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65,536 laws, actually :-)

If The Law is going to be good enough for us to live under it, it's going to have to be a lot better than some piece of software that can run on 9 operating systems; it's going to have to be able to operate correctly taking into account the circumstances of 6,298,069,909 (and counting) people. That's why we don't leave it to computers - and why we have to remember that there's Mac OS X, FreeBSD, Linux, VMS, RSTS, and all those other systems - or, to step out of the analogy, people - out there.

BTW, anybody know why "HTML Formatted" /. filters out standard HTML character entities? I wanted to put ™ or ™ after "The Law" there, and it wouldn't let me :-(

Lets & through fine. Maybe it's a legal thing ;-)

Good questions. I'll answer in order:

> How rural (i.e. how many students)?

660 square mile county with 1500 students in the single high school. Mainly farming and local employment. Some long distance commuters to city employment.

> How common do you think your situation was (what percentage of rural schools offered/offer AP courses)?

It's the norm for the state. All offered AP courses.

> Do you think there are enough teachers capable of providing an AP curriculum for all of the rural communities?

Sure. Why would a teacher in the country be any less qualified than one in a city? My AP CompSci (Pascal) teacher was just as bad as one in a city.

> Can you see how it would be better for a group of AP students to be able to get together (through email, IM and even video teleconferencing) and collaborate?

It wasn't a disadvantage for me. Remember, we're not talking about email and IM. That's almost universally available. We're talking about high speed internet. Glorious full color IP teleconferencing is not an essential tool for taking an AP course. Collaberation with fellow students was enough for my course.

Your choice to live in a area with high cost housing also brings the choice of working someplace that will allow you to make enough to cover your expenses. Let's look at the census data for Alaska for 2000. Wow, it sure paints a rosy picture:

Less than 9 percent unemployment, only 60,000 people living below the poverty level (only 32 thousand if you only count 18 and older), out of an over 16 population of around 460,000. That's pretty good odds. Whoops. Those percentages are of people in the labor force. Nearly 29% of the Alaskan population OVER 16 is excluded from the labor force. Care to guess why? There are NO JOBS IN THE BUSH. Certainly none that would pay enough to afford your living quarters. At least not until internet in the sticks is reliable and pervasive enough to allow telecommuting...

I don't wish to come off as an ass, and I sincerely hope that I didn't offend you.

Some white people? Geez, where are you from? There are far more poor white people than poor black in USA.

If you're talking sheer numbers, then you are correct, but that's only because there are more white people than blacks total. However, from the March 2002 Current Population Survey:

The poverty rate, which was 12 percent for the entire population, was 23 percent for Blacks and 8 percent for non-Hispanic Whites.

Additionally,

Among all children under age 18, the poverty rate was 16 percent, but it was three times as high for Black children (30 percent) as for non-Hispanic White children (10 percent).

In addition, they have tables of Poverty Status of the Population in 2001 by Sex, Age, Race and Hispanic Origin. While "other minorities" don't have quite as high percentages as blacks for living in economically repressed areas, the percentages are still significantly higher than for whites.

The statistics prove it. You have much better odds as a white person of living in a non-economically repressed area than you do as a minority.

Having said all that, my point was that it's just as ridiculous to say someone is more likely to commit a crime because of where they live as it is to say the same thing because of their race.

Some white people? Geez, where are you from? There are far more poor white people than poor black in USA.

If you're talking sheer numbers, then you are correct, but that's only because there are more white people than blacks total. However, from the March 2002 Current Population Survey:

The poverty rate, which was 12 percent for the entire population, was 23 percent for Blacks and 8 percent for non-Hispanic Whites.

Additionally,

Among all children under age 18, the poverty rate was 16 percent, but it was three times as high for Black children (30 percent) as for non-Hispanic White children (10 percent).

In addition, they have tables of Poverty Status of the Population in 2001 by Sex, Age, Race and Hispanic Origin. While "other minorities" don't have quite as high percentages as blacks for living in economically repressed areas, the percentages are still significantly higher than for whites.

The statistics prove it. You have much better odds as a white person of living in a non-economically repressed area than you do as a minority.

Having said all that, my point was that it's just as ridiculous to say someone is more likely to commit a crime because of where they live as it is to say the same thing because of their race.

are student loans (and the degree they get you) worth the debt load?

From the 2002 Statistical Abstract of the US (warning - this is a PDF):

Median Annual Income by Educational Degree (No 664)
Overall - $32,092
High School Graduate - $27,669
Some college, no degree - $33,035
Bachelor's degree - $49,180
Master's degree - $59,376
Professional degree - $81,606
Doctoral degree - $71,732

Obviously, the answer to your question depends on how much debt you're carrying. But education does pay off.

The wealth numbers (which I don't have on me) are even more striking. The vast majority of Americans are in debt. If you have a college degree or above, you can begin to break even (especially if you own your house and are middle-aged or older). Those with Master's degrees have the most wealth, followed by those with Doctoral degrees. (Master's does better than doctorate, I suspect, because of all the MBAs.)

Also, was her address a combination of name + number where the first part was based on her real name and the number was given to her by the system because someone else with a similar name had already signed up? If a spammer is targeting msn.com specificaly, they may have cracked the collision-resolution already; that is, if they have bob12@msn.com they know they'll probably get a hit with bob13@msn.com. If not, they go looking for other names. Incidentally, the U.S. Census has lists of common first and last names posted online; spammers could concievably use these to optimize dictionary attacks.

The tax thing is exactly why I got out of Cali, actually. Moved to New Mexico, where I actually get to keep the money I make, plus have wonderful food that's near impossible to get elsewhere. Lots of similar benefits can be found here, as this area really is a growing place; the location to places like Sandia Labs will ensure things don't change and remain techie friendly for a good long while. Plus, living just down the road from where Bill Gates was arrested (seriously, it's only a couple miles away) gives me a perverse pleasure when one of my win boxes is acting up on me -- I'm still tempted to put up a monument to the occasion, of course, that's just my sick and twisted sensibilities.

Since the original post doesn't say anything about other household income, assume the listed salary is the whole thing. Per recent Census Bureau figures, median annual income for calendar year 2001 for all households in the US was $42,100. The 80th percentile was $83,500 and the 95th percentile was $150,499. Linear interpolation would estimate the 90th percentile at $128,166. Similarly, $50,000 would fall at about the 56th percentile. Hardly upper middle class...

The immediate cause of death was a fall that caused a head injury. Last year, Atkins received treatment for a heart condition, said to be caused by an infection unrelated to his diet.

The current average life expectancy for American men is 74.0. It's too early to start throwing questions out about Robert Atkins and his diet, but his untimely death will eventually spark them.

According to the government census there are over 290 million people living in the US. But your statistics are way off. That particular spammer didn't send an email to every person in the US. Secondly, not every spam sent, is received, there are also duplicates. The percentage of people invoved vs those that complained are probably much higher though, but still probably just a few percent, which is a LOT. Why? Because, how many SPAMs do you actually complain to the FTC about? Then you'll see how large this number actually is, even if it's a small percentage.

i thought "About four per cent of patients with SARS die."

so it doesn't kill 1 in 25 people. it kills 1 in 25 SARS-infected people.

with estimated 6,302,309,691 population at the moment, your chance of catching it is 0.00476% (currently around 3000 people infected)

so your chance of dying of SARS should be 0.00017%

probably one in a small town will die, or one extended family member in my whole family generations (dated back to 2000BC) will also die.

New York:19,011,378

Rhode Island 1,058,920

Electoral College Votes of: New York 33

Rhode Island 4

Votes per Electoral College Vote:

New York: 576,102

Rhode Island: 264,730

Think about it. A Rhode Island vote is effectively worth 2 New York votes.

New York:19,011,378

Rhode Island 1,058,920

Electoral College Votes of: New York 33

Rhode Island 4

Votes per Electoral College Vote:

New York: 576,102

Rhode Island: 264,730

Think about it. A Rhode Island vote is effectively worth 2 New York votes.

Your stats about the trade increase since the 60s are irrelivant. You forget to add other variables such as inflation.

No, I don't. Take a look at US household income statistics. Adjusted for inflation, the median household income has increased 26% over the same period. And that's using the CPI, which if anything understates things. E.g., consider what kind of computing power (or home entertainment gear, or about eight zillion other things) you could have bought in 1968.

Imagine how much more the dollar would be worth if the clothing companies moved production back to the US, and gave those jobs back to Americans.

If all clothing were made in the US, then there would be a few more US jobs, true at least for a while. But to benefit a very few workers, all US consumers would pay more for their clothing, making the consumer's dollar worth less, not more. And if people are forced to spend more money on clothes, that's less that they spend elsewhere, putting other Americans out of work.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out that if you create jobs, you lower unemployment. if you lower unemployment and create jobs, people have money. If people have money - they spend it. If people spend money - it's good for the economy. *duh*

As H. L. Mencken says, "For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong."

It's true that creating jobs is good. But trade barriers don't create jobs; they just move them around. And since they move them from more efficient producers to less efficient ones, they destroy value, making everybody poorer.

Check these first 3 tables...

Link

The most interesting table is the one titled
"Share of Aggregate Income: All races"

These tables are divided into 5 sections by population of people. Out of all the people in America, 20% have 3.5% of the wealth, 20% have 8.7% of the wealth, 20% have 14.6% of the wealth ... etc ... and the top 20% have 50.1% of the total yearly income. Each column represents the same number of people (except the last column, representing only the top 5%, which is just extra info.), in their respective 1/5th of the spectrum: Lower, Lower-Middle, Middle, Upper-Middle, Upper, and finally, Upper-Upper(5%)

As you can see, over the years, only the Upper-Middle and Upper class have increased their percentage of total US Income. Middle class, Lower-Middle class, and Lower class have all taken decreases in their paycheck w.r.t. overall combined US Income.

As you can see, the poorer are getting poorer (Relatively, which is all that matters), and the richer keep getting richer.

If you tabulate the statistics as represented here, there is no such thing as "middle class shrinking" syndrome as I have described in the above post (because they are equal # of people in each column). And I cannot find any US Census tables which represent their defined middle class size, upper class size, and lower class size. But as has been demonstrated, Since the upper 40% of the people are continually increasing their net worth, and the lower 60% are continually decreasing their net worth, the "middle" Middle class is dispersing left, and the "upper" Middle class is dispersing right. This is in effect how the class structure is polarizing as I described above.

If anybody can find actual numbers of middle class, lower class, and upper class over the years, I would be interested in seeing them. But they will look similar to what I have described, given the data provided in the above link.

I'm sorry but I cannot find the article I once read last year about the american middle class shrinking faster than european countries, but I'm quite sure I did read it, and if I happen to find it, I will post it here.

Though I live in San Francisco now, I still consider myself a St. Louisianan and so must point out that St. Louis is the 18th largest city in the US (by metro-area population, not inner city population, which all major cities have been hemorraging for decades now). What's more St. Louis was the 3rd city to host an Olympic Games, and has one of the best universities in the nation, which means one of the best universities in the world.

"300 million Americans are caught up in a scam similar to the Nigerian one"

Thats funny...

SINCE THERE ARE ONLY 290 MILLION AMERICANS IN THE WORLD!

Don't believe me? Look at this bitch.

Or are you counting your illegal alien brothers and sisters?

Great. For those terrorists who can't gather enough from that horribly vandalized silo, the government has been nice enough to preserve one as a museum.

The Census Beaureau holds its records for 72 years before releasing them. I wouldn't call sneaking a peak at the 1950 census a very big deal.

Right now, on tdlp.org, there's 458 HOW-TO's and mini HOW-TO's, 826k of man pages (gzipped), and many various other faq's and articles. Google matches about 4 million records for "linux help". I think that it's fair to say that's a VERY big "manual" to search through, espessially if you don't know exactly what you're looking for (ie, "my network card doesn't work").

Like I originally said, and I see being echoed in other comments replying to the same parent, users want to use the computer. No one - except those of us that read /. - has interest in using another system (even if it's superior) if it means they have to spend hours and hours setting it up, tinkering, and reading thousands of lines of technical manuals.

OSDN claims 8.8 million unique visitors (probably a good number to use for the people that are "self-sufficient"). The world has around 6.2 billion people. Thats about 0.14% of the population of the planet that can solve their own computer problems. Obviously, thats not that fair, so saying there's about 605.60 million people on the internet, that's about 1.5% of people that can solve their own problems (interestingly, not far off from my 2% estimate :) ).

Is it really fair to expect those 596 million people to read all that documentation? Do you think they read everything on msdn.microsoft.com when they installed windows? Now try wondering why windows has such a huge market share...

Well, some software changes. Much rarely does at a visible rate. But people just never do learn to avoid common superstition unless they're taught reality.

Hmm. Maybe he's right. But then again, at $8-45M a quarter, it can take a long time to lose all your nut.

If a Senator violates his/her state's trust on the other side of the US, I see no reason to not let a state court issue a warrant for their arrest which would prompt the US Marshalls to arrest them and extradite them to their home state for prosecution.

There is a reason... it's called the constitution, and perhaps you should read it some time. I quote (emphasis added):

The Senators and Representatives shall receive a compensation for their services, to be ascertained by law, and paid out of the treasury of the United States. They shall in all cases, except treason, felony and breach of the peace, be privileged from arrest during their attendance at the session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any speech or debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other place.

So, unless the representative commits treason, a felony or breach of the peace they can't be arrested. I would be interested in knowing what "Ethics crimes" you would consider to be so serious that they should be felonies, and how you would prove anything as they can't be questioned about speechs or debates in the house. You can't ask Representative Corporate Monkey why he voted a specific way. If he voted for Megacorp because he felt it was for the best for his constituents, or because they helped his campaign funds doesn't make a difference. The constitution says that he can't be questioned about it.

As for removing the "unconstitutional size limits" on the house. You should read the constitution. The constitution does not specify a number of seats in the house. It does however specify a maximum. The maximum is one per thirty thousand constituents, with a mimimum of one per state. It does not say that a representative can only have thirty thousand constituents, nor does it say that you have to have one representative for every thirty thousand people. If you want to follow this rule strictly then sure, you can increase the size of the house.

But, given that the current US population is 290,236,982 (Source US Census) that would require 9,674 representatives. Assuming that we pay them a mere $30,000 a year salary (or $1 per constituent), then we have almost three hundred million dollars per year going to them... On top of which we have to pay for the office space, the assistants, the football stadium sized congress building,... Can you imagine trying to co-ordinate a meeting with over nine thousand participants? Can you imagine trying to get them to come to concensus over anything?

Not that your suggestion is completely unworkable or anything...

Z.

Can you imagine the effect that would have on our society and future generations if you did in fact lock up or put all males between 15 and 30 under survellience for suspicion to commit a violent act.

the USA has around 260million people. That's a lot for europe or other places to compare to

If you check the US Government figures for population by country you'll note that whilst USA is third on the list (albeit a distant third to China and India) that if you go down the list a bit, adding up Germany, France, UK, Italy, Spain... that combined they surpass the USA rather easily with more EU countries (smaller ones) still to be counted, and more joining too.

Which isn't to suggest that population is some sort of ultimate metric for the comparison of countries (in any event the EU and the USA are very different in nature, at least at present) just that 260 million isn't as many as you seem to think it is.

The truth is we import 68% more from Canada than from Mexico. What a spectacular failure for your theory.

Mexico has a largely unskilled, undercapitalized workforce while Canada's more closely resembles our own. I would not expect tech sector jobs to go to Mexico. Nor would I expect us to import much from Mexico other than, perhaps, agricultural products.

But you're wrong again. 60% of our imports from Mexico are "Machinery and Transport Equipment", 15% are "Miscellaneous Manufactured Articles", 8% are "Mineral Fuels, Lubricants and Related Materials" (oil and natural gas), and less that 5% are agricultural-related ( http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/sitc1/2001/c20 10.html#13)

Just look at the jobs we've already lost to outsourcing. How many IC fabs do we have in the U.S.? What percentage of consumer electronics is manufactured in the U.S.? How many steel industry jobs have we lost? How are U.S. firms supposed to compete when China's government invested $6 billion in their steel industry in 2002?

About IC fabs, I don't know the exact numbers. In 1997, there were 980 companies employing 198,000 employees. They produced $75 billion dollars worth of good, up sharply from $29 billion in 1992. (http://www.census.gov/prod/ec97/97m3344c.pdf, NAICS product code 334413)

That rose to 230,000 employees producing $91 billion dollars worth of good in 2000, before it fell sharply in 2001 (you may have heard of the tech recession). Of course there were still 216,000 employees in 2001. (http://www.census.gov/prod/2003pubs/m01as-1.pdf)

Apparently you're wrong about that, too. So if you have some statitistics to share, go ahead. Otherwise I can only assume that you have no idea what you're talking about.

And if we'd quit buying athletic shoes, cheap plastic toys and all the other assorted crap we buy from China, they wouldn't have the money to buy our old machines.

Take a look at this, here are the stats.

Oh, and give me a break. You expect me to belive the Chinese government buys our old computers, pays to ship them over there, trucks them out to the back country and dumps them in the river? What, are computers cheaper than cement and they need a new dam? At least give me some reference if you want me to buy into this bunk.

I mean, here we are in the second leg of the double dip recession

The economy grew at 4% last quarter. You do realize the '01 recesion was the shortest in 20 years right?

we've got at least 10 years of ever escalating budget deficits ahead

So? The absolute size of the defecit isn't important, it's the size of the defecit relative to the size of the economy. The current estimates are much smaller than the defecits of the past. Look at the bond market, ie the market where this debt will be traded. The yeild curve has hardly budged.

the main reasons that the unemployment rates are lower now are that a) a large number of people have given up, which takes them off the list

And you know this how? And how do you know that this is different than in the past?

a larger number of people are employed at lower paying service jobs that require both spouses to be fully employed to make a percentage of the money that one alone used to make

Wrong median income has been consistently rising.

Oh, and the ruling Party is planning on giving the richest 1% of the population more money

Actually they are letting them keep more of their own money.

Did I mention the upcoming war, which will further deplete the economy

Deplete it of what? And what will be the benefit of a larger supply of oil?

Look I'm sorry if your career dot bombed, being poor sucks, I know, but try to keep some perspective.

what a troll... I can't resist. There are 290 million US citizens. Would you condemn all of them on behalf of 19 million Australians? To judge an entire country by the actions of its politicians is ridiculous.

Iraq has a share in the responsibility for those civilian deaths. Iraq uses resources intended for civilians for military and governmental purposes, then blames the U.N. and the U.S. for killing its people with sanctions.
The war that caused the bombing of Iraq's infrastructure was directly instigated by Iraq, not anyone else.
(feel free to debate contributing causes, but it was Iraq that fired the first shot.)

While there are six times as many blacks as whites in prison by population (http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/prisons.htm), those in prison in the U.S. have committed crimes. And the number of blacks and whites in prison is very nearly equal (http://www.census.gov/prod/2001pubs/c2kbr01-1.pdf ). They are not unjustly rounded up, unlike the targets of Hitler's regime. The only appropriate question is whether governmentally-changeable societal conditions in predominantly black neighborhoods foster criminal behavior. Otherwise, the results are not the resposibility of the United States government - they are the responsibility of those who are committing crimes.
And there are private organizations that are taking it upon themselves to help those neighborhoods.

The United States allows dissenting views to exist. There are not book-burning sessions.
And questions like yours (and replies like mine) are allowed to be raised, which allows Hitler-esque regimes to be stopped before they may grow.

IHBT, I know...

If you're looking for the Longitude and Latitude information, you can get it fairly easy at Census site

Too bad the original link in the article cannot witstand the hits. But the concept of it does sound like a good idea.

I personally would enjoy finding out the location of few bloggers and kicking them in the mouth repeatedly so they stop whining and typing in caps on their pathetic sites.

Last time I looked, there weren't 230 million households in the US. The parent's estimate was pretty accurate.

It appears that last month, with more than a month to go before the law took effect, more than one million Wisconsinites joined the No Call List. For a state with an adult population in the area of four million, that's pretty impressive. Apparently a great deal of the state hates the calls as much as I do. If you're in Wisconsin, join the crowd and get on the No Call List, it's the cool thing to do!

Depends on where you live. In the midwest $60k a year is an okay income considering the cost of living is fairly low... Of course, I may feel differently if I reach my mid 30's and am only making $60k/year

FWIW, the 2000 census puts the median wage for a 4 person family right for the country at $62k. I had access to salary information at my old job and I can tell you from first hand knowledge the wages ranged from about $32,000 (Help Desk Tech.) to about $98,000(Sr. Software Developers) You want more than $100,000k/year - nothing but management.

Play football? Become a criminal predator? Join the army? Get a job in advertising? :)

But there's literally no place left for us to go, unless we start building underwater or on Antarctica (problematic when the surface altitude changes seasonally, but possible).

Hey, don't leave out the ocean's surface. There's room enough to build thousands of state-sized floating cities for us meat-popsicles.

After that point, yeah, there's space, but rockets probably can't cheaply blast people off Earth faster than they're being born (2.3 babies per second). Maybe if we built a ring of space elevators around the equator we could spit the human sardines offplanet faster... I don't know. Or maybe the best solution is to expand to innerspace and leave our bulky biological bodies in the dust.

--

According to the US Census Bureau's latest data [census.gov], California's per pupil spending is below the national average. And I don't know of many "top flight" private schools that charge only $5,000 tuition, at least not in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Sorry, someone else may have already provided this information for you, but I get tired of sifting through flamewars to get to meaningful information.

I was once looking for unbiased gun violence statistics, myself, and I came across unbiased statistical information from the following sources:

United States Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics
This site page presents firearms and crime statistics.

United States Center for Disease Control and Prevention
This page links to several data sets that present mortality and morbidity statistics, including deaths and injuries from firearms

United States 2000 Census
This site contains information about gun ownership and gun-owner demographics.

I hope you find this to be more useful than all of the squabbling. :)

Boy is it obvious when the economically-challenged open their mouths.

First, I don't know where this number of $19 million dollars came from, the BEA says that we spent $204.5 billion from 1982-2001 on space.

How much did the government spend on national defense from 1982-2001? $5.773 trillion.

How much did the government spend on interest payments from 1982-2001? $4.09 trillion

How much did the government spend on "income securities" (welfare, diability, etc.) from 1982-2001? $9 trillion.

We have been continuously been in deficit spending since 1979.

The government now spends more per capita per year than what per capita yearly income was in 1978.

In the year 2000, expenditures on national defense was 11.6% of total expenditures, which was $2.77 trillion Income securites was 23.2%.

Currently the effective tax rate (the average per capita tax) is about 33%. In 1913 it was 5%.

Median income for a 4-person family in 2000 was $62,228. In 1982 it was $27,619.

The debt is bad, but the tax burden is the problem. The way to get rid of the debt is to curb spending, but military spending only accounts for about 11%, and let the economy grow out of the debt. Per capita income has been skyrocketting, but so have expenditures and consequently taxes. But you can't blame military spending. Someone has fed you bull and you ate it. I can tell when someone has never taken an economics class, or been in the military.

By the way, if you pay income tax, you are by definition "rich", since the top 50% of wage earners pay 96% of the income tax. Futhermore, ANY reduction in income taxes now by rule will disportionately affect the rich since the rich so disportionately carry the burden.

If you saw a map of the US you would see the same thing. Have a look at the USA state by state
census. Compare The eastern states to the central states, and western states.

Have a look at these census numbers for Canada's 27 Metropolitan areas. The top four cities have 1, 2, 3.5, and 4.7 million people. Two more cities are just under 1million, 3 more are just under 700thousand. The other 18 areas are spread between 150, 450 thousand. Does this really mean the population is more concentrated? The largest population centre, Toronto, has a density of 603 p/sqkm. Compare this to the entire state of New Jersey: 437p/sqkm. That is a "high density" city compared to a state. New York state is better at 155p/sqkm. But this is still higher then the density of southern Ontario and Quebec. The most densly populated regions of the country. 20% of the popluation live in small towns of 10k or less. These seems to compare favorably with the USA where 80% of the population live in "metro."

*My 2-3 million number was wrong. I suspect the difference is due to the use of "metropolitan area" versus city.

Considering that Georgia (amongst the '3rd world' in the US) receives more federal funding than it generates...

You've been watching too many Dukes of Hazard reruns. The statistics I dug up show we Gawjuns generate more than we take.

Gross Product
Federal Funds

Couldn't find Fed taxes paid as that would have been a better comparison, but clearly we are not livin off the rest of the country.

Considering that Georgia (amongst the '3rd world' in the US) receives more federal funding than it generates...

You've been watching too many Dukes of Hazard reruns. The statistics I dug up show we Gawjuns generate more than we take.

Gross Product
Federal Funds

Couldn't find Fed taxes paid as that would have been a better comparison, but clearly we are not livin off the rest of the country.

There are plenty of government sources of data that is free and open to anyone. The Census Bureau, Energy Information Administration, Commerce Department, a good starting place is FirstGov .

In addition, most state governments and even county level governments publish large amounts of data.

Okay fine your statement is about 1/4 true. There are private prisons in Texas, mostly filled with inmates from other states that they shipped here because of over crowding in their own states (no I don't like that either). According to your research we have 38 out of about 115 that exist in the US. (18 other states have them). There is usually a prison for every county in Texas (254 counties), plus some state prisons. That's a long way from "all the prisons in Texas are privately owned".

I'm a Marine, I earn below the minimum wage, in fact well below the poverty line. I take home $2012 each month after taxes.

That would be about $32,192 (assuming at worst a 25% tax rate, most tax rates are much higher). Unless you've got six kids, you're not below the poverty threshold (and you've already said you have 2 kids). And in order for you to be making less than minimum wage, you'd have to be working over 100 hours per week.

To give an example, I take home about $2030 a month, and I'm considered to be above average in a state with a very high average salary (it's not Alaska, but it's pretty high) - as an IT person.

Well, actually, that makes 99,47916 % of the world... ;-)

Which also means 95,387877 % of the world's population.

check this and this

I recently did some number crunching on
<UL>
<LI> Of the total sample population (106,910), 55,606 make under $27,500 annually. Roughly 50% of Americans don't exceed this number.
<LI> Similarly, 25% don't break $12,500. 10% don't break $2,500.
<LI> The 80%/20% line occurs at about $52,500 per year. Now, the total income earned by the bottom 80% of earners (everyone who earns less than $52,500 per year), is about $1.8 billion. The total income earned by the top 20% (those earning over $52,500 per year) is about $2.3 billion.
<LI> On the 50%/50% line ... the top 50% of earners earn about $3.3 billion. Bottom 50%: $0.7 billion. The top 50% of earners earn 84% of the income.
</UL>

From that data, the idea that the top 50% of americans are paying 96% of the taxes doesn't seem like such a problem. They're making 84% of the money. Slightly progressive taxation scheme, but then again, 20% of the population isn't making enough to actually afford taxes, and 10% just barely makes anything at all.

<p>It's sometimes comfortable to look at nice middle-classish-looking median figure (or even an average) and assume it means "most americans are doing just fine." That might even be a true conclusion IF we were dealing with a normal distribution of income. But the reality seems to be that income distribution is a pretty skewed thing -- lots of individuals in the lower brackets, progressively fewer and fewer individuals as you get into the higher brackets.

Sorry. According to the 2000 Census, in 1999 the median salary for Americans was 41,944 Dollars per year. Not 15,000. This link has a lot of Economic info collected during the census. Also, did you know that 96% of taxes are paid by the top 50 % of Americans? Also, if you make over 50,000 a year you are in the top 25 % of wage earners in America. Here are several pages of statistical info on taxes. The point as it pertains to your arguement, the average american has not earned 15,000 a year for a long time. You can make that with no college education what so ever. If you get paid 8 an hour, you make 16,000 a year (roughly). If you get paid just 2 more an hour, around 20 a year. (all before taxes). Add 2 more to that an dyou make 24,000 a year. Point is, even fast food jobs can net you 15,000 a year and that's if you work fast food. You can get a job stocking groceries that pays more then that. You could also get a job as a package handler at UPS and that pays more. It's increasingly easier to make money in this country believe it or not. Those dot commers who are waiting for something can get a job at those type of places with their eyes closed. Don't laugh. It's money. While I agree that congressmen (let's not bash them shall we?...it would only bring us to their level) make too much cash and it's a crock that they vote for their own salaries (do I want more money? sure I will vote for that spending bill), I don't agree that alot of congressmen are not putting the best interests of the taxpayers first. Sometimes the voting public doesn't know what is best for themselves (not often but sometimes they don't have a clue). If you think your congressmen is not doing the job, you can vote him out. You do vote don't you? If more people voted, then the politicos would have to think of better ways to get into office and they might actually have to do what their voters say they should do.

If you view those statistics for legal immigration in light of the existing populations of those countries, Australia has a more open door than the US does.

Besides, the original post referred to Southeast Asia - the "leaky boat" scenario - which was a phenomena during the epoch of the killing fields, but not now, so recent statistics are besides the point.

As to your second paragraph, I don't see your point. Is there some particular significance to Indian immigrants? There may be a Commonwealth issue for Australians, but the US doesn't much care about that. Each immigrant is counted only once; some with certain temporary visas have been physically present in the US for some length of time, in effect delaying their enumeration- but all that affects is the timing of the count. I hope you'd agree that such immigrants should be counted at some point, and I think the time when they get permenent residence status is the correct choice.

Since the earth a land surface of roughly 148,300,000 sq kilometers and the current human population ow the world in about 6,228,394,430equals about .02381 square kilometers or 0.009193041 Square Miles = 256287 Square Feet per person.

The Phoenix metro is huge, over 7 million people.

I am deeply alarmed by this statistic...since the US Census says that the 2001 population estimate for all of Arizona is 5,307,331.

That implies that between your statistic and the census's statistic...at least 2 million Arizonans evaporated recently! Thank god I live in the (mostly cool) mid-east. :-)

"Which State?"

Assuming they are looking for someplace with a low population I checked the census listings. Wyoming is the lowest at 479,602. (1999 estimated)

Much more interesting is the second lowest listing which is...

(Drum roll please...)

District of Columbia at 519,000! (1999 estimated)

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