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for many people a 2400 sq ft house is still a large house. especially if it is a one floor ranch.

I would be willing to wager it is larger than the average home.

which a quick google search shows the average home size in the US in 2010 is at 2392 sq ft, with a median at 2169 sq ft.
source - http://www.census.gov/const/C2...

So if the workforce is supposed to represent the population, then I guess Tim Cook would get the best bang for the his hiring buck by bringing in more white women.
Yes, white. According to The US Census Bureau the country is 77.7% white. So while it is important to get the 70% male employees down closer to 49%, that 55% white employee number is even further off the norm.

If by "large number of workers" you mean "just a few percent of workers," then yes, you're right.

In 2012, the average commute time was about 25.5 minutes. Even if those are at highway speeds (they're not), that's a commute distance of about 25-30 miles. Realistically, it's a commute distance of 10-20 miles. Perhaps even less than 10 in areas with particularly heavy traffic.

Considering the "megacommuters" are those with drives of 50+ miles and spend 90+ minutes driving to work, and they comprise about 600,000 commuters in total, the number driving "40+ miles" cannot be a "large number of workers."

But don't take my word for it: http://www.census.gov/newsroom...

perhaps if these people saved up and bought their own homes rather than renting, they wouldnt be in this mess.

The median price for a new or existing single family home or condo in San Francisco is one million dollars.

The median is the price for which half of homes sold for more and half for less.

The nosebleed price is a result of limited inventory and an influx of cash buyers willing to pay whatever it takes.

Many are tech workers with stock compensation from an initial public offering or takeover. Realtors call them "Google" kids even if they are 40 years old and work on biotech.

A secondary group of cash buyers are [mostly Asian investors] who see San Francisco as a relative bargain.

$1 million city: S.F. home price hits seven figures for the first time [July 17, 2014]

The median household income in the U.S. is $53,000. State & County QuickFacts [2008-2012]

Chicago Public School teachers are paid between $50-97K, based on education and time in job, plus pension and healthcare benefits.

Since the average income of full-time workers with a master's degree is $62,000 http://www.census.gov/prod/200... , that doesn't seem unreasonable. I'm not one of those conservatives who wants to reduce everybody in the country except themselves to Wallmart wages. I want to live in a country in which I'm getting a good salary for a job well done and everybody else is getting a good salary for a job well done.

There seem to be different kinds of teachers -- some of them work hard to keep up in their field, and give their students the attention they need, and some of them don't.

I think good teachers deserve the money. The bad teachers don't. If they're bad teachers, they should be trained to improve. If they can't be trained to improve, they should be fired.

Take a science teacher. I know a lot of science teachers who read Science magazine every week to keep current with the field. I read Science magazine (most) every week just to keep current with biology, and it's a tough job. Imagine if I also had to keep up with physics. They go to science conferences and teaching conferences. They keep ahead of their kids with computers (no easy task). They help their students do science fair projects. Every so often, they have to learn an entirely new curriculum. That's a big job and they may need the summer just to catch up with their work.

Somebody is going to say, "Why do science teachers have to spend so much time preparing their courses? It's all done. They can just recite the textbook." That's a complete misunderstanding of what science teachers do. Teaching science isn't teaching revealed truth, like the Bible. Science teachers have to understand what's going on in the entire world of science, and then select the subset which is most appropriate for their students. When the Higgs boson was discovered, and kids were interested in it, science teachers had to prepare to teach what the Higgs boson was and its significance (I couldn't).

Just as important, teachers have to learn how to teach.

For example, there are certain topics that kids can understand at a certain age. If you go beyond what they can understand, they won't learn anything, and you'll bore them or confuse them and they'll be turned off on science completely.

For example, according to the science curriculum, molecules are too abstract for most middle-school kids. I was surprised at that, but it makes sense. Suppose you tell an 11-year-old kid, "There are things called molecules, that you can't see, that you can't verify experimentally, and you'll have to trust me that they exist, and here's an artist's impression of what they look like." That's not teaching science. That's memorization. You could say exactly the same thing about angels. You can't verify them experimentally either.

Understanding what and how to teach about science is a tough job. If a science teacher were doing a good job of educating my kids, I wouldn't resent him or her for getting $100,000 a year. How much is it worth to you to have a kid who understands science?

Some people are going to say, "My wife is a teacher and she works seven hours a day and gets the summer off, and forgets about work once she's outside the school door."

Sure, there are bad teachers, but how many? Look at the Vergara case, where the anti-union, anti-tenure and charter school advocates got their chance to argue that the schools were filled with incompetent tenured union-protected teachers. What was the best evidence they could come up with, and based on that, how many incompetent teachers were there?

A guess from an expert who, when pressed, said that there were 1-3% "at maximum" who were, not incompetent, but gave "cause for concern" http://www.slate.com/articles/...

And the best response that could be given would be to blackhole everything EU. They want to be forgotten, then let's forget them.

Let me guess, you're american and you didn't pay attention in school, so you think "Europe" is some small country somewhere on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, yes?

The EU is larger than the USA in people, economic power and basically every other metric except prison population. Blackhole the EU if you want. We may or may not come over to save the sorry remains of your economy in a couple years.

The EU wants to be forgotten, let's see how the EU economy survives that.

The trade volume between the USA and the EU is about 60 billion US$ monthly . However, the USA imports a lot more, while the import/export balance of the EU is almost balanced (http://ec.europa.eu/trade/policy/eu-position-in-world-trade/). Make a guess who would suffer more.

You can already see some politically incorrect numbers.

AP CS student demographics from the first link in the summary.

- 31.4% Asian
- 3.8% Black
- 8.4% Hispanic
- 0.3% Native American
- 50.5% non-Hispanic White

Compare to current US demographics from the Census Bureau
http://quickfacts.census.gov/q...

- 5.3% Asian
- 13.2% Black
- 17.1% Hispanic
- 1.2% Native American
- 62.6% non-Hispanic White

It looks like every race except Asian is under-represented.
Is this evidence of systemic oppression by USA's Asian-American overlords?
Are White people so hateful they'd rather cut themselves to spite the Black and Brown people?

Like this?.

That's the data from the census bureau, where they separate computer science, maths and statistics, engineering and physical sciences. Mouse over the name of the major/occupation to only show info for that specific one.

Like this?

You make it sound like no-one thought of changes in demographics before now. The SS trust fund has always had assumptions about longevity built in. And the US is not outside of that predicted range (actually a little under, IIRC.)

I don't know how I made it sound anything of the sort. I simply commented on the life expectancy difference between dates.

The problems with the SS trust fund are purely due to the artificial contributions cap combined with the decline in median household income relative to GDP. The planners didn't expect to lose the gains in income equality over the prior to the '80s. (If the national income is more concentrated at the top end, and you exclude the top end from contributing....)

That's not the problem at all. Income inequality has little to do with it. Unemployment is rampant which hurts the basic premise of the social security schema. Add to that the problem of a somewhat negative population growth and it throws it all out of whack.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/da...

You see, the planners forecast population growth and the idea was that about 80% of the working population would pay for around 15% in social security benefits. I left 5% off because there will be some eligible to draw benefits but continue to work and end up paying their allotment back in penalties. But when you have a boom in population growth and then it slows, you end up with 25% or better of the population being over the age of retirement (in 2010, there was something like 20.7% of 65 and over compared to 18-64 with roughly 8% under 18 compared to the same source and another 41.9% coming.)

Or in other words, currently, the number of people 65 and over is equal to 20.7% of people of working age. The number of people under 18 year old who will replace the retiring workers is equal to roughly 8% of the current working age population. But the number of people within 18 years of being 65 is roughly 42% of the current working population. this means that 42% will leave while only 8% replaces them leaving a deficit of 34% without bothering to estimate the number of retirees who will still be with us and dependent on Social Security or the number of working age people and others who had tragic events happen and draw from the system too..

http://factfinder2.census.gov/...

But I like you try to push income inequality as a leading factor. It shows you are willing to make something up to push the idea and I bet people believed you too.

You're claiming that ten percent of the US citizens (~32 million people) don't have Social Security numbers assigned or ID of any kind? That's hard to believe, which is why the parent suggested that you were talking about illegal aliens. Nearly 85% of the US population lives within a largish metropolitan area [], which would mean that half-to-most rural people would have to lack a SSN for your claim to be true.

That's very unlikely.

The "closely held" test is pretty meaningless, since the majority of U.S. corporations are closely held.

It's more important to look at how many people are affected. According to https://www.census.gov/econ/smallbus.html more than half of the employees in the US are employed by companies with more than 500 employees, which excludes almost all "closely held" corporations.

Sure, there are a lot of "closely held" companies, but most of them are pikers.

80.7% of the US population lives in an Urban Area, as defined by US Census.

Since there is no shortage of paid shills for the rich, whenever there is any waste, it is pointed out gleefully (and usually unfairly) by these mouthpieces. So, there have been innumerable stories (mostly unfair) of welfare queens and $1000 hammers since I was a kid in the 60s. These stories have lead people to the mostly incorrect assumption that government is wasteful.

The US government is NOT wasteful. Our tax rates are lower than most other industrialized countries. Government is trimmed to the bone. You probably don't know this, but there has been a huge reduction in government employees since the 2008 financial meltdown. Local government has been hit even harder, since reduction in federal subsidies have caused massive layoffs. There is CONSTANT cost pressure on government. This ratchets costs downwards. You may also not know that we enjoy the lowest income tax rates in the industrialized world. We do have a very fine military, but the reality is that that military is where the real government waste lives. Do we really need more military spending than the next 10 players combined?

Our government works pretty well, all things considered. We enjoy safety from invasion, robbery, and fire, reasonable roads, fairly good schools, and OK health care (assuming we are 'middle class' enough to live in a good neighborhood.) I think you are seeing a government that doesn't really exist outside conservative ideology.

Lets see what has to say about that.

Excerpts:
In 2000, 2-in-3 householders in the United States owned their own homes; in 1900, less than half owned their homes.
Nationwide rate -- 1950: 55.0%; 1970: 62.9%; 1990: 64.2%; 2000: 66.2%

The inflation index usually ignores the cost of housing, conveniently, which happens to be most people's greatest single expense. As you can see, the minimum wage is hardly keeping up:
Median Average
1980 $64,600 $76,400
1981 $68,900 $83,000
1982 $69,300 $83,900
1983 $75,300 $89,800
1984 $79,900 $97,600
1985 $84,300 $100,800
1986 $92,000 $111,900
1987 $104,500 $127,200
1988 $112,500 $138,300
1989 $120,000 $148,800
1990 $122,900 $149,800
1991 $120,000 $147,200
1992 $121,500 $144,100
1993 $126,500 $147,700
1994 $130,000 $154,500
1995 $133,900 $158,700
1996 $140,000 $166,400
1997 $146,000 $176,200
1998 $152,500 $181,900
1999 $161,000 $195,600
2000 $169,000 $207,000
2001 $175,200 $213,200
2002 $187,600 $228,700
2003 $195,000 $246,300
2004 $221,000 $274,500
2005 $240,900 $297,000
2006 $246,500 $305,900

Care to place a wager?

Seattle currently has a 16.6% unemployment rate for youth age 16-24 (based on this data.

I'd be glad to wager that by 2020, the unemployment rate for youth age 16-24 in Seattle will be higher than 16.6%, with $50 going to a charity of your choice.

Of course, what you're conveniently not mentioning, and what is spelled out in the very data you linked, is that Seattle's unemployment among those who are age 16-24 is *lower* than the national average. How is that possible?! Shouldn't the current almost-$10/hour minimum wage have killed our local economy?

I live in Seattle and I'm damn proud of my city.

Care to place a wager?

Seattle currently has a 16.6% unemployment rate for youth age 16-24 (based on this data.

I'd be glad to wager that by 2020, the unemployment rate for youth age 16-24 in Seattle will be higher than 16.6%, with $50 going to a charity of your choice.

When I worked in Wisconsin a corporate goon like you came in and said that we needed to allow minorities to be interviewed. We said, OK. There were no minority applicants. Wisconsin is over 88% white, and the city we were hiring in was over 95% white. Among the qualified CS field graduates even more so are white. You see, we can offer equal opportunity to all races and sexes, but it doesn't guarantee equal outcome.

Unless -- and this is where your insane ignorance of reality leads -- you want us to waste time interviewing folks who have no qualifications. Problem solved: You're an idiot, as the corporate diversity drone was.

When not a single non-white person was hired that season guess what? Quotas were instituted. In order to hire qualified individuals we then had to also hire unqualified individuals. When workers found out that unskilled dumb-asses were being paid the same as them they demanded raises, some left. The unqualified folks just could not perform the software engineering jobs. We had to turn to outsourcing -- Ah, yes, let us say we have more equality by including H1B and outsourced "diversity". The company folded up only 5 years after it came under the Totalitarian Diversity Brigade.

Google is smart as fuck for withholding as much information about its demographics as possible because moronic social justice warriors like yourself think that there are sick people in hospitals because doctors are making people sick. No, you can't look at the ratios in places of employment and claim that these are caused by company policy: You need to prove that claim of racism or sexism -- Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Furthermore, you'll need to disprove the null hypothesis because correlation is not causation.

40 fucking years and Social Justice Wankers haven't got any hard evidence of racism and sexism yet? Where's the study showing what courses of study different demographics actually are interested in taking in schools? Output depends on Input: You get out what you put in. There is not ONE study to do such quantification in order to prove sexism or racism exists, so you can fight it? That's the FIRST step: Identifying the problem's location and scope? So, why don't these idiots do that study? Ah, you see, they're smarter than you think: They know there is little to no bigotry, just professional outrage and sensationalism based on misleading statistics and anecdotal "evidence" as examples.

Protip: There has been Sex and Racial Equality for over 30 fucking years. The democrats will play SWJ identity politics in the next election. They need evidence of a "War on Women" lying around come election year, hence stories like this. I'm non partisan, but these political puppeteers are fucking insane, and you've been duped.

From the 2010 US Census:

The Black or African-American
alone population was 38.9 million
and represented 13 percent of the
total population.

Yes, but the ISP doesn't want you. They want you to go away. They want your parents. You moving to a provider with a higher cap is a good thing. (at least for now)

They don't actually want my parents over me, they use more internet than I do. I may download a lot, but my parents LOVE netflix and such and manage to rack up more download than me. I tend to download a 5GB game from steam and play it exclusively for 40+ hours.

Second, I didn't move to an ISP with a higher cap. I moved and couldn't get internet service from anybody WITHOUT a cap while paying more money for it to boot. It sucks.

Not even remotely true. Only 1 country on earth has above 50% broadband coverage: Liechtenstein

There's a difference between offering internet service and people taking you up on it, and there's a reason I stuck scare quotes around 'everyone' because there will always be the occasional exception(and boy does it suck to be them sometimes). But if 90+% of the population can get an unmetered double-digit megabit connection for under $50/month, it's pretty universal.

Also, the wiki page isn't saying what you think it says. It's referring to "Fixed (wired)-broadband subscriptions per 100 inhabitants 2012", Dynamic Report, ITU ITC EYE, International Telecommunication Union. Retrieved on 29 June 2013."

IE Monaco has 45.5 wired broadband connections per 100 people. If you average 2 people per house, that's 91% availability.
The USA averages 2.61 people per household, translating to 73% of people having broadband in the USA. This tracks pretty well with other sites.

It's expensive and difficult. Local municipalities could start doing it but they're going to have to buy back the franchise agreements they sold to the ISPs (what you call a monopoly)

Yep. It'll get better eventually, but we need to get the current set of technology ignorant congresscritters out of office. Call it 20 years before you get a supermajority that 'grew up' with computers.

I don't have the statistics handy, but last year I crunched some numbers to figure out estimates of the total working population. If the average income per person in 2012 was just shy of $43k (http://bber.unm.edu/econ/us-pci.htm), that's about $13.4 trillion (using the population numbers from http://quickfacts.census.gov/q...). Assuming everyone who works is working full-time or better (60% of the population? That's about 188.3 million people), we have an average income of $71155 per person. Of course, these are fuzzy numbers that I put together in just a couple minutes.

I included a link to the data in my post. No "back of the napkin" calculations necessary. Here's the link again.

I don't have the statistics handy, but last year I crunched some numbers to figure out estimates of the total working population. If the average income per person in 2012 was just shy of $43k (http://bber.unm.edu/econ/us-pci.htm), that's about $13.4 trillion (using the population numbers from http://quickfacts.census.gov/q...). Assuming everyone who works is working full-time or better (60% of the population? That's about 188.3 million people), we have an average income of $71155 per person. Of course, these are fuzzy numbers that I put together in just a couple minutes.

US census data begs to differ. 19.2% of people in the US live in rural areas.

Really? You're such a racist that you don't think that a rich white woman could marry a black man? Anti-miscegenation laws were made illegal by the SCOTUS in 1967. According to http://www.census.gov/populati..., there are 558,000 white and black mixed race married couples. Your kind’s claim that this doesn’t happen is ridiculous. You need to get out of your inbred “holler” sometime and see the rest of the world. You might learn something, assuming you’re capable of that.

Nice theory, but there are more poor whites than blacks, therefore more poor white folks exposed to lead plumbing than poor blacks.

Just a statistical fact - while 13% of blacks are poor, 6% of whites are also classified as poor, yet whites out-number blacks almost five to one...

It's incorrect to assume the majority of the poor are minorities.

Actually, where I grew up, the blacks looked down on the poor whites and did not want to associate with them.

Also: In decending order, lies, damned lies and statistics.
Never trust one of those "studies" until you see their actual data. And then still don't trust it...

Nice theory, but there are more poor whites than blacks, therefore more poor white folks exposed to lead plumbing than poor blacks.

Just a statistical fact - while 13% of blacks are poor, 6% of whites are also classified as poor, yet whites out-number blacks almost five to one...

It's incorrect to assume the majority of the poor are minorities.

This is unadulterated horseshit.

Median gross rent in Pitt is $674, in SF is $1362. source.

To add some data to the current replies to this comment, I suggest you look at the graph here: https://www.census.gov/populat... Between the growth peak in the early 60s of over 2%, we've reduced it to %1. The latest annual letter from the Gates Foundation provides some good background about what's ACTUALLY been improving in the world: http://annualletter.gatesfound...

While custody awarded to the father has seen an increase since 1994 (when various "tender years" laws were abolished), custody is still given by far to the mother. This number has gone up ever so slightly in the past decade but it in any divorce it is far more likely that the mother will win custody (the numbers break down to around 85% sole custody to the mother, 10% joint custody and 5% sole custody for the father).

Minimum wage USED to be a living wage and teens did just fine.

Here is a table of historical minimum wages. Note that the highest minimum wage in terms of constant 1996 dollars was 1968, when the minimum wage was $1.60. According to this spreadsheet from the US Census Bureau, the poverty threshold for a family of four in 1968 was $3553, which is over $200 higher than full-time pay at $1.60/hr. I used the figure for a family of four because of your reference to "making sure people can feed their kids".

Besides, one thing teens need to learn is to not sell themselves cheap.

No; teens need to learn the true value of their labor. Many of them think their time is worth more than it is actually worth.

Whites may make up a significant portion of development staff (and they also make up over 80% of the population in the US

The 2010 US Census says that its 72% apparently, and in that number includes Hispanics, Arabs, and various other minority groups that don't fall into other groups.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U...
http://www.census.gov/2010cens...

Uh, median household income is $67,348

The United States 2012 census found 2012 median household income to be $51,371 . Allowing for a quick estimate of inflation, you are wrong by 20%.

So, it seems that you argue publicly by relying on false information, and starting every comment with "Uh".

Have a look at the first document (number 78) here. The birth rate / death rate ratio has been decreasing over time, but it's still positive. The reason for the minority / majority inversion that you're talking about is in the bottom chart on that document - the birth rate among current minorities (except Cubans) is higher than that of the current majority (white people).

I'm sure that part of the reason for that is the fact that hispanics are mostly catholic, but the bigger reason is likely what the other poster mentioned: the richer a group is, the fewer children they have.

Federal tax receipts, historical. In 1957 tax receipts were basically $80 billion. In 2013, tax receipts were $2,775 billion.

Population of the US, historical. In 1957, there were about 172 million people. In 2013 there are about 317 million.

Inflation calculator. A 1957 dollar is worth about $8.46 in 2013

Tax receipts in 1957, per capita: $465. Correct for a 2013 dollar (multiply by $8.46) and you get about $3900 (the Federal Government also ran a real cash surplus and the national debt decreased).

Tax receipts in 2013, per capita: $8754. Or a bit more than double that 1957 per-capita after you adjust for inflation (deficit - pushing over $2000 per person).

Essentially, the Federal Government is taking about twice out of everybody's pocket as it did back in the "high tax" 50s. The difference is in the deductions allowed today versus then, so the actual, effective tax rate was dramatically different than what many suspect. And given that the overwhelming majority of tax receipts come from high income people (the top 10% pay more than 70% of all Federal income taxes, and when you include SSI/FICA - which they would all cap out - and capital gains, approximately 88% of individual, and 40% of ALL, Federal receipts comes from the income of these top 10%), we are witnessing a massive wealth redistribution at the hands of the Federal Government. The fact it's happening so poorly is not a reflection on the taxpayers, but the inefficiency and corrupt nature of the Federal Government.

Given that being in Congress makes one quite wealthy, perhaps a lot of that redistribution is strictly for the benefit of those IN Government. It's still a Federal Government by the people and of the people, but increasingly FOR Government, not for the people.

In the US, the married/unmarried divide is pretty small (within 5%) .

So... [Citation needed].

In 2011, 9 percent of all nurses were men while 91 percent were women. Men earned, on average, $60,700 per year, while women earned $51,100 per year.

I know it is impossible, but I just want there to be honest discourse about this supposed "STEM shortage / gender gap". There is no STEM shortage just like there is no Lawyer shortage. The gender gap in software engineering isn't a problem just like the gender gap in nursing isn't a problem. Corporations want to turn software engineers into a commodity. Period.

I have not seen any data, but my gut feeling is that the number is a fraction of a percentage of people who have high speed connections.

Look at it this way:

* Netflix has over 30 Million subscribers .

* According to the US Census data, 75% of US households have internet.

* 115 Million Households in the US

Some math:

115 Million households * .75 = 86.2 Million households with internet.
31 million Netflix Subscribers / 86.2 Million Internet users = 36% of households with internet in the US use Netflix. Yes, over a third.

Now add the fact that cable companies are losing cable TV customers in the hundreds of thousands *each quarter* and you can see how more and more people are depending on Netflix (and other services) to fill their video entertainment needs. The name for the trend is cord-cutting .

So based on that I would surmise that a substandard Netflix experience would be a dealbreaker for 1/3rd of all internet customers and a larger proportion of *high speed* internet customers (since people who don't need to stream video opt for the cheaper services).

I have not seen any data, but my gut feeling is that the number is a fraction of a percentage of people who have high speed connections.

Look at it this way:

* Netflix has over 30 Million subscribers .

* According to the US Census data, 75% of US households have internet.

* 115 Million Households in the US

Some math:

115 Million households * .75 = 86.2 Million households with internet.
31 million Netflix Subscribers / 86.2 Million Internet users = 36% of households with internet in the US use Netflix. Yes, over a third.

Now add the fact that cable companies are losing cable TV customers in the hundreds of thousands *each quarter* and you can see how more and more people are depending on Netflix (and other services) to fill their video entertainment needs. The name for the trend is cord-cutting .

So based on that I would surmise that a substandard Netflix experience would be a dealbreaker for 1/3rd of all internet customers and a larger proportion of *high speed* internet customers (since people who don't need to stream video opt for the cheaper services).

Actually, Gini index took a pretty significant leap from 2010 to 2011. "Based on the Gini index, income inequality increased by 1.6 percent between 2010 and 2011"

Apparently reading data (see the table to the left of the graphs) is hard. In 1980, the GINI was 0.403; in 1990 it was 0.428. In 2000 it was 0.462. Meaning the 1980s saw a GINI increase of 0.25, and the 1990s saw a GINI increase of 0.34. There was a greater GINI increase in the 1990s than in the 1980s.

We can also go to the Census itself and get the GINI data. Look at the change from 1980 to 1988, and 1992 to 2000; the former is 0.023; the latter is 0.029. A great increase directly in the Clinton years than the Reagan years. That is the raw Census household data.

Lastly, interesting how you now stretch it to be the "Reagan Bush" era, versus my original contention of just Reagan. Apparently changing my argument for me is a valid debate technique? In that case, the Clinton/Obama years have been even worse (adding 0.029 under Clinton, and 0.011 under Obama for a total of 0.04, versus 0.03 total for Reagan/Bush). The interruption in the Clinton/Obama years - the Bush years - was a miniscule 0.004 - a tenth of the change.

Breaking my usual anti-AC rule since you're pretty insistent on your stance and your post is pretty much a hate-based post probably because you just lost your job...

Your data from MotherJones is rather misleading; take a look at the actual data from the Census, the GINI coefficient (you can learn about the GINI ratio here). You'll see that the slope of the GINI ratio is very shallow, around 0.0022 from 1967 to present. Meaning about a 0.2% change annually. And more importantly, if you look at the data, you'll see a big bump in 1993 - right around the start of the tech boom. Since that time the slope is around 0.0011 - around a tenth of a percent.

Understanding that, the whole reason you probably had decent income to start with is because of the tech boom in the 90s creating a new upper-middle class based on technology, not manufacturing. There has been precious little change in the actual distribution of income over the last 20 years - it's been WHO has that income. It's no longer tradesmen or manufacturing/heavy industries, but technology.

Yes, we should be dumb and stupid...great way to plan for the future.

Repeat after me, throwing money at something does not make it better, it just makes it more expensive. WE are constantly under-performing in test scores compared to other countries that spend a fraction of what we do on education. Not spending more does not equate to being dumb and stupid. Spending more with no or negative results could equal dumb and stupid though.

And 30-40 MILLION more people have health insurance available to them. Overall spending DECREASE since once it's fully in force and people are enrolled the number of ER visits goes way way down. Again, 'decade over decade' and you compare to just 'now'.

No they do not. Right now, the number of people who do not have health insurance available is actually greater then before as policies were canceled and some increased in costs to the point people claim they cannot afford them any more.

Even the government claims less then 6 million people signed up for the exchanges. The CBO claims that after Obamacare is fully implemented, 30 to 40 million people will not have coverage. Before the ACA, it was only 50 million who were uninsured. But right now, we have seen over 80 million policies canceled because of the ACA. So unless you are counting a large amount of people who had their policies canceled as the ones who are going to be getting insurance, the best you can claim is that 10-20 million will have access to insurance. But currently, it seems like only 6 million or so is able to be claimed if you discount anyone who was canceled from the number of people signing up for the exchanges. But that isn't the case in reality.

I know, that is not what you have been told by your handlers. But it actually is the cold hard truth of the matter.

I think the proper question is why aren't you getting off your lazy AC ass and actually doing something about it? If you don't like the government, you're quite free to persuade your neighbors to join you in replacing your representatives.

I think you will find this to be a common theme over the next several elections. Whether the politicians will stand and deliver is another story, but we can expect to see some different talking heads in the mix.

According to the Census Bureau, there're about 115 million households in the US. Target has basically admitted that the theft amounts to their entire database.

It's fairly clear that Target's entire database was compromised. Unless you assume the crackers ran a query to select only the "best" addresses.

To assume the data theft effected almost every single household in the US makes 2 assumptions not in evidence: (1) Target has a relationship with 95% of all households, and (2) Target keeps only one record for every household which highly unlikely, and counter-productive to highly targeted marketing.

The most likely scenario is that Target has multiple records for most households (husband, wife, 7 teenage children, elderly parent).

The sad part is that there are likely many people with compromised data that never had any real relationship with Target (neither cardholder, nor registered website users). For decades companies have been purchasing name/address information from all sorts of people trying to make a quick dime. Target would be no different.

In some of these states, there simply aren't many students of any race or gender taking the test, which helps explain the dearth of young women and minorities. (Indeed, no women or minorities took the exam in Wyoming—but that's because no students at all took it.) But Idaho had nearly 50 students taking it, and Utah had more than 100.'"

Did you know that feminists and social justice warriors need funding for their political careers? Did you know they continue to purposefully present bad statistics and rely on misleading evidence to further their political goals and funds?

You are now aware that Idaho is 93.8% white. and Utah is 91.8% white. The USA is 77% white, what's your fucking point? That minorities make up a minority? I really can't take anything else they say seriously. It's just that same old bullshit brain rot, like the wage gap myth. There are lots of sick folks in hospitals, doesn't mean hospitals make folks sick. Percentages enrolled and employed don't dictate school or employee policy. Men and women are different. Women and men make different choices and have different personality traits cross culturally. Yes, I'm generalizing, that doesn't limit the choice of individuals to point out trends. Get over it. However trotting out this tripe as news is just fucking dumb.

In some of these states, there simply aren't many students of any race or gender taking the test, which helps explain the dearth of young women and minorities. (Indeed, no women or minorities took the exam in Wyoming—but that's because no students at all took it.) But Idaho had nearly 50 students taking it, and Utah had more than 100.'"

Did you know that feminists and social justice warriors need funding for their political careers? Did you know they continue to purposefully present bad statistics and rely on misleading evidence to further their political goals and funds?

You are now aware that Idaho is 93.8% white. and Utah is 91.8% white. The USA is 77% white, what's your fucking point? That minorities make up a minority? I really can't take anything else they say seriously. It's just that same old bullshit brain rot, like the wage gap myth. There are lots of sick folks in hospitals, doesn't mean hospitals make folks sick. Percentages enrolled and employed don't dictate school or employee policy. Men and women are different. Women and men make different choices and have different personality traits cross culturally. Yes, I'm generalizing, that doesn't limit the choice of individuals to point out trends. Get over it. However trotting out this tripe as news is just fucking dumb.

According to the Census Bureau, there're about 115 million households in the US. Target has basically admitted that the theft amounts to their entire database.

I'd like to think that this would mean the end of the credit reporting rackets; how can anybody even pretend any more that that data is meaningful when this sort of fraud is taking place? But I also wanted to think that the Snowden revelations would have meant the end of the NSA, so clearly I'm not somebody anybody is paying or should pay attention to.

Cheers,

b&

FBI statistics, that is. Where offender race could be identified, 5,486 were murders by blacks, 4,729 by whites, and 256 by "other." As blacks make up 13.1% of the population, the inescapable conclusion is that a wildly disproportionate share of U.S. murders are committed by black males. The fact that 72.5% of all black children are born out of wedlock might have something to do with that, which in turn may be due to greater welfare dependency among blacks than whites.

Now go ahead and tell me how my government statistics are racist...

I cannot and do not care about the citizens of other countries.

Don't care as in leave alone or don't care as in take what you can get? Great way to make lots of enemies. You do realize that the US population of 320 million is a statistically insignificant proportion (<5%) of the world population?

I cannot and do not care about the citizens of other countries.

Don't care as in leave alone or don't care as in take what you can get? Great way to make lots of enemies. You do realize that the US population of 320 million is a statistically insignificant proportion (<5%) of the world population?