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Thank you. That is more along the lines what I was looking for. It does show that my perception has some grounding in reality.

But if you look at survey data, most people who sit out elections don’t say they were deterred by inconveniences. They say they simply weren’t interested in voting at all, or disliked the candidates, or didn’t care. While we should take self-reported surveys with a grain of salt, there’s something important going on here

I think the take away is that we are both correct. Which cause is more? I don't know and I didn't know that at the start of this conversation.

OSM is notorious for not marking one way streets, either. I don't think that information is in the TIGER data they started from, so it required people to manually update.

Yeah. Costs increased because people who long delayed treatment for existing conditions could finally SEE A DOCTOR at an affordable price.

Actual facts say otherwise. People are going to the doctor LESS.

As far as what you pay, I agree, it's too much. There should have been a public option charging people say 8% of their income (plus 2% per child covered or something) for an acceptable level of insurance, capped at a certain amount.

Simple to pay for and calculate cost, portable between jobs within the state of California, gets employers out of the benefits-admin business, and cuts out much of the profit-taking middlemen. But noooo, the private insurers wouldn't stand for being relegated to second-class providers of "Medigap."

Blame the insurance lobby and low-information voters for not having a public option like 90% of developed places have.

And blame President Obama and the Democratic leadership for forcing the ACA on us, which forces purchase of a product from a private corporation and fines you if you choose not to buy. It's a tax, through and through - but one that goes predominantly straight to corporations.

The US Census Bureau defines millennial as 1982-2000 births. See https://www.census.gov/newsroo... Of course, you're a boomer and get your information from more reliable sources than the official statistics for the country, like pulled out of your ass.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Could you provide sources to your claims. From the research i've done on home schooling in the UK and US, it's seems pretty easy to me.
gov.uk
census.gov (is it bad that the only government website i could find with a reference to homeschooling in it was from the US DoS for diplomats, or the census?)

Correction: that's an ADDITIONAL $24k per person/year. You're overlooking that corporate profits are calculated after payroll and expenses are deducted. Total annual payroll in 2015 was $6,253,488,252,000 with a total employment of 124,085,947 people, so everyone who worked that year made on average ~$50,396. With your naive distributions to the entire population, you'd then have workers making ~$74,636 and babies/retired folks making $24,240 per year.

Far more than 5000 people a year have to play games with their finances to avoid the estate tax so it impacts many more people than the 5000 you indicate it impacts.

Anyway, if something is wrong in principle, it doesn't matter that it only impacts a few people. Would you be in favor of a law that allowed 5000 people to be snatched off the streets and sold as slaves in the United States every year? After all, it would only negatively impact 5000 out of more than 326 million people, or less than 0.0015% of the population, and imagine the benefits of the cheap labor to those buying the slaves. How about if the government just instituted a program to kill the 5000 oldest Medicare recipients each year to save money - after all, that's less than 0.0015% of the population.

The claim is that more minorities have common names than Caucasians apparently, although I haven't seen strong data to support that claim. I do buy the argument though because minorities do have a lot of common surnames at least.

According to the 2010 US Census the most common Surnames at least in the US are Smith, Johnson, Williams, Brown, Jones, Garcia, Miller, Davis, Rodriguez, Martinez, Hernandez, Lopez, Gonzalez, Wilson, and Anderson. 6 of those are Spanish: Garcia, Rodriguez, Martinez, Hernandez, Lopez, and Gonzalez. I am not sure if any of the others are mostly minority. The fastest growing surnames are also minorities: Zhang, Li, Ali, Liu, Khan, Vazquez, Wang, Huang, Lin, Singh, Chen, Bautista, Velazquez, Patel, and Wu. I don't see Census data on common both first and last names.

https://www.census.gov/newsroo...

I haven't seen numbers on Crosscheck purges by race, but apparently African Americans and minorities are heavily represented.

Crossheck is apparently very partisan where purges are about 50% democrats, 29% republicans, and 21% independent/other. There is plenty of data to show that Crosscheck is partisan.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/u...

Page seven of 2010 Census' surname data.

https://www2.census.gov/topics...

For people to lazy to look, the White population has 4.5% of the population in top 10 surnames (last names) and would require 239 surnames to make up 25% of the population.

The Black population has 13% in the top 10 surnames and only 43 surnames to make up 25% of population.

And the the Hispanic population is 16.3% for top 10 surnames and 26 surnames to cover 25% of population.

Wrong
Median income for White Males is HIGHER than in 2001
As always, the facts get in the way

in our country alone the poorest of the poor are still better off than the rich in many places around the world.

The median net worth of the bottom quintile of American households is about -$6000. That means they have less than nothing. Everything is borrowed. So what do you consider the poor and what do you consider rich elsewhere? What do you know about the homeless? What do you know about alcohol and drug addicts? What do you know about prison inmates working for next to nothing?

Get out of here with your "poor people should stop being so uppity and be thankful for what they have" garbage. The poorest of the poor ain't got shit.

Long-standing court precedent is that the Constitution only applies to U.S. soil. That's why Bush put a prison in Guantanamo Bay - it's not U.S. soil, it's Cuban soil. He was hoping to avoid that little complication of prisoners from Iraq and Afghanistan being shielded by the Constitution because they'd been brought to the U.S. That's also why INS can search your baggage and computer at the border - until you're admitted to the U.S. you're not considered to be on U.S. soil.

So while it's disappointing that the SCotUS didn't take this case, it's not surprising. From their perspective, these other countries willingly handed the U.S. Federal government Kim Dotcom's assets and money. It has nothing to do with the U.S. court system. He is not a U.S. citizen, he doesn't live in the U.S., and the seizures and forfeitures did not happen on U.S. soil.

OP is incorrect that the Constitution only applies to U.S. citizens. The moment a non-citizen crosses onto U.S. soil, even if they do so illegally, they are protected by the Constitution. In fact, due to the bad aftertaste of the three-fifths compromise, non-citizens (legal and illegal) are counted as part of a state's population when determining how many Representatives in the House that state gets. That's right - each 750,000 extra illegal aliens = 1 more Representative in the House (they're distributed pretty evenly across blue and red states at the moment so it doesn't skew politics too badly).

Except not. Millenials outnumber baby boomers.
https://www.census.gov/newsroo...

These heavy people are heavier than me.

Statistically speaking, the overwhelming majority of them are not heavier than you.

https://www2.census.gov/librar...

A 48 year old male who weighs 357 pounds weighs more than 99.1% of the male population, and 99.4% of the female population. Yes, there are some people who are bigger than you, but they are very rare - on the order of 9 out of every 1000 people you see.

I take up one seat, they take up two or three seats.

Ah yes, the gold standard CDC "How many seats do you take up?" health metric. You "take up one seat" because you carry a massive proportion of your excess weight wrapped up around your torso and neck. Not because you are thin.

I exercise, diet and don't listen to the naysayers.

Seated cable rows and slow-as-molasses walking don't constitute a regular exercise regimen. Eating thousands of calories per day of pure garbage doesn't constitute a diet, except in the loosest sense of the word, as in, "The hyena eats a diet that consists of any organic matter it can find." As for listening to the naysayers - your refusal to listen to the people offering facts and strategies for managing your weight is exactly why you will shorten your lifespan and end up dead in the next 15 years - either from heart attack, stroke, complications related to diabetes, renal failure, or cancer.

I've done that for 30 years.

And it's worked out so well for you, huh? Did you "lose weight" back up to 375 yet? You have stayed the same weight, or gained weight, for the last 30 years... yet you keep insisting that you have everything all figured out. By the numbers, and by the facts, you demonstrably do NOT have it all figured out.

I'll do that for another 30+ years.

No, you won't. You're on track to die in your early 60's, a good 10-15 years younger than your expected lifespan. That's only about 12-15 years away, Chris. And the longer you wait to make lifestyle changes instead of doubling down on the lifestyle that has led you to be the miserable health wreck you are currently, the less likely you'll be to be able to actually reverse your early date with the grim reaper.

These guys are lifelong city-dwellers right?

Yes, like 80% of the population.

143 million Americans.

Roughly 44% of the country (per https://www.census.gov/popcloc...)

Math ain't hard.

Remember that in WWII, something like 70% of the population still lived on farms. Now it's less than 10%. Take a trip through Kansas and you'll see plenty of 4/5ths abandoned towns that were full in the 40's and 50's.

According to the US census, 43.5% of the population was rural in 1940, down to 36.0% by 1950. Considering those weren't all living on farms, nowhere near 70% of the population lived on a farm in WWII.

Source: https://www.census.gov/populat...

320M people total. 200M workforce participation rate. https://data.bls.gov/timeserie...

48M people over 65. https://www.census.gov/newsroo... 74M people under 18. https://www.childstats.gov/ame...

So you want retired people and children to work?

There are a couple of problems with using those numbers as-is.

First, merely having a job (workforce participation) tells you nothing about whether you are underemployed, whereas unemployment takes that into account.

Second, workforce participation tells you nothing about how many people were forced into retiring earlier than originally planned, but concluded that they wouldn't be able to find work, so they didn't bother. The question isn't whether anyone over 65 is working, but rather whether the number of people over 65 who are working has decreased, and whether that decrease was caused by a lack of opportunity to keep working or by having so much money that they didn't feel the need to keep working.

320M people total. 200M workforce participation rate. https://data.bls.gov/timeserie...

48M people over 65. https://www.census.gov/newsroo...
74M people under 18. https://www.childstats.gov/ame...

So you want retired people and children to work?

The past cannot be changed but it sure set up their descendants pretty nicely.

Ask me how I know your white.
Native people die at higher rates than other Americans from
tuberculosis: 600% higher ? alcoholism: 510% higher ? diabetes: 189% higher
vehicle crashes: 229% higher ? injuries: 152% higher ? suicide: 62% higher

Income and Poverty
$38,530
The median household income of single-race American Indian and Alaska Native households in 2015. This compares with $55,775 for the nation as a whole.
Source: 2015 American Community Survey
http://factfinder.census.gov/bkmk/table/1.0/en/ACS/15_1YR/S0201//popgroup~006 http://factfinder.census.gov/b...

26.6%
The percentage of single-race American Indians and Alaska Natives who were in poverty in 2015, the highest rate of any race group. For the nation as a whole, the poverty rate was 14.7 percent.
Sources: 2015 American Community Survey
http://factfinder.census.gov/bkmk/table/1.0/en/ACS/15_1YR/S0201//popgroup~006 http://factfinder.census.gov/b...

The past cannot be changed but it sure set up their descendants pretty nicely.

Ask me how I know your white.
Native people die at higher rates than other Americans from
tuberculosis: 600% higher ? alcoholism: 510% higher ? diabetes: 189% higher
vehicle crashes: 229% higher ? injuries: 152% higher ? suicide: 62% higher

Income and Poverty
$38,530
The median household income of single-race American Indian and Alaska Native households in 2015. This compares with $55,775 for the nation as a whole.
Source: 2015 American Community Survey
http://factfinder.census.gov/bkmk/table/1.0/en/ACS/15_1YR/S0201//popgroup~006 http://factfinder.census.gov/b...

26.6%
The percentage of single-race American Indians and Alaska Natives who were in poverty in 2015, the highest rate of any race group. For the nation as a whole, the poverty rate was 14.7 percent.
Sources: 2015 American Community Survey
http://factfinder.census.gov/bkmk/table/1.0/en/ACS/15_1YR/S0201//popgroup~006 http://factfinder.census.gov/b...

The proportion of male registered nurses has more than tripled since 1970, from 2.7 percent to 9.6 percent. https://www.census.gov/people/... This is the exact opposite trend in computer science where the percentage of women comp sci majors has declined.

So the drop in women in computers means they are being pushed out? Every other industry where women were not welcomed has gotten more filled with them. But the one that used to be all women is losing them and somehow that is due to sexism. Perhaps women are finding that there are other jobs that they would rather do. When they were not allowed to be doctors and lawyers, they had to be computers, it was all there was for them since it was an extension of secretary or data entry. Now every industry is open to them and they have stopped being interested in computers. It sounds like we should force women to do what we want them to do rather than give them the choice. Instead of being barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen, we want them bound and shackled to the terminal writing code. That is very nice of you to treat women that way!

The countries where the sexes are equal in jobs are where you don't have choice to do what you want. The more equal the society, the more diversity you see in the professions of the sexes.

And why on earth would keyboard jockies in CS or IT be categorized as "hunt and gather" activities? They're not, they're classified in the service industry under "Information, culture and recreation".

I am responding to your classification of careers as either "hunt and gather" or "nurture, heal, and educate." But that doesn't explain why there are so few women in computer science. Sitting at a keyboard all day is the opposite of "hunt and gather" activity.

And how long has that been going on? What are the fruits of their labours? Had it made any appreciable difference? From the statistics it doesn't seem like it.

The proportion of male registered nurses has more than tripled since 1970, from 2.7 percent to 9.6 percent. https://www.census.gov/people/... This is the exact opposite trend in computer science where the percentage of women comp sci majors has declined.

Let's theorize for a moment that females are just not interested on average in working in IT.

That is not a viable theory. Computer science is practically the only field where gender disparity has gotten WORSE.

So what does this mean? It means any job paying less than approximately $15 per hour is NOT LIVABLE. You will starve, or end up homeless, or some sort of big problem. It's not sustainable.

What a bunch of ivory-tower hogwash. Full time at $15/hr is just above the median per capita income. You're essentially saying that about half the people in this country are destined to starve/end up homeless/whatever "some sort of big problem" means (but surely something ominous given the context).

Tons of people go through their entire lives doing just fine on far less than what you call "starvation wages." You need to get out more.

Conversely, the US has just 8% of its population in the top 10 cities - and about 75% live in suburban and rural areas.

Ah, selective facts, huh? That's why you focus on cities, when that's a legal designation, that can misleadingly portray many facts. Unstated by you, is that the US has almost 500 urban areas, with a total population of some 220 million, and a total area of under 90,000 square miles. And if you look, the top 10 Urban Areas have a rather LARGER share of the US population, and furthermore, the Census reports that close to 80% of the population lives in urban areas. Hmm.

I wonder why you'd make such mistaken portrayals.

Population density is an OK measure as long as the population is relatively spread out, like in the US;

Actually, you're just showing your propensity for error again. In reality, the population distribution of the US shows a CLEAR discrepancy from the density, making it a demonstratively terrible measure.

You really are too incompetent, your intent to advance an agenda is leading you to to deceive, but you are so poor at doing so, you fail to be anything except obvious.

I appreciate your decision to leap off a cliff like a lemming, but are sure that's a good idea for you?

The average bus has 7 passengers.

[citation needed]

Two people in a car use less fuel per passenger-mile

Unfortunately, 76% of people in the in US commute to work ALONE.

https://www.census.gov/hhes/co...

If they trot out the line about most Americans live in an urban area, keep in mind that the definition for that requires only 2500 people. They changed the formal definition a while back, specifically for the census.

50000 for an urban area, https://www.census.gov/geo/ref...

It's the fastest growing city in the nation for a few years running now

Source? According to the US census bureau and just about every other source I can find, Seattle is at most #5 of cities with the largest number of new inhabitants, and isn't even on the list of fastest growing cities by population percentage.

Source

I wonder what the numbers would look like if you included working age people on "Social Security Disability".

And what if you included Senior Citizens, Homemakers and Kindergartners!

Well that's nice yet completely not relevant, when I was referring to WORKING AGE PEOPLE.

Many homemakers are working age. Durp. But I guess you missed the point of what I was saying, didn't you? Strange, I included a link, which you MYSTERIOUSLY ignored.

Try reading it, so you can understand my point, which was to say, it's easy to claim things are terrible, but sometimes under scrutiny, it isn't quite so.

People who CLEARLY can work, yet claim they are "disabled". When their disability is just being unemployed. If you don't think people game the disability system like this in the US, boy do I have a bridge to sell you.

Yes, yes, you're very concerned, and those despicable people getting disability who don't deserve it are so terrible. Your hand-wringing hysteria is not impressive, or convincing, because you are simply denigrating a wide group of people without any actual substance or information to validate your assertions.

It'd be one thing if you bothered to look for a report first, but no, you didn't, you just leaped right to it. The thing is, I've heard the noise over disability before, and it's not at all impressive, no more than the people clamoring over Medicare Fraud, Welfare Queens, or Waste in Government Budgets.

William Proxmire was just grandstanding with his awards, and so are you. Reagan was even worse, as was Newt.

Durp, the military has been shedding jobs since the end of the Cold War.

No it has been outsourcing jobs since the end of the Cold War.

Oh, you want to complain about that? Go ahead, but that wasn't what you said, now was it?

We'll just ignore the fact that the Department of Defense is still one of the largest employers in the world with over 3 million people.

Oh gosh! That's almost as many people as there are public school teachers in the US!

Even if those numbers are down from 30 years ago, that's still a shitload of people.

Not so impressive when the country's population has increased by a third.

If you don't want to see the US Military as a jobs program, that's fine, be in denial.

If you want to employ people by the government as a jobs program, might I suggest an alternative that would be more beneficial?

Lets not forget all of the handouts to Defense contractors that costs billions of dollars for overpriced equipment that even the military doesn't want.

If you want to complain about that, you should make that your complaint.

Sadly, that's not even involving people working in the US!

Tell me again how that isn't a jobs program and corporate welfare?

Your remark, and I quote, was "and you are too old to go into the military(the other jobs handout program)" which was missing the nature of the US downsizing of its military. They killed the Space Shuttle too.

Rhetoric, Blather, and Disingenuous Gabble.

So asking serious questions about the policies of the US Government and how its spends its money is apparently a bad thing now?

You're not serious. If you were serious, you wouldn't be engaging in your particular pattern of behavior. You'd also realize that y

This means that winning one electoral vote in California takes on hell of more votes than winning the same electoral vote in Wyoming or Kansas or Montana

That would be true if every state ran their system like ME and NE. However, the majority is first past the pole. Here's the states that you mentioned if they worked on a distributed EV system.

California: Clinton 34, Trump 18, Johnson 2, Stein 1
Wyoming: Trump 2, Clinton 1
Kansas: Trump 3, Clinton 2, Johnson 1
Montana: Trump 2, Clinton 1

There's nothing wrong with your statement in that it takes more heads to earn a single EV (total population divide by EVs in state), but first past the pole makes that a mute point. WY, KS, and MT are a total of 12 EV which is only 2.2% of the EC. CA is 55 EV which is only 10.2%. Three rural states aren't even a fifth the total power of CA. So while Clinton only commanded ~62% of the state, she gets 10.2% (55/538 EV) of the EC from only 2% (1/50 states) of the total number of states. Trump commanded 70%, 57%, and 57% in WY, KS, MT respectively and received 2.2% (12/538 EV) of the EC out of 6% (3/50 states) of the total number of states.

What I do think is interesting is that Johnson commanded 3.4%, 5.3%, 4.7%, and 5.6% in CA, WY, KS, and MT respectively and received 0 EV, even though that is 3.6% (496,603/13,835,311 votes) of all votes that were cast in those states. I mean not even an unfaithful elector. My two cents, and it is just that, is that we're all so hell bent on trying to fix something for a two party system, that we forget we could be more than a two party system.

I will agree that the limit of 435 members to the house is pretty brain dead. Additionally, while the 1911 Act set the new membership size, The Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929 set it in stone. Census data in 1920 showed that populations were growing faster in cities than in rural areas and this Act was a stop-gap (oops turned into forever) measure to come up with a new method for determining size of Congress and distribution of seats, the formula has change since then, just not the number of seats. Additionally, I won't go into the formulas but they are posted here for public review. Without boring you to tears, the formulas favor smaller over bigger. You can read this about other methods that have been used and a bit of history on how membership size has ran through the decades.

As far as number of seats go. There's pros and cons to both sides. A smaller Congress would be more apt to get things done and cost less (maybe, unless they gave themselves a raise pursuant to the 27th Amendment), but members would be less personable to their constituents. A larger Congress would most likely cost more and less (I know, hard to think about Congress doing even less) might get done. However, they would be able to get more personable with their constituents. I think larger would be better, but I also think Congress should rethink the way that they operate and going into my opinion on that end would just inflate this comment already bigger than it already is.

Hope any of that drivel was helpful.

Then you should laugh at gun control people who play the bait and switch, talking about crime and mass murder and then say that the US has 30,000+ gun deaths per year. Ooops 2/3 of that are suicides.

Now, if the US had a higher suicide rate than Japan, or Taiwan, or France or England or Germany then, and only then, it may make sense to include those numbers. But the US doesn't have a higher suicide rate therefore this is an example of gun control advocates LYING.

Second point - 2% of the US counties are responsible for over 1/2 of the gun violence in the US
https://crimeresearch.org/2017...

And, if you break this down further, you'll find that it's only parts of those counties accounts for the violence Third point - there is no correlation between more guns in a state and more gun violence.
- US counties with high guns per capita have violence rates equal to bucolic countryside European towns.
- As guns became easier to get in Florida (and other states) gun violence went down (contrary to the predictions of gun control people).

- As guns became more numerous in the US gun violence has gone down (contrary to the predictions of gun control people).

Fourth point - Gun control people are not focusing on people who use guns while committing a crime. They are focusing on gun ownership. Rifles are always their target and yet they used in 5% of the gun crimes.

More deaths are done with knives than rifles. (See below - from US Statistical Abstract)
More deaths are caused by hammers and other blunt objects than by rifles.(See below)
More deaths are caused by fists and feet than by rifles. (See below)

Characteristic 2000 2005 2008 2009
Total firearms. . . . . . 8,661 10,158 9,484 9,203
Handguns. . . . . . . 6,778 7,565 6,755 6,503
Rifles. . . . . . . . . . .411 445 375 352
Shotguns. . . . . . ..485 522 444 424
Other not specified or type unknown. . . . . . 53 138 79 96 Firearms,
type not stated. . . 934 1,488 1,831 1,828
Knives or cutting instruments. . . . . ..1,782 1,920 1,897 1,836
Blunt objects 1. . . . . . 617 608 614 623
Personal weapons 2. . 927 905 861 815
Poison. . . . . . . . . . . . 8 9 10 7
Explosives. . . . . . .9 2 10 2
Fire. . . . . . . . . . . .134 125 86 98

These are not "alt-facts"
https://www.bjs.gov/content/pu...
https://www.census.gov/prod/20...

That does not follow from what I said. I said that out of the entire population of registered sex offenders there will be roughly 6% of them that sexually reoffend within 10 years of release from incarceration. For 700,000 current registered sex offenders in the US, that's 42,000 of that group that will sexually reoffend at least one more time within 10 years of release...which sounds like a pretty big number until you look at the population count and realize that this group of statistically certain recidivists is only 0.129 percent of the US population and suddenly the actual risk is more like a stupid joke. Over the same 10 years there will be 300,000+ fatal car crashes, 1/3 of which are caused by drunk drivers. Just by those numbers, you and your kids are more than twice as likely to be killed (that means dead, not harmed but still living) in a car crash by a drunk driver than sexually assaulted by a registered sex offender.

The more interesting question is this: how many registered sex offenders were not registered sex offenders before the first offense where they were convicted and were then required to regsiter? The answer is 100 percent, obviously, and that's the point to take home here. You'll spend all your time trying to force the sex offender across the street to move away while the gym teacher or the uncle is repeatedly fucking your daughter in the ass right under everyone's nose. Actually, forget the uncle; women who molest children are practically never caught because no one suspects them, so they can molest with abandon. Your wife might be diddling the neighbor's four-year-old in the bathroom for all you know, and you'll never think anything is suspicious because she is female.

There's already a federally funded database for such data, TIGER.
https://www.census.gov/geo/map...

Early versions of Google Maps (after leaving NavTEQ and TeleAtlas), used the TIGER database and had weird problems where their own office (Irvine, CA) address was actually showed it being on the wrong block. TIGER address is what suppose to be not what it's actually is once the local government gets done with an area. A better funded TIGER would go greatly into pushing innovation in this space. GIS data is being silo into competing camps: NavTEQ (German automakers), TeleAtlas (TomTom), Google, and Apple.

80% of the US lives in Cities.

No, 80% of the US population lives in urban areas. An urban area is any incorporated place with a population of at least 2,500. For example, of the 351 municipalities in Massachusetts, only 69 count as rural, accounting for just 1.3% of the population. When you raise the limit to 25,000 people, you get more than 36% of the population. 50,000 gets you 61% of the population. The "urban areas" in Massachusetts include lots of small towns with countless acres of farmland and backwoods roads. There's an equal number of people in municipalities of 0-16,999 people, 17,000-34,999 people, 35,000-85,999 people, and 86,000 or more people. The population in the US is actually very spread out, but you can't get an accurate picture from a simple binary urban/rural comparison.

Germany land area: 348,900.0 sq. miles
United States land area: 9,147,420.0 sq. miles
Over 26 times the land area. In other words, it's easier to get the power
from the source to the people in Germany, than it would be in the USA.
It's the same argument, people complain about, when talking about internet
speed. "Japan & South Korea" have x times the speed and x cheaper price
of internet, than in the USA.
Japan land area: 364,560.0 sq miles
South Korea land area: 97,480.0
It's easier in smaller countries to build out, than the USA.
Ok, so the liberal logic would say, move all the people to large urban population
centers, and make living out in the middle of the nation illegal. Yeah, that would be
the way their liberal minds would work. After all, it's "for your own good".
You want renewable power, fine, but leave coal, gas & nuclear alone.

Well thanks for showing us how your mind works. You spout a random statistic of no particular value, the size of the US versus Germany, but don't consider the population distribution, the same as with your claim about the Internet. Despite numerous and extensive discourses on both flawed argumentations of yours having been available for quite some time. The one they have in common is that you're trying ignore the distribution of population, which is not even across any of the nations, and in fact, you can see how there is plenty of concentrated population in the US with any number of maps. The next part is that you're ignoring the actual state of affairs, as the complaints about power production and internet provision actually don't just depend on the averages, but on particulars, such as North Carolina's complaints about pollution to North Carolina's actions to inhibit municipal internet.

Then, of course, you haven't actually considered that efforts to create a better interconnected grid in the US are ongoing, that alternative power production can work better with distribution.

But instead of looking at those details, let's just let you try to boil things down with an irrelevant argument that isn't particularly important. No wait, let's not.

Of course, that you ended it all with a false conclusion of what you think your strawman concept of a liberal mind would say, just puts another nail in the coffin of your argument. Why do you bother? Is it simply because you don't realize how poor a case you're making, or is that the point? Heck, maybe you're around to make conservatives look bad, that'd be offensive, but at least I wouldn't feel quite as bad.

But I mean really, Mitt Romney gabbled his nonsense over the size of the US Navy and Air Force, what else can I expect?

The vacancy rate for my 50-year-old apartment complex and the surrounding apartment complexes are at 50%

Then you live in such a shitty neighborhood that nobody else wants to live there. Rental vacancy rates in Palo Alto and San Jose are nowhere near 50% - for the past few years, they've been hovering in the 3-6% range. The most recent 2015 census data supports that, and more recent numbers from the city of San Jose and Palo Alto both support that as well.

Census: https://factfinder.census.gov/...
San Jose current numbers: http://www.sanjoseca.gov/index...
Palo Alto current numbers: http://www.paloaltocompplan.or...

Furthermore, you're renting, because you literally cannot afford to buy anything more than a cardboard box in an alley there in the Valley.

Correct. For the kind of work that I do.

Which is what? You claim you're a miracle worker, but then you claim that you get entry-level intern rates. Either you've got the skills to command a higher salary, and you're stupid enough to not demand that higher salary, or you don't have the skills, and the equivalent of entry-level jobs is all you'll ever have, because you are incapable of learning anything.

A 25 year old making what you do would be "doing kind of okay, I guess." A 45+ year old making what you make should be embarrassed at never having bettered himself.

Medicare/Medicaid spending was about $1191 billion in 2015.

https://www.cms.gov/research-s...

The US population was 322 million in 2015, or about 302 million citizens.

https://www.census.gov/popcloc...

That comes to $3698 / person / year or about $3977 / citizen / year. That's comparable to the total per capita public health care spending in France, Japan, Iceland, the UK, Finland, New Zealand, Italy, Spain, Israel, etc. The following is total per capita spending (public+private) in those countries:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

* Disclaimer... I don't think AI will be able to replace more than 10% of humans within the foreseeable future.. But for my argument below i make the assumption that all manufacturing would be replaced within the next few years.

So who will buy the stuff...

My guess of what happens.
- Companies fire people one at a time causing less money to be available in the market.
- Companies realize that they are not making any profit since less goods are sold.
- It will cost less to hire someone to produce goods in smaller volumes than it is to produce with robots.
- Companies will start to hire people again and put money back into the market. ... and the cycle repeats.

Some ways that could possibly help out. (If robots would be a 100% replacement for normal workers in all fields.)
- Companies would not be allowed to own robots but hire them from people. Perhaps put a limit on how many robots a person can own.
- Put limits on how much profit a company could make per employee they have. (something like 10% for >$10000, 40% for >$100000, 90% for >$1000000) .. This should mainly be to force companies to hire more people, even if they would only do 2 minutes of work a day, and not to finance any huge welfare program run by the state..

The market will be able to adjust since it's all about supply and demand, and you have a large initial cost for using robots so unless you reach that point it will be cheaper to hire people. And the less people working the fewer customers there will be for said products. We may need to put some limits on the companies to incentivize them to hire more people, but as i wrote above there are ways to do it. (probably many more ways than the above ones)

You also have to remember that most people are not employed by those large companies, or in work-areas, that could buy robots to produce goods. The majority of people are employed by small companies, or in work-areas, that don't get the benefits from switching over to robots..
http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/s...
https://www.census.gov/content...
From the above links:
- In the US large companies have been pending around 50% of all people employed, but only about 11M people are working in manufacturing. For large enterprises that would benefit from robots that would be ~6M people.. And for smaller companies it's ~5M.. Lets say you can replace 100% in large companies and 50% in smaller companies.. That would still just be 8.5M people in a country with 321M people.

What robots in the industry would do is to move loads of the manufacturing back to the country that wants the products thereby reducing the amount of needed shipping (reducing pollution and cost of shipping) and keeping most of the money in the country.. It may increase the wage-gap a bit but with lower prices of goods it would still allow for the lower-income to have a higher standard of living than today.

I think that the countries that would draw the short straw of this development would be the countries that produce most of the cheap crap, like China.

So lets the market work... If unemployment starts jumping too high then put a cap on profit per employee or don't allow any person to own more than X number of robots.. I would think using tax-incentives based on amount of profit per employee would be the best incentive to keep people in the workforce.

The ADA was full of good intentions, but it needs to be massively updated, including eliminating any requirements on non-profits and orgs offering free content. This is just the latest example of the damage that the ADA has done to our economy, businesses and society.

Deaf make up just 0.38% of the population, yet the rest of society is forced to bend over backwards to accommodate them, rather than them accepting that they are disabled and live within their limitations just like the rest of us (we all have limitations of one type or another, 1 in 5 in the US have a disability of some kind according to the latest census, 1 in 10 have a severe disability).

https://www.census.gov/newsroo...

Why should I subsidize people living that far from civilization, especially when all banking and bill payment can be done online as well as correspondence?

You like food, don't you? And wood and paper products? And cotton clothes? Hell, even petroleum-derivative clothes come from feed stocks acquired "off in the sticks". Humanity has managed to automate 90% of the work required to gather all of these things so there's a smaller percentage of people doing that work than ever before in history, but as with all things, the first 90% is the easy part.

Automating that last 10% completely may never happen. It certainly won't happen in your lifetime. A lifetime that would be remarkably abbreviated if those people weren't out there. If they stopped doing what they do, there's about a year to a year and a half worth of food in the pipeline, from canned foods in warehouses to corn, wheat, and flour in silos. If those people stop, your civilization is dead in about 2 years, with something like 60% casualties.

I think you can handle subsidizing information delivery (both postal and digital) and electricity delivery for the 20% of the population that has been handling the bottom half of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs for you for so long that you've forgotten why they exist.

Competitive private industry always does it better, faster and cheaper than the government (note I said competitive).

This is purely a religious statement, with plenty of contradictory evidence. Competitive private industry does many things quite well, it's true, but the one thing competitive private industry never does is ubiquity. It can sometimes come close, especially for portable things, but when it comes to utilities, private industry never achieves ubiquity unless both coerced and incentivized by government to do so. This has been repeatedly demonstrated for centuries, ever since capitalism became an -ism.

Meanwhile, private courier services in the US have soundly demonstrated that the USPS is indispensable. The private services have consolidated until there are only two remaining and they do not compete and they do not provide service to all addresses in the country. FedEx and UPS have tacitly divided up the market between them, with FedEx assuming the premium role and UPS the "everything else" role, and UPS is maintaining their position by cheating, leaning heavily on the USPS to do it.

It takes a minimum of four independent entities operating under substantially similar conditions and providing substantially similar goods or services to produce a competitive environment, and we are already below that threshold with respect to courier services. Even if we were dumb enough to follow your advice and privatize the post office, the current trajectory would continue. FedEx would buy a handful of the most profitable bits of the USPS, UPS would buy some of the rest, and both would totally abandon rural America, leaving some 95% of the land area unserviced by any courier when the remaining unprofitable bits of the USPS collapsed.

Government is monopolistic, sedentary and there is no drive to compete or improve.

Almost correct, but you and those like you who spout the tenants of capitalism as religious truth have cause and effect perfectly backwards. Government is not monopolistic because it's behaving like a robber baron. Government is monopolistic because a) ubiquity for certain things, particularly certain services, is desirable and b) ubiquity for those things is not and can not be profitable. Ubiquity for fire prevention, law enforcement, military services, and yes, courier services, among a good many other things, is only achievable in a functional way through government.

To take one example, competitive fire prevention is nonsensical. The most successful fire prevention service allows the least poss

That's not really true in this case. The music industry's U.S. revenue was $7 billion in 2015. The TV and movie industry's revenue was $131 billion in 2014 So about $140 billion total.

U.S. ISP revenue was $97 billion in 2016. The U.S. consumer electronics industry revenue is over $200 billion. The Internet publishing, broadcasting, and search industry's revenue was about $110 billion in 2014. Total is over $400 billion. Nearly 3x bigger than music, movies, and TV. Yet they're made to bend over and comply with the wishes of the studios. The tail is literally wagging the dog.

It already destroyed Sony's audio electronics division. Sony was the top name in audio equipment in the 1970s and 1980s. Then in 1987 they acquired CBS records and renamed it Sony Music Entertainment. SME coexisted with Sony Electronics until 1998, when the MP3 player came to market. Sony Electronics came up with an MP3 player, but SME forced them to add DRM to it. Customers avoided it because it was impossible to take their existing CDs and simply copy the music over to a Sony MP3 player.

Sony's 1998 revenue was 1,128 billion Yen for the audio division (page 14), 660 billion Yen for the music division (page 15).

Their 2000 revenue was 935 billion Yen for the audio division (page 47), 709 billion Yen for the music division (page 498).

By 2003 their audio sales had atrophied to 683 billion Yen (page 20), vs 636 billion Yen in music sales (page 18). Music sales were about the same as 1998, but their audio electronics sales had been cut nearly in half because of SME demanding their products comply with their copyright protection requirements. (In 2004 their music division began a joint venture with BMG, so financials are not comparable from then on.)

In 1977, the median income for a 30-year-old man was about $10,000, or $41,500 adjusted for inflation [1]. Today, the median income for a 30-year-old man is about $35,000 [1]. The median home sale price in 1977 was about $49,000, or $203,000 inflation-adjusted [2]. The median home sale price today is about $325,000 [2]. In 1977, a 4-year college degree at an in-state, public institution cost less than $4,000, or about $16,000 inflation-adjusted for tuition and fees [3]. Today, that's $38,600.

These are only a few rough indicators, but the point is this: a millennial or gen-xer today makes 84% in real terms of what his counterpart did in 1977; his education costs more than twice as much and has gone from something he could pay for completely with a summer job to more than a full year's salary; the house he's looking at has gone from 4 years' salary to nearly 10 years', and a 20% down payment has gone from about 3 months' salary to about two years'.

These, for example, are reasons that millennials have it tougher than previous generations.

[1] https://cps.ipums.org/cps/
[2] https://www.census.gov/const/u...
[3] https://nces.ed.gov/programs/d...
[4] http://www.collegedata.com/cs/...

Anything that contributes to population reduction is gold in my books.

Before people start sounding the 3rd world growth and not 1st world, I won't be happy until both these numbers are moving in reverse: http://www.census.gov/popclock...

35% of Syrians [in the US] 25 years and older have a Bachelor's degree or more, compared to 24.4% of all Americans. *

Median Syrian-American family income is 58k/year, significantly higher than national median of 50k (2000 census numbers). *

Number of Syrian doctors: "A study published in Health Policy in 2007 analyzed the dynamics of international immigration patterns of physicians to the United States and found that Syria has a higher-than-expected physicians immigration rates. [4] In fact, Syria was the sixth country among the top eight countries which have a higher-than-expected rate and the second Arab country after Lebanon when adjusting for the population size". **

Sources:
* http://www.census.gov/prod/200...
** http://www.avicennajmed.com/ar...

If the parking were outside, it would probably not be as expensive.... but most multi-family dwellings such as apartment buildings and townhouses around here have underground parking.

That would make it cheaper, not more expensive. Outdoor provisioning is a lot harder. I think somebody is trying to take advantage of you, like the proverbial garage shop mechanic who comes to you with your car being in dire need of some servicing, but even if they only fleece you for a hundred bucks, they can still ruin your car.

Our only option at that point would be to either downscale considerably and settle for a place about half of the size of our current home, which would be extraordinarily cramped for our lifestyle, or to find another similar sized condo in another building of similar age, and no more likely to have been equipped with more modern facilities. One could suggest that we temporarily rent for a while while our building was rebuilt in such a circumstance, but it's a foregone certainty that the prices per square foot in the rebuild would still be substantially higher, making a mortgage unviable.

Oh, so you're a disaster away from being in a disadvantageous situation? Then I submit, your situation is far more untenable than you realize, and you should consider that your problems are far more extensive than merely the provisioning of electric vehicles.

Not abnormal, after all, merely providing for electrical charging is a minor concern, but your situation is something to address in itself. Of course, it might require national rethinking, but lots and lots of things do.

Well, I don't think I'm an anomaly, and I don't think my situation is particularly unique.

As a person who I see as somewhat intransigently resisting EVs for no good reason, no, I won't say you are anomalous, or unique. There are lots of people like you in this thread.

It is not, however, a point in your favor. I'm sure you think of yourself as somebody making a prudent and considered remark, and while I will grant that you are being less hysterical than some of the excessively tendentious persons, you are still rather obstinately thinking your objections are more substantial than they really are.

Still, that is a character judgment, and perhaps unfair. You want to look at numbers? Well, I don't know much about you.

Let's consider the Housing situation in the US. If you look, you can see that there are lots of detached homes, so in that regard, yes, you do seem to be anomalous.

If we want to consider the average driving? Well, you can see MightyMartian's numbers. It's well within EV's capabilities at an easy level. The need for a 4-minute fillup is overwrought.

Driving 10 hours a day? Well, you've already walked away from that one without a clear answer, but there is a dollar value to you, most likely. And of course, there are ways to resolve it. But it's really not that widespread a demand.

Price? Not even an issue, there's already tons of investment in that.

I'm not everybody either, however, so I'm sure an EV would be suitable for a vast number of people that currently do not own one. I think that the biggest deterring factor to their not being more popular than they are, despite how well they would meet people's needs is their up-front cost, even after rebates, and the inconvenience that this cost creates to financing. Even if an EV may cost less in the long run, people are invariably going to feel that they need to get by on what they have today.

You may be right that costs of EV's will come down as they become more popular, but again, that's living in the hypothetical or ideal world, rather than the real one of the here, and the now.

Nope, it's living in the real world, and recognizing the basic principles by which even the Internal Combustion gasoline powered au

California must be doing something right if the population has grown so much. People actually want to come here. Unlike the Republican South from where people are leaving in droves for Blue states.

Your assertion is factually incorrect. There is a statistically significant migration from blue states to red states. People are voting with their feet, but not in the direction you imply.

captcha: "inconvenient truth"

To visualize this easily: http://bl.ocks.org/cingraham/7663357

To get in the weeds with raw data: http://www.census.gov/data/tables/2016/demo/geographic-mobility/cps-2016.html

captcha: "inconvenient truth"

That's the alt-right point, Non-Hispanic Whites are 61.8% of the population, they're not an overwhelming majority and "they may be outbred" faster than new immigrants can be assimilated.
By 2040 they will stop being majority using official projections http://www.census.gov/populati...
The argument is that if there can be a gay pride, and a black pride, there must also exist a white pride and people being ashamed of being whites should go fuck themselves. The argument is consistent.

Disclaimer: Mexican, not living in US, not Nazi apologist.

typically only focus on the swing states

If you switch to a straight popular vote, you'd have something similar but a switch in locations. Candidates would ignore rural areas and only campaign in cities:

"The urban areas of the United States for the 2010 Census contain 249,253,271 people, representing 80.7% of the population, and rural areas contain 59,492,276 people, or 19.3% of the population. "
https://ask.census.gov/faq.php...

Maine and Nebraska can split their electoral votes....there's no legal hurdle preventing other states from doing the same.

What's the functional difference between splitting a state via electoral votes vs just counting popular vote? If California allowed splitting the electoral vote, 1/3 of their 55 votes would go red, which is more than most rural states have in total.

typically only focus on the swing states

If you switch to a straight popular vote, you'd have something similar but a switch in locations. Candidates would ignore rural areas and only campaign in cities:

"The urban areas of the United States for the 2010 Census contain 249,253,271 people, representing 80.7% of the population, and rural areas contain 59,492,276 people, or 19.3% of the population. "
https://ask.census.gov/faq.php...

Maine and Nebraska can split their electoral votes....there's no legal hurdle preventing other states from doing the same.

It may be possible to impeach a government official for violating the Oath of Office, which includes swearing to protect and defend the Constitution. Trump has made no secret of the violations he intends to commit, after taking office. For example, Constitution specifies that one of its purposes is to "promote the general Welfare" --which does not mean promoting only the welfare of the rich, and it is mostly the rich who desperately want all the data about Anthropogenic Global Warming to be ignored, so they can keep getting richer, while ocean levels rise and drown the home of millions of ordinary citizens.
Next, Trump claims to want to make America great again, but then he goes and starts appointing people who promote ignorance, not knowledge. Knowledge Is Power! --not ignorance. It is know-how that was one of the factors that made America great in the first place. To promote ignorance is to not-hardly be consistent with the Oath of Office, to defend the Constitution and consequently promote the general Welfare!
The last thing I'll mention is Trump's claim to oppose abortion --and that means enslaving pregnant women, when they don't want to stay pregnant, in violation of the 13th Amendment. Note that the Constitution requires a Census of ALL persons ("except Indians not taxed") every 10 years, and the Founding Fathers were right there in 1790 to specify the details of how the very first Census would be done. No unborn human has ever been counted in any Census! This means that the Founding Fathers did not consider the unborn to be persons, a Constitutional Precedent far predating the Roe v Wade decision. And modern scientific data about what we might call "generic personhood" indicates that dolphins are vastly more likely to qualify as persons, before any unborn human. Our unborn are mere-animal entities, nothing more than that, and to enslave women as life-support systems for mindless animals would be a heinous crime quite worthy of impeachment.