"They will work to ban the permanent replacement of striking workers, so workers can stand up for themselves without worrying about losing their livelihoods."
Does this scare anyone else? I can't articulate exactly why this scares me, but it seems rather... un-free. If workers are free to unionize, shouldn't employers be free to choose who they employ and when?
Don't worry about that. Worry about the removal of secret votes following card check procedures at businesses. That will allow union organizers to "organize" unions by way of muscle. But don't worry about that either.
It also makes it easier to lie to the workers about exactly what the "card" is for.
The UAW keeps trying to unionize postdocs at the University of California. They do this by coming around to their offices, one-on-one, pulling them out to the corridor, and pressuring them to sign a card which they say is "to get more information" or something. Many people (and remember, an awful lot of postdocs can barely speak English) just sign the card to get them to go away, without realizing that they've just officially voted for unionization.
>If workers are free to unionize, shouldn't employers be free to choose who they employ and when?
If there were a one-sided restriction on employers like you sort of make it out to be, yes it would scare me. But it isn't. Unions are not allowed to conduct secondary-strikes for instance. This tremendously weakens their power, and to make up for it we wind up with a cycle of more unnecessary regulation for both sides.
I agree we need less regulation of it overall--but it is crazy to pretend there isn't significant regulation stifling the union side of things.
That's where there's a dispute between the union and company A, so the union not only pulls company A's workers out on strike, but also company B and C's.
It's a tactic most often used just to be assholes.
Note that traditionally company B and C aren't just arbitrary as the parent kinda makes it seem. It would usually be something like restaurant workers at A are on strike, and truck drivers working for B refuse to deliver to A in solidarity with them. It is totally illegal under Taft-Hartley, which certainly isn't only about constraining big business.
Sweet! Does that mean that instead of quitting my job I can just go on permanent strike from it? That way, I know I can always get the job back if I decide to return.
Kinda unfair to my boss, who won't ever be able to replace me, but hey! One of the small costs of creating a worker's paradise, right?
I'd like to think that the system will be designed to prevent abuse like that. I mean, this site is based on a grand overview rather than getting into nitty-bitty details. I think it's possible to create a system that prevents stuff like this happening. And I'd like to think that Obama's committed to people not gaming the system.
Either side taken to the extreme is slightly scary. Absolute freedom could easily lead to very evil corporations. No freedom leads to Atlas Shrugged. Some place in the middle, where we learn from things that go wrong and try to make a good equilibrium, is potentially the best for both sides.
It's true that "absolute freedom" and "no freedom" are polar opposites. It's a non-sequiter that their oppositeness prevents either of them from being true, somehow forcing us to find some utilitarian compromise.
There are well-written defenses of both lasseiz-faire and marxist economics (although I think the former is vastly more defendable than the latter). I've yet to read a thorough, consistent defense of some "middle way".
Obama will call on citizens of all ages to serve America, by developing a plan to require 50 hours of community service in middle school and high school and 100 hours of community service in college every year. Obama will encourage retiring Americans to serve by improving programs available for individuals over age 55, while at the same time promoting youth programs such as Youth Build and Head Start.
Ack... That makes me cringe. In my school district (in MD) you are required to have 75 hours of community service hours to graduate high school. It's also nearly impossible to earn them doing something interesting - most people resort to sorting books or working at a library or something.
100 hours of community service in college every year? That'd really sucks. It may not seem like a lot, but it is if they're spent on drudgery...
I understand where you are coming from, we had a 40 hour requirement at my high school.
But I can't help but feel you aren't being creative enough or looking hard enough. I mean I'm sure homeless shelter's need volunteers, as do toy donations for under privileged children, political campaigns need volunteers (see Louie Mantia's contribution to the Obama campaign here: http://louiemantia.com/blog/?p=31), and so do Boys & Girls clubs.
Not to mention taking 1-2 weeks off and helping people in other countries.
1 or 2 weeks off from high school isn't really an option, if you're the type that cares about grades. A friend of mine got stuck in India after a vacation (passport troubles) for nearly 2 weeks, and had a rather difficult time afterwards.
However, I'm one of the lucky few here. :) I'll manage to get the community service hours by being a sysop for my school, i.e. managing the Ubuntu server that runs a significant part of the school technology infrastructure.
We needed 75 hours in FL for the bright futures scholarship. I joined the local volunteer fire station and got my first responder cert. from the county. It's not always boring.
Well that's good, but it doesn't scale. If twelve kids in the county want to do volunteer work then it's easy to find places for them, but if five thousand kids in the county need to do volunteer work they can't all be accommodated in "sensible" programs.
I believe, but I'm not for certain, that developing a plan includes also coming up with new and helpful ways to do community service, not just a "here, 50 hour requirement, go have fun." That's something the Bush admin would do, I sure hope an Obama admin won't.
I also don't think its necessarily the best thing to do... perhaps he should give incentives to school districts that implement such a system but make the school districts responsible for it.
That's something the Bush admin would do, I sure hope an Obama admin won't.
I think you're doomed to be repeatedly disappointed over the coming years as we all remember that government incompetence isn't some weird temporary anomaly, it's just the way things are.
Look at the flip side - if your small business provides a way for high school students to do something useful for you, and it is both somewhat fun and counts as "community service", then perhaps you have access to a nearly free source of labor.
Actually, I personally have always found that one a bit ominous too. If I were President I'd say:
"Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your own sorry ass."
I've got no interest in getting into a particularly deep and codependent relationship with my country. I'll pay my taxes, they can enforce the laws, and we'll leave it at that.
I believe that 100 hours of community service also includes $4000 worth of tuition credit, but we'll see. Remember that this is his idealized plan, now he has to govern.
Obviously compulsory volunteerism won't actually be mandated. This is America.
"Obviously compulsory volunteerism won't actually be mandated."
As I said earlier in the thread somewhere, it already is in some places at least. In my county you need 75 hours of community service (fluffed 'Social Service Learning Hours') to graduate high school. I'm not whining, because you have 7 years to do it, but I'm just saying: "This is America" won't get you that far.
So, "slavery" then? Who'd have thunk President Obama would be the one to bring back slavery?
Seriously though, it's not actually _forced_, it's just encouraged via one of those offers-you-can't-refuse.
It really does make me very uneasy though. Why did people wait until after the election to start discussing the more worrying aspects of Obama's policy platform?
And how long before people start discussing Obama's triple goals of giving tax cuts to 95% of the population while balancing the budget and starting up many expensive new federal programs?
Not compulsory volunteerism, but I think the government has the right to make you do community service in exchange for, say, free education. My college is a public school, and we need to do 8 hours of community service as it stands right now.
As much as I don't like volunteer work, I think it's a reasonable trade. If you don't want to do the work, you go to a private school.
What? What "free education" are you talking about? Maybe you should go to your state gov't website and figure out how much taxes everyone is paying for "free education". The gov't doesn't "give" you anything, the money the gov't has, comes form the pockets of the taxpayers.
...Of course. That's the whole idea of government. However, the way it works is that taxes come from everybody and get funneled into very specific venues, which you don't need to pay for in particular. So as a child, you don't pay to go to school, and your parents pay taxes, but they don't pay for school in general.
However, the government organizes those schools, for better or for worse, and so my point is that it's within the government's rights to set up a system like the one Obama's proposing, so long as the system exists only for public schools.
"Create a National Network of Public-Private Business Incubators: Barack Obama and Joe Biden will support entrepreneurship and spur job growth by creating a national network of public-private business incubators. Business incubators facilitate the critical work of entrepreneurs in creating start-up companies. Obama and Biden will invest $250 million per year to increase the number and size of incubators in disadvantaged communities throughout the country."
Does this mean incubators like yc? Obviously it isn't limited to hightech, but is that the sort of thing they speak of?
It means incubators more in the style of Pittsburgh. In Pittsburgh, most of the seed money is supplied by the state of Pennsylvania and invested via organizations like http://www.pittsburghlifesciences.com/ and http://www.innovationworks.org/. These organizations effectively provide due diligence for the entire (small) VC community.
What we will get is more available investment money in cities that need it. It is certainly arguable whether this is good for the overall entrepreneurship environment. I take the position that it is good.
YC is not an incubator, or at least not a traditional one.
On a tangent... "Obama and Biden will invest $250 million per year". That's $250 million of our dollars, not theirs. Maybe it's just me, but that type of behavior makes me extremely nervous. I did vote for him, but we should all be wary of him going forward.
I'd pesonally like to see the whitehouse take a hands-off approach to governing. At least one time.
That's like 1/12000th the current federal budget and something a lot of state and local governments are already doing through the SBA. If you don't want government investments what level of spending are you comfortable with?
Edit: I think we could cut 80% of the federal budget (over time) and keep 95% of I what I want but I don't see that happening. Let's cut the DoD to 100 billion a year and see if anything bad happens. (That should pay for around 500,000 people and a lot of tech.)
Can someone here who happens to be enthusiastic about this idea enlighten us and explain why the federal government would be a better investor than private entities?
Well for one the government can take a longer term view than a typical VC. As an example, imagine if the government focused on alternate energy years ago. Then when oil increased in price we'd be in better shape to make a transition.
Also, a lot of technology comes as a by product of working on something for the long term.
Indeed, imagine if Nixon launched Project Independence, a "Manhattan Project" for clean energy, with the goal of achieving energy self-sufficiency by 1980. Imagine he launched this sometime around, I dunno, November 7, 1973. Just think where we might be today!
People seem to have forgotten that the Federal Government has pumped $billions into green energy research over the past decades, with little to show. I haven't heard ahy good arguments for why Obama will have more success.
That's true but I think the pharmaceutical industry is an exception due to all the regulation. If it were possible to market drugs in 5 years instead of 10 most companies would focus on the 5 year drugs. With a 10 year drug there is a lot of uncertainty and is a reason there has been a lot of mergers in the pharmaceutical industry over the past few decades. A big company will contribute a sales force to sell the smaller company's products and then will just acquire them if things are going well.
I was down modded for saying 10 years is not long term but at 25 most people need to think in terms of a 40 year retirement horizon. I am 28 and I am thinking about the cost of heath care in my 80's which is 50+ years from now. So excuse me for saying this but most people under thirty need to be looking 50+ years ahead because there is a good chance we are going to be alive then.
Now most people in power tend to be older which may shorten their views but 100 years is not all that long when you start thinking the people that come after you.
Well that's just an extreme case. I don't mean subsidies but actual investment in R&D.
But most VC companies won't invest in something for the long term. Do you think any VC company would have invested in a company trying to get into space in the 1960s?
You should probably have known what you were talking about before you said that. Space-related stocks did incredibly well during the 1960's. Some of them -- satellite companies -- did, in fact, get into space.
Hmm I did not know that but thanks for letting me know. Well let me rephrase my question. Would those private companies have been so successful if the government did not allocated funding for space research or focus on it's own space program?
I don't know the answer but I think they'd be related.
Maybe I can modify my initial point to state that once the government shows a long term interest in an industry companies will be more prone to enter it.
The space program isn't really a great example of long-term thinking though. Its crowning achievement was the Apollo Project, which only took about eight years -- less than the time it takes Boeing to design a new airliner, for instance. Once we'd got to the moon we figured out we didn't have a long-term plan for what to do when we got there, so the money dried up and wound up getting spent on one short-term boondoggle after another: Skylab, the Shuttle, the International Space Station et cetera. NASA's budget and primary focus change frequently, and every time there's a grand new plan to do something new (a new launch vehicle or a trip to Mars) the money will evaporate soon afterwards leaving behind either nothing (e.g. the last few Mars plans) or a crippled project which never really does what it was originally supposed to do (e.g. the shuttle or the ISS). Meanwhile, huge slices of the NASA budget are spent idiotically thanks to Congress (e.g. the spreading of NASA facilities over various states with powerful senators).
NASA has had some great successes (the occasional huge success is pretty much unavoidable if you gather thousands of very smart people and billions of dollars) but as a poster child for government's ability to take a long-term view it's pretty dim.
Do you really think the government created and funded the NASA, the DARPA, the Manhattan Project and the NSA for the love of science? (I certainly won't deny all the really cool side effects they created, though.)
I'm sure scientists and engineers would have discovered and created as many cool things if the money was spent on peaceful research projets instead of being confiscated by the government.
Doesn't have to be better; just more and different.
Besides if its government run, it might have a strict form associated with getting funding. There will probably be a part of the application where you need to specify your revenue model. If you leave it blank, no funding. That might qualify as "better".
No. National angel fund can be found in Russia and China. They are not work very well. Basically because the managers are more care about the safety of the money, they are not tend to invest business that will spend and revenue tens of millions in future. They invest 50~100k$ roughly and expected to get back in 3~5 years with ~10% revenue.
It's a $4000 tax credit. They aren't giving you $4000. If you don't have a paying job, you get nothing. If you don't pay at least $4000 in tax, you aren't getting the full benefit.
I don't know about you, but I don't think I ever paid $4000 in tax during college. I spent what little free time I had at part-time jobs, but didn't earn much money. Most of my taxes were returned to me by the government for being a poor student.
100 hours of mandated community service is a tremendous amount. If you don't work during school, the tax credit is useless and if you do work during school, it reduces the number of hours you can work.
That being said, I did other activities that might qualify as volunteer work under this plan: I helped out with a local high school's FIRST robotics team.
Ummm no. Refundable tax credits put money in your pocket whether you owe up to the amount that year or not.
"Create the American Opportunity Tax Credit: Obama and Biden will make college affordable for all Americans by creating a new American Opportunity Tax Credit. This universal and _fully refundable_ credit will ensure that the first $4,000 of a college education is completely free for most Americans, and will cover two-thirds the cost of tuition at the average public college or university and make community college tuition completely free for most students. Recipients of the credit will be required to conduct 100 hours of community service."
Also, let's just do the maths here: there's 10 million college students in the US. Give each of them $4000 a year to pick up trash from the projects, and that's $40 billion a year, or about 1.5% of the size of the Federal budget, or 4% the size of the deficit.
That's a helluva lot of money to spend in the middle of a budget crisis on paying people to do work, the nature of which is so far undecided.
"Community service" doesn't involve just picking up trash. It branches out to a lot of services that are really invaluable for a community. In my hometown, a group of students completely renovated an old police station, and turned it into an entertainment center. Bands go there to practice, kids play games, they hold arts and crafts nights. It didn't take long, maybe 20 hours for three kids, but it made a place that turned the town into a better place.
For my bar mitzvah, I spent a similar amount of time fixing up an old, old path in the woods. It used to be a hiking spot, but it fell into neglect. I walked along it, a group of girl scouts painted trail markers, and over the course of a year we had something new in a boring town.
College is a big problem. I'm in a public school, and tuition is rising rapidly. Something has to be done to fix things. And I like this plan a lot: it means that in exchange for $4,000 students are really expected to do a lot. A hundred hours of service means that a lot can be done. I doubt 10 million students would really take this offer - there are a lot of rich, lazy kids, and a lot of kids with scholarships - but if, hypothetically, 10 million kids each spent 100 hours doing community service, we'd have a billion hours a year being spent trying to fix up things around the country. That's a pretty incredible force.
And Obama hasn't delegated that money yet. He's proposed it, because he thinks it'll work. If you have another plan, one that you think will work better, there's a webform you can fill out to send your ideas. Who knows, it might be worth a shot.
tuition is rising because the colleges can charge more. why can colleges charge more? because a big chunk of the tuition is paid for by the government.
price is set by supply and demand. supply in this case is inelastic, and when the government helps people pay for college a larger number attend, hence demand increases.
Right, so year-by-year, it'll be the same order of magnitude of cost as the Iraq war, except the war was always planned to end eventually whereas the "community service" plan is planned to go on forever.
Justifying one enormous waste of money by saying "Oh well, at least it's not as big a waste of money as that other waste of money" isn't a good way to run a budget.
Would you run your personal budget that way? "Aw geez, well I bought a $300,000 boat last month, so I guess it's okay to buy a $100,000 car now."
I think the difference here is that the money would actually have some sort of return, rather than just fill the pockets of defense contractors. Theoretically, it would get more people into college or help them stay there, improve communities everywhere in small ways that add up to a lot, and maybe, just maybe (doubtful), teach people to care about the people around them.
I agree, though, that big spending plans are things we should be very skeptical of. To be honest, I know some people who do run their personal budget like that.
my ma grew up in communist russia. and when she hears obama speak all she can think of is the 1917 revolution and the Khrushchev speaking at the 20th congress of the communist party.
is she right, i dont know. did i grow up in a communist country, no. i was born and grew up in nyc. but i do know that every russian i've talked to thinks obamas 'change' sounds like the hammer and they all waitin for the sickle.
Does this scare anyone else? I can't articulate exactly why this scares me, but it seems rather... un-free. If workers are free to unionize, shouldn't employers be free to choose who they employ and when?