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With a reduced money supply you have greater poverty

Um, no. You have some economic definitions mixed up. This is deflation, not poverty.

But considering that money is steadily inflating as it has for a long time, the money supply is therefore increasing. Thus reality contradicts your position.

BLS numbers are highly robust, and yes, I do believe them, since they match actual consumer spending patterns. Only 13% of US consumer spending is for food, after all, and only 8% is for food at home (rest is restaurants).

http://www.bls.gov/news.releas...

Not quite. $100 in 1969 is $648 today.

http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cp...

BoLS says unemployment is down to around 6%.

Now, you may argue with the specifics, but the general trend has been downward since 2009. Or a more detailed article.

I think the statistic you're looking for is this. Nobody believes the official US unemployment rate - it only makes sense as a short-term trend. The US doesn't count anybody who has been unemployed long-term.

Whether by choice or not, the participation rate does reflect the potential manpower available in an emergency without impacting the normal labor force.

BoLS says unemployment is down to around 6%.

Now, you may argue with the specifics, but the general trend has been downward since 2009. Or a more detailed article.

I think the statistic you're looking for is this. Nobody believes the official US unemployment rate - it only makes sense as a short-term trend. The US doesn't count anybody who has been unemployed long-term.

Whether by choice or not, the participation rate does reflect the potential manpower available in an emergency without impacting the normal labor force.

BoLS says unemployment is down to around 6%.

Now, you may argue with the specifics, but the general trend has been downward since 2009. Or a more detailed article.

Productivity is at record levels, but everyone has to work harder and longer. Does that really make sense to anyone but a "free market conservative"?

Sure. Do we still have work to do? Unemployment is lower, and labor participation, while dropping, is still pretty good.

http://data.bls.gov/pdq/Survey...

That should be "Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey", and I looked at it from 1948 to 2014.

The statistics point to a drastic change in the future. But if we look at the statistics right now, there is work to be done, and we have to have people to do it. And just because productivity is high doesn't mean the work goes away. So right now, yes it makes sense to anyone, if you think about it as more than rhetoric. When you put it as you did, no it doesn't make sense.

For anyone interested, here are the (preliminary) stats for 2013: http://www.bls.gov/iif/oshwc/c... 302 Female fatalities, 4101 male. Not quite 19 out of 20 but close.

In 2013, 93% of US workplace fatalities were also men. http://www.bls.gov/iif/oshwc/c...

Maybe if more women want to be CEOs they should face the same risks men do.

I beleive that a person should make decisions about education for themselves. But, I also think people should use some data in those decisions.

1. Employment Projections from BLS (http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_chart_001.htm)
2. The College Degrees With The Highest Starting Salaries

If you read the chart and the article and then conclude that college is not worth it for your profession, so be it. It is also your prerogative to completely ignore my opinions or any opinions in the original article.

Nearly half of the software developers in the United States do not have a college degree. Many never even graduated from high school.

What? I pored over the article and the US BLS link in it to find the source of these statements. Aside from a pull quote that appears as an image in the article but isn't even in the article itself and is unattributed, could someone find me the source of this statistic?

Because I'm a software developer in the United States with a Masters of Science in Computer Science. All of my coworkers have at least a bachelor's degree in one field or another. And my undergrad very much so started with a sink-or-swim weed out course in Scheme and then another in Java. Yes, they were both easy if you already knew how to code but ... this article almost sounds like it's written by someone with no field experience. Granted that's a low sample set, I'd like to know where the other half of us are. Everyone keep in mind that a Computer Science degree is a relatively new thing and there very well may be elderly coders doing a great job without technically a degree in computer science.

The only way I can see the misconception spreading is that people who use Wix to drag and drop a WYSIWYG site (for you older readers that's like FrontPage meets Geocities) erroneously consider themselves "software developers".

This will make one of the few jobs that still pays decently

The median household income in the US is $51,000. 15% of Americans living in poverty

The median annual wage for computer programmers [is] $74,000. Computer Programmers

Might it be one of the most expensive movies ever?

Asks an ignorant troll...

Considering it was made with 25 year old footage, it was probably one of the cheapest movies ever made.

The U.S. spends $324 billion dollars a year on entertainment*. tThe cost of the Voyager II program ($865 million dollars*) over 40 years is equal to about 22 millon dollars per year. A drop in the bucket. The Pioneer and Voyager missions have spawned an entire cottage industry of "science-based edutainment shows" on TV like "Through the Wormhole" and "Cosmos". That program has paid for itself many, many times over.

How do we determine how much to spend on stuff with little or no payback?

I have no idea. But the Voyager mission has certainly paid for itself many times over.

*CONSUMER EXPENDITURES--2012; U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

**Voyager, The Interstallar Mission; NASA

If you're traveling with more than $10k, you just have to fill out one form declaring it.

I believe, that requirement — whatever its Constitutionality — applies only to people arriving into the US, not leaving. Indeed, you aren't declaring anything upon leaving — neither the Customs nor Border Patrol have anything to do with passengers departing.

Also, it was introduced, when $10k meant a lot more money, than it does today. I don't know, when, exactly, but I do remember seeing it on the Custom form in the early 90ies. The $10k even then was $17.5k in today's dollars. But, I think, the requirement is much older...

"First, why analyze the percentage of computer and math degree holders who hold an IT job? Why is a mathematics degree automatically equivalent to a CS degree?"

That's an excellent question which you should post by going to just about any www.bls.gov data page (like http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat1... table 11 on their data by occupation, and skooch down to "Professional and related occupations" to browse). You can click on the link at the bottom to ask them why they lump those together in their data releases.

Most likely it is a hold-over. Many CS departments back in the 1960s and 1970s used to be a sub-sub-specialty in mathematics departments (math: applied math: CS; and similarly math: applied math: statistics). Computer hardware engineering or simply computer engineering was a sub-sub-specialty of electrical and electronics in engineering programs.

BLS is commonly about a decade behind when it comes to job titles, and then they stumble a bit. They used to classify computer programmers as "technicians", and still classify "computer operators" in that general part of the reports. When the job title "software engineer" was adopted, it took them a few years to catch up and then they distinguished between systems and applications, but then adopted "software developer". The thing is, if they define a category too narrowly, their surveys can't support statistical confidence in reporting on it; and if they're too broad it's often too ambiguous for the people concerned to find useful.

Over in their industry categories ( http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat1... table 17), there are a lot of computer wranglers they consider to be in "professional and business services", and a couple hundred-thousand in "Information: software publishing".

"Why do many people with STEM degrees not work in STEM jobs?"

There are a few who planned it that way, e.g. patent and copyright lawyers, technical writers. (One reporter at a STEM trade publication pointed out that he had a degree in a modern foreign language, which he had no expectation to make his life's work. It would surprise me if a STEM grad said the same.) Teachers are a border-line case; some are using teaching as a survival job, others aimed to teach STEM subjects all along, but may have been side-tracked into teaching Latin, Civics, or History because that's what the nearby school district wanted. But there are quite a few STEM grads who couldn't get their STEM dream-jobs because of the on-going STEM talent glut, STEM employers' unwillingness to provide relocation assistance, etc.

"First, why analyze the percentage of computer and math degree holders who hold an IT job? Why is a mathematics degree automatically equivalent to a CS degree?"

That's an excellent question which you should post by going to just about any www.bls.gov data page (like http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat1... table 11 on their data by occupation, and skooch down to "Professional and related occupations" to browse). You can click on the link at the bottom to ask them why they lump those together in their data releases.

Most likely it is a hold-over. Many CS departments back in the 1960s and 1970s used to be a sub-sub-specialty in mathematics departments (math: applied math: CS; and similarly math: applied math: statistics). Computer hardware engineering or simply computer engineering was a sub-sub-specialty of electrical and electronics in engineering programs.

BLS is commonly about a decade behind when it comes to job titles, and then they stumble a bit. They used to classify computer programmers as "technicians", and still classify "computer operators" in that general part of the reports. When the job title "software engineer" was adopted, it took them a few years to catch up and then they distinguished between systems and applications, but then adopted "software developer". The thing is, if they define a category too narrowly, their surveys can't support statistical confidence in reporting on it; and if they're too broad it's often too ambiguous for the people concerned to find useful.

Over in their industry categories ( http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat1... table 17), there are a lot of computer wranglers they consider to be in "professional and business services", and a couple hundred-thousand in "Information: software publishing".

"Why do many people with STEM degrees not work in STEM jobs?"

There are a few who planned it that way, e.g. patent and copyright lawyers, technical writers. (One reporter at a STEM trade publication pointed out that he had a degree in a modern foreign language, which he had no expectation to make his life's work. It would surprise me if a STEM grad said the same.) Teachers are a border-line case; some are using teaching as a survival job, others aimed to teach STEM subjects all along, but may have been side-tracked into teaching Latin, Civics, or History because that's what the nearby school district wanted. But there are quite a few STEM grads who couldn't get their STEM dream-jobs because of the on-going STEM talent glut, STEM employers' unwillingness to provide relocation assistance, etc.

No, the "management" category in the article specifically includes only non-STEM management. As regards education, the article itself is vague, but tracing down the references suggests that STEM teaching is included as a STEM career (as it damned well should). So much for your "two biggest groups".

I dunno where the IT job part came from.

The men/women pay gap issue is a good point, but it's hard to keep people from tabulating such these things. Statistics are like opium, and tend to dull people's minds momentarily to obvious criticism.

In conclusion, I have only one question: are you one of these 5.5% of unemployed STEM niggers the article mentions?

Actually, it's like $12.74B in 2014, at least according to the inflation calculator at http://www.bls.gov/data/inflat... .

Christ, folks. It's numbers. It should be easy to validate the numbers you use before you randomly vomit them on the interwebz.

Engineering is a bit different from IT work though, found the BLS stats on that. In 2002 computer tenure was 3.2 years but had risen to 4.8 by 2012. But those classified as "architects and engineers" went from 5.2 to 7.0 years. Maybe some slashdotters should consider "crossing over"; I'm one of those "bi" skill people having engineering degree and switching from engineering job to IT and back as the market in my area changed over the past 30+ years

http://www.bls.gov/news.releas...

Job tenure in USA really hasn't changed much for those over 25 years old according to Bureau of Labor Statistics, was 5 years in 1983, got as low as 4.7 years in 1998, then rising to 5.4 years in 2012.

http://www.bls.gov/news.releas...
http://www.bls.gov/news.releas...

Job tenure in USA really hasn't changed much for those over 25 years old according to Bureau of Labor Statistics, was 5 years in 1983, got as low as 4.7 years in 1998, then rising to 5.4 years in 2012.

http://www.bls.gov/news.releas...
http://www.bls.gov/news.releas...

Unfortunately thanks to Netflix and Amazon, I'm barely staying within my usage cap with Comcast as it is.

What the hell are you downloading? Raw uncompressed blu-ray images? According to Netflix's usage page, the highest quality streams use HD: 3 GB per hour, 3D: 4.7 GB per hour, Ultra HD 4K: 7 GB per hour.

For a HD stream, it would take you over 80 hours to reach 250GB. 40, 2hr HD movies. Wow. Just Wow. The average American watches 2.8hrs of TV per day. If you download 100% of only HD content from Amazon/Netflix every month you'll be about at the 80+hrs / month of usage. Still a lot of downloading, given that you can't watch live events (sports/news broadcasts). Btw, even the World Cup isn't broadcast in 1080p like on broadcast/cable TV.

The current caps are from 250GB to 350GB depending on your service area. In fact, if you look at your data usage, you'll notice that they've suspended the 250GB cap enforcement.

You do realize that you fall into the .000001% of consumers who should be on a business plan if they want to download 50TB/month.

Remember no business caters to the .0000001% of consumers regardless of their business. You should vote with your dollars, find a provider that will give you unlimited usage with higher bandwidth. I'm sure there's plenty of ISPs that would be willing to drop an OC48 (2.4Gb) into your house for a quite a few grand a month. Or a Comcast business solution that has no cap.

Surely a 150Mbdown 20Mb up with no caps for $250/month is enough for you and your entire family to watch HDs every minute of every day until your eyeballs rot. Just think, with 150Mb/s down you could consume about 65GB/hr, or 20 HD movies per hour 24hrs per day, 7 days per week...

Right tool for the right job. Obviously you want Commercial Services at Residential Pricing and you don't meet the requirements of the typical Residential user, so switch to Commercial Services and be happy.

According to the CPI Inflation Calculator, 18.3 cents today is worth about 11 cents in 1993, so a loss of around 40%, not 75%. But your point stands.

The federal gas tax currently stands at 18.4 cents a gallon, where it has been set since 1993, when gas cost $1.16 a gallon.

Since the gas tax is ostensibly for the construction and maintenance of roads and highways, it should be compared to that. The cost of maintenance and construction scale mostly according to CPI, not the price of gas. I can't think of any reason why you'd compare the tax to the price of gas unless you're deliberately trying to mislead people into thinking it needs to go up more (political arguments about energy taxes aside).

Putting $1.16 into an inflation calculator yields $1.90 in 2014 dollars, or a 64% increase. 64% of 18.4 cents is 11.7 cents. So a 12 cent increase is exactly what's needed for the tax to keep pace with inflation.

Employment in manufacturing in the united states is down over 30% in 40 years.
In that time, the population has quadrupled from 76 million to 308 million.
Manufacturing employees have dropped from 18 million to 12 million.
Manufacturing jobs have dropped from 23% to 4% of jobs. Similar declines in UK and Japan.

Ok, so we have the US, UK, and Japan. That in total is roughly 7% of the global population. Why do you think that is at all an accurate characterization of global industry employment?

During that same period, China went from zero employment in modern manufacture (they had plenty in primitive and mostly useless industries like excessive brick manufacture in 1970) to 100 million.

India has still held steady at over 10% employment in manufacture since 1960 despite massive population growth (over 100 million currently BTW) and the recent global recession. I doubt they had a lot of modern manufacture back in 1960.

While sure, that's probaby somewhat less manufacture jobs as total global employment (though apparently it's still around 14% of total global employment today), it's still growth in jobs as I noted.

Further, I see from the googling that I did to come up with the above links, that there's a lot of dishonesty currently in discussion of global employment in manufacture. The biggest change is simply that too many people are discounting both the transition of manufacture from the developed world to the rest and the recent, very severe global recession. We also have the ignoring of attendant resource extraction and service industry jobs associated with this manufacture.

Just because a recession results in a short term decline in global manufacturing employment doesn't mean that it will result in a long term decline in global manufacturing employment. Nor is focusing solely on the US, UK, or Japan an honest appraisal of global manufacturing employment.

You were probably being glib, but let's fact-check that statement.

Here's some BLS data from 2012 that can be broken down into the following:

Hourly workers paid the minimum wage or less
- age 16-19 (i.e., teenagers): 24.1% (854k / 3,550k)
- age 20-24: 26.6% (943k / 3,550k)
    - (not shown; calculated by subtracting the 16-19 group from the 16-24 group)
- age 25+: 49.4% (1,753k / 3,550k)

Further, it shows that 64.4% (2,286k) of all workers paid the federal minimum wage or less worked part time. From this, we can clearly see that most minimum wage earners are part time, and most are not teenagers. Moreover, even if every teenager was a part-time minimum wage worker, they still would only make up 37.4% (854k / 2,286k) of all part-time minimum wage workers.

So what are the tech wages like in Salt Lake City?

Not half bad.

May 2013 Metropolitan and Nonmetropolitan Area Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates --- Salt Lake City, UT

Which areas are the likely ''up and comers'' in the next decade? These are generally places that have been building up their tech capacity over the past several decades, and seem to be reaching critical mass. One place following a strong trajectory is Salt Lake City, No. 4 on our list, which has enjoyed a 31% spurt in tech employment over the past 10 years. Some of this can be traced to large-scale expansion in the area by top Silicon Valley companies such as Adobe, Electronic Arts and Twitter.

These companies have flocked to Utah for reasons such as lower taxes, a more flexible regulatory environment, a well-educated, multilingual workforce and spectacular nearby natural amenities. Perhaps most critical of all may be housing prices: Three-quarters of Salt Lake area households can afford a median-priced house, compared to 45% in Silicon Valley and about half that in San Francisco.

The Best Cities For Tech Jobs [May 2012]

With a 2-3% inflation you get a doubling of price every 23 to 35 years. So 1 billion today is equivalent to 350 million $ in 1980 and 550 million dollar in 1990. So not so "big" anymore.... I used this by the way : http://www.bls.gov/data/inflat... very useful to compare money amounts.

Keep electing republicans and america will end up with so many starving and jobless people

Both the number of food-stamp recipients (starving) and unemployment (jobless) increased under Obama. Why, when the unemployment was 6% under Bush, he was blamed for "jobless recovery" by some. Worse, as his figure went further down to 5%, he was still blamed by others.

Obama's figure today — six years later — is still above 6% (despite millions leaving the workforce for good and thus not figuring into the count) — but you are blaming Republicans? Wow...

And, no, the mortgage-crisis was not Bush's fault. The do-gooding Democrats are to blame.

Then there is the interesting question of why having a career as an astronaut should be safer than having a career as a deep-sea fisherman, or a lumberjack.
If I have the numbers correct - from http://www.bls.gov/iif/oshnoti... - fishery workers have around 100 deaths per 100000 per year - or 1 death per 1000 years worked.
If an astronaut flys once a year, then the rocket only needs to get to 99.9% safety - not 99.9999.

Six nines would make it considerably safer than a career in a library. (0.3 deaths per 100K)

According to the bls transportation as a percentage of pre-tax income has gone for 14% in 1973-74 to 13.7% in 2012 but vehicle purchase has stayed constant at 6.2%, most of the savings are in the other category which would be dominated by repairs (fuel has actually risen from 3% to 5.4%).

According to the bls transportation as a percentage of pre-tax income has gone for 14% in 1973-74 to 13.7% in 2012 but vehicle purchase has stayed constant at 6.2%, most of the savings are in the other category which would be dominated by repairs (fuel has actually risen from 3% to 5.4%).

average incomes:
welder - 32K
plumber - 26k
electrician - 39K
software - 71k
software engineer - 90k
electrical engineer - 83k
civil engineer - 78k
social scientist - 86k

I think some of those numbers are too low. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics says 2012 median pay is:
welder - 36K
plumber - 49K
electrician - 50K

I know median isn't the same as average, but this article says plumbers average $51,500, and this one says $52,950. Also, I think a small part of this is due to work location. Obviously not all of it, but every podunk town in the country has welders, plumbers, and electricians, but engineers and social scientists are much more concentrated in cities with higher costs of living. If you look at San Jose, CA, the median plumber salary ($79K) is 60% higher than the national median (see USNews link above), but the mean electrical engineer salary ($121K) is only 30% higher than the national mean.

I'm an engineer, but some of the most rewarding work I've done was at a research lab where I did all kinds of trade-like stuff, like cutting and hanging electrical conduit and pressurized gas lines, a bit of simple PVC water plumbing (replacing a leaky valve here and there), and a bit of carpentry, building test stands and partition walls with metal studs and drywall. We had all manual pipe cutters, threaders, and reamers/deburring tools, too, which are more physically demanding but way more satisfying to use than the automatic stuff. There were the also simple painting or cleaning tasks, too, but that more fun stuff is what I remember most clearly.

average incomes:
welder - 32K
plumber - 26k
electrician - 39K
software - 71k
software engineer - 90k
electrical engineer - 83k
civil engineer - 78k
social scientist - 86k

I think some of those numbers are too low. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics says 2012 median pay is:
welder - 36K
plumber - 49K
electrician - 50K

I know median isn't the same as average, but this article says plumbers average $51,500, and this one says $52,950. Also, I think a small part of this is due to work location. Obviously not all of it, but every podunk town in the country has welders, plumbers, and electricians, but engineers and social scientists are much more concentrated in cities with higher costs of living. If you look at San Jose, CA, the median plumber salary ($79K) is 60% higher than the national median (see USNews link above), but the mean electrical engineer salary ($121K) is only 30% higher than the national mean.

I'm an engineer, but some of the most rewarding work I've done was at a research lab where I did all kinds of trade-like stuff, like cutting and hanging electrical conduit and pressurized gas lines, a bit of simple PVC water plumbing (replacing a leaky valve here and there), and a bit of carpentry, building test stands and partition walls with metal studs and drywall. We had all manual pipe cutters, threaders, and reamers/deburring tools, too, which are more physically demanding but way more satisfying to use than the automatic stuff. There were the also simple painting or cleaning tasks, too, but that more fun stuff is what I remember most clearly.

average incomes:
welder - 32K
plumber - 26k
electrician - 39K
software - 71k
software engineer - 90k
electrical engineer - 83k
civil engineer - 78k
social scientist - 86k

I think some of those numbers are too low. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics says 2012 median pay is:
welder - 36K
plumber - 49K
electrician - 50K

I know median isn't the same as average, but this article says plumbers average $51,500, and this one says $52,950. Also, I think a small part of this is due to work location. Obviously not all of it, but every podunk town in the country has welders, plumbers, and electricians, but engineers and social scientists are much more concentrated in cities with higher costs of living. If you look at San Jose, CA, the median plumber salary ($79K) is 60% higher than the national median (see USNews link above), but the mean electrical engineer salary ($121K) is only 30% higher than the national mean.

I'm an engineer, but some of the most rewarding work I've done was at a research lab where I did all kinds of trade-like stuff, like cutting and hanging electrical conduit and pressurized gas lines, a bit of simple PVC water plumbing (replacing a leaky valve here and there), and a bit of carpentry, building test stands and partition walls with metal studs and drywall. We had all manual pipe cutters, threaders, and reamers/deburring tools, too, which are more physically demanding but way more satisfying to use than the automatic stuff. There were the also simple painting or cleaning tasks, too, but that more fun stuff is what I remember most clearly.

average incomes:
welder - 32K
plumber - 26k
electrician - 39K
software - 71k
software engineer - 90k
electrical engineer - 83k
civil engineer - 78k
social scientist - 86k

I think some of those numbers are too low. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics says 2012 median pay is:
welder - 36K
plumber - 49K
electrician - 50K

I know median isn't the same as average, but this article says plumbers average $51,500, and this one says $52,950. Also, I think a small part of this is due to work location. Obviously not all of it, but every podunk town in the country has welders, plumbers, and electricians, but engineers and social scientists are much more concentrated in cities with higher costs of living. If you look at San Jose, CA, the median plumber salary ($79K) is 60% higher than the national median (see USNews link above), but the mean electrical engineer salary ($121K) is only 30% higher than the national mean.

I'm an engineer, but some of the most rewarding work I've done was at a research lab where I did all kinds of trade-like stuff, like cutting and hanging electrical conduit and pressurized gas lines, a bit of simple PVC water plumbing (replacing a leaky valve here and there), and a bit of carpentry, building test stands and partition walls with metal studs and drywall. We had all manual pipe cutters, threaders, and reamers/deburring tools, too, which are more physically demanding but way more satisfying to use than the automatic stuff. There were the also simple painting or cleaning tasks, too, but that more fun stuff is what I remember most clearly.

As many as possible. I've said for years the real money lies in being a welder, plumber, or an electrician.

But have you tried backing it up with any facts? People keep repeating it, but the statistics keep insisting otherwise. You can point to an anecdote about a welder who made $150K in a year. The trouble is showing that large numbers of young people could all become welders who make $150K per year. On average, welders make $32,000 per year. And that's among welders who actually hold a job as a welder.

Only on a nerd site would you find such jealously... As welder, of anything, and everything. I didint get paid no f'in 160,000 annually. Welding encompasses numerous things, it isn't he shit you see on TV with some guy/gal welding steel with a MIG or TIG welder. And unlike what they teach you in shop class or any tech school, you have to be able to weld numerous alloys and those alloys in some cases are mismatched.

So you and the goons that voted your comment up should become educated, before you think little thoughts of someone on TV welding steel on steel, and figure that's what it must be to be a welder.

mig, tig, stick, acetylene, and even soldering..

The Wall Street Journal article is wrong. There is no state in the US where even the top quartile of the welders earn anywhere near $150,000. You can look it up on DoL website .
The author is using anecdotes for evidence and appealing to commonly held assumptions (like yours) for theory.

As many as possible. I've said for years the real money lies in being a welder, plumber, or an electrician.

But have you tried backing it up with any facts? People keep repeating it, but the statistics keep insisting otherwise. You can point to an anecdote about a welder who made $150K in a year. The trouble is showing that large numbers of young people could all become welders who make $150K per year. On average, welders make $32,000 per year. And that's among welders who actually hold a job as a welder.

From the Occupational Outlook Handbook.

Welders, Cutters, Solderers, and Brazers
Median Pay in 2012: ~36k
Job Outlook: 6% (slower than average)

I'm sure there's a welder out there SOMEWHERE than makes $150k. However, if you go into welding for a living then chances are its not going to be YOU.

Meanwhile, the median income for those with a Bachelors degree comes in at ~43k (and this is 2003 data). Of course, I'm probably preaching to the choir here.

http://www.bls.gov/ooh/product...

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

My father paid cash for a fully tricked out Mustang (approx 1 month salary) and got a new 3000+sqft home on a large lot (125x175) for a mortgage equal to 12 months of earnings.

Your dad was doing pretty well for the time -- close to $40K, assuming something like $3200 for the car. (Not sure how "fully tricked out" you mean.) By this inflation calculator, that equates to about $240K today.

Today, one month of an equivalent salary will get you a reasonably nice new car, and one year of an equivalent salary will get you a nice house, unless you live in Silicon Valley, DC, Boston, or another hyperdeveloped area. I'd say that the inflation calculator reflects what's going on with car prices; real-estate prices have outstripped it in many places, but not all. (If he bought a house in Detroit in 1970, you probably wouldn't be seeing a good return on that investment today.)

But, as the Fed inflation-metric apologists always point out, a 1970 car is not the same as a 2014 car. Compare fuel efficiency, safety equipment, reliability, and you can make the case that you get a lot more for the same money today. Real estate? Meh, a third of an acre in 1970 is about the same as a third of an acre today, and I'm not sure the superior insulation and wiring of a 2014 new house compensates for the generally inferior workmanship compared to 1970.

"500,000+ welders are injured annually."

Impossible; there aren't 500,000 welders in the U.S. There aren't even 400,000. (In 2006: 393,000 per American Welding Society).

http://www.aws.org/w/a/research/outlook.html

If we add up all the OSHA injuries of all types from all construction & manufacturing industries (incl. manufacturing of food, textiles, paper, plastics, etc.), the grand total of all injury types in a year is less than 200,000 (197,000 by my count). So 500,000 welding accidents in a year is total fantasy.

http://stats.bls.gov/iif/oshwc/osh/case/ostb3593.pdf

Seriously, can we stop using false information and stop treating straight up lies as fact? Per the Bureau of Labor Statistics, unemployment is on the decline and the lowest it's been since the recession.

There are 700,000[1] mechanics in the US, I'm sure at least one of them can service an electric car.

[1]: http://www.bls.gov/ooh/install...

Benefits that people working 2 or 3 part-time jobs don't get.

Even for employees without much in the way of the way of health insurance, life insurance, or disability insurance pre-tax compensation, employers still need to pay their part of Social Security & Medicare, Federal unemployment insurance, state unemployment insurance, and workers' compensation insurance as part of total hourly compensation.

Across all workers, the cost of legally required benefits is actually as much as the total cost of employer-provided health insurance. See this breakdown for more info.

Who would mod this nonsense up? Inflation was 1.8% or so in 2013.

Where have you been? Food prices are up more than 10% since January...

In what country? Certainly not this one. They're up 3.3% since December, and only 1.7% since March of 2013. Meat's up a lot (11.5% since December, 5.1% since March of 2013), but that's only part of the story.

See table 2: http://www.bls.gov/cpi/cpid140...

Anyway, food's less than 15% of the average household's spending.

Another indicator of public understanding of science focuses on understanding of how [scientists] generate and assess scientific evidence, rather than knowledge of particular facts. Past NSF surveys have used questions on three general topics—probability, experimental design, and the scientific method—to assess trends in Americans' understanding of the process of scientific inquiry.
...
Understanding of what it means to study something scientifically is considerably lower, at 18% in 2010. Correct responses on this question are lower, in part, because the task of expressing a concept in one's own words is more difficult than recognizing a correct response to a multiple-choice style close-ended survey question.

This is still much higher than I would expect based on occupation, since STEM [science, technology, engineering, and math] fields account for only 6% of the workforce. However, even though, as you say, "[m]ost people are not in a position to understand themselves and their own thinking", this is not insurmountable. Surveys similar to the NSF one I linked shows that over the past 25 years, the literacy rate has doubled (from 10% in 1988); clearly, the public can learn to understand rational, scientific methods.

Even if this conclusion is wrong, what do you think the proper method is to deal with the irrational nature of humans? Set up some sort of inner cabal of "great minds" to run the world (ignoring the fact they're just as human, therefore just as irrational, as anyone else)? Try to find some inhuman ("angelic") agent to run the world, and hope their goals remain humanly comprehensible? Or just give up and go back to the caves?

Please read this paper http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/20...

Highest paid federal employees: http://xfinity.comcast.net/sli...

This gives mean wages instead of median, but still better than nothing. Software professional wages: http://www.bls.gov/oes/current...

I would guess people making more than 150K can be expected to answer email at off hours without additional compensation. Part of the job. But at some point below, may be below 100K or so, they should be compensated.

Not arguing your point, but you must be using a wonky inflation index to get you from $0.40 to $2.
http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cp...