Recent comments

  • The strength of science is not that you can ever be proven right, but that you can be proven wrong. ALL scientific theories must undergo experimental validation before they are accepted, and that acceptance is only until counterexamples show otherwise. Scientists as people have their own biases, but decent ones will work hard at trying to find where they are wrong.

    What about B-school, or for that matter economists? Does anyone ever say, "I was wrong"? Do people even look for counterexamples to their own pet theories, much less reality without cherry-picking? Mostly I see either silence or doubling down on the demonstrably wrong.

    Reply to: B School Goes Back to the Drawing Board   15 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • I'm for...what works. Call me the common sense society or a member of the new elitist group called the math class. What works, what adds up. For example, raw nasty capitalism can work for startups. Yet obviously putting up people's health as a place to get rich....isn't working out to well and should be considered a right, a public work, a moral imperative. It happens to be more cost competitive and economically competitive on the side.

    Too much comrade and it's enough to drive ya nuts with regulations, rules, red tape.....too much capitalism and you have your sociological mutually assured destruction experiment.

    Reply to: What do we want from an economy?   15 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • don't make assumptions based on restaurants, etc. I happen to love Indian food and it's a real bitch to cook too, it's quite popular among engineers generally. Yummy. Then that area is Silicon forest, so we have no idea what other activities are in the area. Is Infosys, TCS, operating there? (probably). So, we can go by the many horrific employment reports from Intel, the fact they hide their layoffs with an absurd perpetual "flunk out class" from the jobs (which Enron adopted, so lovely!), their H-1b applications, the use of L-1 and their offshore outsourcing activity.

    Same with Hillsboro Demographics. Sure it looks like Mexigon but one really needs to find out the current population survey and percentages.

    Reply to: What is in The Economic Stimulus Bill of 2009? - Part V   15 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • here as well with tips. There is an email system on EP too. I request people leave me as "last resort" with formatting help but I will help people. Bottom line, it's a learning curve on how to format blog posts, no way out of it easily, although use of a WYSIYWG editor seems to help many.

    Reply to: Health Care Debt   15 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • wringing out "inefficient" corporate governance. Interesting, but could use some numbers here concerning debt load, number of hospitals affected, etc.

    Reply to: Health Care Debt   15 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • Thank you for the suggestion. Any more tips are welcomed. (I need all the help I can get. Seriously.):-)

    Reply to: Health Care Debt   15 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • and this is just a guess, from the pattern of ethnic restaurants in the area, that in the 1990s, Intel went about 25% H-1b and stayed at about that ratio since. Agriculture in the area has since gone 90%-100% illegal- and all of the tandoori houses closed in the last 4 years and reopened as Mexican places.

    Reply to: What is in The Economic Stimulus Bill of 2009? - Part V   15 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • #14 on the H-1B Visa list but I do not know precisely what percentage of it's workforce is on guest workers (H-1B, L-1, etc.) but we do absolutely know that IBM is offshore outsourcing contracts, jobs as fast as they can and Intel has many facilities offshore.

    IBM is one of the worst. Over and over they get state tax incentives to create jobs....and they take the money...and do not create local jobs.

    Google is offshore as well.

    Reply to: What is in The Economic Stimulus Bill of 2009? - Part V   15 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • I haven't checked every district and some have historically high unemployment rates, but it seems so "equal" to the point it seems unequal to what projects make sense as well as where the real unemployment is.

    We know Detroit is economic disaster ground zero and it's looking so bad for the big 3 auto companies, I expect that rate to spike up much worst than it already is.

    Then, if 25% of the jobs to be created are in the tech sector, we have a major issue not being talked about and that is offshore outsourcing. I am hoping a real expert on Buy American can address software design, services but I have been hunting high and low on that topic and I do not believe it is covered under those provisions.

    As usual, it seems the geek community and their labor issues is getting ignored.

    Reply to: What is in The Economic Stimulus Bill of 2009? - Part V   15 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • Just because I happen to have some close friends in AmberGlen Hillsboro, OR Intel Campus, while likely there are many H-1b's on the project, Digital Health is indeed primarily centered here in Oregon, at least for the major development team & localization (translation to foreign languages) of the user interface & manuals.

    Reply to: What is in The Economic Stimulus Bill of 2009? - Part V   15 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • Just spot-checking that jobs created, I'd have to say we ended up with almost no correlation to unemployment rate- but a remarkably low spread per congressional district nationwide. The numbers seem (and I haven't crunched the heavy math) to be between 6000-9000 jobs created per district, with a median of about 7500. Given the spread, and the accusations of "pork" thrown out, I'm pretty amazed at those numbers.

    Reply to: What is in The Economic Stimulus Bill of 2009? - Part V   15 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • Yes.

    KS just joined CA.

    Reply to: Is America Bankrupt?   15 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • Once it was formatted that is (could somebody go back and format the other one on how local hospitals got refinanced into rent-based businesses? I think that too is an important part of the big picture that I simply haven't heard about at all). However, I've got a couple of quibbles with some of your theory:

    Fact is, "money" is only created when there's an interest rate yield...I loan you $1, you repay me $1 ten cents. When short terms rates are 0%, as they are right around now, no money's being created, and most importantly...no one's making any real money.

     

    This is actually a very real point, but more importantly, a very modern point that only applies to fiat currencies.  In normal capitalist and traditional economies, money is made by value added production- that is, by increasing the real value of some item, then selling it for the difference you can get between what you paid for the item and what it is now worth.  

    But with fiat currency and fractional reserve banking, bankers found a way around that- interest rates, that is, usury.  But in September, we learned what happens when the main way to make big money is usury- it's an unsustainable system that comes crashing down around your ears.

    Because of this, I have a tendency to side with the sound-money people.  I'm not a gold bug yet (partially because the price of coined gold is still trading at several times spot price, indicating that there is some fiat currency "magic" going on in that market as well), but I'm becomming more and more of a tangibles consumer; instead of keeping my money in the bank, I prefer keeping it in a 2 year supply of canned goods (rotated), a house that actually has some equity still (surprisingly), and items that will help me survive a total US Default such as native plant landscaping, a cheap used boat, a used pop up tent trailer, and a class 3 hitch for my wife's van, as well as sacrificing to pay off all of our consumer debt.

    The more I think about it though, the more I have to say we need a better balance between sound money and fiat currency.  "Hard to transport" gold bar backed debit cards with a minimum currency amount of an atom, perhaps, so that as deflation or inflation hits, all that really changes is the number of significant bits on a number in a data cluster someplace?  That are government backed instead of bank backed and fully transparent so that anybody who you are doing a transaction with can verify you have the correct number of atoms for the transaction before agreeing to it?

    Reply to: Is America Bankrupt?   15 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • Folks read the user guide and the FAQ in the about link.

    Gregman you need to format your posts

    Also don't be a blog hog.

    Also, format links where you site references. For example, you quote the GAO, please link to the study you cite.

    One of the goals on posts as least (comments anything goes) is to have well cited and referenced posts. The big sacrilege is to write economic fiction so being able to verify those links is important to readers. It brings credibility to what you are saying (and CDOs, derivatives is something we have talked a lot about on EP, what a ponzi scheme!)

    There are lots of tools to help you format posts but writing straight text is very difficult to read without formatted links, sections with headers, etc.

    We ain't going anywhere but you shouldn't be filling up the blog space with tons of posts at once.

    You're ok but one more and you'll be in trouble.

    Finally, the Instpopulist is for shorter posts those types of things of "this pisses me off" to "did you see this"...

    Reply to: Is America Bankrupt?   15 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • Your posts are valuable. In fact I just rated them both up. But you really need to learn the value of the paragraph in prose writing- your point is hard to understand because of this.

    Reply to: Health Care Debt   15 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • I share these concerns...about bloat, over spending, mismanagement. Something must be done. Most experts are saying that Obama's main error was allowing Congressional dems to write the package. But did he really have any other choice?

    Reply to: House of Cards   15 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • Which still needs some work: A vacation RV toilet that includes the proper bacteria and "fuel cell blades" for a 48-volt, 4 12 volt circuit system, 12 volts of which would be required to run the circulating pump and mixing blades to keep the bacteria alive. The fuel cell blades would be alternating Ammonia and Methane separators- tech that is already in existence in Japan.

    The up side? I think you could actually run the electric needs of an RV or electric boat off the system, if you had enough people on board.

    Reply to: Auto bailout requires union concessions   15 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • Normally any comment which tries to link to some product site is grounds for immediate banning and not ok.

    I let this one slide because there are start-ups, small companies trying to manufacture alternative vehicles and they should get assistance.

    The problem with this post is the United States does not really have advanced manufacturing battery technology to date. I believe there are funds in the Stimulus to jump start advanced battery technologies but start ups, small manufacturing should also be getting some attention here, especially anything to do with innovation or advanced manufacturing.

    Reply to: Auto bailout requires union concessions   15 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • Auto Alternatives (Affordable, Safe & Reliable): There are smaller, more efficient auto manufacturers that can replace the Big-3. For every $1 Billion dollars the federal government gives or guarantees for the Big-2 (soon to be 3), BG Automotive Group, could build 40 assembly plants (located in 40 separate cities where employment is needed), hiring 12,000 employees, and producing 600,000- 100% electric vehicles. We can save the jobs and save us from our dependence on foreign oil. The latter figures are for EACH $1 Billion dollar allocation. We would also be requiring more batteries/battery packs than the North American battery industry could produce. We would also require 600,000 U.S. made motors, computer systems, etc. to operate the vehicles. 100% of our components under the hood, including the power system, is made in America and assembled by Americans.

    We have a huge demand, domestic and foreign for our electric vehicles, but do not have the funds required for the production expansion to meet the overall demand. BGelectricCars.com

    Reply to: Auto bailout requires union concessions   15 years 9 months ago
  • What I'm wondering (and doubt) that spending and savings is a 1:1 ratio. In other words, people are losing their ass and this whip out is the main cause in the consumer spending decline, instead of people are socking away the cash. Then there is no ATM called a home equity loan anymore. I know many people were using home equity loans to stay afloat, especially older people who have no other possible source of income.

    So, it would be nice if we could see the ratios with more data fine tuning. on spending vs. savings.

    Reply to: Just how historic is the Consumer retrenchment?   15 years 9 months ago
    EPer:

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