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Obama Wins The Election. Here’s His Technology Agenda.
- rpm4321 14y agotl;dr: Tax it.
- jamesaguilar 14y agoPossibly the least accurate TL;DR I have ever read.
- rpm4321 14y agoYep, sorry. I thought it was obviously facetious. Probably not in the spirit of HN, but with all the victory lapping by the liberal wing of HN tonight, I guess the libertarian in me got a bit carried away.
- MartinCron 14y agoI feel your pain, but I guess that's what bleeding heart liberals do. Isn't it?
- Volpe 14y agoThere isn't any mention of taxes in that article... What am I missing?
- camus 14y agomust be talking about doobies ...
- hayksaakian 14y agotl;dr you'll still have to bust your ass to execute a successful startup. Don't expect the government to do your job.
- rdl 14y agoI really hope the STEM immigration reform happens, independent of "comprehensive immigration reform". The main people blocking "just do the STEM part now" immigration reform are congressional Democrats, and I'm not sure if the election changes anything there. Maybe the President getting re-elected pretty solidly gives him more moral power in arguing with the Congress?
- nhebb 14y agoThere are other immigration reforms issues that have had wide bipartisan support, but congress doesn't seem to like to package legislature that way. There's a strong historically tendency towards bundling. > Maybe the President getting re-elected pretty solidly ... Electorally, yes, but it's a squeaker by popular vote. As of this writing, the victory margin is less than half of a percent.
- backprojection 14y agoI live in Texas, and I voted for Johnson. If I lived in Ohio I would have voted for Obama. It's hard to find numbers at the moment, but it looks like Johnsons's pulling 5%.
- rdl 14y agoNationally as a popular vote thing, plenty of people who voted Johnson might have voted for either Romney or Obama in their "safe" state otherwise. I live in Obamaland, support Johnson, but would not have voted for Obama if I hadn't voted for Johnson. So you can't just add 100% of Johnson to Obama.
- emmapersky 14y agoAs of 3:03 am Johnson has 1% of the popular vote with just over 1M votes. http://google.com/elections http://google.com/elections
- cglace 14y agoI will never understand anyone who votes for the Libertarian candidate and then says their other choice was the far more progressive option. Is it because both are the contrarian play to something else?
- saurabhpalan 14y agoI am really looking forward to the Startup visa...its about time
- westicle 14y agoMaybe I'm showing my hn colours, but I'm surprised by no mention of SOPA/PIPA. I would have thought broad policies which have already been introduced as bills during the last term in office would be more significant to technology than potential immigration reforms. I note that I'm not from the USA, so my perspective might not be as well-informed as it could be.
- curt 14y agoMissing for those in technology hoping to sell the company they build: Capital Gains Rate is likely to increase from 15% to 23.8%
- MartinCron 14y agoFrom historically very low to merely historically low. I don't think this will be enough to dissuade people from building and selling things.
- curt 14y agoIt's not that it will discourage founders, it will discourage investors since they'll need a higher return to achieve the same after tax profits. What's more likely is investors will require a larger percentage reducing the founding teams ownership stake.
- zanny 14y agoI don't buy this, investors will still take as much ownership stake as they can get in the market to maximize profit regardless of how much they are taxed. Since interest rates are so low, the only real way to grow money in through investment and capital gains anyway.
- curt 14y agoSorry, but this is how I was taught and how I've seen a lot of VC's do it. They take their assumptions which include revenue projections, required rate of return, risk premium, future dilution, and of course the tax rate. They then plug those into a model to tell them what percentage / valuation they need. Of course this doesn't work well for seed stage since there's not enough information.
- zanny 14y agoDon't be sorry, but think about it. Your goal as a VC is always to maximize profit. If the US capital gains tax rate goes up, that doesn't change your outlook on US based investment on a per-case basis, it just makes all of US investment look "worse" compared to other countries with lower tax rates. And honestly, that would probably not even be that bad. One of the major reasons techies talk so much about immigration reform is that people with ideas want to go to the US because that is where all the money is because nobody wants to invest outside the borders due to a combination of many factors, but tax rate is always one of them. A higher capital gains tax rate makes other markets more appealing, and I don't have the exact numbers on what other markets would be most appealing at what % hikes, but I can't imagine taking the tax rate up to even 40% would drive investors out of US markets just on the basis of how convenient America is for tech entrepreneurialism already, it reduces a ton of the risk factors involved you described.
- emmapersky 14y agoIts a shame the startup visa won't cover STEM graduates from non american schools.
- HistoryInAction 14y agoYou'll be able to get in through funding. Believe me, Startup Act 2.0 isn't Startup Visa Act isn't IDEA Act. There's a whole spectrum of potential implementations of the solution. I've put together a coalition that's building the next bill. Note that acquisitions aren't taken into account in the current bills. It'll be fixed. We've been going through some iterations within political space. No more press releases, starting today, game on for startup visa.
- throwaway1979 14y agoI remember seeing that the UK gave visa preferences to people with MBAs from certain top american schools. I wish there was something equivalent in the US for technical people (e.g. people with a masters/PhD from a top 20 non-us school). There are current solutions but none support someone doing a startup.
- HistoryInAction 14y agoToo many Congresscritters scared of something like that being used to hack the system. It's going to be American schools-only, if we can pass anything at all. And yes, current solutions are pretty awful. I detail some hacks here though: https://www.quora.com/Blueseed/Are-there-any-interim-solutions-to-Blueseed-co https://www.quora.com/Blueseed/Are-there-any-interim-solutio... More and more founders are looking to O-1, especially if they can raise a round, putting them in the top few % of all 'startups,' including mom and pop shops, but damned if I'm explaining Steve Blank's segementation of the new business market to USCIS.
- mtgx 14y agoWhat is his copyright agenda, though?
- xradionut 14y agoOpen data is the big thing for me. There's a lot of buried gems in the gov data and doing the ETL and make it available to the public in a usable format is a good way to build skills.
- danielweber 14y agoSo what can he open up now that he couldn't open up during his first term?
- rcavezza 14y agoAnything he believes is good for the public but may have hindered his reelection.
- deelowe 14y agoI seriously doubt Obama is now completely unconcerned with his future in politics. He's much to young to hail mary his second term like this and there's no precedent that would indicate anything of to sort. Also, he's going to be focused on winning back the house in 2014. As it stands, he's in for more gridlock over the next 2 years given the split in congress. Remember, this is the same guy that supported the NDAA, has increased drone usage both locally and abroad, and didn't take to well to the whole Bradley Manning/wikileaks deal (also, what was his stance on sopa/pipa). Obama is only for "open government" to the extent that it furthers his party's agenda.
- njharman 14y agoDoes any ex-president have a political career? Where would they go from the top? He's never going to have as much power and ability to make difference as 2nd term US President. It's now or never.
- deelowe 14y agoEx-presidents do a lot of work that goes unreported once they leave the white house. They typically work directly with the president who's currently in charge on foreign affairs by meeting with dignitaries, they assist with humanitarian efforts, they work as part of the national convention (John Kerry and Jimmy Carter assisted Obama with his speeches and debates), and so on. Just because they aren't in the white house, doesn't mean they aren't active in politics. These guys have experience that is extremely valuable to anyone who's currently in or is trying to get to the white house. Also, remember that it takes a certain type of person to be president. Most of these guys would go insane if they just went back to their ranch once they left. The President's Club is a great book that covers some of the ways ex-presidents stay involved in the politics of the day, even if you don't hear or read about it in the news.
- TheFuture 14y agoRIM bailout? That one I would believe. Open government? Wow, I remember that one from 4 years ago. Skilled immigration? They don't vote for Dems. Unskilled immigration is all he cares about. Pour more money into failing "green" tech. Yes, let's build more Chevy Volts filled with toxic batteries. Seriously, there is no tech agenda from this pres.
- sixothree 14y agoWahhhh Wahhh Wahhh much?
- bravoyankee 14y agoTo paraphrase Chris Hedges, we don't need more advances in technology, we need advances in morality.
- patrickgzill 14y agoYou forgot to mention Solyndra : http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-10-17/taxpayers-recover-0-solyndra http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-10-17/taxpayers-recover-0...
- thetabyte 14y agoSo you're telling me risky investments in possibly revolutionary startups can fail? If we go back to writing by PG, failures like this are proof we are making risky a enough investments to actually make a big difference.
- Prophasi 14y agoStrategic conduct on the part of businesses isn't the same thing as smart (or ethical, or legal) conduct when it's done by governments. Everything has a context.
- thetabyte 14y agoI agree. Which is why government making the risky investments that more conservative businesses won't in order to create the empowering innovations that will save our environment and improve our economy is a major positive for me.
- padobson 14y agoDoesn't say anything there about defending internet freedom or net neutrality. Not that Romney would have, but it can never be pointed out enough that we're not given real choices with these elections. Given that 98.5% of the electorate voted for one of the two bozos, it's clearly not being said enough.
- gte910h 14y agoAmerica has HUGE minority rule issues. I predict 2016 will have a major non R vs D theme of "Swing state vs everyone else". Reforming states to something that doesn't cause third parties to be spoilers (by using a voting system such as IRV), probably in the NE to start, is likely the new wave that gets us out of this mess.
- moultano 14y agoPlease not IRV. If we're going to change voting systems, Approval Voting is better in every conceivable way. (It's simpler, closer to what we do now, produces the condorcet winner more reliably, and doesn't have the crazy non-monotonicities that IRV does.)
- gte910h 14y agoTechnically, yes. Approval is better. Politically, IRV has a better chance of not getting huge opposition by the major parties
- Evbn 14y agoWhy would 2016 be different from any other year in that respect?
- gte910h 14y agoIMO the republican party has a lot of energy thrashing it about right now, and could be an agent for change if they think it will give them an advantage. ESPECIALLY if it starts to fracture, I could see the pieces start to try to salvage the coalition out of it, a coalition which would require the survival of third and fourth parties.
- beatgammit 14y agoWell, I guess I'm not starting my startup for another 4 years...