{"id":531130,"date":"2010-04-16T18:53:00","date_gmt":"2010-04-16T22:53:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/techdirt.com\/articles\/20100414\/1228039013.shtml"},"modified":"2010-04-16T18:53:00","modified_gmt":"2010-04-16T22:53:00","slug":"steve-ballmer-tasked-with-fixing-the-deficit-with-a-video-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/531130","title":{"rendered":"Steve Ballmer Tasked With Fixing The Deficit — With A Video Game"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Obama Administration has appointed Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson to lead an 18-person, bi-partisan commission tasked with tackling the country’s deficit. USAToday<\/a><\/em> is running a fairly typical piece looking at the multitude of moving pieces that contribute to the nation’s fairly-staggering $12.8 trillion debit load, and the variety of partisan and often factually-challenged bickering that surrounds the debate. Buried down at the bottom of the piece is an odd solution to a very complex problem. According to Bowles, the commission has contacted Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer about Microsoft creating “a deficit-reduction video game” that would allow the average American to attempt balancing the budget. Details are scarce, but it would appear that the likely browser-based game would act to “virally” educate the public on how reducing the deficit isn’t easy. In other words, it’s a PR move designed to seemingly justify why we continue to fail — instead of solving the problem. And here we were busily waiting for a Tea Party MMORPG, or Halo 4: Die Deficit Die<\/em>. <\/p>\n

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The Obama Administration has appointed Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson to lead an 18-person, bi-partisan commission tasked with tackling the country’s deficit. USAToday is running a fairly typical piece looking at the multitude of moving pieces that contribute to the nation’s fairly-staggering $12.8 trillion debit load, and the variety of partisan and often factually-challenged bickering […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6723,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-531130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6723"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=531130"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531130\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=531130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=531130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=531130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}