Four Outrages Techies Need To Know About the State of the Union 489
Mr.Intel writes "Last night's State of the Union Address contained ten things (and four outrages) technical professionals need to know about the President's plans, and how his policies might affect you, your employer, and your family well into the future."
Riduculous (Score:0, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:A modest proposal (Score:3, Interesting)
Why does he sound like a jackass? I quote funding of Social Security from wikipedia: "In 2009 the Office of the Chief Actuary of the Social Security Administration calculated an unfunded obligation of $15.1 trillion for the Social Security program. The unfunded obligation is the difference between the present value of the cost of Social Security and the present value of the assets in the Trust Fund and the future scheduled tax income of the program.". This mean, if I read it correctly, that the amount that will be paid out, most of which is going to Boomers, far exceeds the assets in the trust fund. In fact, it exceeds it by so much that even future scheduled tax income will not cover it. The assets in the trust fund of course do not completely represent the amount of money that the Boomers paid in, since some of that money was used to pay for those before the Boomers. However, given the magnitude of the unfunded obligation, this suggests to me that the amount that has been paid in by Boomers is not sufficient to cover the amount owed to Boomers.
Even if the amount that has been paid in were sufficient to cover future obligations to that given generation, this would not at all imply that the Boomers were "owed" the money in Social Security. For years, the government has spent more than it has received. It's fine to say "but this money that is being spent (the obligations) is covered by this patch of money that is received (the OASDI taxes)", but money is totally liquid, you can account it how you like. The fact is, not enough was paid, and the younger generation is and will pay for it.
A few thoughts on the matter (Score:5, Interesting)
Here are my thoughts on the matter.
First off, the biggest obstacle to American success is China and their unfair trade practices. By keeping their currency pegged to the US dollar at artificially low rate they are creating trade barriers to real free trade. One argument to let them get away with it is that they are a developing nation. This is false, even before they opened up to western trade China had a huge infrastructure developed. They had railroads, canals, heavy industry, chemical plants, and universities producing large numbers of well trained engineers and scientists. They had advantages many nations in Africa would envy. They need to be treated as a first rate economic nation. Another side effect that China's policies have is that it can drive down wages and development in true developing countries by under bidding them on products. I don't think this is what anyone intends. China must be forced to change.
Another obstacle is NAFTA. The theory behind NAFTA was that Mexico would provide low end goods to the US and Canada at wages better than the Mexicans had had before NAFTA. The US and Canada would sell expertise and high end manufacturing equipment to help US manufacturing. One provision Mexico had to meet before signing NAFTA was "land reform". This land reform threw some 1/3 of the Mexican farm labor force off the land, who then headed to the border cities such as Juarez to work in the factories or the US as illegal immigrants. The brutally drove down the cost of labor in MEXICO and the US. Mexican factories merely substituted cheap labor for more efficient manufacturing. And since this "land reform" occurred before NAFTA was signed the disingenuous argument is that NAFTA had nothing to do with this effect. NAFTA must go, all it did was enrich corporations and not people. NAFTA is a poster child for globalization's failure.
I have been questioning now is the conventional economic wisdom that the tight coupling of economies since this latest financial crisis. We are in a situation now where a crisis in one country can affect a host of others. Much like mountain climbers roped together, if one climber falls the entire string of climbers may plunge to their deaths. There needs to be "firewalls" between nations to prevent, slow, or buffer the effects of a crisis. Some may argue that this may be inefficient, I will argue that destroying the global economy is even worse.
Overall I think that Capitalism and conventional economic theory has failed. We need to revisit the basic assumptions of how economies must be run. Two things I think we should do are
1) have economies and financial systems that serve people, not vice versa
2) With my respects to Mr. Dubcek, develop Capitalism with a human face. Corporations are not people and should not be treated as such, and the people running the corporations should not be allowed to hide behind the corporation. There must be accountability.
Re:A modest proposal (Score:4, Interesting)
I say "f#$%" them, as a generation. They want to be able to default $500k mortgages and enjoy generous pensions and Social Security when they won't even let my generation discharge a few 10s of thousands of dollars in student loans **in bankruptcy court**.
First, most of us have not yet had the pleasure of "default[ing] $500K mortages". Check the percentages of defaults nationwide (it's under 20%) and my assumption is that it was not us boomers that did most of the defaulting - look a little closer upstream at the X'ers for that. Second, most boomers don't have pensions - just fairly crappy 401K's that are usually underfunded and insufficient to maintain a person in this country - not that relatively meager SocSec payments are much better. Finally, I don't really give a rat's ass whether or not you discharge your debts, as long as my tax dollars aren't backing them. Let the lenders take the haircut and I'd be fine with it.
As for the Congresspeople who don't seem to care about you, all I'll say is that you have a chance to vote, too. You're also young and energetic enough to run about banging on doors and getting your fellow young people elected. In my state, we have quite a few Gen X's in the state legislature (many with many Gen Y's on their staff), many of whom will probably be in the US legislature in a few years. Of course, not many of them go about spouting idiocy like "Take away Social Security and Medicare" and everything will be great for me!!!
In fact, as for your "modest proposal", if you did try to do that, remember that boomers are in generally better health than the elderly of previous generations, we outnumber you, firearms take away strength advantages, and I bet you'd taste really good, once roasted.
Such an angry young man (Score:4, Interesting)
You need to realize that grouping all people of a certain age into a "generation", and accusing all of them is silly.
I have disagreed with a lot of the stuff done by the government for over 40 years. It's not my fault.
Re:Huh? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:OMG! Really? (Score:5, Interesting)
Disturbingly, that's not as 100% true as you think. There are some cases of local laws in various places also being privately held copyrighted material and/or "trade secrets" of various organizations. The most common example of this are laws covering zoning and construction written by local engineering forms which then charge money for copies. The bigger concern isn't petty local corruption like that, however, it's actually things like case law and various binding legal interpretations by the legislative and executive branch. Case law has traditionally largely only been accessible by contracting with private firms with virtual monopolies on republishing them. Aside from that, we're increasingly seeing (or not seeing) more and more binding decisions being made by secret courts and various executive offices which in some cases aren't even accessible by Congress. We're also more and more seeing what amounts to superuser permissions to create binding policy equivalent to laws being handed off to more and more agencies.
Consider no fly lists. We know that certain people aren't allowed on airplanes. We don't know which people, and we don't know why, and we don't know which things we might do that might get us put on the list, or on other lists which we don't even know about. The rationale in that particular example is that flying is a privilege, not a right, and therefore having it taken away is not a punishment. Clearly that's a load of nonsense. Traveling about the country is certainly a right, and removing of the more convenient ways to do that is a curtailment of that right. If that argument is faulty, that means that it's acceptable to refuse registered voters entrance to polling places because it only inconveniences them and they can find another way to vote. Even if being able to board planes is a privilege and not a right, removal of privileges that everyone enjoys by default still qualifies as a punishment by any sane definition.
Get edumicated. (Score:4, Interesting)
You need to do some research. The only high speed rail the USA has is the Acela line, which is run by Amtrak. It brings in an absolute *ton* of money. It is full all the time, self sustaining, and brings major profits to the states it runs through. The cost of getting this type of line through the entire USA is negligible for the amount of money (and jobs) it would bring to each of the states. While not as fast as those in Europe and Japan, it is being upgraded to those speeds and will allow for more passengers (and profit). There is zero credibility to any claims made that high speed rail in the USA would be unprofitable, rarely used, and a money drain. The only example we have is the Amtrak Acela line, and it is huge success in every aspect.