The original stock market crash had a good deal to do with expectations of a poorer business climate brought about by increased taxes and tariffs.
What increase in taxes?
During the 1920s, four tax reduction acts were enacted, with the Revenue Act of 1924 providing tax rebates to individuals for 1923. The corporate income tax rate was slightly higher at the end of the decade than at the beginning, but the overall corporate burden was reduced as a result of the increase in the surtax exemption and the repeal of the war-excess profits and capital stock taxes.
Most of the excise taxes were either repealed or greatly reduced during the 1920s. The only important excise tax existing by the end of the decade was the tax on tobacco, which yielded $434 million in 1929.FEDERAL TAXATION: AN ABBREVIATED HISTORY
Tax increases would come after 1929 - in a failed attempt to balance the federal budget.
As for the tariff, it was orthodox Republicanism:
The return of Republicans to national power in 1920 led to a resumption of protectionist legislation. By now a power in the Senate, Smoot was a close economic adviser to Presidents Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover. In 1923 the Fordney-McCumber Tariff raised rates again, including those on Cuban sugar, a direct competitor with Utah's beet sugar industry. With Smoot's ascension to the chairmanship of the Finance Committee even higher rates were assured. In 1930 President Hoover signed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff which boosted average duties on imports to 53 percent, the highest in American history. While Smoot saw this legislation as the culmination of his protectionist career, most economists then and since have assailed the tariff's disastrous effect on world trade at a time when the domestic economy of the U.S. was already suffering. The higher rates, about one-third greater than previous duties, made it more difficult for foreign nations to purchase American goods and pay off their war debts. In retaliation, some twenty-five nations raised their duties, making American goods more expensive. By the time the Democrats took power in 1932 and lowered the tariffs under the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act in 1934 the world economy was in a tailspin.
Smoot never fully acknowledged the unintended consequences of his legislation. In fact, he argued in the depths of the depression that the rate might not be high enough. The 1930 tariff was "the Great Protectionist's" proudest achievement.Reed Smoot and the Smoot-Hawley Tariff, 1930
The New Deal prolonged the Great Depression by cartelizing key industries. In fact, it was when these policies were repealed in the 1940s that economic growth started to accelerate again.
The U.S. in wartime was a command economy.
The word "cartel" may never have been used, but this was in fact how things got done.
You produced what the government told you to produce. Wages, prices and profits were controlled. Industries were pushed and pummeled into "rationalization." -- all-out production for war.
The Ford Motor Company came within an inch of being nationalized - labor and management at each other's throats, and at the heart of the problem, a rapidly aging, mercurial and paranoid Henry Ford.
The point is not "don't have debt" the point is "don't have debt on your credit cards".
I quite agree that credit card debt can be dangerous. But I would want to read the fine print on a personal line of credit at 5%. To me this sounds like a second mortgage.
Does the shininess of the technology inform us about how many people have bought them?
It tells you why people are buying into HD.
The "overwhelming number" of sets you talk about just might be moving off center stage and into a secondary role - the basement, the bedroom and so on.
The last significant innovations in analog tv were MTS audio, closed captioning.
The "monitor" tv with basic comb filtering, cable and S-video inputs, component video at the high end of the market. The first CRT rear-projection sets priced for the consumer market.
But all this was in place at least fifteen years ago - and sets of that vintage are at end-of-life.
WalMart.com stocks 48 wide screen HDTV sets starting at $250. Eight 1080p models 42-52' The standard definition TV set is disappearing from the shelves.
No one is stocking it and no one is buying it in the numbers which matter anymore.
Looks like someone is connecting all those Vista machines that are not being sold to the internet. I'd like to have me a few of those failures every decade or so.
It interests me that once a Geek gets an idea in his head no force on earth can dislodge it.
Microsoft posts spectacular returns each quarter in the client and office division - online stats show healthy growth for Vista while Linux barely registers a pulse... but "Microsoft is dying."
Such a thing was probably not even considered a possibility all those thirty-odd years ago.
In 1968 Kubrick ordered the destruction of all sets, blueprints, props and miniatures used in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
He did not want to see their re-appearance in cheap knock-off productions. I.e., MGM's endless recycling of the ship and robot created for Forbidden Planet.
Toy versions of the sci-fi props and costumes used in comic strips and the movies appear no later than Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon in the thirties. They became popular again with radio and TV shows like Space Patrol in the fifties.
The way a foundation works is by donating the the interest, not the principal. Therefore, it makes sense that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will only be donating a small portion of its total assets, since the principal will not be touched.
The principal will be touched
"Buffett's gift came with three conditions for the Gates foundation: Bill or Melinda Gates must be alive and active in its administration; it must continue to qualify as a charity; and each year it must give away an amount equal to the previous year's Berkshire gift, plus another 5 percent of net assets.
In October 2006 the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation was split into two entities...also announced was the decision to "... spend all of [the Trust's] resources within 50 years after Bill's and Melinda's deaths." This would close the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust and effectively end the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. In the same announcement it was reiterated that Warren Buffett "... has stipulated that the proceeds from the Berkshire Hathaway shares he still owns at death are to be used for philanthropic purposes within 10 years after his estate has been settled."Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
I would just think there would be an overwhelming amount of TVs in existence which aren't HD, and that it would take a very long time to overcome that number.
There are not an overwhelming number of number of sets that:
1 use advanced display technologies
2 deliver wide screen - large screen - projection - - without the weight and bulk of a CRT
3 output multichannel digital sound
4 include multi-source digital and analog I/O, format conversion and other amenities, as standard
5 and are digital broadcast ready
The HD set is a real step up even at entry level. There has been nothing the like of it since the transistorized color TV set became mass market along about 1968.
Given the interest rates most cards charge, only a mentally defective person would carry a balance on a card and pay it off over time.
It might make perfect sense to maintain a manageable debt load and keep a little more cash on hand for other - opportunistic - purchases, at a significant discount.
The as-new appliance that a neighbor needs to unload quickly because he is moving out of state.
BluRay, apart from quality advances, doesn't really offer anything.
Upconversion can't extract detail that was never recorded.
Tho Blu Ray disk can include things like internet connectivity, uncompressed theater sound. 50 GB storage for the movie and extras. The boxed set that is cheaper to produce and easier to store.
Average people will not spend $400 on new technology especially with an economic recession looming over us.
There was talk that the movie industry would not survive the Great Depression.
RCA stock was hammered in 1929. In 1933 RCA anchors the new Rockefeller Center.
The poorest of the poor might not be able to afford a console - or the movie ticket, but for a everyone else radio and the movies were an escape from hard times.
The economics haven't changed so very much.
HD rentals from Netflix are $20/mo. The six pack of Coke and the microwave popcorn $5 at your neighborhood drugstore. It might be worthwhile to troll the bargain bins for the compatible PS2 or XBox game.
You could come home with a month's worth of entertainment for a family of four and still see change from a $50 bill.
How about "expanding" fair use in the US to what the founding fathers envisioned, and "limiting" the endless copyrights that would have appalled them?
Which "founding father" would that be?
Ben Franklin - who owned the printing press?
The Franklin whose independent and solidly middle class income made charitable gifts of his inventions possible?
In the 150 or so authors represented in the Library of America how many men and women of working class origins do you see before the era of extended copyright and how many after?
Thomas Jefferson, born into the southern plantation elite?
The gentleman farmer who could spend half a lifetime in Europe and never see the industrial revolution in progress?
"Fair Use" doesn't have much meaning in a world where only the slave owner can safely read, write or publish anything - and the only reward for the laborer is bare survival.
It is a world in which the geek can seem altogether too comfortable.
Alexander Hamilton, the tireless campaigner for a strong central government?
The quintessential New Yorker - linked forever to the capitalist's universe of private property, banking, trade and manufacturing?
Oh yeah- I refuse to honor ANY copyright held by a corporation. Only a writer or painter or other artist should hold a copyright. Disney can go to hell (actually he probably already did).
The geek has no conception of art as a collective or corporate enterprise. Shakespeare began as an actor and retired as part owner of a theatrical company. Disney as an independent - largely self-taught - animator in Kansas, of all places.
The geek is obsessed with his right to free entertainment from the major studios. His right to produce derivative works. Fan fiction by any other name.
Let's be honest here.
Steamboat Willie is eight minutes of silent era sight gags with a thin narrative thread and synchronized sound-on-disk. The geek doesn't want Steamboat Willie.
What he wants is the instantly recognizable characters, character designs and voices of the Mouse and Pete as they have evolved in eighty years in of Disney films, comics and videos.
He wants a known-good set of blueprints. He can't hack it on his own.
What should they be famous for ?
* Quoting from a 2000 year old book of myths ?
How many of the geek's sci-fi and fantasy epics quote from that same "2000 year old book of myths?" How much of the whole of western literature and culture?
Why buy a nice Apple Mac Book Pro where you can Build a Desktop that is 3 times more prowerful
because the kind of guy who buys the macbook pro thinks in terms of the billable hour.
the time he would spend shopping for parts and doing minimum wage assembly and testing can be better spent with his family - or simply bringing home the bacon.
So, most of your argument boils down to you being able to play "My Little Pony goes on a Picnic"? That's a magnificent argument for the superiority of proprietary code!
It is however the decisive argument when I am out shopping for a program that will entertain my seven year old niece.
Third, I would love so hear how taking pictures of a property devalues it.
Talk to a realtor who deals in estate homes. Owners of these properties tend to be really, really, prickly about intrusions on their privacy - and safety.
Your complaints don't make sense. Nobody uses Microsoft Office with the specific goal of using Office. They word process, or work with spreadsheets, or make a presentation. All of which can be done under Linux.
Much too simplified - and complacent.
Microsoft offers solutions that work from the server room down to the point of sale.
You want small business accounting integrated with your core office software? Web-based collaboration and document management? [AKA SharePoint] No problemo.
Just because you can't play some specific Windows only game under Linux doesn't make Linux bad.
The thing is, there is - for all practical purposes - no such thing as a Linux-exclusive PC game.
While damn near every mainframe, arcade or PC game ever written can be run directly or under emulation in Windows. Colossal Cave to Bioshock.
You could spend years mining resources like the Underdogs, barely scratch the surface of what is out there. and never spend a dime.
Some of the shit you're used to on Windows isn't going to work under Linux. If you can't deal with that, stop complaining and just use Windows.
Which is what you'll find on 92% of the world's desktops.
Essentially, what this 10% increase means is, that about half of the people who got new hardware also got Vista to it, and nobody switched "mid-life" for their hardware.
Take a look at that graph again and you will see Vista poised to take a 20% share in a month or two - and Vista sales have been strongest in the Premium and Ultimate markets.
The right question to ask is how the adoption rates for Vista compare to Windows MCE and XP Pro.
You should also have noticed that Vista is the only platform showing significant - and accelerating - growth. In the Net Applications stats, Linux is right where the Intel exec would place it: flat-lined at 0.61%.
The OS Statistics from w3Schools exposes trends over five years.
In the W3Schools stats Vista needed only six months to move from a 2% to 8% share. Linux five years to move from 2% to 4%.
The Mac fares no better on a site that targets the web developer.
It's interesting that the testers chose to compare a system running Ultimate with 1 GB RAM with an unknown version of XP.
If I were using Ultimate on the enterprise desktop, I would want it with full disk encryption enabled, TPM enabled. Performance on the lab bench would not be my prime concern.
The integrated Intel graphics chip is going to cut deeply into that 1 GB of RAM available to Vista.
Interesting as well that the testers didn't seem to grasp the differences in the way Vista manages applications and resources. Programs running under Vista should become more responsive the more you use them.
Two companies scrambling to maintain relevance, control and faltering business models in a world of open-source...
a faltering business model isn't generally associated with a company that is reporting 15% growth in revenues in the states, 20% in the EU and 30% in places like China - each quarter.
Nope, the essay is correct. The Democrats are much more in bed with Hollywood than the Republicans are.
The successful Hollywood film generates billions of export dollars. It is a potent expression of American culture abd values, a subversive influence in plsces like China. It is clean industry, skilled labor. It is the electoral votes of California, Florida, New York. The politician of either party ignores it at his peril.
Slashdot Mirror
What increase in taxes?
During the 1920s, four tax reduction acts were enacted, with the Revenue Act of 1924 providing tax rebates to individuals for 1923. The corporate income tax rate was slightly higher at the end of the decade than at the beginning, but the overall corporate burden was reduced as a result of the increase in the surtax exemption and the repeal of the war-excess profits and capital stock taxes.
Most of the excise taxes were either repealed or greatly reduced during the 1920s. The only important excise tax existing by the end of the decade was the tax on tobacco, which yielded $434 million in 1929. FEDERAL TAXATION: AN ABBREVIATED HISTORY
Tax increases would come after 1929 - in a failed attempt to balance the federal budget. As for the tariff, it was orthodox Republicanism:
The return of Republicans to national power in 1920 led to a resumption of protectionist legislation. By now a power in the Senate, Smoot was a close economic adviser to Presidents Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover. In 1923 the Fordney-McCumber Tariff raised rates again, including those on Cuban sugar, a direct competitor with Utah's beet sugar industry. With Smoot's ascension to the chairmanship of the Finance Committee even higher rates were assured. In 1930 President Hoover signed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff which boosted average duties on imports to 53 percent, the highest in American history. While Smoot saw this legislation as the culmination of his protectionist career, most economists then and since have assailed the tariff's disastrous effect on world trade at a time when the domestic economy of the U.S. was already suffering. The higher rates, about one-third greater than previous duties, made it more difficult for foreign nations to purchase American goods and pay off their war debts. In retaliation, some twenty-five nations raised their duties, making American goods more expensive. By the time the Democrats took power in 1932 and lowered the tariffs under the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act in 1934 the world economy was in a tailspin.
Smoot never fully acknowledged the unintended consequences of his legislation. In fact, he argued in the depths of the depression that the rate might not be high enough. The 1930 tariff was "the Great Protectionist's" proudest achievement. Reed Smoot and the Smoot-Hawley Tariff, 1930
The New Deal prolonged the Great Depression by cartelizing key industries. In fact, it was when these policies were repealed in the 1940s that economic growth started to accelerate again.
The U.S. in wartime was a command economy.
The word "cartel" may never have been used, but this was in fact how things got done.
You produced what the government told you to produce. Wages, prices and profits were controlled. Industries were pushed and pummeled into "rationalization." -- all-out production for war.
The Ford Motor Company came within an inch of being nationalized - labor and management at each other's throats, and at the heart of the problem, a rapidly aging, mercurial and paranoid Henry Ford.
I quite agree that credit card debt can be dangerous. But I would want to read the fine print on a personal line of credit at 5%. To me this sounds like a second mortgage.
It tells you why people are buying into HD.
The "overwhelming number" of sets you talk about just might be moving off center stage and into a secondary role - the basement, the bedroom and so on.
The last significant innovations in analog tv were MTS audio, closed captioning.
The "monitor" tv with basic comb filtering, cable and S-video inputs, component video at the high end of the market. The first CRT rear-projection sets priced for the consumer market.
But all this was in place at least fifteen years ago - and sets of that vintage are at end-of-life.
WalMart.com stocks 48 wide screen HDTV sets starting at $250. Eight 1080p models 42-52' The standard definition TV set is disappearing from the shelves.
No one is stocking it and no one is buying it in the numbers which matter anymore.
Can you back this up with hard evidence - not another Slashdot anecdote - or are you just spouting the party line?
It interests me that once a Geek gets an idea in his head no force on earth can dislodge it.
Microsoft posts spectacular returns each quarter in the client and office division - online stats show healthy growth for Vista while Linux barely registers a pulse... but "Microsoft is dying."
In 1968 Kubrick ordered the destruction of all sets, blueprints, props and miniatures used in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
He did not want to see their re-appearance in cheap knock-off productions. I.e., MGM's endless recycling of the ship and robot created for Forbidden Planet.
Toy versions of the sci-fi props and costumes used in comic strips and the movies appear no later than Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon in the thirties. They became popular again with radio and TV shows like Space Patrol in the fifties.
The principal will be touched
"Buffett's gift came with three conditions for the Gates foundation: Bill or Melinda Gates must be alive and active in its administration; it must continue to qualify as a charity; and each year it must give away an amount equal to the previous year's Berkshire gift, plus another 5 percent of net assets.
In October 2006 the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation was split into two entities...also announced was the decision to "... spend all of [the Trust's] resources within 50 years after Bill's and Melinda's deaths." This would close the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust and effectively end the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. In the same announcement it was reiterated that Warren Buffett "... has stipulated that the proceeds from the Berkshire Hathaway shares he still owns at death are to be used for philanthropic purposes within 10 years after his estate has been settled."Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
It is your business not to intrude on the privacy of those living on the properties you are being paid to map - and only to map.
There are not an overwhelming number of number of sets that:
1 use advanced display technologies
2 deliver wide screen - large screen - projection - - without the weight and bulk of a CRT
3 output multichannel digital sound
4 include multi-source digital and analog I/O, format conversion and other amenities, as standard
5 and are digital broadcast ready
The HD set is a real step up even at entry level. There has been nothing the like of it since the transistorized color TV set became mass market along about 1968.
It might make perfect sense to maintain a manageable debt load and keep a little more cash on hand for other - opportunistic - purchases, at a significant discount.
The as-new appliance that a neighbor needs to unload quickly because he is moving out of state.
Upconversion can't extract detail that was never recorded.
Tho Blu Ray disk can include things like internet connectivity, uncompressed theater sound. 50 GB storage for the movie and extras. The boxed set that is cheaper to produce and easier to store.
There was talk that the movie industry would not survive the Great Depression.
RCA stock was hammered in 1929. In 1933 RCA anchors the new Rockefeller Center.
The poorest of the poor might not be able to afford a console - or the movie ticket, but for a everyone else radio and the movies were an escape from hard times.
The economics haven't changed so very much.
HD rentals from Netflix are $20/mo. The six pack of Coke and the microwave popcorn $5 at your neighborhood drugstore. It might be worthwhile to troll the bargain bins for the compatible PS2 or XBox game.
You could come home with a month's worth of entertainment for a family of four and still see change from a $50 bill.
What counter-revolution?
You look at countries like China and what you see is a second capitalist revolution - a world recast in the mold of entrepreneurs like Bill Gates.
60% of Microsoft's revenues come from outside the U.S. and it is seeing 30% growth in emergent markets like China - each quarter.
Wunderman scoops 10 Dubai Lynx awards at 1st Dubai Advertising Festival [Dubai based agency wins awards based on campaigns for Microsoft and others]
Xbox 360 championship [Microsoft sponsors competition that launches Dubai's Mid-East champion professional video game team on a world tour]
How about "expanding" fair use in the US to what the founding fathers envisioned, and "limiting" the endless copyrights that would have appalled them?
Which "founding father" would that be?
Ben Franklin - who owned the printing press?
The Franklin whose independent and solidly middle class income made charitable gifts of his inventions possible?
In the 150 or so authors represented in the Library of America how many men and women of working class origins do you see before the era of extended copyright and how many after?
Thomas Jefferson, born into the southern plantation elite?
The gentleman farmer who could spend half a lifetime in Europe and never see the industrial revolution in progress?
"Fair Use" doesn't have much meaning in a world where only the slave owner can safely read, write or publish anything - and the only reward for the laborer is bare survival.
It is a world in which the geek can seem altogether too comfortable.
Alexander Hamilton, the tireless campaigner for a strong central government?
The quintessential New Yorker - linked forever to the capitalist's universe of private property, banking, trade and manufacturing? Oh yeah- I refuse to honor ANY copyright held by a corporation. Only a writer or painter or other artist should hold a copyright. Disney can go to hell (actually he probably already did).
The geek has no conception of art as a collective or corporate enterprise. Shakespeare began as an actor and retired as part owner of a theatrical company. Disney as an independent - largely self-taught - animator in Kansas, of all places.
The geek is obsessed with his right to free entertainment from the major studios. His right to produce derivative works. Fan fiction by any other name.
Let's be honest here.
Steamboat Willie is eight minutes of silent era sight gags with a thin narrative thread and synchronized sound-on-disk. The geek doesn't want Steamboat Willie.
What he wants is the instantly recognizable characters, character designs and voices of the Mouse and Pete as they have evolved in eighty years in of Disney films, comics and videos.
He wants a known-good set of blueprints. He can't hack it on his own.
* Quoting from a 2000 year old book of myths ?
How many of the geek's sci-fi and fantasy epics quote from that same "2000 year old book of myths?" How much of the whole of western literature and culture?
because the kind of guy who buys the macbook pro thinks in terms of the billable hour.
the time he would spend shopping for parts and doing minimum wage assembly and testing can be better spent with his family - or simply bringing home the bacon.
It is however the decisive argument when I am out shopping for a program that will entertain my seven year old niece.
It was a private road not a public street.
"Expectations of privacy" are rooted in cultural norms not technology - a distinction that the geek too often forgets - or ignores.
Talk to a realtor who deals in estate homes. Owners of these properties tend to be really, really, prickly about intrusions on their privacy - and safety.
Much too simplified - and complacent.
Microsoft offers solutions that work from the server room down to the point of sale.
You want small business accounting integrated with your core office software? Web-based collaboration and document management? [AKA SharePoint] No problemo.
Just because you can't play some specific Windows only game under Linux doesn't make Linux bad.
The thing is, there is - for all practical purposes - no such thing as a Linux-exclusive PC game.
While damn near every mainframe, arcade or PC game ever written can be run directly or under emulation in Windows. Colossal Cave to Bioshock.
You could spend years mining resources like the Underdogs, barely scratch the surface of what is out there. and never spend a dime.
Some of the shit you're used to on Windows isn't going to work under Linux. If you can't deal with that, stop complaining and just use Windows.
Which is what you'll find on 92% of the world's desktops.
Take a look at that graph again and you will see Vista poised to take a 20% share in a month or two - and Vista sales have been strongest in the Premium and Ultimate markets.
The right question to ask is how the adoption rates for Vista compare to Windows MCE and XP Pro.
You should also have noticed that Vista is the only platform showing significant - and accelerating - growth. In the Net Applications stats, Linux is right where the Intel exec would place it: flat-lined at 0.61%.
The OS Statistics from w3Schools exposes trends over five years.
In the W3Schools stats Vista needed only six months to move from a 2% to 8% share. Linux five years to move from 2% to 4%.
The Mac fares no better on a site that targets the web developer.
There are stats that show a very different picture: Top Operating System Share Trend for May, 2007 to March, 2008
Win XP 74% Down From 83%
Vista 14% Up From 4%
It's interesting that the testers chose to compare a system running Ultimate with 1 GB RAM with an unknown version of XP.
If I were using Ultimate on the enterprise desktop, I would want it with full disk encryption enabled, TPM enabled. Performance on the lab bench would not be my prime concern.
The integrated Intel graphics chip is going to cut deeply into that 1 GB of RAM available to Vista.
Interesting as well that the testers didn't seem to grasp the differences in the way Vista manages applications and resources. Programs running under Vista should become more responsive the more you use them.
about 16 million unique visitors to its web sites each month.
who else has but a stockholder shares ownership of a corporation?
a faltering business model isn't generally associated with a company that is reporting 15% growth in revenues in the states, 20% in the EU and 30% in places like China - each quarter.
The successful Hollywood film generates billions of export dollars. It is a potent expression of American culture abd values, a subversive influence in plsces like China. It is clean industry, skilled labor. It is the electoral votes of California, Florida, New York. The politician of either party ignores it at his peril.