While I agree that a lot of our respective societies health issues are preventable, I am 26 years old, can run a marathon, and rarely ever touch red meat and I call shenanigans on the idea that diet and exercise are a cure-all! I have 140/85 blood pressure (high) despite doing cardio work 5 days a week and eating right. I have knee problems when it's cold, back problems all the time, and suffer from bronchitis every winter from exercise in the cold. Sometimes I feel like a healthy lifestyle is making me fall apart.
I'm not a good (counter)example, but I'm 28 years old, pretty sedentary (gym twice a week and only started recently after 8 years of neglect), overweight.. and I've only needed to go to a doctor a couple of times in the last 10 years, and only missed work for medical reasons twice in my lifetime... I'm far from perfect health, but I do count my blessings (though, if I don't start to pick up and get back in shape, I'll regret it later)
Just 10k a year. Wow, that's cheap. Let me look at my 1000.00 dollar a month budget and figure out how to work that in.
475.00 rent
50.00 car insurance
41.00 internet (college student with both campus and on line classes)
30.00 a week gasoline
55.00 a week grocery bill
50.00 cell phone
oops, run out of money
How about you sending me the money to afford health insurance since it is such a small amount in your world?
Hello, South American (Uruguay) here. I have the best health insurance you can buy in my country (probably MUCH better than anything you can get there).
You know how much it costs? U$D 60 a month (for people under 30). It works, as I'm too busy to actually use it (I only used twice for two visits to the doctor since I affiliated last year).
Oh, and by the way, you think you don't have any room to cut over there? I have news for you... I was a student... and I didn't need a car (still don't - though, oh, I do want one badly). If you don't have good public transport between where you study and where you live, get a good bike (I used to make a 10 mile ride each way, I was in great shape, now that I work 8 to 6 I'm overweight - I actually miss the bike).
Your internet and cell phone bills are also ridiculous, but I guess that's the US for you, and you don't have other choices on campus or whatever. I pay U$ 10/month cell phone, and never run out of local minutes or SMSs, and can even make a couple long-distance calls a month. And I pay U$ 15/month for my internet connection (not great, 1 mbps ADSL)
Rent is also ridiculous over there. I pay U$ 150, U$ 450 gets you a really nice, large house over here.
Apples to oranges, I know, but it's one reason I'm still in my country, when I could be making U$ 5000 or more over there (the day I can figure out to sell myself there while living here, I'll have it made).
Having universal gov't health care doesn't stop the wealthy from buying more health care than anyone else;
It depends. In my country (Uruguay, SA), which currently has a left-leaning government (president is an oncologist, and belongs to the Socialist party), they chose to "level down": they gave universal access to the formerly paid-only mutual health system to every worker, by decree, paying a nominal fee to the mutual system.
Before that, we already had "universal" health care, but in a three-tier system where
- The poor had access to the hideous public healthcare, where doctors are usually decently trained but lacking the most basic of tools and no money;
- The working class had access to a relatively good "mutual" service - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_state - where you can get the best doctors and access to the best tech, as long as you're willing to wait, and don't ask for it very often;
- And the rich or privileged had access to apparently-better-than-US-style health insurance which in practice means not having to wait for doctors or tech (choosing to see any doctor you want in about 24 to 48 hs, etc, etc), access to the best infrastructure but not largely different from the mutual system except for the waiting time.
Now the government thought it would be a good idea to make everyone stand in the "middle" tier, the mutual system, which means that the third of the population that were formerly badly helped by public healthcare now become a burden on the mutual system, and banning private healthcare (such as the one I had recently become a member of) so that the "rich"*, too, have to use the mutual system (the very rich can still choose to pay, a lot more than before for better healthcare, and not as easily as before). The mutual system, which was never in the best finances to start with, is starting to collapse: the end result is awful healthcare for everybody.
An analogy would be Obama decreeing: "Americans deserve the best healthcare! Everybody can get free healthcare from John Hopkins!" (substitute with good hospital of choice). Do you think John Hopkins would be able to cope? The end result would be awful waiting times and/or bankruptcy. It is, of course, a very simplistic analogy, but not too far from the truth:
The Spanish hospital (Asociacion Española) had a tremendous influx of new patients and can barely cope, the Medical Union's hospital (CASMU) is now on strike and patients fear for their health, and other formerly on the brink hospitals are going broke.
*where rich is anybody earning over two thousand dollars. Not kidding.
I made a hundred bucks a week when I was a teen. Of course my parents never gave me that, but my boss at the restaurant sure did.
And then you wonder why we South (and Mexican North) Americans go to the US... that's more than what I used to make 2 years ago as a developer (on a side note, that also explains a lot of crappy code:P )
I've even noticed an interesting phenomenon that, while far from universal, is also not all that rare: programmers who share a common non-English first language using English among themselves to engage in technical discussions.
I live in South America, and I've never seen that. We use our native language, and yes, our talk is peppered with English words.
OTOH on a multilingual environment we all use English (for example, some of my family works for the UN, and we always use English even when we could be speaking in some other language - say, we all know German and we're with a German speaker, we still speak English). Or when speaking with a German programmer, etc...
You're obviously not a programmer. If you are, you work with some obscure programming language that has non-English keywords/reserved words. I'd love to hear about it as a curiosity. Please do tell!
One example: the Spanish localization of Excel has some of its syntax translated to Spanish... and it's awful for me (Spanish native speaker), as I don't have the slightest idea of which function is its English equivalent.
Not to mention it's not portable, which is a major pain.
This is the next great challenge of our time I think. In a world where every kind of media can be digitized and exist on every computer on earth instantly (or near enough as to make the distinction pointless) have we reached a point in which entertainment can only be an amateur affair? If they can't find a way to either (a) make people want to pay for content that they could get for free if they tried, or (b) make it impossible to get the content for free, we may eventually reach a point at which there is no money to made in any non-live performances.
I know it's not the same, but I pay (quite a lot for my budget) for playing the Magic:The Gathering online game (which is not even a particularly good implementation, but is the game I like), when I could be playing for free.
So I suspect that you CAN make people pay for stuff.
I'd actually like a reason to pay for some of the stuff I now get without paying for the authors (and, short of sending money to them, I don't have many legal ways to do it here where here != US).
when you call their tech support, you'll reliably get connected with someone who speaks English.
Just FYI: speaking fluent English != being a good programmer/designer/whatever (though in programming in particular, it's a good idea). In China, people over 30 don't speak English because it was BANNED, not because they're not intelligent.
And I'd expect most of those H1Bs to speak fluent English anyways.
Oh? And what are you willing to do without? Because let me tell you something: to be on par with the standards of living in India and China, you can say 'bye-bye' to having your own place to live. Instead, you and three generations of your clan will be living in a studio apartment. You won't be able to afford a car, you won't be able to afford decent clothes, and you won't be able to afford to eat anything not obtained from a frickin' soup kitchen.
(I live in Uruguay, South America, so my opinions might be biased).
My uncle just returned from China, and he brought a lot of videos of his time there. I was AMAZED at the differences between what I expected, and what I saw.
People in (urban) China don't live as bad as you make it seem... it's true 90% of the workers don't have a car, they all move with scooters/small motorbikes, but the buildings were all pretty nice (if small), clothes all seemed decent (they're made there, after all!), and cooking wasn't so bad (yes, meat is unaffordable, but it's unaffordable in Europe too!) and AFAIK it wasn't obtained from a soup kitchen for the average worker.
The biggest surprise for me was the factory my uncle went to visit... workers there had access to a ping-pong table, billiards and nice couches/beds for their half-hour break... sounded more like Google than an "exploitation" factory.
BTW I don't have a car or my own house (though I'm getting there) - but from what my family in Canada tells me, it's not that usual for people in NA to "own" their own houses either - they're all acquired through the famed huge mortgages. I'm sure that if the Chinese government allowed those kinds of mortgages, more people there would have their own houses too.
Suppose this takes off and TPB starts raking in cash.
This shows that even "Pirates" are willing to fork over money and pay for the products if the service is good enough and the price is low enough.
You're probably right. Back during the Napster days, I'd have paid quite a lot for a service with its functionality.
Same nowadays, if they gave me a nice carrot to go along with a (hopefully not too big) stick, I'd probably pay for music... I don't buy CDs because they're simply obsolete, and way too many of the current music services are either US-only (heck, yesterday Youtube felt like not showing me music videos because of my country), iPod-centric (Apple's store), or not as comfortable as alternatives (Amazon store).
If last.fm chose to let me pay to DOWNLOAD the music and keep it, I'd probably pay (maybe I'm ignorant, does it?). If my torrent tracker of choice did it, I probably would too (I currently use a mix of last.fm and the torrent tracker to get the music I want).
If you think I wouldn't, consider this: I pay about USD 50/month for the Magic:The Gathering online card game, when I could be playing stuff for "free" (aka pirated or other versions of MTG).
The best part is that offshore's don't offer COBOL skills, so job security is quite high.
MWHAHAHA that's what you think... COBOL was taught over here (Uruguay) until 2004 (I had to take it - ouch - I'm still trying to forget).
However, banks and such don't think of offshoring the COBOL code for some reason, so the "job security" bit still stands.
Besides, you'd have to offer me A LOT of money (for what offshoring usually costs - think USD 3000 or more) for me or my former classmates to pick up COBOL after we got spoilt on other languages - we already earn what is considered a lot of money here - in my case, close to USD 2000 before taxes - the bad thing is government and retirement funds take 60% of that, while in the US I'd probably keep most of it.
It's simple. The company that agreed to pay them that can't afford to pay them that. A new entity (the government) came in which is not bound by those contracts.
Ahh... but the government DIDN'T let the company go bankrupt and those contracts nullified (bah they probably wouldn't be even them, IANAL).
They (your representatives?) chose to bail it out, so OTHER contracts (the ones that apparently keep the economy afloat or some such) don't go belly-up. Why would the contracts you want be upheld, but the ones you think are "unjust" (and probably ARE) wouldn't?
That's applying some twisted logic and going against the rule of law, setting a very bad precedent.
You don't want your government choosing whether your whatever agreed remuneration is "just" or not, do you?
This issue is that we are rewarding the people in power for fucking us over. What we need to get the bad guys out and provide proper incentives for a new team to replace them.
However... you need to come up with a way to make them responsible / punish them WITHOUT giving up the rule of law.
If you agree on some probably just but illegal punishment, you're only legitimizing the government when they want to deal some illegal punishment to someone else you don't think is justly punished (say, Guantanamo)... or even YOU.
Sadly, you'll just have to try for reform, so this doesn't happen again. Something different and unjust will happen someday in the future, but at least make the "bad guys" have to work at finding a creative way to screw you over, and gain some time in the process until they find the loopholes.
We gave them money because if AIG fails, two huge things go down with them. First, Europe's big banks all of them (who used AIG to get cheap insurance--they'd suddenly need new equity on the order of 30-50 billion).
As a South American... I see this as some kind of scam, in which we (and the Chinese, etc..) come behind. Ok, so European banks go belly-up... suddenly Europe won't have the money to subsidize their farming and everything, and we will only have to worry about the Chinese:P (ok, so the smart folk will find a way to screw us anyways)
If you don't know what I'm talking about... my country has about 200.000 square kilometers, most of it fertile land. The Netherlands has 40.000, most of it urbanized or reclaimed from the sea. Yet I have potatoes from the Netherlands that are cheaper than locally-grown potatoes (!!!!)...
I've seen cattle in Austria... it lives a better life than I do (heating in winter, etc:P )... cattle in my country is first rate, it should be illogical to raise significant amounts of cattle in Austria, yet there it is, and due to quotas, only residual amounts of some of the finest meat in the world is allowed to trickle into Austria, at hugely taxed prices.
Same goes with professionals, and other goods and services which aren't allowed to flow freely, and are held back by protectionist practices funded by these kind of bubbles, fueled by the artificial value of the US dollar (ok, so you can argue that it's not artificial as long as people believe in it:P ).
Sorry by the rant, and don't take it personally if you live in any of the described countries. I don't have anything against you personally, I visited said countries (ok, not China yet) and they're very nice. But, as our more left-wing politicians like to point out, your artificial trade restrictions and protectionism is keeping us down (and you up to your standards of life, which understandably you don't want to give up - and I don't want you to, either, I just wish you let the high tide raise all boats... and occasionally suffer the effects of the low tide, not just us - it always seems those with less are the ones that suffer the consequences the most).
Basicly, letting AIG fail would not just crash the American economy. It would crash the world economy. As in NO MONEY IN THE ATM crash. As in NO FUEL FOR YOUR CAR crash. It might cost billions, but the alternative is far worse. Think Zimbawe. They have been allowed to grow too large to fail, and there is no way out of it except to keep them alive until they can be split up and sold.
Ehhh? AIG failing would crash world economy.. how? It would probably be hard on the US, and countries that heavily depend on them as trade partners... of course, me living in a country that would be less affected, I can't see how it would be so bad for me:P (ok, so people holding to US dollars wouldn't be happy). I'd actually like an AIG bankruptcy on general terms, it would be nice if corporations were required some fiscal conservativism as us people without ready access to credit have to - me, I don't have a house, I don't have a car, but I don't have ANY outstanding debt either - some meager 5% of my income in credit cards and that's it.
Sadly, as a 2nd rate world citizen (that's how I feel, since I vote in elections that hardly matter in the big scale of things), I don't have much
influence in any outcome. I'd like some real banking and financial market reform for once...
If you're worried about those that would be left jobless by such a huge crash... how about spending those trillions on that? I'm sure nothing short of a collapse of the entire US population would be any problem with such staggering amounts of USDs... it would also "move" the economy instead of staying on banks' account sheets.
The problem is, we (at least here in Uruguay) call ourselves Americans too.
To difference the USians, we call them "gringos" or "yanquis" - no kidding, that's really what a large portion of the population calls you over here.
Actually, there are other countries called "United States" over here too.. the name you chose for your country is quite problematic:P
When someone is talking about "Americans", we can usually realize what kind of Americans they're talking about from the context, so it's not that big a problem.
BTW, we do call the entire continent America... so for us, there IS a place called America. When we want to include Spain, it's "Iberoamérica", etc..
He could have bought gold (which would have been far better than 5%).
Treasury bonds, which are supposedly safe investments, give a reasonable interest rate in US dollars if I understand correctly (I probably don't, I never had 32.000 dollars in my life:P )
Everyone is familiar with the story of the iPhone developer who spends two weeks of spare time making a game that goes on to make them hundreds of thousands of dollars
What? Say again? I'm definitely not familiar with that (or with any "get rich fast" story you might hear somewhere)
Slashdot Mirror
Already done
You beat me to it.. I was going to mention WWII as a counterexample.
From Wikipedia:
Deployment
By June 9, just 3 days after D-Day, two harbours codenamed Mulberry 'A' and 'B' were constructed at Omaha Beach and Arromanches, respectively.
So yes, you could set up a port in 3 days (if you know beforehand about it)
I got a neti pot and I haven't had a sinus infection since, I just use the neti pot whenever I feel my head getting clogged up. $20 dollar solution.
Thanks man, I had never heard of the neti pot before. I'll give it a try next time I feel my nose clogged.
There's an apparently good video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8KOsNtpV8w
While I agree that a lot of our respective societies health issues are preventable, I am 26 years old, can run a marathon, and rarely ever touch red meat and I call shenanigans on the idea that diet and exercise are a cure-all! I have 140/85 blood pressure (high) despite doing cardio work 5 days a week and eating right. I have knee problems when it's cold, back problems all the time, and suffer from bronchitis every winter from exercise in the cold. Sometimes I feel like a healthy lifestyle is making me fall apart.
I'm not a good (counter)example, but I'm 28 years old, pretty sedentary (gym twice a week and only started recently after 8 years of neglect), overweight.. and I've only needed to go to a doctor a couple of times in the last 10 years, and only missed work for medical reasons twice in my lifetime ... I'm far from perfect health, but I do count my blessings (though, if I don't start to pick up and get back in shape, I'll regret it later)
Just 10k a year. Wow, that's cheap. Let me look at my 1000.00 dollar a month budget and figure out how to work that in. 475.00 rent 50.00 car insurance 41.00 internet (college student with both campus and on line classes) 30.00 a week gasoline 55.00 a week grocery bill 50.00 cell phone oops, run out of money How about you sending me the money to afford health insurance since it is such a small amount in your world?
Hello, South American (Uruguay) here. I have the best health insurance you can buy in my country (probably MUCH better than anything you can get there).
You know how much it costs? U$D 60 a month (for people under 30). It works, as I'm too busy to actually use it (I only used twice for two visits to the doctor since I affiliated last year).
Oh, and by the way, you think you don't have any room to cut over there? I have news for you... I was a student... and I didn't need a car (still don't - though, oh, I do want one badly). If you don't have good public transport between where you study and where you live, get a good bike (I used to make a 10 mile ride each way, I was in great shape, now that I work 8 to 6 I'm overweight - I actually miss the bike).
Your internet and cell phone bills are also ridiculous, but I guess that's the US for you, and you don't have other choices on campus or whatever. I pay U$ 10/month cell phone, and never run out of local minutes or SMSs, and can even make a couple long-distance calls a month. And I pay U$ 15/month for my internet connection (not great, 1 mbps ADSL)
Rent is also ridiculous over there. I pay U$ 150, U$ 450 gets you a really nice, large house over here.
Apples to oranges, I know, but it's one reason I'm still in my country, when I could be making U$ 5000 or more over there (the day I can figure out to sell myself there while living here, I'll have it made).
Having universal gov't health care doesn't stop the wealthy from buying more health care than anyone else;
It depends. In my country (Uruguay, SA), which currently has a left-leaning government (president is an oncologist, and belongs to the Socialist party), they chose to "level down": they gave universal access to the formerly paid-only mutual health system to every worker, by decree, paying a nominal fee to the mutual system.
Before that, we already had "universal" health care, but in a three-tier system where
- The poor had access to the hideous public healthcare, where doctors are usually decently trained but lacking the most basic of tools and no money;
- The working class had access to a relatively good "mutual" service - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_state - where you can get the best doctors and access to the best tech, as long as you're willing to wait, and don't ask for it very often;
- And the rich or privileged had access to apparently-better-than-US-style health insurance which in practice means not having to wait for doctors or tech (choosing to see any doctor you want in about 24 to 48 hs, etc, etc), access to the best infrastructure but not largely different from the mutual system except for the waiting time.
Now the government thought it would be a good idea to make everyone stand in the "middle" tier, the mutual system, which means that the third of the population that were formerly badly helped by public healthcare now become a burden on the mutual system, and banning private healthcare (such as the one I had recently become a member of) so that the "rich"*, too, have to use the mutual system (the very rich can still choose to pay, a lot more than before for better healthcare, and not as easily as before). The mutual system, which was never in the best finances to start with, is starting to collapse: the end result is awful healthcare for everybody.
An analogy would be Obama decreeing: "Americans deserve the best healthcare! Everybody can get free healthcare from John Hopkins!" (substitute with good hospital of choice). Do you think John Hopkins would be able to cope? The end result would be awful waiting times and/or bankruptcy. It is, of course, a very simplistic analogy, but not too far from the truth:
The Spanish hospital (Asociacion Española) had a tremendous influx of new patients and can barely cope, the Medical Union's hospital (CASMU) is now on strike and patients fear for their health, and other formerly on the brink hospitals are going broke.
*where rich is anybody earning over two thousand dollars. Not kidding.
I made a hundred bucks a week when I was a teen. Of course my parents never gave me that, but my boss at the restaurant sure did.
And then you wonder why we South (and Mexican North) Americans go to the US... that's more than what I used to make 2 years ago as a developer (on a side note, that also explains a lot of crappy code :P )
You forgot Google Brain search:
/intro_android.html
:P
http://www.google.com/mobile/m/brainsearch
What's scary is... it did return some relevant results
I've even noticed an interesting phenomenon that, while far from universal, is also not all that rare: programmers who share a common non-English first language using English among themselves to engage in technical discussions.
I live in South America, and I've never seen that. We use our native language, and yes, our talk is peppered with English words.
OTOH on a multilingual environment we all use English (for example, some of my family works for the UN, and we always use English even when we could be speaking in some other language - say, we all know German and we're with a German speaker, we still speak English). Or when speaking with a German programmer, etc...
You're obviously not a programmer. If you are, you work with some obscure programming language that has non-English keywords/reserved words. I'd love to hear about it as a curiosity. Please do tell!
One example: the Spanish localization of Excel has some of its syntax translated to Spanish... and it's awful for me (Spanish native speaker), as I don't have the slightest idea of which function is its English equivalent.
Not to mention it's not portable, which is a major pain.
This is the next great challenge of our time I think. In a world where every kind of media can be digitized and exist on every computer on earth instantly (or near enough as to make the distinction pointless) have we reached a point in which entertainment can only be an amateur affair? If they can't find a way to either (a) make people want to pay for content that they could get for free if they tried, or (b) make it impossible to get the content for free, we may eventually reach a point at which there is no money to made in any non-live performances.
I know it's not the same, but I pay (quite a lot for my budget) for playing the Magic:The Gathering online game (which is not even a particularly good implementation, but is the game I like), when I could be playing for free.
So I suspect that you CAN make people pay for stuff.
I'd actually like a reason to pay for some of the stuff I now get without paying for the authors (and, short of sending money to them, I don't have many legal ways to do it here where here != US).
when you call their tech support, you'll reliably get connected with someone who speaks English.
Just FYI: speaking fluent English != being a good programmer/designer/whatever (though in programming in particular, it's a good idea). In China, people over 30 don't speak English because it was BANNED, not because they're not intelligent.
And I'd expect most of those H1Bs to speak fluent English anyways.
Oh? And what are you willing to do without? Because let me tell you something: to be on par with the standards of living in India and China, you can say 'bye-bye' to having your own place to live. Instead, you and three generations of your clan will be living in a studio apartment. You won't be able to afford a car, you won't be able to afford decent clothes, and you won't be able to afford to eat anything not obtained from a frickin' soup kitchen.
(I live in Uruguay, South America, so my opinions might be biased).
My uncle just returned from China, and he brought a lot of videos of his time there. I was AMAZED at the differences between what I expected, and what I saw.
People in (urban) China don't live as bad as you make it seem... it's true 90% of the workers don't have a car, they all move with scooters/small motorbikes, but the buildings were all pretty nice (if small), clothes all seemed decent (they're made there, after all!), and cooking wasn't so bad (yes, meat is unaffordable, but it's unaffordable in Europe too!) and AFAIK it wasn't obtained from a soup kitchen for the average worker.
The biggest surprise for me was the factory my uncle went to visit... workers there had access to a ping-pong table, billiards and nice couches/beds for their half-hour break... sounded more like Google than an "exploitation" factory.
BTW I don't have a car or my own house (though I'm getting there) - but from what my family in Canada tells me, it's not that usual for people in NA to "own" their own houses either - they're all acquired through the famed huge mortgages. I'm sure that if the Chinese government allowed those kinds of mortgages, more people there would have their own houses too.
Suppose this takes off and TPB starts raking in cash.
This shows that even "Pirates" are willing to fork over money and pay for the products if the service is good enough and the price is low enough.
You're probably right. Back during the Napster days, I'd have paid quite a lot for a service with its functionality.
Same nowadays, if they gave me a nice carrot to go along with a (hopefully not too big) stick, I'd probably pay for music... I don't buy CDs because they're simply obsolete, and way too many of the current music services are either US-only (heck, yesterday Youtube felt like not showing me music videos because of my country), iPod-centric (Apple's store), or not as comfortable as alternatives (Amazon store).
If last.fm chose to let me pay to DOWNLOAD the music and keep it, I'd probably pay (maybe I'm ignorant, does it?). If my torrent tracker of choice did it, I probably would too (I currently use a mix of last.fm and the torrent tracker to get the music I want).
If you think I wouldn't, consider this: I pay about USD 50/month for the Magic:The Gathering online card game, when I could be playing stuff for "free" (aka pirated or other versions of MTG).
The best part is that offshore's don't offer COBOL skills, so job security is quite high.
MWHAHAHA that's what you think... COBOL was taught over here (Uruguay) until 2004 (I had to take it - ouch - I'm still trying to forget).
However, banks and such don't think of offshoring the COBOL code for some reason, so the "job security" bit still stands.
Besides, you'd have to offer me A LOT of money (for what offshoring usually costs - think USD 3000 or more) for me or my former classmates to pick up COBOL after we got spoilt on other languages - we already earn what is considered a lot of money here - in my case, close to USD 2000 before taxes - the bad thing is government and retirement funds take 60% of that, while in the US I'd probably keep most of it.
It's simple. The company that agreed to pay them that can't afford to pay them that. A new entity (the government) came in which is not bound by those contracts.
Ahh... but the government DIDN'T let the company go bankrupt and those contracts nullified (bah they probably wouldn't be even them, IANAL).
They (your representatives?) chose to bail it out, so OTHER contracts (the ones that apparently keep the economy afloat or some such) don't go belly-up. Why would the contracts you want be upheld, but the ones you think are "unjust" (and probably ARE) wouldn't?
That's applying some twisted logic and going against the rule of law, setting a very bad precedent.
You don't want your government choosing whether your whatever agreed remuneration is "just" or not, do you?
This issue is that we are rewarding the people in power for fucking us over. What we need to get the bad guys out and provide proper incentives for a new team to replace them.
However... you need to come up with a way to make them responsible / punish them WITHOUT giving up the rule of law.
If you agree on some probably just but illegal punishment, you're only legitimizing the government when they want to deal some illegal punishment to someone else you don't think is justly punished (say, Guantanamo)... or even YOU.
Sadly, you'll just have to try for reform, so this doesn't happen again. Something different and unjust will happen someday in the future, but at least make the "bad guys" have to work at finding a creative way to screw you over, and gain some time in the process until they find the loopholes.
We gave them money because if AIG fails, two huge things go down with them. First, Europe's big banks all of them (who used AIG to get cheap insurance--they'd suddenly need new equity on the order of 30-50 billion).
As a South American... I see this as some kind of scam, in which we (and the Chinese, etc..) come behind. Ok, so European banks go belly-up... suddenly Europe won't have the money to subsidize their farming and everything, and we will only have to worry about the Chinese :P (ok, so the smart folk will find a way to screw us anyways)
:P )... cattle in my country is first rate, it should be illogical to raise significant amounts of cattle in Austria, yet there it is, and due to quotas, only residual amounts of some of the finest meat in the world is allowed to trickle into Austria, at hugely taxed prices.
:P ).
If you don't know what I'm talking about... my country has about 200.000 square kilometers, most of it fertile land. The Netherlands has 40.000, most of it urbanized or reclaimed from the sea. Yet I have potatoes from the Netherlands that are cheaper than locally-grown potatoes (!!!!)...
I've seen cattle in Austria... it lives a better life than I do (heating in winter, etc
Same goes with professionals, and other goods and services which aren't allowed to flow freely, and are held back by protectionist practices funded by these kind of bubbles, fueled by the artificial value of the US dollar (ok, so you can argue that it's not artificial as long as people believe in it
Sorry by the rant, and don't take it personally if you live in any of the described countries. I don't have anything against you personally, I visited said countries (ok, not China yet) and they're very nice. But, as our more left-wing politicians like to point out, your artificial trade restrictions and protectionism is keeping us down (and you up to your standards of life, which understandably you don't want to give up - and I don't want you to, either, I just wish you let the high tide raise all boats... and occasionally suffer the effects of the low tide, not just us - it always seems those with less are the ones that suffer the consequences the most).
Basicly, letting AIG fail would not just crash the American economy. It would crash the world economy. As in NO MONEY IN THE ATM crash. As in NO FUEL FOR YOUR CAR crash. It might cost billions, but the alternative is far worse. Think Zimbawe. They have been allowed to grow too large to fail, and there is no way out of it except to keep them alive until they can be split up and sold.
Ehhh? AIG failing would crash world economy.. how? It would probably be hard on the US, and countries that heavily depend on them as trade partners... of course, me living in a country that would be less affected, I can't see how it would be so bad for me :P (ok, so people holding to US dollars wouldn't be happy). I'd actually like an AIG bankruptcy on general terms, it would be nice if corporations were required some fiscal conservativism as us people without ready access to credit have to - me, I don't have a house, I don't have a car, but I don't have ANY outstanding debt either - some meager 5% of my income in credit cards and that's it.
Sadly, as a 2nd rate world citizen (that's how I feel, since I vote in elections that hardly matter in the big scale of things), I don't have much influence in any outcome. I'd like some real banking and financial market reform for once...
If you're worried about those that would be left jobless by such a huge crash... how about spending those trillions on that? I'm sure nothing short of a collapse of the entire US population would be any problem with such staggering amounts of USDs... it would also "move" the economy instead of staying on banks' account sheets.
there is no place called "America".
The problem is, we (at least here in Uruguay) call ourselves Americans too.
:P
To difference the USians, we call them "gringos" or "yanquis" - no kidding, that's really what a large portion of the population calls you over here.
Actually, there are other countries called "United States" over here too.. the name you chose for your country is quite problematic
When someone is talking about "Americans", we can usually realize what kind of Americans they're talking about from the context, so it's not that big a problem.
BTW, we do call the entire continent America... so for us, there IS a place called America. When we want to include Spain, it's "Iberoamérica", etc..
Lol I had to look it up. Sadly it seems that they didn't use the format as they should.
:) )
I'd like to see them try to break into my father's house, though (I hope he didn't set up anything lethal
He could have bought gold (which would have been far better than 5%).
:P )
Treasury bonds, which are supposedly safe investments, give a reasonable interest rate in US dollars if I understand correctly (I probably don't, I never had 32.000 dollars in my life
I have never owned an iPhone, but the UI does seem like it would work with a RTS game :)
No idea how hard it could be to develop for the iPhone, though.
Thanks, I'd never heard of it.
:)
I found the story here btw: http://gizmodo.com/5052165/trism-makes-250000-since-release
And yes, making 250000 does qualify as "get rich fast" in my book
Everyone is familiar with the story of the iPhone developer who spends two weeks of spare time making a game that goes on to make them hundreds of thousands of dollars
What? Say again? I'm definitely not familiar with that (or with any "get rich fast" story you might hear somewhere)
Check out their horsepower and weight. I doubt that their engines were above 80 horsepower. Today, 4 cylinder engines can get above 200 horsepower.
I really wonder if you guys NEED all that power in your cars (at least the urban commute ones)
--> still waiting for the Tata Nano