Obama Wins The Election. Here’s His Technology Agenda.

http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/06/obama-wins-the-election-heres-his-technology-agenda/

by jabo • 14 years ago

173 97 14 years ago

techcrunch.com

rpm43212• 14 years ago

tl;dr: Tax it.

jamesaguilar• 14 years ago

Possibly the least accurate TL;DR I have ever read.

rpm43212• 14 years ago

Yep, sorry. I thought it was obviously facetious. Probably not in the spirit of HN, but with all the victory lapping by the liberal wing of HN tonight, I guess the libertarian in me got a bit carried away.

Volpe• 14 years ago

There isn't any mention of taxes in that article... What am I missing?

camus• 14 years ago

must be talking about doobies ...

hayksaakian• 14 years ago

tl;dr you'll still have to bust your ass to execute a successful startup. Don't expect the government to do your job.

Maro• 14 years ago

That's a good thing.

cglace4• 14 years ago

But do expect them to give you money if you are building green tech.

rdl4• 14 years ago

I really hope the STEM immigration reform happens, independent of "comprehensive immigration reform". The main people blocking "just do the STEM part now" immigration reform are congressional Democrats, and I'm not sure if the election changes anything there. Maybe the President getting re-elected pretty solidly gives him more moral power in arguing with the Congress?

nhebb• 14 years ago

There are other immigration reforms issues that have had wide bipartisan support, but congress doesn't seem to like to package legislature that way. There's a strong historically tendency towards bundling.

> Maybe the President getting re-elected pretty solidly ...

Electorally, yes, but it's a squeaker by popular vote. As of this writing, the victory margin is less than half of a percent.

backprojection• 14 years ago

I live in Texas, and I voted for Johnson. If I lived in Ohio I would have voted for Obama. It's hard to find numbers at the moment, but it looks like Johnsons's pulling 5%.

pilsetnieks• 14 years ago

Either way, he doesn't have worry about reelection anymore and can afford making unpopular decisions.

rdl4• 14 years ago

It doesn't help because the Congress itself is the roadblock, and they do need to get re-elected.

Obama himself has been pushing for STEM in the first term, and there's every reason to believe Romney would have as well -- they agreed on it. It's Congress on this one issue that's preventing STEM-only from going forward.

saurabhpalan• 14 years ago

I am really looking forward to the Startup visa...its about time

westicle• 14 years ago

Maybe I'm showing my hn colours, but I'm surprised by no mention of SOPA/PIPA.

I would have thought broad policies which have already been introduced as bills during the last term in office would be more significant to technology than potential immigration reforms.

I note that I'm not from the USA, so my perspective might not be as well-informed as it could be.

curt5• 14 years ago

Missing for those in technology hoping to sell the company they build:

Capital Gains Rate is likely to increase from 15% to 23.8%

MartinCron2• 14 years ago

From historically very low to merely historically low. I don't think this will be enough to dissuade people from building and selling things.

curt5• 14 years ago

It's not that it will discourage founders, it will discourage investors since they'll need a higher return to achieve the same after tax profits. What's more likely is investors will require a larger percentage reducing the founding teams ownership stake.

kayoone• 14 years ago

double that and u get what a german founder would have to pay when selling the company he built. You guys dont realize that you still pay very little taxes compared to most!

cfn• 14 years ago

Here in the UK it can be as low as 10% if you qualify for "Entrepreneur Relief" or a high as 28 otherwise. It is a good deal if you qualify.

gavanwoolery2• 14 years ago

If you sell a company for $100 million, that's almost $9 million more down the drain. Yes, countries XYZ and have it worse, but that does not necessarily make this a good thing.

In general, tax hikes are bad, because the government caries little responsibility (look how reckless they have been with our budget/deficit to date). Giving more tax money to the govt. is like giving a loan to someone with a horrible credit score.

Also, this technology agenda is horrible. It is not the government's job gamble tax-payer money on business ventures (even ones as appealing as "green tech") - leave that to VCs and free markets.

r00fus2• 14 years ago

That's not $9M down the drain - it's $9M used to pay the US Government as your startup requires all the infrastructure, legal framework and military protection provided to get where it is (feel free to move your startup to Somalia, where I hear the taxes are close to zero).

That the investor/owner portion of the tax burden will go up slightly from historically low levels doesn't belie the fact that the average American and small business owner pays even more in %.

Remember - during the roaring 90s we had a much higher rate - did that stop the Googles, Yahoos, Akamais, etc?

seanmcdirmid2• 14 years ago

I believe Somalia has the libertarian taxation policy that you are looking for. Be sure to pack some extra guns though.

prostoalex2• 14 years ago

I'll refer you to Ken Fisher's Debunkery http://www.ken-fisher-debunkery.com/

But the gist is that when you plot the capital gains rate and stock market curves on the same graph, there's no dependency, which is counter-intuitive. However,

1) Endowments, pension funds and 401k's don't care about capital gains tax rate as they're shieleded at 0%

2) Foreign buyers are exempt from US rates as long as they pay their home country rates and there's a double-taxation agreement in place

3) People don't choose to buy less, people just choose to sell less. Combined with fairly stable demand generated from (1) and (2) the price of quality assets actually tends to grow faster in high-capital-gains-tax years than in low-capital-gains-tax years.

What's correlated with higher capital gains taxes is brokerage profits - sellers don't sell as frivolously.

curt5• 14 years ago

Your entire premise is flawed since they all apply to companies in the stock market not a company sale. It's unrelated to my original statement but....

Investment vehicles, such as a 401k, do pay capital gains taxes just not on the sale they pay when the individual pulls the money out of the account.

You're arguing for less liquidity in the market? Liquidity is a good thing because it allows the market to more efficiently deploy capital.

PS... correlation does not equal causation otherwise the amount Chocolate eaten per capita has direct effect on the number of Nobel Prize winners.

emmapersky2• 14 years ago

Its a shame the startup visa won't cover STEM graduates from non american schools.

HistoryInAction2• 14 years ago

You'll be able to get in through funding. Believe me, Startup Act 2.0 isn't Startup Visa Act isn't IDEA Act. There's a whole spectrum of potential implementations of the solution.

I've put together a coalition that's building the next bill. Note that acquisitions aren't taken into account in the current bills. It'll be fixed.

We've been going through some iterations within political space. No more press releases, starting today, game on for startup visa.

throwaway1979• 14 years ago

I remember seeing that the UK gave visa preferences to people with MBAs from certain top american schools. I wish there was something equivalent in the US for technical people (e.g. people with a masters/PhD from a top 20 non-us school). There are current solutions but none support someone doing a startup.

mtgx• 14 years ago

What is his copyright agenda, though?

xradionut• 14 years ago

Open data is the big thing for me. There's a lot of buried gems in the gov data and doing the ETL and make it available to the public in a usable format is a good way to build skills.

danielweber• 14 years ago

So what can he open up now that he couldn't open up during his first term?

rcavezza• 14 years ago

Anything he believes is good for the public but may have hindered his reelection.

ceph_• 14 years ago

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4056310 Requiring all government agencies to have an API was a good start. Definite win for openness.

TheFuture3• 14 years ago

RIM bailout? That one I would believe.

Open government? Wow, I remember that one from 4 years ago.

Skilled immigration? They don't vote for Dems. Unskilled immigration is all he cares about.

Pour more money into failing "green" tech. Yes, let's build more Chevy Volts filled with toxic batteries.

Seriously, there is no tech agenda from this pres.

sixothree• 14 years ago

Wahhhh Wahhh Wahhh much?

bravoyankee• 14 years ago

To paraphrase Chris Hedges, we don't need more advances in technology, we need advances in morality.

patrickgzill2• 14 years ago

You forgot to mention Solyndra : http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-10-17/taxpayers-recover-0...

thetabyte3• 14 years ago

So you're telling me risky investments in possibly revolutionary startups can fail? If we go back to writing by PG, failures like this are proof we are making risky a enough investments to actually make a big difference.

rayiner6• 14 years ago

I worked for a DARPA contractor for years. Nerds all wank over how awesome DARPA is, and how great they are for putting money into all these blue-sky projects that may not pan out, etc. Yet the administration puts some money into technology that doesn't have an immediate benefit in killing people, and people flip their shit.

For context: DARPA has a budget of almost $3 billion. The risk-weighted investment into Solyndra was probably on the order of the low tens of millions.

guscost• 14 years ago

If I trusted the government-approved definition of "clean" I'd be a bit more enthusiastic about those subsidies.

Evbn4• 14 years ago

What better definition is there? BP's?

incision• 14 years ago

Your snarky, unqualified dismissal reeks of sour grapes drawn from a sad place [1][2].

1: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4515939

2: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4515897

TheFuture3• 14 years ago

Reality is a sad place right now. People are so scared of it, they're willing to believe anything just to not have to think about what's going to happen when the music stops.

rayiner6• 14 years ago

Here is the thing with investments into Green Tech. The economically proper thing to do would be to have Pigovian taxes on pollution, and let the market sort out how to achieve the lowest pollution levels. I think > $1 trillion in new taxes, even if they were offset by reductions in income tax, etc, wouldn't really go over well. But that's the Right Solution (TM).

So we're stuck with things like subsidizing Green Tech.

krzyk• 14 years ago

Subsidizing never, ever created a good solution. It always makes poor solutions, that cost more than they are worth. Compare to subsidizing medicaments. When they are subsidized then they cost more then when government lifts the subsidy.

If you want a good solution then make it fight for life in the current market, eventually it might win - in this case you will really get a good solution.

gte910h8• 14 years ago

Taxes are dodge-able, additionally, they have a long lead time (accountants have to establish that YUP THIS IS PERMANENT and make recommendations to the business departments) then and only then do prices definitely stay in the place that makes green tech cheaper.

Additionally, if no green tech change occurs, then you're stuck with the job losses by lower consumption of the good you're taking, but don't get the job gains of the good you're hopping will spring up to replace it.

So from a economics perspective, seems like it might be the pure way to go. From a policy perspective, it's iffy.

TheFuture3• 14 years ago

Why can't we just build new, safer nuclear power like India, China, Japan, and basically everyone else are building right now? Whoops, the left has demonized nuclear power so much in this country that people fear it more than coal!

It always sounds great to be "investing" in infrastructure or energy or whatever. But pols don't invest, they cater to voting blocks. Politics can't solve these problems.

potatolicious2• 14 years ago

> "Skilled immigration? They don't vote for Dems. Unskilled immigration is all he cares about."

Uh...

Democrats own the minority vote, which constitute a huge portion of the skilled immigration this country sees - the two largest contributors are China and India after all.

Okay, so excluding minority immigrants, lets look at skilled, white immigrants - the bulk of whom are coming from openly socialist countries - UK, France, Germany, etc.

So skilled immigration is pretty guaranteed to increase the base for left-leaning folks and minorities, both of which are traditional strongholds for Democrats. Why wouldn't they do this?

Not to mention Democrats have, in this election at least, demonstrated that they are able to rally a substantial base of educated, working professionals to their side. So even with non-immigrants, "skilled labor" is hardly synonymous with Republicans.

padobson• 14 years ago

Doesn't say anything there about defending internet freedom or net neutrality.

Not that Romney would have, but it can never be pointed out enough that we're not given real choices with these elections. Given that 98.5% of the electorate voted for one of the two bozos, it's clearly not being said enough.

gte910h8• 14 years ago

America has HUGE minority rule issues. I predict 2016 will have a major non R vs D theme of "Swing state vs everyone else".

Reforming states to something that doesn't cause third parties to be spoilers (by using a voting system such as IRV), probably in the NE to start, is likely the new wave that gets us out of this mess.

moultano• 14 years ago

Please not IRV. If we're going to change voting systems, Approval Voting is better in every conceivable way. (It's simpler, closer to what we do now, produces the condorcet winner more reliably, and doesn't have the crazy non-monotonicities that IRV does.)

Evbn4• 14 years ago

Why would 2016 be different from any other year in that respect?

beatgammit• 14 years ago

Well, I guess I'm not starting my startup for another 4 years...

Obama Wins The Election. Here’s His Technology Agenda.

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