between the figure on the paper, and what they actually take home.
If you go to Disney you can see a show ( I forget what the name is) that tells us that the 'promise' of computers was to create more leisure time for our families . . . . . .so doesn't that MEAN that computers do the the work that humans used to do? What were we thinking?
Companies that do business internationally or those suppliers or vendors to said companies are doing great. Retailers with international sales are fine, those without are hurting. Apple for instance makes 50% or more of it's sales internationally.
China's economy is booming, as is Korea, Germany, Australia, Brazil.
If you want to find work, look at the companies with greater than 30% of revenue coming from outside the US. The company I work for has 200+ open positions in the US. The majority of those are not tech related, ~40 are (ecom, IT, logistics and data). We just hired a language specialist for QA we're doing so much translation work.
There are jobs, and yes you may have to relocate to find them. Sign on with a staffing company and check that travel box. Agreeing to travel is your best bet to get work.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
Hiring someone is much better philanthropy than just giving money.
Why would a tech industry be worried about proping up the rest of the country? It seems to me that a business is there to survive and to hopefully keep its own employees employed. Isn't it governments job to look after its citizens? Personally, I don't see it as any business's responsibility to take care of those that are not directly connected to it. The it is the responsibility of government. If the government wants to raise taxes on a specific sector of the work force, it has the right to do so, but asking a private company to just out of the blue start helping others isn't realistic in my opinion. You might as well get all the unions to take 25% pay cuts with the proceeds going to some charity, not likely to happen when it starts coming out of people's pockets rather than some anonymous "IT industry" There are lots of businesses out there that make money, why would you want to go after some sector just because a few businesses are "successful" Hell, if you want to do that, go after the damn banking industry, they seem to have all the money, and if they mess up the government bails them out.
I'm sure that we could lower the unemployment rate if we just didn't allow outside products into the united states, since it would kick start manufacturing again. As long as we are at it, we could ban all computer and electronics and go back to manual bookkeeping. That would drive paper prices up allowing us to hire more lumberjacks and get rid of all those pesky forests we have laying around. Sure quality of living would go down, but so what people would be employed. Heh, seriously though, I know that it costs me far less time and money to pay my bills, correspond with others, do research and get entertainment than it would be without technology. In my mind, the tech industry is doing its part to foster a better standard of living. The fact that people are out of work says more about the way government and the economic system runs than it does about tech companies destroying people's livelihoods. Tech companies are successful because people want the products they produce. The way to stay in business is by producing products and developing new products. There are plenty of tech companies that fail as well, what do we do about them? Cherry picking successful companies and saying that the industry as a whole should support give up its income and give that back to people that have no relation probably isn't the best way to go about fixing the economy. Perhaps, since the writer of the article is making money, he should be giving his income to others rather than paying his house note, rent, groceries, etc.
It seems to me, that if you're asking people who are actually innovating to give up the rewards of that innovation, you're punishing those that should be getting rewarded.
/* TODO: Spawn child process, interest child in technology, have child write a new sig */
Nothing really surprising in the article, but the best quote from it is this:
From the original article:
In a low-tech society you don’t see much variation in productivity. If you have a tribe of nomads collecting sticks for a fire, how much more productive is the best stick gatherer going to be than the worst? A factor of two? Whereas when you hand people a complex tool like a computer, the variation in what they can do with it is enormous.
Unfortunately the author doesn't go into the consequences of this observation. If one person can become wildly more productive with some tool, his work will simply be devaluated so that his higher productivity doesn't earn him more than the stick gatherer.
It was this case with teamsters of old, who probably were able to do 30 to 50 km a day with an ox-cart. Now a lorry-drivers transports 100 times as much 20 times as far away in a day, but they still are paid as measly as teamsters of old. What was gained for those teamsters who figured out to become 2000 times as productive? Nothing. Same pay, work still sucks and they aren't better of after a day of work.
Same with most other businesses that improved due to technology. The first generation who figured out how to become more productive reap some benefits from it, but after that, the improved productivity becomes the norm and people will toil on as usual. At the end of the day, the time people spent at work is paid, not their productivity. If the produce much, the value of their product is just reduced proportionally.
Step 1: remove government Step 2: ???????? Step 3: Profit!!!!111111111111
Just because it "does not make sense" doesn't mean they couldn't do it that way anyway. You're acting like not only is it government policy not to make their employees pay income tax, but that making them pay income tax would somehow violate some fundamental law of nature or something of the sort. I think you're underestimating the love that accountants and bureaucrats have for paperwork, process, and accounting.
Furthermore, it actually does make sense. That government worker might have a second job, or they might a spouse who also has a job with whom they jointly file. Add to that income any other sources of income they might have made throughout the year, and that extra income might put them into a higher tax bracket. If that puts them into a higher bracket that would entitle the government to keep a larger cut of their withheld wages. I think it goes without saying that the government wants all the money it can get.
I'd also like to take the time to note that both the Federal government and many State governments collect income taxes, and that they do so separately from each other. Even if your "why would they collect money they already have" argument made sense, each level of government would pay the applicable income taxes to the other levels. Federal workers would still pay State taxes, State workers would still pay Federal taxes, and local workers would pay both, since they are all separate entities who collect their own separate taxes and pay their own employees out of the separate coffers filled by these taxes.
Presumably, given your attitudes on government employees and the sound of your general political beliefs, I'd be willing to bet you view government as some sort of horribly inefficient money burning engine. If this is the case then why do you have such a hard time believing that they'd go through the seemingly inefficient and convoluted process of collecting tax money from the general populace, paying their employees with a portion of that money, withholding some portion of that pay, and then refunding some further portion of that come April? And shouldn't someone like you be happy if you are right, that the government just bypasses the whole inefficient passing-money-back-and-forth bit, and just skips straight to reducing worker pay by the amount they'd be taxed anyway?
Don't forget about the wonderful quality of life in the 19th century, the enormous freedom to live in perpetual debt in company towns, the freedom to get a lead pipe applied to your knees should you dare to actually strike as a worker, the freedom dem niggers and womenfolk enjoyed while being kept in their respective places, the freedom of 60 hour work weeks in conditions that cut decades from your life expectancy, the freedom to have your children work to make ends meet. Great times, man, great times. I can see why you in particular would want to go back there.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
This should be obvious to everybody. I expected to see it. I expect it to get worse, too.
Look, we're now fully involved in a worldwide economy. We're competing internationally for international markets. The price of shipping and communication has dropped to next to nothing, and will continue to drop. Many, many jobs are just as easily done elsewhere, and there's more competition for those that remain.
So, if the most valuable skill you can bring to the table is the ability to make tables in Word, or the ability to snap together car parts in a factory, or follow a tech support script, then your pool of competition has grown massively. You're not in competition with the other folks in your neighbourhood for jobs. You're in competition with everyone in the world, and they have lower costs and standards of living.
If, on the other hand, you've learned skills that are rare and valuable worldwide, then, well, you face less competition and a worldwide economy that is growing massively every day. So you'll do well.
This shocks people? Really?
Blaming tech workers for this seems insane. They're the most valuable asset you have. They're helping to keep the economy afloat. The correct course of action is not to attack tech workers, it's to encourage education, in subjects that result in (*cough*) valuable skills. It's to encourage and support tech companies. Encourage immigration by skilled workers. Don't waste the last head start you've got.
Just to be sure, are you talking about the same CRA referred to here?
The one that contains the words "to encourage such institutions to help meet the credit needs of the local communities in which they are chartered consistent with the safe and sound operation of such institutions."?
See, when I read the excerpt it seems to say the exact opposite of the one you got from Fox Noise.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
So it must have evolved from an earlier, simpler economy.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
When a scientist employed by the Naval Research Laboratories invents a better laser, is something of value produced -- yes.
- the same scientist could be working for a private company, doing the same thing.
No, he might not be able too because of the "tragedy of the commons", while as a public employee (employed by the state/by the people) he might move towards a paradigm shift that otherwise wouldnt have happened (or have happened too late compared to other, wiser societies). If the current political system of the US is loosing way too much efficiency by corruption (and it ancient setup) to be of a value is another issue. But a well-organized lean state can make good investments benefiting the society as a whole.
China's economy is booming, as is Korea, Germany, Australia, Brazil.
I'm not sure that a booming economy is really a good measure of future success. The US had a Booming economy only a few years ago, and now they are struggling. China's economy appears to be on a similar or far worse path, with an economic collapse looming overhead. Germany's population is aging and shrinking, both of which have historically been detrimental to the economic stability of the a country. South Korea's population is not only showing signs of shrinking, but it's norther neighbor is still out growing them, which in the case of Korea could mean political instability. Australia and Brazil are certainly going to be interesting to watch. historically neither has been significant in the global economy, but certainly that can change very quickly in troubled times.
I am going to have to call you out on that BS. Provide a source. I will give you one from my own anecdotal data point. I served in the Navy for 6 years. Guess what? I paid federal income taxes. Since I entered the military as a resident of Michigan, I did not have to pay state taxes but that is definitely the exception and not the rule.
Also, my father-in-law works for the government. Guess what? He pays federal taxes too.
Before you go posting your extreme rhetoric around here (and I have seen plenty of your rants about adopting the gold standard and the abolishing the fed for example), please research a little better before posting just incredulously false claims.
incredulously false claims.
- you do realize, you are like a twentieth commenter here with the same BS? You should have read what is written already.
Gov't workers do not pay income taxes because the money that they get from gov't was money that gov't already collected, it's money gov't already had. It pays you the money so that it can collect it back from you, that's not income taxes, that's an illusion created to make it look like gov't workers pay income taxes.
To pay income taxes you have to genuinely earn the money, not from gov't, but from private trade, so that gov't can come in and raid whatever you made via income taxes. Income taxes is money, raided from real workers in real economy (though by the looks of it, now the only economy left in US is gov't, which is my point.)
Any money that you get from gov't as an employee, which then ends up shuffled back to the gov't is not real income taxes, because it doesn't come from any real income. It's gov't shuffling the money it already has to create an illusion.
You can't handle the truth.
At some point, we could just consider that working to get an income is not required anymore:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen%27s_dividend
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income_guarantee
It is disturbing to me that only dotcoms are mentioned in this article. There are a lot of American technology companies that produce actual technology not just put some HTML in front of a database.
Oh, but that requires actual engineering skills. Never mind. Carry on.
Huge tech center. Among the highest per capita income in the nation... all built on taxes paid by the underemployed and the soon to be unemployed.
Silicon Valley makes their own bed. DC sleeps in the beds of others.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Yes, promise people a retirement program, take money from them for all their working lives, and then refuse to give anything back to them when they need it
- the past generations of people voted for the past generations of politicians to get them to be on top of the pyramid scam that SS and Medicare are, and they voted to get the unborn to pay for that in the future.
Swell grandma you got there. AFAIC she deserves the nice clock cleaning, not anybody who doesn't want to pay her from a system, from which she already gotten out of more, than anybody who is paying her today ever will.
You can't handle the truth.
To help people Silicon Valley should mind it's own business and leave all worries to the invisible hand which resides in Wall Street and leads the world in the present era of extreme(peace, security and prosperity). All things are becoming extreme these days.
So... what's the unemployment rate like "within a few blocks of" of Wall street ?
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
What's a pension? /jk, I remember hearing grandpa talk about them...
These modern days, we're told that we need to take responsibility for our own retirement and invest in our 401Ks. In the stock market. Which they've turned into a casino. A rigged one. yeah, that's much better...
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
It's reasonable, and interesting, to ask whether well-off people living in California should worry about their fellow-citizens elsewhere in the USA who are much worse off. After all, you are all citizens of the USA, which has certain values and aspirations.
But it does suggest taking the same argument a little further, and asking whether Americans - on average the wealthiest nation in the world, perhaps with a few limited exceptions - should worry about their fellow human beings in countries where many or most people go hungry, and $100 is a small fortune.
It's one of the big paradoxes of modern politics that the politicians who run the national governments of relatively rich countries (mostly "the West", whatever that may be) feel compelled to make frequent comforting noises about international aid and their duty to the poor abroad. While at the same time, they and the voters who elected them know damn well that "it's the economy, stupid" - that is, the politician's first and foremost duty is to increase (or at least maintain) the standard of living of their voters. If they do that, everything else can be forgiven. If they fail to do that, nothing else can redeem them.
Yet to make Americans relatively better off, the US government must strive mightily to deprive other nations of natural resources and other forms of wealth. Hence the tendency to appear with weapons in hand, bestowing things like "democracy" and "freedom" that cost nothing, while quietly abstracting things like oil and scarce minerals, which are extremely valuable. While "foreign aid", when examined closely, either doesn't materialize at all, or turns out to be tightly linked to purchases of American goods and services, or political and economic policies that suit the USA.
(I use the USA as the most obvious example; however everything I have said applies to other rich nations such as the UK, France, Germany, Japan, etc.)
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
If you want to work, change countries and adjust your lifestyle. You will still live very well, and be able to send yourself and your children to university, especially your children. And you could learn a second or third language too, and learn about other cultures by living there.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
So while we here in Nebraska appreciate the concern, get your ducks in a row and remember who has been stable through the mess the rest of you created. In the meantime, our economy will continue to kick ass despite the best efforts of the coasts.
References:
Blog and newsweek:
http://www.wakeupfromyourslumber.com/blog/andie531/nebraska-bucks-recession
http://www.newsweek.com/2011/01/18/why-the-midwest-fared-best-in-the-recession.html
Happiness:
http://www.mainstreet.com/article/moneyinvesting/news/happiness-index-nebraska-nabs-top-spot
Silicon Valley
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/17/technology/17iht-valley.4.20255686.html Silicon Valley Foreclosure rate
http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2011/02/10/calif-posts-nations-3rd-highest.html
CS: It is all sink or swim...oh and did I mention there are sharks in that water?
You're both partisan cunts. It's the "Military/Industrial/Democratic/Republican/Chinese Perpetual Poverty Economy (tm)," and it is brought to you by Wal Mart. Politics isn't football. These people are all on the same team.
Hey, I finally got my first freak! Took you long enough!
The problem is not the advancement of technology, the problem is the social structure, the production relationships. Our current capitalistic system is not fit for the information revolution. It was fit for the industrial revolution. Capitalism will start blocking real productivity, as best explained here: http://www.cracked.com/article_18817_5-reasons-future-will-be-ruled-by-b.s._p2.html/ As the classics speculated, the new socialist society will emerge from the advanced capitalistic societies.
No, socialism always fails.
Capitalism NEVER blocks productivity - Socailism always blocks progress as it strives to keep things exactly as the way they exist right now.
You are a complete idiot who has never had to work a day for anything in your life!
Where else did you think all the crap loans that the CRA forced the banks to make would wind up,
So I keep hearing, but where did you think all the crap loans that the CRA didn't force the unregulated non-banks to make would wind up? You know, the 50% of the subprime loans made by mortgage brokers and non-bank companies like GM (ditech.com)? What about all the CDOs that were bought up by investment firms like Lehman Brothers?
You're missing an additional 30% of subprime loans that were made by uncovered affiliates of CRA-covered institutions. So yes, about 80% of subprime loans had nothing to do with CRA. And it's also been documented that the subprime loans made by CRA-covered institutions were more affordable, had more conservative credit standards, and have performed better than the average subprime loans from this period.
Are you adequate?
The more my comments are down-moderated as 'troll' (this entire thread), the more I know I am absolutely, irrevocably correct.
You can't handle the truth.
In another 5 years they will be able to pay off their (still deferred) loans with the wheelbarrow of money they get for an allowance, or they could buy a loaf of bread instead...
Cheap storage VM.
You would cite ...
You would put words in my mouth, which means that you have no interest in hearing what someone else says, you wish only to put up your own words and then bat them around.
Bye.
The one that contains the words "to encourage such institutions to help meet the credit needs of the local communities in which they are chartered consistent with the safe and sound operation of such institutions."?
You do understand how such laws are enforced, don't you? Compliance isn't based upon an individual review of each and every loan application, approved and denied, to see if the bank is obeying the laws regarding redlining and other credit practices the CRA was designed to stop. Compliance is based on statistics. X% of your customers live in a certain region, X% of your loans should be coming from that region. There is no review to see if the loans were denied for unsafe or unsound operations, they are simply tallied up and counted against the bank when it comes time for the CRA review.
So, your numbers are sagging from certain neighborhoods. What do you do? You need to approve loans that would otherwise be denied. You may even need to try to SELL loans in that area just to get the numbers up, if there aren't enough qualified applicants.
That's how government regulation works. Statistics. Oregon schools are currently being raked over the coals for Title IX compliance because some of them have a higher percentage of boys competing in athletics than girls. This proves, in government-land, that Title IX is not being complied with. It cannot be that fewer girls want to play sports, it must be that the schools are not giving them equal opportunity. Nobody actually went to the schools and asked the students if they had the opportunity, it would be too hard. So we assume that equal opportunity would result in equal numbers and that there are no other factors in play. Just like the banking regulators assume that CRA compliance would result in "equal numbers" and no other factors are in play.
Ugh I forgot about that. The really REALLY scary part? Is the world thinks the USA will just silently go into that good night and slink into a corner to die when those bubbles burst.
Afraid not as pre WWII Europe showed us what happens to a militaristic society when the shit hits the fan, they start looking for "living space" and I'd argue with all the crap south of the border and the resentment of illegals it really wouldn't be hard to get the American people behind "pulling a Poland" on South America, especially if they promise "bread and jobs" and I would argue that if the president made a deal with Russia, China and India they could probably do so without opposition from anyone outside South America. How? Tell Russia anything they do in Eastern Europe is cool, same for China and Africa, same for India and Afghanistan.
Mark my words we are in for another depression and it is gonna be fugly with a capital FU. The peasants won't just go quietly starve like in the 30s, there are too many guns for that. it is gonna be seriously nasty folks, seriously nasty.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
It might sound strange, but I have hope for humanity. People pulled thru the 1930s depression, and it can happen again. The fear-based crazies are what you have to worry about. They're the ones that will use the weapons. I don't think it will come to that at all.
My parents were born just before the depression and lived thru it all. They understand frugality. Wait until people don't understand frugality, as they'll have a humbling experience.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
The problem with comparing it to the 30s is three things: 1.-rampant inflation will make being frugal an exercise in futility as your money will keep dropping in value every second you hang onto it. Just look at how a bag of groceries that would have cost you $20 ten years ago is more like $50 now. 2.-insane healthcare prices. In the 30s if you were sick you could go to the country doc, hell my grandma traded chickens for healthcare. Today you fall and break a leg depending on where you are it could cost thousands. 3.-lack of agriculture. in the 30s many farms were owned by families so one could trade goods and services for food. Now the vast majority are owned by the megacorps who will simply ship the food overseas and let the poor starve.
So as you see we are talking a VASTLY different situation and like the man a couple of weeks ago in NC who held up a bank for $1 just so he could get medical care in prison things are gonna get REALLY ugly. In the 30s my grandma had a 2 acre farm which she could trade labor for some of her food, raised chickens and hogs which she could get slaughtered for free in return for some of the meat, things just aren't like that anymore. If you don't have money you better have a gun because that is what it looks like it is gonna come down to as we simply don't have the family farms anymore, the banks took those decades ago and sold them to ConAgra.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Truly, the gun thing is overblown. The situation you describe is rife with paranoia. It's that sort of mentality that demonstrates who's able to be a survivor (hint: guns are short term, farming is long term).
I have four gardens right now; big to tiny. All produce. I'm different, admittedly. Lots of people have guns, and most of them have brains. They had guns in the '30s, too. Lots of them. My ancestors had them. But they didn't go uncivil. They worked hard. They made it thru. The megacorps you describe could ship food overseas-- if people could pay for it. It doesn't do much good rotting in the fields, just like subdivisions of empty homes benefits no one. You have no faith in your fellow Americans to do the right thing. Reach out, and you'll be happily amazed.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
No human is "absolutely, irrevocably correct." Therefore, I question whether you are human.
One of the key components of a healthy economy is healthy manufacturing. I don't mean the manufacturing of intellectual IP like programs or television shows, but the creation of cars, washing machines, lathes, and shower curtains. The US has been leaking this economy for years. All of the production that can be done outside of the US (and much of Europe) is being done so because of advantages for doing so. Yes lower wages, lesser environmental controls, but also low energy costs and less taxes. We need to bring manufacturing back. We need to value the industrial infrastructure, and to improve it. I live in Boston - trying to find a place that will sell me simple mechanical parts for a decent price is difficult - everything is eventually manufactured in China, it seems. Without a strong industrial sector, good jobs will disappear.
Economic recovery requires and appreciation of industry, and accommodation of it by government. I don't mean giving into demands of large corporations for tax breaks and so forth, but rather that there be a sincere effort to attract and hold industrial concerns, particularly those which are international in nature, and will bring in more money as the dollar declines in value. There also needs to be low cost, plentiful, and reliable energy - I believe new generations of molten salt nuclear reactors are the best solution. There needs to be an effort to make the populace want to be an engineer or technician and other jobs in industry, rather than lawyers, programmers, musicians, and drug-dealers. There also needs to be tariffs and prohibition against countries that do not support population with the similar or better rights than those in the US & better EU countries. I'll explain that in details later.
When some guy comes along and says you need snake oil. He has a shill that tells you how good it was. You believe them and waste some money. That's getting suckered.
Same story, but instead of some guy, it's bank bigwigs, and instead of some shill, it's everyone you know and all the media you see. Same thing though. GPPP clearly didn't need his house and could not afford it, but got smooth talked into it anyway: suckered.
Suckers aren't blameless, just screwed out of money.
A much wiser man than me once wrote "Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains."
You believe that you can "count on your fellow Americans to do the right thing" and I would point out that many of the megacorps that control so much are NOT Americans, they hold nothing dear to their hearts but wealth, and rotting in the fields? If you haven't noticed this will NOT be a global meltdown, the BRIC are doing quite well in this and will be happy to buy that food for THEIR people while YOURS starve.
Between the corps at the top and waves of illegals at the bottom which in case you've not been informed of current events might want to look at "Aztland video" to see illegals in as far north as Utah using this crisis as an excuse to burn the flag and push their agenda of "Yankee go home the west coast is ours now!" who have NO reason to be civil and EVERY reason to cause as much destruction as they can so they can run the people off their lands and claim it for themselves?
Well I wished I held your belief in your fellow man but frankly I do not sir. Here all the cops are on the take and snitches get fed alive to the chipper, you can yell "immigra!" at any construction site and watch them scatter like deer, and I see endless waves of houses empty because the banks would rather let them rot and take a tax break or a bailout on the property than let the former owner have a roof over their head. And in case you haven't noticed the majority live in cities now, have since the late 60s. you know, those big piles of concrete and asphalt where nothing grows? What do you suggest they do, eat tires?
No sir things are gonna get seriously nasty. The militias and supremacist groups are having their ranks swell like never before, you have the illegals on the west coast wanting nothing more than to take control away from the US, and the south has people with their number painted on the back of their cars because they can't find any work. The turnover in my own building has been more than half these past 6 months not because they found a better place, but because they lost everything including the roof over their head. the lucky ones are sleeping on someone's couch, the unlucky? in their cars in 105 degree heat.
I'm sorry sir but I haven't see any "Americans pulling together" what I have seen is either "fuck you pay me!" or "fuck the poor!" or "We must give teh rich more MONIES nom nom nom". No coming together, no helping each other out. The ideals you speak of? Long since dead I'm afraid. Hell look at congress right this very minute where the teabaggers won't be happy unless they can slash the hell out of aid to the poor at the very worst possible time. Where is their "caring for their fellow Americans"?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I guess we have to disagree. The militias are actually waning, as are some of the stupid white folks behaving badly. The problem with the Internet is that it's autistic, and all sounds are shouted at the same level. They didn't get formed that way-- it's a medium problem.
It's been no fun, but it doesn't have the earmarks of madness you believe it does, IMHO. If you're in a place where they're not helping each other out, move. Or spend some karma.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.