If you are the CEO of a company who is running a budget deficit (aka running at a loss), you do have two choices: raising revenue or cutting costs.
Often in larger companies there are many employees who are doing redundant tasks where doing a 50% reduction in staff (just to throw out a number) won't result in a 50% decline in productivity. In fact many businesses depend on that happening, as hopefully they get rid of the low-performing employees and those who are perennial screw ups. If you work and live in the real world, you know who those are... and sometimes they are you so it hurts even mentioning it. In that case, they are hoping that by firing 50% of the work force, the company may be able to provide about 75% of the services or products that they were able to provide earlier (to give an arbitrary number.... but that is the philosophy).
One problem with cutting staff is that a great deal of that "waste" is actually training people in the future to take over for the current cadre of experienced people. The hope for a well managed business is that you can get through the lean times with experienced people, so when times are better you can put them into a position to train those new recruits before they retire or simply die of old age. The other problem is that often it is hard to identify who you should cut or due to labor contracts of various kinds and some laws, you need to get rid of people who you should otherwise be hanging onto in such cuts of staff.
Raising revenue is the opposite side of things, where you hope that by increasing sales (or in the case of government you are raising tax revenue) that you can have your existing employee base simply be doing more things than they were in the past. That works to a point, assuming you haven't saturated your market or in the case of tax revenue you haven't taxes the citizens to the point they will stop working because they simply refuse to pay more taxes or can't afford to pay those taxes.
None of this is easy, and often managers of companies or government leaders choose the wrong path to go or at least would have been better off trying a different approach to the problem.
The ugly side is that a company which simply fails altogether to chart a reasonable path to balance its books will simply go bankrupt and stop being in business. A government, on the other hand, simply can't go bankrupt or when it does the results are a bit more catastrophic and result in civil war, inflation, or worse.
Other businesses really don't care who owns the company... at least if they follow the typical corporate charter of "maximizing profit and increasing shareholder equity". Such agreements, if they were not mandated by the government, would actually be contrary to the principles of the corporate charter and could be grounds for dismissal of the corporate executives who engage in such contracts.
That there may be some people running businesses that show some prejudice toward some ethnic, gender, skin color, sexual preference, or other sort of arbitrary standard that has nothing to do with making a profit, a business which doesn't care about such things and simply finds people who can efficiently do their job tends to be the business which maximizes its profit... aka is the one growing and returning more revenue for its shareholders.
The point of the grandparent post is that the government can and does screw that up a whole bunch. Perhaps that is good for "society", as government doesn't have the same kind of charter as private businesses, but that is a political debate and not one based upon economics and how a company is managed.
The money simply isn't there. Those you are trying to claim are not paying taxes simply will quit working altogether.
Go ahead, close loopholes, simplify the tax code so we can put thousands of accountants and lawyers out of work. I'd love that as a realistic solution as those accountants and lawyers could be put to work doing more productive things in our economy. But claiming that all you need to do is to confiscate at the point of a gun more money from those who are already tired of paying too much money into people who would steal from them isn't going to work.
Raising taxes is only going to screw things up even worse.
I do agree that there are some people who game the system and somehow weasel their way out of paying "their fair share of taxes". Some of those loopholes are deliberate though as it was tax policy (and a whole bunch of lobbying in the halls of Congress and state legislatures in the form of *cough* bribes [called campaign contributions]) to put them into place, but that is how the tax system is set up. If you don't like loopholes, push for and encourage tax code simplification where the whole tax law can be on a couple pieces of paper in understandable English.
Regardless, enough people are already paying taxes that closing those loopholes is going to be minor and insignificant... and in fact those "loopholes" are what gives already high tax rates some sanity.
Besides, is it really the point of government to be maximizing tax revenue at all?
I would dare say if you are younger than 70, you likely don't know what real austerity actually is. Perhaps some people in eastern Europe know, but not in North America or western Europe.
It really isn't that simple, though. The process has to be gradual or everything will implode. Cut the budget by 50% and the economy will take such hit that US collected taxes will drop more than 50% (presumably necessitating further cuts, and so on). Not to mention how many people might starve without foodstamps while you are doing this.
Anyway, a good start would be to force our politicians to keep all wars IN the budget. Iraq and Afganistan are staying outside of the budget in "emergency appropriations" or whatever they are called.
That is why this is called a fiscal cliff and not just a budget shortfall. Cutting the budget by 50% and increasing taxes simultaneously still won't solve the current problems.
I hate to be cruel here, but people are going to need to starve if they can't survive without food stamps, the troops will need to come home from not just Iraq and Afghanistan but also from Japan, Germany, Italy, and South Korea too. Highway construction will need to stop, and perhaps even the US Postal Service will need to be eliminated as well. A hard re-thinking of what the real priorities of what the government should be actually doing may need to happen.
This might have been solved by a more gradual paring down of expenses in the past, but that time has come and gone. Congress was busy spending like there was no tomorrow, and now the sobering reality is that tomorrow is now today and the bills are due with no money left in the bank and maxed out lines of credit. Printing money (what the federal government currently is doing to "solve" this problem at the moment) only causes inflation. That is the next shoe to drop, and IMHO the only real option left and not a very good option at that.
If Social Security was treated as an actual retirement savings account rather than some sort of group insurance plan, it would be held to a higher standard for fiscal management.
Younger workers simply will get tired of supporting so many older people that want to live an active lifestyle with the current situation. If the political system (aka voting in elections) doesn't accommodate their viewpoint to get things changed, they may just try alternative ways to vent their frustration. That should be of significant concern.
BIg places like walmart just there workers on to Medicare/Medicaid at the same time upper management getting payed a lot. Now upper management can take a small pay cut so that all walmart workers can get a real Health Care Plan.
Upper management can have their pay confiscated so workers can get an additional bottle of pain reliever each year.
Fixed that for you. While from a public relations perspective it looks bad for "upper management" to be making seven and eight digit incomes, compared to the costs involved for paying their ordinary employees you can literally confiscate all of the money going to "upper management", where its redistribution among ordinary workers in that same business would amount to just a few bucks more per year.
It is a total lie that a "small pay cut" in upper management (say something more realistic like 50% pay cut... if you think that is small) would amount to any improvement in a health care plan for an ordinary "Wal-Mart associate".
Health care costs are going up much faster than inflation. That is the real issue that needs to be addressed, not some sort of envy that you don't have what it takes to be in upper management. The other issue is that tax laws and regulations are explicitly set up to ensure that new businesses don't start up and that groups of merchants can't compete against Wal-Mart and other megacorporations.
One of the things that unfortunately did not happen with the Obamacare debate was to really address deep down on the issues surrounding public health policy and rooting out the real issues that are causing health care costs to go up faster than inflation, thus becoming a major area of spending for everybody involved. Previous attempts to address public health policy have all been temporary quick-fix solutions that take care of minor areas and in the long run actually drive up costs... thus turning it into that cash cow for big businesses supplying services to government agencies and other organizations involved with health care. Turning medical students into effective slaves by driving up their tuition costs doesn't help either and is feeding the problem as well as driving out talented people who might even be willing to help.
I'm not saying that I know an easy fix either, but it is sad that when the time came to really address the issue, Barack Obama blew his one opportunity to really make a difference in a key part of American life. Instead, Obamacare is going to feed those large businesses and provide rationale for billion dollar salaries of their CEOs in a multi-trillion dollar industry.
Is there no equivalent of the UK's National Grid in the US?
Not really. There are some regional power grids that are operated by quasi-public-private organizations (organized by state governments in cooperation with major utility companies), but there isn't even really a "national grid". What the federal government does for highways is mainly establish national standards.... basically a stack of books written by and for civil engineers that explain signage, pavement, dimensions, and color standards that should be followed by the various states when their highways are being built.
Federal highway taxes are also extracted from fuel purchases and redistributed to each state depending on what member of congress happens to be cutting a sweetheart deal to pass some piece of legislation, but those tend to be "block grants" where each state can pretty much spend that money however it sees fit. Each state also raises its own taxes to pay for a great many of these things.... including I might even add military expenditures as well.
Local governments (municipalities and counties... it varies from state to state on the degree) also get involved in highway construction and usually are much more heavily involved with public utilities like electricity, sewer, natural gas, garbage, and water distribution. Most things like natural gas and petroleum pipelines are almost always privately owned by some entrepreneur who sees a way to make a pile of money.
In theory yes, but realistically? I doubt they really could, even if there was a desire to. Do you honestly see any other way out of this mess other than war? The scientists would at least be offered jobs in the dubious role of finding clever and new ways of killing.
I hope it doesn't end up as open warfare, but the free ride that many people have getting from the government is going to end... not just in Greece but in America as well. Confiscating the wealth of other nations to feed bad habits in America simply needs to stop somehow, and there is going to be some real pain for a great many people simply because some prudent steps were not taken in the recent past.
Bailing out the big banks was perceived as a bad thing, and it may be seen soon how bad of a move it really was. Ditto with massive public spending as "stimulus"... perhaps even more so. We'll see just what a bankrupt nuclear power will look like.... again.
If warfare happens though, it will be ugly because it will be at home. Killing off your own citizens is not an effective way to balance the budget and tends to do things like destroy factories and resource extraction areas. And you want to know what led to the collapse of the Roman Empire?
NASA did not "fully fund" the Falcon 9. I'm not even sure where you get that notion. That NASA did subsidize the development effort I'd agree, along with some DARPA funding and a whole lot of private investor equity as well.
As for differences between originally planed specifications and what was actually delivered, I'd suggest you talk to any engineer who has worked on a project that took longer than a year and ask them if the specifications ever met what was originally planned. Customer needs change and so sometimes engineers can tweak performance.
All you are pointing out is that SpaceX is competitive with the other launchers. Is that a revelation? Launching with the Ariane 5 is currently at a premium price in part because of reliability and its ties with the ESA. More important for SpaceX, they are winning contracts.
The original thread was about how Arianespace could tweak costs of things like faring couplers and a whole sheaf of regulations from European regulators (through lobbying presumably) that would drive the Falcon 9 prices above that of Ariane launches. My contention is that even doing that Arianespace is not going to be able to cut costs that much without massive subsidizes... which even your cost numbers bear out.
Restricting religious speech if any speech is allowed at all is a form of discrimination. That is where you are mistaken here.
That obviously fails as a legal principle. For example, professors can kick you out of class and give you a failing grade if you start proselytizing in math lecture when called to do an integral.
Not quite, what you are citing here is "disturbing the peace", a completely separate set of laws that have little if anything to do with free speech. If you are getting into somebody's face and doing something which is disruptive and preventing another person from being able to perform their work and to do the things they need to do in order to earn money by being a jackass, that justifiably needs to be punished.
You are not getting kicked out of the lecture hall because you are preaching a religious message, but because you are interfering with the normal and expected discourse of the day. If you brought up stupid and silly discussions, playing some music, or even reading aloud Shakespeare and disrupting the class, you would be similarly escorted out of the building and cited with the applicable crimes for doing such nonsense.
On the other hand, if the campus has some forum or situation where people are able to express themselves freely (like a letter to the editor in the student newspaper... to give an example), that is a free speech venue where expressing religious and political ideas is not only useful but required. That gets back to my point that a college campus, especially a public university operating under the laws and constitution of the United States of America, not only can't restrict what is done in public forums but must explicitly by the terms of the U.S. Constitution permit any sort of religious expression including proselytizing. If they want to restrict such expression, they must necessarily shut down any sort of free expression.
When you are in a classroom, you are certainly not free to express yourself in any random manner, which is why your analogy is simply flawed.
It may be possible that a university could restrict student web pages explicitly to classroom assignments or purely information items about the student. Arguably a university doesn't even need to provide server space for students to have a web page at all. If a university wants to avoid "hate speech" and students advocating religious viewpoints, they certainly could simply shut down student accounts altogether. My point is that many public universities are offering what amounts to be an ISP for the duration of when they are on campus where through their student registration fees are paying for some server space on campus computers for personal use. When that happens, it is no different than a commercial entity providing such services to the general public.
The explicit clause in the 1st amendment is to "prohibit the free exercise thereof". That is where the university could be in trouble. It goes a little bit beyond simply providing a non discriminatory situation. More specifically, unless the university simply restricts all forms of communication on private pages by simply banning private pages altogether, they have created a forum that would by necessity be required to allow religious expression.
I'm not saying that this is letting students "use the university name" to promote their views. Let's be serious about what people see when they look at a student web page.... anybody with half a brain would realize that they are speaking for themselves and not on behalf of the university or using the name of the university itself in any way. I could say ditto for the university e-mail system... which would be no different if the students were instead using the campus mail system for sending information about a prayer vigil or some other similar religious expression. If you use AT&T as your ISP, who in their right mind thinks that just because you have att.com at the end of your e-mail address that you actually represent the company?
Restricting religious speech if any speech is allowed at all is a form of discrimination. That is where you are mistaken here.
Assuming you are paying tuition including lab fees and internet usage fees, those students are paying for the university networks with the university as the ISP. They are paying for it themselves, not the other way around. There may be "subsidies" in terms of a state government underwriting some of the cost, but if a university allows students to create personal web pages on personally allocated storage, they are paying for that service.
This isn't establishing a religion, and certainly the university isn't mandating that a student must post something positive in favor of a particular deity like requiring "Allah Akbar" somewhere on each page (something that is required in some countries... or something like that). That would be wrong. Misrepresenting yourself as having the university endorsing or supporting a particular political cause or promoting a particular religion would be bad... but that is not what a student generated web page usually does.
I just don't understand where the "establishment clause" comes in here if some student makes a web page on their personal user account that says "I believe in Jesus Christ and he is my Savior!" That is not only being paranoid about the establishment clause, but arguably is in violation of the 1st amendment. I dare say it is a matter of time before universities will get slapped down for stopping that kind of activity.
If NSU was a private university, they could have a contract when you become a student that you would agree not to express yourself religiously while on campus or on campus resources. But because it is a public institution I would dare say that unless the are simply denying any ability to create private personal communications using school computers, that they are constitutionally obligated to accept such expression of religious ideas.
If you make some slanderous speech (aka accuse somebody falsely of some heinous crime or other bit of infamy) you are still subject to a lawsuit for making such a speech. Still, the bar should be set pretty high in terms of prosecution and should involve issues where professional careers or actual reputation damage can be documented and noted. That isn't something for university officials should enforce but rather allow venues for those who feel wronged to "have their day in court" if such a situation arises. Private arbitration done on campus, for example, could be imposed and quite a bit cheaper in terms of legal fees than going to a normal civil court and something which could be resolved between two particular students.
I don't see how saying "I hate you filthy Jews" (or some other similar extremely racist statement) is something which should be feared on a college campus. Something like that may even be a true statement... but with some campus policies would censor such a student and withhold transcripts or expel a student saying something like that.
Besides, I'm objecting here to specific denial of expression of religious speech. It has happened on campuses where things like showing a cross or reading the Bible on your own is considered "religious expression" and grounds to have a dorm contract terminated. There have been voluntary prayer groups which have been banned as an "establishment of religion" on campus. I'm calling such actions to be wrong.
It shouldn't be too surprising that SpaceX has money rolling in now. They've been making deliveries and meeting deadlines for stuff like COTS. While he has been reinvesting the revenue into the company, they definitely are getting revenue as checks are getting cut.
I presume that is the Falcon XX vehicle using the Merlin 2 engine (something that will have the thrust capabilities of the F1 engine used on the Saturn V)? The Falcon XX would fly with six of those Merlin 2 engines, thus giving it in theory a larger payload capacity than even the Saturn V... or as I like to put it the capability of putting a fully loaded and fueled 747 into orbit.
That is a long-term plan at least, but at the moment development work is not happening on the Merlin 2. Elon Musk did float the idea for NASA to help fund the development of the Merlin 2, but Congress hasn't been all that receptive. I wouldn't fault the guy for at least trying.
I can't remember the actual link (it was nearly six months ago), but Elon Musk is treating SpaceX as if it was a publicly traded company in terms of organizing its balance sheet and releasing information. He has some experience in doing IPOs due to his involvement with Tesla Motors (TSLA on NASDAQ) and certainly knows how to raise capital.
Basically, Elon Musk has said that "going public" and doing an IPO is a long-term goal for SpaceX. Long term as in something he plans on doing "in the next five to ten years" or something like that. By that time, assuming that SpaceX is able to fulfill the current manifest and refill it with a similar list of companies and projects, SpaceX will indeed by a significant player in the industry and worth some serious money as an IPO.
To give some sort of comparison of the money invested, Elon Musk personally invested a little over $100 million into SpaceX as seed capital. He has also done several rounds of additional investing from venture capital firms (mainly from California). The two roughest times in terms of ownership of SpaceX involved his divorce from Justine (Elon did not sign a prenuptial agreement with her and technically she owned 50% of his interest in the company at the time of the divorce) and when the 3rd flight of the Falcon 1 failed to achieve orbit. I think about a billion dollars has been invested into SpaceX so far from non-government sources, and sales of somewhere between $2-$5 billion... if that can give an approximate market cap if it were a public company. In theory it is already in the black and making a profit as a company, and has done so for a couple of years now from an IRS accounting perspective and what would be needed for the SEC.
The largest rocket that RKK Energia ever built was the N1. It had a higher launch pad thrust than the five F1 engines combined, but ultimately didn't put as much payload into LEO (IMHO what really counts). That is also why if you watch Saturn V launches, it seems like it takes a long time for the rocket to leave the launch pad. All of that mass with a modest set of thrusters doesn't gain as much acceleration as something a bit more powerful. The Space Shuttle, by comparison, seemed to leap off of the launch pad.
I haven't really understood why SpaceX gave up the Falcon 1e development, in terms of competing for the small launcher market. SpaceX developed the technology to have secondary payloads fly on their vehicle, giving them the ability to launch almost any satellite or even any number of satellites. Still, it would seem there is a market for precisely timed launches that have a relatively modest payload.
Essentially SpaceX has given up that small launcher market segment. I'm not sure if that was a good move or not, as the Falcon 1 is a proven launch design.
While it would seem as though SpaceX may capture the market for American spaceflight companies, note that there are nearly a dozen companies in America that are playing catch-up to SpaceX and could in theory reduce costs below what SpaceX is currently charging. Some of those are traditional spaceflight companies like Boeing, ATK, and Lockheed-Martin (all of whom have launchers that can compete against the Falcon 9), but you also have companies like Stratolaunch, the Spaceship Company (yes, that is the name), Blue Origin, Armadillo Aerospace, Masten, Sierra Nevada, XCor, Northrup-Grumman, and others who are all in the process of building competitive launch vehicles at some stage or another.
There are even a couple European companies of interest that are developing rockets that may even compete against the Ariane rockets within the EU and some entrepreneurial start-ups in Russia to compete against RKK Energia.
If SpaceX sits back and thinks they have captured the market, they will be passed by some other start-up company to take their place. There is nothing really unique to what SpaceX has done, other than they are the only company currently flying man-rated hardware in orbit from America. That counts for something, but they won't be alone.
Perhaps there will be a shakedown of the space launch industry with some or even many of these companies going out of business, but it is very competitive right now and I wouldn't pick any particular company dominating for some time.
The concern was really hitting the ISS. The relit stage was not a concern but rather that there might not be enough fuel to clear the ISS orbit, particularly as more delta-v was needed than was thought left in the 2nd stage. Because the 2nd stage had to burn a little bit longer due to the loss of engine, that pretty much ate up the reserves that NASA felt was necessary to inject the OrbComm satellite into a higher orbit and clear the ISS... so they decided to fly under the ISS orbit instead. That of course put it closer to the Earth and a much higher air resistance from the atmosphere... which is why the OrbComm satellite reentered the atmosphere a little more than a week later with the Falcon 9 2nd stage.
The real proper solution is to let people keep their own damn money and let that "welfare recipient" be able to start their own business so they can earn the $100k after taking care of their basic needs and buy their own luxury Tesla vehicle.
I'd rather live in a society where anybody can be rich through hard work than in a society where everybody is equally poor. Buying toys and giving them away to people who didn't earn them just makes everybody poor and these kind of cars would never be made in the first place.
What is the cost per kilogram delivered into LEO? The Falcon 9 can deliver 13 metric tons to LEO for $54 million, or $4 million per metric ton. That PSLV rocket that you are quoting only puts 3 metric tons to LEO for the $17 million, or about $5 million (plus change) per metric ton. The $54 million is the quote on the SpaceX Falcon 9 web page if you want the source.
Russia has actually raised their launch prices in part because of the demand for them is outstripping their supply and they have a backlog on production at the moment. They are simply being capitalists, which is a good thing too but sort of shoots your theory out of the water. Name a specific launcher if you think it can be more competitive.
The Ariane V vehicle has a launch cost of $120 million and puts about 15 metric tons into orbit, or about $8 million per metric ton. In other words, it is literally twice the cost as the Falcon 9. It can put up a slightly heavier payload at the moment, but that is something SpaceX is trying to fix with their Falcon Heavy rocket.
If you want to find the source from Chinese space officials who toured the SpaceX plant in Hawthorne, California and said they couldn't compete, do some Google searching on the topic. I won't bother but it was widely reported at the time including a post here on Slashdot when it happened.
That entirely depends on the type of regulations involved. For example, they could make conditions on the launch vehicles used for European satellites which the Ariane fulfils, but the Falcon doesn't, and if it were modified to fulfil them, it would get just as expensive as the Ariane.
I don't possibly see how modifying the faring and coupling links on satellites as well as launch standards that the Falcon 9 currently has which aren't similarly a problem for the Ariane 5 that would end up causing the Falcon 9 to cost 2x-4x the current launch price. You are talking hypothetically here on something that simply wouldn't happen.
At best, all that the EU could do is to simply not let European manufacturers launch on non-European launchers. But that would make those European satellite manufacturers to simply lose business to American, Russian, Chinese, and Indian companies. Oh, and I suppose Brazil is getting into the business too.
This is a very competitive global market with lots of players... both in terms of customers (not all of them are even governments) and a whole lot of suppliers. Anybody treating this as a monopoly or even monopsony situation simply doesn't understand the commercial spaceflight market at all... which is the point of why this concern about European regulations is totally ludicrous. Not only is the market pretty large, but it is getting larger and there are many more players involved along with multiple governments... any one of which is more than willing to undercut the "competition" to get the business. In other words, a real competitive marketplace where launchers are now seen as commodities for commercial activity.
What reliability issues are you talking about? SpaceX has launched a total of 46 Merlin engines with three failures. That is an 85% success rate... something that most launch companies would be glad to see in the early phases of their launch program. Some of those failures were engineering failures (like forgetting about galvanic corrosion, or that rockets continue to burn even after the engines shut down). Those have been addressed, but it is reasonable to ask what other lessons does SpaceX need to still learn that should have been obvious?
Dismissing the Grasshopper program is getting pretty low. That is supposed to be a test program. I also dare you to find anybody anywhere that has flown a vehicle as large as the Grasshopper up for any distance (it actually went up about 20 feet, not two) and has been able to do a successful vertical landing like SpaceX. There was a NASA flight where a rocket "burped" and the engines fired but were shut off suddenly... and the rocket wobbled on the launch stand for awhile with everybody on the pad panicking with the thought that it would fall over. That is the only other similar rocket of the same scale that even comes close and that wasn't even intentional. Next time try to look at the scale of that vehicle first before you start to criticize it, not to mention that it is but the first of several flights that are planned. You can be critical if it goes up and corkscrews down onto the launch pad afterward like Armadillo Aerospace's Pixel did on its final flight (after several dozen successful flights by John Carmack).
I do agree that SpaceX need to do rather than talk though. The only way to genuinely silence their critics is to get their manifest cleared by sending payloads into space where they belong. I have reason to think SpaceX is going to be successful at doing just that, but they are working on that too. There should be another flight of the Falcon 9 very soon. It was supposed to be in December, so it will be interesting to see if they can get the FAA-AST to clear the use of the Merlin 1-C engine after the mishap on the last flight. Oh yeah, it isn't just SpaceX that has to sign off here or even NASA for that matter. There are regulations in place for commercial spaceflight that must be met.
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If you are the CEO of a company who is running a budget deficit (aka running at a loss), you do have two choices: raising revenue or cutting costs.
Often in larger companies there are many employees who are doing redundant tasks where doing a 50% reduction in staff (just to throw out a number) won't result in a 50% decline in productivity. In fact many businesses depend on that happening, as hopefully they get rid of the low-performing employees and those who are perennial screw ups. If you work and live in the real world, you know who those are... and sometimes they are you so it hurts even mentioning it. In that case, they are hoping that by firing 50% of the work force, the company may be able to provide about 75% of the services or products that they were able to provide earlier (to give an arbitrary number.... but that is the philosophy).
One problem with cutting staff is that a great deal of that "waste" is actually training people in the future to take over for the current cadre of experienced people. The hope for a well managed business is that you can get through the lean times with experienced people, so when times are better you can put them into a position to train those new recruits before they retire or simply die of old age. The other problem is that often it is hard to identify who you should cut or due to labor contracts of various kinds and some laws, you need to get rid of people who you should otherwise be hanging onto in such cuts of staff.
Raising revenue is the opposite side of things, where you hope that by increasing sales (or in the case of government you are raising tax revenue) that you can have your existing employee base simply be doing more things than they were in the past. That works to a point, assuming you haven't saturated your market or in the case of tax revenue you haven't taxes the citizens to the point they will stop working because they simply refuse to pay more taxes or can't afford to pay those taxes.
None of this is easy, and often managers of companies or government leaders choose the wrong path to go or at least would have been better off trying a different approach to the problem.
The ugly side is that a company which simply fails altogether to chart a reasonable path to balance its books will simply go bankrupt and stop being in business. A government, on the other hand, simply can't go bankrupt or when it does the results are a bit more catastrophic and result in civil war, inflation, or worse.
Other businesses really don't care who owns the company... at least if they follow the typical corporate charter of "maximizing profit and increasing shareholder equity". Such agreements, if they were not mandated by the government, would actually be contrary to the principles of the corporate charter and could be grounds for dismissal of the corporate executives who engage in such contracts.
That there may be some people running businesses that show some prejudice toward some ethnic, gender, skin color, sexual preference, or other sort of arbitrary standard that has nothing to do with making a profit, a business which doesn't care about such things and simply finds people who can efficiently do their job tends to be the business which maximizes its profit... aka is the one growing and returning more revenue for its shareholders.
The point of the grandparent post is that the government can and does screw that up a whole bunch. Perhaps that is good for "society", as government doesn't have the same kind of charter as private businesses, but that is a political debate and not one based upon economics and how a company is managed.
How do you really get that "increased revenue"?
The money simply isn't there. Those you are trying to claim are not paying taxes simply will quit working altogether.
Go ahead, close loopholes, simplify the tax code so we can put thousands of accountants and lawyers out of work. I'd love that as a realistic solution as those accountants and lawyers could be put to work doing more productive things in our economy. But claiming that all you need to do is to confiscate at the point of a gun more money from those who are already tired of paying too much money into people who would steal from them isn't going to work.
Raising taxes is only going to screw things up even worse.
I do agree that there are some people who game the system and somehow weasel their way out of paying "their fair share of taxes". Some of those loopholes are deliberate though as it was tax policy (and a whole bunch of lobbying in the halls of Congress and state legislatures in the form of *cough* bribes [called campaign contributions]) to put them into place, but that is how the tax system is set up. If you don't like loopholes, push for and encourage tax code simplification where the whole tax law can be on a couple pieces of paper in understandable English.
Regardless, enough people are already paying taxes that closing those loopholes is going to be minor and insignificant... and in fact those "loopholes" are what gives already high tax rates some sanity.
Besides, is it really the point of government to be maximizing tax revenue at all?
I would dare say if you are younger than 70, you likely don't know what real austerity actually is. Perhaps some people in eastern Europe know, but not in North America or western Europe.
It really isn't that simple, though. The process has to be gradual or everything will implode. Cut the budget by 50% and the economy will take such hit that US collected taxes will drop more than 50% (presumably necessitating further cuts, and so on). Not to mention how many people might starve without foodstamps while you are doing this.
Anyway, a good start would be to force our politicians to keep all wars IN the budget. Iraq and Afganistan are staying outside of the budget in "emergency appropriations" or whatever they are called.
That is why this is called a fiscal cliff and not just a budget shortfall. Cutting the budget by 50% and increasing taxes simultaneously still won't solve the current problems.
I hate to be cruel here, but people are going to need to starve if they can't survive without food stamps, the troops will need to come home from not just Iraq and Afghanistan but also from Japan, Germany, Italy, and South Korea too. Highway construction will need to stop, and perhaps even the US Postal Service will need to be eliminated as well. A hard re-thinking of what the real priorities of what the government should be actually doing may need to happen.
This might have been solved by a more gradual paring down of expenses in the past, but that time has come and gone. Congress was busy spending like there was no tomorrow, and now the sobering reality is that tomorrow is now today and the bills are due with no money left in the bank and maxed out lines of credit. Printing money (what the federal government currently is doing to "solve" this problem at the moment) only causes inflation. That is the next shoe to drop, and IMHO the only real option left and not a very good option at that.
If Social Security was treated as an actual retirement savings account rather than some sort of group insurance plan, it would be held to a higher standard for fiscal management.
Younger workers simply will get tired of supporting so many older people that want to live an active lifestyle with the current situation. If the political system (aka voting in elections) doesn't accommodate their viewpoint to get things changed, they may just try alternative ways to vent their frustration. That should be of significant concern.
missed one
BIg places like walmart just there workers on to Medicare/Medicaid at the same time upper management getting payed a lot. Now upper management can take a small pay cut so that all walmart workers can get a real Health Care Plan.
Upper management can have their pay confiscated so workers can get an additional bottle of pain reliever each year.
Fixed that for you. While from a public relations perspective it looks bad for "upper management" to be making seven and eight digit incomes, compared to the costs involved for paying their ordinary employees you can literally confiscate all of the money going to "upper management", where its redistribution among ordinary workers in that same business would amount to just a few bucks more per year.
It is a total lie that a "small pay cut" in upper management (say something more realistic like 50% pay cut... if you think that is small) would amount to any improvement in a health care plan for an ordinary "Wal-Mart associate".
Health care costs are going up much faster than inflation. That is the real issue that needs to be addressed, not some sort of envy that you don't have what it takes to be in upper management. The other issue is that tax laws and regulations are explicitly set up to ensure that new businesses don't start up and that groups of merchants can't compete against Wal-Mart and other megacorporations.
One of the things that unfortunately did not happen with the Obamacare debate was to really address deep down on the issues surrounding public health policy and rooting out the real issues that are causing health care costs to go up faster than inflation, thus becoming a major area of spending for everybody involved. Previous attempts to address public health policy have all been temporary quick-fix solutions that take care of minor areas and in the long run actually drive up costs... thus turning it into that cash cow for big businesses supplying services to government agencies and other organizations involved with health care. Turning medical students into effective slaves by driving up their tuition costs doesn't help either and is feeding the problem as well as driving out talented people who might even be willing to help.
I'm not saying that I know an easy fix either, but it is sad that when the time came to really address the issue, Barack Obama blew his one opportunity to really make a difference in a key part of American life. Instead, Obamacare is going to feed those large businesses and provide rationale for billion dollar salaries of their CEOs in a multi-trillion dollar industry.
Is there no equivalent of the UK's National Grid in the US?
Not really. There are some regional power grids that are operated by quasi-public-private organizations (organized by state governments in cooperation with major utility companies), but there isn't even really a "national grid". What the federal government does for highways is mainly establish national standards.... basically a stack of books written by and for civil engineers that explain signage, pavement, dimensions, and color standards that should be followed by the various states when their highways are being built.
Federal highway taxes are also extracted from fuel purchases and redistributed to each state depending on what member of congress happens to be cutting a sweetheart deal to pass some piece of legislation, but those tend to be "block grants" where each state can pretty much spend that money however it sees fit. Each state also raises its own taxes to pay for a great many of these things.... including I might even add military expenditures as well.
Local governments (municipalities and counties... it varies from state to state on the degree) also get involved in highway construction and usually are much more heavily involved with public utilities like electricity, sewer, natural gas, garbage, and water distribution. Most things like natural gas and petroleum pipelines are almost always privately owned by some entrepreneur who sees a way to make a pile of money.
In theory yes, but realistically? I doubt they really could, even if there was a desire to. Do you honestly see any other way out of this mess other than war? The scientists would at least be offered jobs in the dubious role of finding clever and new ways of killing.
I hope it doesn't end up as open warfare, but the free ride that many people have getting from the government is going to end... not just in Greece but in America as well. Confiscating the wealth of other nations to feed bad habits in America simply needs to stop somehow, and there is going to be some real pain for a great many people simply because some prudent steps were not taken in the recent past.
Bailing out the big banks was perceived as a bad thing, and it may be seen soon how bad of a move it really was. Ditto with massive public spending as "stimulus"... perhaps even more so. We'll see just what a bankrupt nuclear power will look like.... again.
If warfare happens though, it will be ugly because it will be at home. Killing off your own citizens is not an effective way to balance the budget and tends to do things like destroy factories and resource extraction areas. And you want to know what led to the collapse of the Roman Empire?
NASA did not "fully fund" the Falcon 9. I'm not even sure where you get that notion. That NASA did subsidize the development effort I'd agree, along with some DARPA funding and a whole lot of private investor equity as well.
As for differences between originally planed specifications and what was actually delivered, I'd suggest you talk to any engineer who has worked on a project that took longer than a year and ask them if the specifications ever met what was originally planned. Customer needs change and so sometimes engineers can tweak performance.
All you are pointing out is that SpaceX is competitive with the other launchers. Is that a revelation? Launching with the Ariane 5 is currently at a premium price in part because of reliability and its ties with the ESA. More important for SpaceX, they are winning contracts.
The original thread was about how Arianespace could tweak costs of things like faring couplers and a whole sheaf of regulations from European regulators (through lobbying presumably) that would drive the Falcon 9 prices above that of Ariane launches. My contention is that even doing that Arianespace is not going to be able to cut costs that much without massive subsidizes... which even your cost numbers bear out.
That obviously fails as a legal principle. For example, professors can kick you out of class and give you a failing grade if you start proselytizing in math lecture when called to do an integral.
Not quite, what you are citing here is "disturbing the peace", a completely separate set of laws that have little if anything to do with free speech. If you are getting into somebody's face and doing something which is disruptive and preventing another person from being able to perform their work and to do the things they need to do in order to earn money by being a jackass, that justifiably needs to be punished.
You are not getting kicked out of the lecture hall because you are preaching a religious message, but because you are interfering with the normal and expected discourse of the day. If you brought up stupid and silly discussions, playing some music, or even reading aloud Shakespeare and disrupting the class, you would be similarly escorted out of the building and cited with the applicable crimes for doing such nonsense.
On the other hand, if the campus has some forum or situation where people are able to express themselves freely (like a letter to the editor in the student newspaper... to give an example), that is a free speech venue where expressing religious and political ideas is not only useful but required. That gets back to my point that a college campus, especially a public university operating under the laws and constitution of the United States of America, not only can't restrict what is done in public forums but must explicitly by the terms of the U.S. Constitution permit any sort of religious expression including proselytizing. If they want to restrict such expression, they must necessarily shut down any sort of free expression.
When you are in a classroom, you are certainly not free to express yourself in any random manner, which is why your analogy is simply flawed.
It may be possible that a university could restrict student web pages explicitly to classroom assignments or purely information items about the student. Arguably a university doesn't even need to provide server space for students to have a web page at all. If a university wants to avoid "hate speech" and students advocating religious viewpoints, they certainly could simply shut down student accounts altogether. My point is that many public universities are offering what amounts to be an ISP for the duration of when they are on campus where through their student registration fees are paying for some server space on campus computers for personal use. When that happens, it is no different than a commercial entity providing such services to the general public.
The explicit clause in the 1st amendment is to "prohibit the free exercise thereof". That is where the university could be in trouble. It goes a little bit beyond simply providing a non discriminatory situation. More specifically, unless the university simply restricts all forms of communication on private pages by simply banning private pages altogether, they have created a forum that would by necessity be required to allow religious expression.
I'm not saying that this is letting students "use the university name" to promote their views. Let's be serious about what people see when they look at a student web page.... anybody with half a brain would realize that they are speaking for themselves and not on behalf of the university or using the name of the university itself in any way. I could say ditto for the university e-mail system... which would be no different if the students were instead using the campus mail system for sending information about a prayer vigil or some other similar religious expression. If you use AT&T as your ISP, who in their right mind thinks that just because you have att.com at the end of your e-mail address that you actually represent the company?
Restricting religious speech if any speech is allowed at all is a form of discrimination. That is where you are mistaken here.
Assuming you are paying tuition including lab fees and internet usage fees, those students are paying for the university networks with the university as the ISP. They are paying for it themselves, not the other way around. There may be "subsidies" in terms of a state government underwriting some of the cost, but if a university allows students to create personal web pages on personally allocated storage, they are paying for that service.
This isn't establishing a religion, and certainly the university isn't mandating that a student must post something positive in favor of a particular deity like requiring "Allah Akbar" somewhere on each page (something that is required in some countries... or something like that). That would be wrong. Misrepresenting yourself as having the university endorsing or supporting a particular political cause or promoting a particular religion would be bad... but that is not what a student generated web page usually does.
I just don't understand where the "establishment clause" comes in here if some student makes a web page on their personal user account that says "I believe in Jesus Christ and he is my Savior!" That is not only being paranoid about the establishment clause, but arguably is in violation of the 1st amendment. I dare say it is a matter of time before universities will get slapped down for stopping that kind of activity.
If NSU was a private university, they could have a contract when you become a student that you would agree not to express yourself religiously while on campus or on campus resources. But because it is a public institution I would dare say that unless the are simply denying any ability to create private personal communications using school computers, that they are constitutionally obligated to accept such expression of religious ideas.
If you make some slanderous speech (aka accuse somebody falsely of some heinous crime or other bit of infamy) you are still subject to a lawsuit for making such a speech. Still, the bar should be set pretty high in terms of prosecution and should involve issues where professional careers or actual reputation damage can be documented and noted. That isn't something for university officials should enforce but rather allow venues for those who feel wronged to "have their day in court" if such a situation arises. Private arbitration done on campus, for example, could be imposed and quite a bit cheaper in terms of legal fees than going to a normal civil court and something which could be resolved between two particular students.
I don't see how saying "I hate you filthy Jews" (or some other similar extremely racist statement) is something which should be feared on a college campus. Something like that may even be a true statement... but with some campus policies would censor such a student and withhold transcripts or expel a student saying something like that.
Besides, I'm objecting here to specific denial of expression of religious speech. It has happened on campuses where things like showing a cross or reading the Bible on your own is considered "religious expression" and grounds to have a dorm contract terminated. There have been voluntary prayer groups which have been banned as an "establishment of religion" on campus. I'm calling such actions to be wrong.
It shouldn't be too surprising that SpaceX has money rolling in now. They've been making deliveries and meeting deadlines for stuff like COTS. While he has been reinvesting the revenue into the company, they definitely are getting revenue as checks are getting cut.
I presume that is the Falcon XX vehicle using the Merlin 2 engine (something that will have the thrust capabilities of the F1 engine used on the Saturn V)? The Falcon XX would fly with six of those Merlin 2 engines, thus giving it in theory a larger payload capacity than even the Saturn V... or as I like to put it the capability of putting a fully loaded and fueled 747 into orbit.
That is a long-term plan at least, but at the moment development work is not happening on the Merlin 2. Elon Musk did float the idea for NASA to help fund the development of the Merlin 2, but Congress hasn't been all that receptive. I wouldn't fault the guy for at least trying.
I can't remember the actual link (it was nearly six months ago), but Elon Musk is treating SpaceX as if it was a publicly traded company in terms of organizing its balance sheet and releasing information. He has some experience in doing IPOs due to his involvement with Tesla Motors (TSLA on NASDAQ) and certainly knows how to raise capital.
Basically, Elon Musk has said that "going public" and doing an IPO is a long-term goal for SpaceX. Long term as in something he plans on doing "in the next five to ten years" or something like that. By that time, assuming that SpaceX is able to fulfill the current manifest and refill it with a similar list of companies and projects, SpaceX will indeed by a significant player in the industry and worth some serious money as an IPO.
To give some sort of comparison of the money invested, Elon Musk personally invested a little over $100 million into SpaceX as seed capital. He has also done several rounds of additional investing from venture capital firms (mainly from California). The two roughest times in terms of ownership of SpaceX involved his divorce from Justine (Elon did not sign a prenuptial agreement with her and technically she owned 50% of his interest in the company at the time of the divorce) and when the 3rd flight of the Falcon 1 failed to achieve orbit. I think about a billion dollars has been invested into SpaceX so far from non-government sources, and sales of somewhere between $2-$5 billion... if that can give an approximate market cap if it were a public company. In theory it is already in the black and making a profit as a company, and has done so for a couple of years now from an IRS accounting perspective and what would be needed for the SEC.
The largest rocket that RKK Energia ever built was the N1. It had a higher launch pad thrust than the five F1 engines combined, but ultimately didn't put as much payload into LEO (IMHO what really counts). That is also why if you watch Saturn V launches, it seems like it takes a long time for the rocket to leave the launch pad. All of that mass with a modest set of thrusters doesn't gain as much acceleration as something a bit more powerful. The Space Shuttle, by comparison, seemed to leap off of the launch pad.
I haven't really understood why SpaceX gave up the Falcon 1e development, in terms of competing for the small launcher market. SpaceX developed the technology to have secondary payloads fly on their vehicle, giving them the ability to launch almost any satellite or even any number of satellites. Still, it would seem there is a market for precisely timed launches that have a relatively modest payload.
Essentially SpaceX has given up that small launcher market segment. I'm not sure if that was a good move or not, as the Falcon 1 is a proven launch design.
While it would seem as though SpaceX may capture the market for American spaceflight companies, note that there are nearly a dozen companies in America that are playing catch-up to SpaceX and could in theory reduce costs below what SpaceX is currently charging. Some of those are traditional spaceflight companies like Boeing, ATK, and Lockheed-Martin (all of whom have launchers that can compete against the Falcon 9), but you also have companies like Stratolaunch, the Spaceship Company (yes, that is the name), Blue Origin, Armadillo Aerospace, Masten, Sierra Nevada, XCor, Northrup-Grumman, and others who are all in the process of building competitive launch vehicles at some stage or another.
There are even a couple European companies of interest that are developing rockets that may even compete against the Ariane rockets within the EU and some entrepreneurial start-ups in Russia to compete against RKK Energia.
If SpaceX sits back and thinks they have captured the market, they will be passed by some other start-up company to take their place. There is nothing really unique to what SpaceX has done, other than they are the only company currently flying man-rated hardware in orbit from America. That counts for something, but they won't be alone.
Perhaps there will be a shakedown of the space launch industry with some or even many of these companies going out of business, but it is very competitive right now and I wouldn't pick any particular company dominating for some time.
The concern was really hitting the ISS. The relit stage was not a concern but rather that there might not be enough fuel to clear the ISS orbit, particularly as more delta-v was needed than was thought left in the 2nd stage. Because the 2nd stage had to burn a little bit longer due to the loss of engine, that pretty much ate up the reserves that NASA felt was necessary to inject the OrbComm satellite into a higher orbit and clear the ISS... so they decided to fly under the ISS orbit instead. That of course put it closer to the Earth and a much higher air resistance from the atmosphere... which is why the OrbComm satellite reentered the atmosphere a little more than a week later with the Falcon 9 2nd stage.
The real proper solution is to let people keep their own damn money and let that "welfare recipient" be able to start their own business so they can earn the $100k after taking care of their basic needs and buy their own luxury Tesla vehicle.
I'd rather live in a society where anybody can be rich through hard work than in a society where everybody is equally poor. Buying toys and giving them away to people who didn't earn them just makes everybody poor and these kind of cars would never be made in the first place.
What is the cost per kilogram delivered into LEO? The Falcon 9 can deliver 13 metric tons to LEO for $54 million, or $4 million per metric ton. That PSLV rocket that you are quoting only puts 3 metric tons to LEO for the $17 million, or about $5 million (plus change) per metric ton. The $54 million is the quote on the SpaceX Falcon 9 web page if you want the source.
Russia has actually raised their launch prices in part because of the demand for them is outstripping their supply and they have a backlog on production at the moment. They are simply being capitalists, which is a good thing too but sort of shoots your theory out of the water. Name a specific launcher if you think it can be more competitive.
The Ariane V vehicle has a launch cost of $120 million and puts about 15 metric tons into orbit, or about $8 million per metric ton. In other words, it is literally twice the cost as the Falcon 9. It can put up a slightly heavier payload at the moment, but that is something SpaceX is trying to fix with their Falcon Heavy rocket.
If you want to find the source from Chinese space officials who toured the SpaceX plant in Hawthorne, California and said they couldn't compete, do some Google searching on the topic. I won't bother but it was widely reported at the time including a post here on Slashdot when it happened.
That entirely depends on the type of regulations involved. For example, they could make conditions on the launch vehicles used for European satellites which the Ariane fulfils, but the Falcon doesn't, and if it were modified to fulfil them, it would get just as expensive as the Ariane.
I don't possibly see how modifying the faring and coupling links on satellites as well as launch standards that the Falcon 9 currently has which aren't similarly a problem for the Ariane 5 that would end up causing the Falcon 9 to cost 2x-4x the current launch price. You are talking hypothetically here on something that simply wouldn't happen.
At best, all that the EU could do is to simply not let European manufacturers launch on non-European launchers. But that would make those European satellite manufacturers to simply lose business to American, Russian, Chinese, and Indian companies. Oh, and I suppose Brazil is getting into the business too.
This is a very competitive global market with lots of players... both in terms of customers (not all of them are even governments) and a whole lot of suppliers. Anybody treating this as a monopoly or even monopsony situation simply doesn't understand the commercial spaceflight market at all... which is the point of why this concern about European regulations is totally ludicrous. Not only is the market pretty large, but it is getting larger and there are many more players involved along with multiple governments... any one of which is more than willing to undercut the "competition" to get the business. In other words, a real competitive marketplace where launchers are now seen as commodities for commercial activity.
What reliability issues are you talking about? SpaceX has launched a total of 46 Merlin engines with three failures. That is an 85% success rate... something that most launch companies would be glad to see in the early phases of their launch program. Some of those failures were engineering failures (like forgetting about galvanic corrosion, or that rockets continue to burn even after the engines shut down). Those have been addressed, but it is reasonable to ask what other lessons does SpaceX need to still learn that should have been obvious?
Dismissing the Grasshopper program is getting pretty low. That is supposed to be a test program. I also dare you to find anybody anywhere that has flown a vehicle as large as the Grasshopper up for any distance (it actually went up about 20 feet, not two) and has been able to do a successful vertical landing like SpaceX. There was a NASA flight where a rocket "burped" and the engines fired but were shut off suddenly... and the rocket wobbled on the launch stand for awhile with everybody on the pad panicking with the thought that it would fall over. That is the only other similar rocket of the same scale that even comes close and that wasn't even intentional. Next time try to look at the scale of that vehicle first before you start to criticize it, not to mention that it is but the first of several flights that are planned. You can be critical if it goes up and corkscrews down onto the launch pad afterward like Armadillo Aerospace's Pixel did on its final flight (after several dozen successful flights by John Carmack).
I do agree that SpaceX need to do rather than talk though. The only way to genuinely silence their critics is to get their manifest cleared by sending payloads into space where they belong. I have reason to think SpaceX is going to be successful at doing just that, but they are working on that too. There should be another flight of the Falcon 9 very soon. It was supposed to be in December, so it will be interesting to see if they can get the FAA-AST to clear the use of the Merlin 1-C engine after the mishap on the last flight. Oh yeah, it isn't just SpaceX that has to sign off here or even NASA for that matter. There are regulations in place for commercial spaceflight that must be met.