"We want kids to NOT want to be I-bankers..."

College Majors Engineering Majors
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You wanna get out of this recession? Get rid of Chris Dodd. Get rid of Barney Frank. Get rid of Chuck Schumer. Get rid of Nancy Pelosi. Get rid of Harry Reid. Get rid of Barack Obama. Get rid of radical socialism and restore individual liberty.

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<p>O yea, because they are the cause of this problem, right? The republican stance is "do nothing, let the economy fix itself". That, my friend, is a recipe for disaster. Stop blaming the politicians in charge now. The Dems get their shot for the next few years, it doesn't matter how hard you cry, so please stop.</p>

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"O yea, because they are the cause of this problem, right? The republican stance is "do nothing, let the economy fix itself". That, my friend, is a recipe for disaster. Stop blaming the politicians in charge now. The Dems get their shot for the next few years, it doesn't matter how hard you cry, so please stop. "

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<p>This is in all actuality a pathetic line. It is not "crying" to legitamately criticize the way any administration handles a job. I don't know if you have read the stimulus or the budget offices projections for a deficit, I don't want to belittle you so I assume you have. In that case you would know that at the current agenda of the Obama administration continues there will be a deficit of about 9 trillion dollars (or it may be debt I do not remember exactly) either way it would be devestating to our future. </p>

<p>It is better for Obama and our country as a whole to have republicans criticize spending because then it may cause the administration to at least try to have a reign on the current spending levels. If Obama's team realizes this early on (about the long term effects) then they can more acurately develop economic problems. In fact one of the reasons that the Bush administration did poorly on the Iraq war was because they failed to listen to the critics, sometimes criticism is just what people NEED to hear.</p>

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No, it was caused by Liberal policies that forced mortgage lenders to make stupid loans. This would not happen in a free-market.

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<p>ImaHero, please explain.</p>

<p>Dbate, I do agree that government policies should be scrutinized, but I feel that some people ARE crying/whining because they DON'T back legitimately criticize policies. Some just bash liberals for the sake of bashing liberals (the same can be said for conservatives in the previous administration). </p>

<p>I'm all for policy discussion but it frustrates me to read some of these childish posts/rants that blame people just because they don't agree with their ideals. They don't seem to back up their assertions with and proof or logic; it's just their passion talking. By the way, this is true for most politics related threads and not just this one in particular.</p>

<p>On a side note, what does Bush's and Obama's past have to do with the topic at hand? The value of i-banking versus engineering for society?</p>

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<p>"Nobody forced the banks to give out faulty loans."</p>

<p>WRONG. Go read the Community Reinvestment act of, I believe, 1977 which forced mortgage lenders to make 40% of their loans to subprime borrowers. Another great accomplishment of Jimmy Carter. This would NEVER happen in a free market!</p>

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<p>If Obama want more engineering, then he needs to:</p>

<p>1 - put some money on the table for scholarships
2 - fix the "crush the smart freshman" policy of too any engineering schools. What truly smart kid would sign up to go to a school that intentionally flunks out 20% of qualified matriculants.</p>

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<p>Agree somewhat toadstool--how about pure merit scholarships (not based on Financial Need?)? How about some type of support system to retain those freshman eng intents? Engineering is a difficult discipline-I think we can all agree. But, too many bright kids steer away from it because of the rigid courseload and many feel the pay just doesn't justify the major/workload. I would like to see a solid plan to attract and keep eng intents instead of telling us what we need more of in terms of students and their majors in college! Provide a plan of action and less talk!!</p>

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<p>We need more K-12 outreach programs. How many kids actually know what engineers do? Everybody knows what doctors and lawyers do. Nobody knows about investment banking, but it attracts many of its professionals because of the high salaries and bonuses it offered.</p>

<p>I wonder how engineering retention rates compare with med school acceptance rates. Is it any more difficult? I don't think you can compare it with med school retention rates because you've already eliminated the people who can't get into med school. Pretty much any college student can go into an engineering program of some sort, but the same cannot be said for medicine.</p>

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<p>Understand that the average engineer doesn't contribute much towards the technology race among the developed nations of the world. However, a large influx of engineers into any economy increases the chances of finding innovative engineers, who will be the ones to discover new technologies, improve standards of living, and increasing global economic competitiveness. </p>

<p>Not everybody gets to be Bill Gates. But it is in the best interest of our nation for people striving to accomplish similar feats. Because the majority of the younger populations see success as leading a well-off life with a family, they pursue degrees in fields such as medicine, business, and law because these fields are usually seen as more lucrative and safe. </p>

<p>Now don't get me wrong, I know lawyers, doctors, and accountants etc.. are important to the well-being of any industrialized nation. Although their services are necessary for the proper functioning of advanced societies, they are also the beneficiaries of the wealth created by goods and services MADE POSSIBLE by advanced technologies invented by engineers. A precipitous decline in the number of engineers will have an adverse effect on the economy. Just as an influx of engineers will contribute to the overall growth and global competitiveness of our country.</p>

<p>So really, I think Obama is right. While we still need I-bankers, doctors, lawyers, we don't want the entirety of society striving to have those professions.</p>

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<p>"So really, I think Obama is right. While we still need I-bankers, doctors, lawyers, we don't want the entirety of society striving to have those professions."</p>

<p>The point is, who the hell is Barack Obama to tell people how to live their lives? Why do Liberals feel the need to tell everyone what to do and how to live their lives? Why do Liberals feel they're so much smarter than the rest of us bitter Americans clinging to guns and religion?</p>

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<p>"The point is, who the hell is Barack Obama to tell people how to live their lives? Why do Liberals feel the need to tell everyone what to do and how to live their lives? Why do Liberals feel they're so much smarter than the rest of us bitter Americans clinging to guns and religion?"</p>

<p>He's a leader. What do leaders do? They use their power and respect to influence others. If everyone in the world and history had your attitude, we'd still be a bunch of nomadic, warring tribes.</p>

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<p>I agree with Obama. I just think the irony of a lawyer telling us we need more engineers is absolutely amazing. Lawyers are right up there with investment banking in the general lack of value production.</p>

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Understand that the average engineer doesn't contribute much towards the technology race among the developed nations of the world. However, a large influx of engineers into any economy increases the chances of finding innovative engineers, who will be the ones to discover new technologies, improve standards of living, and increasing global economic competitiveness.

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Agree absolutely.</p>

33

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The point is, who the hell is Barack Obama to tell people how to live their lives? Why do Liberals feel the need to tell everyone what to do and how to live their lives? Why do Liberals feel they\'re so much smarter than the rest of us bitter Americans clinging to guns and religion?

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By that logic, saying that we need more cops in our community is telling people how to live their lives. Ridiculous! He isn\'t mandating that certain people go into certain professions. All he is saying is that there is a greater need for engineers than investment bankers. </p>

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Understand that the average engineer doesn\'t contribute much towards the technology race among the developed nations of the world. However, a large influx of engineers into any economy increases the chances of finding innovative engineers, who will be the ones to discover new technologies, improve standards of living, and increasing global economic competitiveness.

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Agreed, but average engineers are still productive to society, even though they\'re not at the forefront of technology.</p>

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<p>Obama isn't just saying that there is a greater need for engineers than investment bankers. He's using legislation to artificially drive down compensation for those in the financial sector, so the best and brightest will gravitate instead to engineering or whatever industry he deems most valuable.</p>

<p>Look at the new plan to impose restrictions on executive pay even at firms that didn't take TARP money. My question is, if engineering professions add so much more value to the economy than finance does, why doesn't the market recognize this and compensate engineers/bankers accordingly?</p>

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My question is, if engineering professions add so much more value to the economy than finance does, why doesn't the market recognize this and compensate engineers/bankers accordingly?

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<p>Because engineers don't deal with money? One might expect that engineers would be compensated better if we used a barter system.</p>

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My question is, if engineering professions add so much more value to the economy than finance does, why doesn't the market recognize this and compensate engineers/bankers accordingly?

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<p>The answer is simple - markets are imperfect - as evidenced in nauseating detail by the unfolding economic crisis, as we can now see that the financial 'innovation' that the investment bankers produced actually provided far less value than was originally thought, and in some cases, may have actually created negative value. </p>

<p>The basic problem is what I stated before: engineers, along with investment bankers, are not directly rewarded by the market for the value that they create. Rather, their compensation is moderated by the firms who employ them. It then becomes an internal political struggle rather than an pure economic allocation task to determine who within the firm actually captures that value. The financiers have proven to be more politically powerful than the engineers, to the point that they can sometimes even extract value even when there was no actual value created, as evinced by the infamous AIG bonuses. Employees at regular firms could never expect to earn bonuses if their company performed poorly, especially if it declared bankruptcy, which AIG effectively did when it surrendered an 80% warrant-based equity share to the government. {The AIG bankers would surely argue that the bonuses were based on guaranteed contracts, yet nobody expects the sanctity of contracts to be honored in the case of bankruptcy. In fact, the very rationale of bankruptcy as a legal device is precisely to allow the firm to escape from the strictures of existing contracts.}</p>

37

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[quote]
The point is, who the hell is Barack Obama to tell people how to live their lives? Why do Liberals feel the need to tell everyone what to do and how to live their lives? Why do Liberals feel they're so much smarter than the rest of us bitter Americans clinging to guns and religion?

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<p>Seems to me that conservatives also feel the need to tell others how to live their lives. Leaders of the religious right, for example, seem to waste no opportunity in lecturing others about what they can and cannot do. Didn't Jerry Falwell blame 9/11 on the gay community? </p>

<p>Furthermore, I seem to recall the past 8 years of George Bush telling Americans what they should do. For example, Bush strongly urged American children to study hard in school, when he himself has freely acknowledged that he did no such thing when he was young. </p>

<p>Average</a> student Bush urges Americans to study</p>

<p>And of course Bush strongly encouraged Americans to join the military to fight the War on Terror, when he himself secured a safe stateside National Guard position during the Vietnam War. </p>

<p>Look, Presidents are always going to suggest that Americans pursue certain actions, even when they never did it themselves. That's what leaders do.</p>

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Bush repented. Bush overcame his problems. Obama still finds himself comfortable with unrepentant terrorists and far left idealogs.

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<p>I believe Obama repudiated his dealings with Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers.</p>

39

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WRONG. Go read the Community Reinvestment act of, I believe, 1977 which forced mortgage lenders to make 40% of their loans to subprime borrowers. Another great accomplishment of Jimmy Carter. This would NEVER happen in a free market!

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<p>There is to date no hard empirical evidence that the CRA contributed to the crisis, a notion that has been strongly backed by Sheila Bair, head of the FDIC (and Bush appointee). The CRA compelled FDIC-backed commercial banks to originate mortgages for less creditworthy borrowers, yet, according to the Federal Reserve, about half of all subprime loans were made by mortgage banks that are not backed by the FDIC and are therefore not subject to the CRA, and another 25% of the loans were made by banking subsidiaries and structured vehicles that were only partially subject to the CRA, and that vast majority of the subprime pool is where the greatest losses have occurred. </p>

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No, it was caused by Liberal policies that forced mortgage lenders to make stupid loans. This would not happen in a free-market.

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<p>As stated above, half of the subprime loans, including a disproportionate percentage of the worst ones, were made by mortgage banks who were not forced to make those loans because they were not subject to the CRA and hence were completely subject to free market forces.</p>

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[quote]
This is in all actuality a pathetic line. It is not "crying" to legitamately criticize the way any administration handles a job. I don't know if you have read the stimulus or the budget offices projections for a deficit, I don't want to belittle you so I assume you have. In that case you would know that at the current agenda of the Obama administration continues there will be a deficit of about 9 trillion dollars (or it may be debt I do not remember exactly) either way it would be devestating to our future.</p>

<p>It is better for Obama and our country as a whole to have republicans criticize spending because then it may cause the administration to at least try to have a reign on the current spending levels.

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</p>

<p>I wish the Republicans had been criticizing spending for the last 8 years. It is rather jarring to see the Republicans now turning into deficit hawks. I remember the Bush Administration saying that the War in Iraq was going to cost only $50-60 billion - what happened?</p>

40

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Agree somewhat toadstool--how about pure merit scholarships (not based on Financial Need?)? How about some type of support system to retain those freshman eng intents? Engineering is a difficult discipline-I think we can all agree. But, too many bright kids steer away from it because of the rigid courseload and many feel the pay just doesn't justify the major/workload. I would like to see a solid plan to attract and keep eng intents instead of telling us what we need more of in terms of students and their majors in college! Provide a plan of action and less talk!!

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<p>The government could greatly expand the funding of science, i.e. through the NSA and NIH, and in addition, create programs to bring scientific advances to market. Doing so would increase the pace of technology innovation and provide more and higher-paying jobs to engineers.</p>

<p>To appease the deficit hawks and make the program revenue-neutral, I would propose a simple answer: eliminate farm subsidies. Think of it this way. Who really believes that the future of the country will be based on farming rather than on high technology? </p>

<p>Another set of proposals revolve around spurring entrepreneurship. The government allows people to open IRA's into which they accumulate tax-free income with which to invest in other businesses through the market. So why not create a similar tax-free vehicle via which people can invest in their own small business? I would also support a capital gains tax cut (or even eliminating the tax entirely) for privately-run small businesses. Small businesses should also be allowed generous accelerated depreciation schedules, or even full depreciation at the time of spending, as well as strong carry-forwards and carry-backs. Let's face it. Small business expenses are lumpy, particularly when the business is launched, and you never really know when (or even if) the company is even going to exist at all for the entire depreciation period. For example, if I buy a bunch of servers and routers to start my own Web 2.0 company, do I know that it will still be around for the entire 5-year deprecation schedule? Heck, it might not even survive a single year. Not only that, but the company may not even be profitable for several years, which means there would be no income to depreciate against. I, as the entrepreneur, should be able to move the tax deductions forward to such time as the firm does become profitable, or if it never does, to such a time as when I abandon the company and get a regular job when I should be able to claim them from my regular income. </p>

<p>Potentially the most promising opportunity of all is to reform the patent system. The truth is, the system as currently designed is strongly stacked against the individual inventor. If you're just a guy trying to build some new technology in your garage, you don't have the best patent law firms on retainer. There are millions of patents and patent applications out there, almost all of them with multiple claims, so you therefore never really know if you're inadvertently violating a patent that you never even heard of before. Even if you could somehow be sure that you've track downed each and every one of the patents that were related to your invention, you would still not be sure if you were in violation, as many of the patents are written in legalistic language that can be interpreted in any number of ways, depending on what a court may decide. Even if you are able to successfully procure a patent to protect your invention, your patent may later be found to be invalid, despite the fact that the patent had ostensibly been found to be valid enough to be granted in the first place. In other words, even being granted a patent doesn't always mean that you were 'actually' granted the patent.</p>

<p>The problem is that the patent system is overrun with lawyers. Few if any engineers or inventors are also lawyers. Lawyers can flexibly redefine existing patents according to their own individual litigation skill, sometimes redefining somebody elses' patent so as to cover your invention (which means that you're now in violation), or redefining your patent completely out of existence (by invalidating it). But nobody really knows beforehand. It is ultimately up to a potential court trial to determine where the boundaries of a particular patent truly lie. Ambrose Bearse once defined a jury as 12 people who are gathered to determine who has the best lawyer, and successful inventorship often times ultimately rests not on who discovers the best technology but on who has the best patent lawyer.</p>