
Steve Ballmer serves up a data trove about government spending in the US - throw9982
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/17/business/dealbook/steve-ballmer-serves-up-a-fascinating-data-trove.html?_r=0
======
roymurdock
I have found this website very helpful in the past few years when researching
government financial info:
[http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/total_spending_chart](http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/total_spending_chart)

I reached out to the website developer/maintainer/creator, Chris Chantrill,
telling him I appreciated his work on the site and asking if he needed help
(seems like a 1 man operation?) - here's how he responded:

 _Thanks! I started the site in 2007 when "I couldn't take it any more." Since
then it has just growed.

Here's how you can help. Suggest a feature.

Best wishes,

\--Chris_

Chris' site provides unbiased commentary on the importance/relevance of
certain measurements, and gives access to download data. It could use a bit of
a UX/UI overhaul but it's an amazing feat for a one-man operation to track and
present all these different sources of gov data.

I'll be interested to see how Balmer's site compares in functionality (and
neutrality) especially given his vast resources and team of experts.

~~~
JamieF1
Can't believe I'm posting something positive about the Irish government but
they recently launched this site which is actually pretty decent. Pity other
governments don't do the same.
[http://whereyourmoneygoes.gov.ie](http://whereyourmoneygoes.gov.ie)

~~~
barking
The optics are good but it's effectively useless in determining whether money
is being spent wisely or not.

It only gives a very high level picture. It would need to allow one to go a
whole lot deeper for people to be able to work out what is value and what
isn't.

How does the office of taoiseach spend €182 million per annum, for example?

It should be possible to see exactly where the money was spent all the way
down to an invoice.

The data needed to be aggregated originally, presumably, to deliver what they
do publish so what we want is access to the raw stuff.

~~~
movedx
> It should be possible to see exactly where the money was spent all the way
> down to an invoice

With that level of visibility ("down to an invoice"), it's easy for people to
take up pitch forks and begin lambasting teachers, for example, for their
spending on computer software, materials for class, and so on. Perhaps a
doctor's medical decisions would start being questioned left, right, and
centre, yet the people doing the questioning have no medical experience or
understanding of the patient's needs.

Let me put this another way: do you like being micro managed at your job?
Would you like every decision you make regarding public spending, as an
individual teacher, to be disputed, criticised and thrown up on Twitter by
someone who, for example, doesn't agree with your purchasing of materials to
teach a religious class, or a class on evolution, or perhaps a subject you
don't think should be taught, like film & television?

I think having the data that's "down to an invoice" available to the state is
valuable, but accessible to the public? No. I couldn't get behind that.

EDIT: "if" -> "is"; "ZERO" -> "no"

~~~
barking
I disagree. Let me give you an example. Some years ago,the irish police had a
grievance, they were paid less pay for holidays than normal working days. This
was because when on holiday they were just receiving their normal salary and
weren't getting certain other expenses. In other words, these expenses weren't
real expenses but a form of tax-free pay. They had been introduced as an under
the table pay increase during some negotiation or other, probably as a way of
hoodwinking the taxpayer/other workers or circumventing some pay-cap or other.
As I understand it this type of thing is/was common in the public service.
There have been moves towards openness. Already lists of government payments
to private contracters are published in Irish newspapers. Also lists of tax
defaulters and details of their settlements are published regularly. Public
servants having their salaries and expenses published is just another step
further down this road. The same should apply to welfare recipients.

Being able to see who spent what, where and how is probably the greatest way
to ensure tax money isn't wasted.

~~~
jnty
What's special about individuals who happen to be employed in the public
sector or in receipt of welfare payments that makes it OK to intrude on their
privacy in this way?

~~~
barking
Like jumpcrisscross said. Ideally, where every euro of taxpayers' money goes
should be a matter of public record.

~~~
jnty
I doubt that that's what you actually think. For example, I doubt you want me
to be able to ask the government how much money was spent on impotence
medication for you. There's a trade-off to be made regarding personal privacy.
Why do you think that trade-off should be made against certain groups of
people?

~~~
Forbo
You can have transparency and privacy, they are not mutually exclusive in this
case. Government spent X amount of money on Y number of prescriptions for
medication Z. You can determine if there needs to be further auditing if Y
exceeds the projected number of prescriptions based on prevalence of
conditions.

------
jliptzin
Today I filed my tax return showing all the money that came in and every
minute expense required to make that money. Why can't we hold the government
to the same standard? There should be one (huge) annual spreadsheet published
showing how much money came in (federal, state, and local levels), with a
detailed accounting of where every penny went, just like I am required to do
for my business to claim deductions.

~~~
justin66
> federal, state, and local levels

(don't forget the counties!)

The reason that cannot work is that when you get below the state level, you're
dealing with governments that might or might not have enough money and
motivation to do proper accounting, staffed by people who might or might not
have actually gone to college.

Mandating they contribute to the "national spreadsheet" would represent an
unprecedented imposition on local governments. Not that it's necessarily a bad
idea, but I'm guessing it's unconstitutional if it comes from the federal
government.

~~~
dragonwriter
> The reason that cannot work is that when you get below the state level,
> you're dealing with governments that might or might not have enough money
> and motivation to do proper accounting, staffed by people who might or might
> not have actually gone to college.

Because of state and federal funding rules, local governments are generally
not only already providing detailed public accountings in documents that
nobody bothers to read, but also providing detailed reports of their spending
and revenue to state and federal authorities (who periodically audit parts of
them) as a condition of basic funding. They absolutely can and do track income
and expenses at very fine levels, and report them with very fine breakdowns
(often _different_ breakdowns of the same spending representing different
control agencies demands.)

~~~
DanielBMarkham
Yep. In addition, the reverse is actually true: at the federal level, many
agencies are not required to use GAAP. In layman's terms, they aren't required
to account for things in the way most businesses are. Common sense does not
hold. If the Pentagon says 1+1=3? It equals 3. It's an odd world where money
is appropriated to be spent. That's it. The rest of it is smoke and mirrors.

The smaller you are, the more "downhill" you are from the folks making the
important regulations, and the more you're required to adhere to strict and
closely monitored books. (Corruption still happens, of course, but at least
there are numbers that add together and some form of reasonable audit trail
for financial events. And don't get me started about whether or not good
accounting principles have anything at all to do with good governance)

ADD: Here's a link for reference: [http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/23/politics/us-
army-audit-account...](http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/23/politics/us-army-audit-
accounting-errors/)

(I could also tell personal stories from my time with the federal government,
and there are plenty more links to find for those interested. The point is
that more political power and money movement, at least in the states, usually
is associated with fewer and less reliable financial controls, which is
counter-intuitive)

------
CalChris
And in related news, Trump killed open.gov today.

[https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170414/13382037153/trump...](https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170414/13382037153/trump-
administration-kills-opengov-will-not-release-white-house-visitor-logs.shtml)

~~~
leggomylibro
Jeez, nobody tell him about data.gov ...

~~~
theduncan
Http/1.1 Service Unavailable

~~~
mr_overalls
www.data.gov works for me

~~~
outsidetheparty
Quite a few links, including the "Contact" page for every topic, are just
showing an error message "Data.gov encountered an unexpected error. We
apologize for this inconvenience and assure you that work is underway to
correct this problem. Please check back in 15 minutes and thank you for using
Data.gov." (which appears to be the same text they show as their generic 404
message.) For example
[https://www.data.gov/contact](https://www.data.gov/contact) and
[https://www.data.gov/climate/faq](https://www.data.gov/climate/faq)

~~~
outsidetheparty
huh, never mind. They're back. I guess for once that "check back in 15 mins"
turned out to be true...?

------
vitorbaptistaa
_Disclaimer: I work for Open Knowledge International and have worked on
OpenSpending in the past_

If you're interested in public spending data, take a look at OpenSpending
([https://openspending.org/](https://openspending.org/)). It's a project that
aims to make exploring, visualizing, and searching spending data easier. It's
all free software
([https://github.com/openspending](https://github.com/openspending)) and you
can upload your own datasets or explore others. It also provides you with an
API, so you can use it to build finance-related projects (e.g.
[http://orcamento.inesc.org.br](http://orcamento.inesc.org.br))

------
analog31
I'd love to see the same thing done with the health care industry. I have a
pet hypothesis that the financial complexity of the industry is one of the
barriers to reducing costs: Nobody knows what's being spent on what, and to
whom. Everybody can claim that somebody else is gouging us.

~~~
sjg007
They're probably all gouging each other where in the end the retail patient
with no insurance suffers bankruptcy.

------
JohnJamesRambo
Oh this is fascinating. I can't wait for people to slice and dice this up and
show all kinds of data and analysis. This reminds me of how the NBA opened up
the data stores from Sport Vu analytics and other advanced statistics and how
much we learned from it by all the people on the web looking at it and
thinking about it, sorting it and analyzing it in many different ways to see
things no one had seen before. That has to be good for our country.

~~~
1wheel
The NBA stopped posting the Sport Vu data early last year - I don't think it
is coming back.

~~~
JohnJamesRambo
Do you have an article describing why they did that? I can't find one.

------
gumby
I really never liked Ballmer, but I did love him for the Developers dance, and
now, well, this is awesome. I hope he does it in a long-term sustainable way.

~~~
donatj
Funny and satirical as it is, [1] completely changed my opinion of Steve
Ballmer for the positive.

> Steve Ballmer. You open the door to his enormous grinning face, and before
> you know it he’s in the hall handing over a bottle of something cheap (but
> with such confidence you don’t notice) and he’s giving you the handshake of
> your life. Then he’s in. Loving it. Loving the music. Loving the food and
> drink. He’s going up to everyone, saying hello. And after a while you
> realize he’s started balling “thanks for coming, great to see you man!” to
> your guests. By the end of the evening it’s his party and everybody had a
> great time. That’s Steve Ballmer.

[https://medium.com/packt-publishing/how-to-be-like-steve-
bal...](https://medium.com/packt-publishing/how-to-be-like-steve-ballmer-
cf4c9803d74c)

~~~
SamReidHughes
One thing that gets wrong is calling Gates the genius. Ballmer is the smarter
of the two.

~~~
ido
Then why did Microsoft stagnate under his leadership, once Gates left?

~~~
sangnoir
Because intelligence by itself does not assure success. I'm not a
Balmer/Microsoft fan, but 'stagnated' isn't the word I'd use to describe
Microsoft in Balmer's era: they missed mobile and got into search late, but
they did extremely well in other areas.

~~~
ido
He stepped in in 2000, with microsoft being the top dog of the tech world, and
left in 2014 with them not even being one of the "big four".

Right now Apple, Amazon, Google & HP are all bigger (in terms of revenue) than
Microsoft:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_informatio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_information_technology_companies)

~~~
sangnoir
> He stepped in in 2000, with microsoft being the top dog of the tech world,
> and left in 2014 with them not even being one of the "big four".

It seems we are in agreement - being overtaken =/= stagnation. A more
convincing argument would have been if their revenues had plateued under
Ballmer (they didn't - revenue _grew_ by 280% from $25B to $70B in 2014).

------
dandare
Dear competitor, we welcome you! :)

Our startup is trying open the information on government spending to the
masses:

[https://us.wikibudgets.org/w/united-states-
budget-2016](https://us.wikibudgets.org/w/united-states-budget-2016).

------
guelo
One of the hardest views of government budget to come by is per-category over
time or per budget proposal. So you could see, for example, how much police
funding has gone up or down over time. Or for different budget proposals the
increase/decrease of each category compared to the current baseline. That data
is never available when proposals are debated in Congress every year. The best
you get in the news is when some interest group digs deep to find the most
click baity possible shocking line item. I think even the politicians just
vote based on party and don't really have any idea about the budget big
picture. Hopefully this Ballmer will provide that kind of view.

------
pthreads
I am very eager to see what's in store here when it goes live. If indeed it
contains accurate, unbiased and factual data then it is a great project. And
it is about time someone did it. I wish it was citizen funded instead of rich
individuals (even if the intentions are good). But I will take what I can get
for now.

~~~
nojvek
I'll get excited when it comes out. What is in it for ballmer?

~~~
gumby
It makes his wife happy? That is what is discussed in the article. Frankly,
it's a reasonable motivation.

~~~
xbmcuser
I think it was more about him wanting to win an argument with his wife about
his tax dollars being enough for charity but once he started getting the data
like all engineers he kept going deeper down the rabbit hole.

------
scosman
"“But come on, doesn’t the government take care of the poor, the sick, the
old?” Mr. Ballmer recalled telling her."

Too bad he never had a mentor who was an expert in philanthropy...

~~~
simplegeek
It seems his wife is.

~~~
akcreek
He was sarcastically alluding to Bill Gates.

------
24gttghh
>With an unlimited budget, he went about hiring a team of researchers in
Seattle and made a grant to the University of Pennsylvania to help his staff
put the information together. Altogether, he has spent more than $10 million
between direct funding and grants.

$10 million spent so far just trying to figure out what the collective
governments in the US is spending money on. Is this an argument for
privatization or a failure of government to provide this information
succinctly itself?

~~~
rjtavares
Why do you believe an equivalent effort to figure out what the private sector
is spending money on would be cheaper?

~~~
Zak
When it comes to publicly-traded companies, it probably would be because
they're required to make specific, comprehensive disclosures about their
income and spending on a regular basis. Governments, especially local
governments are much less consistent about such disclosures.

It's also reasonable to expect that a government that is elected by the public
and funded by taxation provide an accounting to voters and taxpayers.

~~~
TheCoelacanth
He's only using government provided data for this site, so it's not like the
data isn't available.

------
runeks
> His first instinct, naturally, was to go to a search engine. “My favorite
> one, of course: I go to Bing,” he said. “And by the way, I check it with
> Google, just to make sure there’s nothing I’m missing.”

It appears that Mr. Ballmer could cut his search time in half by just skipping
the first step here. I believe this is the optimization everyone else applies.

------
propman
I am definitely very excited about this. Blanket statements like "government
is too inefficient and such a waste" or "we need to raise more taxes to fix
this problem" are statements that are irrefutable due to the convoluted nature
of government. Now we can have a little more insight into what is efficient
and what isn't. Also the opaqueness and division of data makes it difficult to
make meaningful and economical decisions in a macro sense. I feel like there
are lots of untapped opportunities to create services that involve gathering
specific data that may also be sold anonymously to government in order to make
better decisions along with helping customers.

~~~
afsina
Sadly, many people who make those blanket statements (such as myself) also
believe governments, especially big-centralized ones cannot be fixed. These
kind of data is good, it may be an eye opener for some. But governments will
find loop holes to make those spendings look like justified. Most people will
be fine with it anyway. Look at the authors response: "Oh there are 10 million
public school teachers, those are nice people!"

~~~
thomastjeffery
At the same time, more specific data is always better.

Soon he'll realize the slim margins that go to actual teachers, and see that
most of it goes to boards, etc.

~~~
rayiner
Nope. 80% of per school expenditures goes to salary and benefits, with the
overwhelming majority for instruction rather than administration:
[https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cmb.asp](https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cmb.asp).

~~~
thomastjeffery
I stand corrected.

------
tommoor
The UK gov supplies a very simple chart that shows where your taxes have gone,
it looks like this:

[https://imgur.com/a/pr6LQ](https://imgur.com/a/pr6LQ)

Although the real thing shows how much money you personally contributed to
each sector - I removed for the screenshot.

~~~
adventured
The US already has numerous breakdowns on where the money goes in segments.
For example, I can tell you how much of the budget & tax revenue goes to the
military, Social Security, medicare, veterans housing, interest on the public
debt, and on and on. We have vast, freely available public data on spending.
That's not what Ballmer is doing.

------
discordance
Direct link to Ballmer's site -

[https://www.usafacts.org](https://www.usafacts.org)

------
ceejay
Granted, I don't yet know the scope of the project precisely (ie. how detailed
and how much information was collected), but if it's as big as I think it is,
Steve Ballmer has instantly become one of my favorite people currently
inhabiting this planet.

~~~
thr0waway1239
It was created by someone who was at Microsoft. If the past is any indicator,
you will see a splashy introduction, the follow-up and follow-through will be
horrendous, and in the end everyone will hold their noses and still use it
anyway.

------
samfisher83
I think this is an interesting point:

>One rule Mr. Ballmer said his team made early on was to use only government
data — no outside providers — to avoid accusations of bias. But this created
its own challenges.

Its going to be interesting to see the site. I wonder if it will be free?

~~~
bluejekyll
Hopefully free for non-profit uses at least.

------
WalterBright
> “How many people work for government in the United States?” he asked, with
> the excitement of a child showing off a new toy, before displaying the
> answer. “Almost 24 million."

Directly, sure. Indirectly, a lot more. By indirectly, I mean companies that
do government contract work.

~~~
dingdongding
If you go by that approach then everyone in the society indirectly works for
the govt in some way or the other.

~~~
ht_th
Sure. But I was more thinking about people who directly work indirectly for
the government, such as cleaners who work for a company that has them clean
(the same) government offices (all the time). There are a lot of similar
supporting services that have been privatized and "out-sourced" to external
companies but which employees are practically working for the government.

------
Zigurd
The problem with "radical transparency"is that the worst money-wasters get to
hide behind confidentiality in the name of security:

1\. Counter-terrorism spending, which wastes money protecting backwaters no
terrorist has even heard of

2\. The Drug War and it's army of informants

3\. Seizures of property and cash, dimensions currently unknown

4\. A Cold War-sized military in a post-Cold War world

5\. The prison-industrial complex

Those are all discretionary spending. And those are all conservatives'
favorites. And they all get wrapped in "we can't be transparent, because drug
lords and terrorists!"

~~~
marcosdumay
At a minimum, transparency lets you say "hey, we do all that stuff with this
$, why is there all that extra $$$$ spent there where we can't see?"

~~~
Zigurd
Sure. But if you look at other comments on this thread, there are arguments
for fine-grained transparency for, for example, school spending, or social
program spending. The objection to that is that it's grist for the outrage
mill: "How DARE they spend money on LGBT issues!" Radical transparency would
be better supportable if it did not exclude the secret policeman's budget.

------
rahimnathwani
The UK's National Audit Office has this page:
[https://www.nao.org.uk/highlights/whole-of-government-
accoun...](https://www.nao.org.uk/highlights/whole-of-government-accounts/)

It shows a breakdown, for the year 2014-2015, of "consolidated financial
statements for the whole of the UK public sector".

The pie chart and "Breakdown of WGA Balances" can be hard to understand when
you first load the page, but if you hover over a column in the column chart
(under '2011-2015 Balance Information'), you can click to see a breakdown for
one of the sections of the column chart.

It's kind of nice to see the information categorised by type, rather than by
which body spent the money.

------
joshmn
I've always kind of had a crush on Steve Ballmer, he just seems like a real
jolly fellow. After reading the excerpts, that crush only grew.

------
prance
> Well, let’s look at that. People who work in schools, higher ed, public
> institutions of education — they are government employees.” And they
> represent almost half of the 24 million, his data shows.

> “And you say, O.K., what are the other big blocks?” Mr. Ballmer continued.
> “Well, active-duty military, war fighters. Government hospitals. Really? I
> didn’t know that.”

I'm really surprised if this really surprised him. I mean, the ex-CEO of one
of the most powerful and influential corporates on Earth didn't know that
soldiers, public teachers, medical personnel etc. are employed by government??
If that's true, I don't even know what to say. I would find it ridiculous,
laughable, if it wasn't so sad.

~~~
lifeformed
I think he was surprised at the scale, not that those groups counted as gov't.

------
yeukhon
He talks about his motivation in this speech:
[https://youtu.be/ChxeCKyafVU](https://youtu.be/ChxeCKyafVU) "How to Tell a
Story", I recommend watch it.

------
macawfish
I'm enjoying how his enthusiasm is being channelled in a productive way!

------
clavalle
This is half the battle. The other half is figuring out the value created by
the spending.

Hopefully having the data in one place can help us calculate that fuzzier side
of the equation.

------
saadrizvi
This is fantastic - this type of transparency will also put positive pressure
on agencies and departments to demonstrate their outcomes for citizens.

------
jsl6906
I'm not sure how comparable it is, but for what it's worth, the Census Bureau
disseminates data on State and Local Government Finances:
[https://www.census.gov/govs/local/](https://www.census.gov/govs/local/). Not
particularly timely however, as the most recent data available is for 2014.

------
hNewsLover99
Talk about your fluff pieces!

Sorkin's article ignores Ballmer's billion-dollar tax dodge... er, break...
for buying a basketball team.* Ballmer should revise his boast from "paid for
with pre-tax dollars" to "paid for with "shamefully un-taxed dollars."

Interesting terms that don't show up when Googling Ballmer's site (at least as
of today...)

tax expenditure tax shelter estate tax good will sports team basketball

    
    
                 site:usafacts.org
    

And so much for the "already taxed" argument by Trump's billionaire class (and
their gullible working-class sycophants) against the estate tax. How much
supposedly already-income-taxed dollars of wealth will soon escape estate
taxes? And how much will all of these tax expenditures __add to working and
middle class taxes and the national debt?

Now that, Mr. Sorkin, would be an interesting article.

* Check out "Steve Ballmer Gets Billion-Dollar Tax Write-Off For Being Basketball Baron" at [https://yro.slashdot.org/story/14/10/27/0237200/steve-ballme...](https://yro.slashdot.org/story/14/10/27/0237200/steve-ballmer-gets-billion-dollar-tax-write-off-for-being-basketball-baron)

__[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_expenditure](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_expenditure)

------
taurath
It sounds pretty great, but I'm very worried about what actually comes out of
it given the media landscape. People will use the data in ways that benefit
them - even the CBO's reports are highly politicized.

If we can't start taking "real, true" data at face value and using it to drive
actual policy again, this is just another drop in the bucket.

~~~
kuyan
> even the CBO's reports are highly politicized

Can you source that?

~~~
MisterBastahrd
I took it to mean "third parties politicize CBO reports" rather than "CBO
reports are created with ideological slants," because, well, that's the truth
of the matter. You can't criticize a CBO forecast for being slightly
inaccurate when politicians decide to change the parameters after the fact.

~~~
astronautjones
I think you're correct, but it was poorly worded

~~~
taurath
Sorry about that, GP is correct with regard to my intent.

------
victor22
I hope he focus on collecting and funneling the data vs. spending a ton on
analyzing the current easily available data.

------
aaronjgreenberg
It's funny how well this dovetails with the stereotype of the tech industry.

WIFE: You should help with these philanthropic efforts.

BALLMER: I pay lots of taxes, the government takes care of helping people.

WIFE: That's not true.

BALLMER: Yes it is, and rather than contribute philanthropically, I'll start a
start-up to settle this.

------
dang
Since the project itself is now at #1
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14139186](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14139186)),
I suppose we can treat this earlier discussion as the duplicate.

------
OliverJones
I love how this article portrays Mr. Ballmer as a wide eyed innocent.

“I mean it’s funny, but I didn’t realize all these not-for-profits were in a
sense almost like government contractors.”

Well, yeah. Antipoverty nonprofit agencies run programs like Head Start and
handle all sorts of charity operations. Adoption agencies, training programs,
and on and on. A key skill for nonprofit comptrollers is knowing how to get
governments to cough up the money they're contracted to pay these agencies.

“You know it’s not legal to know how many firearms that are in this country?
The government is not allowed to collect the number.”

Mr. Ballmer, are you the LAST person to know that? People interested in
stemming urban violence have known that for decades.

Maybe somebody with his clout can make a difference. It's good to have this
information gathered up in a useful form. But, enough with the "innocents
abroad" narrative!

~~~
bufbupa
I'm going to have to disagree with you here. I think its much more
constructive to encourage potentially ignorant individuals to be inquisitive,
rather than to reprimand them for not knowing something sooner.

To belittle those individuals who did not have access or exposure to this
information seems cynical or high-horsed. Exposing verifiable data is the
first step, encouraging people to challenge their belief systems through
curiosity and with the assurance that changing their mind (based on that data)
is not stupid or reprehensible is the second.

------
Fifer82
Just incase there isn't already enough other links. This one is for the US /
UK / Czech Republic

I liked the style.

[https://www.wikibudgets.org/](https://www.wikibudgets.org/)

------
yread
He talked about it in his recent TEDx talk

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VRgmKiE0Js](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VRgmKiE0Js)

Quite interesting (and low-key for Ballmer) talk

------
asveikau
Steve Ballmer gives mainly to Republicans and gave money to oppose income tax
in Washington state specifically for high earners. I doubt he can be totally
nonpartisan on this subject.

~~~
berberous
So? Literally everyone is partisan. Everyone has a world view. That doesn't
mean you can't legitimately aim to have a non-biased open and accurate
dataset. Different folks can interpret that data set in different ways.
Balmer's view of how the data suggests we should drive policy can be different
from your own.

~~~
pc2g4d
There's more to it, though. Washington has a long history of opposition to
state income taxes, for various reasons: [http://kuow.org/post/strange-short-
story-washington-state-s-...](http://kuow.org/post/strange-short-story-
washington-state-s-income-tax)

In a way, he was just supporting state tradition.

------
whatupmd
A step in the right direction, to say the least.

------
WalterBright
This will be a much needed site. Thanks, Steve!

------
smithkl42
It's quite possible for someone to be a mediocre CEO and still do good, smart
things. This is a good thing, and smart.

~~~
nyolfen
i'm not sure why the dig at him was a necessary foreword

~~~
esturk
To give pause that only revered CEOs can bring meaningful change in this
world. This view is especially prevalent in the Tech world.

------
bawana
can we translate this data into performance measures for our politicians?
After all, we are paying freshmen congressmen >150K annually with an
additional stipend of several million to run their office. EVERY YEAR. How
does what they do make a measurable impact on our lives?

------
Clownshoesms
There's something comically evil looking about Ballmer, almost the Emperor
from Star Wars.

A former Microsoft exec wondering what the government does with money? A lot
landed in his pockets I suspect, but it's good he's philanthropic now.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vhh_GeBPOhs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vhh_GeBPOhs).

------
0x445442
Bravo Mr. Ballmer. Now lets get all government financial transactions on the
block chain...

------
40acres
This makes me wonder, has the data been public all this time?

------
aryehof
The article mentions that the data shows a huge allocation of resources to
education. Why is education publicly funded in the USA, and not left to market
forces? Can't that be considered a "socialist" policy?

~~~
castratikron
A public company generally cares about quarterly performance. A private
company might have its sights as far as a few years out. However, with
education it takes about 20 years to start seeing a return on investment. It
just doesn't make sense to approach education from a business standpoint, both
because the ROI is very low, and you need to have stability in education, you
can't have someone like ITT Tech all of a sudden deciding to close their door
to tens of thousands of students and leave with a bunch of useless credits
that won't transfer.

~~~
SamReidHughes
If you really believe this why don't you short-sell a bunch of companies and
make a killing?

~~~
tanderson92
Because the belief has nothing to do with your arbitrary test. And even if it
did, the market can remain irrational longer than you can stay solvent.

~~~
seoguru
one of my favorite John Maynard Keynes quotes.

------
joshu
I just bought a domain for something similar. Oops

~~~
jonknee
Team up, there is more than enough data!

~~~
joshu
I actually don't like the way they present or treat the data so I guess I
still have time.

------
rbanffy
Wow! I'd never imagine Steve would eventually grow up into a responsible
citizen... After everything he did at the helm of Microsoft, I'm genuinely,
positively surprised.

------
victor22
It's fascinating how great leaders do PR by making it seem they run the whole
show, therefore making them look even greater.

------
ashnyc
Steve Ballmer will be running for president ... wait and see

------
nickgrosvenor
and they're using mail chimp to manage their email database

------
afsina
I strongly disagree with the author here:

"Suddenly, he explained, the faceless bureaucrats who are often pilloried as
symbols of government waste suddenly start to look like the people in our
neighborhood whom we’re very glad to have."

