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An income of $250,000 per year does not make one "ridiculously wealthy".

According to the Current Population Survey, less than two percent of households make over a quarter million per year. That's less than one in fifty. (Note that this is households, not individuals, as well.) It's a tiny, tiny slice. These people are the few, the elite, and it's insane to hold our nation hostage to their whims.

Obama was called a socialist based on his comment about "spread(ing) the wealth around".

Here, I'll quote McCain in 2000, arguing that people who make more should pay a higher proportion of their income in taxes, which is by definition a leveling of income.

McCain: So, look, here's what I really believe, that when you are -- reach a certain level of comfort, there's nothing wrong with paying somewhat more.

Ooh, looks like we dodged a socialist bullet there.

Who believes that a 35% tax rate on income over 300 some odd thousand dollars is "rugged individualism"?

Wasn't Bush an avatar of rugged individualism, an incarnation of the free market itself?

Well I could think of some algorithm books for which you need a good math background and no computer, "The Art of Computer Programming" comes to mind.

If you find some sufficiently educated prisoners this could be something to pass their time with.

But face it, about 20% of all Americans have a bachelors degree or higher. Academics tend to be underrepresented in prison so there is little reason to believe that you will find many takers for this kind of literature in prison.

The degree percentage per person can be found here:

http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/education/phct41.html

The statement that there are less academics in prison is supported here:

http://www.policyalmanac.org/crime/archive/education_prisons.pdf

Guess what? Whites are no longer a majority in this country. (IE: Less than 50% of the population).

Whites make up 74% of the US population according to the Census Bureau .

According to the census bureau, "Real median household income in the United States climbed 1.3 percent between 2006 and 2007, reaching $50,233". So 50K and below would cover 150 million people. The same press release notes that "the weighted average poverty threshold for a family of four in 2007 was $21,203; for a family of three, $16,530; for a family of two, $13,540; and for unrelated individuals, $10,590." Of course, poverty and 'low income' are not synonymous, and the US definition of poverty is... quite poor. But for those folks who might not have any idea of the value of a dollar (and if you work in tech, that might be you), here's a measuring stick of sorts.

Unfortunately the money has to come from somewhere. Shortly after WWII (which cost us $238B after inflation it would be about $5T) the highest tax bracket was in the 90% range. People got houses under the new FHA and VA loans, and new companies were created (though not as many as after the top marginal tax rate was reduced by the Johnson administration which Kennedy had been pushing for). Companies didn't move overseas to more favorable countries then, though I would concede that moving overseas would probably have been more of an involved process than it is today and that economic situations of the world were obviously different.

The current Iraq war, so far, has cost us $500B and the highest tax bracket pays something like 35%. That money has to come from somewhere, and unfortunately neither party is willing to actually decrease our deficit in any sort of substantial way, so now we're stuck with a national debt that is almost insurmountable.

We currently owe over $10T which comes out to about $37,747.83 per person in the US (population of 305,363,780 though this number keeps changing). That number also includes children. The average household size is 3.2 (I'll round it to 2 parents and one child). Now the amount to each tax payer (203,575,853 of them) owes is $49,121.74. The problem with that number is that it doesn't account for the people that are in retirement and not contributing to the tax system. According to the same population website, there were 37,191,004 people 65 and older in the year 2006 (we'll have to assume that they are all retired, though that's not entirely the case). Now the amount each tax payer owes is $60,101.63

The madness needs to stop someday. This whole "credit crisis" is all due to everyone living beyond their means (individuals, corporations, and government). We need someone to actually do the tough job of cutting spending so that we can all live within our means. We probably even need to cut back even more than that so that we can repay our debts. It is unfortunate that we live in an unjust world, and so the people who have lived within their means (like me, and probably many people on here) are hit with this credit issue just as hard as the people who were reckless with their money.

I will also state that tax cuts generally do contribute to the growth of the economy, but only as long as the burden of debt interest is under control. If we continue borrowing the amounts of money we are today, and our creditors decide that we cannot pay it back and stop lending to us, then no matter how good our economy is at the time it will decline sharply due to the lack of money in the market. One way to defend against that is to print more money, but that devalues the dollar and makes international trade more and more difficult which also affects the economy negatively.

So, with all that said, who has the most money? Rich people of course. What do they typically do with their money? Try to make more money, which is usually through investments, which help other large companies. Those large companies then probably employ more people. Is it fair to ask the plumber/electrician/factory worker to pay his/her share of the national debt when that amount is so much more of a percent of their savings than

Unfortunately the money has to come from somewhere. Shortly after WWII (which cost us $238B after inflation it would be about $5T) the highest tax bracket was in the 90% range. People got houses under the new FHA and VA loans, and new companies were created (though not as many as after the top marginal tax rate was reduced by the Johnson administration which Kennedy had been pushing for). Companies didn't move overseas to more favorable countries then, though I would concede that moving overseas would probably have been more of an involved process than it is today and that economic situations of the world were obviously different.

The current Iraq war, so far, has cost us $500B and the highest tax bracket pays something like 35%. That money has to come from somewhere, and unfortunately neither party is willing to actually decrease our deficit in any sort of substantial way, so now we're stuck with a national debt that is almost insurmountable.

We currently owe over $10T which comes out to about $37,747.83 per person in the US (population of 305,363,780 though this number keeps changing). That number also includes children. The average household size is 3.2 (I'll round it to 2 parents and one child). Now the amount to each tax payer (203,575,853 of them) owes is $49,121.74. The problem with that number is that it doesn't account for the people that are in retirement and not contributing to the tax system. According to the same population website, there were 37,191,004 people 65 and older in the year 2006 (we'll have to assume that they are all retired, though that's not entirely the case). Now the amount each tax payer owes is $60,101.63

The madness needs to stop someday. This whole "credit crisis" is all due to everyone living beyond their means (individuals, corporations, and government). We need someone to actually do the tough job of cutting spending so that we can all live within our means. We probably even need to cut back even more than that so that we can repay our debts. It is unfortunate that we live in an unjust world, and so the people who have lived within their means (like me, and probably many people on here) are hit with this credit issue just as hard as the people who were reckless with their money.

I will also state that tax cuts generally do contribute to the growth of the economy, but only as long as the burden of debt interest is under control. If we continue borrowing the amounts of money we are today, and our creditors decide that we cannot pay it back and stop lending to us, then no matter how good our economy is at the time it will decline sharply due to the lack of money in the market. One way to defend against that is to print more money, but that devalues the dollar and makes international trade more and more difficult which also affects the economy negatively.

So, with all that said, who has the most money? Rich people of course. What do they typically do with their money? Try to make more money, which is usually through investments, which help other large companies. Those large companies then probably employ more people. Is it fair to ask the plumber/electrician/factory worker to pay his/her share of the national debt when that amount is so much more of a percent of their savings than

#1 - The CRA expansion in 1995, which put 30% more people on the housing market than there should have been, creating an incredible sellers' market in which housing, which previously had roughly paced inflation, spiraled up until people were looking at "house value" increases of over 200%.

The homeownership rate went from 64.2% in 1995 to 69.1% at the peak in 2005. That is barely an 7-8% increase, nowhere close to a 30% increase. The Community Reinvestment Act had little to do with the current mess. See BIS Working Paper #259 or this BW article. Most of the subprime lenders were not subject to the CRA and much of the foreclosure problem lies in the 'burbs where the CRA did not apply.

wsws.org... World Socialist Web Site? Good lord.

The first article twists numbers to give the wrong impression. It describes how rich save more money under the tax cut than the poor do. It's hard to counter that argument without using a 'duh', but I'll try.

Mary has a dollar, and I tax her 10 cents. John has a billion dollars, and I tax him 100 million. That's 10% in both cases. Let's cut it in half for both. Mary saves 5 cents. John saves 50 million.

The article bitches that the cut isn't fair; presumably, it wouldn't be fair until both Mary and John save the same amount of money... which is impossible, unless half of John's taxes are fed into Mary's pocket.

I don't need to go into why that's evil, because it's obvious; if it's not obvious, I don't think I'll ever be able to convince you it is.

From the article: The legislation adopted by the House of Representatives March 8 is an illustration of the class logic of Bush's program. It compresses the current five-bracket rate structure into four and reduces the rates gradually over the next five years. When the full cut is phased in completely in 2006, the top income tax rate will fall from 39.6 percent to 33 percent. The lowest rate will fall from 15 percent to 10 percent.

"the top income tax rate will fall from 39.6 percent to 33 percent. The lowest rate will fall from 15 percent to 10 percent."

You're right, it's unfair. The rich are paying a disproportionate amount.

The second article mainly complains about the widening gap between the rich and poor. Here's an illustrative example:

The top 1 percent received 21.8 percent of all reported income in 2005, up significantly from 19.8 percent the year before and more than double their share of income in 1980. The peak was in 1928, when the top 1 percent reported 23.9 percent of all income. The top tenth of a percent and top one-hundredth of a percent recorded even bigger gains in 2005 over the previous year. Their incomes soared by about a fifth in one year, largely because of the rising stock market and increased business profits.

So? A widening income gap is not a problem. Indeed, one would expect that people and companies that made more money than normal would continue to make more money than normal. Why is that bad? Keep in mind, that the increasing amount of wealth at the top is TAXED SEVERAL TIMES MORE HEAVILY than wealth among the lower class; even after those evil Bush tax cuts.

This is a good resource: http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/. It's the Statistical Abstract of the United States, as provided by the census bureau. I pulled up some real numbers, for 2004.

People/entities with a taxable income over $1,000,000 numbered 0.18% of the population. Their income was 11.4% of the population (how unfair!). But... they accounted for 79.6% of all income tax revenue. I know, it's not enough; it won't be enough until they are brought down to a mere sustenance wage like us; but I think it requires some real non-objectivity to insist they aren't paying their share.

>...that's why I have wheels instead of legs.

Instead of? Hate to break it to you, but if you're posting from the US the odds are over 9 to 1 that your household has at least one set of wheels. I believe the grandparent poster's point was that the legs on this new mobile home can't possibly move fast enough to provide effective means of evacuation (as described in the summary) or to negotiate its way through traffic. Barring your ability to go off-road in a settled environment without crushing everything in your path, your legs are prone to the same drawbacks.

Seeing as we bought $25 BILLION more from China than China bought from the US just in August 2008, I'd say that we are a pretty integral customer of Chinese manufacturing.

Check out the stats: http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c5700.html. We've already bought more than $167 billion of Chinese goods than we have sold the Chinese. That is not an insignificant number, and that figure only takes into account the first 3/4ths of the year.

There's nothing wrong with somebody wanting an extra room or two to start a family, a home business or private study.

The other question is: Was there an option to buying a McMansion? Are there enough smaller affordable homes in non-shitty school districts to house the working class? No, but no builders wanted to build the affordable homes because they weren't as profitable as McMansions and the banks were willing to make the loans, so they were able to have potential customers for the oversized houses. The median price of any housing with under an hour commute time to NYC is $450K. The median income in NYC is about $48K, so that's ten years wages before tax for just somewhere to raise your family. Yet every new construction project I see is luxury apartments. Back in 2000 the median price was just $148K and the median income was about $40k. So housing was about 3.7 time annual income just eight years ago, and now it is 10 times annual income. The banks offered people the possibility to be in unimaginable debt, and people need somewhere to live, so they got in over their heads, because the only other option was to up root their young family and hope that life was affordable somewhere else. That's not always an option personally speaking, NYC is far and away the best paying play for the career my collage degree is in. I'm 33 and I make over twice the median annual income, yet the only housing I can afford to buy would be a 600 sq ft studio apt. A $300k studio costs $1750 a month mortgage plus a $650 maintaince fee, and would only be getting one room. Two bedroom apts start at about $500K, so now that's $2917 a month mortgage and an $800 maintaince fee, for 1100 sq ft that's a 45 min subway commute to midtown. So when people purchase homes that are more than they can afford, the question of why they did that isn't as simple as "greed" there is a large mount of "need" int there as well.

You claim that $26,400 is not an issue. That is very close to the median income of a working American.

Actually, the median income is almost twice that. Specifically, as of 2007, the median family income was $50,233. Even in 2004 the median income was $44,334.

Regardless, 26K/year for a walking assistance device is still a bit of a stretch to give to everyone who wants one.

Not so far fetched given 30 years. If you were able to successfully add this capability to a human being, would it still be a Homo Sapiens? But lets just say it happens, then you can power pacemakers or even bionic bodyparts on internal power, without the need for batteries, recharging, fuel cells, etc. So if you do that you need to provide energy for the electric cells. For an otherwise normally functioning person, this would require an increased daily caloric intake. You have to wonder where we will get all the food people will need to eat when the world population is about 8.7 billion in 2035.

Oh btw, A report from the US Congress released last week found that two-thirds of corporations in the country paid no federal income tax between 1988 and 2005.

What's your point? I suppose you're trying to hint that those 2/3 companies are using loopholes and playing dirty to keep from paying taxes? You need to know how many incorporated businesses are *small businesses*. It's overwhelming. It's also easy to find thanks to the census bureau.

Straight from the census: "About three quarters of all U.S. business firms have no payroll. Most are self-employed persons operating unincorporated businesses." In other words, 2/3 don't pay taxes, but 3/4 are a single person trying to make a living with his own corporation. Did you know that those single people pay themselves from that corporation, and then they pay income tax on the money? In other words, they do pay taxes. So btw, look up the facts!

Besides the fact this was probably priced at cost, keep in mind that real income was much lower (around one-fourth what it is today**). People just didn't have disposable income like they do today, making this kind of purchase more costly than it appears.

(**I'm taking a stab at the one-fourth figure. You can see that real income roughly doubled in roughly 50 years here, so I guess I'm close.)

But... it's only 78-80% accurate for true positives. I'm probably malquoting the proper terms but isn't there four possible outcomes to tests?

True positive (correctly identified as positive; terrorist, the 78-80%)
False positive (incorrectly identified as positive; first time flyer, guy cheating on wife, frequent flyer whose luggage was lost AGAIN, etc.)
True negative (correctly identified as negative; Joe Schmoe)
False negative (incorrectly identified as negative; terrorist, the remaining 20-22%)

I'd actually like someone smarter/more knowledgeable than I to step in right about now... but are the rates for true positives reveresed for true negatives? One person in five will be pulled into a little room, harrassed, given a prostate exam, (ideally uh, I guess..) let go, and everyone laughs and goes on their merry way? Or since the amount of terrorists is slim to none compared to the population of flyers, what god damn good will it do if it misses one terrrorist in five and one in five of the 612,000,000 paying airline passengers annually carried in the US will be flagged as terrorists?

122400000 terrorists? That seems like, uh, a lot. We see how well the machine works with terrorists. How well does it misinterpret the nervous, scared (watch out for TERROR), depressed, and the angry? Even an astoundingly great number like 99.99% of people who are not terrorists are identified as not terrorists, that leaves... 61200 being pulled aside for "further questioning". 61200 is a fucking townful.

I disagree with you on the basis that the elderly are no more responsible for wrecks than teens and young adults.

U.S drivers under the age of 25 are about twice as likely to be involved in a fatal wreck and often 3-5 times more likely to be in a wreck per 1000 drivers.

I've seen some statistics from Canada as well which echo similar results.

Remember, old people don't drive well because they are impaired... Young people don't drive well because they make reckless and/or inexperienced decisions. If you want to restrict licenses, then you should probably start with not issuing licenses until the mid twenties for males and late teens to early 20s for women... It seems teen/young adult wrecks coincide pretty well with frontal lobe development... which in itself, could be labeled an impairment.

Mexicans are now the largest racial group in California.

Citation needed, my friend. According to the wikipedia, which is using stats from American Community Survey, Hispanics/Latinos only make up 35.9% of the population of California. Not sure if "illegals" are counted in that total, but there are still alot of areas in California that are majority White still.

I always wonder why nobody has done a phone with a Braile output

Because there aren't enough blind people to make it profitable. There are 1.3 million legally blind people in the United States. That's less than one half of one percent of the current population.

Complex Problem + Increased R&D spending + Small Market = Few Products

Glad to see there are some players in this niche though.

My parent comment has 39 replies, many of them very interesting, but it is moderated -1 Off Topic at this time.

So, I'll repeat what I said: Alaska's population is like that of a small city, 683,478. Sara Palin has been Alaska's governor for less than 2 years. Before that, she was mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, a city of less than 10,000 people.

BULLSHIT. Per capita spending is all that matters.

Then here's what matters:

District of Columbia:
population: 581,530
Fed Money: $58,600,000,000.00
per-capita: $100,768.66

State of Alaska:
population: 670,053
Fed Money: $8,500,000,000.00
per-capita: $12,685.56

Washington DC gets about 8 times the money per-capita than Alaska does.

BULLSHIT. Per capita spending is all that matters.

Then here's what matters:

District of Columbia:
population: 581,530
Fed Money: $58,600,000,000.00
per-capita: $100,768.66

State of Alaska:
population: 670,053
Fed Money: $8,500,000,000.00
per-capita: $12,685.56

Washington DC gets about 8 times the money per-capita than Alaska does.

... for very low values of "they". Alaska's population is like that of a small city, 683,478, with basically one kind of business, oil.

Sara Palin has been Alaska's governor for two years.

Before that, she was mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, a city of less than 10,000 people (not counting moose and caribou).

Nerds should be able to estimate the voter turnout in their state here and calculate the probability that their one vote will swing the election in that state. Obviously the closeness of the race plays a huge role too, but there's no way to know how close the race is until after the elections (margin of error is +/- 3%, and the race will be won by less than 3%).

If you've done all this, you will see that the chance of your vote making a difference is extremely remote. Your entire trip to the voting booth is wasted. You're giving away time and money for nothing.

If tons of people stop voting and a single vote becomes meaningful, then it will be time to start voting again.

On the other hand, if every nerd believed you, 5% fewer people would vote, which will certainly have a good chance of deciding an election.

Nerds should be able to estimate the voter turnout in their state here and calculate the probability that their one vote will swing the election in that state. Obviously the closeness of the race plays a huge role too, but there's no way to know how close the race is until after the elections (margin of error is +/- 3%, and the race will be won by less than 3%).

If you've done all this, you will see that the chance of your vote making a difference is extremely remote. Your entire trip to the voting booth is wasted. You're giving away time and money for nothing.

If tons of people stop voting and a single vote becomes meaningful, then it will be time to start voting again.

You also realize that the vast, vast majority of federal dollars go to things like roads and infrastructure, right?

You can divide Federal expenses into a few big buckets:

defense spending
payment on the national debt
direct transfer payments to individuals
administrative expenses
grants to states

State-centered "pork" is almost exclusively handled through grants (with some defense spending qualifying as state / congressional pork).

The Federal government doesn't have a choice about non-discretionary direct transfer payments like social security and welfare. Furthermore, it doesn't control where people choose to live. And for obvious reasons, people who retire tend to choose not to live in "blue" states like New York, New Jersey, or California because those are very expensive places for people to live on a fixed income.

Luckily, the US government publishes Federal expenditures on a state by state basis:
http://harvester.census.gov/cffr/asp/Geography.asp

So you can look it up yourself. Compare the grant money allocated to New York state vs the grant money allocated to Florida. This is an appropriate comparison because they are both Atlantic states, have about the same population, but one is a "blue" state while the other is a "red" state.

Guess who gets more? (Hint, it's not the "red" state). Now, New Yorkers have a higher per capita income than Floridians do, by about 25%. But they get a full 50% more in Federal grant money.

In other words, blue states aren't getting cheated and red states are not welfare states. It's just more leftist propoganda and lies from the resident /. commissar Doc Ruby.

Actually I did. Just how stupid are you? Try reading. it. again.

The link is there now. It wasn't when I responded to your posting earlier. Why? I don't know. My account is configured to insert the domain name after linked text (to avoid the URL trolls), and it wasn't there when I pasted your quote into my reply.

But, I went to look at your link. To be clear, WSWS.org is the World Socialist Web Site. I prefer to avoid citation of clearly partisan sources, but I read through the article and found the assertion you quoted:

The top .1% of Americans earned almost as much as the bottom 150 million Americans.

Based on other data I've seen, something didn't add up. So, I went to look at the actual report. I was only able to find the version dated through 2002, but the home page of one of the authors has the Excel data, updated through 2006. I wasn't able to find the statement in question in the report. I also wasn't able to find the NY Times article that the WSWS article cites. So, I don't know the source for the statement.

But, we should be able to verify it ourselves. Download the Excel workbook and take a look at the worksheet named "Table0". There, you can see the average income (including capital gains) for the top 0.1% is $3.7M. Multiply that by the number of families (133,325) and you get a total of $495B. In the same table, the total number of families is 148M. Dividing 495B by 74M (1/2 of 148M) yields an average income per family for the bottom 50% that must be less than $6,672, if the statement in question were correct.

The workbook doesn't contain information by percentile, for less than 90%. But, this graph was derived from Table A-3: Selected Measures of Household Income Dispersion: 1967 to 2003. The table on the same page shows the same data, and in 2003, the average income of the lowest quintile is $10,536 -- substantially higher than the implied average of $6,672 for the lowest 50% that is claimed above.

I'm not claiming that the report is in error, although there is certainly some controvery about it. However, it appears that someone's interpretation doesn't meet the smell test. You might want to take some time reading the entire report and corroborate it against other sources.

The graph from Wikipedia (derived from a US Census report) appears to support part of your claim: the gap between the 95th percentile and the 10th percentile has certainly gotten wider since 1967. The gap between the 10th and 50th percentiles also has gotten wider, although to a lesser extent. However, the gap has leveled off or even declined slightly since 1999 -- ironically since Bush 43 took office.

I'm paying for creativity and talent.

Which in a world of 6,719,000,000+ is not in short supply. There is far more than enough to keep you busy for the rest of your life. Many different people can be entertained by a cheap copy of the same good song. Funny that.

The vast majority of creative and talented people in the current "IP" regime get almost nothing in payment. It's almost all going to the middlemen who give almost nothing in return and has been for hundreds of years. That is not an acceptable situation and the fact that you choose to support it says more about your naivety than any token "rewards" most creative and talented people might get.

In addition a basic problem with so-called "IP" markets in general and the music business in particular is the economic network effect. That is, it's always going to be n times as efficient to have one player produce and copy n copies of their "IP" than it is for n players to produce and copy 1/n copies of their "IP". This leads to unstable, winner-take-all markets with only a monopoly or an oligopoly remaining who can and do charge whatever they like for the "IP" they control. This has happened in pretty much every "IP" market you care to name. It's not a free market because real competition and commodity, cost-plus pricing with efficient production don't happen.

I would agree at least partially with your argument if we had IP law that allowed a true free market to arise where songs, videos and software cost cents/copy and not tens of dollars however until that happy day arises (and parasitic middlemen, marketers and their associated million dollar stars are a thing of the past) I will happily pirate all the "big media" content I can when the opportunity arises. Note that this argument does not apply to small players and I'm much more careful about making sure small players get a just reward for their work in entertaining me, though I don't use copyright and badly broken markets as my benchmark of how much they should be paid.

---

It's wrong that an intellectual property creator should not be rewarded for their work.
It's equally wrong that an IP creator should be rewarded too many times for the one piece of work, for exactly the same reasons.
Reform IP law and stop the M$/RIAA abuse.

... high demand, is the musician's creativity - writing melodies that people like, expressive lyrics, cool guitar solos, interesting arangements, new instruments used in a different genre, etc.

In a world of 6,718,000,000+ people that is not in short supply, not even a little bit, whatever the marketing parasites might tell you.

That's what I'm paying for when I buy music.

You need to become more numerically literate.

---

It's wrong that an intellectual property creator should not be rewarded for their work.
It's equally wrong that an IP creator should be rewarded too many times for the one piece of work, for exactly the same reasons.
Reform IP law and stop the M$/RIAA abuse.

I hear this quite a bit on the internet. It seems people that work in large environments don't realize how many people work with small computer networks. Half of the US work force works for a company with under 500 employees. You can check that here Census info. Since there are more small companies, and fewer large companies, there is a higher percentage of the total small/medium (under 500) workers that will be in a decision making position. It is also very likely that these smaller companies are the kind of business that can have all their systems shut down for a weekend a couple times a year.

My anectodal evedence is that I current provide IT services for 3 places. All in that under 500. 1 is 24/6, the others are M-F 8-8. However, they are all manufacturers in some way. So that may also have something to do with it.

America has a spike in the age distribution of people over 50, thanks to the baby boomers.

True. However, Japan's elderly (those over 65) comprised 19% of the population as of 2003. By contrast, the United States elderly percentage (as of the 2000 census) was 12.4%*.

Granted, we're talking percentages rather than raw numbers, but those considered senior citizens comprise a larger portion of the overall population in Japan as compared to the U.S. That said, to see the baby boom generation and how their population affects the overall population, look at this 2005 graph from the census bureau.

Overall, it's not necessarily the older generation that "holds progress back" but rather, it is people in general who do not see the need for the newest and shiniest. Look at Blue Ray and HDTV to use two examples. DVDs are perfectly acceptable for the masses so most don't see the need to repurchase new media to play in their new (much more expensive) players.

*Scroll to the last page to see the percentage breaks outs and add the last three columns.

America has a spike in the age distribution of people over 50, thanks to the baby boomers.

True. However, Japan's elderly (those over 65) comprised 19% of the population as of 2003. By contrast, the United States elderly percentage (as of the 2000 census) was 12.4%*.

Granted, we're talking percentages rather than raw numbers, but those considered senior citizens comprise a larger portion of the overall population in Japan as compared to the U.S. That said, to see the baby boom generation and how their population affects the overall population, look at this 2005 graph from the census bureau.

Overall, it's not necessarily the older generation that "holds progress back" but rather, it is people in general who do not see the need for the newest and shiniest. Look at Blue Ray and HDTV to use two examples. DVDs are perfectly acceptable for the masses so most don't see the need to repurchase new media to play in their new (much more expensive) players.

*Scroll to the last page to see the percentage breaks outs and add the last three columns.

Caucasian-pride-ridden state in the southern U.S

I am actually quite amazed that /. would put such an inflamatory phrase like that into a summary. By using the word "ridden" are you implying that being proud of your race is a bad trait? I do believe that while we are at the olympics, many people are 'proud' of their country, heritage or race. However, in light of the olympics, this is a positive thing as we cheer in the name of sport and friendly competition. The usage in the summary, gives the impression that all Georgian's are Klansman. One should note that Georgia has a higher percentage of African Americans (29%) than the US average http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/13000.html, and I'm sure they are proud of being from Georgia.

Why not describe other countries that are predominantly Caucasian such as Sweden, or Ireland in the same manner?

Other uses that you should try:

Arab-pride-ridden (Iraq)
Jewish-price-ridden (Israel)
Linux-pride-ridden (./)

Or, even easier, contract with a payroll outsourcing company to provide payroll services, just like huge swaths of private industry do, and stop worrying about paying the ~170 million dollars the article references to upgrade a custom payroll system to a *new* *custom* payroll service that you'll read the same frigging article about 30 years from now, detailing how California can't find Java programmers anymore to upgrade their 100,000 lines of payroll code.

This is not a unique problem for an organization to have. Why would you reinvent the wheel when you could let a company that specializes in payroll outsourcing handle the problem for you at a cost that's probably signifcantly lower than the cost of doing it yourself? I find it terribly hard to believe that the State of California pays people in such a byzantine way that they need to roll their own solution and maintain the entire infrastructure themselves.

According to the 2006 US Census of State Employment, California employed 474,660 full & part time employees. That $177,000,000 referenced as the cost of upgrading could certainly be better spent negotiating a good contract for payroll services. Considering ~22,000 of the people listed in that census fall into the category of "Financial Administration," I bet the outsourcing would also save the state some non-trivial amount of money in the form of salaries that no longer have to be paid, saving the state even more money.

A cursory search using google shows that "small businesses" can expect to pay about $10 to $12 dollars per employee per month for outsourced payroll services. Assuming this is the best rate California could get, that 177 million dollars in upgrade costs would pay for about 2.5 years of service. Consider that they'd undoubtedly get a discount for such a significant volume of business, and the money they'd save by not having to owning, operating, staffing, and supporting their own data centers to perform this function for half a million employees, and I think there's a very good chance that outsourcing their payroll services would be a big money saver for the state.

Of course, this is all based on the (perhaps faulty) premise that any government wants to provide the most fiscally responsible solution to its taxpayers...

Capitalism's main problem is that it doesn't distribute wealth equitably

Bingo!!!

However I still question whether the problem is Capitalism itself or simply the people who have gamed the system and basically turned Capitalism back into Feudalism.

I agree with many of the concerns that Gates expresses in the article but I absolutely disagree with his assessment of the situation and the solution. Case in point, perhaps I don't know enough about this RED program started by Bono which is saving the world but from what I read of the article corporations are using marketing to sell products to by pulling heart strings and then giving a portion of the profit margin to a charity. Why don't they just give donations to charities outright like their customers have been doing for ages? What is the added value to the charities of creating a marketing ploy?

But back to Capitalism. The solution is not Creative Capitalism, the solution is to adopt real Capitalism and punish those who destroy the Free Market in which Capitalism works. Many of the countries that are suffering with poor standards of living actually have marketable resources which could be used to build an economy, however, through corruption the wealth of the nations are radically uneven in their distribution.

And sadly Gates fails to recognize the symptoms in the United States economy for what they are. The GINI coefficient for the United States has been continually trending in the direction of inequality similar to many countries where the average citizen is incapable of participating in a Capitalist Economy as anything other than a laborer to be exploited.

The solution to the worlds ills is not more goofy marketing and selling of crap products that nobody needs. The first step in the solution is to stop the outrageous corruption and exploitation that destroys economies, communities, and living standards. A secondly we need to seriously listen to experts in sociology and economics, not a monopolist who wants to put his corporate label on everyones contribution to the solution.

Today (June 2008) there are 6.7 billion people in the world, and 304 million in the US. (See the US Census). The world is currently producing about 85 M barrels of oil per day, and the US consumes about 20.7 M bls/day (see World Oil balance).

Note that world petroleum production peaked in 2005. This works out to 8 gallons of petroleum per US citizen daily. This consumption includes gasoline, asphalt, heating oil, jet fuel, deisel fuel, lubridants, food production, and petroleum-based plastics. Of these products which is the LEAST painful to reduce?

So with 4.5% of the world population we are consuming 24% if the world's oil. In other words, adding 21 MBls indeed won't lower the price of gas.

Define welfare. You seem to not be using the same terms others are using.

Everyone is using, what suits them.

Pointing out exceptions does not contravene my point.

It does not, alright, but I don't need to disprove you — only to show, that your (attempt at) proof is incomplete. The report you presented as evidence requires much more research and interpretation. But that's boring stuff (and you'll also need to look a few decades back too), and the conclusions are likely to be far less bombastic than you are hoping for.

Per person? You are really confused. It's per dollar remitted.

The table I was referring to showed the amounts of grants per State. I divided the total amounts for a few States by each State's population (obtained from U.S. Census). Looking at the dollars remitted by each State is a different view. It was more difficult to research and less relevant, so I chose not to do it

It follows, then, that Republican states are benefited by (voluntarily! since they aren't forced to accept federal funds) the progressive tax scheme that they claim to decry.

Whether the above is true or not, there is nothing wrong with decrying, what one benefits from. In fact, it can (should?) be viewed as honorable honesty: "Even though we benefit from it, we think, it is a terrible idea and should be abolished as soon as possible. That said, we will continue milking it for all it is worth, for as long as you, fools, keep forcing it upon all of us."

Whats the state of navigation for linux in car systems? It'd be fun to homebrew one, but without decent navigation it's not a whole lot of use.

I'm sure i should have some BSOD joke in here too, but i haven't had my coffee yet

Navigation is a hard problem, primarily due to a lack of data. There are free sources (as in public domain) of street line data for many countries, however you need topological network data to accurately route a car -- street intersections, one-way streets, weighting of streets according to real-world local conditions, etc.

The US Census releases the TIGER data, and OpenStreetMaps builds on that (and other) data with a public domain wiki-style site, but neither sources have sufficient topological data to route autos.

There are two primary providers of topological map data -- you'll see their logos at the bottom of most maps, including Google Maps: NavTeq and TeleAtlas. For a brief introduction to the scale of the problem, I'd actually recommend watching TeleAtlas's marketing video on their production process

I'd love to see furtherance of open topographical data -- data about the communities around us is useful for more than just routing automobiles. One very interesting development is Google StreetView. In taking these photographs, Google has removed the need to actually drive the routes to gather, correct, or refine data -- they can collect the photographs en-masse, allowing more specialized analysis to be done offline -- anyone, anywhere, can determine whether a street is one-way, where the freeway on-ramp is, etc.

I should also mention that OpenStreetMaps uses a share-alike creative-commons license. The definition of an "aggregate work" of data is very fluid -- I can not use OSM data, since I can't combine it with data available under different licensing -- even publicly available municipal data that simply can't be re-licensed CC Share-Alike.

The difference is that the students in top schools are usually smarter and harder working.

Citation badly needed. When you cross reference US census data with Ivy League statistics, it becomes evident that the spots in top colleges actually go to the wealthy students. Coincidence? When they're getting over ten thousand applicants and only need roughly 10%, as is common of Ivies, that is highly unlikely. You are either severely mislead, or simply a classist fucker. I'll assume the former, and inform you that the myth you believe is baseless and quite disgusting.

Sucks to be a family in California or New York. Good policy for DINCs in Kansas though.

California median household income: $53,770.
New York median household income: $48,201.

5X the median household income? Sounds pretty rich to me.

Sucks to be a family in California or New York. Good policy for DINCs in Kansas though.

California median household income: $53,770.
New York median household income: $48,201.

5X the median household income? Sounds pretty rich to me.

Well lets take an honest look at this on.
The Hummer has terrible resale value for a lot of reasons. A big one is that it is a terrible vehical with a terrible repair history. A Prius is a Toyota and has a great repair history.

Okay, how about a Toyota Sequoia with a Honda Civic Hybrid? $26k versus $20k, but just over $17k 5-year depreciation instead of just over $8k 5-year depreciation.

It doesn't matter what comparison you do; guzzlers have horrible depreciation in comparison to fuel-efficient cars. Namely, because guzzlers continue to cost a lot to run, while a person who's buying used is doing so to save money.

Why not compare it to a Lexus, Honda, Acura, or Mazda 3 or 6.

Because we're comparing fuel-efficient vehicles with guzzlers, obviously.

"The average car on the road is now roughly nine years old, implying an average lifespan of 18 years. Ignoring inflation on gasoline prices and interest on the purchase, this would work out to a savings of $41,400 over the lifespan of the vehicle. That's a *Lot* of money. Saying it has to cost under $20k is just stupid."
Yea you are ignoring the interest that you would have to pay on the extra money.

And inflation on gas prices. If you want more detailed calculations that include interest and inflation, go here.

The other thing you are forgetting is that car loans are limited to usually five years

And so one should pretend that economics doesn't matter because of this, right? Whether the money is coming from a car loan, a savings account, home equity, or whatnot, economics is still economics. All that changes is the interest rates.

and you are ignoring the cost of a battery pack replacement. I doubt that any battery pack will last the 18 years you are perdicting for a car life span.

1) That's covered by the linked calculations.
2) LG Chem expects their spinel packs for the Volt to last 30 years. A123 has already gotten over 7,000 cycles on their pack. AltairNano titanate cells have done over 20 *thousand* cycles.

"Let's toss in another $500 in maintenance savings -" $500 a year? On my Mazda all I have had to do is change the oil and get new tires.

Um, no. In 2005, the average driver spent $2,013 in gasoline and motor oil plus $2,339 on other vehicle expenses (repairs, insurance, etc). Unless you have a magical car that never breaks, your car needs more than just oil and tires changed.

And those are not available yet for a car sized battery pack

BZZT, sorry, try again! *Almost all* new PHEVs and EVs coming out in significant volume in the coming years are using one of those chemistries, and the prototypes are running on them. The only glaring exception to this is Tesla.

plus I question the very idea of charging a Li/Poly car pack in five or ten minutes.

I love how you confused LiP, spinel, and titanate cells with li-poly; that was just the icing on the cake.

That will out a LOT of heat.

Li-ion variants tend to be over 99% efficient at slow charging and ~96% or so efficient at fast charging. 60kW*4%=2.4kW -- 50% more power as heat than a blow dryer consumes. 250kW*4%=10kW, still the tiniest fraction of the heat released by a running internal combustion engine.

None of those technologies are available right now.

What part of "Already Installed Across Oahu" don't you get? What, do you need a link? Or two? How about a map? Or

Either way, the population isn't going anywhere (until the pubs cause wwIII), so we should NOT be using food grade arable land to grow biomass for fuel.

Europe currently has negative population growth. It's not unreasonable to expect the rest of the world to follow suit over the next century or so. While I wouldn't expect a precipitate fall in population, growth should level off (see http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/idb/tables.html for recent history and some projected statistics for the next forty years).

Your point only applies if we get to the point of having a shortage of food grade arable land. If we're only using 50% of the potentially arable land, this doesn't seem like a long term problem. What we're hitting now (causing increasing food prices) is that it is not free to start cultivating the land because the infrastructure is not there. I.e. we're facing short term shortages rather than actual long term limits.

It's also worth noting that the US uses significantly more grain than other countries. The global average is one pound of grain per day, but the US uses five. If the US backed down to two pounds of grain per day, that would still leave three pounds of existing grain that could be used for biofuels.

It's also worth noting that biofuel produced from waste (e.g. the stems and stalks rather than the edible grains) can actually make food cheaper (by increasing the effective yield per acre or hectare and better amortizing the cultivation costs).

especially that portion of us below 30.

The problem is that people under 30 are apathetic and don't vote. Until the under 30 crowd votes with any kind of numbers that are comparable with other age groups, no one will pay much attention to them. If you take yourself out of the system, don't be surprised if you're not represented.

Um, pretty much every source of economic data. Take a look at the US Census data since 1980. Total manufacturing output in the 2000's is several times greater. As population grows the number of things made follows. It's not of an indicator of economic health, but the US definitely makes more crap today than it did in 1980.

Closing on 7 billion now.

10 billion on my likely death year.

http://www.ibiblio.org/lunarbin/worldpop

http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/popclockworld.html

[1] http://www.bluewaterwind.com/de_overview.htm
[2] http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/10000.html

According to the latest numbers (from the 2000 census, so possibly a little out of date, but it's the latest info I can find at the moment.), only about 9% of people in the US use oil for heating (with natural gas being 51% and electric being 30%), which is presumably why there is a lack of uproar about it.

OTOH, fuel oil made up 80% of heating in Maine, so I dunno. Maybe it just hasn't hit the critical point for the majority yet.

Breaking copy protection does not need to be impossible, only difficult enough to discourage an alpha value worth of customers.

No, difficult enough to discourage the single [non-]customer who has the means and the will to break and distribute it while not discouraging the large number of potential customers. With 6,673,182,752+ people in the world that's not good odds. Most vendors seem to get away with it at all only by flat-out lying to their potential customers e.g. "WGA"; to call it an "advantage" is an outright lie and the only reason they can get away with is because of economic network effects.

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DRM'ed content breaks the copyright bargain, the first sale doctrine and fair use provisions. It should not be possible to copyright DRM'ed content.

In the elementary grades, one teacher could cover all the subjects easily. 12 kids (or less) paying 4-5K per child per year would pay this teacher well.

The nation's public school districts spent an average of $8,701 per student on elementary and secondary education in fiscal year 2005, up 5 percent from $8,287 the previous year, the U.S. Census Bureau reported today. So when you have classroom of 25 students per teacher, you have to ask if $207,175 worth of product is actually being supplied? Where does all that money go? Like most government run monopolies the majority of the labor budget is spent on a few over paid execs and a massively bloated middle management.