Note that just a few years ago Clinton ran several years of surplus budgets and paid down some of the debt, without the trillions in cuts that Obama's austerity bullshit includes.
False. the US debt has increased every year since President Eisenhower in 1957. I don't know where this myth started, but it most assuredly is a myth; Clinton never had a surplus, never paid down the debt. It is a fiction, pure and simple - the numbers from the US Treasury prove it to be such.
As a European who has lived in the USA for a long time now, I think you've missed the original poster's point. The USA does not have any left-leaning parties, from the perspective of your average European
It is a matter of perception. As an American who's lived in Europe (and South America, and currently mainly in Asia), most of Europe has extreme left, middle left, and slightly left, and really nothing considered right-of-center.
The lose is due to a lack of new revenue so you can thank the tea party republicans
Raise taxes to the historical post-WWII average - 18.5% of GDP, instead of the 14.5% we have now. That extra 4% puts another $560 billion in the coffers. We'd still have a ~$1.2 trillion deficit this year.
Two-thirds of the deficit is from overspending; you cannot solve the deficit problem without addressing that. And since Congress has shown a distinct lack of resolve in cutting spending any time in the past, it's best to address that first before trying to paper over the issue by raising revenues.
Cut $560 billion in annual spending first, then boost taxes back up to the historical level, and we're down to a $500 billion annual deficit. Still massive, but considerably better than where we are (for a point of reference, our budget deficit alone is greater than the GDP of Canada - it is that big).
Just spending cuts? No problem. Cut military spending and economy subsidiaries and the budget is on track.
Satisfied?
Seriously? Cut the entire DOD - heck, toss in the VA as well. No soldiers, no pensions, no bombs, bullets, no bases, nothing - zero out both. We'll still have a ~$800 billion deficit. In fact, every Federal dollar received just barely covers Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, and income security (welfare, unemployment insurance, section 8 housing, food stamps). Every other dollar spent - DOD, national debt, EPA, OSHA, DOEs, Justice, DHS, etc - is funded with borrowed dollars.
Heavy social spending is what built the debt, and is the structural problem we're fighting today and will continue to do so in the future.
Are you sure it wasn't Bush's decision to slash taxes when we were running a surplus for the first time in modern history and on course to pay down the deficit?
Few corrections to your statement:
1. The Bush tax rate cuts were a response to the Clinton recession, and later 9/11. And they dramatically increased actual taxes collected - in absolute and inflation-adjusted dollars. Far from a tax cut, they were, in fact, a tax increase as total taxes collected increased.
2. President Bush never had a surplus. Never. Check the facts - every year since 1957 the Federal debt has increased. Including the Clinton years. I know it's "common knowledge" that Clinton had a surplus - but the fact is, he didn't. This is a case of common knowledge that is actually common myth - it never happened.
As far as Republican Administrations creating the debt, please review the Constitution about who writes the budgets. It's the Congress - not the President - who allocates funds. And I remember Tip O'Neill famously quoting that every single proposed budget from Ronald Reagan was DOA - the Democrat controlled House created the budgets with the large deficits.
As far as Federal revenues as a percent of GDP, historically post WWII tax revenues have been at ~18.5% of GDP. Go ahead and collect another 4% of the GDP today, to bring up tax receipts to that historical level - that's an additional $560 billion in taxes. We'd still have a ~$1.2 TRILLION deficit to deal with. It's the spending that is the vast majority of the problem, NOT revenue.
Actually, you need to go back to Eisenhower; he was the last one to actually reduce the national debt, in 1956 and 1957. Every year since then the US has piled up more and more debt.
Did you read the GP post at all? They didn't fix the problem. Of course, with a handle of "macs4all" I'm pretty sure the cognitive dissonance has a bit of sway with you understanding his post...
Oh, yeah? I'm posting this on a mid-2010 17-inch MacBook Pro with an Nvidia card. I've been running Lion developer previews for months, and the only time I've ever have graphics problems is when I'm playing a game and the system gets too hot because my room isn't well-ventilated.
How hot is your room? I'm in Shanghai, and my HP G71 - with a big 17" screen - running 3D FEA simulations (both CPU cores pegged at 100%, 7.6 GB of RAM committed, full rendering enabled) never flakes out thermally. Even while the room temperature is a relatively warm 36 deg C.
Having to worry about your room being too hot is a sure sign there's a thermal management problem with your laptop. They're supposed to be used in places beyond just a comfy air-conditioned office, after all...
You don't understand Apple - it's not about keeping last year's gear working, it's about getting you to upgrade hardware this year. Product churn is the name of the game, and anything that allows you to keep your older hardware working properly is simply not in Apple's best interests...
The Apple cognoscenti were always quick to dismiss the need for multitasking on a phone, as something that was never needed. And then when iOS 4.0 it was of course 180 degrees opposite - that unless you had multitasking you didn't have a real smartphone. Apple's story will change as soon as they figure out that the market either wants the same UI, or that other competitors begin to succeed with those features. At which time Apple will proclaim they have it now, it is a must-have, and was part of the grand plan all along.
From what I've been seeing, Apple's main interest at the moment is the consumer market. Developers, movie editors, servers all come a distant second. Why else would they cripple Lion server? Why would they make Lion a download only OS? Or why release a very incomplete Final Cut Pro X?
I've said it a few times before: Apple is a Consumer Electronics Phone marketing company. One single product - the iPhone - accounts for half their revenues and nearly 60% of their profits. EVERYTHING ELSE - iPads, iPods, Macs, iTunes, software, accessories, etc - accounts for the minority of their revenue and profits.
Apple has evolved in spectacularly profitable fashion to become a literal one-trick pony - the iPhone. They are losing marketshare in all other areas, nothing else has taken fire like the iPhone. So they are single-mindedly pursuing the iPhone metaphor across all business segments hoping it will ignite those other, smaller segments. But so far - nothing's caught.
Apple's big problem is going to be keeping the momentum in the phone market, or replacing it with momentum in another market. The iPhone is losing marketshare in the smartphone world, and its biggest share is in the US and EU markets - which are close to saturation. The growth markets for smartphones is China, South East Asia, and India - and Apple has very little penetration or positive growth in those markets. As the US and EU market growth for smartphones slows down, and that is coupled with Apple's slow loss of marketshare in those markets, they will face falling revenues and profits from the iPhone business.
So, make your other products as much like an iPhone as possible and hope people will grab on to it and keep them rolling for a few more years while Apple tries to identify another market for expansion.
They use a common port connection, so that you can use any cable to talk to any board. Sometimes it's overkill - sometimes it's not. But it simplifies connectivity with a common connector.
Or the PenPoint OS running on GRiD Systems tablets in 1991 - along with gestures and full graphical interface...
Or the Kyocera Refalo, from 1991 as well (a small personal organizer with touchscreen, applications, handwriting recognition) - commercially available a few years before the Newton.
In January 2007 this effort was introduced as the iPhone, which would be available some months later. Looks like SPB had a month to tweak their UI after they saw what Apple did.
SPB Mobile Shell was announced in August 2006 with preliminary screen shots leaked in September 2006. Looks like Apple had 3-4 months to tweak their UI after they saw what SPB did, and 2-3 months to further tweak their UI after actual hands-on with a shipping product.
Unless you mean you want to rewrite that history again?
Apple usually starts with a solid basic product to prove a concept, with a vision for how to bring it to maturity in steps, such as the App Store one year later.
The lack of cut&paste and multitasking are an example of that evolution. Apple couldn't initially figure out how to make either of them work WELL, and wasn't going to include anything half-assed. It was going to take time. The result: Their cut&paste is absolutely the best and their multitasking preserves battery life, and system stability and performance.
Correct - it was a featurephone - not a smartphone - when it started. No downloadable applications, no multitasking (it still does not have real multitasking, like Symbian or Windows Mobile), both of which most consider as required for a smartphone. It was a pretty featurephone, and that's about it.
Samsung designs and builds their own. So does LG, ZTE, Huawei, and HTC. Apple doesn't. And as far as the design being outsourced, I know - I've done design for Apple, and it was done either onsite in Cupertino, or from my US office outside of Seattle.
From personal experience at Apple, board layout and mechanical design is done with PC-based tools, not UNIX offerings. Specifically PADS/PCB and Solidworks.
I love it how ACs come in here and try to re-write history.
It's not just ACs that "rewrite history"; I was using SPB Mobile Shell with widgets and grids of icons on a Samsung 830w back in Feb 2007 - well before the iPhone was released. Worked great, too - configurable, easy access, and even had a slide-out keyboard similar to the Blackberry phones.
As far as I can tell and remember, the iPhone was little more than a pretty feature phone - no apps (I was a regular user of Handango back then, plenty of apps for the WM platform), no Exchange support, no cut-and-paste, no multitasking, little more than what most LG and Samsung and Nokia feature phones offered. And considerably less functionality than the Symbian and Windows Mobile smartphones offered.
But it looked pretty, and Apple is great at marketing...
Apple the corporate entity is a marketing monster, yes, and they are also a totally anti-competitive, control-freaks as well.
But to say they haven't made a decent product (or as one reply to you said "certainly not innovative") is absurd.
Actually, it's correct. They conceptualize and market, but a lot of the design work is outsourced, and all the production is done via contract. Apple, in fact, doesn't make decent product - because they simply do not make product.
Apple is no longer a computer company. They're a phone marketing company that has a small computer branch that is an ever-shrinking chunk of their revenue (47% of Apple's revenue - and 52% of their profit - comes from sales of just iPhones).
Slashdot Mirror
You are wrong.
Note that just a few years ago Clinton ran several years of surplus budgets and paid down some of the debt, without the trillions in cuts that Obama's austerity bullshit includes.
False. the US debt has increased every year since President Eisenhower in 1957. I don't know where this myth started, but it most assuredly is a myth; Clinton never had a surplus, never paid down the debt. It is a fiction, pure and simple - the numbers from the US Treasury prove it to be such.
As a European who has lived in the USA for a long time now, I think you've missed the original poster's point. The USA does not have any left-leaning parties, from the perspective of your average European
It is a matter of perception. As an American who's lived in Europe (and South America, and currently mainly in Asia), most of Europe has extreme left, middle left, and slightly left, and really nothing considered right-of-center.
The lose is due to a lack of new revenue so you can thank the tea party republicans
Raise taxes to the historical post-WWII average - 18.5% of GDP, instead of the 14.5% we have now. That extra 4% puts another $560 billion in the coffers. We'd still have a ~$1.2 trillion deficit this year.
Two-thirds of the deficit is from overspending; you cannot solve the deficit problem without addressing that. And since Congress has shown a distinct lack of resolve in cutting spending any time in the past, it's best to address that first before trying to paper over the issue by raising revenues.
Cut $560 billion in annual spending first, then boost taxes back up to the historical level, and we're down to a $500 billion annual deficit. Still massive, but considerably better than where we are (for a point of reference, our budget deficit alone is greater than the GDP of Canada - it is that big).
Just spending cuts? No problem. Cut military spending and economy subsidiaries and the budget is on track.
Satisfied?
Seriously? Cut the entire DOD - heck, toss in the VA as well. No soldiers, no pensions, no bombs, bullets, no bases, nothing - zero out both. We'll still have a ~$800 billion deficit. In fact, every Federal dollar received just barely covers Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, and income security (welfare, unemployment insurance, section 8 housing, food stamps). Every other dollar spent - DOD, national debt, EPA, OSHA, DOEs, Justice, DHS, etc - is funded with borrowed dollars.
Heavy social spending is what built the debt, and is the structural problem we're fighting today and will continue to do so in the future.
Are you sure it wasn't Bush's decision to slash taxes when we were running a surplus for the first time in modern history and on course to pay down the deficit?
Few corrections to your statement:
1. The Bush tax rate cuts were a response to the Clinton recession, and later 9/11. And they dramatically increased actual taxes collected - in absolute and inflation-adjusted dollars. Far from a tax cut, they were, in fact, a tax increase as total taxes collected increased.
2. President Bush never had a surplus. Never. Check the facts - every year since 1957 the Federal debt has increased. Including the Clinton years. I know it's "common knowledge" that Clinton had a surplus - but the fact is, he didn't. This is a case of common knowledge that is actually common myth - it never happened.
As far as Republican Administrations creating the debt, please review the Constitution about who writes the budgets. It's the Congress - not the President - who allocates funds. And I remember Tip O'Neill famously quoting that every single proposed budget from Ronald Reagan was DOA - the Democrat controlled House created the budgets with the large deficits.
As far as Federal revenues as a percent of GDP, historically post WWII tax revenues have been at ~18.5% of GDP. Go ahead and collect another 4% of the GDP today, to bring up tax receipts to that historical level - that's an additional $560 billion in taxes. We'd still have a ~$1.2 TRILLION deficit to deal with. It's the spending that is the vast majority of the problem, NOT revenue.
Actually, you need to go back to Eisenhower; he was the last one to actually reduce the national debt, in 1956 and 1957. Every year since then the US has piled up more and more debt.
Did you read the GP post at all? They didn't fix the problem. Of course, with a handle of "macs4all" I'm pretty sure the cognitive dissonance has a bit of sway with you understanding his post...
Oh, yeah? I'm posting this on a mid-2010 17-inch MacBook Pro with an Nvidia card. I've been running Lion developer previews for months, and the only time I've ever have graphics problems is when I'm playing a game and the system gets too hot because my room isn't well-ventilated.
How hot is your room? I'm in Shanghai, and my HP G71 - with a big 17" screen - running 3D FEA simulations (both CPU cores pegged at 100%, 7.6 GB of RAM committed, full rendering enabled) never flakes out thermally. Even while the room temperature is a relatively warm 36 deg C.
Having to worry about your room being too hot is a sure sign there's a thermal management problem with your laptop. They're supposed to be used in places beyond just a comfy air-conditioned office, after all...
You don't understand Apple - it's not about keeping last year's gear working, it's about getting you to upgrade hardware this year. Product churn is the name of the game, and anything that allows you to keep your older hardware working properly is simply not in Apple's best interests...
Damn trolls...
The Apple cognoscenti were always quick to dismiss the need for multitasking on a phone, as something that was never needed. And then when iOS 4.0 it was of course 180 degrees opposite - that unless you had multitasking you didn't have a real smartphone. Apple's story will change as soon as they figure out that the market either wants the same UI, or that other competitors begin to succeed with those features. At which time Apple will proclaim they have it now, it is a must-have, and was part of the grand plan all along.
From what I've been seeing, Apple's main interest at the moment is the consumer market. Developers, movie editors, servers all come a distant second. Why else would they cripple Lion server? Why would they make Lion a download only OS? Or why release a very incomplete Final Cut Pro X?
I've said it a few times before: Apple is a Consumer Electronics Phone marketing company. One single product - the iPhone - accounts for half their revenues and nearly 60% of their profits. EVERYTHING ELSE - iPads, iPods, Macs, iTunes, software, accessories, etc - accounts for the minority of their revenue and profits.
Apple has evolved in spectacularly profitable fashion to become a literal one-trick pony - the iPhone. They are losing marketshare in all other areas, nothing else has taken fire like the iPhone. So they are single-mindedly pursuing the iPhone metaphor across all business segments hoping it will ignite those other, smaller segments. But so far - nothing's caught.
Apple's big problem is going to be keeping the momentum in the phone market, or replacing it with momentum in another market. The iPhone is losing marketshare in the smartphone world, and its biggest share is in the US and EU markets - which are close to saturation. The growth markets for smartphones is China, South East Asia, and India - and Apple has very little penetration or positive growth in those markets. As the US and EU market growth for smartphones slows down, and that is coupled with Apple's slow loss of marketshare in those markets, they will face falling revenues and profits from the iPhone business.
So, make your other products as much like an iPhone as possible and hope people will grab on to it and keep them rolling for a few more years while Apple tries to identify another market for expansion.
The market for DIY hobbyist boards most assuredly does...
They use a common port connection, so that you can use any cable to talk to any board. Sometimes it's overkill - sometimes it's not. But it simplifies connectivity with a common connector.
from 1993.
Or the PenPoint OS running on GRiD Systems tablets in 1991 - along with gestures and full graphical interface...
Or the Kyocera Refalo, from 1991 as well (a small personal organizer with touchscreen, applications, handwriting recognition) - commercially available a few years before the Newton.
In January 2007 this effort was introduced as the iPhone, which would be available some months later. Looks like SPB had a month to tweak their UI after they saw what Apple did.
SPB Mobile Shell was announced in August 2006 with preliminary screen shots leaked in September 2006. Looks like Apple had 3-4 months to tweak their UI after they saw what SPB did, and 2-3 months to further tweak their UI after actual hands-on with a shipping product.
Unless you mean you want to rewrite that history again?
Apple usually starts with a solid basic product to prove a concept, with a vision for how to bring it to maturity in steps, such as the App Store one year later.
The lack of cut&paste and multitasking are an example of that evolution. Apple couldn't initially figure out how to make either of them work WELL, and wasn't going to include anything half-assed. It was going to take time. The result: Their cut&paste is absolutely the best and their multitasking preserves battery life, and system stability and performance.
Correct - it was a featurephone - not a smartphone - when it started. No downloadable applications, no multitasking (it still does not have real multitasking, like Symbian or Windows Mobile), both of which most consider as required for a smartphone. It was a pretty featurephone, and that's about it.
No history rewrite needed.
Samsung designs and builds their own. So does LG, ZTE, Huawei, and HTC. Apple doesn't. And as far as the design being outsourced, I know - I've done design for Apple, and it was done either onsite in Cupertino, or from my US office outside of Seattle.
From personal experience at Apple, board layout and mechanical design is done with PC-based tools, not UNIX offerings. Specifically PADS/PCB and Solidworks.
I love it how ACs come in here and try to re-write history.
It's not just ACs that "rewrite history"; I was using SPB Mobile Shell with widgets and grids of icons on a Samsung 830w back in Feb 2007 - well before the iPhone was released. Worked great, too - configurable, easy access, and even had a slide-out keyboard similar to the Blackberry phones.
As far as I can tell and remember, the iPhone was little more than a pretty feature phone - no apps (I was a regular user of Handango back then, plenty of apps for the WM platform), no Exchange support, no cut-and-paste, no multitasking, little more than what most LG and Samsung and Nokia feature phones offered. And considerably less functionality than the Symbian and Windows Mobile smartphones offered.
But it looked pretty, and Apple is great at marketing...
Oh, come on.
Apple the corporate entity is a marketing monster, yes, and they are also a totally anti-competitive, control-freaks as well.
But to say they haven't made a decent product (or as one reply to you said "certainly not innovative") is absurd.
Actually, it's correct. They conceptualize and market, but a lot of the design work is outsourced, and all the production is done via contract. Apple, in fact, doesn't make decent product - because they simply do not make product.
About 250,000 Chinese employees and hundreds of acres of factories. Apple has a few stores, however...
DOS - good old DOS!
Apple is no longer a computer company. They're a phone marketing company that has a small computer branch that is an ever-shrinking chunk of their revenue (47% of Apple's revenue - and 52% of their profit - comes from sales of just iPhones).
Maybe I'll meet you someday, wandering the halls around 1 Infinite Loop!
Problem is, the software needed to design a Mac doesn't run on OSX - you need Windows to design your Mac.