Steve Wozniak: 'US would look like Dubai if it didn't spend all its money on military', Snowden=Hero

[nationalize the fed]

Stephen McBride ArabianBusiness Sunday, 24 May 2015

"Everything is first-class," says Nerd-in-Chief Steve Wozniak of Dubai, as we sit down to chat on the sidelines of this month's Gartner Symposium at the Madinat Arena.

"The United States used to talk, when I was growing up, like that's what we were. The US would look like this if we didn't spend all our money on the military." SNIP

...And "Woz" is equally approachable for normal people. He speaks passionately about everything and does not appear to edit himself. When we start to talk about privacy and I ask him whether he thinks NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden is a hero or a villain his answer is prompt and unabashed.

"Total hero to me; total hero," he gushes. "Not necessarily [for] what he exposed, but the fact that he internally came from his own heart, his own belief in the United States Constitution, what democracy and freedom was about. And now a federal judge has said that NSA data collection was unconstitutional."...

MORE: http://www.arabianbusiness.com/steve-wozniak-us-would-look-like-dubai-if-it-didn-t-spend-all-its-money-on-military--593703.html

Dubai in the 1960's



Dubai in 2012



Dubai before the boom: Staggering pictures show how emirate went from desert backwater to the Manhattan of the Middle East in just 50 years
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2144613/Pictures-Dubai-1960s-1970s-city-fishing-settlement.html

Here's where the US spends money (Figures from 2014- click link below and see the present amounts. >$2000 PER SECOND-that's $20,000 per TEN SECONDS)



https://www.nationalpriorities.org/cost-of/

[cascadiance]

2. It's interesting that Erik Prince of Blackwater infamy now lives in Abu Dhabi...

Right next door to Dubai

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/18/world/18blackwater.html

[dflprincess]

32. No extradition treaty? n/t

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

3. But..but...look at all we've gained for our efforts.

The eternal gratitude of the Iraqi people.

Warehouses full of candy and flowers.

Peace in the Middle East.

Loads of new friends.

A reputation as the Noble Good Guys.

Wealth and prosperity for all Americans.



Well....maybe not.

[FSogol]

4. Screw that. Know what the income inequality is like in Dubai? How about the slavery?

[Agschmid]

14. This.

Oh and good luck being gay...

[NYtoBush-Drop Dead]

30. I wonder if Woz hides HIS money in the Caymans.

[SusanCalvin]

33. Yeah, I wouldn't hold up Dubai as a shining example.

But I'm guessing Woz is not terribly politically astute....?

[MADem]

34. And then there's the raw sewage floating in the sea--they had a horrible problem with ...

well, SHIT everywhere. I'd be afraid to go out in a sailboat~! I understand they've made substantial improvements to the sewage system (at least they aren't carting all the poops out by truck, with some of the truckers dumping the stuff "where ever&quot , but I don't know if every building is hooked into the municipal system yet.

[Cheese Sandwich]

5. 90% of the people in Dubai are migrant workers, often in squalid conditions bordering on slavery...

So it's not exactly something we should try to emulate.

In 2013, the UAE had the fifth-largest international migrant stock in the world with 7.8 million migrants (out of a total population of 9.2 million), according to United Nations (UN) estimates.

http://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/labor-migration-united-arab-emirates-challenges-and-responses


Not surprising this capitalist leader would look to a slave society for inspiration.

[nationalize the fed]

7. What do you call a Mother that works 2 jobs

and has to itemize her measly tips so the IRS won't confiscate anything she might have been able to "save"?

[betterdemsonly]

9. A libertarian myth

Any women living on tips is probably getting earned income tax credit. Although this is the source of the libertarian myth which is the poor picked on rich paying all taxes, not counting excise taxes, sin tax, property taxes and gas taxes, not to mention fines and fees for minor traffic violations.

[nadinbrzezinski]

12. While she is likely not paying taxes

except SS, when all is said and done, she is very real... not a myth I speak to those figments of my imagination often actually.

[betterdemsonly]

13. Her poverty is real, but it because of low wages, not taxes n/t

[nadinbrzezinski]

15. While we agree on the taxes part

people need to stop being so dismissive of poverty... it is a form of slavery and our income inequality is actually higher than Dubai's...

(And yes Dubai has actual slavery before you say it)

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/01/07/5-facts-about-economic-inequality/

[betterdemsonly]

17. Look I am poor. I don't want to be a slave in Dubai.

I don't look up to em. Sorry.

[nadinbrzezinski]

19. Did I say you have to?

but you also missed what Wosniak said... so let me try to simplify it. IF we stopped being number 1 in arms and military, we might be able to afford nice things like oh bridges.

[betterdemsonly]

21. I have no problem with that part

but we also might have more money if guys like him weren't stashing it in Dubai, a country that likes and benefits from our militarism.

Dubai is a shit example since it isn't a normal country. It's just a playground for rich with a bunch of oil money, and off the books slaves propping it up.

[nadinbrzezinski]

23. I am not sure if he is one of the people doing that

but from the first impressions look that city looks impressive.

He has been known to be impressed by things like that, the looks of a place. He's made similar comments about the skyline of Mexico City for example. That one was to Mexican press at the Mexico City airport. He took a wide swipe at Bush that time, so for some odd reason it did not cross to our insular media.

[betterdemsonly]

25. He seems like really superficial guy

it is true many elites disliked Bush for a variety of reasons. It doesn't mean they're useful to us, or we have much overlap in terms of interests.

[nadinbrzezinski]

27. He is a genious for computers and programing

Last edited Wed May 27, 2015, 12:37 AM - Edit history (1)

but if you know people in IT who do programing, he is average for that.

Not defending him, I just find his comment to have some merit... and it has to do with how much money we spend on the armed forces.

[Cheese Sandwich]

10. wage slave

[hunter]

6. No fun being an immigrant laborer in Dubai...

... or in the U.S.A. for what it's worth.

Personally, Dubai seems like a hell on earth to me.

Ooops. Looks like I just blew any opportunity I ever may have had for working there.

http://blogs.tribune.com.pk/story/18358/dubai-look-beyond-the-glitter-to-see-the-sorrow-of-migrant-worker

[Nevernose]

22. Really not terribly different

...than any major American city. Our entire system has become an explolitation of the poor, and -- totally perversely -- the poorer you are, the easier it is to exploit.

[Recursion]

26. Yes, very very different from an American city

Dubai's trafficking levels are an order of magnitude higher than the US's.

They also have huge truck convoys that leave the city every day to dump sewage out in the desert because they don't have any place to treat or dispose of it.

[Nevernose]

28. Both of those things are true

However, what I was specifically referring to was the exploitation of the poor. Whether they're trafficked or not, an Indian migrant housekeeper in Dubai doesn't have it much better than a Honduran housekeeper in Manhattan.

[Recursion]

36. Yes, it's very different

an Indian migrant housekeeper in Dubai doesn't have it much better than a Honduran housekeeper in Manhattan.

Humbug. Manhattan has shelters and support networks for trafficked persons and law enforcement that will at least possibly take the Honduran housekeeper's side (Google "Devyani Khobragade&quot ; Dubai does not -- in fact, Dubai has law enforcement that will happily jail the housekeeper if the employer claims the housekeeper owes him money.

[pnwmom]

8. I like the Woz but he's got a really skewed vision of Dubai.

That's not the direction we should be aiming for.

[FSogol]

16. He has the billionaire's vision of Dubai combined with a ridiculous opinion. n/t

[betterdemsonly]

11. Snowden is a hero, but there is nothing to admire about Dubai

Their leaders provoke America into wars to keep the oil prices high. That is how they got their money. They play a role in our corruption, and militarism. The libertarian politics associated with Snowden is pretty blind to this fact. Dubai is just a big gated community for the rich like Monaco. There is no example there.

[whereisjustice]

20. Isn't he talking about infrastructure, not Government policies, i.e. literal use of "look like"?

I've just watched them rebuild a three mile stretch of road over 2.5 years and by the time they finished it was ready to repave. Start, stop, budget issues, low bids, etc.

[FSogol]

31. At Dubai beaches they have workers remove turds and tp from the beaches each morning.

Much of their waste plants dump excess sewage in the seas. Their infrastructure is underfunded.

[Throd]

18. I would not consider Dubai worthy of emulation.

Steve needs to leave the white linen table and go back to the kitchen to see how the food is actually made.

[whereisjustice]

24. Having read the article, I get exactly what he is saying and agree. Besides, how do you figure

Dubai and Snowden would get along?

I think Woz got his start as a kid building a simple tone generator to trick telco circuit switches into connecting long distance calls for free.

I suspect he still laughs about that and doubt he's suddenly turned into an advocate for religious monarchy run by elite sheiks and princes

[Elmer S. E. Dump]

29. That's 1.5 trillion we'll never see again

Think what this country could be if we had that money for the good of "the people".

[hifiguy]

39. Not to mention the $10-15 trillion

(nobody knows the precise figure) that the banksters hoovered up in the last seven years.

[dreamnightwind]

35. All of the anti-Dubai posts here are kind of missing the more important point

which is, that we, the U.S. taxpayer, have been duped or strong armed into paying for global militarism, to a degree that no other people on earth are required to pay. It isn't because we the people demand the military we have, quite the opposite, but the MIC has us by the balls and even our Democratic candidates, with very few exceptons, can't wait to spend more of our tax money on military adventurism we neither ask for nor need. The amount of money taken from Americans for this purpose is truly staggering.

I agree that the example of Dubai is a poor one, not anything we want to emulate.

Also I've seen a few refs to Wozniak like he is some kind of mega corporate mogul. I don't know his net worth, probably plenty, but the mogul was Jobs. Woz was the geek, not particularly world-wise and he had no taste for building a corporate empire. While Jobs was building the marketing and consumer electronics phenomenom that is Apple, Woz went back to college, not to teach but to study, not business but tech.

I lived in a small geodesic dome back off the street in a very ordinary neighborhood in Santa Cruz for a few years. Cute, but tiny. At that residence, I got a lot of mail addressed to Wozniak, the landlord said he used to live there. Extremely humble one-room + kitchen and loft little dome. That was the mid 80's, he may own a high-rise in Dubai for all I know, but his roots are simple and purely technical.

[Gregorian]

37. Hardly a sustainable vision.

Yes, we pay too many taxes for war. But I think a far bigger problem, which leads to war, is this notion of growth that these "smart" people seem to embrace.

It's time to decrease our size and impact, not grow. Let's start by shutting down the militaries. They don't serve anyone.

[tk2kewl]

38. It takes a billionaire to see Dubai as some sort of ideal