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OK, I'm going to play devil's advocate here. These aren't meant to be complete rebuttals or anything, but points to consider.

What about people who work sixty hours a week at minimum wage and can't afford to feed their famililes? Lazy bastards.

Obviously, I don't think anyone working sixty hours a week is too lazy, but who told them they were entitled to not working any more when they decided to obtain more dependants? Did they neglect to count of the fact that 1) prices (recently) go up and 2) more people means more expenses? Does everyone have a [diety]-given right to have children (or a stay-at-home spouse) and not have to work a lick harder to support them?

It's sad that the term "Big Government" carries such negative connotations.

It's sad to me that "Governemnt" carries such negative connotations. Oh, no, wait - it isn't. Usually they're just a group of bureaucrats that voted themselves the ability to take my money and use it to pay themselves for the time they spend meddling in my business.

You can see it happening right now. Rich getting richer, poor getting poorer, etc.

Oh, those neglected poor. What is the poverty line again? In 2003 it was just over $12k for two people. According to many sources, many poor actually own a home (46%), are not overcrowded (more than 2/3 have more than 2 rooms/person), own a car (>70%), and own a color tv (97%). Those are pretty rich poor, considering I don't yet own my home or my car. And as for starving - "According to the Agriculture Department, in 1995, there were 887,000 hungry children. By 2002, the number had fallen to 567,000." (The source also cites references to US Dept. of Ag. in its footnotes.)

The solution [is] to put a system in place that redistributes wealth at about the same rate that the wealthy can hoard it.

I hope to become wealthy someday, actually, although I've got quite a ways to go. So tell me, if you are "redistributing" wealth at the same rate the wealthy are "hoarding" it, what incentive is there to become wealthy? At the same rate, they will gain nothing for their effort. So why make an effort? Surely someone else will make an effort, which will then be taken and given to me. We can argue about the actual affect of trickle-down economics, but it seems obvious to me that if nobody sees making an effort as worthwhile, then the economy is going to become pretty bad very quickly.

Unfortunately, people will always take advantage of the system.

The libertarians want to make one part of the system - the government, which happens to have a basic monopoly on force - small, so that when people go looking to take advantage of the system, they don't see any worthwhile advantage to using force. Seems reasonable to me.

One last note: If you have to vote for lower taxes, you should vote for Badnarik over Bush

Now this I agree with, although I believe there might be one or two other candidates who would actually reduce taxes. Likewise, if you really think more expansion of the government is the way to go, choose your candidate based on that view. But my biggest message would be to choose the candidate that represents you, or who knows what you will get.

Yeah, so? Are you implying that these white people were all going to vote for Bush? Or they would split their votes between candidates any less evenly than any other group of white people?

Well, since you bring it up, yes. In states that have a lower proportion of minority voters, like Pennsylvania or California, a higher percentage of the white voters voted for Gore in 2000.

If the Democrats are right about why the Republicans are trying to exclude the black people on that list, they have to concede that the white people were more likely to vote Republican. A higher percentage of the whites in Florida voted for Bush than the whites in Pennsylvania or California. As evidenced by the offsetting of the larger minority voting block in that state.

It's not logically consistant to claim that the whites were going to split their vote evenly but that the "minority" voters were going to vote Democrat. If that was reality, Republicans would never win.

Maybe you're right and the felons list is full of movie stars from Blow.

No. Not movie stars. Did you even click on the link? It's for the federal bureau of prisons. Diego Delgado is a real guy. He was a cocaine smuggler. Blow was based upon some of the things he did. I mentioned the movie because it illustrates that this guy (from central America) is Latino. But the government still calls people like him white.

We'd have to hold more elections than there are protons in the universe for even 600 Hispanics to appear on the list, without someone "cooking the books."

All we'd need is 1. How many lottery tickets does someone have to buy to be a winner? Just 1. I'm not sure if you're intentionally misrepresenting probability or you just don't understand.

Don't you think you might be wrong?

Why? Because you can arbitrarily present a formula to "prove" that you're correct?

That's not how probability works, and I suspect that you already know that.

LK

Yeah, so? Are you implying that these white people were all going to vote for Bush? Or they would split their votes between candidates any less evenly than any other group of white people?

Well, since you bring it up, yes. In states that have a lower proportion of minority voters, like Pennsylvania or California, a higher percentage of the white voters voted for Gore in 2000.

If the Democrats are right about why the Republicans are trying to exclude the black people on that list, they have to concede that the white people were more likely to vote Republican. A higher percentage of the whites in Florida voted for Bush than the whites in Pennsylvania or California. As evidenced by the offsetting of the larger minority voting block in that state.

It's not logically consistant to claim that the whites were going to split their vote evenly but that the "minority" voters were going to vote Democrat. If that was reality, Republicans would never win.

Maybe you're right and the felons list is full of movie stars from Blow.

No. Not movie stars. Did you even click on the link? It's for the federal bureau of prisons. Diego Delgado is a real guy. He was a cocaine smuggler. Blow was based upon some of the things he did. I mentioned the movie because it illustrates that this guy (from central America) is Latino. But the government still calls people like him white.

We'd have to hold more elections than there are protons in the universe for even 600 Hispanics to appear on the list, without someone "cooking the books."

All we'd need is 1. How many lottery tickets does someone have to buy to be a winner? Just 1. I'm not sure if you're intentionally misrepresenting probability or you just don't understand.

Don't you think you might be wrong?

Why? Because you can arbitrarily present a formula to "prove" that you're correct?

That's not how probability works, and I suspect that you already know that.

LK

Why is it that those on the "progressive" side are assuming that criminals who happen to be black were going to vote Democrat?

You are probably not familiar with the controversy. The problem with the list, and the reason it was so controversial to begin with, was that it was full of people who were not criminals, who were put on the list by mistake. Criminality aside, blacks overwhelmingly vote Democratic, so it was naturally seen as a very convenient mistake for Jeb to make, especially now that it's 4 years later and many of the same incorrect names are still on it.

So what you're saying, by not actually saying it, is that about 26,000 of those people were white.
More than half of the people on the list that you refer to are not black.

Yeah, so? Are you implying that these white people were all going to vote for Bush? Or they would split their votes between candidates any less evenly than any other group of white people?

Assuming that the numbers are accurate and that someone hasn't "cooked the books" so to speak. It still proves nothing. Let us not forget the numbers of hispanics who are counted as white.

Before you try to say that it doesn't happen...Have you ever seen the movie Blow? The very ethnic Diego Delgado is catagorized as "White" by the government.

Starting from the 2000 census data, so that we include the effects of Florida's weird ideas about movie stars from Blow, Florida is 65.4% white (non-Hispanic), 16.8% Hispanic, and 14.6% black. The ex-felon population will have a slightly different racial makeup, but you can estimate it by assuming that the ratios of whites to Hispanics are about the same as for the rest of the state (blacks are obviously overrepresented). What's the probability that out of a random sampling of 26,000 non-black ex-felons, 4745 (18.25%) of which you'd expect to be Hispanic, you'll find exactly 61 Hispanics?

It's (.8175^(25939)) * (.1875^61) * 26000! / (25939! * 61!) That number is so small it's hard to calculate. You can use Stirling's Approximation to get the log of it: 25939*log(0.8175) + 61*log(.1875) + 26000*(log(26000)-1)) - 61*(log(61)-1) - 25939*(log(25939)-1) = -2270 - 18858 + 88789 - 47 - 88855 = -21241. Even allowing for the probability of finding fewer than 61 Hispanics, which changes the result by log(60) at most, you're still left with a probability of a 1 with at least 21240 zeroes to 1 of finding 61 or fewer Hispanics on the felons list by chance.

Maybe you're right and the felons list is full of movie stars from Blow. Even if the list "really" contains 600 Hispanics, ten times as many as are estimated, the log of the probability would be 25400*log(0.8175) + 600*log(.1875) + 26000*(log(26000)-1)) - 600*(log(600)-1) - 25400*(log(25400)-1) = -2223 - 436 +88789 - 1067 - 86482 = -1419, or a one with 1400 zeroes to one. We'd have to hold more elections than there are protons in the universe for even 600 Hispanics to appear on the list, without someone "cooking the books."

Don't you think you might be wrong?

Greg Palast claims that in the last election, the GOP's efforts to *gasp* enforce the law and prevent felons from voting cost the democrats 22,000 votes. While I think that any vote denied is a tragedy and don't want to trivialize it, lets look at this 22,000 figure and some of the other "disenfranchisement" claims.

I will use this Wikipedia entry as my source. Let go through the various "disenfranchisement" claims.

From the article, 57,700 "felons" were struck from the voter list. These people were all contacted (although I assume it is reasonable that many of these people were not reached), of which 4,874 appealed. Of the 4,874 appeals, 2,430 were re-instated. Now, lacking an additional info, I assume that someone compared these two numbers, and figured that 50% of the listed names were incorrect, where in reality, it is only 50% of those on the list who came forward to dispute the error. Granted, anyone being denied a vote is tragic, but 2,430 (all of whom were reinstated) is a far cry from 22,000. Why didn't the other 53,000 people on the list appeal? More likely, most didn't appeal because outside of the 2,430, nearly all were convicted felons. Which brings us to ...List Demographics:

Voter demographics authority David Bositis, a senior research associate at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in Washington, DC, reviewed The Nation's findings and concluded that the purge-and-block program was "a patently obvious technique to discriminate against black voters." He noted that based on nationwide conviction rates, African-Americans would account for 46% of the ex-felon group wrongly disfranchised.

Breakdown of the distribution for 3 major counties:

• Miami-Dade, 20% voters are Black, 66% names on list were Black (3,794)
• Leon County, 29% voters are Black, 55% names on list were Black
• None of the names on the list were Hispanic.

First off, David Bositis is expecting a 46% rate of black names on the ex-felon group list. What is his criteria? national averages. African Americans comprise 12.6% of the US population, but make up 46% of the ex-felon group (according to Bositis). Florida has slightly more aftican-americans than the national average at 14.6%. Lets look at Miami-Dade and Leon counties that the Bositis cites: Both counties have significantly higher (about double) the national average of African-Americans. Wouldn't it make some sense that the they would appear on the felon list with greater frequency than the national African-American breakdown of ex-felons? (46%)

Now lets go after that last bullet: None of the names on the list were Hispanic. Greg Palast has this screenshot on his website of a segment of the list. (Ignore for the moment that he apparently uses Windows, AOL, and has 16 non-standard icons in his system tray.) While I don't dispute that ChoicePoint used poor methods to determine matches, what else can we glean from the spreadsheet? For one thing, there are no "Hispanics" in the race column, despite there being two names that appear to be hispanic in origin. One is listed as unknown, and one as white. So, the argument that "hispanics have been removed because they tend to vote Republican" is probably bunk. Much more likely, ChoicePoint correctly identified Hispanics as an "ethinic group" and not a race. This would very reasonably explain why there are no "hispanics" on the list.

Bottom line, while I don't doubt that some African-American voters were disenfranchised, maybe even enough to change the outcome, I seriously doubt it was 22,000.

Are you serious??? You want the United States to focus on one scientific goal? You are saying, in effect, that even though there are well over 290 million people in the US, each and every citizen should be forced by the government to be focused solely on what you think is the Right Thing(tm). Give me a break!

The US is still (ostensibly) a free market, capitalist country. Each citizen and industry is free to pursue their own interests. And yes, that even includes interests that might not fit perfectly into narrow-minded people's ideas of what is Best For The Country(tm).

Thanks to visionaries pursuing their unique interests in a free market economy, non-conformists have made leaps of creativity and ingenuity that have created some of the most helpful technologies used around the world. Don't ruin it for the rest of us with your command-and-control utopia.

Um, Kerry is right not to recognise a non-existent threat. On what basis do you predict a caliphate in the US? Some Islamic terrorists bring down the twin towers, therefore the end of American civilisation as you know it is coming? The idea that Islam will take over from within is even more absurd than a frontal assault; Islam is a tiny minority religion in the US - in 2001, 1.1 million adherents out of an adult population of 208 million, according to this (table 79). What is it about you guys that want to bomb the crap out of the rest of the planet - you are so gung-ho and yet so afraid of your own shadow? Get a grip, learn some history and stop being such a baby.

Hmm. Seems to me you're arguing that spousal homicide is extremely uncommon. Sure, it's not like every 10th spouse is dying every year, but it's a big deal, heck, approximately a third of all women murdered are murdered by an intimate.

Original AC replying back...I was reponding to the misconception that men killing their wives is "hardly an oddity". Well my thoughts are still the same on this sad topic. Although it happens more than it should, women being killed by intimates is actually extremely uncommon. Non-homicidal domestic violence is a whole other topic.

Marriage numbers from a US Census PDF for the year 1975. Close enough(by 1 year) to your source, which listed 1,600 women were killed by intimates in 1976.

Drawing from the US Census PDF(pg. 2) it lists during June 1975: 49,811,000 women were married.

Out of 49,811,000 married women, 1,600 were killed by intimates(rough approximation here.)
So what's the percentage of married women being killed by intimates? About .0032%, or 1 in 31,000 married women.

Note that this is using the 1,600 number of women killed in "intimate" homicides, which includes not just married women(the "intimate" perpetrator may not even be her husband!) but also unmarried women.

Since then, the marriage rate has only gone down somewhat, the homicides are down, and the spousal homicide rate is still quite miniscule.

I've heard lots of accusations of Harris disenfranchising, etc... but never that ChoicePoint had "close ties to the GOP". You cite Greg Palast. Could you find a less biased source? Noam Chomsky Perhaps?

All sorts of deliberate errors were made in the scrubbing process, costing Gore a minimum 22 000 votes on election day 2000.

You obviously pulled these numbers from some reference (probably Palast's work) and didn't even bother to see if they make sense. Since you didn't cite any web references, I will use this Wikipedia entry as my source. Let go through the various "disenfranchisement" claims.

From the article, 57,700 "felons" were struck from the voter list. These people were all contacted (although I assume it is reasonable that many of these people were not reached), of which 4,874 appealed. Of the 4,874 appeals, 2,430 were re-instated. Now, lacking an additional info, I assume that someone compared these two numbers, and figured that 50% of the listed names were incorrect, where in reality, it is only 50% of those on the list who came forward to dispute the error. Granted, anyone being denied a vote is tragic, but 2,430 (all of whom were reinstated) is a far cry from 22,000. Why didn't the other 53,000 people on the list appeal? More likely, most didn't appeal because outside of the 2,430, nearly all were convicted felons. Which brings us to ...List Demographics:

Voter demographics authority David Bositis, a senior research associate at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in Washington, DC, reviewed The Nation's findings and concluded that the purge-and-block program was "a patently obvious technique to discriminate against black voters." He noted that based on nationwide conviction rates, African-Americans would account for 46% of the ex-felon group wrongly disfranchised.

Breakdown of the distribution for 3 major counties:

• Miami-Dade, 20% voters are Black, 66% names on list were Black (3,794)
• Leon County, 29% voters are Black, 55% names on list were Black
• None of the names on the list were Hispanic.

First off, David Bositis is expecting a 46% rate of black names on the ex-felon group list. What is his criteria? national averages. African Americans comprise 12.6% of the US population, but make up 46% of the ex-felon group (according to Bositis). Florida has slightly more aftican-americans than the national average at 14.6%. Lets look at Miami-Dade and Leon counties that the Bositis cites: Both counties have significantly higher (about double) the national average of African-Americans. Wouldn't it make some sense that the they would appear on the felon list with greater frequency than the national African-American breakdown of ex-felons? (46%)

Now lets go after that last bullet: None of the names on the list were Hispanic. Greg Palast has this screenshot on his website of a segment of the list. (Ignore for the moment that he apparently uses Windows, AOL, and has 16 non-standard icons in his system tray.) While I don't dispute that ChoicePoint used poor methods to determine matches, what else can we glean from the spreadsheet? For one thing, there are no "Hispanics" in the race column, despite there being two names that appear to be hispanic in origin. One is listed as unknown, and one as white. So, the argument that "hispanics have been removed because they tend to vote Republican" is probably bunk. Much more l

6.1 billion

Voter turnout was higher in 2000 than in 1996. It was slightly lower than in 1992.

http://www.census.gov/prod/2002pubs/p20-542.pdf

I don't think that Bush's team keeps people home, rather they are probably driving more opponents to the booths than Dole's team did. (I have no idea how they work to their base).

I was overly harsh in calling it the median person; actually, now that I look up the numbers, 84% of Americans over age 25 have high school diplomas, though only 27% have bachelor's degrees.

Your average American, then, probably isn't your plumber, your electrician, or other high-paying blue collar service pro (he's probably in the 23% between median and college). But I did exaggerate a bit. Still, I hedged to 1/3, and I think I'm probably right about that.

Anyway, try out a new Wal-Mart supercenter in an area not likely to attract scummy people, and you'll be surprised at the stuff they offer, both quality and price. I still don't buy my clothes there, but you can't beat it for a great price on staples that you don't want in Sam's quantities.

$345 shure was a lot of money when a house cost $22,000 and the average income was $3,960 (thanks to fiftiesweb).

A quick adjustment based on the 2001 median household income of $42228 (US Census Bureau) is $3,450... rather a lot of money.

Unfortunately, I think soon as Jon Stewart starts presenting himself as too serious, then he will not be able to get the guests he does, nor be able to act the way he does on show from too much outside pressure.

Face it, TDS has a comparatively well educated, young demographic. Jon is building himself quite a reputation with that demographic. I think he could get away with a second, more legitimate, news show airing right afterwards. With a large and under-represented demographic like his, not appearing on the show could be political suicide. Imagine if Kerry came back on the Monday before the election and let Jon rip him up a bit. Then imagine if Kerry dropped some of the party spin bullshit and said Look... I don't like it, but that's how the system works and if you want change then you have to do it within the bounds of systems' own rules. When you saw me in the debates I couldn't say everything on my mind because that would have scared the old people, and since the young adults watching this program vote in such low numbers, I have to kiss elderly ass to stand a fair chance.

Nobody has any idea how many people are going to vote for the first time this year. Last month I got registered. I actually went downtown and talked the people there. While I was at the desk making idle chit-chat the lady told me that there would be a longer than usual delay in mailing the registration card because of all the new voters this year. She said so far it was over 150,000 (that was the beginning of September). Not bad for a county with only 863,251 people. It's not enough to swing the states electoral vote, but it's a message for the future if I ever saw one. All these polls you see in the paper or on TV have no way to know anything. They don't consider first time voters... at all. I also hope during this Election Day that the networks learn from their mistakes and keep their estimates to themselves. CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, and FOX News do not tell us who won the elections because they report whom the official polls say won. They don't need to masterbate peoples sense of instant gratification by estimating the results before people go to bed. This isn't football, we don't need an instant replay, and we don't need John Madden style commentary. This is the person who will be ruling over us for the next 4 years so we can afford to take our time.

As of the 2000 census, the U.S. population was only 281.5 million. And realizing that the majority of processors and operating systems are 32bit these days, a standard integer would work just peachy. If you really want to cover your bases, just use a long int. Also, one would use an unsigned integer as a negative value for a vote count doesn't make sense. But, don't worry too much about this, unless you plan on developing a real voting system.

Wow, you must be one of those peace-loving, compassionate democrats I hear so much about, like the one who let the air out of my truck tires after they keyed my Bush bumper sticker.

Here's your citations:

Number of registered voters in Franklin County, OH as of October 6th: 820,000 MSNBC

Census Data for Franklin Co. Ohio.
2003 estimated population: 1,088,944
3 year growth rate = 1.9%
Additional year of growth = .64%
Population in 2004: 1,095,913
Percentage of county under the age of 5: 7.2%
Percentage of county under the age of 18: 25.1%
Total population uneligible to vote: 32.3%
Population eligible to vote: 741,933

According to the census an additional 6% of those in the 742,000 are foreign born and likely not citizens (it's impossible to determine the actual number that are or are not citizens from the census data) but we have to assume that the number would therefore be even lower.

That's a net of nearly 80,000 "phantom" voters. Are you actually trying to claim that somehow a bunch of people running a "get out the vote" campaign registered every eligible voter in the county, and then found another 80,000 voters that were somehow missed? You're telling me the census is off by almost 15%? The largest estimate I've ever heard is in the 2-3% range.

But hey, keep deluding yourself. It's your life.

This is for all the responding posts to the parent asking for corroboration. 10 minutes of Googling later, here (requires registration) are some related links.

No one has been able to fully enumerate the five Congressional members and their offspring who are serving in Iraq. However, some facts pointed out in this discussion:

1. Moore never asserted in his movie that the children of US Congressmen are under-represented in US forces in Iraq. See the movie transcript to verify from primary source. Instead, he asked the people that authorized the Iraq war (members of Congress) if they would send thier kids to Iraq.
2. Equally factual is that in the United States, you can only enlist in the armed forces when you are of the age of majority. Meaning your parents (the Congressmen Moore was posing his question to) cannot do what he posits. They can no more send their children to Iraq than violate some fundamental precepts of the Constitution.
3. Quote: Senators and Congressmen (and Pentagon workers, and the President himself) ARE on the front lines of this war, and have been since its opening salvo. They don't need their children to be put in harm's way to show their bravery and resolve. They need only show up for work. If you don't think Washington, D.C. is a target, you haven't been listening to Osama.
4. The Congressional members who are known to have children serving in the Enduring Freedom theatre of operations or are expected to be there soon are: Sen. Tim Johnson, D-SD, son Brooks Johnson, 31, a staff sergeant with the Army's 101st Airborne Division; Rep. John Kline, R-MN, son, Dan Kline who is slotted for shipping out.
5. For anyone who still wants to play the statistics game and still assert that Congress members' families are under-represented, fine. Let's see where the numbers take us. Quote: The correct comparison would be to compare the total number of parents in the US with children of military age over the total number of troops and then the same comparison in the Congress - number of Reps with children of military age vs. number serving...assume that all people from the age of 40 to 79 have children of military age and likewise all Congressional Reps. - the errors are likely to be in the same direction (overstated in both cases) and so even out. There are around 130 million in the 40 to 79 age group. So the rate of service is around 1 per thousand potential parents. Applying this to Congress, you'd expect less than 1 child in Iraq. Instead, we can count one for certain, possibly another four depending upon your sources. So the representation, in known terms from primary sources, is at least the enlistment rate of the general population.
6. This is just immediate family members. Including first relations, representation of Congress members' families is likely to go much, much higher. If you are a Moore fan, would you care to chase down primary sources on that, which will only widen the gap further, o

the pay was below industry standards, but it's in Bentonville, AR, so the cost of living was pretty low, too.

...of course, I wasn't working for Wal-Mart at the time, so I couldn't really give you the opinion on that.

I am not saying any of this as a racist. I don't think the problem is the "white man" but instead a problem within the black community, specifically the poor family structure. According to planned parenthood

Each year, approximately 19 percent of black women, 13 percent of Hispanic women, and eight percent of white women aged 15-19 become pregnant

The proportion of all births that occurred to unmarried women was 22.1 percent for white women, unchanged from 1999; it declined for black women from 69.1 to 68.7 percent. Among births to Hispanic women, the proportion increased from 42.2 to 42.7 percent

IMO, when the black community can fix these problems, they will experience the same success rate as anyone else. For example, according to the Census Bureau

Black households had the lowest median income. Their 2003 median money income was about $30,000, which was 62 percent of the median for White households (about $48,000).

Median money income for Hispanic households was about $33,000 in 2003, which was 69 percent of the median for White households.

Asian households had the highest median income among the race groups. Their 2003 median money income was about $55,500, 117 percent of the median for White households.

The above was not to start a flame or be racist. It is just MHO on what is causing the biggest issues in the black community; those being high crime percentage, high percentage of out of wedlock child births and poor family structure. Affirmative action won't fix these problems. No government social policy would fix these problems. Each Black American will need to make the change for themselves, and then they as a community can have unlimited success like any other American.

Or would you care to deny that in the current system, a citizen of Illinois has more Presidential voting power than one from Utah?

In Illinois (2003 population 12.6 million), there is 1 electoral vote for every 600,000. In Utah (Pop. 2.3 million), there is 1 electoral vote for every 460,000.

Therefore, since your vote corresponds to 1/460,000 of an electoral vote in Utah and only 1/600,000 in Illinois, I would like to deny that a citizen of Illinois has more Presidential voting power than one from Utah.

Sources:
Electoral Votes
PDF of population estimates for 2003

most projections show that by 2050 the majority of the US population will be non-white.

Here are some US Population Projections.

In 2050 they (U.S. Census Bureau) project that 72.1% of the population will be "white". If you don't count "hispanic" as "white" then they predict 50.1% "white, not hispanic". Under either definition the majority is white.

Some quick research:
Florida population in 2000: 15,982,378
Percent of poulation under 18: 22.8% , or roughly 3,643,982
Number that voted for one of top three candidates: 5,922,531
Percent of Florida population over 18 in 2000 that voted: 48%
Seems to me like we need to worry less about 15,000, which is .000938% of the population and GET PEOPLE TO VOTE.

Some quick research:
Florida population in 2000: 15,982,378
Percent of poulation under 18: 22.8% , or roughly 3,643,982
Number that voted for one of top three candidates: 5,922,531
Percent of Florida population over 18 in 2000 that voted: 48%
Seems to me like we need to worry less about 15,000, which is .000938% of the population and GET PEOPLE TO VOTE.

$1 billion USD/day is just over $3/day/resident.

First of all, our defense budget is closer to $450B.

I'm not really concerned with how much I personally have to pay each day to keep our military running (BTW, the US work force as of 2003 amounts to 146.5M people, thus placing the cost/person/day at around $6.5, or $8.4 using the $450B figure). What I am concerned with is the fact that $450B is a tremendous amount of money that could really be put to better use somewhere else. For example, 12% of our 293M people are below the poverty line (35M people), which for an individual living alone is about $9K/year. That 450B in defense spending each year amounts to $13,000 each year for the people that really need it. That could pay for food, shelter, basic healthcare, and most importantly, education. Although it wouldn't make much sense to cut our defense budget altogether, there is no reason it couldn't be less than what it currently is. We have far too many other problems in this country that are going largely ignored while we sink billions into the military.

The rest of your post is just as unrealistic.

If you'd like to explain how exactly I was being unrealistic, that might help things along. Thanks.

Over 1967 to 2003 period, the percentage of families making less than $35,000 (in 2003 dollars) also fell from 52.8 percent of households to just 40.9 percent. In short, the ranks of the middle class could not have fallen because they became poor, because the ranks of the poor also fell.

The truth is that poor and middle class households alike became better off, which increased the ranks of the "rich" (those making over $49,999 in 2003 dollars in the (as some media records it)) as a share of the population. In 1967, those with such an income constituted 24.9 percent of households. By 2003 this had increased to 44.1 percent. The inescapable conclusion is that the declining ranks of the middle class result from one thing only-more of them are now "rich."

Census Data

My first comment on slashdot, and I get IP banned. Wow, was I that out of line?

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Anywho...

then the problem lies with you

I wouldn't mind some explaining on this one. As I mentioned in my original post, there's nothing against me which would prevent anyone from wanting to hire me, and it's not exactly rocket-science to fill out an application, turn it in, and call back every few days. The problem isn't me or anything that I am or am not doing, the problem is that places simply aren't hiring, and when a few jobs do open up, there's more than just a couple of people eyeing those jobs.

I live in CA

That explains a lot right there. Check around on google and find some statistics for California as opposed to Delaware; the population difference will blow your mind. Here, I'll even do the work for you. Check out your town as opposed to mine (Sussex County, Delaware). More people = more places of employment = easier to land a job.

so stop blaming other people for your problems...

There's a very large number of things I could blame Bush for, and all of them would be true. Check out the news some night, you may see what I mean.

...and get your act together

See my first point up above.

who has not tolerance for woe is me bullshit

That would make two of us. I was merely contributing to the conversation; if you take that as "woe is me bullshit", then I apologize.

• Share of Aggregate Income
  
• Highest Fifth 50.1%
  
• Fourth Fifth 23.0%
  
• Middle Fifth 14.6%
  
• Second Fifth 8.7%
  
• Lowest Fifth 3.5%
  

Fair's fair, right? If you think the average black household--real median household money income: $29,177--should be paying $4,376 a year in taxes, that's cool. They're just bearing the same burden as the rest of us.

"Fair" is tricky. Fifteen percent looks fair on the surface, but when you're that typical black American family, it seems a whole lot less fair that you need to give up money you'd use to buy food and a roof over your head when the rich family across town needs to give up money that they could have used to spend on an extra week on a yacht in Barbados.

(Link: US Census Bureau publication: Income in the United States: 2002)

What percentage would a Green party president expect an average American making $75,000 a year pay to support all these social plans?

Bah, I wanted to moderate rather than post in this thread, but you've baited me into it. If you think an average American makes $75,000 a year, you are completely out of touch. The median household income for the US was $43,318 last year. Per capita income was 35,000, but that counts children, so isn't really applicable.

Also, it's rather naive to talk about "tax percentages" as if there were only one tax out there and it affected everyone equally. Most people pay a variety of state and local taxes along with federal income tax (progressively graduated) and federal payroll taxes (slightly regressive because of how it's capped). Tax reform is a complex subject, and it can't be reduced to "what do you think the rate should be." If you're interested, you should have a look at a very good overview of the different possibilities and their consequences.

Not sure what you meant by "average," but the median household income in the US for 2003 [pdf, 791KB] was $43,318. (See chart on page 3 of report.)

From what I can discern on page 5, the median income for an individual is betweeen $30-40K.

Looking at things "on average" is never a very useful way to look at things for any given individual. Also, the way I look at things, cost of living increases are meaningless if your salary is already above the "living wage" level. You don't need an increase to keep up with "cost of living" when you're already well above that. Notice that it's cost of living and not cost of living how you want. If you're above the cost of living already, you don't need to catch up at all!

Now, at the bottom of the ladder, wage increases should keep pace with some form of inflationary measure (and I think we all can agree that CPI is a really poor measure when you average Hollywood with the poor areas of the South - the media, at least, doesn't post the spread on these figures but I'm pretty sure you can look them up at the Census Bureau).

I'm in agreement, though, that something should be done to help flatten out the disparity between executives getting ~9% raises on at least 10x living wage, while those closer to 1x living wage get at or below the rate of increase in living wage. However, I don't have an answer on how to affect that change in an open-market system; the capitalistic system is designed so that the majority of the money will end up in the hands of the few who are better able to manage it. It's quite possibly urban legend, but I've heard that if you distributed all the wealth in the US equally, within a [short period] the wealth would move around unevenly to the same people that have it today.

It's like the stuff in our newspaper here a while back when some guy was crying because he had to change jobs from $100k / year down to $70k / year. Yeah, it looks bad that that's a 30% pay cut, but he's still about 3 times the poverty level. Deal and get on with it!

Anyway, to summarize, cost of living increases only matter if you're living just at the low end of what you need to get by. If you have to give up luxuries, then you're not at that limit and should not really be expected to get cost of living increases. The only way you get cost of living increases when you're above the "cost of living" line is because your services are at a premium for some reason - what's happening when costs rise faster than salaries for a given profession it simply means that the added value has been reduced for that field, and eventually, when the profession becomes a commodity, there will be no premium over cost of living at all, and if the profession becomes outdated it will disappear. This is the way free markets work, folks...

Someone mentioned earlier that the previous generation could survive with one income. Today many families need two incomes to make ends meet.

Someone mentioned earlier that the previous generation could survive with one income. Today many families need two incomes to make ends meet.

1) because the Electoral College allows the *individual states*, not the popular vote, to elect the President. This actually *helps* keep California and New York from completely dominating, say, Wisconsin.

From the US census, as of July 1, 2003:

Resident Population California: 35,484,453 4.8
Resident Population New York: 19,190,115 1.1
Resident Population Wisconsin: 5,472,299

From Project Vote Smart:

Electoral Votes California: 55
Electoral Votes New York: 31
Electoral Votes Wisconsin: 10


Electoral Votes Per Person:

California: 1.5x10^-6
New York: 1.6x10^-6
Wisconsin: 1.8x10^-6

Give me one good reason why my vote should be worth more than a Californian's just because I was born in New York, and why a farmer's in Wisconsin is worth more than mine.


-Colin

• Share of Aggregate Income
• Highest Fifth 50.1%
• Fourth Fifth 23.0%
• Middle Fifth 14.6%
• Second Fifth 8.7%
• Lowest Fifth 3.5%

Hollywood makes the USA visible but I wouldn't be so sure the USA is the "center". The USA doesn't have a monopoly on diversity and other good things. The USA's population is also only 4.6% of the world's population, by some measures statistically insignificant.

Reminds me of Britain and the British Commonwealth, the empire where the sun never set, early in the last century. Britain had a policy of having a navy more than twice the size of the rest of the world put together. Look at where they are now.

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

What kind of spacelaunch system was used that could transport people offworld faster than they were being born on Earth? (Oh, that's right- they had fantasy hovercar tech.)

--

From this doc we can see that the college degree question is a bit tricky, because of at least two factors:

a. people over 60 have a much lower rate of college education, and bring down the overall average. presumably, we are more interested in comparing our children to those in the workforce -- the percentage for employed civilians age 25-64 is 32.7%, and for everyone 25-60 it looks like it is about 30%.

b. the 27% stat doesn't include associate's degrees. when you ask people your question, you should be careful to specify, "What percentage of Americans have a bachelor's degree or higher?" Over 50% of folks have SOME college education, though not necessarily a degree. Only 40% of all employed members of the labor force have NO college education, while 55% of unemployed members of the labor force have NO college education.

Beyond all of which, is it unreasonable to suppose that your aunt wished she had been to college, and wished she had been able to send her kids to college?

By the way, what percentage of Americans do you believe perform unskilled labor? (I don't know the answer to that, though I'm sure you can find out at the bureau of labor stats.

Not all black people are African American.

Of course that is true. A black person in african is African African :)

Not all African-Americans are black.

False. At least by the people that define these things. I personally would consider a white person from Africa who now lives in the US as African American, but this is not how the US government defines it. From the census bureau it defines African American as:

Black or African American. A person having origins in any of the Black racial groups of Africa. It includes people who indicate their race as "Black, African Am., or Negro," or provide written entries such as African American, Afro American, Kenyan, Nigerian, or Haitian.

WHAT about that ?. I wonder why US has a negative in exports balance (there was a time that would be ILLEGAL in India).

Correct me if my math is wrong, but:

2*[2^(128-1)] (accounting for 0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:0000 - FFFF:FFFF:FFFF:FFFF:FFFF:FFFF:FFFF:FFFF)

gives approximately 3.402823669209e+038 possible addresses.

earth population is estimated at 6,391,727,119

this allows 5.32379372× 10^28 ipv6 adresses for every person currently alive.

I still think I need more.

Nitpick...5.32379*10^28 per person, assuming a world population of 6,391,727,078, which is the current world population estimate according to the US census bureau.

That means one address for each atom in a pile of carbon that weighs 2369 lbs! (88435 moles)

I'm sorry, but in a country of 270 million people

294,221,787

Not an important point. I only bring it up because you were off by twenty-four million people. Which is, you know, huge. That's more than the population of Australia. You were off by a whole continent.

Anyway, it's just a point of trivia.

From the 2000 census
New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island + Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana + Chicago-Naperville-Joliet = 39,786,945

Wyoming, Vermont, Alaska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Delaware, Montana, Rhode Island, Hawaii, New Hampshire, Maine, Idaho, Nebraska, West Virginia, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, Arkansas, Kansas, Mississippi, Iowa, Connecticut, Oregon = 38,406,741

If you go with a more narrow definition of those metro areas, those 3 cities still come out at 28.5 million. Leave CT and OR off the above list of states.

Now...is the EC current situation fair? Maybe, maybe not. It tries to give representative power to each state.
But a straight popular vote would shift the power completely to the cities (Not California or New York, but metro LA and NYC)

In 1920 the U.S. population was 51% urban, by 1990 75% urban. United States Urban and Rural Population 1790-1990 . Urban being defined as a community of 2,500 or more. But that isn't the whole story.

Farming employed 25% of the U.S. labor force in 1920, under 2% in 1990. Farmers and the Rural Community . In 1920 Iowa farmers alone owned $309 million dollars worth of agricultural implements and machinery. 1930 U.S. Census data . That is not low-tech subsistence farming, a peasant or yeoman society.

In the mid-twenties many farms had central heat, indoor plumbing, electricity, sewing machines, pianos, telephones, radios, cars, pickup trucks and tractors. That implies a middle class income by first world standards and a domestic market that Sears, Roebuck mined for generations and WalMart still pursues.

IMHO, I think you're missing the authors point.

This is exactly the authors point - we get millions of "competent" graduates out of how many millions that are being educated? What's the final percentage? Are we really producing the throngs of Einstiens that they would have you believe? According to the US Census - only 83% of people 18 and over have graduated high school. That number drops to 24.7% for college or higher. Now looking at the numbers for educational achievement marked 29 June, 2004 : we come up with the following percentages:

Associates 0.044042109 (4.40%)
Bachelors 0.164815319 (16.48%)
Masters 0.05748253 (5.75%)
Doctorate 0.006189309 (0.62%)
Total 0.228487159 (22.85%)

This means that if we take the cenus estimates for people 20 and over (there is no segmentation for 18 and over) that approximately 12,800,428 masters and doctoral degrees are in the hands of the American people. This is a pretty small number compared to the over all population of 200,948,641 for people over 20. Also consider that this number doesn't tell us the number awarded every year. Indeed, according to the government (ca. 1993) there is a "real crisis in higher education in America." Now if we start to factor in the number of masters and PHD degrees that are awarded to non US citizens we start to see that number shrink yet again.

I think that what the numbers, and this book are trying to tell us is that the educational system is one that perpetuates the myth that intellect is a scarce resource because that perceived "rarity of intellect" is one of the major drivers of the economic system which Gatto is criticizing. We believe that less than one percent of the population has the mental capacity to obtain a doctorate, therefore we make sure that less than one percent of the population gets a doctorate. Our hypothesis is confirmed and we proceed to act as if the experiment was valid and the prophecy non-self fulfilling.

Anecdotaly, I think there is some proof with this. I'm sure everyone has run into the PhD who can't solve a simple problem, or the Masters degreed T/A that doesn't understand the basics, but managed to persevere long enough to slip into a teaching berth at some university.

Granted, this is a "Back of the envelope" sort of analysis, but I think it does point towards that something isn't on the up and up with the educational system in the US.

IMHO, I think you're missing the authors point.

This is exactly the authors point - we get millions of "competent" graduates out of how many millions that are being educated? What's the final percentage? Are we really producing the throngs of Einstiens that they would have you believe? According to the US Census - only 83% of people 18 and over have graduated high school. That number drops to 24.7% for college or higher. Now looking at the numbers for educational achievement marked 29 June, 2004 : we come up with the following percentages:

Associates 0.044042109 (4.40%)
Bachelors 0.164815319 (16.48%)
Masters 0.05748253 (5.75%)
Doctorate 0.006189309 (0.62%)
Total 0.228487159 (22.85%)

This means that if we take the cenus estimates for people 20 and over (there is no segmentation for 18 and over) that approximately 12,800,428 masters and doctoral degrees are in the hands of the American people. This is a pretty small number compared to the over all population of 200,948,641 for people over 20. Also consider that this number doesn't tell us the number awarded every year. Indeed, according to the government (ca. 1993) there is a "real crisis in higher education in America." Now if we start to factor in the number of masters and PHD degrees that are awarded to non US citizens we start to see that number shrink yet again.

I think that what the numbers, and this book are trying to tell us is that the educational system is one that perpetuates the myth that intellect is a scarce resource because that perceived "rarity of intellect" is one of the major drivers of the economic system which Gatto is criticizing. We believe that less than one percent of the population has the mental capacity to obtain a doctorate, therefore we make sure that less than one percent of the population gets a doctorate. Our hypothesis is confirmed and we proceed to act as if the experiment was valid and the prophecy non-self fulfilling.

Anecdotaly, I think there is some proof with this. I'm sure everyone has run into the PhD who can't solve a simple problem, or the Masters degreed T/A that doesn't understand the basics, but managed to persevere long enough to slip into a teaching berth at some university.

Granted, this is a "Back of the envelope" sort of analysis, but I think it does point towards that something isn't on the up and up with the educational system in the US.

For the curious, the State of Rhode Island is 1,045 Sq Mi. with about 1,000 persons per Sq. Mi. Rumor has it the state has another 500 Sq. Mi covered by water. It has 408,424 Households with a 1999 per household income of ~42K. With a 2003 estimated population of 1,076,164. For the really curious check out RI Census page http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/44000.html The area is certainly larger than RI. But I would venture to guess that the topology of RI is also very different than Walla Walla. For example, I think RI ranges from 0-800 feet above sea level. Not sure, but I would guess Walla Walla is fairly flat.

Rhode Island: 1,045 square miles

Is saying "big as Rhode Island" supposed to be more impressive than 1000 square miles or so? 33.3 miles by 33.3 miles?

Pretty big, but not so thrilling if you use numbers rather than impressive sounding fake measurements. Especially over mostly flat land.

A "library of congress" isn't as big as you think it is, either. Impress me with measurements in terabytes and petabytes, not "library of congresses".

Acto http://homer.ssd.census.gov/doc/lookup/bugs_webexp lorer.html 1) bug references to V0.95 are dated back as far as 6/22/95, and 2) there seems to have been a version for Win95.

[Sounds interesting, must see if I can track that down... ]