Now that we Amis have a nice tax cut, how to reduce spending to cover it?

[Cruddy]

MichealtheGreat, having worked in environments with those SCADA scrap systems, all I can say is, thank you and well done. You derserve every success for your efforts.

Anytime you want to see about a UK subsidiary, send me a PM.

As for reducing the US budget deficit, how about cutting back the airforce side of the National Guard? It's not like the Mexicans are going to bomb you tomorrow, and the new airline security seems plenty tight enough to prevent another 9/11.

Alternatively, scrap "son of Star Wars". It might just stop a couple of Korean ICBMs - but seeing as how you'd retaliate anyway, what's the point?

And if the Bushies do get their ABM system, it's just going to encourage others to do the same.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Oerdin
To add to everyone elses' denunciation of this post I'd like to share my family's story.

My late uncle Boris Ilyin (yep, a Russkie in the family ) was another immigrant example. He was my Aunt Lucy's husband (Lucy is the one who's the official embodiment of the family southern Democrat dynasty), and left Russia some years after the revolution as a 15 year old kid. He was in Vladivostok, due to his dad having been a representative of the Tsarist government, and over a couple of years, he walked, hitched, boated, etc. his way out in 1928. (his dad and most of the rest of the family didn't make it) through Manchuria into Korea, then Japan. He'd been told that an uncle of his (former field grade officer in Tsarist army, turned car mechanice in Detroit) was in the US in Detroit. He managed to get onto a freighter, worked his way over to the US, and got here when he was 17. He hooked up with his uncle, worked sporadically as a car mechanic, (with the depression on) and taught himself enough of everything (starting with English) to get into college and get a four year engineering degree in the late thirties. World War 2 came along, he got drafted into the Army as a private, got assigned to the Corps of Engineers (amazing, the Army did something smart and didn't make him a rifleman ), got field commissioned almost straight away, and left the Army in 1946 with a temporary grade commission as a full Colonel in the Army reserves.

He got into aviation engineering right at the begining of the jet era , and ended up with patents for the first all-attitude, all-flow range, high pressure fuel pumps that were used on the first generation of US production jet aircraft. He retired early, he and Lucy got to see a lot of the world before he died, and they were comfortably well off - nice house, investments, some extra property, early retirement and travel.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Cruddy
MichealtheGreat, having worked in environments with those SCADA scrap systems, all I can say is, thank you and well done. You derserve every success for your efforts.

Anytime you want to see about a UK subsidiary, send me a PM.

By 1-September (very close to completion of the prototype system, with the second following in the first half of 2004), I should have published technical and marketing white papers and a live full-scale demonstrator online. Most of that's done now, or nearly done, but I'm waiting on the lawyers to give me the green light on having secured IP rights before I publish anything in depth.

Another cute feature is that the product is designed to be dynamically multilingual and metric/english, so any client user in any location can get the language and measurement units they want, without using a different client version of the program.

[Kidlicious]

MtG,

Your success story is fascinating. How did you educate yourself, and figure out that this was what kind of work you wanted to do? In other words, how did you find your direction? Is electricity generaion just a great interest for you?

[TheStinger]

Originally posted by Lawrence of Arabia
Cut all foreign aid to developed countries (such as israel, germany, france, england and this includes military aid)

Exactly what subsidies and aid does the US give France,Germany and the UK(England is not a country in its own right and hasn't been for over 300 years) If you mean the bases then really I think the uS gets more out of them thean we do.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Kidicious
MtG,

Your success story is fascinating. How did you educate yourself, and figure out that this was what kind of work you wanted to do? In other words, how did you find your direction? Is electricity generaion just a great interest for you?

Kidicious - self-education is fairly simple. For business, a lot of it is simply training yourself to listen and observe in as great a detail as you can, because you learn more (both good and bad, both of which you need to know) from watching people attempt to do whatever it is you want to do. How they market, the types of social interaction, what they say and how and how it impacts the listening party, listening in on technical back-chatter in meetings, etc. Constantly ask yourself "what are these people doing wrong? What are they doing right?"

If you run into anyone who seems to know what they're about, try to make yourself useful and learn something from them. That doesn't necessarily mean people who are experts at something - two of the guys I learned a lot from was one of the greasiest ****** I ever worked for in my early IT days - one a greasy ladder climber at IBM, the other a USDA Prime bull****ter who had small business built off milking the state of Nevada for employee training subsidies for the disabled. Obviously, the lessons learned there were how not to do things, but beyond that, getting an insight into the mentality of those types and how and why they succeeded to the extent they succeeded is useful. (hint: All marketing is marketing, whether it's fraudulent BS for a lemon product, or wonderful marketing for the best thing to hit the human race. The only question is: "Is it effective in achieving it's desired goal?" The rest of it - the ethics and what you're marketing, is up to you, but effective marketing is generic, because it's all about psychology and meeting someone's perceived wants and needs.)

Electricity generation (actually, utilities and infrastructure in general, I did a lot of water and gas work in the mid-late 90's) was where I landed after scab construction, office work for a construction manager/engineering firm, IT work and the Army. It was the first thing that came along. I don't necessarily like it (it's sure as hell not a life-long dream), but it's technically interesting enough to have a lot of analytical problems, and it pays better than most applied science, etc. It also gets you exposed to a lot of things - the physical construction side has exposed me to large-scale finance, environmental laws and issues, construction and construction management. The contractual side has given me a lot of exposure to risk management, contract law, business regulation, etc.

The software side is my ticket out of electricity generation and utilities, but it would be silly to venture off into developing for something I don't know as well, bypassing something I do know well. (Another lesson: Start a business you may not like that much, if you know it has a better probability of success than what you really want to do. You can (a) learn from it; (b) start a track record that will help you with later financing and venture cap; and (c) sell it at a profit, so you have more capital to start what you really want.

The intermediate result with the current software/systems product is I get a good server infrastructure to play with, lots of reusable software components that are commercially proven, money up front and on an on-going basis, and a good set of books and track record. From that, I can branch off into more esoteric fun stuff like creating the technology for virtual interferometric astronomy, running with the UAV project I'm working on, small payload - high suborbital lift rocketry, virtual ecosystem management for high end aquariums (science, breeding, etc.) and all sorts of odds and ends problems that haven't been solved really well.

[Kidlicious]

It sounds like similar advice that my grandfather told me about getting into business.

Sounds interesting. Keep us informed.

[Odin]

By luck, I just might become the first member in my family to be in the upper-middle class, college Ph.D. Biology professors make about $50,000 to $100,000 per year, don't they?

BTW: I was talking about the billionares, not the crafty small-bussiness owners. Note to self: remember to elaborate.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Most current billionaires more or less did it from the ground up. Unless you inherit billions (and there weren't that many billionaires in the past), it's pretty hard to get up that high without some huge leveraging from starting something and taking it public, then having the market feeding frenzy jack up your stock values.

If you look at the top ones in the US, only the Walton clan (AFAIK) are primarily inheritors.

Odin - depends on where you teach, I'd expect, but another thing you can do with the bio doctorate in addition to teaching is get qualified as a registered Environmental Assessor and do consulting work on the side.

[Dinner]

Environmental Assessors can do well though most of the consultants end up doing Phase I & II work and living hand to mouth. You really have to work your butt off in order to compete in a low margin business like EA. Still, it’s one of those businesses which someone can break into.

As a Geologist I work in the environmental field and I've thought about trying to start my own small constancy in 10 years or so. The big problem is most of the large (read: profitable) jobs are multidisciplinary so you either have to have a large staff who knows about each specialty or you end up outsourcing (both eat up profits in no time). Thus the only way I can think of to get into the business is to work for small clients who mostly want Phase I/II work so they can complete due diligence prior to sale or for mortgage lenders who are trying to decide wither a piece of real-estate is worth owning or not. Both are a commodity type service.

[JohnT]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat
If you look at the top ones in the US, only the Walton clan (AFAIK) are primarily inheritors.

Technically, that isn't true... Walton's wife and children owned 90% of the Wal-Mart stock in a family partnership that was set up around 1955. When Sam died, there was comparably little estate tax as he didn't own any Wal Mart stock. His 10% ownership in the partnership (Walton Enterprises) passed on to his wife (tax free), and when she dies, their shares go to the Walton Family Charitable Trust.

I've got more on this at home (I'm racking my brain trying to figure out the name of this sort of estate planning, but I can't figure it out), though I doubt there is little interest. A quick reference to the tale (sorry 'bout the highlighting) can be found www.unionresource.com/Articles/Walton.htm]here.[/url]

[Ned]

On the topic of this thread, what to cut, I of course would cut wasteful spending.

However I do agree with the NPR cut, but would extend this to public broadcasting and support of the arts in general. NPR is representative of all of these. It and they have become so far left in their political orientation as to be completely unacceptable. I am sure the left here on Apolyton would agree that if NPR were as right as it is now left, that it should be cut. The government has no right to be spending public dollars in supporting one party over an opposition party. Since supporting an ideology is the same thing as supporting a party, it is clear the NPR has to go. This has nothing to do with budget cuts.

[Jac de Molay]

Maybe cut NPR but keep Public TV. It still has the best educational viewing for kids and the best science shows. And, even with the increased number of channels, viewership is as high as ever.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by JohnT


Technically, that isn't true... Walton's wife and children owned 90% of the Wal-Mart stock in a family partnership that was set up around 1955. When Sam died, there was comparably little estate tax as he didn't own any Wal Mart stock. His 10% ownership in the partnership (Walton Enterprises) passed on to his wife (tax free), and when she dies, their shares go to the Walton Family Charitable Trust.

I've got more on this at home (I'm racking my brain trying to figure out the name of this sort of estate planning, but I can't figure it out), though I doubt there is little interest. A quick reference to the tale (sorry 'bout the highlighting) can be found www.unionresource.com/Articles/Walton.htm]here.[/url]

Intelligent estate planning doesn't affect that Sam's intent was to pass on the wealth to his heirs. I'm doing the same thing with my kids, and my daughter is legally old enough to work, so part of her stock receipts will be under an employee pension plan, with the tax bennies (i.e. working stiff subsidized corporate welfare ) that entails.

[Dinner]

I'd disagree about cutting NPR. They haven't really been left since the every early 1990s when Congress eliminated the automatic yearly grants and now only provides matching funds to go go with money private donors give. This forced NPR playing more of what local listeners wanted to hear instead of what NPR-elitists wanted to play. Besides NPRs budget is a tiny, tiny item compared to the big expenses which are social security, medicare, military expenditures, infastructure (roads, bridges, airports, ports, etc), and education.

If you want to balance a budget which is project to rise to $44,000bn with in four years then you are going to have to either raise taxes, cut the total national budget by 20%, or a combination of cuts and tax increases.

Lastly, BBC has an excellent article about how Bush buried a Treasury Department report which stated the current Tax and spend attitude of the Bush Administration was completely unsustainable and that the US would be unable to meet its social obligations to baby boomers (who are already beginning to retire) due to the record deficits. This tax cut was absolutely criminal.