Not every business cycle is a boom. We're just coming out of a ~15 year downturn, a bit worse than the one in the 70s, not as bad as the one in the 30s. It doesn't say much about capitalism, other than that it has business cycles.

You know, it's been hotter every month for the past 6 months - OMG it's the global warming, it will be 300 degrees in a decade! Either that or the seasons are cyclic, sort of like the economy. One of those.

The only serious economic issue we face is public debt. Life always seems better when you're living beyond you're means. Your standard of living is certainly higher while your running up credit card debt like crazy. The Boomers did that with the nation as a whole - running up the national debt like crazy (which did improve everyone's standard of living for a while, thus the misleading impression that they had it better). We'll be generations paying that binge off, with an appropriately lower standard of living to show for it. The US national debt is $150k per taxpayer now. That's going to be a drag on everything, and might well blow up. But that's the flaw in democracy, not capitalism.

End products are what we use in daily life - doesn't matter where they're made. I expect some small measure of in-home "manufacturing", growing gradually over time. The feedstock for that will still be raw materials, however, despite being shipped to the end user.

The current revolution is in automating everything automatable, sending manufacturing jobs (and mindless clerical paper-shuffling jobs, and mindless service jobs) the way of farming jobs. Just like every previous technological step forward, it will be a good thing in the long run.

Well, if that's your standard, I do hope you're personally donating enough to the charities you feel most deserving (political groups don't count) to cover all the flaws and misbehavior any random stranger might see in you (or at least that you see in yourself).

Heh, I can't tell if you're really asking, or simply impersonating a typical 5-year old. Just in case it's the former:

Asking for fairness is asking that the world be so simple that the rules make sense to a young child. But fairness is a poor goal. A court system in which innocence or guilt is decided by the toss of a fair coin would be perfectly simple and unbiased, discriminating against no one (not even the guilty). Justice is better that fairness, and righteousness is better than justice (the principle of jury nullification).

Real life is about trade-offs and compromises to achieve the best result given the world as it is, not the world as we'd like it to be. A non-corrupt government tries keep the economy growing, and provide needed services. Treating each company the same way is not an interesting goal per se, at best it's sometimes a useful means toward those ends.

Pay for what you need. Whatever happened to that idea? Should you get extra food for the same price if you eat more? Should you get a bigger car for the same price if you have kids and need the space? Should you get a bigger apartment for the same price if you're bigger?

Meh, statistically you'll make significantly more over your lifetime if you're tall. I think you're still coming out ahead from that particular genetic lottery, without also getting free seat upgrades.

Doesn't every airline that offers economy plus (or whatever it's called) also let you upgrade with frequent flyer miles?

If you want a toy train set, just go and buy one. Passenger trains solve no problem that the US has (you'd need that extra 4 weeks off work just for one trip!).

"Economy plus" or whatever they call the seats wit normal legroom is the old-school standard. Think of is this way: you can buy a "standard seat" ticket for $350, or an "I don't care how you torture me just give me the cheapest price" ticket for $300. 90% of customers choose the torture option over the standard option, cheap bastards, but you don't have to.

Fair is for 5-year olds.

The 40k MS employees likely keep another 400k in the area in work providing good and services to them, as they're paid quite well by WA standards, and most people spend all the money that comes to them.

There's no need for politicians to get kickbacks: there's nothing more powerful at the state level then bringing jobs to the state or keeping jobs in the state.

Plus WA and local governments get the property taxes not just from the buildings on the MS campus, but the 40k houses owned by MS employees, the businesses owned by those who wouldn't otherwise be in business in the area, their homes, and so on. All the sales tax for everything all those people buy, and so on. I'd bet at least 10% of MS's entire WA payroll ends up in local/state coffers, plus at least an equal amount from the satellite business created. That's a lot of funding for the state.

What economic damages? I don't get it. Are you complaining that MS bought a lot of small software companies the way every large tech firm does? Are you complaining that MS products weren't as good as you'd have liked (compared to what? IBMs offerings at the time? please).

I've never understood the burning MS hatred on Slashdot. Yes, MS had a lot of second-rate products, but so do most companies in the world!

People will complain about anything, but it pisses me off to see people who likely give nothing at all to charity complaining that someone who does isn't doing it the way they would.

Really? Evil? I don't buy it one bit. He sold a set of software products that companies wanted to buy. Products that were no fun to support, of course, or for geeks to use in many cases, but let's please not confuse "icky" with "evil".

Right now people are being beheaded in the middle east for the crime of minding their own business while having the wrong religion. That's Evil. Something like 1300 girls we're allowed to be used as sex slaves - raped over and over for years - in a developed nation because of misguided notions of political correctness. That's evil. Windows ME was merely icky.

Are you talking about "IT" or software development? I don't doubt you, but my experience with (non-contract) H1B workers has been rather the opposite - it's only the best and the brightest who the company will pay to move to the US, while the 80% work from India or China.

Gates has transferred billions from the coffers of large corporations, by way of IT products, to charitable programs that directly save lives, and improve the standard of living in the 3rd world. This is bad again why?

I still do a double-take at "college algebra". Taking algebra in high school should be considered remedial. "College algebra" should mean abstract algebra (group theory). No wonder it's hard to find competent programmers!

All this H1B complaining from people who have never hired H1Bs at a large company, or likely even worked with them. Unskilled immigration is a different story (though any immigrant who finds work is welcome in my book), but America certainly need more people with STEM degrees!

Lots of people meets those qualifications. Lots more should realize what the hiring manager is likely looking for at a big company is "5 years coding experience, knows some Java (or PHP)". Small shops need someone who can contribute right away, they often don't have the budget to get people up to speed. Big companies are usually just looking for smart people who get things done.

I work for a large US corp. We use an applicant tracking system. Hiring managers and internal recruiters scour it constantly looking for that one overlooked resume that the other guys might have missed. But mostly it's about LinkedIn these days: my manager sends maybe 100 emails a week to people hoping to find anyone actually looking for work. We have reqs we can't seem to fill, IMO because developers with established careers haven't figured out yet that opportunity is knocking again.