1) Force all business to use metric whenever anything is sold or advertized (this doesn't really cost anything).
I have a hard time believing that this wouldn't cost anything. It would have an immediate impact on productivity because consumers aren't used to the metric units, and neither are the business that must change their practices. Another issue is the so called "menu cost" that business types refer to which is the cost of changing prices. Since anything sold by weight would have to be repriced there would be significant costs to change. And then we have to cost of changing our educational system to teach only metric units (replacing text books, retraining teachers, etc.). Any time I hear someone use an argument that states that it will cost nothing the first thing I do is think of the costs and 99.999% of the time there are significant costs.
Personally I have lived in the U.S. and overseas in countries using the metric system. It was a bit awkward at first to use metric units for everything but after a few weeks of using them my mind automatically gives me a rough conversion back to imperial units and when conversing with someone used to the metric system I can convert back to it to explain something like how the weather is or how fast I was speeding the other day.
I do not understand why people are so hung up on switching or not switching. I understand that someone 60+ years old is likely to not want to change and that scientists tend to want change, but I have to ask why? I am guessing that it is because both sides are lazy or set in their ways. Scientists want everyone to conform to their method so that they don't have to think about conversion while most of those against change are just used to imperial units and see no need to change. Personally I am lazy and would rather stick to imperial units because I don't do a lot of conversions and grew up on the imperial system. I have yet to hear a convincing argument as to why we should switch to the metric system. Most arguments come from those who think that America should be like the rest of the world (which is a cop-out argument)or that science uses it and therefore the rest of us should as well (which doesn't apply to 90%+ of Americans that are not involved in scientific calculations on a daily basis). Maybe it's just me but I like pints of beer, gallons of gas, and miles per hour, but it wouldn't kill me to change to litres of beer or gas and kph.
I understand that the idea behind bio-fuels is no net carbon, but the federal government won't implement a tax that calculates net carbon. The will only tax carbon so that they can fuel their pork projects if a carbon tax is ever implemented. A carbon tax is so complicated because how do you determine how much carbon goes into a product? If you think the tax structure is complicated today wait until a carbon tax is passed, it will take 10 CPA's to fill out a "simple" tax form. In actuality a carbon tax already exists to some degree by the simple fact that gasoline has a special tax, it could be expanded but I have never been a fan of giving the federal government more money to waste on their pet projects.
Bio-fuels are a great idea but there are other unintended consequences that people forget about such as top-soil loss, fertalizer runoff, and probably a number of other environmental issues that we have not taken into account yet. The only real solution is to reduce our energy consumtion and rely on solar power. Other solutions have some promise, but wind causes problems with wildlife due to noise, tidal power will affect fish populations, and just about anything we do will cause some type of problem. Is man induced climate change more of a problem than a loss of usable top soil, gigantic oceanic dead zones, and massive losses of fresh water reserves due to irrigation?
I can't answer that question, but the Earth has survived climate change many times but it has never suffered from massive oceanic dead zones caused by fertilizers and top soil runoff. Surely severe climate change will cause problems for many of the species currently on Earth, but our constant deforestation in order to cultivate crops has already killed many more species than climate chnages has in the past 100 years. Growing algea will cause problems as well due to the changes in the chemistry of the water bodies used for cultivation. I accept climatoligists models (well, not the scare tactics that are used, but that some warming will happen due to the human impact on the environment) but they have yet to offer a solution because they only look the climate, they ignore the other side which is deforestation and polution of the oceans. Carbon is only one of many problems that humans have brought down on this planet.
I will be interested to hear any thoughts on how to address the problems associated with bio-fuels or other alternative energy sources that can be implemented in the near future.
If you don't want to rent it out you can also hire a home care company to check on the house periodically. Their rates vary depending on the level of service you want but the will come out and check your water, look for signs of leaks, check temperatures and other simple tasks to ensure that your house doesn't deteriorate. With New England winters you would probably want to ensure that your water pipes are empty, but having soemone come by every once in a while prevents other problems like out of control roof leaks.
Thanks for correcting my grammar, I am always happy to learn. I never was very good at grammar, I did a fair amount of school in Kentucky where grammar is not exactly their strong suit. I have been working on it every since I left that state but still mess things up from time to time.
Yes, the Republicans are truely evil, I heard it a couple of time here... wait no I meant a couple of thousand times.
Vote Libertarian, the only party that is for our civil liberties and responsible government. Democrats are not for liberties, they tote that line but before Bush who made the most extensive use of the NSA wiretapping program (it was around for the past couple of decades)? You guessed it, Clinton. They want to take guns away, ban video games, ban smoking, ban food aditivies, and ban anything that might possibly hurt/offend someone. Repulbicans want to ban gambling and censor the media. As far as I am concerned both major parties are cronies and no one will ever convince me otherwise. Although I don't tote the Libertarian line I do feel that they are out for our freedom much more than any other party, they just have no name candidates with no money to spend on advertising to get their message across. They are a bit extreem in their views on the governments role (like getting rid of corporate controls), but at least they care about protecting our freedoms.
I will agree with you on almost everything, the problem with Clinton is her national image as a coniving politician. She has actually been pretty centrist on most issues buy she has a very bad national image. New York doesn't represent America and her favorible view in New York doesn't translate to national support.
Most Americans don't really care about if we are right of center compared to the rest of the world. What matters to Americans is American issues and our world policies, not really what the rest of the world thinks of us. In the U.S. left of center is left of center to us, it doesn't really matter what left of center in the rest of the world is in an American election.
I would agree with you that there needs to be reform to our health care system, although with our demographics a socialized system really isn't very feasable. The baby boomers are coming into retirement age and having the younger working age citizens pay for it doesn't really work out economically. I also agree that tort reform doesn't completely address the issue although it is a step in the right direction. Lawsuits themselves don't really cause health care costs to go down, insurance is the problem. Reducing malparcitice insurance (a huge percentage of health care costs) would help. More work needs to be done on other issues. I am not really for forcing companies hands because I believe that a free market with controls to keep in in check by anti-monpolistic legislation is the best way. Insurance companies are a huge problem in several ways. They drive down the price they have to pay to health care providers by leveraging their power, then jack up the rates to their customers. This leads to doctors having to charge higher prices to uninsured because they don't make any profit (well, maybe some profit but very slim margins) on payments from insurance companies. Strict regulation of the insurance industry is deperately needed in this country. To me it just doesn't make sense that the insurance industry as a whole made record profits last year after the largest natural disaster in U.S. history. That just shows how broken the insuarnce industry (and legislation governing it) is.
The U.S. government should offer a health plan similar to medicare for all citizens that are unable to afford their own or through their job. That is the step that no one in politics is really ready to make. The costs will be high for such a system but a completely socialized system will result in two major problems. If the government is the one paying doctors they will be unable to make much of a profit, this will reduce the already low numbers of doctors comming from the U.S. American health care provides the highest quality in the world (wealthy foreigners flock to this country for treatment), although it isn't available to all (the problem). A socialized system will reduce this quality. The other major problem with a complety socialized system is the cost. If people think that taxes are high now (they really aren't that bad but if we raise them there are serious economic consequences) they will become outragous in order to fund such a system. In order to balance our budget taxes will have to be on the order of 50-60% of income to support this system and maintain other government programs (I am not for keeping many of them at current levels but the government has a very poor track record of actually cutting spending. Even under Clinton when we had a suprlus it was not due to fiscal responsibility, it was due to very high economic growth and a moderate level of increases in government spending. If you want data on this I can dig it up but our budget never went down in real terms, it only went up at a lower rate than tax revenue. Very similar to the surplus in the 1950's or 60's, I can't remember the year but unexpected growth allowed a surplus back then until the government realized it could raise its budget).
Ultimately socialized medicing would run into the same problems that social security is about to experience. Contrary to poular belief
I actually doubt that the deomcrats will get a President into office. Just looking at the people being considered for President next election the Democrats are talking about extreemists, the Republicans are atalking about McCain. Not that I really belive McCain is a good choice for President, he is a more of a centrist than extreemist. The Democrats were talking about Bayh (spelling?) for a while and he would have been a good candidate, he is centrist.
The extreem left has hijacked the Democrats much like the extreem right has hijacted the Republicans. Since the democrats won this election I think their leadership feels that they now have the mandate that the republicans had and will send another leftist to run for President. During this past election the Democrats had a lot of centrist candidates which helped them win in the battleground states. The problem with this is that those candidates were young and will not be seen as a possible Presidential candidate. They are going to push for Clinton and Obama, both of whom are pretty far left. Neither of them has a chance of winning the Presidency. McCain has shown that he doesn't tote the party line and sticks to his guns which tend to be in the middle (not on all issues but if you look at his track record he tends to be centrist).
The Democras are in a good position to be able to take both congress and the Presidency but their leadership is full of people like Dean, Clinton, and Pelosi. Although Pelosi has suprised me in her poise lately, her track record is one of a leftist. It will be interesting next election but I actually think that the Democrats have their opportunity but will shoot themselves in the foot by running a bad candidate. The Republicans will probably run either McCain or Guliani (spelling?) both of which have been able to be centrists and are well respected but a lot of America. The choice of candidates will leave the majority of Americans (who are not left or right wing) with little choice but to go for the middle ground.
"Suddenly we're talking about deferred financial costs and not "save the whales". Old men in 3 piece suits understand that language even if they care whit about the whales."
You couldn't be more correct. This has actually been a slow moving trend on Wall Street lately as companies that move to green technologies and reduce waste show that their costs go down and the bottom line is improved. It is still a hard argument in industry met with scepticism but when the finance guys run the numbers and show the benfits of not polluting in $ terms the executives eyes light up. The number of green funds has been slowly growing as well as the number of Fortune 500 companies that are working on ways to improve energy efficiency. FedEX put solar panels on one of its facilities that provide about 80% of its power during peak operating times and sells power back to the grid when operations slow down. I don't have any other examples off the top of my head but I am constantly reading about green measures taken by large firms in the WSJ and Business Week. Hopefully I can impact some decisions like this in my soon-to-be corporate/consulting future (I am a techie gone MBA).
I never said that climate change was not happening did I? I was jusy pointing out that studies vary wildly in their timeline. The wait and see approach that people were talking about seems to be the status quo (not that I agree with it). The point is that no one really knows what the outcome of global warming will be other than the planet will change, but the extent (studies vary from 3-10 degree increase over the next 50-100 years) is uncertain and I wish I knew what and when it was going to happen. People like you that read beyond someones comments, and make implications that are not evidenced in their comments are what is wrong with/.
"For those who say times are tough, that we can ill afford sweeping changes because the existing system is already broke or hobbled, consider that the U.S. and the former U.S.S.R. spent over $10 trillion on the Cold War, enough money to replace the entire infrastructure of the world, every school, every hospital, every roadway, building and farm" (p 58).
I would have to disagree with that statement, I think that the most efficient government today would have a hard time replacing just Florida's infrastructure for $10 trillion. I have watched them spend about $250 million on widening a 5 mile stretch of road over the past 5 years on US 41. Replacing everything you speack of would cost $1000's of trillions using the government. Heck, they spend thousands on a hammer, just think of cost of hammers for the entire world. If you want a government (or even worse a bunch of governments) to work on a massive project like this hire me, I'll only charge a few billion and promise completion by 2250:-)
"What I do know is that if the current world response to climate change doesn't change for the better soon, then you will start to see real consequences in the next several decades."
You know that global warming will have grave consequnces in the next few decades? According to many, last years hurricanes were "proof" of global warming. I wish I had the same crystal ball or time machine that you have so the I could "know" the future.
Hmmm... when I used to repair windows machines it was probably my #1 task. Many problems probably could have been fixed but customers didn't want to pay $65/hour to have me remove and reinstall drivers and apps, hack at the regisrty, or whatever else. Actually I rememebr a lot of technet articles that atcually said that reinstallation was the recommended solution. (this was pre XP days, I haven't been in that business since XP was released)
"Its kind of like making a robber pay for your home security system after they get caught. We shouldn't have to pay for it, we are not going to rob our own house."
I also understand your point. I really would like to bill for the % of bandwidth consumed by spam and the time I spend deleting it though. Considering that spam is illegal spammers should not only be fined, they should spend time in prison like any other thief. Spam is worse than telemarketing calls, with them I can check my caller ID and not answer (they don't usually leave a message), with spam I have no choice but to deal with it somehow.
Actually the US recently extended patent protection in order to match international patent laws. Another issue with patents, particularly drugs, is that by the time they go through FDA approval half of the life of the patent is already gone. There probably should be different lengths of patents for different types of technology. With IT, in a number of cases by the patent is approved the technology is no longer relevant. I will not try to say that the patent system is perfect, but having an international standard is very useful when trying to develop a product and much better than each country having its own laws (although many still vary widely).
Copyrights are an entirely differnt matter and I don't really know enough about them to hae an opinion. All that I know is that if I put a copyright symbol on a document and have a way to prove the date of publication I am supposedly protected under US law (if the it is eith written in the US, published in the US, or written by an American). I don't know the duration or anything else.
Well, investments in the US are income earned in the US.
The weakening dollar is helping our balance of trade (it is cheaper for other countries to buy US products and more expensive for us to buy theirs), while our purchasing power parity is not changing within our boarders (this actually bodes well for speculators betting on the USD).
If an American chooses to move to a country that the US doesn't have a tax treaty with (not really that many anymore), than that is your prerogative, don't blame the US government, our tax system is relatively fair. You can debate the fairness of it, it is progressive although probably not a progressive as it should be due to the way Social Security is taxed (only on the first 86K or so).
I think it is ridiculous how people want to trash America when we have the highest number of immigrants fleeing to our country. Many countries people talk about leaving here for are countries with the exact opposite problem. Yes, we are far from perfect, but name a country that is. We have a high per capita GDP (not the highest, but good), low and stable inflation, low unemployment (and don't give me some crap about the way it is calculated, I used OECD stats which are standardized), a stable currency (yes it has depreciated relative to other countries but the EURO is relatively new and the world is hedging its bets, plus our low interest rates are driving FDI down by a modest amount), and a relatively free society. We allow people to voice their opinions, anyone can run for office (if they have the guts and determination), vote (well you do have to be a citizen without a felony... although a number of recounts have shown non-citizens voting as well as convicted felons).
This does sound like it could turn most people off.
On the other hand it could be interesting if they added a few touches to it. Make pork act be a detractor. Blocking a bill could be like defense. Getting involved in a scandal could be another detractor. It might work out that the highest scorer ing legislators were the people that never showed up.
"And don't forget, for all the American's who do want to leave the US, there are still US taxes to pay (unless you renounce one's US citizenship) as the US taxes its citizens regardless of where they live (which in the end just increases one's tax burden)."
I don't know where you get your information, if you live outside the US the first $80K (this may be higher now, the last time I checked though it was this) is completely tax exempt (unless you work for the government). Also any taxes paid overseas are used in total tax burden and if you have to pay higher local taxes than the US would require you won't pay anything.
"Do they feel reporters should be extended the same privileges as the attorney / client relationship?"
I don't think it is anywhere close to the same thing. Reporters are subpoenaed when they are involved in a criminal investigation (i.e. finding the sources of leaks, etc.). This is not the same thing as attorney/client privilege. Of course reporters think that the same laws apply to them, but it isn't the case. I wonder how much these rankings have to do with the way the press operates in different countries and the affairs that the governments are involved in. Obviously the US has more secrets that need to be protected than any other highly ranked country.
On the other hand the US government has a history of going out of their way to cover things up that are not really national security issues (i.e. Monica, Watergate, etc.). When the press gets word of these the government usually tries to keep the press quiet, although the press doesn't even listen when it is a national security issue. I think these rankings are pretty bogus. There needs to be a way to account for criminal investigation/national security issues when the press is "censored" or no country highly involved in world affairs or with a strong military will ever be ranked high, even if their press really has close to free reign.
Personally I don't really care where any country is ranked on this list. Some organization that can't even spell doesn't deserve any spotlight or credibility.
Project Management/Collaboration tools are one of the most useful service available at my University. Another possible option is remote GUI apps (here we have CITRIX and can run common office apps, by this may be too expensive to license). X11 forwarding with access to a word processing app, presentation app, an advanced math application (i'm thinking of software we have available like MatLab, but anything that can solve complicated math), and a spreadsheet app would probably be one of the most cost effective uses. As many others have mentioned more storage is always useful, along with web site perks like MySQL database access are always nice. Here we recently offered a service similar to Facebook for current student and Alumni to network.
The number of possibilities are endless, one thing you should really think about is polling the students that currently use your services. They probably know what they could use more than anyone.
Stock options have a value that is readily available in the market place or through options pricing models. Granting a stock option is the same as granting a stock (although the value isn't the same) in the eyes of the IRS. If you let the option expire the loss can count as an offset to a capital gain (carry back/carry forward rules apply).
This is how a number of criminals are caught, they cheat on their taxes. While in my undergraduate program the IRS came to recruit people, they wern't looking for accountants to work in an office, they were looking for agents to infiltrate crime and use the tax code to prosecute them. I don't believe the IRS will go after a thief if they pay their taxes, they probably won't even turn you over to the FBI or a local authority as long as you pay them.
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I have a hard time believing that this wouldn't cost anything. It would have an immediate impact on productivity because consumers aren't used to the metric units, and neither are the business that must change their practices. Another issue is the so called "menu cost" that business types refer to which is the cost of changing prices. Since anything sold by weight would have to be repriced there would be significant costs to change. And then we have to cost of changing our educational system to teach only metric units (replacing text books, retraining teachers, etc.). Any time I hear someone use an argument that states that it will cost nothing the first thing I do is think of the costs and 99.999% of the time there are significant costs.
Personally I have lived in the U.S. and overseas in countries using the metric system. It was a bit awkward at first to use metric units for everything but after a few weeks of using them my mind automatically gives me a rough conversion back to imperial units and when conversing with someone used to the metric system I can convert back to it to explain something like how the weather is or how fast I was speeding the other day.
I do not understand why people are so hung up on switching or not switching. I understand that someone 60+ years old is likely to not want to change and that scientists tend to want change, but I have to ask why? I am guessing that it is because both sides are lazy or set in their ways. Scientists want everyone to conform to their method so that they don't have to think about conversion while most of those against change are just used to imperial units and see no need to change. Personally I am lazy and would rather stick to imperial units because I don't do a lot of conversions and grew up on the imperial system. I have yet to hear a convincing argument as to why we should switch to the metric system. Most arguments come from those who think that America should be like the rest of the world (which is a cop-out argument)or that science uses it and therefore the rest of us should as well (which doesn't apply to 90%+ of Americans that are not involved in scientific calculations on a daily basis). Maybe it's just me but I like pints of beer, gallons of gas, and miles per hour, but it wouldn't kill me to change to litres of beer or gas and kph.
I understand that the idea behind bio-fuels is no net carbon, but the federal government won't implement a tax that calculates net carbon. The will only tax carbon so that they can fuel their pork projects if a carbon tax is ever implemented. A carbon tax is so complicated because how do you determine how much carbon goes into a product? If you think the tax structure is complicated today wait until a carbon tax is passed, it will take 10 CPA's to fill out a "simple" tax form. In actuality a carbon tax already exists to some degree by the simple fact that gasoline has a special tax, it could be expanded but I have never been a fan of giving the federal government more money to waste on their pet projects.
Bio-fuels are a great idea but there are other unintended consequences that people forget about such as top-soil loss, fertalizer runoff, and probably a number of other environmental issues that we have not taken into account yet. The only real solution is to reduce our energy consumtion and rely on solar power. Other solutions have some promise, but wind causes problems with wildlife due to noise, tidal power will affect fish populations, and just about anything we do will cause some type of problem. Is man induced climate change more of a problem than a loss of usable top soil, gigantic oceanic dead zones, and massive losses of fresh water reserves due to irrigation?
I can't answer that question, but the Earth has survived climate change many times but it has never suffered from massive oceanic dead zones caused by fertilizers and top soil runoff. Surely severe climate change will cause problems for many of the species currently on Earth, but our constant deforestation in order to cultivate crops has already killed many more species than climate chnages has in the past 100 years. Growing algea will cause problems as well due to the changes in the chemistry of the water bodies used for cultivation. I accept climatoligists models (well, not the scare tactics that are used, but that some warming will happen due to the human impact on the environment) but they have yet to offer a solution because they only look the climate, they ignore the other side which is deforestation and polution of the oceans. Carbon is only one of many problems that humans have brought down on this planet.
I will be interested to hear any thoughts on how to address the problems associated with bio-fuels or other alternative energy sources that can be implemented in the near future.
If carbon were taxed biofuels would also be taxed since they also produce carbon dioxide.
If you don't want to rent it out you can also hire a home care company to check on the house periodically. Their rates vary depending on the level of service you want but the will come out and check your water, look for signs of leaks, check temperatures and other simple tasks to ensure that your house doesn't deteriorate. With New England winters you would probably want to ensure that your water pipes are empty, but having soemone come by every once in a while prevents other problems like out of control roof leaks.
Thanks for correcting my grammar, I am always happy to learn. I never was very good at grammar, I did a fair amount of school in Kentucky where grammar is not exactly their strong suit. I have been working on it every since I left that state but still mess things up from time to time.
Yes, the Republicans are truely evil, I heard it a couple of time here... wait no I meant a couple of thousand times.
Vote Libertarian, the only party that is for our civil liberties and responsible government. Democrats are not for liberties, they tote that line but before Bush who made the most extensive use of the NSA wiretapping program (it was around for the past couple of decades)? You guessed it, Clinton. They want to take guns away, ban video games, ban smoking, ban food aditivies, and ban anything that might possibly hurt/offend someone. Repulbicans want to ban gambling and censor the media. As far as I am concerned both major parties are cronies and no one will ever convince me otherwise. Although I don't tote the Libertarian line I do feel that they are out for our freedom much more than any other party, they just have no name candidates with no money to spend on advertising to get their message across. They are a bit extreem in their views on the governments role (like getting rid of corporate controls), but at least they care about protecting our freedoms.
I will agree with you on almost everything, the problem with Clinton is her national image as a coniving politician. She has actually been pretty centrist on most issues buy she has a very bad national image. New York doesn't represent America and her favorible view in New York doesn't translate to national support.
Most Americans don't really care about if we are right of center compared to the rest of the world. What matters to Americans is American issues and our world policies, not really what the rest of the world thinks of us. In the U.S. left of center is left of center to us, it doesn't really matter what left of center in the rest of the world is in an American election.
I would agree with you that there needs to be reform to our health care system, although with our demographics a socialized system really isn't very feasable. The baby boomers are coming into retirement age and having the younger working age citizens pay for it doesn't really work out economically. I also agree that tort reform doesn't completely address the issue although it is a step in the right direction. Lawsuits themselves don't really cause health care costs to go down, insurance is the problem. Reducing malparcitice insurance (a huge percentage of health care costs) would help. More work needs to be done on other issues. I am not really for forcing companies hands because I believe that a free market with controls to keep in in check by anti-monpolistic legislation is the best way. Insurance companies are a huge problem in several ways. They drive down the price they have to pay to health care providers by leveraging their power, then jack up the rates to their customers. This leads to doctors having to charge higher prices to uninsured because they don't make any profit (well, maybe some profit but very slim margins) on payments from insurance companies. Strict regulation of the insurance industry is deperately needed in this country. To me it just doesn't make sense that the insurance industry as a whole made record profits last year after the largest natural disaster in U.S. history. That just shows how broken the insuarnce industry (and legislation governing it) is.
The U.S. government should offer a health plan similar to medicare for all citizens that are unable to afford their own or through their job. That is the step that no one in politics is really ready to make. The costs will be high for such a system but a completely socialized system will result in two major problems. If the government is the one paying doctors they will be unable to make much of a profit, this will reduce the already low numbers of doctors comming from the U.S. American health care provides the highest quality in the world (wealthy foreigners flock to this country for treatment), although it isn't available to all (the problem). A socialized system will reduce this quality. The other major problem with a complety socialized system is the cost. If people think that taxes are high now (they really aren't that bad but if we raise them there are serious economic consequences) they will become outragous in order to fund such a system. In order to balance our budget taxes will have to be on the order of 50-60% of income to support this system and maintain other government programs (I am not for keeping many of them at current levels but the government has a very poor track record of actually cutting spending. Even under Clinton when we had a suprlus it was not due to fiscal responsibility, it was due to very high economic growth and a moderate level of increases in government spending. If you want data on this I can dig it up but our budget never went down in real terms, it only went up at a lower rate than tax revenue. Very similar to the surplus in the 1950's or 60's, I can't remember the year but unexpected growth allowed a surplus back then until the government realized it could raise its budget).
Ultimately socialized medicing would run into the same problems that social security is about to experience. Contrary to poular belief
I actually doubt that the deomcrats will get a President into office. Just looking at the people being considered for President next election the Democrats are talking about extreemists, the Republicans are atalking about McCain. Not that I really belive McCain is a good choice for President, he is a more of a centrist than extreemist. The Democrats were talking about Bayh (spelling?) for a while and he would have been a good candidate, he is centrist.
The extreem left has hijacked the Democrats much like the extreem right has hijacted the Republicans. Since the democrats won this election I think their leadership feels that they now have the mandate that the republicans had and will send another leftist to run for President. During this past election the Democrats had a lot of centrist candidates which helped them win in the battleground states. The problem with this is that those candidates were young and will not be seen as a possible Presidential candidate. They are going to push for Clinton and Obama, both of whom are pretty far left. Neither of them has a chance of winning the Presidency. McCain has shown that he doesn't tote the party line and sticks to his guns which tend to be in the middle (not on all issues but if you look at his track record he tends to be centrist).
The Democras are in a good position to be able to take both congress and the Presidency but their leadership is full of people like Dean, Clinton, and Pelosi. Although Pelosi has suprised me in her poise lately, her track record is one of a leftist. It will be interesting next election but I actually think that the Democrats have their opportunity but will shoot themselves in the foot by running a bad candidate. The Republicans will probably run either McCain or Guliani (spelling?) both of which have been able to be centrists and are well respected but a lot of America. The choice of candidates will leave the majority of Americans (who are not left or right wing) with little choice but to go for the middle ground.
"Suddenly we're talking about deferred financial costs and not "save the whales". Old men in 3 piece suits understand that language even if they care whit about the whales."
You couldn't be more correct. This has actually been a slow moving trend on Wall Street lately as companies that move to green technologies and reduce waste show that their costs go down and the bottom line is improved. It is still a hard argument in industry met with scepticism but when the finance guys run the numbers and show the benfits of not polluting in $ terms the executives eyes light up. The number of green funds has been slowly growing as well as the number of Fortune 500 companies that are working on ways to improve energy efficiency. FedEX put solar panels on one of its facilities that provide about 80% of its power during peak operating times and sells power back to the grid when operations slow down. I don't have any other examples off the top of my head but I am constantly reading about green measures taken by large firms in the WSJ and Business Week. Hopefully I can impact some decisions like this in my soon-to-be corporate/consulting future (I am a techie gone MBA).
I never said that climate change was not happening did I? I was jusy pointing out that studies vary wildly in their timeline. The wait and see approach that people were talking about seems to be the status quo (not that I agree with it). The point is that no one really knows what the outcome of global warming will be other than the planet will change, but the extent (studies vary from 3-10 degree increase over the next 50-100 years) is uncertain and I wish I knew what and when it was going to happen. People like you that read beyond someones comments, and make implications that are not evidenced in their comments are what is wrong with /.
"For those who say times are tough, that we can ill afford sweeping changes because the existing system is already broke or hobbled, consider that the U.S. and the former U.S.S.R. spent over $10 trillion on the Cold War, enough money to replace the entire infrastructure of the world, every school, every hospital, every roadway, building and farm" (p 58).
:-)
I would have to disagree with that statement, I think that the most efficient government today would have a hard time replacing just Florida's infrastructure for $10 trillion. I have watched them spend about $250 million on widening a 5 mile stretch of road over the past 5 years on US 41. Replacing everything you speack of would cost $1000's of trillions using the government. Heck, they spend thousands on a hammer, just think of cost of hammers for the entire world. If you want a government (or even worse a bunch of governments) to work on a massive project like this hire me, I'll only charge a few billion and promise completion by 2250
"What I do know is that if the current world response to climate change doesn't change for the better soon, then you will start to see real consequences in the next several decades."
You know that global warming will have grave consequnces in the next few decades? According to many, last years hurricanes were "proof" of global warming. I wish I had the same crystal ball or time machine that you have so the I could "know" the future.
"But you did deal with telemarketing...by purchasing caller id."
No, I have a cell phone and my service comes with caller id... but you do have another good point.
Hmmm... when I used to repair windows machines it was probably my #1 task. Many problems probably could have been fixed but customers didn't want to pay $65/hour to have me remove and reinstall drivers and apps, hack at the regisrty, or whatever else. Actually I rememebr a lot of technet articles that atcually said that reinstallation was the recommended solution. (this was pre XP days, I haven't been in that business since XP was released)
"Its kind of like making a robber pay for your home security system after they get caught. We shouldn't have to pay for it, we are not going to rob our own house."
I also understand your point. I really would like to bill for the % of bandwidth consumed by spam and the time I spend deleting it though. Considering that spam is illegal spammers should not only be fined, they should spend time in prison like any other thief. Spam is worse than telemarketing calls, with them I can check my caller ID and not answer (they don't usually leave a message), with spam I have no choice but to deal with it somehow.
"But you need to look at the other side of things too. Anti-spam companies are making a lot of money from spam too."
Another cost that spammers should have to fund when they are caught. We shouldn't have to pay for anti-spam services, the spammers should.
Actually the US recently extended patent protection in order to match international patent laws. Another issue with patents, particularly drugs, is that by the time they go through FDA approval half of the life of the patent is already gone. There probably should be different lengths of patents for different types of technology. With IT, in a number of cases by the patent is approved the technology is no longer relevant. I will not try to say that the patent system is perfect, but having an international standard is very useful when trying to develop a product and much better than each country having its own laws (although many still vary widely).
Copyrights are an entirely differnt matter and I don't really know enough about them to hae an opinion. All that I know is that if I put a copyright symbol on a document and have a way to prove the date of publication I am supposedly protected under US law (if the it is eith written in the US, published in the US, or written by an American). I don't know the duration or anything else.
Well, investments in the US are income earned in the US.
The weakening dollar is helping our balance of trade (it is cheaper for other countries to buy US products and more expensive for us to buy theirs), while our purchasing power parity is not changing within our boarders (this actually bodes well for speculators betting on the USD).
If an American chooses to move to a country that the US doesn't have a tax treaty with (not really that many anymore), than that is your prerogative, don't blame the US government, our tax system is relatively fair. You can debate the fairness of it, it is progressive although probably not a progressive as it should be due to the way Social Security is taxed (only on the first 86K or so).
I think it is ridiculous how people want to trash America when we have the highest number of immigrants fleeing to our country. Many countries people talk about leaving here for are countries with the exact opposite problem. Yes, we are far from perfect, but name a country that is. We have a high per capita GDP (not the highest, but good), low and stable inflation, low unemployment (and don't give me some crap about the way it is calculated, I used OECD stats which are standardized), a stable currency (yes it has depreciated relative to other countries but the EURO is relatively new and the world is hedging its bets, plus our low interest rates are driving FDI down by a modest amount), and a relatively free society. We allow people to voice their opinions, anyone can run for office (if they have the guts and determination), vote (well you do have to be a citizen without a felony... although a number of recounts have shown non-citizens voting as well as convicted felons).
This does sound like it could turn most people off.
On the other hand it could be interesting if they added a few touches to it. Make pork act be a detractor. Blocking a bill could be like defense. Getting involved in a scandal could be another detractor. It might work out that the highest scorer ing legislators were the people that never showed up.
"And don't forget, for all the American's who do want to leave the US, there are still US taxes to pay (unless you renounce one's US citizenship) as the US taxes its citizens regardless of where they live (which in the end just increases one's tax burden)."
I don't know where you get your information, if you live outside the US the first $80K (this may be higher now, the last time I checked though it was this) is completely tax exempt (unless you work for the government). Also any taxes paid overseas are used in total tax burden and if you have to pay higher local taxes than the US would require you won't pay anything.
"Do they feel reporters should be extended the same privileges as the attorney / client relationship?"
I don't think it is anywhere close to the same thing. Reporters are subpoenaed when they are involved in a criminal investigation (i.e. finding the sources of leaks, etc.). This is not the same thing as attorney/client privilege. Of course reporters think that the same laws apply to them, but it isn't the case. I wonder how much these rankings have to do with the way the press operates in different countries and the affairs that the governments are involved in. Obviously the US has more secrets that need to be protected than any other highly ranked country.
On the other hand the US government has a history of going out of their way to cover things up that are not really national security issues (i.e. Monica, Watergate, etc.). When the press gets word of these the government usually tries to keep the press quiet, although the press doesn't even listen when it is a national security issue. I think these rankings are pretty bogus. There needs to be a way to account for criminal investigation/national security issues when the press is "censored" or no country highly involved in world affairs or with a strong military will ever be ranked high, even if their press really has close to free reign.
Personally I don't really care where any country is ranked on this list. Some organization that can't even spell doesn't deserve any spotlight or credibility.
Project Management/Collaboration tools are one of the most useful service available at my University. Another possible option is remote GUI apps (here we have CITRIX and can run common office apps, by this may be too expensive to license). X11 forwarding with access to a word processing app, presentation app, an advanced math application (i'm thinking of software we have available like MatLab, but anything that can solve complicated math), and a spreadsheet app would probably be one of the most cost effective uses. As many others have mentioned more storage is always useful, along with web site perks like MySQL database access are always nice. Here we recently offered a service similar to Facebook for current student and Alumni to network.
The number of possibilities are endless, one thing you should really think about is polling the students that currently use your services. They probably know what they could use more than anyone.
Stock options have a value that is readily available in the market place or through options pricing models. Granting a stock option is the same as granting a stock (although the value isn't the same) in the eyes of the IRS. If you let the option expire the loss can count as an offset to a capital gain (carry back/carry forward rules apply).
This is how a number of criminals are caught, they cheat on their taxes. While in my undergraduate program the IRS came to recruit people, they wern't looking for accountants to work in an office, they were looking for agents to infiltrate crime and use the tax code to prosecute them. I don't believe the IRS will go after a thief if they pay their taxes, they probably won't even turn you over to the FBI or a local authority as long as you pay them.