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http://www.census.gov/geo/www/tiger/

Format is a bit obscure, but it works rather ok. We were able to use the data to draw road maps and then find paths on them. I'm sure it has it's own problems too but maybe you could contact them and point out the errors.

Perhaps you should look at the Topologically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing (TIGER) data published by the Census bureau. It is a cool set of map files. You can find more at http://www.census.gov/geo/www/tiger/.

I know the transportation departments across the country use the files.

North American high-definition television sales grew about 60% to 10 million units in the fourth quarter as Samsung and Sony gained market share at the expense of Sharp and other manufacturers, NPD Group unit DisplaySearch said.

While this doesn't confirm that 25% market penetration referenced in the GP, it does point to a fairly significant level. It isn't clear from the article whether the growth is relative to the previous quarter or to the same quarter of the previous year, which would obviously make a big difference (assuming the growth has been trending). Other growth numbers in the article do explicitly compare to the previous year, but that doesn't prove anything.

What does this mean? Well, as I said, it doesn't confirm the 25% market penetration, but it might indicate a higher level of penetration than you expected.

Also, your 80 million number for America is way too high because we need to look at the number of households, not the total population. http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html gives the 2000 number of households for the US as 105,480,101 and gives a population growth from 2000 to 2006 of 6.4%, which gives us an estimate for the number of household in 2006 as 112,230,827. Throw in another couple of percent to get to 2008 as a pure guess: 114,475,444.

Back to penetration -- 25% of households is 28,618,861 -- call it 29 million. With 10 million sold in the 4th quarter of 2007, and at least another 6 million in the 3rd quarter (based on the 60% growth rate), thats 17 million HDTVs in just the last half of 2007. You decide how likely the 25% penetration is given this.

Another reference, http://www.rtoonline.com/Content/article/Oct07/Nielson_HDTV_Household_DMA_Estimates7975789103007.asp, gives the US HDTV penetration as 13% at the end of last October. Even assuming that a full third of the 10 million HDTVs sold in the 3rd quarter were sold in October, that still pushes the penetration up to almost 19%. Not 25%, but in the ballpark. Of course, this over-counts those purchases a bit since some are likely purchased as upgrades or as second (or more) HDTVs for a given household.

You know, most of those 6 billion were students at some point of their life.

More to the point, about 2.5 billion people are currently under the age of 25*, so actively targeting those might give Microsoft about 1 billion students over 10 years

* (at the bottom of the page hit Submit for pop pyramid: http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/idb/worldpopinfo.html )

Actually, the US Census claims there are 17.6 million businesses in 2002 with owners and no employees. These are more than 70% of all businesses, which implies to me that there's 21-25 million businesses overall. Sounds like a lot of people agree with me. And I think it provides an effective counter to your argument. After all, if we already have 22 million businesses, what's another factor of 10 going to matter?

I guess it'd be redundant calling an AC a troll, idiot, moron, and just out of the question to suggest that they provide links or any backing info of any kind.

6 million HDTV homes by the end of 2007 receive HD programming in some form or other. This is from subscribed HD sources and may not cover all HDTVs, but likewise it is no guarantee that all those subscribers have HDTVs either. With 6 million being <5% of the more than estimated 106M households in the US (2000 data), I think that answers anything the AC wishes to say.

On the need for glasses, on TV's less than 42" at normal viewing distances, HD content isn't that noticeably better than DVD sources. On larger TV's, the differences are directly affected by the quality of the TV itself, as there are large disparities in rendering capabilities of TVs, so my response to you might be "get something other than a bottom end 'HDTV'"....

And FYI: my current HDTV is greater than 42", and has enough processing power to render acceptable quality pictures even out of SD satellite sources. It upconverts everything to 1080i and has very good filters that limit things like the stair stepping effects.

I submit that the fundamental problem with the United States is excessively concentrated power.

Agreed. But that concentration isn't just the federal government; it's the control of the majority of the nation's wealth into the hands of a few.

This concentration isn't something that just happens, it occurs because of government action and policy - it's governments that issue corporate charters, land deeds, and the like.

If there are indeed infrastructure problems within a state, why is the state impotent incapable of fixing them, instead relying on federal handouts?

States vary enormously in their wealth. New Jersey's median household income is $64,169; Mississippi's is $35,261. If all states are part of one nation, if companies in New Jersey want to ship their goods to Mississippi, it's not unreasonable to share that wealth around so that everybody has decent infrastructure.

Thus, the real place to begin the reform is to avoid giving the nearly 1 trillion dollars to the Fed. This simple logic can then be applied to the vampiric parade of entitlements currently sucking your wallet, and your future, dry.

The big problem with entitlements is medical care. What drives the rising costs? The for-profit medical "care" model.

What we first need to do is change the FCC so that it's not headed by appointed officials, but rather by elected representatives.

The FCC's power has grown far beyond it's original intention (regulating airwaves frequencies in the U.S.). Apparently they only do things in response to complaints. Or at least that's how it once was. But the really fucked up thing is 99% of complaints come from one organization.

So essentially this one single organization is responsible for most of the - detrimental in my opinion - changes to what is allowed to be broadcast or not.

It's not the popular decision. People just think it is because this one fucked up organization has such broad powers and people just assume that it's the popular opinion. It is not.

The organization responsible for all this? The Parent's Television Council. The sick thing is they're proud to be the nation's most influential advocacy organization yet have barely a million members. That's right one million up tight fucks are responsible for 99.8-99.9% of all FCC regulation that affects 303 million people.

And the FCC allows it.

The New Hampshire House has 375 to 400 members. NH House of Representatives They are each paid $200 a year.

New Hampshire has a population of 1,315,000. New Hampshire Quick Facts

In such a system, where do you think the real power lies?

a) with the executive and the 24 member New Hampshire Senate
b) with the House committees
c) the party leadership
d) the permanent committee staff and the New Hampshire lobbyist
e) the individual members of the House.

Spoken like a Neo-con Republican. As a Libertarian I don't have a dog in this race. However, the Republicans would rather run against a Black Man than a White Woman. It's archaic and wreaks of old world views, but don't kid yourself that a large portion of the Independent Iowa voters who normally vote Republican padded Obama's count and when it came to NH the majority of voters being Women got off their collective asses and realized that they do have a chance to have a woman in the White House.

This country ethnically breaks down as http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/usinterimproj/

As a man I'm looking forward to seeing some change but from not just the notion of someone's skin color, but from their sex. Give the ladies a shot at steering the ship for once.

"Another common belief, but the sad reality is that most music has always stunk."

I disagree with this. I personally

"Another common belief, but the sad reality is that most music has always stunk."

I disagree with this. I personally

"Another common belief, but the sad reality is that most music has always stunk."

I disagree with this. I personally

Some of the recent increase in mentions of MRSA on death certificates may be due to improved levels of reporting, possibly brought about by the continued high public profile of the disease.

http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/education/001863.html

That's the link for my statistics, just so you know I'm not pulling numbers wildly out of my ass.

Fact is, most people in the US just aren't educated enough to recognize a scam. Look at the earning income and imagine their lives and how desperate one can get. Why do you think those damn AMWAY scams work so well. Promises of a better income for less than well off people.

Notice how I'm not saying stupid people. Just not educated for whatever reason. Most of the people that read slashdot are VERY tech knowledgeable. We grew up with this. Most of the people who get conned, didn't.

Whether they were too poor to afford a home computer and internet access, or were ahead of the technical wave... it doesn't matter. Remember, the internet hasn't been around that long in comparison to everything else. In the past 30 years, we've advanced more than we have in 300 years. Some people simply cannot keep up or get confused and don't try.

It's always easier to be ignorant than try to learn. Look at the statistics in the link I gave you. 27% of the people in the US over the age of 25 have a college degree (This is Bachelors, PHD, Masters, Associates... etc). I bet about 90% of slashdot readers has a college degree of some kind.

So it's suddenly surprising to you that with all this technology and most of the people not growing up with the technology, we have a lot of VERY uneducated people that are easily scammed?

I'm not excusing their behavior, and the fact that they fell for something that was too good to be true, means they fell into two categories

1) Greedy
2) Desperate

Otherwise, you typically don't fall for things like that. Just remember that you are in the top echelon of educated people in the US. What's easy for you to understand and grasp isn't for them. But that doesn't make it okay for trash like this to exploit them. In fact it means that they are the worst kind of trash and low life who KNOWINGLY did it again and again and again.

I have no remorse for any punishment they get. I personally hope they go to prison and meet one of the people whos' lives they ruined financial... who then turned to crime to survive because they didn't know better.

For some non-partisan data to put the situation into perspective using 'Bad Math' derived from the U.S. Census Bureau:

233,039,000 households x $80 = $18,643,120,000 for DTV converter box coupons

$95 billion in farm aid

You may have changed your mind but it seems that you didn't learn your lesson (to look things up instead of assuming). Earning power has steadily increased for at least fifty years.

Actually, Wikipedia has a nice graph regarding the military - it depicts a steady drop both in enlistment and percent of GDP; both have dropped by 50% since 1950 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_history_of_the_United_States)Note, there is a small uptick in expenditures in 2006 due to the Iraq war, though the enlistments are not higher.

As regards a majority Spanish-speaking population, this is the best reference I could track down. It doesn't explicitly validate my claim since it only looks ahead 50 years, but I strongly suspect if you do the math based on the growth numbers provided it will prove my projection accurate. http://www.census.gov/population/www/pop-profile/natproj.html

Actually, Wikipedia has a nice graph regarding the military - it depicts a steady drop both in enlistment and percent of GDP; both have dropped by 50% since 1950 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_history_of_the_United_States)Note, there is a small uptick in expenditures in 2006 due to the Iraq war, though the enlistments are not higher.

As regards a majority Spanish-speaking population, this is the best reference I could track down. It doesn't explicitly validate my claim since it only looks ahead 50 years, but I strongly suspect if you do the math based on the growth numbers provided it will prove my projection accurate. http://www.census.gov/population/www/pop-profile/natproj.html

The only impediment is YOU

No, it's the other 299,398,483 people. I split my vote between the Greens and the Libertarians.

Only when YOU vote for a democrat or a republican. They cannot win without your vote.

Then why do they continue winning? As I said, I split vote between the Greens and Libertarians.

Everyone?

Statistically speaking, yes.

Every year, I hear the same thing: IPV4's going to run out of addresses. It's not like global warming-- it's a finite number of routes. The number of them still exceeds an address for every single human on the face of the earth * a nice multiplier. Fie.

The government actually does keep a list of all citizens it considers suspect.

And those people would be wrong. Most Americans claim to be "Christian". They only polled 1022 people, but it was the first result on Google.

Wikipedia quotes a survey that randomly called over 50000 people and got more or less the same results.

Also, in the Census Bureau's"self described religious identification" report, the overwhelming majority claimed to be christian.

I recognize that many places in the US are relatively sprawly, but I don't accept that that in and of itself is a reason to encourage cars as our sole, or even primary means of transportation. You give an example: 40 miles from your work? Personally, I don't see why you'd spend an hour each way to get to work. I would have to have a flipping amazing job to do that. And even in that case, I suspect that I would do what I had to do to live closer.

But more to the point, if you don't insist on better public transportation, it's not going to be provided. You have to be willing to vote for it and to pay for it, but it can be created. We are under a cultural assumption (I suspect 'driven' by certain industries...) that the car is simply the best solution so we should get used to it. Yet we lived for millenniums without cars - only in the last century have we really geared towards cars. Is there a particular reason to, though? Even in the US many people live in places and situations where it is entirely not needed. In our biggest city it's even considered foolish to use a car. Why are we still gearing for that, then?

More to the point, why are more urban centers not gearing for other things? Most of our population is, in fact, urban: 75% in the United States. There is, in my opinion, why we aren't spending money on mass transit infrastructure in at least a 2:1 ratio.

According to a survey of nearly 600 U.S. and European companies that have more than 1,000 employees ...

You can't keep running a "War on Terror" if you're broke. The US is dependent upon foreign lenders. And like the old saying goes, the debtor is slave to the lender.

China - on track to beat last year's 232 billion dollar deficit.

Japan - another 80 or 90 billion

OPEC - add 110 billion this year (or more likely 130 billion)

Oh, what the heck - lets just do the WHOLE DARNED WORLD Another $800 Billion Dollar trade deficit this year. The US consumer's credit card is maxed out.

You can't keep running a "War on Terror" if you're broke. The US is dependent upon foreign lenders. And like the old saying goes, the debtor is slave to the lender.

China - on track to beat last year's 232 billion dollar deficit.

Japan - another 80 or 90 billion

OPEC - add 110 billion this year (or more likely 130 billion)

Oh, what the heck - lets just do the WHOLE DARNED WORLD Another $800 Billion Dollar trade deficit this year. The US consumer's credit card is maxed out.

You can't keep running a "War on Terror" if you're broke. The US is dependent upon foreign lenders. And like the old saying goes, the debtor is slave to the lender.

China - on track to beat last year's 232 billion dollar deficit.

Japan - another 80 or 90 billion

OPEC - add 110 billion this year (or more likely 130 billion)

Oh, what the heck - lets just do the WHOLE DARNED WORLD Another $800 Billion Dollar trade deficit this year. The US consumer's credit card is maxed out.

You can't keep running a "War on Terror" if you're broke. The US is dependent upon foreign lenders. And like the old saying goes, the debtor is slave to the lender.

China - on track to beat last year's 232 billion dollar deficit.

Japan - another 80 or 90 billion

OPEC - add 110 billion this year (or more likely 130 billion)

Oh, what the heck - lets just do the WHOLE DARNED WORLD Another $800 Billion Dollar trade deficit this year. The US consumer's credit card is maxed out.

The US justice and social system needs some serious work. If you have 1 in 142 US residents in jail you have a problem. This equates to just under 2 million inmates and this is only based on 2002 figures, so I'd hate to see the current status.

This inmate population is enough to populate any of the 13 least populated states in the USA.

I am not saying what these people did isn't wrong, but the crime sounds more like revenge that punishment. This kids will be in debt and slaves to the system by the time the get out. Any time they would have had to think about what they did will be marred by the excessiveness of the punishment. Maybe the American society is just looking to continue slavery, but using other means to do it?

Because it sounds better than, "Too lazy/proud to walk to the soup kitchen?"

How about some real numbers? Just for a lark I checked the 1990 Census(PDF from Hell) and the 2000 Census(also PDF) just to see what kind of dramatic drops we're getting for artists and computer scientists (sorry no data for "hacker"), because, obviously, they're starving to death.

From 1990 to 2000 we lost -400,934 artists in this country, for a negative decrease or "growth" of 19%. Oh. The. Horror.

From 1990 to 2000 we lost -2,388,940 computer scientists (and math professionals, they're lumped together), for a negative decrease or "growth" of 306%

Obviously these numbers are from the last census, but I'll be surprised if the trend doesn't continue. We'll definitely see more artists, because we have that sort of population, and we'll definitely see more CS professionals, though I'll be very surprised if the rate of increase doesn't drop off dramatically as the field "matures" compared to levels in 1990.

The truth of it is, the global amount of computer work is still increasing, and while other countries are getting a piece of the pie, we still dominate that field. Salaries normalize because the demand for new workers is being met. Low skill work offshores and automates, as it has in every industry since the industrial revolution.

If you're used to living in a world where a low level of skill, the kind that Web 2.0 - style applications would be in a position to replace, garnered you a high salary and a fancy title, yes, it's quite the rude awakening. For the rest of us, it's business as usual.

and whenever the leftists win a bigger government vote

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.

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.

I have to be honest here - The 2004 election had a 64% turnout rate, vs a 60% turnout rate in 2000.

I'm doubtful that the results would have been different if the people who didn't vote had gotten off their asses, found out a bit about the candidates and voted.

Or are you guessing that, in 2004, most of the potential voters who stayed home would have voted for Gore?

While I follow your presentation perfectly, I don't see how you are coupling the exchange rate internationally to inflation domestically. If you are arguing that ought to be and indeed will end up linked, that's fine, but one need not speculate, one need only look to the domestic inflation figures. Speculation and even seemingly valid logic can be confounded by many factors in a complex system. Best to look to the actual results.

I'm reminded of a long, long argument I once had about condo appreciation. This fellow presented this very long logical argument why condos really couldn't appreciate, and I asked him for data, any data, from any source, that showed that they didn't. Couldn't do it.

There is some inflation here. But it's hardly crazy.

Look here http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/histinc/p01w.html and then browse around at nearby things. Latest data on inflation-adjusted individual income here.

BTW, the petrodollar welfare article is interesting, but note that the Euro can't really *yet* be the reserve currency, as fairly well binding legislation at the EU is keeping the number of euros available for that sort of thing scarce. Perhaps if demand for euros rise, they EU will change things.

C//

I don't think you realize how tiny our military has gotten compared to 12 years ago when Clinton shutdown so many of our bases and reduced the military force.

Why is everyone here so pessimistic? Everyone focuses on the fact that it killed nine people (and injured 11)...nobody bothers to mention how many billions of people it didn't kill. According to http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html, the population at the time of writing this is 6,625,501,132. The number of people killed was 9. So it really only killed approximately 0.00000001358387814% of the world population. Those are pretty good odds if you ask me!

The total population of the world has increased by around 7-8 times in just the last 250 years, and more than doubled in the last 50.

This page gives an interesting overview of estimates of population sizes back to 10.000 BC.

Extrapolating backwards, you end up with incredibly tiny populations very quickly, and until a few hundred years ago, the effective size of groups that shared knowledge was far smaller simply because of distances.

Before 1854, travel from the town I grew up in to Oslo, a 20-30 minute car ride away, was a trip most people in that town would never make a single time in their lifetime - they had the choice between riding a horse or carriage (most people wouldn't have one) or walking and for most people it was a pointless trip. Then came the train line, and an explosion in travel.

Go back a few hundred more years, and population density was far lower, and while some people certainly traveled and traveled far, they were by now means the norm. Exchange of knowledge quickly slows down over the centuries, meaning the same things would either need to be discovered over and over in different groups, or spread extremely slowly.

All you need to look at is how slow the spread of knowledge has been in the time we have written history for, and how the process of building on knowledge has accelerated with population growth and improved communications. Look at all the things people in the ancient Greek, Egyptian, Chinese and Arab cultures knew, for example, that took hundreds of years to spread and become common knowledge or even to be used by well educated people, and that often only survived at all because of the invention of writing that allowed the ideas to survive years, decades and even centuries of scorn, ridicule, outright suppression or just lack of understanding.

Now, slow that process down hundreds and thousands of time as you go back century by century, until humanity is just a tiny scattering of small tribes, isolated enough to not have much contact. Take away writing as a way of preserving knowledge, and shorten the lifespan. Then see little knowledge would ever get transferred from one generation to the next.

Given that Orange County California has a population of about 3 million, I would imagine that the county sheriff might have four or five hundred uniformed officers. Add in being sandwiched between San Diego and Los Angeles, I think it makes a lot of sense to have a SWAT team. What surprises me is that this isn't obvious to anyone who even has a minor bit of a clue about geography.

According to http://www.census.gov/ :

WORLD 2007 Total, all ages 6,602,236,753

According to http://www.math.hawaii.edu/~ramsey/People.html :

[...] one estimates that 96,100,000,000 people have lived on the earth.

The dead outnumber the living roughly 15 to 1.

So chances are you are already dead!

$5.85/hr for 40hrs/wk (which a lot of people are lucky to get; most places cut you off at 36) is $234/wk, $936/mo, $12,168/yr. Taxes are about 15% at that wage, so you're looking at $10k per year. Nobody really lives on that; it's minimal survival, especially for a 'first-world' country. Housing and food costs vary wildly, but you can expect to pay about 80% of your after-tax income on basic needs (shelter, food, cheap clothes, electricity). Note that this doesn't include medical insurance, car insurance, gas, or any form of entertainment. Offering credit to someone in this situation is almost criminal, because it's quite likely they won't be able to keep up with it. One bounced check, late payment, or short paycheck, and they're screwed more thoroughly than a porn star; the fees and interest quickly outstrip their available income.
Construction and manual labor is more like $8-$10/hr, more for trades like pipefitters, electricians, etc.
A white-collar service job might net you $9-$15/hr. Specialists could see $25/hr or more, after 4+ additional years of training and certification, plus relevant experience.
Basically, unless you put yourself into nearly lifelong debt for a degree (and manage to choose a good one), you're capped at about three times the poverty level unless you get a decade of experience or move into management/business ownership. Any opportunity beyond $12-$13/hr is pretty rare, and either physically or mentally punishing. (major exceptions are administration and government/military contract work) Another thing to consider is that once you move past $20k/yr, your taxes rise from 15% up to around 22%. Additionally, locations with moderate to high pay rates have correspondingly high costs of living. There are cities in the US where a McDonald's employee makes over $10/hr to start; unfortunately, almost everything is 2-2.5x more expensive, which leaves them worse off once increased taxes are factored in.

For more economic details, have a look at the census bureau, http://www.census.gov/. Latest data is from 2000.
If you want to know more about our tax system, have a look at the ever-dreaded IRS here: http://www.irs.gov/.

This is what they call a trade war. Considering the current trade deficit of the USA, it would be a rather stupid move.

Besides, why wouldn't you pay a mere $100 billion, if you already have a deficit of $50 billion per month?

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.

Maybe in Kentucky $60k/yr is a decent family income, but you would be hard pressed to afford a $200k house on that.

Wow, you're pretty off-base, I'd say. First, let's look at median state incomes: I count 32/51 states+DC that have a median income less than $60k. Even California's median income is less than $65k. If you look here instead, you get much lower numbers -- I don't know why.

Anyway, I live in Louisville, Kentucky. It is, according to the US Census Bureau, the 27th largest city in the US (I point that out just to make it clear I'm not in a rural area, where (I'm fairly sure) housing is much cheaper by $/sqft).

My fiance and I have a combined income of $70k, and just bought our first home. We were approved for a mortgage of up to $300k. Granted, I thought that was a little ridiculous, but I later realized we *could* have afforded to pay it. We got our loan at 5.875% (30-year fixed) due to good credit, and we're fairly frugal people, but it would not have required much effort -- maybe a bit of attention to how often I upgrade my computer equipment, and that sort of thing. According to this, a 95% loan on a $300k house would cost less than $1,700/month. Add on property taxes and home insurance, and we'd be looking at around $2k/month. The amount of money we put into savings each month plus the amount we're actually paying for our mortgage easily tops that (well... it doesn't really stay in savings because I usually dump it back into the mortgage as additional principle payments). Now, I admit would couldn't afford that if we had 2 children, and we're making $70k instead of $60k, but on the other hand I'm talking about a $300k house, as opposed to $200k.

But let's back up a minute -- this begs the question (yes, it really does, you grammar Nazis -- it "fails to consider the question") of whether you need a $200k house in Kentucky. I can promise that you don't. See, I don't know what $200k will get you in the San Francisco area, but with just a quick search out here you can get a 9-room ranch-style house (4-bedroom, 2-bath) with an unfinished basement on 16 acres of partially wooded land (with pond(s), a stream, a deck, and a 2-car carport) with an asking price under $180k. With a bit of effort looking around and some negotiating, I'm sure you can get more for a full $200k.

Telecommute for the win.

Maybe in Kentucky $60k/yr is a decent family income, but you would be hard pressed to afford a $200k house on that.

Wow, you're pretty off-base, I'd say. First, let's look at median state incomes: I count 32/51 states+DC that have a median income less than $60k. Even California's median income is less than $65k. If you look here instead, you get much lower numbers -- I don't know why.

Anyway, I live in Louisville, Kentucky. It is, according to the US Census Bureau, the 27th largest city in the US (I point that out just to make it clear I'm not in a rural area, where (I'm fairly sure) housing is much cheaper by $/sqft).

My fiance and I have a combined income of $70k, and just bought our first home. We were approved for a mortgage of up to $300k. Granted, I thought that was a little ridiculous, but I later realized we *could* have afforded to pay it. We got our loan at 5.875% (30-year fixed) due to good credit, and we're fairly frugal people, but it would not have required much effort -- maybe a bit of attention to how often I upgrade my computer equipment, and that sort of thing. According to this, a 95% loan on a $300k house would cost less than $1,700/month. Add on property taxes and home insurance, and we'd be looking at around $2k/month. The amount of money we put into savings each month plus the amount we're actually paying for our mortgage easily tops that (well... it doesn't really stay in savings because I usually dump it back into the mortgage as additional principle payments). Now, I admit would couldn't afford that if we had 2 children, and we're making $70k instead of $60k, but on the other hand I'm talking about a $300k house, as opposed to $200k.

But let's back up a minute -- this begs the question (yes, it really does, you grammar Nazis -- it "fails to consider the question") of whether you need a $200k house in Kentucky. I can promise that you don't. See, I don't know what $200k will get you in the San Francisco area, but with just a quick search out here you can get a 9-room ranch-style house (4-bedroom, 2-bath) with an unfinished basement on 16 acres of partially wooded land (with pond(s), a stream, a deck, and a 2-car carport) with an asking price under $180k. With a bit of effort looking around and some negotiating, I'm sure you can get more for a full $200k.

Telecommute for the win.

An ignorant racist joke gets moderated funny.
But an actual fact from the latest government census is marked flamebait, not informative?

Now here's an opinion, Slashdot moderation needs a serious overhaul.

No, you are wrong. Median household income for New York City is $38,293. In San Francisco, median household income is $55,221 (higher because San Fran proper has few low-income areas unlike NYC). So assuming that OP is married and OP's spouse brings any any income at all (even something like 10k a year) OP is very much not lower-middle class, even in those expensive cities.

No, you are wrong. Median household income for New York City is $38,293. In San Francisco, median household income is $55,221 (higher because San Fran proper has few low-income areas unlike NYC). So assuming that OP is married and OP's spouse brings any any income at all (even something like 10k a year) OP is very much not lower-middle class, even in those expensive cities.