MS is actually a bit late to the finger touch screen game. They have done the stylus thing for years, but people weren't buying those in large numbers.
or to use a car analogy, you don't have manufacturers coming up with their own weird basic control UIs
You certainly did in the early days!
We're only a few years in to the finger touchscreen smartphone. I don't think that anyone would claim that WebOS, iOS, Windows, or Android has the touch interface perfected just yet.
Will it let me play flash games on the wife's stupid iPhone, or do I still have to pony up $2 each time I'm bored?
Why don't you buy your own phone? You can get a Flash-capable one, though I don't think you'll be happy with the Flash games that are designed for a mouse or keyboard when you are on a smartphone.
People seem to forget that every time. It's also one of the reasons why HTML5 video will never replace Flash completely.
I think people forget it because video is Flash's "killer app". Sure, there are Flash ads and Flash games - heck, there are even real Flash applications - but there is a reason that Apple includes a YouTube app on their phones and tablets that don't support Flash. No Flash was not a big deal, but no YouTube would have been a deal-killer for a lot of potential customers.
I think a CEO can be a professional. Certainly they can also be "some idiot" with an MBA, but he/she can also be a professional. Certainly having some founder's son in charge who happens to own a bunch of the company doesn't make you inherently better off as a stockholder than having a professional in charge. Many formerly successful companies have died at the hand of the founder's children.
But most of all, I don't think that people who build companies are "always far more successful". First of all, most companies fail - so right off, most people who build companies fail. A few companies either get lucky with timing or innovate in some way, and many of these companies are built around their founder's unique personality. The founder doesn't necessarily have a business education, and probably isn't prioritizing very long-term sustainability. When the founder dies or is otherwise displaced, a company that is built around his unique personality is never going to be the same. Some will adapt and be just fine (IBM), and others will wither and die (A&P).
Why in the world not? All that would do is force people to set up dummy corporations around each patent, so that you are selling the "corporation" and not the patent.
all of the legal cost will be recouped through end-user pricing.
That's not how commodity pricing works at all. HTC can't suddenly jack up the price of their Android phones and expect to get it - they'd have their clock cleaned by Motorola and Samsung. Apple has a little more room for price increases, I suppose, but even they would have to swallow most of any huge settlement or loss.
In other words, the phones are already priced for maximum profit - changing the underlying cost doesn't really change the whole supply/demand curve.
Are you suggesting that the concept of debt doesn't exist? That there is only having money and spending money?
Of course not. But while you can loan yourself money, the net is zero and the effect meaningless.
I see no issue with planning ahead, running a surplus when times are good, and folloing your system of automatic adjustments as a base line.
I see no problem with that in principle, but in practice there is nowhere to put the money. It's a lot of money - hell, it's so much money that simply keeping it as a cash balance would probably threaten deflation. Equities markets are straight out. The only reasonable place to "put" the money is in US t-bills... which increases the US government debt. So it turns out not to be such a great idea.
think it could be used quite easily as leverage to dismantle SS all together.
I'm afraid it will get hit as soon as it starts taking serious money out of the federal budget.
I also fear how the system would opperate in a down-turned economy such as now.
First of all, I would set the payroll deduction with a moving 3-or-5-year average so that there wouldn't be any wild swings. In the event of a horrid downturn like we're in now, that would still mean a payroll tax increase. However, congress could easily subsidize the system as part of a stimulus, just like they did with the current system's payroll deduction.
instead of being as we both wish, independent.
True, it will never be truly independent - I mean, it's still a government entity. And it's not constitutionally guaranteed or anything, so congress can do with it whatever they wish at any time. Given those constraints, I don't see how it could be made any more independent than giving it it's own source of revenue, and with no financial connection to the general fund.
Leanding money != Spending money. The SSI trust has not been "spent". The SSI trust will continue to grow for the next 6 years.
That's just an accounting trick. If I give you a dollar, but then you spend the dollar and replace it with a piece of paper that says, "I owe me $1", it doesn't change the fact that you spent the dollar and have nothing to show for it but a piece of paper. The trust fund exists in concept only.
Social Security has created no debt for our children. Congresses willingness to borrow from the trust has created that debt.
Correct, but the system was gamed to begin with. Social Security should not have been allowed to have "surplus". The only reasonable thing to do with it is buy treasuries, which is of course debt for the children of the boomers to pay.
If the SS trust did not exist or was constitutionally protected, Congress would have just borrow the money from another source. We would have incurred the debt whether it came from the SS trust, bonds, a trillion dollar platinum coin, etc...
It's certainly possible. But the trust fund gave them political cover - most of the time you hear the deficit reported it excludes the money borrowed from the trust fund. Same with total debt. This made it seem like the government had its books in order when it didn't, which let the politicians spend more money.
And getting rid of SS won't solve the problem unless we cut it off right now and forgive the debt we owe ourselves.
I'm not suggesting anything so radical. I'm simply suggesting that the payroll tax be reduced to cover only current costs, but that it be allowed to rise automatically as needed. This would force politicians not to hide spending in the "trust fund", and it would prevent social security from being blamed for overall budget problems because it would be self-sufficient. I don't really care what they do with the "trust fund", since it is just a bunch of modified T-Bills. I don't really care if they "pay" them down by raising taxes or cutting spending or dissolving them in an act of congress. The practical result is the same - it's just a matter of whether the money comes from the payroll tax or the general fund - same thing in my mind.
And that if we continue to do nothing, the SSI trust will be spent by 2040.
Ahh, but that trust has already been spent. So drawing it down will result in either borrowing or increased taxes - so Social Security is already part of our strained federal budget. By design. The "trust fund" was a huge mistake. If it was intentional, then it was a scam. It gave baby boomers a false sense of security and it gave their kids hundreds of billions in debt. Meanwhile, the government could spend the money coming in from everyone's payroll taxes. Brilliant, evil, or stupid - depending on perspective:) I think the "smart" thing to do is index the payroll tax to costs so that it automatically goes up or down based on the current cost of the system. Then let the politicians dicker over benefits to suit their taste for "automatic" payroll tax increases.
It's very dishonest - I'd argue immoral - for a current government to promise future benefits.
It's because Senate after Senate has voted to borrow money from the SSI trust fund.
Indeed, but what else should they do with it? What safer investment is there besides treasuries? I'd have preferred a lower payroll tax offset by higher general taxes.
Medicare and Medicaide, yeah, we've got issues there, fundamental issues with how our economy and health sector interact, and nothing short some form of universal coverage is going to fix that. But that is a huge topic fit for a thread of its own.
If we could solve it in one thread, I'd be all for it!:)
Nonsense. Growth companies are exceedingly common - pretty much any company that doesn't pay a dividend.
And even dividend companies are under pressure to produce steady, consistent returns. Predictability that the big institutions can use to sell their funds to people with income-centered portfolios.
True that companies like "Ben and Jerry's" were the exception when it comes to activism, but the profit/growth balance is all over the map.
Corporations may have to work to maximise profits,
They mostly don't even have to do that, if that's not what their shareholders want. Even in purely economic terms, some shareholders want growth over profit. Some want to stay in a particular location rather than make more money offshore. Some want to address social or environmental concerns. Corporations have to look after the interests of their owners, but that doesn't mean the owner's interests are always "maximize profit".
The housing bubble was a symptom of excess liquidity in the credit market.
Isn't it a bit more complicated than that? Yes, there was excess liquidity, which itself has many causes. But there was also a de-facto government guarantee of most of the mortgages out there (from Sallie Mae and Freddie Mac). The government also encouraged risky lending to puff it's chest about improving home ownership numbers. And of course you have fraud committed by brokers and borrowers - but just a smidge of due diligence should have protected against that, so you also have gross incompetence from investors.
So, yes, you can go after excess liquidity. But I think ignoring the other causes is at our own peril. And while I agree that privatized retirement plans add to liquidity, but I'm not sure what alternative there is. Sure, unions and government employees have massive retirement funds tied up in equities and bonds ($13 trillion?). Sure, there are trillions of dollars in 401(k) plans($4 trillion?). But frankly, watching Europe implode fiscally does not make me want to jump over to government-guaranteed plans anymore than we already are. Most of the US fiscal trouble already comes from our entitlement programs, and making them into European style plans would only make the problem worse. To look at it another way, it probably doesn't make a difference whether you back our retirements with securities and bonds (the national economy) or the good faith of the government - at the end of the day they are one and the same. If the economy tanks, the government is left with no cash and must eventually undertake "austerity" measures. If the economy tanks, the economic investments are worth much less. Either way, retirees lose.
I agree that banks are under-regulated, and the joke of reform passed last year is over-complicated and creates a powerful federal agency just screaming for corruption. There was also very loose policy at the fed - the fed rate was quite low. And of course they let the banks get over-leveraged, which happened in Europe, too, by the way. I'm afraid I don't see much meaningful reform on this point.
And yes, consolidation of wealth certainly does not help when there is an excess of liquidity - but I'd like to point out that we seem to have a shortage of liquidity and the wealth gap has only expanded since 2007. I won't claim this disproves any effect because the crash was certainly an anomalous event, but it does show that there are other forces besides wealth concentration at work.
Living in a capitalist world is not an excuse for acting like an asshole.
I hear you, but I guess I have three questions: - Who is being hurt by the large salary for the CEO? - Who gets to determine what is and isn't reasonable? - What is your proposed remedy or remedies?
I'm not saying we should go full commie, but our economy was significantly more healthy in times in which our wealth distribution was significantly more narrow than it is now.
That's an interesting correlation, but is it the cause or the effect? If you treat the symptom (wealth distribution) rather than the cause (housing bubble?), are you really solving anything?
High remuneration of CEOs may be ok when there is a high risk, but today, where is the risk?
If you are a stockholder, I can see your anger. But if you aren't, what do you care? If the company is harmed by the CEO getting compensated too much, it will suffer - but how does that affect you?
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Microsoft has been riding that train forever.
MS is actually a bit late to the finger touch screen game. They have done the stylus thing for years, but people weren't buying those in large numbers.
or to use a car analogy, you don't have manufacturers coming up with their own weird basic control UIs
You certainly did in the early days!
We're only a few years in to the finger touchscreen smartphone. I don't think that anyone would claim that WebOS, iOS, Windows, or Android has the touch interface perfected just yet.
Dewey Defeats Truman!
Will it let me play flash games on the wife's stupid iPhone, or do I still have to pony up $2 each time I'm bored?
Why don't you buy your own phone? You can get a Flash-capable one, though I don't think you'll be happy with the Flash games that are designed for a mouse or keyboard when you are on a smartphone.
People seem to forget that every time. It's also one of the reasons why HTML5 video will never replace Flash completely.
I think people forget it because video is Flash's "killer app". Sure, there are Flash ads and Flash games - heck, there are even real Flash applications - but there is a reason that Apple includes a YouTube app on their phones and tablets that don't support Flash. No Flash was not a big deal, but no YouTube would have been a deal-killer for a lot of potential customers.
Very few bananas are produced in the US.
I don't agree with your thesis.
I think a CEO can be a professional. Certainly they can also be "some idiot" with an MBA, but he/she can also be a professional. Certainly having some founder's son in charge who happens to own a bunch of the company doesn't make you inherently better off as a stockholder than having a professional in charge. Many formerly successful companies have died at the hand of the founder's children.
But most of all, I don't think that people who build companies are "always far more successful". First of all, most companies fail - so right off, most people who build companies fail. A few companies either get lucky with timing or innovate in some way, and many of these companies are built around their founder's unique personality. The founder doesn't necessarily have a business education, and probably isn't prioritizing very long-term sustainability. When the founder dies or is otherwise displaced, a company that is built around his unique personality is never going to be the same. Some will adapt and be just fine (IBM), and others will wither and die (A&P).
You shouldn't be able to sell a patent. Period.
Why in the world not? All that would do is force people to set up dummy corporations around each patent, so that you are selling the "corporation" and not the patent.
all of the legal cost will be recouped through end-user pricing.
That's not how commodity pricing works at all. HTC can't suddenly jack up the price of their Android phones and expect to get it - they'd have their clock cleaned by Motorola and Samsung. Apple has a little more room for price increases, I suppose, but even they would have to swallow most of any huge settlement or loss.
In other words, the phones are already priced for maximum profit - changing the underlying cost doesn't really change the whole supply/demand curve.
it's just much worsely written than most...
The worsest. :)
Are you suggesting that the concept of debt doesn't exist? That there is only having money and spending money?
Of course not. But while you can loan yourself money, the net is zero and the effect meaningless.
I see no issue with planning ahead, running a surplus when times are good, and folloing your system of automatic adjustments as a base line.
I see no problem with that in principle, but in practice there is nowhere to put the money. It's a lot of money - hell, it's so much money that simply keeping it as a cash balance would probably threaten deflation. Equities markets are straight out. The only reasonable place to "put" the money is in US t-bills... which increases the US government debt. So it turns out not to be such a great idea.
think it could be used quite easily as leverage to dismantle SS all together.
I'm afraid it will get hit as soon as it starts taking serious money out of the federal budget.
I also fear how the system would opperate in a down-turned economy such as now.
First of all, I would set the payroll deduction with a moving 3-or-5-year average so that there wouldn't be any wild swings. In the event of a horrid downturn like we're in now, that would still mean a payroll tax increase. However, congress could easily subsidize the system as part of a stimulus, just like they did with the current system's payroll deduction.
instead of being as we both wish, independent.
True, it will never be truly independent - I mean, it's still a government entity. And it's not constitutionally guaranteed or anything, so congress can do with it whatever they wish at any time. Given those constraints, I don't see how it could be made any more independent than giving it it's own source of revenue, and with no financial connection to the general fund.
Leanding money != Spending money. The SSI trust has not been "spent". The SSI trust will continue to grow for the next 6 years.
That's just an accounting trick. If I give you a dollar, but then you spend the dollar and replace it with a piece of paper that says, "I owe me $1", it doesn't change the fact that you spent the dollar and have nothing to show for it but a piece of paper. The trust fund exists in concept only.
Social Security has created no debt for our children. Congresses willingness to borrow from the trust has created that debt.
Correct, but the system was gamed to begin with. Social Security should not have been allowed to have "surplus". The only reasonable thing to do with it is buy treasuries, which is of course debt for the children of the boomers to pay.
If the SS trust did not exist or was constitutionally protected, Congress would have just borrow the money from another source. We would have incurred the debt whether it came from the SS trust, bonds, a trillion dollar platinum coin, etc...
It's certainly possible. But the trust fund gave them political cover - most of the time you hear the deficit reported it excludes the money borrowed from the trust fund. Same with total debt. This made it seem like the government had its books in order when it didn't, which let the politicians spend more money.
And getting rid of SS won't solve the problem unless we cut it off right now and forgive the debt we owe ourselves.
I'm not suggesting anything so radical. I'm simply suggesting that the payroll tax be reduced to cover only current costs, but that it be allowed to rise automatically as needed. This would force politicians not to hide spending in the "trust fund", and it would prevent social security from being blamed for overall budget problems because it would be self-sufficient. I don't really care what they do with the "trust fund", since it is just a bunch of modified T-Bills. I don't really care if they "pay" them down by raising taxes or cutting spending or dissolving them in an act of congress. The practical result is the same - it's just a matter of whether the money comes from the payroll tax or the general fund - same thing in my mind.
And that if we continue to do nothing, the SSI trust will be spent by 2040.
Ahh, but that trust has already been spent. So drawing it down will result in either borrowing or increased taxes - so Social Security is already part of our strained federal budget. By design. The "trust fund" was a huge mistake. If it was intentional, then it was a scam. It gave baby boomers a false sense of security and it gave their kids hundreds of billions in debt. Meanwhile, the government could spend the money coming in from everyone's payroll taxes. Brilliant, evil, or stupid - depending on perspective :) I think the "smart" thing to do is index the payroll tax to costs so that it automatically goes up or down based on the current cost of the system. Then let the politicians dicker over benefits to suit their taste for "automatic" payroll tax increases.
It's very dishonest - I'd argue immoral - for a current government to promise future benefits.
It's because Senate after Senate has voted to borrow money from the SSI trust fund.
Indeed, but what else should they do with it? What safer investment is there besides treasuries? I'd have preferred a lower payroll tax offset by higher general taxes.
Medicare and Medicaide, yeah, we've got issues there, fundamental issues with how our economy and health sector interact, and nothing short some form of universal coverage is going to fix that. But that is a huge topic fit for a thread of its own.
If we could solve it in one thread, I'd be all for it! :)
The cases you mentioned are extremely rare.
Nonsense. Growth companies are exceedingly common - pretty much any company that doesn't pay a dividend.
And even dividend companies are under pressure to produce steady, consistent returns. Predictability that the big institutions can use to sell their funds to people with income-centered portfolios.
True that companies like "Ben and Jerry's" were the exception when it comes to activism, but the profit/growth balance is all over the map.
Corporations may have to work to maximise profits,
They mostly don't even have to do that, if that's not what their shareholders want. Even in purely economic terms, some shareholders want growth over profit. Some want to stay in a particular location rather than make more money offshore. Some want to address social or environmental concerns. Corporations have to look after the interests of their owners, but that doesn't mean the owner's interests are always "maximize profit".
So essentially, making money is immoral?
No - amoral. That is, neither right nor wrong inherently.
The housing bubble was a symptom of excess liquidity in the credit market.
Isn't it a bit more complicated than that? Yes, there was excess liquidity, which itself has many causes. But there was also a de-facto government guarantee of most of the mortgages out there (from Sallie Mae and Freddie Mac). The government also encouraged risky lending to puff it's chest about improving home ownership numbers. And of course you have fraud committed by brokers and borrowers - but just a smidge of due diligence should have protected against that, so you also have gross incompetence from investors.
So, yes, you can go after excess liquidity. But I think ignoring the other causes is at our own peril. And while I agree that privatized retirement plans add to liquidity, but I'm not sure what alternative there is. Sure, unions and government employees have massive retirement funds tied up in equities and bonds ($13 trillion?). Sure, there are trillions of dollars in 401(k) plans($4 trillion?). But frankly, watching Europe implode fiscally does not make me want to jump over to government-guaranteed plans anymore than we already are. Most of the US fiscal trouble already comes from our entitlement programs, and making them into European style plans would only make the problem worse. To look at it another way, it probably doesn't make a difference whether you back our retirements with securities and bonds (the national economy) or the good faith of the government - at the end of the day they are one and the same. If the economy tanks, the government is left with no cash and must eventually undertake "austerity" measures. If the economy tanks, the economic investments are worth much less. Either way, retirees lose.
I agree that banks are under-regulated, and the joke of reform passed last year is over-complicated and creates a powerful federal agency just screaming for corruption. There was also very loose policy at the fed - the fed rate was quite low. And of course they let the banks get over-leveraged, which happened in Europe, too, by the way. I'm afraid I don't see much meaningful reform on this point.
And yes, consolidation of wealth certainly does not help when there is an excess of liquidity - but I'd like to point out that we seem to have a shortage of liquidity and the wealth gap has only expanded since 2007. I won't claim this disproves any effect because the crash was certainly an anomalous event, but it does show that there are other forces besides wealth concentration at work.
Living in a capitalist world is not an excuse for acting like an asshole.
I hear you, but I guess I have three questions:
- Who is being hurt by the large salary for the CEO?
- Who gets to determine what is and isn't reasonable?
- What is your proposed remedy or remedies?
First run comments are no longer offered.
I'm not saying we should go full commie, but our economy was significantly more healthy in times in which our wealth distribution was significantly more narrow than it is now.
That's an interesting correlation, but is it the cause or the effect? If you treat the symptom (wealth distribution) rather than the cause (housing bubble?), are you really solving anything?
Prices being unpredictable and following a random walk does not mean the prices are "random"!
High remuneration of CEOs may be ok when there is a high risk, but today, where is the risk?
If you are a stockholder, I can see your anger. But if you aren't, what do you care? If the company is harmed by the CEO getting compensated too much, it will suffer - but how does that affect you?
Yeah, I forgot about that. But man, a six-year-old laptop? I'd think you could have replaced the whole thing for $80.
LOL, I really liked my palm (and later sony-made palm device). I did a lot on it, but holy crap are the smart phones today a leap forward!
Except in battery life... I miss the set-of-AAA-every-three-weeks deal :)
Oh, and the later palms like the Tungsten... what a steaming pile that thing was.
Have a bunch of competing private companies all promoting and using their own different methods, both for choosing recipients and for raising revenue.
How are they to raise revenue without copyright? Presumably taxes, right? How do you compete with tax schemes?