How Corruption Is Strangling US Innovation 391
hype7 writes "The Harvard Business Review is running a very interesting piece on how money in politics is having a deleterious effect on U.S. innovation. From the article: 'Somehow, it seems that every time that [Mickey Mouse] is about to enter the public domain, Congress has passed a bill to extend the length of copyright. Congress has paid no heed to research or calls for reform; the only thing that matters to determining the appropriate length of copyright is how old Mickey is. Rather than create an incentive to innovate and develop new characters, the present system has created the perverse situation where it makes more sense for Big Content to make campaign contributions to extend protection for their old work.if you were in any doubt how deep inside the political system the system of contributions have allowed incumbents to insert their hands, take a look at what happened when the Republican Study Committee released a paper pointing out some of the problems with current copyright regime. The debate was stifled within 24 hours. And just for good measure, Rep Marsha Blackburn, whose district abuts Nashville and who received more money from the music industry than any other Republican congressional candidate, apparently had the author of the study, Derek Khanna, fired. Sure, debate around policy is important, but it's clearly not as important as raising campaign funds.'"
Re:Thank You Captain Obvious (Score:0, Informative)
47 million on food stamps, average welfare spending per poor household is HIGHER than median income, I just read a story about an illegal immigrant getting a free kidney transplant, the Fed Reserver currently printing $40 Billion a month for whoever they deem should get it.
If you are in America and not getting money for nothing you are a moron now. They are literally throwing out for anyone and everyone as quick as they can. Welfare spending in 2012 has exceeded $1 Trillion.
Re:The corruption is FAR, FAR more severe... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:disney hasn't created new characters? really (Score:4, Informative)
"The Lion King" was a good movie, but it was far from original; it started as an adaptation of Osamu Tezuka's "Kimba the White Lion", and the plot is heavily based upon Shakespeare's "Hamlet".
And Shrek is not even a Disney character, fool!
Re:water is wet (Score:5, Informative)
Re:oh boy ! (Score:5, Informative)
Just a little Econ101: salaries rise, and I don't just mean nominally through inflating a currency, when the productive capacity of an employee rises.
"For decades, productivity and compensation rose in tandem. Their bond was the basis of the social compact between the economy and the public: If you work harder and better, you and your family will be better off. But in the past few decades, and especially during the past 10 years or so, the lines have diverged. This is slippage No. 1: Productivity is rising handsomely, but compensation of workers isn’t keeping up."
http://www.nationaljournal.com/next-economy/the-no-good-very-bad-outlook-for-the-working-class-american-man-20121205 [nationaljournal.com]
Re:The Magic Number 435 (Score:5, Informative)
the size of congress is spelled out in the constitution moron
Article I [cornell.edu], section 2, says:
(with the first sentence updated by section 2 of the 14th Amendment [cornell.edu], further updated by the 19th [cornell.edu] and 26th [cornell.edu] Amendments), so, if "the number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty thousand", that allows up to about 10,000 Representatives.
The Constitution doesn't explicitly say how many Representatives there should be per person, it just says that number must be less than or equal to 1/30000 of the population, So "The House is supposed to grow (and shrink) with population, yet it has not for nearly 100 years." is not true and the size of Congress is not explicitly spelled out in the Constitution.
Blame for Congress not having grown in size can be laid at the feet of Public Law 62-5 [google.com].
Re:Thank You Captain Obvious (Score:4, Informative)
Want to see where it's similar? Try Japan and Europe. Massive regulations, people entrenched, everyone under 35 has part-time jobs, or are going through temp agencies and working 3 of them, and still not making ends meet.
This is simply not true here in Japan.
Even McDonald's here pays over $11-12/hr (which is still too low) and the majority of the work force are full-time, life-long, benefit-receiving employees.
Where did you do your in-depth research for this post?
Re:Thank You Captain Obvious (Score:5, Informative)
I live in the UK and you're talking bollocks, unemployment is not exceptional, we have nothing like the poverty that the US has. We have far better minimum wages which combat poverty. there is no such thing as food stamps here. And of course the national health service is free to all so if you get sick it is not a problem financially (except for the time off work for some people).
And the Japanese guy disagrees too I see.
I don't earn great wages and I live in London and I still have plenty of spending money, food is not a concern.