Discussion on:

Computer Professionals Update Act seeks to remove overtime pay for IT pros

Tax rates were much higher in the past and did not inhibit job creation.

It seems to me that regardless of where you are wrt "Management" or "Union" human nature stays true - Grab all you can from the pile while it is in front of you. There are no villains or hero???s here, just folks trying to get by, operating off millions of years of evolutionary shaping.

With your ability to write long and convoluted posts with so little to start with. Especially in light of your assertion that you do this without interpretation or assumptions! :-/

He preaches a gospel of his own making. Those of us who cannot ignore science, education, and real life experience to join the true believers are to be reviled and castigated for our inability to see the 'truth' as spoken.

"He preaches a gospel of his own making."

If you consider facts and reasonable analysis as MY gospel, then you are living in a different upside world.

"Those of us who cannot ignore science, education, and real life experience"

You are a riot!

You are the exact opposite of what you profess to be. You don't use science, and you sound pretty much uneducated on the issues and on the real facts of life, and you only spout what you hear from the liberal news sources, which are blatantly biased and flawed in the coverage of the real world, and thus, what you spout as facts and science and truth, is nothing more than the filtered garbage which you are incapable of using your head to analyze and process and come up with your own results. You are, basically, the typical unthinking liberal who is only as useful as a dumb computer that can only do things with the method of "GIGO".

"to join the true believers are to be reviled and castigated for our inability to see the 'truth' as spoken. "

What you see is garbage, and of course, if you don't have a well-trained mind to analyze and question what is fed to you, then you will, like most illiterate and uninformed people out there, assume that, what you hear and read is "truth". I'm beyond the simple-minded acceptance of the "facts" (as you see it) that are fed to me. You need to question everything, with a real analytical and scientific approach. Anyone who doesn't do that is merely a mental midget, and after a while, begins to believe that, he's the only one that knows the "truth" and is educated better than those who dare to believe different from you, but who actually happen to understand the issues a lot better than you.

You sound just like the typical liberal morons out there who believe that, their stances on the issues are superior to those that don't follow their liberal religion. Liberalism is highly illogical; and you are highly illogical and uninformed. Get out of your liberal bubble and try to get into the real world, and perhaps, then, you'll begin to understand how egotistical you sound and how wrong you have been. I was in the same boat as you are now, a long time ago, but, I've since grown out of that, and I look back, and I begin to feel sorry for people like you who refuse to think on their own.

Only people with superior intellect have the right to be conceited, but you are very far from being that. However, even a person with a superior intellect would understand that, being conceited is anti-social. Nobody should go through life being conceited or anti-social. Live and learn, and you apparently haven't lived in the real world, and thus, you won't be able to learn.

If you consider facts and reasonable analysis as MY gospel, then you are living in a different upside world.

Finally, you understand. I don't consider facts and reasonable analysis as your gospel. I consider that your gospel, as posted in this thread, has nothing whatsoever to do with either. It is self-contradictory, minimally supported by facts, and almost totally devoid of reasonable analysis. It appears to be based more on the fantasies of Glenn Beck than on actuality.

You state 'real' facts, 'true' facts, and facts 'on the ground' as the sources for your conclusions, but provide no actual facts to support those conclusions. When asked for such facts, you either don't respond at all, dodge the question, or accuse the questioner of being simple-minded or dense.

If I had submitted anything like any one of your posts as a position paper in any of my high school or college English classes, I would have been laughed out of the room...by my classmates.

because, your problem seems to be that, you're disconnected from reality, or the capacity to understand the reality.

Some undeniable facts:

We are losing jobs to other countries and to foreign labor.

We have high tax rates, for corporations and for employees, except on the poor who don't even pay taxes.

We have a massive number of regulations which hinder business and job growth.

We have government intrusion into the marketplace, which stifles economic growth.

We have union labor which renders many companies uncompetitive against foreign competition.

We have massive government spending on social programs.

We borrow around $500 billion dollars a year so that the federal government can pay its bills.

We have a national debt way over $15 trillion dollars, and increasing by about $100 billion per month.

We have a national deficit of about $1.5 trillion dollars per year, and it continues to get worse because, the revenues collected cannot pay the bills due, and the only response that Washington has, is to borrow more, putting us into even deeper debt.

When government takes more from the economy, there is less money available for companies to grow, and if a company is not growing, there won't be any new jobs.

We have people and businesses having to spend a lot more money for transportation because of the high cost of energy, and we have to spend some $700 billion dollars a year to import our oil and other energy, while that money could be put to better use within our country to grow businesses and to create jobs, perhaps millions of jobs.

Those above are facts; undeniable facts. There are many more problems which would take a book to write about. But, the problems are there, and it doesn't require an IQ of more than 50 to notice those problems.

Forget the politics, and forget the ideology, and look at the facts and the reality.

As long as we continue to believe that government and big government advocates can solve our problems, our problems will continue to mount and get bigger.

So, look again, and you'll notice that there is absolutely nothing contradictory about anything I post.

How, then, do you arrive at some of your conclusions? The only rationale I can see for some of your conclusions, is, as I posted earlier, your agenda shades your thoughts.

For example, you keep going on about high taxes; when called on it, you said that the rates are relative. How relative? And relative to what? The total tax load (federal, state, and local) on Americans is 26.9%, 59th overall in the world (source: World Bank). The Scandinavian social democracies, the successful economies of Germany, Switzerland, and Brazil, and the failing economies of France, Greece, Spain, Portugal, and Italy all tax at higher rates. In the U.S., statutory income tax rates (both personal and corporate) are at their lowest levels since WW2; effective rates are even lower. Income tax collections reflect this: collections as a percentage of GDP are also at their lowest since WW2. Relative to GDP, corporate income tax collections in the 2000s were a quarter of what they were in the 1960s. Yes, the statutory corporate tax rate is 35%. But the effective U.S. tax rate for the largest corporations is much less. The vast majority of Fortune 500 corporations pay at less than half that rate; many of them had negative tax rates, meaning the government paid them. And small businesses (usually S corporations), which really need the lower tax rates, pay tax at the owner's tax rate, which, while usually less than 35%, is greater than the effective 21% rate of the large corporations. Is it possible that there's more to economic success than just low taxes on businesses?

You invent outcomes. Quoting from your reply to the article that started this thread: So, in order to create jobs, the bill would "force" companies to take the overtime that's either paid or not, and create new jobs with that overtime. The bill does not state that companies cannot work their people longer than 40 hours, nor does it state that overtime is illegal, nor does it remotely imply either case. Nothing in this bill can be interpreted as forcing companies to hire more people. You even say that the bill doesn't state this, yet you come to this conclusion. How? When questioned, you stated a third-grader should be able to understand it. My third-grader niece read the bill, read your post, and said "I don't understand it. How can he think that if he knows how to read?

You exaggerate. You keep citing unions as a cause of our current economic straits and a drag on the economy. In American business today, less than 7.2% of workers are union members. How, then, are unions a drag on the entire economy? Yes, unions are a drag on the automotive industry, but the unions didn't make the idiotic business decisions that have come out of Detroit in the past 4 decades.

You attack the source or the person (or both) while ignoring the data: I notice you blog at "Salon", net magazine with a rabidly left-wing agenda. Credibility is not a virtue which will ever precede what they do or what you do working for them. The remainder of that post is you questioning his thought processes and calling the data 'lies' because it doesn't support your conclusions. That's just one example.

While I share your stated agenda of "a prosperous and growing economy that can be self-sustaining and that is able to provide for everyone that seeks to earn decent lifestyles", I fail to see how recreating the business environment of the Gilded Age will allow "everyone that seeks to earn" to actually earn.

but, you're still not getting it.

Statistics and their interpretation, are all dependent upon who does the study and what goals they wished to achieve with the study.

The facts are undeniable that, the U.S. is still the country with the highest tax burden on corporations, and the burden that corporations have to endure are made worse by the massive number of regulations that they have to comply with, and the unions, and the government intrusion.

Like I said, numbers are relative, and taxes are relative. There is a lot more than just the corporate taxes that businesses have to contend with. Not all corporations get the same breaks, and not all end up paying that much less than the 35%. The burden of the high corporate rates is evident by the number of lawyers and tax professionals that they need to hire in order to cut that burden, but, what they might save by means of lawyers and tax accountants, would have to be paid back towards supporting those lawyers and accountants. It's, save a dollar here which goes towards another expense caused by the original tax.

What is real is the burden that businesses have when having to support expensive government programs, and that is evident in Europe and the U.S. and everywhere that government has become too big to be sustainable, and intrusive. Europe is failing; in fact, it's failed. The U.S. is failing; and we are in the same boat as the Europeans. Most of the reasons for the failures can be traced back to the heavy burden that are imposed on businesses by government. Big government programs are unsustainable, no matter what the underlying economic system for that country.

Everything that's happened in the U.S. and in Europe, was predicted to happen, and it was just a matter of time before they became true.

It a corporation pays any taxes at all, that's a burden, to the companies and to the consumer. That's a fact that cannot be explained away by quoting any numbers or statistics, or any interpretation of those statistics.

The socialist policies which the U.S. and Europe have been practicing for the better part of the last 100 years, were unsustainable, and we're experiencing the repercussions of that stupidity.

What you and that idiot from Salon advocate is more of the same idiocy which has ruined once great countries. The results of that idiocy are going to be hurting billions of people for decades, and many of those countries may never recover, and Greece and Portugal and Spain and Italy, will be in dire straits with no hope for at least a generation. The U.S. is in fact in the same condition, but, the people in Washington have been trying to hide the fact by spending and spending, which really just continues to get us into much deeper trouble. We will not be able to pay our debt for generations, and we won't be bringing the deficit down for at least 10 years, if ever. That is a disaster, and you are too blind to understand that.

We have been on a downhill slide ever since the progressive movement took hold in the U.S., and though we had many periods of relative prosperity, the relentless growth of government and social programs and high taxes and regulations and government intrusion, was adding up to an end which was predicted, but which too many dismissed. The end is here, and we're going to have to start over.

Even your liberal buddy, Paul Krugman (NY Times), has begun to recognize that, what's been happening to the country and to Europe is unsustainable and dangerous to the democracies involved.

Paul Krugman: We're in a Depression as Democracy Under Siege

Read more:

Paul Krugman: We're in a "Depression as Democracy Under Siege"

http://www.moneynews.com/StreetTalk/Krugman-Depression-us-Democracy/2011/12/12/id/420639?s=al&promo_code=DB1D-1

The problem with the Krugmans of the world is that, they were the main advocates for the stupidity which brought down those economies, and he and others like him will probably suggest more of the same stupidity

Here's a little of what he's got to say:

"The United States and Europe are stuck in a democracy-threatening depression and not merely recovering from a strong recession, says economist and New York Times economist Paul Krugman.

Recessions are typically marked by downturns followed by relatively strong and clearly defined snapbacks.

But today, unemployment rates remain stubbornly high in both the United States and in Europe, the latter of which may see returns to more authoritarian governments if better days don't return soon.
That's somebody that finally recognizes that, the whole world is in deep trouble. But, he's got to figure out exactly what caused that trouble, and until he, and you, recognize the problems, you won't figure out the solutions.

But, never mind, the world will be better off without your solutions and those of Krugman, because, your solutions will just make matters a lot worse.

Wake up already!!!

to cling to your fantastic beliefs. And you accuse me of being closed-minded? The psychological term for that is 'projection, ' where one denies one's own faults and projects them onto others.

Personally, I think you're an intellectual coward, afraid to consider anything that might disrupt your narrow, comfortable, know-it-all world view.

I know you'll have a come-back for this one too, but that's all right. I've tried to consider that you have a valid point of view, and you actually might. But with the exception of only one or two posts, I've not been able to make sense of your rantings in this thread beyond your apparent belief that if we only allow those with enough money to keep more money, it will fix everything.

I give you the facts, and you use your closed mind to deny them. I mention the facts out there in the real world, and you claim that I'm using fantastic beliefs. Notice a pattern?

I even quote from one of the heroes of the left, and you call it fantasy. Sooner or later, you're going to have to realize that, your wrongheaded beliefs is the type that have destroyed this country and those in Europe and in Asia and South America.

Someday, reality is going to bite you in the azz, but, your brain is ideologically wired toward denial of the facts, so, the consequences wont really matter to you, and you won't have learned anything.

Hey, from now on, I'll be referring to you as Nick-AlwaysInDenial-Nielsen. It fits you quite nicely.

The one time you provided a list of facts, I agreed with most of them as the basis for this discussion. I have questioned your conclusions; that you see this as denial of the facts brings into question your ability to distinguish between fact and opinion. You, on the other hand, have consistently denied facts that I (and others) have presented, writing them off to whatever reason, usually intellectual deficiencies on the part of the person who posted them.

If reality bites me, at least I'll recognize it..

If so, then I suggest that you start smoking what I smoke.

Look, there are way too many people out there who are convinced that they have the "facts", and that their version of "reality" is the truth. But, when it comes to how things really work, then your facts and your reality end up being no more truthful than a fantasyland.

I'll give you another example of how a fantasy can become a reality to some people...

There are over a billion people in the middle-east who believe that, their religion and their leaders are the way to heaven on earth, and they come up with groups such as the Taliban and Al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood who want to destroy any other way of life, because, they're convinced that, theirs is the only way to live, and everything else is evil and the wrongful way of life. To them, there is one reality, and the western way of life is wrong and evil and. Your ideology, is somewhat similar, and there is nothing that can convince you that, there is a "better set of facts" and something that is "more real". Liberals are convinced that, their ideology (socialism, progressive policies) is the best way for a country, even after it's been a disaster everywhere their ideology has been tried. As a former liberal, I know exactly how you think. Now, I cannot believe that, I used to be that way.

You believe "facts" are only facts when they come from sources of which you approve or confirm your opinions. You're worse than a moral relativist.

And again you dig out the "liberal" label. If not being afraid of the truth, if not being afraid to consider ALL the information before I form an opinion, if not being afraid to learn, makes me a liberal in your eyes, so be it. Your opinion of me means less to me than something on the bottom of my shoe.

and the facts are easily confirmed from what's actually happening or has happened on the ground.

What has occurred in the economy and to countries around the world are the real facts, and theories and ideologies and policies which got us into the messes we're now suffering through, are the real facts about how to do things the wrong way.

The liberal label is about those who have been the party that's been in control the most, and most social programs were enacted when the liberals were in control, and they controlled the congress for 40 straight years when a lot of the liberal stupidity was imposed on the U.S. Then there are the progressive policies which brought about the depression and the New Deal (raw deal, to those in the know), which have been plaguing this country since.

The liberal label is actually pretty lenient, and the real label for those that have perpetrated so much damage on the country, should actually be socialists and communists. The policies and programs are pretty much in the same ballpark of what communist regimes had or have created in their countries.

You may not like the facts, but they are reality.

I think your opinion on this subject is ignorant, misguided, blind to actual fact, and at times flat out stupid.

the sane one, and everybody else is crazy.

How is it possible that anyone could not see how the liberal stupidity got us into the messes we're in?

What is happening now is that, we're paying a very heavy price for the idiotic policies perpetrated on the country by the idiotic liberals, including people like you who have been indoctrinated to the point you can't even think anymore.

The facts are very easy to confirm, and all you need to do is look at the economy, look at the unemployment rate, look at the destruction in the housing market, look at how many businesses, big and small have had to shut down, look at how companies have had to move operations and jobs overseas, look at how expensive government has become, look at the messes that Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security have become, look at how the number of poor have increased tremendously in the last few years, look at the number of people who have become homeless and can't even feed themselves, look at the number of people who have become dependent upon government to provide most or all of their needs; in short, open your eyes and look all around you.

There is a huge difference between facts and opinions. What can be easily confirmed, are absolute facts. Opinion carries interpretation with it, and though the interpretations might deal with some of the facts, the facts won't be changed by those opinions. So, the unemployment rate, for example, can't be helped or changed by just claiming that, it's not as bad as it could've been.

Perhaps your problem is that, you don't know how to tell the difference between opinion and facts. Or, perhaps your problem is that, your ideology has you permanently wired to deny the facts on the ground.

With very few exceptions, almost every response to you by any participant in this thread has been to question your conclusions. In every case, you have been the one to deny the possibility there might be some substance to those responses.

As you said, if the problem appears to be everyone else, it might not be them. Have a good one. I hope it doesn't hurt too much when reality bites.

opinions are a dime a dozen, and facts are priceless and unchanging.

I consider the fact that, most readers of ZDNet are liberal, and that their opinions are not going to be in agreement with mine. I prefer to be analytical and not just allow others to think for me. I like to work with the facts, and not with how I wished things would be, which is how you and a lot of other ZDNet readers think.

I could easily take you to other websites, which I frequent, and you probably won't find anyone agreeing with your side of the issues. Perhaps that's what I'll do with you in the future, to get you to understand how the other side thinks and views things. The people that I engage with in other discussions, are a lot better informed than the crowd here is on the issues, and better educated too.

So, that there might be others that agree with your nonsense, and not with the facts, is a non-issue, because, being right is what matters most to me.

Just make the ones you have, work harder, preferably for longer and less....

Ah damn, labour regulations....
You already import huge amounts of labour, it's cheaper...

because, what I stated has nothing to do with the current conditions; it's about how things could be if government would get out of the way, and taxes were lowered, and burdensome regulations were pulled back.

So, even the labor regulations you mentioned, would have to be stripped and the American workers could be unleashed to become more productive to grow a great economy.

With the conditions I mentioned, there probably wouldn't be a need to overwork anybody, and labor regulations wouldn't be needed except for the ones that relate to safety in the workplace and discrimination.

Your argument is far from new.
It's the same one that was used to justify children working for 10 hours a day in factories, on account it gave them something to do, instead of getting into mischief.

You seem to be labouring under the delusion that given freedom, everybody will be nice, I don't suffer from that particular character flaw.

your point.

So, when is the last time that children were used to work in factories, at least here in the U.S.? There might exist some unknown cases, but it wouldn't be because it's standard practice, so, let's stick to the standard and real cases, not the hypothetical or the ugly past.

And, there is nothing in what I said that says that everybody might play nice in a truly free market system. Not even close, and you're trying to read things into what I said that aren't there. Why not argue on the facts, and not on some off-the-wall interpretations of what you read?

The facts are that, in every endeavor, business or leisure or family matters or government or politics, there will be differences of opinions, and many different decisions which people will make. We are humans, and not everybody was created equal, and not everybody will be as agreeable as one might wish, but, we all strive for a world where most can co-exist and live in relative peace and harmony, and that's the same kind of environment which is desirable and even attained in the workplace. Not everybody will play nice, and not everybody will be happy, but, nobody is forced into an environment which they have to accept.

There is no delusion about how the real world works nor about how businesses operate nor about how some people can be evil while others might be saintly. However, freedom is about making one's own choices, and some of those choices can lead some in the wrong direction (the mean bosses), and others will choose to treat people with respect. It's not a perfect world, because, we're not a perfect species.

However, the free market system is about using the skills of people to advance their own lot in life, and to elevate others while benefiting yourself. If there is no benefit, and everybody starts and stays equal, then the world will be much poorer because ambition will have been suppressed and progress won't be achievable with the lack of initiatives.

Start with Santayana

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it
Though "will not" would appear to be nearer the mark in your case.

Have alook at the impact of british investment in railways and opening up the US prairies, coupled with the UK government's Free trade proponents....

Child prostitution was a simple and relatively minor issue compared to the consequences of that lot.

Some would argue WWI for starters....

in detail to you.

You still insist on going with cases of the past, and hypothetical situations, which are not the reality in the U.S.; not that anybody is aware of.

And, if there is anybody that needs to heed the lessons from the past, it's you and the democrats, who don't understand, or refuse to understand that, big government and big social programs and government intrusion into the free markets have killed most economies of the past and the countries which practiced that socialism.

Can you name one single country where socialism was the underlying economic system, and which survived for more than a few decades? Which country has ever been successful at making socialism work? While some might appear to be successful for a period of time, the fact is that, it's unsustainable in the long run. That's a historic fact, so it's you that needs to learn the lessons of the past. But, you don't even need to go far into the past, because, we're experiencing the downfall of the economies which allowed socialism to creep into the economy.

So, when it comes to the one that has learned from the past, it would appear to be me, and you're still not even acknowledging that the past lessons are escaping your ideologically static mind.

So, why are you having to reach into the railway past to try to make your point? Is it that you can't relate to the lessons of the present and of the relatively recent past? It seems that you're desperately seeking some points to clarify and justify your points, but, you're not paying attention to the reality on the ground when you become desperate.

Try to study up on the real causes of the problems that we have today. Learn the lessons of the past, and try to apply them to today's problems. What ails the country is the failure to learn those lessons from history, and to then apply what's learned into not repeating the mistakes. What you and others advocate is the repeating of those mistakes, which means that, you haven't really learned the lessons of the past.

I'm not saying you personally are "labouring under the delusion" that (on the other swing of the pendulum) 'complete and utter governmental control of the populace' can only be a good thing... but a lot of people in the US seem to think just that; and the current state of the lack of freedom in the US IMHO is quite stifling both to personal and business growth.

[[ I may not have all the facts, but I think you might be from the UK - of which the political situation there I'm certainly not be fully cognizant - and likewise, you may not be fully cognizant of the intricacies of the current state of US economy and politics... ]]

I'm not saying "erase the chalkboard and let anarchy ensue" like another vocal individual in this forum -- but right now in the US most of the regulations (despite what those here with the 'liberal' moniker say) are actually geared towards the benefit of huge corporations and penalize small businesses, which is hurting our (US) economy.

*Easing* (not removing) those regulations so that small businesses have an easier time to flourish IMHO can only be seen as a good thing.

I guess what I'm trying to say is (kinda paraphrasing you) removing all freedoms doesn't insure that the government will be nice, either...

Without rambling on _too_ much, the other thing I do have to say is this... Paraphrasing Plato: "Those smart enough to not enter politics are governed by those who aren't."

That's why I've been posting extreme examples......
I

The UK...

As for even suggesting that big government = socialism, that ones got me rolling about.
I'm not a democrat, I'm a real socialist. I believe wholeheartedly in small government, I believe that a government that chooses to constantly interfere in it's electorate's lives is bad. Your democrats would have less use for than your republicans.

I don't believe you need big government to have socialism.

What I do believe is regulations that protect the working man from the money man are to be dropped, then the ones that protect the money man from the working man should be as well.

I don't believe that's what you have in mind....

and though the country still exists, the economy, just like most of Europe and the U.S., is in shambles. Most countries that had socialist economies are still in existence, but, the economies still failed. That's the argument I'm making, where, the economies of countries end up being destroyed from socialist policies. The UK and many of the world's economies, are experiencing very bad economic times, and most of it can be attributed to socialism.

If you like socialism, then you are part of the problem.

When I mention "democrat", I'm talking about the democrats in the U.S., who have actually morphed into socialists, and it's that socialism which has virtually killed the once great economy of the U.S. Like I keep saying, socialism eventually destroys economies, and the UK is no exception.

Enjoy your economic downturn.

Some greedy wankers, I mean bankers apparently.
The democrats can't even start to be conpared to UK Socialists, and even they aren't real ones.
I said I'm a real socialist.
"The goal isn't to have a welfare state, it's not to need one"
Your versions of capitalism and socialism REQUIRE one.

Enjoy your Yuletide

everything else that people in the UK want to be in denial about.

Fact is that, there is a whole lot more socialism in the UK than in the U.S., and you're all reaping the consequences of that stupidity.

You reap what you sow.

You display an inordinate amount of ignorance of how the world economy interacts.

not that difficult.

What's makes economics "hard" for some people, like you, is the refusal to learn the lessons of the past.

When something doesn't work, the solution is not doing more of the same. When something has never worked in the past, the solution is not changing the people in charge. When something has failed in the past, the solution is not to implement it in a different location or different country.

No matter where in the world socialism has been tried or when, it's always failed. That's a simple lesson of economics that has been the same the world over.

What makes economics hard for many people is believing that, government always has the solution, but, big government always has the same single solution, and that is, taking from the haves and giving to the have-not. That's pretty naive and dumb, no matter how many times it's tried.

The only thing complicated about world-wide economics is getting people to realize that, the stupid and simple and big government solutions, will always, in the end, come back to destroy them.

Economics, in simple terms, is actually common sense. There is no need to make it complicated. The interactions of a world-wide economy, could still be simple if they all understood the basic principles of economics. Different economic systems, like socialism and capitalism, will never be in agreement, and that's not a complicated issue to understand. What can be easily noticed is that, in just about every situation where capitalism is the preferred economic system, there is more prosperity and a lot less poverty, whereas, with socialism, there is very little wealth and poverty is very noticeable throughout a country that uses it as their economic system.

When an economic system attempts to make everybody equal, the result is always poverty, because, there is no room for ambition and no room for the achievers to create great wealth. The human spirit is squelched, and you end up with a stagnant or dying economy.

The fact is, that it is you that has no clue about economics, on a local, or national or worldwide basis. I'm not an economist by profession, but I understand it enough to know that, you know squat about it.

Let me put it simply for you: socialism should not even be considered an economic system; it's actually an ideology which requires government to be the main driver for anything that happens within the system, and thus, the independent external human influence, does not enter into growing an economy.

Worldwide economics is complicated, only because, there are just too many clashes between the different "economic" systems, and governments involved. There is an interdependence in world economics, but, it's not really complicated when broken down to the basics.

is that you ignore what doesn't reinforce your desired conclusions.

And about lessons from the past? Tight money policies deepened and lengthened the Great Depression, yet you seem to think that the same policies can make things better now. Take your own words to heart and learn from the past.

"Then the only reason I can see for you to get it so wrong is that you ignore what doesn't reinforce your desired conclusions."

Actually, history bears out my conclusions, and the real world conditions bear out my conclusions. So, again, you are the one that's not comfortable with reality. Like I've been saying, your apparent life-long indoctrination has you blinded to reality.

"And about lessons from the past? Tight money policies deepened and lengthened the Great Depression, yet you seem to think that the same policies can make things better now. Take your own words to heart and learn from the past."

No!, you ninny!

Tight money policies were the least of the problems during the great depression. The biggest problems, were the big government advocates that created the economic conditions that in turn brought about the great depression. Tight money is just one policy, and there were myriads of problems. However, you are apparently unable to think below the surface of the issues. Whatever the problems, there were people involved in creating them. And the people involved were the progressives in power who only had one solution, that being, big government, with big government spending, with big government social programs, with big government projects, with government in control of the economy. The idiotic policies failed, and failed big. Those same idiotic policies are with us again, with big government advocates all around us, starting with our idiot president and including many members of congress who have no idea about how free-market economics work.

You can be sure of one thing, and that is, that as long as governments remain so intrusive in our daily lives and in their respective economies, there wont be any recoveries. That is precisely what is happening right now, and that is precisely what happened to make the great depression last so long.

So, again, you fail in logic and in common sense, and most importantly, you are failing to learn from the lessons of history. You and countless millions of people, are precisely why the recovery is nowhere to be found, and no recovery will be coming until people learn the lessons of the past.

I keep forgetting that, for you, this is a religious discussion.

Just as you don't get to pick and choose your facts, you don't get to pick and choose your history. Government action strongly contributed to the Great Depression, even deepened it, but that action was mainly protectionist, not socialist, in nature. Many of the social programs to which you refer, while advocated by Hoover, were not instituted until Roosevelt was President, well after the combination of deflation caused by tight money policies and a tax increase, and economic contraction caused by Smoot-Hawley tariffs, plunged the country into depression. The one "socialist" act (and like the other decisions, it was a stupid one) was Hoover's urging (not ordering, urging) businesses not to reduce wages during the deflationary period.

Look, whether Hoover or FDR or anybody, if the policies are socialist in nature, they are harmful. It doesn't matter what party or which president or which political party brings about bigger government and bigger social spending and bigger control over the economy.

The fact is that, even the republican party has had presidents who were quite liberal in their governing and spending and political views. Teddy Roosevelt might have been labeled a republican, but he was mostly liberal in his governing, and even the 2 Bushes were liberal in spending and in social programs. So, it's not the label that matters; it's what the person does that matters.

The plain and simple fact is that, the economy in the U.S. has trended towards socialism for more than 100 years, and with each new social program which increases spending and requires more taxation, the country becomes poorer and those programs then become unsustainable. That's what's happened with Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid and all other government programs, and there isn't any social program around that is not in trouble or in the red and basically, running huge debts. It's the cumulative debts of all those programs that have created the national debt, which is now headed towards 16 trillion dollars, and Obama is now requesting another 1.2 trillion in spending for the next year. It's quite easy to spend money when it's not coming out of your pocket, and it's a lot easier when the can continues getting kicked further down the road. People continue being in denial about the huge problems we have, and kicking the can further down the road is not a solution.

FDR was the worst thing that could've happened to this country, and with his programs, the country became doomed to leaning socialist, and now, that socialism is coming back to destroy us. That socialism became worse when LBJ became president with his Medicare/Medicaid and Food Stamps programs. Then we got Carter and Clinton and now Obummer. Even the Bushes added to the cost of government with their social spending.

So, you don't need to point to any one act or any one social program or any one president, to tell me about where the problems got started. The most important thing to understand is the general trend towards socialism, which is what always ends up destroying economies and governments and sometimes a country.

So, don't examine one single tree in the forest; look at the whole forest, and you might notice that, it's not about a defective tree, but about the whole defective forest. The country has gone to hell, and no one single act was responsible. There were a whole series of actions taken by government that have led to our current dire situation.

BTW, there is no need for me to pick and choose facts; not when they're out there, in plain sight and in real life for everyone to see. The biggest fact that proves everyone of my points, is the state of the economy, within the U.S. and worldwide.

Not the current state of the world economy, but what got us there. You blame government. I'm not so narrow-minded that I can't see there are multiple causes, including individual and corporate greed, lack of regulation, failure to enforce existing laws and regulations, and outright fraud. Only two of those can be attributed exclusively to government.

What a fantastic method to create jobs. Congress must be satisfied with their work in India and Eastern Europe. Now they will work on USA.

Are we not IT "professionals"? Other professionals like doctors, lawyers, accountants, ... get a fixed salary, why would we be any different?

salaries, and their compensation is dependent on the number of clientele they get, which varies from week-to-week, from day-to-day. They are dependent on the number of customers who need their services, and those customers aren't "regular customers" who come in every day with the same needs. People have to eat every day, but they don't need a doctor every day, and sometimes, they don't even visit a doctor for a year or more. Lawyers only get to eat if there are enough problems with people getting into trouble with the law or getting victimized by some other person or a corporation.

IT professionals, for the most part, are in-house, working for a regular salary, for a predefined number of hours.

but IT doesn't have the same level of requirements as those other professions. We don't require any level of academic experience, board certification, et-al. So yes our field is different.

In fact the baseline is so vague, employers expect every new software developer hire to be Dennis Ritchie and every IT infrastructure person to be Steve Wozniak.

Conversely an accountant with a CPA has a well-defined role and set of responsibilities which allows them to be compared and contrasted with other accountants. This makes it easier to negotiate an annual salary and determine their FLSA status.

If you want to call yourself a professional, then the principles do apply. If the principles don't apply, then you are not a professional.

"Physician" but just because I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express doesn't qualify me to practice medicine w/o board certification.

See - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profession

.. you call yourself that, I would expect you to deliver.

see - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional

You were the one asserting "It's what you call yourself that counts..."

I assert that you can call yourself "Professional" but unless you have an academic minimum, a code of ethics, standard board certification you are not one. IT doesn't have those things. The closest you might get is to be a computer scientist, (see ACM), but IT folks don't.

Put another way, even if I don't call myself "Physician", I still belong to the profession if I earn my MD, do my time as an intern, pass my boards and take my oaths.

Thus I'm vague on what your point was in reposting the link to the definition of "profession".

Not "profession", but "professional". One is a type of job, the other is a set of standards to be met.

I'm trying to say that when someone calls themselves a professional they are committing to the ethical and other standards that define that term. If one meets the criteria then one if a professional. If one doesn't meet that standard, they are not a professional.

We have a bunch of people in IT who want to be known as professionals. My point is that many professionals in other areas are salaried and get no extra payment for overtime. Why would IT people who call themselves professionals expect to be treated differently?