7 ms·

End of Obama's silicon honeymoon

49 points by rahooligan 16y ago

nkassis 16y ago
They've forgotten a few things like the current administration stance on copyrights. Things like ACTA. Also patent reforms aren't really being talked about much by this administration.
omouse 16y ago
tech leaders have been outraged by Mr Obama’s willingness to demonise employers for outsourcing work to foreign countries, which is especially popular within the IT industry This is popular with management not really with employees.
tgriesser 16y ago
The president might need to be careful when dealing with the tech industry. Sure, they may not have as much power as the "media" now, but with the declining foothold of traditional news outlets and media sources it will be interesting to see how this dynamic changes in coming years. Also, when it comes to wasteful spending see: http://dailycaller.com/2010/10/20/fbi-computer-system-years-late-and-way-over-budget/ http://dailycaller.com/2010/10/20/fbi-computer-system-years-... I mean come on. There needs to be some serious thought as to how to somehow apply startup principals to government endeavors.
gamble 16y ago
> Many of its 2,000 members, he adds, are unwilling to invest in new initiatives while there is so much uncertainty about future policy. What is this 'uncertainty' Obama is supposed to be responsible for? I don't think Obama has been particularly unclear about his intentions, and when he's compromised it's almost always been toward more conservative positions. His opponents have fallen in love with this term lately, but to me they feel like weasel words used because complaining about a Democrat in the White House sounds too, well, partisan.
- jerf 16y ago
  What taxes are going to be raised to pay for the radical increase in spending? What's the next industry to be demonized and have punitive penalties, taxation, or nationalization applied to it? Is somebody else going to be shaken down the way BP Oil was even when there was no legal authority to do it [1]? What other radical changes to the economy are going to be proposed if the recovery continues to be anemic, and how many dollars are going to be vacuumed out of the private economy to accomplish these changes? How much more loan disasters have been hidden, and how will the administration react, and how many dollars will be vacuumed out of the private economy to implement the reactions? How will the government react to the oncoming pension crises, and how many dollars will be vacuumed out of the private economy to do it? By what order of magnitude will the Obama health care bill's costs be underestimated[2]? It doesn't even matter whether these are true; I'm not really trying to argue these points or I'd back them up better, I'm just answering your question. (So, for instance, replying to me to argue about the legal authority for the BP Oil escrow account would be missing the point.) It only matters that enough people in business think they are true. It doesn't matter whether they are entirely correct, it only matters that the concerns are correct enough. Somewhat loaded terms were chosen deliberately to give a more accurate impression of how these people are thinking. [1]: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/06/16/politics/main6588178.shtml http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/06/16/politics/main65881... , if you don't remember this [2]: I don't even mean this as an attack specifically on that bill; observing that governments almost without exception underestimate costs is merely realism, not politics, and when you're talking about something the size of the health care bill, being 50% off is a big deal.
  - gamble 16y ago
    Disagreements over policy don't strike me as a good reason to blame Obama for uncertainty. The financial crisis and the oil spill would have existed if Obama wasn't president, and the gov't reaction would have been just as controversial. I definitely don't agree with everything Obama has done, but I think it's difficult to lay much of the blame at his feet. If anything, Obama has been more consistent in his approach than the situation demanded.
    - 16y ago
pg 16y ago
I don't feel like people here are down on Obama at all. They're down on things the government has done and not done, which is now (to some extent) Obama's fault since he's (to some extent) in charge of it. But I don't hear any grumbling about him personally.
- tel 16y ago
  I feel like news sources are down on him. It's a better story with a scapegoat.
  - tel 16y ago
    In a bit of meta-irony, my own comment illustrates itself. The core here is that we care about good stories much more than true ones.
- devmonk 16y ago
  A number of people I've talked to that voted for him in the last election have been saying that they're unhappy with the president and Democratically led congress. There is a good chance that many on HN are unhappy also. They might not be vocal about it, because just stating that unhappiness doesn't accomplish much, and it really isn't an appropriate forum for politics. I personally will be supporting fiscally conservative candidates in the future that have supported small business and that I think would be good leaders. I hope that the days of judging candidates by charisma are over, and instead we look at track record. A track record of being a professor and community organizer is inappropriate for the leader of the free world during a time when support of business is imperative.
  - weaksauce 16y ago
    Shouldn't they be angry about the system that polarizes the two sides into waring factions that cannot get anything done in a reasonable timeframe? Look at right now, the right will not vote anything controversial in that may or may not be good for the economy because they are too worried about conceding to the left. The same thing happens when the right is in power. midterm elections make the window of possible change so small that nothing really gets done.
waxman 16y ago
Three, concrete steps Obama should to take to redeem himself with the tech crowd and revive the economy: 1) Immigration reform. If smart engineers from abroad want to study here or work here we need to let them, and let them stay as long as they want. 2) Better science and math education. It might be a long slog to catch up with some other countries, but we need to start. One suggestion: A national "learn to program" initiative in low-income elementary schools. 3) Focus financial industry reforms on making life easier for small businesses (i.e. startups). We create the most jobs and account for the most innovation, and yet the bulk of Obama's economic policy has helped big incumbents. Easier access to credit, federal startup grants, and small business tax reform would all go a long way.
- old-gregg 16y ago
  I probably want to disagree on all 3 accounts. While they do sound good in principle they are not, in my opinion, major hurdles for anyone, lets see: 1) It is borderline trivial to come to US on an H1b visa and has always been so: as a former H1b holder I can hardly see how can government do anything here except to be more efficient (more streamlined procedures). 2) What is government supposed to do here exactly? If science and math graduates had comparable earning power prospects to law, finance and medical grads we wouldn't be discussing it. Besides, on a university level US schools are top notch. 3) Like what? I own a small business and haven't encountered any obstacles caused by the government. Getting customers, press and funding are by far my biggest headaches. And keeping in mind how notoriously inefficient governments are I'd hate to see them decide which powerpoint gets my tax dollars and which doesn't - leave that to VCs. I'd ask Mr. Obama to invest into fundamental research, the kind of expensive, risky and long-term stuff VCs don't invest into. They built Internet to fight Russians and look how much mileage we've gotten out of it. Startups aren't building "new internet", they're in the business of making products on top of the existing one. Mr. President, give us some new shiny tech out of NASA/CIA/whatever and we'll get busy building next generations of googles and facebooks.
  - jforman 16y ago
    The H1B process has gotten considerably more difficult in recent years. We've had two very frustrating rejections recently.
nostrademons 16y ago
"When a good manager meets a bad business, it's the business's reputation that stays intact." -- Warren Buffett I think a lot of Obama's difficulties stem from having to steer a massive federal bureaucracy. There're lots of power centers in government besides the president - the American system is designed that way, so that any given bad president can't do too much damage. (Though that didn't seem to stop Dubya...maybe it's easier to blow things up than it is to build them.) I'm disappointed at Obama's inaction on net neutrality, but he's been distracted by other major initiatives. And the health care bill is huge for potential entrepreneurs; one of the major disincentives to quitting your job is the lack of health insurance.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- ryanwaggoner 16y ago
  I think a lot of Obama's difficulties stem from having to steer a massive federal bureaucracy. To my eye, he's only making the weight of bureaucracy worse.
  - nostrademons 16y ago
    I think every president makes the weight of bureaucracy worse. It seems to be a law of nature that bureaucracy only grows, never shrinks, until it consumes the society that supports it. Then we get another Dark Ages. I also think that in general, a president's power tends to be overstated. People give Clinton a lot of credit for the 90s boom, but I think he was largely riding a technological wave that he had nothing to do with. Dubya did screw things up, but many of the things he screwed up were already set in motion before he took office. Obama fixed a few things, but he's also made things worse in ways that we probably won't see the ramifications of until several years down the line. I shudder to think of the next financial bubble, now that we've set the precedent that wanton recklessness will get you bailed out by the federal government.
- hexis 16y ago
  "And the health care bill is huge for potential entrepreneurs; one of the major disincentives to quitting your job is the lack of health insurance." After all the debate last year, I still find claims like this so strange. As far as I have ever been able to tell, the Health Care reform merely assesses a tax on being uninsured. So, if you quit your job to start a company, you no longer have the option to forgo insurance without now paying a penalty on your taxes. How an additional penalty would either a) provide more/better health care or b) spur entrepreneurship I have never been able to understand.
ScotterC 16y ago
Thought this sentence was interesting: "An enigmatic politician with strong convictions, Mr Obama in many ways resembled the driven young spirits that venture capitalists love to take a punt on." I bet in British-English it comes out right, but in reference to American Football, 'taking a punt on' would mean passing on these driven young spirits and not backing them. Ahh linguistics
c2 16y ago
The President controls the military, can veto bills that congress/the senate passes, and appoints supreme court justices. Anything else the media claims Obama is responsible for is a disingenuous attempt to garner views by name dropping the President and is actually doing a disservice to all it's readers by misrepresenting how the American political system works.
raheemm 16y ago
When the economy improves, the president's approval will start climbing as well.
metamemetics 16y ago
> their backers were betting that Mr Obama would push through an energy bill that would force America to embrace alternative sources of energy more aggressively. Give him a break, getting healthcare reform passed already involved flame-baiting half of congress to the extreme. There's a thing called filibustering that massively slows down all legislature once anyone bill becomes flame-baitable enough. There is no way any president could have halted the greatest financial collapse since the great depression, passed education reform, passed healthcare reform, AND also gotten to a new energy\immigration policy in 18 months, while filibustering exists, without assuming dictatorial power.
iko371 16y ago
-Another source of friction is the reluctance in Washington to reduce hefty taxes on foreign earnings repatriated to America. As many American tech firms make a large share of their revenue and profit outside the country, they are particularly exercised by the government’s reluctance to lighten this burden.- I agree with the Obama administration on this one. Corporations should not be allowed to move their operations overseas. If there is not a skilled labor force in this country from which to hire, corporations should call on our schools and our government to create the kind of educational system and incentives that will produce skilled Americans who can meet the demand. -To make matters worse, tech leaders have been outraged by Mr Obama’s willingness to demonise employers for outsourcing work to foreign countries, which is especially popular within the IT industry, and by his grating sermons on the evils of corporate greed. “We’re praised for creating jobs, while being spanked at the same time,” complains Mark Heesen...- Yes. You should spanked for your corporate greed. It is perfectly reasonable to expect entrepreneurs to pay back into the system that allowed them to create such success. Our current system reeks of thirty-odd years of corporations creeping into government and manipulating the rules, and bending, breaking or destroying regulations so as to maximize profit at the expense of the American people. It is even more reasonable to expect that to undo the damage, we will have to return to a system of tighter controls and the closing of loopholes that allow companies to get away with paying at or near 0% in taxes. -Tech firms and venture capitalists welcome these initiatives, but are deeply frustrated by a lack of action in other areas. For instance, many cleantech start-ups and their backers were betting that Mr Obama would push through an energy bill that would force America to embrace alternative sources of energy more aggressively. But that came a cropper in the Senate.- Right, because instead of strong-arming everything through the Senate, like the Republicans did for six years under Bush, Obama wanted to play the "reach across the aisle" game, to which nearly every single Republican spat back in his face. As a result, in two years, all we got was a mangled health care reform bill that, while a big step in the right direction, still allows huge insurance companies and pharmaceuticals to continue capitalizing on human suffering. -In a speech in Silicon Valley, Mr Obama reiterated that he wants to create the conditions in America that would give rise to the next Google and the next Hewlett-Packard. But he will have to do much more to convince the tech industry that he really means it.- Well, if the tech industry thinks that the path to doing that is to bringing in skilled labor from other countries, outsourcing jobs, and paying at or near 0% in net taxes, then the industry is delusional and needs a reality check. Discouraging immigration of skilled labor encourages the development of those skills in this country. Taxes generate the revenue that the government can use to create an educational system that trains people in those skills and provides incentives for people to leave colleges and universities with degrees in those field. Our current system is far too broken in this regard. Educational spending is far too low, the result of thirty years of Republicans blowing up the taxes on corporations and the richest 1%. It seems to me that too many entrepreneurs have tunnel vision, asking "Why do I have to pay all these taxes?" and "Why can't I bring in the skilled labor I need from other countries?" The frame for these questions is self-centered. If the entrepreneur expands his frame of reference beyond himself to ask, "Who's paying to support society at this point in history?" and "Why can't I find the skilled labor I need in this country?" then the solutions to these problems become clear, and they require a progressive push even stronger than what Obama's achieved thus far.
bwooceli 16y ago
I don't know which is more relevant for the HN audience - a) the discussion of how to balance and deliver promises and priorities in the government or... b) the fact that the comments section of The Econimist is apparently completely vulnerable to spam bots. On (a) I'm inclined to take a long view on this presidency and say that the real rubber will meet the road after the midterms. As for (b) maybe the folks over at TE would like to take advantage of the recent "Offer HN" meme.
known 16y ago
What problem Silicon Valley really was solving?
FluidDjango 16y ago
The author(s) of the piece may be right. Or not. It's an unsigned/unattributed essay that is long on weasel words (as wikipedia would put it, e.g., "Many of its 2,000 members..."), short on evidence (a few quotes attributed to identified individuals) and devoid of quantification ("tech leaders have been outraged by..." what proportion? did some take a poll?) Economics tries to be a quantitative behavioral science. This piece, however...

49 points by rahooligan 16y ago

They've forgotten a few things like the current administration stance on copyrights. Things like ACTA. Also patent reforms aren't really being talked about much by this administration.

omouse 16y ago

tech leaders have been outraged by Mr Obama’s willingness to demonise employers for outsourcing work to foreign countries, which is especially popular within the IT industry This is popular with management not really with employees.

tgriesser 16y ago

The president might need to be careful when dealing with the tech industry. Sure, they may not have as much power as the "media" now, but with the declining foothold of traditional news outlets and media sources it will be interesting to see how this dynamic changes in coming years. Also, when it comes to wasteful spending see: http://dailycaller.com/2010/10/20/fbi-computer-system-years-late-and-way-over-budget/ http://dailycaller.com/2010/10/20/fbi-computer-system-years-... I mean come on. There needs to be some serious thought as to how to somehow apply startup principals to government endeavors.

gamble 16y ago

> Many of its 2,000 members, he adds, are unwilling to invest in new initiatives while there is so much uncertainty about future policy. What is this 'uncertainty' Obama is supposed to be responsible for? I don't think Obama has been particularly unclear about his intentions, and when he's compromised it's almost always been toward more conservative positions. His opponents have fallen in love with this term lately, but to me they feel like weasel words used because complaining about a Democrat in the White House sounds too, well, partisan.

jerf 16y ago
What taxes are going to be raised to pay for the radical increase in spending? What's the next industry to be demonized and have punitive penalties, taxation, or nationalization applied to it? Is somebody else going to be shaken down the way BP Oil was even when there was no legal authority to do it [1]? What other radical changes to the economy are going to be proposed if the recovery continues to be anemic, and how many dollars are going to be vacuumed out of the private economy to accomplish these changes? How much more loan disasters have been hidden, and how will the administration react, and how many dollars will be vacuumed out of the private economy to implement the reactions? How will the government react to the oncoming pension crises, and how many dollars will be vacuumed out of the private economy to do it? By what order of magnitude will the Obama health care bill's costs be underestimated[2]? It doesn't even matter whether these are true; I'm not really trying to argue these points or I'd back them up better, I'm just answering your question. (So, for instance, replying to me to argue about the legal authority for the BP Oil escrow account would be missing the point.) It only matters that enough people in business think they are true. It doesn't matter whether they are entirely correct, it only matters that the concerns are correct enough. Somewhat loaded terms were chosen deliberately to give a more accurate impression of how these people are thinking. [1]: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/06/16/politics/main6588178.shtml http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/06/16/politics/main65881... , if you don't remember this [2]: I don't even mean this as an attack specifically on that bill; observing that governments almost without exception underestimate costs is merely realism, not politics, and when you're talking about something the size of the health care bill, being 50% off is a big deal.
- gamble 16y ago
  Disagreements over policy don't strike me as a good reason to blame Obama for uncertainty. The financial crisis and the oil spill would have existed if Obama wasn't president, and the gov't reaction would have been just as controversial. I definitely don't agree with everything Obama has done, but I think it's difficult to lay much of the blame at his feet. If anything, Obama has been more consistent in his approach than the situation demanded.
  - 16y ago

pg 16y ago

I don't feel like people here are down on Obama at all. They're down on things the government has done and not done, which is now (to some extent) Obama's fault since he's (to some extent) in charge of it. But I don't hear any grumbling about him personally.

tel 16y ago
I feel like news sources are down on him. It's a better story with a scapegoat.
- tel 16y ago
  In a bit of meta-irony, my own comment illustrates itself. The core here is that we care about good stories much more than true ones.
devmonk 16y ago
A number of people I've talked to that voted for him in the last election have been saying that they're unhappy with the president and Democratically led congress. There is a good chance that many on HN are unhappy also. They might not be vocal about it, because just stating that unhappiness doesn't accomplish much, and it really isn't an appropriate forum for politics. I personally will be supporting fiscally conservative candidates in the future that have supported small business and that I think would be good leaders. I hope that the days of judging candidates by charisma are over, and instead we look at track record. A track record of being a professor and community organizer is inappropriate for the leader of the free world during a time when support of business is imperative.
- weaksauce 16y ago
  Shouldn't they be angry about the system that polarizes the two sides into waring factions that cannot get anything done in a reasonable timeframe? Look at right now, the right will not vote anything controversial in that may or may not be good for the economy because they are too worried about conceding to the left. The same thing happens when the right is in power. midterm elections make the window of possible change so small that nothing really gets done.

waxman 16y ago

Three, concrete steps Obama should to take to redeem himself with the tech crowd and revive the economy: 1) Immigration reform. If smart engineers from abroad want to study here or work here we need to let them, and let them stay as long as they want. 2) Better science and math education. It might be a long slog to catch up with some other countries, but we need to start. One suggestion: A national "learn to program" initiative in low-income elementary schools. 3) Focus financial industry reforms on making life easier for small businesses (i.e. startups). We create the most jobs and account for the most innovation, and yet the bulk of Obama's economic policy has helped big incumbents. Easier access to credit, federal startup grants, and small business tax reform would all go a long way.

old-gregg 16y ago
I probably want to disagree on all 3 accounts. While they do sound good in principle they are not, in my opinion, major hurdles for anyone, lets see: 1) It is borderline trivial to come to US on an H1b visa and has always been so: as a former H1b holder I can hardly see how can government do anything here except to be more efficient (more streamlined procedures). 2) What is government supposed to do here exactly? If science and math graduates had comparable earning power prospects to law, finance and medical grads we wouldn't be discussing it. Besides, on a university level US schools are top notch. 3) Like what? I own a small business and haven't encountered any obstacles caused by the government. Getting customers, press and funding are by far my biggest headaches. And keeping in mind how notoriously inefficient governments are I'd hate to see them decide which powerpoint gets my tax dollars and which doesn't - leave that to VCs. I'd ask Mr. Obama to invest into fundamental research, the kind of expensive, risky and long-term stuff VCs don't invest into. They built Internet to fight Russians and look how much mileage we've gotten out of it. Startups aren't building "new internet", they're in the business of making products on top of the existing one. Mr. President, give us some new shiny tech out of NASA/CIA/whatever and we'll get busy building next generations of googles and facebooks.
- jforman 16y ago
  The H1B process has gotten considerably more difficult in recent years. We've had two very frustrating rejections recently.

nostrademons 16y ago

"When a good manager meets a bad business, it's the business's reputation that stays intact." -- Warren Buffett I think a lot of Obama's difficulties stem from having to steer a massive federal bureaucracy. There're lots of power centers in government besides the president - the American system is designed that way, so that any given bad president can't do too much damage. (Though that didn't seem to stop Dubya...maybe it's easier to blow things up than it is to build them.) I'm disappointed at Obama's inaction on net neutrality, but he's been distracted by other major initiatives. And the health care bill is huge for potential entrepreneurs; one of the major disincentives to quitting your job is the lack of health insurance.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
ryanwaggoner 16y ago
I think a lot of Obama's difficulties stem from having to steer a massive federal bureaucracy. To my eye, he's only making the weight of bureaucracy worse.
- nostrademons 16y ago
  I think every president makes the weight of bureaucracy worse. It seems to be a law of nature that bureaucracy only grows, never shrinks, until it consumes the society that supports it. Then we get another Dark Ages. I also think that in general, a president's power tends to be overstated. People give Clinton a lot of credit for the 90s boom, but I think he was largely riding a technological wave that he had nothing to do with. Dubya did screw things up, but many of the things he screwed up were already set in motion before he took office. Obama fixed a few things, but he's also made things worse in ways that we probably won't see the ramifications of until several years down the line. I shudder to think of the next financial bubble, now that we've set the precedent that wanton recklessness will get you bailed out by the federal government.
hexis 16y ago
"And the health care bill is huge for potential entrepreneurs; one of the major disincentives to quitting your job is the lack of health insurance." After all the debate last year, I still find claims like this so strange. As far as I have ever been able to tell, the Health Care reform merely assesses a tax on being uninsured. So, if you quit your job to start a company, you no longer have the option to forgo insurance without now paying a penalty on your taxes. How an additional penalty would either a) provide more/better health care or b) spur entrepreneurship I have never been able to understand.

ScotterC 16y ago

Thought this sentence was interesting: "An enigmatic politician with strong convictions, Mr Obama in many ways resembled the driven young spirits that venture capitalists love to take a punt on." I bet in British-English it comes out right, but in reference to American Football, 'taking a punt on' would mean passing on these driven young spirits and not backing them. Ahh linguistics

c2 16y ago

The President controls the military, can veto bills that congress/the senate passes, and appoints supreme court justices. Anything else the media claims Obama is responsible for is a disingenuous attempt to garner views by name dropping the President and is actually doing a disservice to all it's readers by misrepresenting how the American political system works.

raheemm 16y ago

When the economy improves, the president's approval will start climbing as well.

metamemetics 16y ago

> their backers were betting that Mr Obama would push through an energy bill that would force America to embrace alternative sources of energy more aggressively. Give him a break, getting healthcare reform passed already involved flame-baiting half of congress to the extreme. There's a thing called filibustering that massively slows down all legislature once anyone bill becomes flame-baitable enough. There is no way any president could have halted the greatest financial collapse since the great depression, passed education reform, passed healthcare reform, AND also gotten to a new energy\immigration policy in 18 months, while filibustering exists, without assuming dictatorial power.

iko371 16y ago

-Another source of friction is the reluctance in Washington to reduce hefty taxes on foreign earnings repatriated to America. As many American tech firms make a large share of their revenue and profit outside the country, they are particularly exercised by the government’s reluctance to lighten this burden.- I agree with the Obama administration on this one. Corporations should not be allowed to move their operations overseas. If there is not a skilled labor force in this country from which to hire, corporations should call on our schools and our government to create the kind of educational system and incentives that will produce skilled Americans who can meet the demand. -To make matters worse, tech leaders have been outraged by Mr Obama’s willingness to demonise employers for outsourcing work to foreign countries, which is especially popular within the IT industry, and by his grating sermons on the evils of corporate greed. “We’re praised for creating jobs, while being spanked at the same time,” complains Mark Heesen...- Yes. You should spanked for your corporate greed. It is perfectly reasonable to expect entrepreneurs to pay back into the system that allowed them to create such success. Our current system reeks of thirty-odd years of corporations creeping into government and manipulating the rules, and bending, breaking or destroying regulations so as to maximize profit at the expense of the American people. It is even more reasonable to expect that to undo the damage, we will have to return to a system of tighter controls and the closing of loopholes that allow companies to get away with paying at or near 0% in taxes. -Tech firms and venture capitalists welcome these initiatives, but are deeply frustrated by a lack of action in other areas. For instance, many cleantech start-ups and their backers were betting that Mr Obama would push through an energy bill that would force America to embrace alternative sources of energy more aggressively. But that came a cropper in the Senate.- Right, because instead of strong-arming everything through the Senate, like the Republicans did for six years under Bush, Obama wanted to play the "reach across the aisle" game, to which nearly every single Republican spat back in his face. As a result, in two years, all we got was a mangled health care reform bill that, while a big step in the right direction, still allows huge insurance companies and pharmaceuticals to continue capitalizing on human suffering. -In a speech in Silicon Valley, Mr Obama reiterated that he wants to create the conditions in America that would give rise to the next Google and the next Hewlett-Packard. But he will have to do much more to convince the tech industry that he really means it.- Well, if the tech industry thinks that the path to doing that is to bringing in skilled labor from other countries, outsourcing jobs, and paying at or near 0% in net taxes, then the industry is delusional and needs a reality check. Discouraging immigration of skilled labor encourages the development of those skills in this country. Taxes generate the revenue that the government can use to create an educational system that trains people in those skills and provides incentives for people to leave colleges and universities with degrees in those field. Our current system is far too broken in this regard. Educational spending is far too low, the result of thirty years of Republicans blowing up the taxes on corporations and the richest 1%. It seems to me that too many entrepreneurs have tunnel vision, asking "Why do I have to pay all these taxes?" and "Why can't I bring in the skilled labor I need from other countries?" The frame for these questions is self-centered. If the entrepreneur expands his frame of reference beyond himself to ask, "Who's paying to support society at this point in history?" and "Why can't I find the skilled labor I need in this country?" then the solutions to these problems become clear, and they require a progressive push even stronger than what Obama's achieved thus far.

bwooceli 16y ago

I don't know which is more relevant for the HN audience - a) the discussion of how to balance and deliver promises and priorities in the government or... b) the fact that the comments section of The Econimist is apparently completely vulnerable to spam bots. On (a) I'm inclined to take a long view on this presidency and say that the real rubber will meet the road after the midterms. As for (b) maybe the folks over at TE would like to take advantage of the recent "Offer HN" meme.

known 16y ago

What problem Silicon Valley really was solving?

FluidDjango 16y ago

The author(s) of the piece may be right. Or not. It's an unsigned/unattributed essay that is long on weasel words (as wikipedia would put it, e.g., "Many of its 2,000 members..."), short on evidence (a few quotes attributed to identified individuals) and devoid of quantification ("tech leaders have been outraged by..." what proportion? did some take a poll?) Economics tries to be a quantitative behavioral science. This piece, however...