MISSING THE MEAT by Michael S. Malone
The high tech sandwich is missing the meat.
Over the last thirty years, the United States has built, in the form of the electronics business, the most dynamic, innovative and – the petroleum industry aside – most valuable industry in history. These strengths have in turn enabled the U.S. to create millions of jobs to absorb a growing population, kept the country competitive against new challenges in the global marketplace, and through new inventions improved the health, the quality of life, and the prosperity of its citizens.
It is an amazing achievement, and centuries from now people will look back in wonder at how we ever did it . . .and, unfortunately, with equal amazement, that we let it slip away.
And it is all now slipping away.
It may not seem like the high tech industry is in serious trouble. On the contrary, if anything the news of the last week seem to suggest an entire market sector beginning to recover from the devastating recent recession. Microsoft is preparing to introduce Windows 7, a much-improved version (compared to its predecessor, Vista) of its industry-dominant Windows operating system. Cisco Systems, armed with a giant war chest, is back to its old ways – buying two multi-billion dollar companies in the last week. Google is introducing a new music search application. Twitter has announced that it is finally earning money – and has teamed up with Microsoft’s Bing search engine.
But biggest of all was the news this week that Apple Computer recorded a spectacular 25 percent quarterly jump in revenues to nearly $10 billion – most of it coming from iPhones and, amazingly given that the entire PC sector is growing old, Macs. Even slumping iPod sales couldn’t slow the Apple juggernaut – and, appropriately, the stock market responded by driving the company’s stock to a record high.
Put all of these stories together and it’s hard not to conclude that Silicon Valley and the rest of high tech are roaring back from last year’s crash and heading into yet another of the industry’s quadrennial upswings.
Meanwhile, and more anecdotally, this comeback is also visible on the ground. Valley real estate, for example, suffered about a 20 percent drop in value last winter – and though we weren’t quite Fresno, the cities on the periphery of Silicon Valley did suffer a devastating number of foreclosures. At the same time, a lot of office building construction was either put on hold, and finished facilities sat empty. Most tellingly, because for me this is the ultimate economic indicator, I didn’t have to set aside extra time to get to meetings and luncheons (what few I had during those days, as the entire Valley just seemed to stop dead) because the highways were half-empty.
But in the last couple months, I’ve noticed that home prices have been creeping back up to their pre-crash prices as folks with long commutes from the East Bay and Central Valley take advantage of the moment and buy into the Valley. The foreclosed homes as well have all-but disappeared. And if the new buildings and homes aren’t being built, the completed ones are slowly filling up. And, most important, I found myself the other day stuck in my car muttering about the damn traffic – something I haven’t done in nearly a year. Meanwhile, I used the time to look around at the new cars on the road around me.
As I said, on first glance it’s hard not be optimistic about the near future of the high tech industry.
Meanwhile, at the other end of the tech world there are equal grounds for optimism. Deep in the labs of the country’s biggest electronics corporations and most important universities, amazing technical breakthroughs are taking place – discoveries that barely get noticed in the non-technical media, but which could, a decade or two hence, transform our daily lives, change the nature of entertainment and education, and enable us to live longer and healthier.
Some of these are continuations of processes already at work – such as quintillion bit memories, ever-larger flat screen, 3-D imaging, improve sensors, etc. Others are unexpected and potentially thrilling – like the Taiwanese company that showed up in the Valley this week with audio speakers made from sheets of paper.
“…and perhaps most of all, an Administration that increasingly seems actively hostile to entrepreneurship and small business – high tech is hollowing out.”
Time for a reality check. These high-tech people have cut their own throats. They have contributed millions of dollars to their enemies. Barack Obama probably received something like 75% of their votes. Their political behavior was premised on one issue: abortion! Nothing else really mattered to Silicon Valley’s committed secularists. They did not vote on behalf of their economic long-term interests—but their undisciplined sex drives. Let’s not play any games. Everybody reading my words knows that I’m right. The economic policies embraced by Sarah Palin would most assuredly be good for the tech industry. How many of these practical atheists would support her?
The irony is that Democratic Party candidates like Al Gore, Jr. were blunt concerning the damage they wanted to do to the American economy. They openly said so in their speeches and campaign literature. None of the damage occurring today should surprise anyone possessing an I.Q. above the moron level. One has the moral and intellectual right to insult those claiming, “I didn’t know what was going to happen.” Such individuals deserve to be laughed out of the room.
On the money! And Thomson too, except they don’t deserved to be laughed at, they should be shot. Starting in the 60s this bunch destroyed my country, and perhaps with it, civilization.
While they danced and laughed and fornicated their lives away, they ridiculed and spat at me and my children. We emigrated in 1969.
The U.S. is just repeating the British cycle. It took a long time coming since we’re a much larger ship to turn, but we’re turned and headed for the falls without lee room to turn again.
The billions going to bail out Chrysler and GM is capital that could be used to finance these start ups. This is the real world side of the economic concept of the “crowding out” of private investment by government spending. The public sees the jobs “saved” when the government allocates capital to the auto industry but they never see the even larger number of jobs not created or lost because new and dynamic firms do not get the capital they need to grow.
Also, the tech industry needs huge amounts of reliable and continuous electricity, but they got in bed with environmental Luddites who will certainly endanger the US energy supply at all points with the BS about green energy (spotty, massively overpriced even with huge subsidies, inefficient, unreliable, and nowhere close the power levels we are going to need). And the one existing technology that could provide plentiful and inexpensive electricity for decades until other viable techologies come online, nuclear power, is shelved by this administration. I loved the article on the Tesla in the Metro, too bad the tech idiots didn’t think through the missing sources of electicity before they fell in love with the electric car. I’d love to drop one of those new Toshiba mini-reactors where I work, west of the airport, and power up every office and warehouse for miles with more cheap electricity that they know what to do with.
I agree with the premise of the article but am really starting to hate it when these business writers pull punches, as if they’re trying to make sure they don’t offend the commies. Bottom line is that California & the Feds with its high taxes and regulation have done everything they can to kill entrepreneurship and industry in this country, seeing it as a cash cow to fund their government programs.
American entrepreneurs are going elsewhere – the unwritten story is that much of the global boom of the last several years has been fueled by American capital and American entrepreneurs that are using their immigrant roots to start new companies in their homelands, China, India, etc, rather than the US. Even an American hero like Trump is making most of his money in Scotland, Dubai, etc.
The financial crisis, caused by regulatory failures, has also frightened away a generation of entrepreneurs. Traditionally its not 20 year olds that start companies, but 40- and 50- year olds with some savings and industry connections. Now these people have seen their nest eggs wiped out and their companies laying people off and their friends who started companies take big hits. None of these people will start their companies now.
The unfortunate truth is that under the guise of making life better for the poor, Democrats and moderate Republicans have choked off opportunities for Americans at every level.
Maybe a kernel of truth in this. The comments are way overkill. High real estate prices probably are doing more harm to the entire west coast than scarce venture capital. Prices did not drop much and taxes stayed high. Concentration exacts a penalty.
“Concentration exacts a penalty.”
Nothing could be further from the truth. Highly inflated real estate prices are the direct results of government interference in the marketplace. The same holds true for high taxes. Both of these examples were caused by the implementation of liberal Democratic Party and wimpy “moderate” GOP policies. You Californians are suffering today because of your rejection of conservative Republican politicians at the ballot box. Texans like myself have long had our heads on straight. That’s why we don’t want to pay the price for your foolishness. The heck with Californians wanting the Obama administration to financially bail them out. The majority of California’s voters have made their own bed—and now must sleep in it.
One of the best ways to lie,
is to tell half the truth;
The article does not distinguish
between growth in consumer and
capital manufacturing; The best
New consumer product on the planet
will make no difference, because
the consumers are going to have
no money for luxuries, and not much
for wants; It will be all they can
do to pay for needs.
The creation of new Hi-Tech capital
goods, which our creditors cannot
buy elsewhere, is our only way to
avoid a W shaped recession, or
a V\_ shaped permanent drop in our
standard of living.
It is not business as usual, people,
it is national survival; None of you
would enjoy life in the Re-United States
of America.
Interesting article, especially juxtaposed against the news we hear about cities in China, India, etc, emerging as new “Silicon Valleys”.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But come on, wingnuts, we really want to know how it’s Obama’s fault.
“But come on, wingnuts, we really want to know how it’s Obama’s fault.”
It is also the fault of Arnold Schwarzenegger. The last time I checked he is a “moderate” Republican. When is the last time a conservative Republican won a statewide race in California?
“When is the last time a conservative Republican won a statewide race in California?”
David, you can thank Pete Wilson and the Prop 187 folks for that. Trancedo, Buchanan and the loud (and frankly racist) far right saw a large and fast growing number of Hispanics out there. Now in my personal experience (growing up in New Mexico and living in Texas) I’ve met a lot of people named Vigil, Chavez, Lopez, etc. The vast majority have been hard working, Catholic (some evangelical), pro-life, entrepenurial folks, many of which have relatives in the U.S. Military. These people would have made natural Republicans, but back in the early 90s you started seeing articles in “Campaigns and Elections” and other magazines about how the Hispanic demographic was going to become the largest minority group in the country, and how that meant demographic doom for the GOP.
So instead of outreach (like McCain and G.W. Bush), Dick Mountjoy, Pete Wilson and Co. went on an anti-hispanic crusade under the guise of Prop 187, thus ensuring that California will be a sold Dem state for at least a generation, maybe longer. (Think about it, the East Coast Irish/Catholics are still largely Democratic due to the actions of the Know Nothing Party in the 1840s, and the Democratic Party and the Catholic Church are FAR from being on the same page any more.)
So you have a very valid point, it is pretty much impossible for a conservative Republican to win a statewide race in California, and will remain so for a very very very long time. That being said, the California GOP has only themselves to thank for that particular state of affairs.
#9 Report: thanks for the V\_ sign. I’ve been wondering how to say it. That’s what we’ve got, anyway.
And Thomson: the way I look at it it’s EVERYBODY’s fault except mine and most Libertarians. But principally the teachers’ — who haven’t taught one iota of civics, true history, basic economics and simple cybernetics in 45 years.
I’m not sure that it is regulation. the venture capital may just not be there because financial markets took the hit recently, and we are still in a recession because of it. It’s not like regulation caused a lot of the credit crunch-businesses not being transparent, ignoring risk over a quick buck, not being audited correctly, and other things contribute to the loss of a tremendous amount of capital that could have been used to invest.
Yeah at the state level CA sucks as well, but CA isn’t the only place where hi-tech startups can go.
An even more apt candidate for the metaphorical meat of the sandwich is abundant power to supply these companies. And here too Obama removes the meat… not only not drilling where we can, not only waging a “war on coal” (which is one of our largest natural resources for energy), but also ensuring the country starves in the future by not allowing more nuclear plants to replace the ones slated to go offline.
He can laugh all the way to the bank… the effects of his policies can be survived until after his second term… and hopefully there will be a republican in office that the media can blame.
David, you can thank Pete Wilson and the Prop 187 folks for that. Trancedo, Buchanan and the loud (and frankly racist) far right saw a large and fast growing number of Hispanics out there. Now in my personal experience (growing up in New Mexico and living in Texas) I’ve met a lot of people named Vigil, Chavez, Lopez, etc. The vast majority have been hard working, Catholic (some evangelical), pro-life, entrepenurial folks, many of which have relatives in the U.S. Military. These people would have made natural Republicans
Hispanics never, ever, voted for the GOP.
The reason for this is quite simple: it is not in their best interests to do so. Hispanics are demographically more like blacks than they are whites, and they naturally vote more like blacks.
The notion that Hispanics could ever have been wooed into the Republican camp by mere “outreach” is absurd. If you want the Hispanic vote you can do what the Dems do, and buy it with cold hard cash.
Think about it, the East Coast Irish/Catholics are still largely Democratic due to the actions of the Know Nothing Party in the 1840s
That’s inane. The East Coast Irish tend to be city dwellers who vote like city dwellers. The idea that they vote out of some burning anger over the 1840′s is laughable. Among other things, you really overestmate the quality of the US school system.
For some reason whch you can’t figure out, blacks had no problem getting over the Democrats being the party of slavery.
Magic Dog: A thorough encapsulation of the big-government left’s arguments: Call anyone who knows anything about the subject a name that might make a 13-year-old girl cry, and move on. Well done.
Put all of these stories together and it’s hard not to conclude that Silicon Valley and the rest of high tech are roaring back from last year’s crash and….
That’s news to me. The majority of posts for job openings in my particular discipline are mostly outside of CA.
Oh, and I’ve been out of work for about nine months ever since the SV company I worked for slipped under the waves.
“…and perhaps most of all, an Administration that increasingly seems actively hostile to entrepreneurship and small business – high tech is hollowing out.”
So, when was the last time liberals celebrated anything other than failure? They are the party of racial spoils, self-destructive behavior, weakness and cowardice.
Yeah, that last one is proven by the inability of the congressional liberals to send any type of healthcare to saint obama.
VC isn’t there, because SarOx killed the IPO model. There simply isn’t enough money without the old IPO model to fund high tech startups properly.
What is it with ABC News nowadays? First Jake Tapper, now this Malone joker.
Soon the News division will find itself in the White House doghouse with Bo and Major Garrett, and gettng Mao-Mao’d by Anita Dunn and Valerie Jarrett. ‘course then ABC might have FoxNews-like ratings, too, as
opposed to CNN’s…furious
7. Kieth nissen:
“Maybe a kernel of truth in this. The comments are way overkill. High real estate prices probably are doing more harm to the entire west coast than scarce venture capital. Prices did not drop much and taxes stayed high. Concentration exacts a penalty.”
They are a bit hyperbolic, but they still have a point too. California did have a steep fall in home prices but comercial was never as big a bubble so yes, it has not changed as much and property tax is a huge issue… and it is hard to do business in. Between the state EPA, EDD, et cetera. Yes, the power is bad. and the Feds are really piling on… they just passed those equal worth regulations for women which will mean many new merit-less lawsuits 10 years from now… Why bother? Other countries have educated workers. If you need certain Americans, most are open to moving.
“Dallas, Texas is the New Silicon Valley.”
I hear that a lot these days.
California killed the goose that laid the Golden Egg.
I am sick of all this revisionist history over Pete Wilson and Prop 187.
Pete Wilson won his re-election and Prop 187 won a majority vote.
The PEOPLE liked him and liked the law.
A JUDGE tossed the law.
Here is a quote from the wikipedia entry on Pete Wilson:
“In Wilson’s 1994 successful campaign for re-election against Kathleen Brown, his two signature issues were his opposition to the billions spent by the State funding services for illegal immigrants and the race based quota components of Affirmative Action. Support for the overwhelmingly popular Prop 187 helped give him a landslide win.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pete_Wilson
And Prop 187 had about 59% of the vote.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_187_(1994)
The appeal of the judgment against Prop 187 was blocked by Gray Davis. Look how popular he turned out to be.
Get your facts straight. Immigration control and reform is a WINNER.
Now… back on topic:
I believe the real problem with the tech sector is that consumers care more about technology that is frivolous than about technology that actually improves our lives. People are more likely to spend money on custom ring tones than invest in a start up looking to research new solutions for health care, manufacturing, energy, etc.
Brendan – you bring up a very good and very underappreciated point. In my experience, the Hispanic immigrants are about 10-15% natural Democrat, 25-30% natural Republican (the rest being pretty apolitical). But you don’t hang out where you aren’t liked and too many Hispanics have gotten the message that they aren’t liked by the Republican party. What is interesting is how the (let’s say it) racists in organizations like La Raza found a common interest with white bigots on the Right; by giving the anti-immigrant forces something to scream about (“they even SAY they’re taking over!”), La Raza succeeded in a jiu-jitsu-like use of the Republican party against itself – driving many Hispanics into the arms of the Democrats.
Anyway, while folks like GW and McCain tried to change that, the real change had to happen down in the trenches. I always shake my head at that one.
The excuses the left produces for open immigration are amusing. The present Hispanic immigrant population are illiterate in Spanish, let alone English. By age 40, they are worn out and collecting disability. How do I know ? For 40 years I took care of them and now I review the workers comp claims in California. The earlier generation of Hispanic immigrants came to stay and work. They were the immigrant equivalent of early adopters. This group goes home to Mexico once they have saved enough or if the jobs dry up. They are not entrepreneurs like the older generation was and they don’t revere education like the Hispanics of East LA did in 1960 when my wife taught school there.
The other factor that is costing us is the hostility to immigrants from other countries. I would be willing to take all the Indians and Chinese who want to come here. Why ? Because their homeland is thousands of miles away and they are making a decision to stay. Plus they tend to be educated. We turn away the educated and welcome the illiterate. I know a German couple, he is a master plumber and she is a nurse-midwife, who entered a lottery for immigration visas for years before they got lucky. He said there is no way to start your own business in Germany. They are doing well in Tucson after a long wait to get here.
It is now coming out that unlimited immigration to Britain was a Labour tactic to gain votes. No news there.
Not to discount Mr. Malone’s misgivings, but his piece has a sort of “me or your own lying eyes?” feel to it. Earnings up? Check. Housing rebounding? Check. Cars on the road? Check. Innovations flowing? Check. Then comes the “but”, with “guesses” the number of failed startups. When the failure rate for start-ups was high even during the Boom (or, at least they were at the start-ups where I worked).
He does venture specifics regarding who is buoying the SV housing market and the jobless rate, but it would be interesting to see specifics about aggregate investment flows, venture fund openings/closings, patent filings, corporate relocations, and so on. Those datapoints would add some, uh “meat” to his pessimistic projections.
And — full disclosure — I’m one of those who’d like to believe Obama’s policies are hollowing-out US High-tech (heck, the whole economy), and good schadenfreude on the SillyValley types (like the Wall Street types) who swooned for him and now have buyer’s remorse. But I’d like see some data behind the “I-told-you-sos”.
Furious–
the data that you seek are mostly what is missing. Look for announcements of new rounds of venture financing (there are fewer now than 5 or 15 years ago). Look for IPOs of tech companies–it’s been quite a while since that flow has been more than a trickle.
The first culprit here has already been identified–Sarbanes-Oxley makes it too expensive to be public. That’s why there’s a private market for Facebook shares, but no IPO in the offing. Capital is flowing overseas, in part because the regulatory environment there is much less hostile.
The VC firms here have, in many cases, decided that it’s safer for them to invest in “green tech” and then ude government lobbying to legislate demand for uneconomic products. (Risks are lower, and margins are better that way.) That’s a large part of the reason that Valley big wigs are in the Dems’ pocket.
“High real estate prices probably are doing more harm to the entire west coast than scarce venture capital.”
Why would this be? The market sets the price based on supply and demand. If prices are high and rising, it means people are buying.
If you want to make it easier for people to afford to live there, you have to build more homes. I.e., if qualified workers are not able to afford to move in, the price of homes is merely a symptom of a deeper problem.
Perhaps one of the problems is that people are deciding to leave Silicon Valley. I was raised here, and despite having a PhD and a principal technical position at a prominent company in the valley, I’m looking to move because I’m pretty much priced out of the housing market.
If I’ve got that problem, then there’s a host of other people with less emotional attachment to the valley pretty much half-packed and ready to go.
Michael – the real problem (if there is one) is that the electronics industry is maturing, and many of the products are reaching saturation levels. The US went through something similar back in the late 1800′s/early 1900′s, with the original burst of large scale factories. It was a time when (according to Landes in “The Wealth and Poverty of Nations”, http://www.amazon.com/Wealth-Poverty-Nations-Some-Rich/dp/0393318885, a very enjoyable book, btw) people who became skilled at factory work could command some outraggeous salaries, show up for work in such oddities as top hats, leave a job one day and pick up another the next, not bother to work on Mondays, and so on. Sort of similar to high tech up to (say) the NASDAQ bubble collapse. There’s many other parallels – for example, early factory work required a relatively high (for the day) level of education; through standardization that requirement was reduced hugely; wages – originally high – were commesurately reduced (aided by increases in immigration and offshoring) etc.
)
The interesting thing is how fast it’s all happening – it took close to fifty years to go from the Model T to the Edsel (i.e., when you can’t be creative, go rococco), it took less than twenty-five to go from Windows 1.0 to Vista (or from Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama, but I digress
VC isn’t there, because SarOx killed the IPO model. There simply isn’t enough money without the old IPO model to fund high tech startups properly.
Absolutely. I’m not denying the truth of the other points made above, but this is certainly a valid point. IPOs, which were running at about three-hundred annually in the late 1990s, are now down literally (and I mean actually literally) to single digits annually. The exit strategy for a venture investment today is a merger or acquisition, not an IPO.
Don’t live in the Valley, although I was recently there at a wedding. Nearly everybody there was talking about leaving. Places like Texas and North Carolina were among the first places that came up. There are problems caused on the national scale (i.e. Sarbanes-Oxley) and there is insanity that is purely local. Silicon Valley, and California as a whole will never recover unless public spending and taxation is brought under control, and that isn’t going to happen anytime soon. As beautiful a state as California is, money talks, and right now money is walking elsewhere.
This may be curt; this day, time and place I wish the writer of this blog entry had cut to the f*ng chase in the first paragraph. I haven’t the time. I am intensely interested in the topic. Have any of you commenters provided a one paragraph summary? Every word counted in George Gilder’s very recent piece on the economic/technology revolution in Israel. Nary a mention of TRIZ but I see the “fingerprints”; so Israel will accelerate in the present direction. When is America going to be let out of the shackles? What are we anyway?
I think the biggest reason why this is happening here because there’s been a different culture there for a long time. David Thompson is partially correct because of this difference in culture. The big companies in Silicon Valley aren’t as secure as big companies in other businesses because all they go on is technology and information. If a small company has a technological edge, they become just as much of a force overnight as a large company in any other industry would be. This would be akin to New York Life bumping into a company as large as Prudential Insurance… and Prudential didn’t exist last year.
Thus, most small startups–the meat in this article–usually get’s bought out by larger companies that lack the know how but posses the money. After awhile, this changes the thought of most small startups. The greatest hope is that you’ll develop some technology as a small IPO and get paid a lot of cash when a Google or a Microsoft comes along to buy you out. You all of a sudden are dealing with a business world where you’re now dependent upon a larger entity buying (or bailing) you out. It’s more of a left wing dependency mentality than a right wing self sufficient mentality. The larger companies do this because they know if a small business survives long enough with this hot new technology, they’ll become big, and threaten (if not completely destroy) the market that they exist in.
It’s true that they did cut their own throats, but it was a product of the silicon valley culture. What will it take to change their minds? It will probably take a change in culture, or a few brave business men.
Unfortunately, business men need capital, and that’s hard to come by nowadays.
I am smack dab in the middle of the venture funding problem. What have I seen lately? I am working with a large investor who is ACTIVELY TRYING TO PUSH investment tranches to a specific company, but can’t. Why? The bank in the middle is simply too skiddish to move the money. I don’t think all of it is in currencies but, regardless, I am witnessing the fallout from a banking liquidity crisis which not only effects banks-as-lender but also banks as property agents (cash-as-property).
From one little I do hear from friends who went the VC/PE route after school, green energy tech (with all the anticipated energy subsidies) is the way to go and getting that funding. What you are seeing is referred to as government “crowding out” the private sector. You are going to see similar when Obamacare starts diverting healthcare, less expensive anti-cancer wonderdrugs and more of something. If I knew the something, I would invest there with nice predictable government subsidies instead of a risky, real innovation.
“22. Doc Merlin:
VC isn’t there, because SarOx killed the IPO model. There simply isn’t enough money without the old IPO model to fund high tech startups properly.”
Don is right! I’ve worked two decades in the politically conservative Telecom Corridor area of Richardson, TX and accounting reform killed off one of the two ways for people working at a startup to get a big payout. I’ve experienced both a successful IPO and a successful aquistion. If you work at a startup because you don’t like big company bureaucracy, the success of having your startup bought by a big corporation really sucks. Your stock options become valuable, but your old job gets replaced with one with way too damn much paperwork.
Another factor is rapid shift of contract manufacturing of electronic equipment to China. As I understand the problem, the assembly equipment which are basically specialized robots don’t care what country it’s located in (not much labor cost), but US consumers spending beyond our means make consumer loans for credit cards and mortgages more profitable than business loans. Probably have a similar phenomenon with semiconductor fabs. Laws which encourage consumer debt over business investment has contributed to a hollowing out of our electronic manufacturing infrastructure.
OK. To my own amazement I am going to defend Arnold Schwartzenegger. When he was first elected, he proposed a number of issues that would have cut back on the size and intrusiveness of California’s state government and reduced taxes somewhat. The Democrat controlled state legislature held his proposals dead on arrival. Schwartzenegger then tried to go around the legislature with a series of propositions for the people of California to vote on. After an impressively expensive advertising campaign by the California public sector workers, Californians voted down the propositions.
At this point, Schwartzenegger could have washed his hands of the business since obviously there are not enough people in California who want the state to avoid its current death spiral. However, his wife likes being First Lady of (she is a Kennedy, after all) and who doesn’t like to make his wife happy? Besides, it is pretty much certain that any Democrat who would replace Schwartzenegger will be much, much worse.
A female economist called into Rush’s show a week or two ago and explained very succinctly a large part of what is wrong with our stalled economy: Due to new rules and regulations governing everything from credit lending practices and interest rates, exec bonuses, and all manner of capitalism, money movement has all but STOPPED. Much of the movement of money is into and out of entrepreneurial (risky and otherwise) start-ups and other big and small business activity, investment, etc. Liberals do not understand that money begets money, and the movement of money creates more movement and showers blessings on all that each movement touches. We hit record high tax revenues during the Bush years. Now where are we???
Money managers and investors are frozen in fear of what will come next and how to deal with what has already befallen us. Money has stopped moving at all kinds of points (which also causes revenues to freefall due to no taxes being collected at those points, now). Multiply the tightening of the ship you are doing in your own family and finances to all other families, businesses and institutions in the country. Now add in all the punitive new taxes and the huge threat of coming and more enormous taxes and expiration of tax cuts and what you have is an economy frozen in a shrunken state.
In my own family, we are not buying, we are not spending, we are paying down credit cards and getting rid of them, and we are moving investments into much more conservative instruments. We are battening down the hatches and this is not good for the country, but it is good for us in these times.
And what David Thomson said, as always. These brilliant idiots in Silicon Valley helped bring all this about by spending million$ for and voting for Marxists. You reap what you sow.
I think we SHOULD have more educated immigrants – I was in grad school for engineering at Purdue, and half of the people in my PhD program were from India, China, Korea, Germany, Australia, Turkey, etc. Because we restrict legal immigration, most of these people would get their PhDs and go back home – an incredible waste of brain power. WE need more highly skilled people – doctors, engineers, scientists. We don’t need more unskilled workers. They take jobs away from our own lower classes.
A pragmatic approach would be to enforce our immigration laws and to crack down on people who employ illegals or rent to them. Enforce our borders. Then, in addition to that, increase the number of legal immigrants who can come here AS LONG AS THEY MEET CRITERIA such as – passing back ground checks (no fanatics or terrorists or criminals, please), have skills or education that we need, etc.
For a while, the smell of a start-up in Silicon Valley was the smell of curry, or so a friend of mine told me, because foreign entrepreneurs came to America, started small businesses and hired workers. Again, the people doing this were educated people….
Of course, we also need to get rid of the various statist policies. You know, history has proven over and over again that more government regulation of the economy is bad for economic growth. Yet liberals never seem to learn that lesson … who was it that said the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results?
Time for a reality check. These high-tech people have cut their own throats. They have contributed millions of dollars to their enemies. Barack Obama probably received something like 75% of their votes. Their political behavior was premised on one issue: abortion! Nothing else really mattered to Silicon Valley’s committed secularists. They did not vote on behalf of their economic long-term interests—but their undisciplined sex drives. Let’s not play any games. Everybody reading my words knows that I’m right. The economic policies embraced by Sarah Palin would most assuredly be good for the tech industry. How many of these practical atheists would support her?
Absolutely right, DT. I left the GOP in 2005, because I had voted for balanced budgets and term limits, and got obsessions with gay marriage and stem-cell research. It just seemed to me that the GOP had its priorities out of whack. I could never vote Democrat after all the damage that the Democrats have done to this country, but I gladly have voted for the Libertarians in every election since 2004.
The Republicans’ positions on issues like abortion, sex education, gays, and marijuana all have one central message: they don’t trust us. Why should we trust people who don’t trust us?
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to figure out how the GOP can regain the votes of people (like me, and like Silicon Valley gearheads) who should be natural Republican allies. Coming to grips with the “it neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg” principle seems like a good place to start.
“It does me no harm for my neighbour to say that there are twenty gods, or no god at all. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” – Thomas Jefferson
“…but I gladly have voted for the Libertarians in every election since 2004.”
In other words—your vote was wasted. You empowered the socialist Democrats. What are your priorities? This is the unavoidable question that can no longer be avoided. Your actions have contributed to the severe damaging of the American economy. Do you value your practical atheism more than your own pocketbook? Whatever, only you can make this decision. Nobody else can do it for you.
I’m not an atheist, I’m Christian (LCMS).
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to figure out how the GOP can regain the votes of people (like me, and like Silicon Valley gearheads) who should be natural Republican allies.
I take it, your answer is, “no”.
This is the unavoidable question that can no longer be avoided.
No kidding.
“I’m not an atheist, I’m Christian (LCMS).”
Who cares? Your church membership is mildly interesting–and nothing more. I personally do not belong to any religious institution. So please stop wasting your time with meaningless rhetoric. You are still left with the unavoidable question: is cultural war leftism more important to you than economic and defense issues?
“So instead of outreach (like McCain and G.W. Bush), Dick Mountjoy, Pete Wilson and Co. went on an anti-hispanic crusade under the guise of Prop 187, thus ensuring that California will be a sold Dem state for at least a generation, maybe longer. (Think about it, the East Coast Irish/Catholics are still largely Democratic due to the actions of the Know Nothing Party in the 1840s, and the Democratic Party and the Catholic Church are FAR from being on the same page any more.)”
Spare us this drivel. Prop 187 got the 60% of the Mexican vote in CA. It was shelved thanks to 1 judge and business pressure.
Bush never got more than 38% of the Mexican vote despite turning on a fire hose of easy mortgage money to them. Mexicans are natural Democrats, not natural Republicans, just like the Irish. Most of their children are born out-of-wedlock and they remain poor and dependent on the government tit for money.
Despite that the earning interest is not that much!