Re: The best of times, the worst of times
Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2012 13:55:36 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <9c7fd765-c8da-455d-bd29-1b3c286616a3_at_to5g2000pbc.googlegroups.com>
On Apr 19, 10:25 am, Mladen Gogala <gogala.mla..._at_gmail.com> wrote:
> Even a brief overview of DBA job postings on Dice and Monster will show
> that the demand for skilled Oracle DBA people has gone down dramatically,
> at least in New York City area.
> I expected seeing a demand in people with MySQL or PostgreSQL going up
> accordingly, but that isn't happening, either. This started to happen in
> January and February. What is going on? Does anybody have an explanation?
No, but I think postings on those sites tend to overstate demand, especially when so many of them are for the same stupid job or are just farming. Corporations in general use "it's the economy" to justify many things, often illogically or capriciously.
> Articles like this are also alarming:
>
> http://www.cringely.com/2012/04/not-your-fathers-ibm/#comment-206300
That article misses out on an important point by focusing on global services. Services are great for short term cash flow, but for mid term profitability (which is what a three-to-five year share price target is all about) you count on intellectual property. Patents, in other words. Why? Because IP is the kind of thing where you can replicate profits cheaply. Services require a mostly linear increase of costs and expenses, and I only say mostly because of the outsourcing and the ability to partition out some problems to cheaper less experienced labor, as stupid as those of us actually doing the work can see that that is.
I suggest checking how many new patents are going to IBM and Oracle. In addition, note that the US has brought patent rules more in line with the rest of the world, highly favoring large corporations over iconoclastic inventors.
>
> Is that caused by US elections and corporations trying to escape the
> increased taxes that some people foresaw or is that a global ocurrence?
What increased taxes? I don't see no increased taxes. The Buffett rule would have only the most minor effect, and many or most of the rich people targeted can simply move their investments around to avoid taxable income, perfectly legal. Many others such as investment bankers and VC's hardly even worry about the taxes - if you can get pre-IPO stock at pennies on the dollar, you may grumble about having to pay 30% rather than 15% of your $150M, poor baby, but would that stop you? Some rich people might just move away. http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2012/apr/16/obamas-buffett-rule-impact-on-taxes-jobs/?ap http://www.cnbc.com/id/46663704/HK_Tycoon_May_Reap_800_Million_From_Facebook_IPO among others.
Besides that, the Dems are throwing out increased tax proposals that the Repos will vote down, just so they can say "see!? They coddle rich people!"
I've been saying it since the Jarvis people started their "tax revolution" in the late '70's, when they greedily vultured Jerry Brown's huge surplus: You need to collect taxes to pay for stuff, you can't just fertilize the business environment to stimulate growth and complain government is too big. That's just fertilizer, a polite term for bullshit. It works for a while until the farmland gets burned out and you have to let it lay fallow.
jg
-- _at_home.com is bogus. http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/53118Received on Thu Apr 19 2012 - 15:55:36 CDT