Slashdot Mirror

Most countries do a lot of things that are bad ideas. Our own country is one of them. "If France jumped off a bridge, would you jump, too?"

But, to reiterate my other points, let's look info from the 2007 data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

65% of workers earning minimum wage work part time. No matter how high the minimum wage is, you're not going to support yourself with part-time work.

Half of people earning minimum are under 25. These earners are largely comprised of people being supported by someone else (high school student living with parents, college students in parents' basement) who do not have families to support.

Food service provides the largest chunk of these minimum wage jobs. But, these jobs generally aren't "minimum wage" in that a lot of them are tipped positions.

22% are married. A minimum wage job is a secondary source of income.

I can't find my dead-tree source, but it had an older statistic on how many people are stuck earning minimum wage for more than 1 year (very few). The 2.3% of all workers who earn minimum wage are not the same people year after year.

Doing some quick math - 50% live with parents, 22% live with spouse. This is why minimum wage is a terrible way to "keep you from being homeless and starving" - at most this describes only 28% of minimum wage earners.

Minimum wage does not work. The overwhelming majority of people earning it are not impoverished. If the goal is to help prevent starvation, fixing the food stamps program would be a better use of our congresscritter's time.

Interesting tidbit: 3% of people without a high school diploma or GED earn minimum wage. 2% of people with a high school diploma earn minimum wage. 1% of people with a college diploma earn minimum. (I suspect these are English majors ^.^) If the college educated are three times less likely to earn minimum wage, maybe we could look at reforming our public education system and at further subsidization of student loans.

But, the point of my rant: Minimum wage does very little to help the impoverished. Better ways to fight poverty are improving education (which is harder than pulling a $number out of your arse!) and focus on programs that do help the poor.

Asshats!

Though you didn't imply that copyright law needs to change because the RIAA are asshats, the entire theme of this post did. So I would like to challenge that directly.

1) The RIAA claims that we need to strictly enforce copyright law (and charge per copy) in order to ensure that artists get paid and continue making music.
2) The RIAA are asshats.
Therefore: we don't need copyright law (and strict enforcement) in order to ensure that artists get paid and continue making music.

This is an example of the "ad hominem" logical fallacy. Yes, they are asshats, but that has no bearing on the arguments they use to defend their business model.

I would summarize their position as a variant of the Hypothetical Syllogism (I am adding more premises than allowed, for brevity).

1) If we do not have strict interpretation and enforcement of copyright law, then people will be able to get an artists work for free.

2) If people can get an artists work for free, then most people will.

3) If most people get an artists work for free, then artists will not be able to make enough money to sustain themselves.

4) If artists cannot make enough money to sustain themselves, then they will have no economic incentive to produce music.

5) If artists have no economic incentive to produce music, then they will not make music.

Therefore: in order for there to be music (which we obviously want), there must be strict enforcement of copyright law.

To the best of my knowledge, that is the line of reasoning being advocated, and it should therefore be logically attacked.

I would specifically (and individually) attack premises 3, 4, and 5. According to the US Department of Labor most musicians work part time (already can't sustain themselves but work anyway) and also many of them earn money through live performances (monetizing their work even though free music is presently available). So my attacks, specifically, are:

3) Artists can still monetize their work, through live performances, merchandising, and alternative business models.

4) Even the lesser gains of part time employment or low-income alternative business models qualify as economic incentive.

5) Some artists produce music for the love of producing music, and think of compensation only after the fact.

So there you have it. In a nutshell I would say that we should at least experiment with the alternative business models, and see how they pan out. If all artists stop making music and America starts to experience cultural starvation, we can always reintroduce strict copyright enforcement later on...and then with much more universal support. As it stands, we are unwilling to even try, largely as a result of irrational argumentation (and, of course, a few wealthy/powerful entities who stand to benefit from our irrational behavior).

The link you cite is again bogus as this reflects the cost to employers rather than salary, which is the original poster's issue.

Mean computer programmer salary:
$67,400 in May 2005
$69,500 in May 2006

This is an annual increase of 3.11%, which is lower than inflation of 3.39% in 2005 and 3.24% in 2006. So in some meaningless sense wages did rise, but in the meaningful sense of buying anything, wages went down.

You still have not addressed my question regarding the relevance of rising wages to the visa.

That said, I agree with the sentiment of your original comment.

The link you cite is again bogus as this reflects the cost to employers rather than salary, which is the original poster's issue.

Mean computer programmer salary:
$67,400 in May 2005
$69,500 in May 2006

This is an annual increase of 3.11%, which is lower than inflation of 3.39% in 2005 and 3.24% in 2006. So in some meaningless sense wages did rise, but in the meaningful sense of buying anything, wages went down.

You still have not addressed my question regarding the relevance of rising wages to the visa.

That said, I agree with the sentiment of your original comment.

sorry mistake, it's even MORE obvious. look on the front page for details on 3 month movments. http://www.bls.gov/ncs/ect/home.htm

show me some proof that hb-1 visa's have resulted in pay cuts, because i keep hearing people running their mouths about it but when i look at http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm all i see are rising wages.

Job prospects should be excellent, as computer software engineers are expected to be among the fastest-growing occupations through the year 2016.

Employment of computer programmers is expected to decline slowly

Job prospects should be excellent, as computer software engineers are expected to be among the fastest-growing occupations through the year 2016.

Employment of computer programmers is expected to decline slowly

Real inflation (not the CPI bs that the government hands out every year, which excludes stuff like fuel)

Real inflation (not the CPI bs that the government hands out every year, which excludes stuff like fuel)

There's no real difference between Democrats and Republicans. There is no voice of dissent in American media. Issues that are important are simply left out of the discussion entirely. (Example: how many civilians should we be allowed to kill rather than should be we killing civilians in the first place?)

The media is smart enough to know the answer is something you wouldn't like. The answer for a lot of people would be that, we obviously haven't killed enough.

From 2000 through 2005, U.S. multinationals eliminated 2.1 million jobs at home while adding 784,000 to their payrolls abroad, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis." -USAToday

It's overwhelmingly automation. http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2004/mar/wk5/art01.htm "US had highest productivity gains in manufacturing." Have you ever built anything? Just look at how a factory floor is today versus a decade ago. Nowadays instead of lathes and saws and a wide variety of cutting tools, you have a big honking laser CNC cutter that just lasers the part out, with no operator invention. That's dozens of jobs right there.

And, look at how customer service used to be done, with hoards of people and paper files and multipart copies. Nowadays, thanks to people like us, all of those people no longer have jobs. Yes, if you are in computer science, you can't escape your own role in throwing people out of work. Every programming contract we get is to throw somebody else out of work.

Irregardless, let's approach the situation from your point of view. Let's assume that we follow the funding to the source, and bomb the country responsible. (Never mind the argument that we have no legal right to do so under international law.)

We have every right to do so under international law. Besides, what sovereign right does the United Nations have over me? Or some institution in Europe? That's just absurd.

If we follow your logic, which countries do we declare war on?

We don't have to declare war, just reserve the right to bomb or otherwise destroy any nation that harbors terrorists that attack the USA.

How many neighbors of "terrorists" have to die before we stop bombing, or do we just kill civilians in perpetuity for the actions of a non-government organization?

There's no such thing as civilians, in war.

Why did we invade Iraq and not Saudi Arabia or the UAE, or maintain enough troops in Afghanistan and bring security to the entire country instead of just the capital?

You know, I never thought of that before. Wow, we really should bomb Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Afghanistan is useless. We should have just nuked Kandahar and focused on Iraq.

That won't even keep pace with inflation. Real inflation (not the CPI bs that the government hands out every year, which excludes stuff like fuel) is running between 10% and 12%.

No wonder Gen Y is cynical about salaries.

Because 2.9% is lower than inflation. Duh! Wanker.

Actually ... I did some research on this just to confirm that the USA is the #1 as far as first world countries go (I thought that maybe Australia, Canada or New Zealand might be contenders, too). But instead, I found this:

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/env_are_und_pro-environment-areas-under-protection

Nationmaster is fairly accurate as far as I know.

The per-capita statistic is fairly interesting, too:

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/env_are_und_pro_percap-areas-under-protection-per-capita

Pretty much all of them. Unless your going to claim a normal gas released by the act of humans breathing is something toxic, but look at who puts the most effort in it?

Um ... carbon dioxide ? That's fairly toxic. Concentrations above 7% in the inhaled air will kill in a matter of minutes. That's very easy to verify and even less disputed than it being a greenhouse gas.

The US has given Europe money to help clean their shit up in the past.

For example ... ?

Yep, you have different numbers then I do. Maybe a cite would be worth it.

Here, for example:

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/lab_une-labor-unemployment

That these numbers aren't pulled out of someone's ass can be cross-checked:

http://www.bls.gov/cps/home.htm

http://www.destatis.de/jetspeed/portal/cms/Sites/destatis/Internet/DE/Content/Statistiken/Zeitreihen/WirtschaftAktuell/Arbeitsmarkt/Content75/arb422a,templateId=renderPrint.psml

And most of that gain seems to be attributed to a negetive population growth.

I would contest that. The people who die aren't in the unemployment statistics anymore. In fact, the number of people who do have a job has increased:

http://www.destatis.de/jetspeed/portal/cms/Sites/destatis/Internet/DE/Content/Statistiken/Arbeitsmarkt/Erwerbstaetige/Tabellen/Content50/InlaenderInlandskonzept,templateId=renderPrint.psml

They have done this by wrecking their economy and not growing as a population.

I hardly consider the economy over here wrecked. And about the growing thing, well, what's the government supposed to do about that ? Give people money for reproducing ? They're doing exactly that, and it's not working. And they can't exactly force people to have kids.

Ask yourself why the supposed answers that are going to fix the Problem seem to be more about giving money to poor countries then fixing the problem.

So that the "rich" countries realize that Earths atmosphere is not their personal dumping ground ? Because once it costs money to do so, they might get off their asses and start working on long-term solutions ?

But after you do, then ask yourself why, if this is a global problem and it is so bad that we need to force every country to work on fixing it even though only 37 or so of the 158 countries signed on to the Kyoto protocol have emissions limits imposed on them while it is being toughed as the FIX for Global warming, but seriously, ask yourself this important question and tell me wh

Read this from the department of labor, http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos027.htm

Very insightful for any job industry you are getting into.

Sometimes I'll read books multiple times, and the probability that I do so increases with the time I've had a book. For example, I bought Heart of Darkness when I was 16, read it then, read it twice more for class in college, and then read it again recently. In addition, it's not unusual for me to mark up books as I'm reading them, or, occasionally, get them signed. Friends sometimes borrow them. There's also something to be said for efficiency: most books these days come from Amazon, where shipping is free over $25, most books are discounted 5 - 40% (usually 20 - 25%), and I can expend a minimal amount of finding them.

To be sure, I don't keep every book I buy, and the ones I don't keep either go back on Amazon or to the local thrift store. If you rarely reread books, you're correct that you don't have much to gain -- provided that you live near enough to a library to make it there. The bls says average wages in the U.S. are $19/hour or so; so if you spend an extra 30 or 40 minutes going there and back, you might be in effect spending as much as the value of the book just getting there and back.

A little of this analysis is philosophical, too: you think buying books a tremendous waste of money and paper; I think of them as, in part, showing a facet of my personality to visitors. Who's right? I'm not sure, but I read enough to have considered the issues.

As far as society expecting more of people is concerned, I would think that people would try to out-compete each other in job performance as well as leisure activities. Imagine what an extra eight hours every single day could do for one's career (assuming that it didn't impact performance), and then think about what would happen if a few hundred thousand career-minded people thought of that. Society as a whole would shift toward longer work hours, and if the workers were salaried, compensation would likely not increase substantially. People would be doing more work for (proportionally) less pay, even if it took a few years, or even a generation, for the changes to occur.

Furthermore, if you're inclined to be skeptical, just think of what life used to be like before widespread cheap electric light was available - most people got at least nine hours of sleep - it was dark, there was little to do, and lighting was weak and expensive. Now, since economic and leisure activity is feasible 24 hours per day, the average American sleeps only about 7.6 hours per night (according to this government source), limited primarily by the biological necessity of sleep. If that necessity is removed (or at least obscured, as I suspect that this compound would do, since the functions of sleep are still poorly understood), sleep hours will correspondingly decrease, likely to near non-existence.

I do realize they still sell them, but are they $0.99 per song cheap?

Around 1990, there were CD singles. Granted, they were intended to be replacements for 12" maxi-singles and not 45s, but they were $5. And the record companies killed them because they thought CD singles were "too cheap" -- that they were canibalizing the sales of CD albums.

The expectation of paying $0.99 per song is not based upon historical price trends, but rather upon the expectation that music should be free or at least cheap, which in turn was caused by the record companies withholding digital sales until just a few years ago.

The sad thing is, Kurt Vonnegut was right over 50 years ago when he predicted what life would be like the "future". Of course he made some errors, such as MBAs are the rich ones instead of engineering PhDs, and the obligatory mid 50's "massive vaccum tube supercomputer", but in general he was right on. In "Player Piano" most of humanity is either in the army or in the "Recreation and Reclamation", ie masses of unskilled laborers who dig ditches and whatnot. Really seems to describe the current situation in the US today quite well.

The sad thing is, Kurt Vonnegut was right over 50 years ago when he predicted what life would be like the "future". Of course he made some errors, such as MBAs are the rich ones instead of engineering PhDs, and the obligatory mid 50's "massive vaccum tube supercomputer", but in general he was right on. In "Player Piano" most of humanity is either in the army or in the "Recreation and Reclamation", ie masses of unskilled laborers who dig ditches and whatnot. Really seems to describe the current situation in the US today quite well.

"I guess you didn't read my post or any of the information I linked."

No, I didn't read Woolf's book or listen to her speech. I've heard the arguments a dozen times before. You pick a few conditions leading up to Nazi Germany, then compare them to the current administration's policies. It's sloppily researched propaganda. See here:
http://www.amazon.com/review/product/1933392797/ref=cm_cr_dp_synop?_encoding=UTF8&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending#R28W0R1KUAZR0H
And here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_sharpshooter_fallacy

"Germany was a parliamentary democracy, fairly liberal and very similar to the U.S. today."

No, it was pretty friggin far from the current state of the US. For one, unemployment in Germany was at a staggeringly high 30% in 1932. It's at about 4.5% in the US currently, trending down in the last four years. I bet if you do a little more research, you could find other, rather significant, ways 1930 Germany != 2000 USA. Unless, of course, you are only looking for similarities.
http://data.bls.gov/PDQ/servlet/SurveyOutputServlet?request_action=wh&graph_name=LN_cpsbref3
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/GERunemployment.htm

"Since you mention the Constitution, there are laws being passed as we speak (already passed this year and proposed right now) that dismantle and subvert the constitution."

Laws cannot dismantle the constitution, only constitutional amendments can. Stupid laws get passed all the time, mainly to increase the power of the state over it's citizens. Welcome to 20th/21st century USA.

"But as a matter of fact, there are direct links between Hitler, Hitler's financier and Prescott Bush, our current president's grandfather."

That's nice, what does it have to do with anything?
http://www.fallacyfiles.org/genefall.html
More or less.

"Within a year you will hear this happen to an American blogger and many people will defend the action."

It happens all the time in all types of media. It doesn't matter as long as it's not the government suppressing speech. I can easily visit anarchist, communist, fascist, racist, theocratic, liberal, conservative, and UFO cult religion websites with impunity - where is the organized suppression of thought here? Then again, a lot of media outlets are making a heap of money skewering the Bush regime, maybe it's a conspiracy! :)

"Furthermore, the movement within the U.S. government has directly used tactics, imagery, phrases and ideas from fascist Germany in current times and it's directly related to the things that I'm talking about."

I'm not sure what "Movement" you are talking about, but the political tactics used by Germany have been around before Nietzsche and Machiavelli. I'm not saying it's right, but it certainly isn't a new development, or something indicating a swing toward fascism.
http://www.fallacyfiles.org/genefall.html
(Again)

"I call Bullshit on your pompous invocation of Godwin's law and ask that you at least dig around a bit before responding."

I did dig around and found that you are even more wrong than I originally thought. I suggest you link to websites that provide data to back your arguments, not to other people making the same argument as you.

http://www.fallacyfiles.org/authorit.html

I suggest you read Chomsky, he does some halfway decent research and uses citations, even if his conclusions are utterly wrong.

Lawyers in 2004 made a median of $94,930. The median programmer, by way of comparison, made $62,890. For net/sysadmins, the median is $58,190. The lowest median salary by specialty for doctors was $137,119. Surgeons made over $250,000, on the median. Computing and information systems managers made a median of $92,570.

Lawyers in 2004 made a median of $94,930. The median programmer, by way of comparison, made $62,890. For net/sysadmins, the median is $58,190. The lowest median salary by specialty for doctors was $137,119. Surgeons made over $250,000, on the median. Computing and information systems managers made a median of $92,570.

Lawyers in 2004 made a median of $94,930. The median programmer, by way of comparison, made $62,890. For net/sysadmins, the median is $58,190. The lowest median salary by specialty for doctors was $137,119. Surgeons made over $250,000, on the median. Computing and information systems managers made a median of $92,570.

Lawyers in 2004 made a median of $94,930. The median programmer, by way of comparison, made $62,890. For net/sysadmins, the median is $58,190. The lowest median salary by specialty for doctors was $137,119. Surgeons made over $250,000, on the median. Computing and information systems managers made a median of $92,570.

Lawyers in 2004 made a median of $94,930. The median programmer, by way of comparison, made $62,890. For net/sysadmins, the median is $58,190. The lowest median salary by specialty for doctors was $137,119. Surgeons made over $250,000, on the median. Computing and information systems managers made a median of $92,570.

Lawyers in 2004 made a median of $94,930. The median programmer, by way of comparison, made $62,890. For net/sysadmins, the median is $58,190. The lowest median salary by specialty for doctors was $137,119. Surgeons made over $250,000, on the median. Computing and information systems managers made a median of $92,570.

You need to take economics again. Inflation is defined as a devaluation of currency, which can happen by either price increases or money supply increases, or both. When the talking heads on CNN talk about "inflation", though, they are usually referring to changes in the Consumer Price Index.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation

The biggest problem here is that the Executive branch has all the agencies, and whenever the leftists win a bigger government vote all the extra people in the bigger government are at the Executive branch's disposal.

Congress has some support staff, as do the justices of the Supreme Court. There are roughly two million civilian personnel of the federal government outside the Postal Service. For 535 people or 9 people to hold responsible two million individuals who are neither elected by nor directly responsible to the people is a bit ludicrous. The sheer size of the Executive branch makes accountability and the notion of checks and balances pretty difficult, even with the 94 federal district courts involved.

The Judiciary simply must be larger or the Executive smaller in order for the people to be properly served by checks and balances. In fact, I'd say the Judiciary really needs to be larger and account for more of the federal budget simply in order to guarantee a speedy trial as the sixth amendment promises while not putting undue strain on the court to shorten previous trials. Perhaps civil cases could be heard by a separate set of judges in each district specializing in civil cases, but I digress.

In any case, I'd think the huge Executive branch, with its apparent penchant for shifting blame and covering things up, is much too large right now for the other branches to balance it enough.

Do we really need 2 million people to provide federal government services to 303 million citizens on top of all the 16 million state, county, and city personnel providing services as well? In 2000, 19 million or so people were government employees (it doesn't say whether that includes revenue-generating government agencies like the Post Service). That's over 6% of the population living on taxes and borrowed money who are not elected, or over 14% of the total work force. I fail to see how that is sustainable, let alone sufficiently kept in check by state and federal courts and legislatures.

Nurses don't do too bad. Here in the Seattle area according to BLS they earn about $70K/year compared to $91K/year for programmers. If you think IT workers get no respect from management, ask nurses about how much respect they get from doctors.

The Bureau of Labor statistics, in particular their "100 Years of Consumer Spending" publication. Available here. (~500k PDF)

The graphs you want to look at are the "Expenditure Share for Non-Necessities" graphs for various regions (US generally is on p.11). It started off at a little over 20% just after WWI, and then climbed steadily and dramatically (30% after WWII, which was the real formation of the 'middle class' in the U.S., ~35% in 1960, ~40% in the early 70s) until you get to the current figure which is around 50%. Nationally, that's an all-time high.

If you look at particular areas, like New York City, there has been a small but significant hit in non-necessity spending since the mid-80s boom, probably due to increases in the cost of living due to increased rent. (But in all fairness, NYC is a lot nicer place to live now than it was then.) Spending in Boston also slumped slightly, probably for the same reason. So you get some regions that are probably feeling the pinch -- time to move.

Anyone who thought the 70s were some sort of picnic is looking at them through some seriously rose-colored glasses. The 70s were a time of instability, high unemployment (over 8%!), and out of control inflation. If people were buying things then, it's only because they knew that trying to save it was a waste of time.

It's more difficult to find good data that's correlated with income, but there are a few here and there; including this one from the Family Economics and Nutrition Review, which says flat out: "The data indicate that all household groups were better off in 1989-90 than they were in 1980-81, as measured by the amount and share of total expenditures on nonnecessities ("other")." So that would indicate that there hasn't been some sort of continuous slump from the 70s until today -- in the 80s things actually got better, and the 1980s weren't exactly known as a great period for the economy (certainly not compared to the 1990s).

In terms of cost-adjusted purchasing power (which the BLS estimates in the introduction to the big report above [1], as probably tripled in the last century), you'd be insane to want to live in any previous era, unless your metric for success is purely that of being on the same level as your neighbors. Yes, there were times when there was more income equality, but that's not necessarily an indicator of prosperity; you can still make more money, buy more, and have a better cost of living in a lower socioeconomic bracket today than you could in the past. Lower brackets haven't experienced the growth that higher ones have, but you'd be cutting off your nose to spite your face not to take advantage.

I think the major way the middle class has been 'squeezed' is that there are a lot of people there who traded up to the upper-class (with McMansions, cruise vacations, etc.) on credit, and probably quite a few people in the lower class who borrowed into middle class lifestyles (via shady mortgages) as well. And understandably, income inequality does create a social pressure to overspend. But now that the credit crunch is coming to an end, people living outside their means are going to have to find their way back to a better balance.

[1] "Between 1901 and 2003, the average U.S. household's income increased 67-fold, from $750 to $50,302. During the same period, household expenditures increased 53-fold, from $769 to $40,748. Equally dramatic is that the $40,748 would have bought more than $2,000 worth of goods in 1901 prices, indicating a tripling of purchasing power."

The Bureau of Labor statistics, in particular their "100 Years of Consumer Spending" publication. Available here. (~500k PDF)

The graphs you want to look at are the "Expenditure Share for Non-Necessities" graphs for various regions (US generally is on p.11). It started off at a little over 20% just after WWI, and then climbed steadily and dramatically (30% after WWII, which was the real formation of the 'middle class' in the U.S., ~35% in 1960, ~40% in the early 70s) until you get to the current figure which is around 50%. Nationally, that's an all-time high.

If you look at particular areas, like New York City, there has been a small but significant hit in non-necessity spending since the mid-80s boom, probably due to increases in the cost of living due to increased rent. (But in all fairness, NYC is a lot nicer place to live now than it was then.) Spending in Boston also slumped slightly, probably for the same reason. So you get some regions that are probably feeling the pinch -- time to move.

Anyone who thought the 70s were some sort of picnic is looking at them through some seriously rose-colored glasses. The 70s were a time of instability, high unemployment (over 8%!), and out of control inflation. If people were buying things then, it's only because they knew that trying to save it was a waste of time.

It's more difficult to find good data that's correlated with income, but there are a few here and there; including this one from the Family Economics and Nutrition Review, which says flat out: "The data indicate that all household groups were better off in 1989-90 than they were in 1980-81, as measured by the amount and share of total expenditures on nonnecessities ("other")." So that would indicate that there hasn't been some sort of continuous slump from the 70s until today -- in the 80s things actually got better, and the 1980s weren't exactly known as a great period for the economy (certainly not compared to the 1990s).

In terms of cost-adjusted purchasing power (which the BLS estimates in the introduction to the big report above [1], as probably tripled in the last century), you'd be insane to want to live in any previous era, unless your metric for success is purely that of being on the same level as your neighbors. Yes, there were times when there was more income equality, but that's not necessarily an indicator of prosperity; you can still make more money, buy more, and have a better cost of living in a lower socioeconomic bracket today than you could in the past. Lower brackets haven't experienced the growth that higher ones have, but you'd be cutting off your nose to spite your face not to take advantage.

I think the major way the middle class has been 'squeezed' is that there are a lot of people there who traded up to the upper-class (with McMansions, cruise vacations, etc.) on credit, and probably quite a few people in the lower class who borrowed into middle class lifestyles (via shady mortgages) as well. And understandably, income inequality does create a social pressure to overspend. But now that the credit crunch is coming to an end, people living outside their means are going to have to find their way back to a better balance.

[1] "Between 1901 and 2003, the average U.S. household's income increased 67-fold, from $750 to $50,302. During the same period, household expenditures increased 53-fold, from $769 to $40,748. Equally dramatic is that the $40,748 would have bought more than $2,000 worth of goods in 1901 prices, indicating a tripling of purchasing power."

While I'm sure women do work as hard, I'm fairly sure the statistics show they do not work as long.
Here's a couple of citations for that:
http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2007/jul/wk1/art01.htm
http://jada.ada.org/cgi/content/full/135/5/637 (specific to dentists)
http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/infbrief/nsf06302/

I'm pretty sure there are a lot more, but there's some term for this I can't recall that would probably turn them up.

On the other hand, unemployment did go down signifigantly, to it's currently very low levels.

Just not as low as what it was when he took office.

Ok, they increased GDP and median income per household.

GDP usually increases (only six of the last fifty years decreased). In fact, in terms of year-2000 dollars, the GDP in the first five years of the Bush administration increased 14.4%. Pretty good...unless you compare it to the 20.4% of the first five years of the Clinton administration or the 18.4% of the first five years of the Reagan administration. But, hey, he beat the 11.4% of the four years of the Carter administration.

As for median household income, it's increased over the last two years but not over the last five.

Now if we had supported entitlement spending cuts, that would have been better.

Some measure of fiscal responsibility would be nice. Cutting taxes while waging war does not fall under that category.

• Economy: taxes raises - At least Kennedy recognized that tax cuts increase Treasury coffers while simultaneously strengthen the economy - we have been at record low unemployment rates.
  Really? The most recent rate is 4.7%. Even looking at the 4.6% rate for 2006 it is still higher than the 4.0% that Bill Clinton left Dubya with.
• Forked Tongued: they speak out of both sides of their mouth; condemning the troops' work why 'claiming' to support them - this is only because of the lessons of how the Baby Boomer generation treated the troops during Vietnam - read: Clinton, Kerry, and their ilk
  Kerry was one of the troops during Vietnam. He earned the right to say whatever he wants to about Vietnam because, unlike Dubya, he was there--as a volunteer--for two tours.
• Downsizing: in the 1990's Clinton significantly reduced the size of our standing military, which leads me into the following:
  That doesn't matter. Know why? Because Rumsfeld put fewer troops into Iraq than his commanders recommended.
• They Love Defeat
  I would argue that President Bush loves defeat. He must, because his strategy in Iraq has done everything to encourage defeat.
• Power: they love it and will do any thing to get to it
  Yes, unlike Republicans. (rolls eyes) You must be new around here.
• Politics and Party: because they lust after Power they will put their Party first
  See above.

It should be noted that the hedonic quality adjustments regarding chip speed were deemed unreliable and were never applied to CPI data.

According to the US Dept of Labor the Consumer Price Index includes medical care, gasoline, fuel oil, housing, and education including college tuition. I think this covers your (1), (2), (5), and (6). Dollar deflation (4) is also covered to the extent that Americans buy imported goods which are now more expensive.

You are right that general income taxes (3) are not included in the CPI. To the extent the US government must raise taxes to cover the wars they are in, Americans' net incomes will be lower, but this will not count as inflation.

The CPI excludes stocks, bonds, and real estate :) Rent is included, and as you may have noticed the uptick in real estate prices have not been matched by a similarly large increase in rental prices.

http://www.bls.gov/opub/hom/pdf/homch17.pdf

Here is a graph of the CPI:

http://www.inflationdata.com/Inflation/images/charts/Annual_Inflation/annual_inflation_chart.htm

US inflation has remained around 3% since the 1990s. Information on how the BLS computes the CPI is here:

http://www.bls.gov/bls/inflation.htm

While things like gas are up, other things (like the Department Store Inventory Price Index) is down over 10 years. Clothing is cheap, computers are cheap, etc.

The CPI excludes stocks, bonds, and real estate :) Rent is included, and as you may have noticed the uptick in real estate prices have not been matched by a similarly large increase in rental prices.

http://www.bls.gov/opub/hom/pdf/homch17.pdf

Here is a graph of the CPI:

http://www.inflationdata.com/Inflation/images/charts/Annual_Inflation/annual_inflation_chart.htm

US inflation has remained around 3% since the 1990s. Information on how the BLS computes the CPI is here:

http://www.bls.gov/bls/inflation.htm

While things like gas are up, other things (like the Department Store Inventory Price Index) is down over 10 years. Clothing is cheap, computers are cheap, etc.

That's nonsense. You're mixing up currency fluctuations with inflation. Go use the handy inflation calculator courtesy of Uncle Sam to find out that $100 in 2002 has the same buying power as $115 today. Now, you can argue about how governments calculate inflation or even what inflation is, but it's definitely not that high.

Fact is the OLPC missed its $100 target a long time ago. There were a couple of "sacred cows" that were enormously expensive resource wise and which they raised the specs to accomodate instead of sacrificing them. I'm talking about Gecko and Python - both of which gobble resources, especially memory, like there's no tomorrow. They already doubled the memory capacity of the laptop and who knows how the final thing will perform, they're still making major changes to the hardware. There are lighter tools that could have been used, but some of them are proprietary or ugly so they were cast aside (for instance, WebKit/Opera and C++).

And what percentage is that of the average wage?

The average wage in Vietnam is $700/year [1] while in the US it is $36,764/year [2].
I'm not even going to bother with calculations. I think the point is clear: You're not really comparing apples to apples there.

[1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/5301086.stm
[2] http://www.bls.gov/cew/state2002.txt