> Of course, that's a really douchebag move on Microsoft's part. If they are > going to fire a ton of people to increase their profits, why didn't they do > this when the economy was ok? Or wait until the recession ends?
Ha, what?
They are seeing significantly reduced demand where they need significantly reduced capacity in order to meet the market demand, and you want them to cut capacity either before demand falls or after it recovers?
> If a company I was working for did stuff like this, I would quickly lose any > loyalty I had and try to find ways to manipulate the system in order to do > the least work for the most pay.
The bottom line is that if your company didn't do this, you would be more likely to lose your job. It's capitalism, folks. It's harsh on a minority of individuals, but better for everyone in the long run. Get over it.
Prior to the downturn, companies were operating on the assumption that there would not be a downturn like we have seen. Hiring rates, promotions, raises, capital investment decisions, etc. were all predicated on this assumption. When that assumption proves wrong, a company should re-evaluate those decisions. If they do not, they are not operating wisely. MSFT -- like most other companies -- almost certainly over-hired based on an overestimated revenue stream. My company did the same thing; luckily the business model is such that all they have to do is reduce hiring rates and don't have to lay off too many people.
There are of course hidden costs to cutting people, particularly around knowledge loss. I think that might be somewhat what you're getting at. But the reality is that companies are just trying to mirror the demand they expect to see, which is significantly less than they had been planning for.
When the government enters a market, it is at a competitive advantage as it is funded at least partially by tax dollars, which is revenue not linked to demand for its products.
For example: the idea of school vouchers is an attempt to counter-act this problem in the public vs private school systems.
I suggest you read up on instances where this has happened in the past; it's an important point to understand, especially since there always seems to be a strong voice suggesting that industries would be better off if there was a government "competitor". The fact is that this almost always results in complete socialization of the industry and a loss of the private component, because private industry has to have such a superior product in order to overcome the competitive disadvantage of the demand-divorced tax revenue the public "competitor" enjoys.
(It doesn't really have anything to do with the free market; I wasn't sure what you meant by that comment, so I don't address it here.)
Wow, great comment. Except you sort of ignored the fact that parent was talking about ideas not actions. In this country, we generally expect our government officials to have ideas even before we elect them to their offices, let alone while they are transitioning into office.
Do not attribute to organized religion what can be attributed to good people. Perhaps a better way to phrase it is: good things are happening in Africa by people in spite of their religion wasting donations on stupid shit like this:
Well, perhaps you shouldn't have implied that Delta is worse than this AirTran fiasco if you didn't want to explain???
Seriously, I fly twice a week and 90% of the complaints I hear from casual travelers are absolutely ridiculous. I was on a flight from DTW to a small Pennsylvania airport. It was delayed a couple hours awaiting the inbound aircraft which had run into rough weather. Then it finally took off and by the time it got to the destination airport, a dense fog (1/8 mi visibility) had rolled in making it impossible to land. We circled for an hour or two and when the weather did not clear we had to turn back to DTW because we were running out of fuel. By this time it was quite late and there were no more flights to this airport that day, and due to the holiday there were no available seats on subsequent flights for two days. The airline would not spring for hotel. The Hawaiian Shirt Brigade on the flight WAS IRATE and screamed at both the pilots and the gate agents. They believed they were entitled to (a) free hotel rooms, (b) free tickets on an alternate airline.
Surprise, the airlines are currently unable to control the weather. There is no reason they should be responsible for paying for your hotel room in this instance. There is no reason they should incur the cost of seating you on a competing airline. What is the point of screaming at the PILOTS for deciding not to land in unsafe weather? If you're on a toll road and part of it is closed due to snow, would you expect the toll company to do anything at all?
In my experience, people who don't travel very often simply don't understand the complexities involved and turn all of their travel-related frustration into airline-directed anger. To be honest, the ignorance of infrequent travelers is my main personal annoyance with travel. I don't think asking for a little common sense is unreasonable.
On this line of thinking, any deep knowledge in a niche area can be very useful....and incredibly risky. The idea with a double major is to REDUCE your industry risk, not increase it. It may not feel like it, but your decision of your career direction is one of the riskiest decisions you will make. You have no real control over whether your industry will grow, disappear altogether, be outsourced, become obsolete, see demand drop due to economic forces, be legislated into oblivion, be taken over by the government, be disadvantaged by the tax code, etc.
Not to get philosophical, but capitalism requires agility. It requires businesses to fail, industries to disappear, jobs to be outsourced, etc. And it requires you to be able to switch gears. I think we would ALL be much better off if everyone assumed that one or more career switches in their lives is a very real likelihood.
Capitalism is not very compassionate to the minority of individuals. Some people lose their jobs to India; some people end up making less than they did before; some people have to change jobs to something they enjoy less. At some point, we did understand that these unfortunate realities are necessary to advance the economy as a whole and improve the average standard of living for the community, nation, and world.
I say this as a double major myself. I studied Systems Analysis and Neuroscience. My approach was to study things I was very interested in, NOT to find a profitable intersection that may or may not be there when I graduate (and believe me, most people who asked me about my choice in majors had a hard time understanding this and did not agree with my approach).
> Just make sure you work as an "apprentice" for a good 3-5 years.
You're going to think I'm picking on you, which I guess I am. But...
In my opinion, this attitude keeps people in IT in the shitty jobs for way longer than they should be. All you're doing is keeping your current day job in the realm of outsource-able jobs (if you're both starting from a blank slate, why should I teach you at $75/hr when I can teach someone else at $40/hr). I went into professional services (cue consulting jokes) specifically to avoid this mentality that seems to infest "industry", and after about 6 months I was leading things and bringing actual value rather than just consuming someone else's.
They say every 1 year in consulting is equal to 3 years in industry; my guess is that this attitude has a lot to do with it.
> So what you're saying is, that me - a guy from Rhode Island - needs > to provide documentation and quantifiable proof to you - some random > dude on the Internet?
No, I'm saying that logical voters will want to see that the benefit outweighs the cost. I really am at a loss why you find this a problem.
> You are still spouting your nonsense about cost/benefit ratios. I don't > think we should talk ONLY cost/benefit when it comes to the education of > our children or the abilities for our businesses to be competitive. This > is my opinion, and I'm not going to write a thesis to prove it to YOU. > My new president is already on my side on this one.
Wait, so you don't think you need to have benefits outweighing the costs? That's incredible. I didn't support Obama, but even I wouldn't say that he supports you in this. He is going out of his way trying to show that his crazy public works economy stimulation plan is going to work on stuff that actually needs done anyway (you know, where the benefit outweighs the cost).
> And there's some pretty populated parts of our country without a decent > high speed infrastructure, and that needs to be fixed.
Why?! You are still just asserting stuff without any explanation. I can't believe you think this is a solid argument!
> I just can't understand your cold, un-compassionate position on this. I guess > you're all about the dollar and nothing else. I'm glad I'm not like you.
My problem with "compassionate" people like you is that you tend to be incredibly uneducated on how the world works; OR you tend not to think things through past the first decision point. I mean, do you really think that people like me are out there just trying to keep small towns from having fast Internet? Do you really think that it keeps us up at night to think that Podunk, NC citizens might have the same Internet speeds as us? Get real. I mean it; get real. In the REAL world, when the government invests in something like this, they are TAKING the money from another project. Or, they are increasing taxes -- an action that not even you would dare suggest retards the economy as a whole.
In fact, the government probably will not be able to come up with this funding anyway, given that it is already spending more than it takes in. That means it will borrow from China or print the money out of nowhere. I'm not going to try to explain to you why those are bad things, because you can't even understand a simple cost-benefit analysis rationale.
You people ask "is X a good thing?" and base your support on the answer to that. What a shallow, shallow thought process. If our leaders actually used that thought process, our country would have gone bankrupt a long time ago by trying to do everything that has any net positive.
I stopped making my decisions on the "gee, is free ice cream for everyone a good thing?" thought process back in the 3rd grade. Luckily for this country, "your" new president is much smarter than this, even if many of his supporters are not.
I would guess that this is part of brain formation, as the brain learns what is valuable and what is not. I would expect that the same results would NOT be found in younger brains.
You say that, but then you didn't tell me anything new.
> You seem live in a fantasy world where capitalism is best and it's all about > the mighty dollar. Are those 50 million kids without internet access worth the > MONEY? I say they are, because we NEED those kids to get online, to have access > to the technology, and to keep our country competitive in the world economy.
You still aren't SAYING anything. You are just giving your opinion without any justifying reasons. YOU are still in a fantasy world where the only thing that matters is if one side of the equation is positive and there are no associated costs. It is not black and white; you have to actually analyze the benefits and relate that to the cost. If you are going to say that the benefits outweigh the costs, then you need to justify that and explain why the market hasn't already provided this service. Am I saying that you can't do this? No. I am interested to hear your justification. But so far you have provided zero.
> You think people should all move to the big cities instead. Yea, good idea.
No I don't. I never said anything even remotely close to that.
> Or, we could say "naa, you're not worth the money" and end up shooting ourselves > in the foot 30 years down the road when all the new talent is coming from the > countries where Internet access isn't considered a privilege for people living > in the urban areas only.
First of all, we are talking about BROADBAND access, not all access. Secondly, again you are throwing out a hypothetical that already assumes that subsidizing this is the right decision. You can't justify that this is the right decision by quoting a hypothetical that assumes the the thing you are trying to show. You need to explain how this is worth the capital outlay.
COULD we end up shooting ourselves in the foot by not investing in broadband access for Podunk, NC? Sure. But we could just as easily be shooting ourselves in the foot by taking that money from another investment that was more worthy. You need to actually show that this investment is worth the cost. Econ 101.
> There's more to growing our society than just "Why should *I* pay for YOUR > KIDS." I don't have kids, I don't plan to, and I still don't mind some of > my tax dollars going to the education of our children. I put Internet in > the same category.
Congrats on not needing to see any analysis to come to this conclusion. If someone can show me that this is a net positive for the country, I will support it. Otherwise, I will not. I don't support increases in federal government size, power, and spending rate without any justification whatsoever.
> I won't re-hash everything I've already said, and you've already made up > your mind and seem closed to the possibility that this should be done at > all. So we'll leave it at that.
In fact I have continued to say the contrary; show me that this is a greater benefit than cost, and I will support it. It really is that simple.
> The US Government isn't going to go into the ISP business. What they WILL > do is help finance and give tax incentives to actual commercial ISP's in > order to get them to run lines to everywhere people live.
That's the same thing! The government doesn't do any real work itself; it pays private companies to do it for them. Whether it pays Verizon $1 million or gives them a $1 million tax incentive is only a question of delivery of the funds. The bottom line is that the market is saying "it's not worth it to bring broadband out to Podunk, NC because the cost outweighs the customer revenue base" and the government is now saying "ya, well let me make it worth it". So YOUR tax dollars are going to the construction of infrastructure to Podunk, NC where there are so few potential users that it wasn't worth it for the market to build that infrastructure itself.
> Right now, it's too expensive to run high speed fiber optic lines to > small towns in the mid west. With incentives, Verizon could subsidize > some of this initial investment with the government and run those lines. > The system will be owned and operated by Verizon, not the US government.
And that's better? So, if the government contracted out the work for $1 million, the government would own it. But now we're going to give a $1 million tax incentive, paying out the same amount, and Verizon owns it.
> I think this is a necessary evil to get all of our citizens connected > to the Internet.
Why?! You didn't justify why it is worth it.
> I don't love the idea completely but we will be left in the dust by other > competing markets because these other governments ARE doing this, and > their people are benefiting with very fast Internet connections, whereas > a lot of the people in the US are still on Dial-up.
Still waiting for the explanation on why this is so bad. Why is it that every time the government decides it wants to spend money on X, the only question is "gee, do I like X? Is X good?". That's not the right question! The right question is "Is X worth $Y the government is spending?".
Maybe you should consider that question before calling us all dumbasses.
> universal healthcare, other public services, or other services that > are held by private sector in other countries work very well in > europe, but SOMEHOW, goverment is always 'inefficient' in united states.
Your European-elitist assertion is debatable, but yes in the US the government is highly inefficient (I know; their agencies are my clients). In most large government programs, greater than 50% of the tax funds go to the overhead of the program rather than the program's purpose. This basically means that welfare (for example) is more a program for welfare case workers than welfare recipients.
> for example, the concept of 'lobbying corporation' is an abomination > that exists mainly in united states. remember how they spent 100 > million on advertisements on how network neutrality was 'sabotaging > jobs' back 2 years ago in the blink of an eye over a month, in order > to push laws to turn internet into cable tv ? if you dont, you should.
If there government didn't use tax money and the tax code to pick winners and losers, it would not be cost effective for companies to lobby. If the power was not so centralized, it would not be cost effective for companies to lobby. But, as long as the government is so heavily involved in the markets, companies have no choice but to spend millions to protect and grow their business by manipulating the federal government; otherwise, their competitors will and the company will fall.
When the government gives you something "for free", then it believes it has the right to regulate it to oblivion. See: bailouts, Medicaid, Medicare, etc.
So, even if Obama does it right, the public will eventually change that. This is why increasing federal government power is a bad idea (and, yes, this is an increase in power).
Slashdot Mirror
> Of course, that's a really douchebag move on Microsoft's part. If they are
> going to fire a ton of people to increase their profits, why didn't they do
> this when the economy was ok? Or wait until the recession ends?
Ha, what?
They are seeing significantly reduced demand where they need significantly reduced capacity in order to meet the market demand, and you want them to cut capacity either before demand falls or after it recovers?
> If a company I was working for did stuff like this, I would quickly lose any
> loyalty I had and try to find ways to manipulate the system in order to do
> the least work for the most pay.
The bottom line is that if your company didn't do this, you would be more likely to lose your job. It's capitalism, folks. It's harsh on a minority of individuals, but better for everyone in the long run. Get over it.
> Cutting "low performers" has, in my experience, always been a sign of a company
> in financial trouble.
That's like saying that someone fixing their roof is sign of roof damage. Any non-gradual economic downturn is by definition something that is not predicted or expected. If it was expected it would be priced into the market and you would see a very even, gradual decline in the market NOT this: http://finance.google.com/finance?chdnp=0&chdd=0&chds=1&chdv=1&chvs=Linear&chdeh=0&chdet=1231189200000&chddm=99314&q=INDEXSP:.INX&ntsp=0
Prior to the downturn, companies were operating on the assumption that there would not be a downturn like we have seen. Hiring rates, promotions, raises, capital investment decisions, etc. were all predicated on this assumption. When that assumption proves wrong, a company should re-evaluate those decisions. If they do not, they are not operating wisely. MSFT -- like most other companies -- almost certainly over-hired based on an overestimated revenue stream. My company did the same thing; luckily the business model is such that all they have to do is reduce hiring rates and don't have to lay off too many people.
There are of course hidden costs to cutting people, particularly around knowledge loss. I think that might be somewhat what you're getting at. But the reality is that companies are just trying to mirror the demand they expect to see, which is significantly less than they had been planning for.
When the government enters a market, it is at a competitive advantage as it is funded at least partially by tax dollars, which is revenue not linked to demand for its products.
For example: the idea of school vouchers is an attempt to counter-act this problem in the public vs private school systems.
I suggest you read up on instances where this has happened in the past; it's an important point to understand, especially since there always seems to be a strong voice suggesting that industries would be better off if there was a government "competitor". The fact is that this almost always results in complete socialization of the industry and a loss of the private component, because private industry has to have such a superior product in order to overcome the competitive disadvantage of the demand-divorced tax revenue the public "competitor" enjoys.
(It doesn't really have anything to do with the free market; I wasn't sure what you meant by that comment, so I don't address it here.)
Not altogether, but yes they will build fewer since they would lose the American market.
Sure about that? Because Obama is planning on spending a TON and at the same time cutting taxes. Sounds like borrow and spend to me. No difference.
Your comment would be more credible if you offered any information whatsoever.
Correlation fallacy. If the government was in the truck building business, there wouldn't be lots of companies building trucks.
Wow, great comment. Except you sort of ignored the fact that parent was talking about ideas not actions. In this country, we generally expect our government officials to have ideas even before we elect them to their offices, let alone while they are transitioning into office.
Do not attribute to organized religion what can be attributed to good people. Perhaps a better way to phrase it is: good things are happening in Africa by people in spite of their religion wasting donations on stupid shit like this:
http://www.solidrockchurch.org/king_ofkings.php
> Instead of just giving them the answer, you ask them a lot of questions
> that they can answer until they've reached the desired solution.
Wife, is that you? I had no idea you read /.
> Just don't get me started on Delta.
Well, perhaps you shouldn't have implied that Delta is worse than this AirTran fiasco if you didn't want to explain???
Seriously, I fly twice a week and 90% of the complaints I hear from casual travelers are absolutely ridiculous. I was on a flight from DTW to a small Pennsylvania airport. It was delayed a couple hours awaiting the inbound aircraft which had run into rough weather. Then it finally took off and by the time it got to the destination airport, a dense fog (1/8 mi visibility) had rolled in making it impossible to land. We circled for an hour or two and when the weather did not clear we had to turn back to DTW because we were running out of fuel. By this time it was quite late and there were no more flights to this airport that day, and due to the holiday there were no available seats on subsequent flights for two days. The airline would not spring for hotel. The Hawaiian Shirt Brigade on the flight WAS IRATE and screamed at both the pilots and the gate agents. They believed they were entitled to (a) free hotel rooms, (b) free tickets on an alternate airline.
Surprise, the airlines are currently unable to control the weather. There is no reason they should be responsible for paying for your hotel room in this instance. There is no reason they should incur the cost of seating you on a competing airline. What is the point of screaming at the PILOTS for deciding not to land in unsafe weather? If you're on a toll road and part of it is closed due to snow, would you expect the toll company to do anything at all?
In my experience, people who don't travel very often simply don't understand the complexities involved and turn all of their travel-related frustration into airline-directed anger. To be honest, the ignorance of infrequent travelers is my main personal annoyance with travel. I don't think asking for a little common sense is unreasonable.
On this line of thinking, any deep knowledge in a niche area can be very useful. ...and incredibly risky. The idea with a double major is to REDUCE your industry risk, not increase it. It may not feel like it, but your decision of your career direction is one of the riskiest decisions you will make. You have no real control over whether your industry will grow, disappear altogether, be outsourced, become obsolete, see demand drop due to economic forces, be legislated into oblivion, be taken over by the government, be disadvantaged by the tax code, etc.
Not to get philosophical, but capitalism requires agility. It requires businesses to fail, industries to disappear, jobs to be outsourced, etc. And it requires you to be able to switch gears. I think we would ALL be much better off if everyone assumed that one or more career switches in their lives is a very real likelihood.
Capitalism is not very compassionate to the minority of individuals. Some people lose their jobs to India; some people end up making less than they did before; some people have to change jobs to something they enjoy less. At some point, we did understand that these unfortunate realities are necessary to advance the economy as a whole and improve the average standard of living for the community, nation, and world.
I say this as a double major myself. I studied Systems Analysis and Neuroscience. My approach was to study things I was very interested in, NOT to find a profitable intersection that may or may not be there when I graduate (and believe me, most people who asked me about my choice in majors had a hard time understanding this and did not agree with my approach).
> Just make sure you work as an "apprentice" for a good 3-5 years.
You're going to think I'm picking on you, which I guess I am. But...
In my opinion, this attitude keeps people in IT in the shitty jobs for way longer than they should be. All you're doing is keeping your current day job in the realm of outsource-able jobs (if you're both starting from a blank slate, why should I teach you at $75/hr when I can teach someone else at $40/hr). I went into professional services (cue consulting jokes) specifically to avoid this mentality that seems to infest "industry", and after about 6 months I was leading things and bringing actual value rather than just consuming someone else's.
They say every 1 year in consulting is equal to 3 years in industry; my guess is that this attitude has a lot to do with it.
Your use of logical dissent has been logged and will be reviewed by an analyst.
What basis do you have for this comment? The public is protected against such action by the courts.
Not that private sector flamebaiting isn't fun...
The government believes that the way to fix the economy is to spend more on things like road construction.
> So what you're saying is, that me - a guy from Rhode Island - needs
> to provide documentation and quantifiable proof to you - some random
> dude on the Internet?
No, I'm saying that logical voters will want to see that the benefit outweighs the cost. I really am at a loss why you find this a problem.
> You are still spouting your nonsense about cost/benefit ratios. I don't
> think we should talk ONLY cost/benefit when it comes to the education of
> our children or the abilities for our businesses to be competitive. This
> is my opinion, and I'm not going to write a thesis to prove it to YOU.
> My new president is already on my side on this one.
Wait, so you don't think you need to have benefits outweighing the costs? That's incredible. I didn't support Obama, but even I wouldn't say that he supports you in this. He is going out of his way trying to show that his crazy public works economy stimulation plan is going to work on stuff that actually needs done anyway (you know, where the benefit outweighs the cost).
> And there's some pretty populated parts of our country without a decent
> high speed infrastructure, and that needs to be fixed.
Why?! You are still just asserting stuff without any explanation. I can't believe you think this is a solid argument!
> I just can't understand your cold, un-compassionate position on this. I guess
> you're all about the dollar and nothing else. I'm glad I'm not like you.
My problem with "compassionate" people like you is that you tend to be incredibly uneducated on how the world works; OR you tend not to think things through past the first decision point. I mean, do you really think that people like me are out there just trying to keep small towns from having fast Internet? Do you really think that it keeps us up at night to think that Podunk, NC citizens might have the same Internet speeds as us? Get real. I mean it; get real. In the REAL world, when the government invests in something like this, they are TAKING the money from another project. Or, they are increasing taxes -- an action that not even you would dare suggest retards the economy as a whole.
In fact, the government probably will not be able to come up with this funding anyway, given that it is already spending more than it takes in. That means it will borrow from China or print the money out of nowhere. I'm not going to try to explain to you why those are bad things, because you can't even understand a simple cost-benefit analysis rationale.
You people ask "is X a good thing?" and base your support on the answer to that. What a shallow, shallow thought process. If our leaders actually used that thought process, our country would have gone bankrupt a long time ago by trying to do everything that has any net positive.
I stopped making my decisions on the "gee, is free ice cream for everyone a good thing?" thought process back in the 3rd grade. Luckily for this country, "your" new president is much smarter than this, even if many of his supporters are not.
I would guess that this is part of brain formation, as the brain learns what is valuable and what is not. I would expect that the same results would NOT be found in younger brains.
> You *still* don't understand how it would work.
You say that, but then you didn't tell me anything new.
> You seem live in a fantasy world where capitalism is best and it's all about
> the mighty dollar. Are those 50 million kids without internet access worth the
> MONEY? I say they are, because we NEED those kids to get online, to have access
> to the technology, and to keep our country competitive in the world economy.
You still aren't SAYING anything. You are just giving your opinion without any justifying reasons. YOU are still in a fantasy world where the only thing that matters is if one side of the equation is positive and there are no associated costs. It is not black and white; you have to actually analyze the benefits and relate that to the cost. If you are going to say that the benefits outweigh the costs, then you need to justify that and explain why the market hasn't already provided this service. Am I saying that you can't do this? No. I am interested to hear your justification. But so far you have provided zero.
> You think people should all move to the big cities instead. Yea, good idea.
No I don't. I never said anything even remotely close to that.
> Or, we could say "naa, you're not worth the money" and end up shooting ourselves
> in the foot 30 years down the road when all the new talent is coming from the
> countries where Internet access isn't considered a privilege for people living
> in the urban areas only.
First of all, we are talking about BROADBAND access, not all access. Secondly, again you are throwing out a hypothetical that already assumes that subsidizing this is the right decision. You can't justify that this is the right decision by quoting a hypothetical that assumes the the thing you are trying to show. You need to explain how this is worth the capital outlay.
COULD we end up shooting ourselves in the foot by not investing in broadband access for Podunk, NC? Sure. But we could just as easily be shooting ourselves in the foot by taking that money from another investment that was more worthy. You need to actually show that this investment is worth the cost. Econ 101.
> There's more to growing our society than just "Why should *I* pay for YOUR
> KIDS." I don't have kids, I don't plan to, and I still don't mind some of
> my tax dollars going to the education of our children. I put Internet in
> the same category.
Congrats on not needing to see any analysis to come to this conclusion. If someone can show me that this is a net positive for the country, I will support it. Otherwise, I will not. I don't support increases in federal government size, power, and spending rate without any justification whatsoever.
> I won't re-hash everything I've already said, and you've already made up
> your mind and seem closed to the possibility that this should be done at
> all. So we'll leave it at that.
In fact I have continued to say the contrary; show me that this is a greater benefit than cost, and I will support it. It really is that simple.
Are you suggesting parrots and consultants share a common ancestor?
> The US Government isn't going to go into the ISP business. What they WILL
> do is help finance and give tax incentives to actual commercial ISP's in
> order to get them to run lines to everywhere people live.
That's the same thing! The government doesn't do any real work itself; it pays private companies to do it for them. Whether it pays Verizon $1 million or gives them a $1 million tax incentive is only a question of delivery of the funds. The bottom line is that the market is saying "it's not worth it to bring broadband out to Podunk, NC because the cost outweighs the customer revenue base" and the government is now saying "ya, well let me make it worth it". So YOUR tax dollars are going to the construction of infrastructure to Podunk, NC where there are so few potential users that it wasn't worth it for the market to build that infrastructure itself.
> Right now, it's too expensive to run high speed fiber optic lines to
> small towns in the mid west. With incentives, Verizon could subsidize
> some of this initial investment with the government and run those lines.
> The system will be owned and operated by Verizon, not the US government.
And that's better? So, if the government contracted out the work for $1 million, the government would own it. But now we're going to give a $1 million tax incentive, paying out the same amount, and Verizon owns it.
> I think this is a necessary evil to get all of our citizens connected
> to the Internet.
Why?! You didn't justify why it is worth it.
> I don't love the idea completely but we will be left in the dust by other
> competing markets because these other governments ARE doing this, and
> their people are benefiting with very fast Internet connections, whereas
> a lot of the people in the US are still on Dial-up.
Still waiting for the explanation on why this is so bad. Why is it that every time the government decides it wants to spend money on X, the only question is "gee, do I like X? Is X good?". That's not the right question! The right question is "Is X worth $Y the government is spending?".
Maybe you should consider that question before calling us all dumbasses.
> universal healthcare, other public services, or other services that
> are held by private sector in other countries work very well in
> europe, but SOMEHOW, goverment is always 'inefficient' in united states.
Your European-elitist assertion is debatable, but yes in the US the government is highly inefficient (I know; their agencies are my clients). In most large government programs, greater than 50% of the tax funds go to the overhead of the program rather than the program's purpose. This basically means that welfare (for example) is more a program for welfare case workers than welfare recipients.
> for example, the concept of 'lobbying corporation' is an abomination
> that exists mainly in united states. remember how they spent 100
> million on advertisements on how network neutrality was 'sabotaging
> jobs' back 2 years ago in the blink of an eye over a month, in order
> to push laws to turn internet into cable tv ? if you dont, you should.
If there government didn't use tax money and the tax code to pick winners and losers, it would not be cost effective for companies to lobby. If the power was not so centralized, it would not be cost effective for companies to lobby. But, as long as the government is so heavily involved in the markets, companies have no choice but to spend millions to protect and grow their business by manipulating the federal government; otherwise, their competitors will and the company will fall.
When the government gives you something "for free", then it believes it has the right to regulate it to oblivion. See: bailouts, Medicaid, Medicare, etc.
So, even if Obama does it right, the public will eventually change that. This is why increasing federal government power is a bad idea (and, yes, this is an increase in power).
You still have a month left in your term, George.
No, it's worse than that. It doesn't even show that he was ever in the car.