A Stimulus Package We Can Believe In
President-elect Obama made his campaign about change and promises to do the same with government. One area to start is with the proposed stimulus package.
Already he has said this one will be different. His transition team released a statement yesterday that they were going to ban all earmarks from the proposed stimulus package.
But with the stimulus package having a proposed price tag of around $775 billion, of which approximately $300 billion is in tax breaks for low- and middle-income earners, we also need change in how the money is spent.
In the past, to the extent stimulus packages did more than spur additional consumer demand, they usually included some investments in traditional infrastructure -- building or improving roads, bridges and sewers -- to create jobs, and quite literally, dig our way out of a recession. Given America's decaying infrastructure, these projects are also needed today and will help cash-strapped states move forward with projects that have been stalled.
But the fact is that investing in physical infrastructure will not have the same short-term impact on American jobs, or long-term impact on U.S. competitiveness, productivity, and quality of life as a similar investment in our "digital infrastructure."
ITIF released a report today that finds that a $30 billion investment in our IT network infrastructure would create almost 1 million jobs. The report looks at a $10 billion investment in each of three technologies: broadband networks, health IT, and the smart power grid. It finds that by spurring or supporting this level of additional investment would create or retain 498,00 jobs from broadband, 212,000 jobs from health IT, and 239,000 jobs in the smart grid. Approximately 525,000 of these jobs would be in small businesses.
Investing in these IT infrastructures has a number of benefits. For one, IT jobs are generally higher-skill, high-paying jobs from telecommunications line installers, to software engineers, to electric utility workers.
In addition, these types of IT infrastructure enable a whole host of innovations and new industries that a comparable investment in physical infrastructure would not. For example, broadband has spawned entirely new industries -- from Internet search to online retail -- creating employment not just in the new firms in these industries (e.g. Google, E-Bay) and the new occupations needed to support them (e.g. user interaction designers and online experience managers) but also through jobs created by individuals leveraging or using these technologies and services. To take but one example, Ebay has found that more than 724,000 Americans report that Ebay serves as their primary or secondary source of income. While obviously these are not all full time jobs (though many are), this lone example demonstrates the powerful ability of digital infrastructure to create jobs from this "network effect." These are new jobs being generated far upstream from the direct jobs associated with the initial investment to lay fiber optic cable, purchase hardware, or develop new software that supports health IT or a smart electric grid and the ensuing indirect and induced jobs.
Finally, these technologies are transformative -- that is they have the potential to fundamentally improve our society. Take the smart grid. Modernizing our grid infrastructure with sensors and two-way communication will not only allow utilities to generate and distribute energy more efficiently and reliably, it will allow widespread use of new technologies like plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, commercial energy storage, and residential solar generators. It will also time-of-use pricing which will create new demand for smart appliances that not only use energy more efficiently, but also they will use it more intelligently.
President-elect Obama has promised to do things differently in Washington. Let's start with new ideas for a stimulus package.
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The only thing that will save the US Economy is re-building of our gold reserves. The only way to do this is to export more that we import. The only way that we can accomplish that is to re-industrialize. In the last few decades we have destroyed the industrial base that won WWII and gave us today's bountiful way of life. Paying people to plant trees, dig holes then refill the same holes, rake leaves, write poems, paint pictures, etc. will not be useful or contribute to correcting the US economic problem.
I wrote my first program in 1965, I went on to do a 3 year tour in US ARMY, THE ADJUDANT GENERALS OFFICE as a computer programmer, followed by another 40 years of IT. I evolved from programmer to Analyst to Manager by 1980. In 1977 I became an Contract Consultant because it was the only way to cut through the trash and get the job done.
Today the outsourced IT consultant is nothing but a way to go around emplyment laws and to get cheap employment. Total cost has not changed. Many people doing nothing does not equal 1 person doing it all. The only value add is that Investors who do not contribute CASH or LABOR get a LESS RISKY INVESTMENT. 0 value added.
Yes, technology has changed. Programming has become a mess. The original technology built by IBM based on solid state knowledge and logic has been replaced by programming languages that are lingusticly more complicated than the solution they are trying to solve. As a result IBM rents programmers from East India and plans to have 70% of its revenue from this source. These East Indians are guaranteed 3 year of emplyment for every contract. American IT student cannot even get a job 0 value added
The solution is not MORE distribution of wealth to the RICH and making the working middle class POOR
In other words... you are a spaghetti coder. I bet you love Ada and still cry over the absence of GOTO's in modern languages. In your spare time you write articles on the virtues of programming in Fortran and why we should never have abandoned absolute addressing and core memories.
:-)
KillTheMessenger again
1993 I learned C++ in two weeks that used GPS to track in real-time mobile unit movement fed into ArcView for a real Command and Control Operation, while collecting perminante Beta Scanned data with no data entry for the safe removal and storage of Atomic Energy Waste. I wrote the Operating Systems, using my classes for GPS, Mobile Communication, Beta Scanning, Micro Data (Training, Security, Education, etc.), SQL Server client server and DB/2 mainframe for Wash DC and Scientist all over the world . This included process analysis business rule, DFD, ERD, the code construction, testing, presentation and execution and training.
The above effort was turned into a RAD Method to create finished client-server applications using formal JAD sessions and a CHEN Tool to create in ONLY 3 days from the craddle to the grave
I am talking about using the computer to let the computer do the work, not distroy the economy and the way for Americans. If you can write code, you can create a table to replace the code, if you can do a process it can be computerized. My website in 2001 displayed, add, change and delete for any file (SQL, Oracle or MS Access) you added to the database without more HTML code. What did the industry do, oh, have the programmer do XML. Still requiring ADD, Change, and Delete. Yes I learned how to do this in 1980 on a mainframe.
A practical approach would be to open a new version of Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) for our young people who would receive lessons in self discipline and hard work. Three-fourth of the money would be mailed back to their family and a portion placed in savings accounts.
You go first. You seem to need the self-discipline part.
The Rich are getting richer the worker is getting poor. You cannot become educated and trained without realizing a 0 sum Game. Chains and Chain Link Fences...ONLY will work to inslave
The rich own 97% of all assets right now. It will not be long now Arjurna. Do your duty and work, you were not born to the CLEVER class
ITIF claims that their tax credits are structured to "actually spur additional investment." But their plan has no accountability. ITIF states "credits should apply only to capital expenditures that exceed 85 percent of 2008 capital expenditures for companies." The thinking here is that because of the recession, investment will be below 2008 levels. Fine -- but in practice this gives the public zero guarantee the money is being used for new investment, much less investment in the world-class, super-fast broadband we need.
In fact, the ITIF plan -- which doesn't distinguish between dollars spent on high-speed Internet deployment and other capital expenditures -- would permit companies like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast to spend less on broadband and use the tax credits to fund other projects, like anti-consumer snooping technologies that allow ISPs to interfere with your Web browsing.
When you drill down, you see that while the Free Press proposal is designed to prevent giveaways to incumbents and spur competition, ITIF's would allow incumbents to reduce planned investment in fast broadband and replace it with tax-payer funded investments in just about anything these carriers want.
Or as one commenter on Atkinson's post neatly summarized: "In other words ... why don't we just give the money to ATT and Comcast and expect nothing but a kick in the ... insert your most tender parts here ... in return?"
That was me... and my last comment that $30 billion spent on one million IT related jobs means a mere $30k per job (no more than three months of salary including expenses) and is entirely unrealistic seems to have disappeared. One wonders why...
:-)
I just heard the Economic Professor of HARVARD say to congress, "one IT salary in America will buy 30 IT salaries from Indian. The pursuit of happiness is going out the window to make way for Corporatate and Rich greed. More Quick Response by Obama to transfer more wealth to the rich will not work.
Not bad again Lawyer,
Right now corporations are paying little to no tax. With no capital spending and no hiring. Profit has been going to CASH and Dividends.
15% Capital Gains tax means little or no tax on for Rich Appreciation for ISSUED stock purchase, plus Dividends to reinvest or pullout for 15% income tax. SHELL GAME of shell games before REIT's
Workers need money so they can stimulate a FREE ECONOMY and buy durable goods. Then everone wins.
excellent points.. After all a $500 tax cut will evaporate as soon as the gas prices go back up to $3 per gallon and what will be left......Nothing....Nobody I know is going to open up their wallet now because we owe more on our houses than they are worth so it is hard to refinance, we have seen the 401ks melt away and the job market is horrendous and the company just took away our sick leave of 2 weeks....
Excellent! $500 / 56 weeks is something like $8.93 a week.
Jessie Ventura once send something like: "you cannot pass laws to protect idiots from themselves".
Thomas Peters stated "in any corporate hierarchy one would rise to ones own level of incompetence."
Is there any doubt we are in a CORPORATE SOCIETY. This include Congress, Executive and Judicial
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