reading tech articles on 1,000$ cars that are better than the 2,000$ cars of yesteryear
This would be assuming the average wage was the same, which is obviously false. Another thing you're missing out on is the value added to the cars since then. We're a long time past the days of carberator fueled motors with some basic analog gauges and an AM radio. You have to look at all of the technology that is integrated into the cars of now. Even the cheapest piece of dirt car now is vastly superior to the pieces of junk American manufacturers were pushing out in the 70's.
Most of your points had to do with credit. This is simply the point that if people can get the credit to buy something they will. If car dealerships and real-estate agents can sell land and a house at a value that someone can goto the bank and borrow, they will. And they have, to the point where cars, land, and housing are grossly overpriced in many areas. But this isn't a problem with the economy, this is a problem with user spending habits. People wanted things they couldn't afford, so they borrowed it. They continued until there was no other option and all of the rest of the economy became more and more bloated as a result because all those other people had to pay back their credit for THEIR houses, cars, etc.. The same goes for savings, people just want things they can't afford. If they stopped buying them with credit the price would go down.
Another issue you've overlooked is taxes, which have gone up as a percentage over the years, so no matter what the average income looks like, the taxes are higher. Social Security should have never lasted as long as it has. It is killing the younger working generation of scientists, engineers, construction workers and even IT workers who have to pay for things that they shouldn't.
Free trade fosters more wealth, that's all their is to it. Accept it, adapt, or die. Shielding your eyes from the world never made it go away.
You know, things CHANGE from time to time in this ol' world. What works OK at some time N, does necessarily work well at some time N+K. Reality is like that.
Agreed, if you no longer have a job in one field, do something else in that field, or go to another. If you make baskets, and the industrial revolution happens, and you can no longer make baskets at a profit because someone/something else does it better, find a new skill or die. Not everyone can have everything.
Who is this person going around to the IT crowd telling them that their skills and labor were supposed to give them good paying jobs their entire life because life is fair like that? Life's not fair, get another skill or move to another city where other jobs are if there aren't any in your city. Or, go live in a cheap part of america and start your own IT business to compete with the Indians. (I wouldn't advise this since you couldn't under price them right now.)
Economics is nothing more than a science of how to fuck over the working citizen and benefit the investor.
Economics is the science of distribution of wealth. The whole point is to raise the living conditions of EVERYONE, not the investor. If you compare the life of the average person 50-100 years ago the difference is pretty astounding as far as the general way of life and how much stuff one has. Economic's makes predictions that are correct, whether you want to believe it's ignorant and callow, or whatever else. You can see a natural progression in the standard of living in the United States over the past 100 years; it's obvious. It isn't because of ignorant folks like yourself that think it's their god-given right to a bloated salary.
WHo cares? America is my business. I own it jointly with all my fellow citizens. They are my partners. I aint looking to fuck them over so I can unduly benefit myself and some foreigners. I call that treason....
I don't even know what to say about this. Bringing in some nationalist emotions won't change any of the facts. If you really loved your fellow American you wouldn't stand in the way of raising his and yours standard of living.
I say fuck that, and put up steep trade barriers.
I just read this one, wow, this is the dumbest thing I've ever heard in my life. You obviously don't have any idea about what is happening in the world do you? You can afford the things you have because people like you aren't manufacturing them in the United States for $40/hr union labor. I can afford them because people like you aren't producing them. I thank whomever is in charge that you aren't in charge. I'm tempted to end my post now but I'll do one more.
As far as your cute little office analogy goes. In a matter of months those in the other office will have to raise their prices and hire more minions to do the mass of work they will have. And now they can afford window washers like you guys can afford for your office building; that's nice. So they'll be on a level playing field with you if you just give them a little time. If this isn't satisfactory, then I guess you were just making too much to work at your office because of the years of other lawyers doing so well. You got your degree in the crowded field thinking that you were just going to make tons of "mad cash" and it didn't turn out like that. Oh well, get another job.
Why is wanting money considered greed? You have a job don't you? Greedy bastard, stop reading slashdot and go do some free work for someone who doesn't deserve it. Oh wait, you can't feed yourself then.. heh..
That's another government related problem. All I see here are a bunch of government related problems. Patents are too general and last too long. Bigger government seems to always cause more and more issues because it's impossible to keep a handle on eve market all the time, as Communist Russia found out.
The drugs are widly expensive because ineficient socialist economies will pay any price for the drugs with their peoples' money. If people had it to do they just couldn't afford the drugs and they'd die, therefore the drug companies would also die. At some point the drug companies would have to offer the drugs at a rate that they could make a profit at or else they'd go out of business funding research for products that don't sell. Some people would still not be able to afford them, but more people would. By letting a governments control the supply and demand of a product for an entire market you innevitably raise its price because they will still pay.
The answer is to continue increasing technology and innovating new things. The day will come when food, medicine, and other technology are so abundant and cheap that everyone will have it. This might be hundreds of years, but it will happen. Also make sure to keep governments out of the supply/demand pricing structure because you doom any services for governments/economies of lesser economic prosperity. This is as much Europe's fault as America's.
This product is about increasing the technology available to us. It is about innovation. It is also about making money. The consumer (i.e. world) is better off when people have an incentive to create new technologies.
How can a holographics video disc be used greedily anyway? It's a damn disc that holds information.
Statistically the SAT is a good predictor of college performance.. Sure everyone knows a guy who made a great grade and then flunked out.. and people know ppl that make shitty scores and made straight A's.. But on the average an SAT score (under the right circumstances, meaning they weren't taught to take the test) do provide a pretty good identifier as to who can and will keep their motivation and who can grasp knowledge at the appropriate level.
You can't determine that about a candidate unless you know them intimately and have a good feeling about their personality and have watched them work before. That's where the college degree comes in.
I totally agree. It's a simple matter of supply and demand economics. Although macro economics isn't the best of all thought out systems, it is still generally reliable. Who thinks that going to college for 4 years or not even finishing college should merit 75-100k/year when most other college grads get out and see 45-55k/year.. That's the price point for a normal developer if you ask me. Specializations might go up from there. Which means as you gain experience and specialization you might top out at 75-85k/year which would be how a lot of other industries deal with this type of thing.
75K/year.. That's around $1000 a week after taxes. If you can't pay for rent and food and utilities with 3 weeks worth of salary ($3000) then you're just trying to live outside your means. I think taxes are a big problem by the way. of that 75,000 a HUGE chunk goes to things you'll most likely never directly benefit from. When you could be putting that money back into the economy creating jobs for all of the people that are on wellfare and other unneeded social programs.
I think you missed the point of the parent post. What he was saying is that you need a Bachelors degree in something from an accredited 4 year institution, which your friend most definitely had..:)
Actually, gtk-gnutella sucks in usability compared to BearShare, or K++ which is what I end up using most of the time. Pan's UI is the same compared to Agent, although I use Thunderbird's news reader. Maybe you don't know what good looking UI is? You should go outside and observe some nice architecture; those basement walls are a bit too anti-UI.
Businesses ALWAYS pass their business costs onto their customers.. Their customers provide revenue to pay for their business costs.. OF COURSE it goes to the consumers, where do you think they'd get the money from? The lesson here is that the free market should take care of itself and legislating the hell out of companies is nothing but wasteful. Why not spend all of that money supporting smaller and more innovative private industry? Why not channel it into open source? Why not do something constructive instead of disrupting the market and screwing the consumers?
The point was the rebut the parent post, that outsourcing is not immoral and that nationalism does not equate to morality so the entire post was pretty irrelavent. And no matter what equation they are using, taking away one persons opportunity to give it to someone else cannot be classified as immoral.
Or everyone could spend the least amount of money on the product where the company offshores, saving millions of dollars in the process and putting it into other areas of the economy? You act like saving money one place leads to.. nothing..
Hiring grown men with college degrees from across the world so that they have a better life and feed their families is not moral? When did nationalism become morality?
If Heinz gave me a bottle of Miranader sauce when I bought a bottle of ketchup, I wouldn't expect the makers of other Miranader sauces to complain that they were being pushed out of the market because "Everyone uses heinz and now no one will buy our Marinader sauce".. If I wanted the other Miranader sauce there is nothing keeping me from going and getting the other sauce. Now I have THREE sauces to choose from!!!
Choosing one option over another always means giving up your investment in the first option. I don't quite understand this point. If a linux dev team were to switch to MS they'd have to give up their investment in Linux... ??
If Heinz offered apparel/novelty market goods that were good enough that I would buy them over the stuff I wear already, then I would buy their clothing.. What is wrong with that???
And the money the companies save goes back into the U.S. economy. So does the money that the "Big people with real-estate have to sell". They just invest it into other U.S. companies. All of you need to take some economics classes.
Corporations will quickly switch back to Windows because they will realize there is no return on their investment in installing software that their business users can't use.
The EU stopped those contracts with pc-makers in 1994. Why is Microsoft still the dominant force in the market 10 years later? They make a better product?
Microsoft and IBM coded OS/2 until Windows 3.0 at which point IBM kept on trying to develop until OS/2 Warp which failed as a competitive product to Windows even with IBM's backing. Microsoft didn't litigate BeOS to death at all, I don't understand where this comment came from. The last time they were in court it was BeOS sueing Microsoft and BeOS won 24 million dollars in the anti-trust case and distributed most of it to shareholders. I think you should probably check your facts before you re:spew.
The company you work for doesn't leverage its current product lines, services, and customer base to increase revenue? That's a bit odd, you might be out of a job pretty soon. I was under the impression that companies should use their existing infrastructure to advance their products and revenue. Maybe I've taken too many economics classes to know any better.
Then you just go belly up. That is not Microsoft's fault. No one is forcing anyone to choose Windows as an operating system. A monopoly is when one company unfairly controls the market and forces everyone to use their product. Last time I checked, we still live in a free market economy, and you can choose whatever OS you'd like. As a matter of fact, Microsoft hasn't bought or litigated another OS out of the market. The fact that there isn't another OS that is friendly enough and marketing hard enough to compete in the public eye as Microsoft's Windows line is not Microsoft's fault. Actually that's Microsoft doing their job in the free market.
New operating systems continue and will continue to be produced. The cost of producing an operating system is relatively high compared to other software endeavours. The reason that it might at first seem like a natural monopoly is because everyone knows that you have to have a comparable product, at least in terms of features, ease of use, etc. to even begin to relieve the top companies of their hard earned market share. The cost of providing an operating system infrastructure is not great enough to stop Apple, Linux or BSD development teams from constantly improving and enhancing their software on a daily basis, just as Microsoft is doing.
In short the answer is no, a natural monopoly on desktop operating systems does not exist. Although , I believe that the impending doom of this situation is what causes so many people to be anti-microsoft and anti- in general.
Not forcing someone to choose is not monopolistic. Microsoft doesn't force you to use their media player, nor does it force you to go out and choose another one, as would be the cases if they locked out other applications or didn't include one at all. They are simply offering a default application to get things done out of the box. This does not slow competition at all. User can still choose, they still have free will and the full extent of the free market's options to solving their audio/video problems. DRM or not, a user is not forced to use Media Player. They can go *choose* any media software they want. Simply offering a default application is not stamping out competition.
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This would be assuming the average wage was the same, which is obviously false. Another thing you're missing out on is the value added to the cars since then. We're a long time past the days of carberator fueled motors with some basic analog gauges and an AM radio. You have to look at all of the technology that is integrated into the cars of now. Even the cheapest piece of dirt car now is vastly superior to the pieces of junk American manufacturers were pushing out in the 70's.
Most of your points had to do with credit. This is simply the point that if people can get the credit to buy something they will. If car dealerships and real-estate agents can sell land and a house at a value that someone can goto the bank and borrow, they will. And they have, to the point where cars, land, and housing are grossly overpriced in many areas. But this isn't a problem with the economy, this is a problem with user spending habits. People wanted things they couldn't afford, so they borrowed it. They continued until there was no other option and all of the rest of the economy became more and more bloated as a result because all those other people had to pay back their credit for THEIR houses, cars, etc.. The same goes for savings, people just want things they can't afford. If they stopped buying them with credit the price would go down.
Another issue you've overlooked is taxes, which have gone up as a percentage over the years, so no matter what the average income looks like, the taxes are higher. Social Security should have never lasted as long as it has. It is killing the younger working generation of scientists, engineers, construction workers and even IT workers who have to pay for things that they shouldn't.
Free trade fosters more wealth, that's all their is to it. Accept it, adapt, or die. Shielding your eyes from the world never made it go away.
Why is wanting money considered greed? You have a job don't you? Greedy bastard, stop reading slashdot and go do some free work for someone who doesn't deserve it. Oh wait, you can't feed yourself then.. heh..
That's another government related problem. All I see here are a bunch of government related problems. Patents are too general and last too long. Bigger government seems to always cause more and more issues because it's impossible to keep a handle on eve market all the time, as Communist Russia found out.
The drugs are widly expensive because ineficient socialist economies will pay any price for the drugs with their peoples' money. If people had it to do they just couldn't afford the drugs and they'd die, therefore the drug companies would also die. At some point the drug companies would have to offer the drugs at a rate that they could make a profit at or else they'd go out of business funding research for products that don't sell. Some people would still not be able to afford them, but more people would. By letting a governments control the supply and demand of a product for an entire market you innevitably raise its price because they will still pay. The answer is to continue increasing technology and innovating new things. The day will come when food, medicine, and other technology are so abundant and cheap that everyone will have it. This might be hundreds of years, but it will happen. Also make sure to keep governments out of the supply/demand pricing structure because you doom any services for governments/economies of lesser economic prosperity. This is as much Europe's fault as America's. This product is about increasing the technology available to us. It is about innovation. It is also about making money. The consumer (i.e. world) is better off when people have an incentive to create new technologies. How can a holographics video disc be used greedily anyway? It's a damn disc that holds information.
Statistically the SAT is a good predictor of college performance.. Sure everyone knows a guy who made a great grade and then flunked out.. and people know ppl that make shitty scores and made straight A's.. But on the average an SAT score (under the right circumstances, meaning they weren't taught to take the test) do provide a pretty good identifier as to who can and will keep their motivation and who can grasp knowledge at the appropriate level.
Maybe you went to the wrong college?
You can't determine that about a candidate unless you know them intimately and have a good feeling about their personality and have watched them work before. That's where the college degree comes in.
I totally agree. It's a simple matter of supply and demand economics. Although macro economics isn't the best of all thought out systems, it is still generally reliable. Who thinks that going to college for 4 years or not even finishing college should merit 75-100k/year when most other college grads get out and see 45-55k/year.. That's the price point for a normal developer if you ask me. Specializations might go up from there. Which means as you gain experience and specialization you might top out at 75-85k/year which would be how a lot of other industries deal with this type of thing.
75K/year.. That's around $1000 a week after taxes. If you can't pay for rent and food and utilities with 3 weeks worth of salary ($3000) then you're just trying to live outside your means. I think taxes are a big problem by the way. of that 75,000 a HUGE chunk goes to things you'll most likely never directly benefit from. When you could be putting that money back into the economy creating jobs for all of the people that are on wellfare and other unneeded social programs.
I think you missed the point of the parent post. What he was saying is that you need a Bachelors degree in something from an accredited 4 year institution, which your friend most definitely had..:)
Actually, gtk-gnutella sucks in usability compared to BearShare, or K++ which is what I end up using most of the time. Pan's UI is the same compared to Agent, although I use Thunderbird's news reader. Maybe you don't know what good looking UI is? You should go outside and observe some nice architecture; those basement walls are a bit too anti-UI.
Businesses ALWAYS pass their business costs onto their customers.. Their customers provide revenue to pay for their business costs.. OF COURSE it goes to the consumers, where do you think they'd get the money from? The lesson here is that the free market should take care of itself and legislating the hell out of companies is nothing but wasteful. Why not spend all of that money supporting smaller and more innovative private industry? Why not channel it into open source? Why not do something constructive instead of disrupting the market and screwing the consumers?
The point was the rebut the parent post, that outsourcing is not immoral and that nationalism does not equate to morality so the entire post was pretty irrelavent. And no matter what equation they are using, taking away one persons opportunity to give it to someone else cannot be classified as immoral.
Or everyone could spend the least amount of money on the product where the company offshores, saving millions of dollars in the process and putting it into other areas of the economy? You act like saving money one place leads to.. nothing..
Hiring grown men with college degrees from across the world so that they have a better life and feed their families is not moral? When did nationalism become morality?
If Heinz gave me a bottle of Miranader sauce when I bought a bottle of ketchup, I wouldn't expect the makers of other Miranader sauces to complain that they were being pushed out of the market because "Everyone uses heinz and now no one will buy our Marinader sauce".. If I wanted the other Miranader sauce there is nothing keeping me from going and getting the other sauce. Now I have THREE sauces to choose from!!! Choosing one option over another always means giving up your investment in the first option. I don't quite understand this point. If a linux dev team were to switch to MS they'd have to give up their investment in Linux... ?? If Heinz offered apparel/novelty market goods that were good enough that I would buy them over the stuff I wear already, then I would buy their clothing.. What is wrong with that???
And the money the companies save goes back into the U.S. economy. So does the money that the "Big people with real-estate have to sell". They just invest it into other U.S. companies. All of you need to take some economics classes.
Corporations will quickly switch back to Windows because they will realize there is no return on their investment in installing software that their business users can't use.
The EU stopped those contracts with pc-makers in 1994. Why is Microsoft still the dominant force in the market 10 years later? They make a better product?
Microsoft and IBM coded OS/2 until Windows 3.0 at which point IBM kept on trying to develop until OS/2 Warp which failed as a competitive product to Windows even with IBM's backing. Microsoft didn't litigate BeOS to death at all, I don't understand where this comment came from. The last time they were in court it was BeOS sueing Microsoft and BeOS won 24 million dollars in the anti-trust case and distributed most of it to shareholders. I think you should probably check your facts before you re:spew.
The company you work for doesn't leverage its current product lines, services, and customer base to increase revenue? That's a bit odd, you might be out of a job pretty soon. I was under the impression that companies should use their existing infrastructure to advance their products and revenue. Maybe I've taken too many economics classes to know any better.
Then you just go belly up. That is not Microsoft's fault. No one is forcing anyone to choose Windows as an operating system. A monopoly is when one company unfairly controls the market and forces everyone to use their product. Last time I checked, we still live in a free market economy, and you can choose whatever OS you'd like. As a matter of fact, Microsoft hasn't bought or litigated another OS out of the market. The fact that there isn't another OS that is friendly enough and marketing hard enough to compete in the public eye as Microsoft's Windows line is not Microsoft's fault. Actually that's Microsoft doing their job in the free market.
New operating systems continue and will continue to be produced. The cost of producing an operating system is relatively high compared to other software endeavours. The reason that it might at first seem like a natural monopoly is because everyone knows that you have to have a comparable product, at least in terms of features, ease of use, etc. to even begin to relieve the top companies of their hard earned market share. The cost of providing an operating system infrastructure is not great enough to stop Apple, Linux or BSD development teams from constantly improving and enhancing their software on a daily basis, just as Microsoft is doing. In short the answer is no, a natural monopoly on desktop operating systems does not exist. Although , I believe that the impending doom of this situation is what causes so many people to be anti-microsoft and anti- in general.
Not forcing someone to choose is not monopolistic. Microsoft doesn't force you to use their media player, nor does it force you to go out and choose another one, as would be the cases if they locked out other applications or didn't include one at all. They are simply offering a default application to get things done out of the box. This does not slow competition at all. User can still choose, they still have free will and the full extent of the free market's options to solving their audio/video problems. DRM or not, a user is not forced to use Media Player. They can go *choose* any media software they want. Simply offering a default application is not stamping out competition.