Slashdot Mirror

How can you be looking for a common social cause for something that's not happening?

GOD I hate "common wisdom."

So those bail bondsman and only provide bail for rich people?

And Dog the Bounty Hunter never chases down some lowlife good old boy or other "non-rich" person?

BTW...4,143,077 Texans live in poverty. 1,655,085 of them are children. http://www.census.gov/ ...And 80% are here illegally.

The core point still stands though - pay for military personnel is not "much better" than it used to be. All government payroll data is freely available. Toss it into a spreadsheet and you can see that the average DoD wage is among the lowest in the government at $47,400/yr. Most of the grunts in the field are going to be in the half of that bell curve below that.

Only federal employees working in "water transport & terminals" get paid less. For comparison, the average for postal workers is 40% higher at $66,500/yr You get paid 40% more for dodging unchained dogs than you do dodging bullets.

Oh, look, the State destroying a business and free choice in the first part of the summary and then the State enabling people to harass other people over imaginary property in the second.

The geek's entire working life is defined by his ability to produce, secure and distribute intangible property.

The median household income in the states is $52,000. USA Quick Facts His own expectations will be higher even at entry level.

He'll retire to a world of direct deposit, EMRs and one-click shopping. None of which are possible in a world where intangible property has no legal protection.

The median age according to the 2010 census is 37.5 years, so by any reasonable definition of "elderly", the elderly are a minority.
http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-03.pdf (pg5)

Median new house price in 2010 was all of 221,800: http://www.census.gov/const/uspriceann.pdf

You people in high income enclaves need to get out more. And anyone who wants to sell their company and retire would be wise to move somewhere the housing prices are low. It's not like you have to make sure your commute to the highrise office district is short.

Care to share with us a link to that 1995 census survey?

Doesn't anyone Google these days?

A STATISTICAL ANALYSIS OF THE CPS SUPPLEMENT ON RACE AND ETHNIC ORIGIN

The "First Nations" thing is bogus anyway as there were probably several waves of Asian immigration to the Americas. Most likely what pre-Columbian societies exist today were "Second" or "Third" Nations.

According to the State of Massachusetts (warning: PDF), 260,618 people voted in the Congressional race in the 6th District in 2010.

He says he's polling at 7 percent support in that district; let's take him at his word. That means to estimate his base of support we can multiply 7 percent by 260,618, which yields 18,243.

So what would it take to raise $50,000? If he limited himself to raising money strictly from that 7 percent -- who are presumably his base -- he'd only need them to give $2.75 each to hit that mark. Two dollars and seventy-five cents. If he raised his ask to $10 -- still a small ask in the world of political contributions -- he'd have $182,000. That's not a huge amount of money -- the current incumbent spent $2 million in the 2010 cycle -- but it can buy an awful lot of mailers, yard signs, campaign t-shirts, and other tools to get your name and message out. No corporate contributions required.

Look, I'm as big an advocate for getting money out of politics as you're likely to find, but this is simply not a case of being required to raise Big Money in order to play. You don't have to raise Big Money, you just have to raise some money, because without a little money you can't afford the most basic tools a campaign needs to win. There's nothing un-democratic about giving your supporters yard signs. If you can't rouse yourself to gather the resources needed to do even that, it shouldn't come as a shock when people start assuming you're not a serious candidate.

60K USD isn't exactly "make you rich" territory in the US, but it's a hell of a lot of money for a teenager. That's pretty close to the median annual salary.

If by "pretty close" you mean "well above".

For 2010 (the most recent year for which statistics are available; the 2011 statistics should be available this month), the Social Security Administration figures show the median annual wage in the US as $26,363.55, and the average annual wage as $39,959.30.

So, $60K is more than twice the median annual wage and more than 1.5 times the average annual wage. Its also a more than the median household income ($50,054 in 2011, per the U.S. Census Bureau).

True, but doesn't most of the crap bought in the U.S. come from China?

Not even remotely. Year to date in 2012 the US has imported about $235 billion in goods from China (out of ~$1323 billion total imports) which accounts for a little under 18% of total imports. Not even under the most wild definition of "most" does most of the stuff we buy come from China.

By the way, you are missing part of the formula for GDP, it's the deflator that they are supposed to apply to discount inflation. Of-course their deflators are ridiculously low, I have an 'informative' post with many numbers and links in it here, which shows a few things about inflation and GDP.

The GDP deflater is not part of the calculation of a given years GDP expressed in that years price level. It's only used if you need to express it in another year's price level, as is necessary for calculating growth.

AFAIC GDP has been shrinking for a long time now in 2 ways.

1. The 'production' part of GDP is shrinking all the time. Look at the trade deficit numbers, here is a page with history on it in PDF or text. For the year 2011 the trade deficit was 559Billion dollars and it's growing all he time. Of-course the total personal consumption in USA is mostly on services, not on goods, in fact 2/3 of all consumption is services and only 1/3 is goods. 11Trillion was spent by US consumers in 2011, so about 3 Trillion was spent on goods and the rest was energy, food and services (like healthcare and education for example), so in that sense US consumer consumes mostly 'US' service. However if you look at the goods (go to Walmart and compare how many things are made in USA vs foreign made, like China), you'll find that most of the goods bought and sold (and even food, 90% of sea food comes from Asia) is made elsewhere.

All of GDP is the 'production' part. It's a measure of production within a given geographical area. If US consumers spend, say, $1tr more on imports then that makes no difference to the GDP figure. Remember: GDP=c+g+i+x-m.....adding $1tr to c (consumption) and $1tr to m (imports) leaves it unchanged.

2. The deflator that is used is reverse engineered to fit the propaganda. With the nominal and pre-deflator GDP being 2.9%, the deflator is set to be 1.6. (read the linked comment, I give quotes and links there), that's GDP revised down from 1.7% to 1.3% (post deflator) for the second quarter.

GDP is not a percentage. You can, of course, dispute the inflation statistics and hence the real growth rate, although you don't appear to have any good reason for doing so other than 'by my theory there damn well ought to be more inflation than there is'. This does not affect the percentage of GDP which is domestic consumption of domestically produced goods and services (the c-m figure). Nor does it make the statement I'm disputing ('GDP is 70% consumption of mostly foreign goods') make any sense.

70% of GDP could very well be consumption, at least in countries with unusually low government spending

- I am sorry, this sentence makes no sense. 70% of GDP is consumption, that's not because of low gov't consumption, the exact opposite is the case, that's because of very high consumption stimulated by gov't (especially non-existing interest rates and free money allocated by the Fed to the member banks, who then buy T-bills and bonds and allow gov't to keeps spending).

Percentages add to 100%. GDP is c+g+i+x-m. If c, consumption, is 70% of GDP and x-m is, say, -5% (about right for the US) then government spending, g, can't be higher than 35% of GDP and is almost certainly rather lower. 20%, say, which sounds reasonable for the US (given that g doesn't include pure transfers and that the US has relatively low government spending for a rich country).

You've conflated 'gov't consumption' (whatever that may be) with 'consumption stimulated by gov't'. Consumption of domestic goods by consumers is consumption of domestic goods by consumers, even if it's the indirect result of a government fiscal stimulus or central bank monetary stimulus. It still represents production in the US, and

By the way, you are missing part of the formula for GDP, it's the deflator that they are supposed to apply to discount inflation. Of-course their deflators are ridiculously low, I have an 'informative' post with many numbers and links in it here, which shows a few things about inflation and GDP. AFAIC GDP has been shrinking for a long time now in 2 ways.

1. The 'production' part of GDP is shrinking all the time. Look at the trade deficit numbers, here is a page with history on it in PDF or text. For the year 2011 the trade deficit was 559Billion dollars and it's growing all he time. Of-course the total personal consumption in USA is mostly on services, not on goods, in fact 2/3 of all consumption is services and only 1/3 is goods. 11Trillion was spent by US consumers in 2011, so about 3 Trillion was spent on goods and the rest was energy, food and services (like healthcare and education for example), so in that sense US consumer consumes mostly 'US' service. However if you look at the goods (go to Walmart and compare how many things are made in USA vs foreign made, like China), you'll find that most of the goods bought and sold (and even food, 90% of sea food comes from Asia) is made elsewhere.

2. The deflator that is used is reverse engineered to fit the propaganda. With the nominal and pre-deflator GDP being 2.9%, the deflator is set to be 1.6. (read the linked comment, I give quotes and links there), that's GDP revised down from 1.7% to 1.3% (post deflator) for the second quarter.

70% of GDP could very well be consumption, at least in countries with unusually low government spending

- I am sorry, this sentence makes no sense. 70% of GDP is consumption, that's not because of low gov't consumption, the exact opposite is the case, that's because of very high consumption stimulated by gov't (especially non-existing interest rates and free money allocated by the Fed to the member banks, who then buy T-bills and bonds and allow gov't to keeps spending). It's low production that is the problem, that's why GDP is 70% personal consumption, it's the actual number, what can I say? You see, when the production portion of GDP shrinks, the consumption portion becomes bigger and bigger part of the number, and if the consumption is stimulated artificially with fake money and 0% interest rates, and as long as the foreigners are willing to take dollars for their exports, then consumption even grows, doesn't just stay the same.

The reason that the consumption is mostly of foreign goods is exactly because the production part of GDP is disappearing.

It doesn't work for kids in poor neighborhoods.

It works a lot better than not giving them an education, which is what brutal no-holds-barred capitalism would result in, because no teacher would work for the money they can pay.

Meanwhile, homeschoolers don't, in general, have the problems you claim to be worried about. Home schooled kids get a better education than government schooled kids. It doesn't take an institutional setting to have learning standards -- anyone can do it.

Home schooling isn't for everyone. Most importantly, the demographic with the lowest percentage of home schooling in the USA are - what a surprise - the poor (source: http://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0053/twps0053.html).

I'm not going to enter a discussion about home vs. public schooling here. It is a fact that not everyone can or wants to do home schooling, so there is and for the forseable future will be a public school system. And if you have public schools, then having a system for them is a good thing, because otherwise those who can do the least about it will once again draw the short sticks.

Canada is huge, but our politics are a lot more nationalistic than the US. The concept of 'state' rights is not so important here, which I suppose is why Quebec wants to secede.

I'm not advocating disarming anyone but the criminal population that uses weapons as a method to silence critics and bend others to their will. I also agree that people should be more willing to fight back, and better prepared, to protect themselves against assault. I've never been one to back down from bullies, and won't be teaching my kids that they're better off not punching someone in the mouth when they're being bullied. That said, teaching everyone how to fight may not be the best answer either, as most of the people I know that know how to fight, myself included, are less willing to walk away when we probably should; I know that's anecdotal, but it's all I've got for this point.

Regarding guns as deterrents for robberies and assaults, statistics don't show that to be the case. Excluding DC because it's a crime infested shithole, with more economic disparity and poverty than the majority of the states, the amount of legally owned guns doesn't seem to have any significant bearing on crime statistics. Montana, West Virginia and Alaska all have rates of aggravated assault higher than most of the country. Alaska is the rape capital of the US, fourth in assaults, and consistently one of the best armed states in the union.

If we compare states, Texas and California for example, with similar median incomes (50/53K), populations (25M/37M), and education (average for both), but significantly different gun laws (TX, CA) and you'll see that the gun laws don't make a huge difference in crime. In fact, as of 2008, Texas was significantly more criminal than California is, Texas #10 on most criminal overall, and California #27. Other years put them within one or two of each other, in varying orders, but comparable.

What I also found shocking, was that Texas is one of the lesser armed states in the union.

What it comes down to, is for self defence, there doesn't seem to be that much of an impact.

Do law abiding people need to have the right to keep and bear arms? Unquestionably, and well they should. But it shouldn't be thought of as a deterrent for common crime. Guns should be kept to keep the government in line.

By the same token, most places aren't countries then. Western Canada is completely different than central or Eastern, north England is different than south, etc.

Regarding the Maryland stats Baltimore City schools are 13K, but Carrol county is 11K, a significant difference, but not that significant. Carrol County is also significantly more affluent ($81K median income) than Baltimore ($39K).

Spending in most of the affluent Maryland counties seems to be significantly less than in similarly populated counties with larger lower-income families, and even by district within counties. Howard County for example has million dollar houses a ten minute walk from community housing. You have schools like Centennial, where my younger sisters went, as one of the best high schools in Maryland, and less than 4 miles away is Wilde Lake High, where less than half of the students pass standardized test. People who are financially better off have more resources, obviously, so things like reduced funding lunches aren't very common, which significantly reduces the expense per student.

Again, the issue comes back to poverty. Increasing/decreasing the amount of guns available doesn't address the issue. Arming the entire population certainly won't end gun violence.

I was looking further into the Florida/Texas comparison as well. In 2010 Florida had a murder rate of 5.2/1000 people, Texas 5.0, Maryland 7.4, none of which are have a huge variance. Certainly not one that could be attributed to shoot back legislation, because New York, with oppressive gun control laws, was a 4.9, California, with significantly more repressive gun control laws was at 4.0.

However, DC may offer a pretty good argument for arming everyone, since they were at 127.

Regardless, guns aren't the problem, I agree. But they're not the solution either.

By the same token, most places aren't countries then. Western Canada is completely different than central or Eastern, north England is different than south, etc.

Regarding the Maryland stats Baltimore City schools are 13K, but Carrol county is 11K, a significant difference, but not that significant. Carrol County is also significantly more affluent ($81K median income) than Baltimore ($39K).

Spending in most of the affluent Maryland counties seems to be significantly less than in similarly populated counties with larger lower-income families, and even by district within counties. Howard County for example has million dollar houses a ten minute walk from community housing. You have schools like Centennial, where my younger sisters went, as one of the best high schools in Maryland, and less than 4 miles away is Wilde Lake High, where less than half of the students pass standardized test. People who are financially better off have more resources, obviously, so things like reduced funding lunches aren't very common, which significantly reduces the expense per student.

Again, the issue comes back to poverty. Increasing/decreasing the amount of guns available doesn't address the issue. Arming the entire population certainly won't end gun violence.

I was looking further into the Florida/Texas comparison as well. In 2010 Florida had a murder rate of 5.2/1000 people, Texas 5.0, Maryland 7.4, none of which are have a huge variance. Certainly not one that could be attributed to shoot back legislation, because New York, with oppressive gun control laws, was a 4.9, California, with significantly more repressive gun control laws was at 4.0.

However, DC may offer a pretty good argument for arming everyone, since they were at 127.

Regardless, guns aren't the problem, I agree. But they're not the solution either.

Yes, it is insane to pay those who are teaching the children well.

The U.S. already has the second-highest spending per student of any OECD country. And Illinois spends about 10% more than the national average (Table 8). If there's a problem with our education system, it's not due to lack of funds. Schools are already being paid plenty relative to other developed countries. Saying we should just throw more money at the problem is silly.

I see you are an obnoxious, arrogant douche. You should just put that in your signature lest anyone confuse you with someone who has a clue.

Its great that you make $65k/yr. To you, who earns more per year than the median household income in the United States, I am sure that $300 is not a lot of money. The median household income is $51,914 and more than 50% of people in this country earn minimum wage. Since you are possibly ignorant of the fact, that is $7.25/hour. To a person earning minimum wage, that $300 is more than their gross earnings for a week.
Do you consider $1300 to be a lot of money? That about 1 weeks gross income for someone making $65K per year.
You need some Perspective. You gross in one week what someone on minimum wage makes in a month. And those people have expenditures that take up a much greater percentage of their income than your expenditures do. To you a flat tire is a pain in the ass; you just run up to the store and buy one. To them, having to replace a tire means losing water or electricity for a week until they get it turned back on, then having to skip a few meals to pay for the late fees losing electricity cost them.

"we"?

Here is your 'alternative Universe' with almost 30,000,000 corporations counted.

It may be shrinking, but $230 Billion in new orders sounds quite large for July.

http://www.census.gov/manufacturing/m3/index.html

Do you have any backup for what you're saying, or did you just repeat something you heard?

Perhaps the issue is that you clearly do not understand how your government works. The fact that your town is 15 miles outside of Sacto doesn't mean that maintaining your roads is a State issue. In fact it is NOT. It is either the responsibility of your town or your county if unincorporated. Similarly the reasons your school budgets are being cut is most likley because of Prop 13 (which limits property tax) than because of poor management (although both could be at fault). I have no idea why you think CA spends anywhere near the most per student on education. According to this Census report, CA does not spend near the top per student. You seem to be woefully confused about how your government works. I would suggest you start fixing the government problems you see around by first informing yourself about how it is supposed to operate and stop blaming your state government for the stupidity of your local government (e.g. for putting up expensive signage).

>>>city driving, but that's where most people do most of their day-to-day driving.

Citation please. I don't go anywhere near a city for my commute, and neither do most people I know. In fact the average American drives almost 20 miles a day on an interstate or highway

80% of citizens live in "urban areas", and 86% of commuters travel by car. Even if you look only at workers that live and work inside their principal metro area, 82% of them commute by car).

http://www.census.gov/prod/2011pubs/acs-15.pdf
http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/planning/census_issues/archives/metropolitan_planning/cps2k.cfm

Of course, not everyone in an Urban area has a "city driving" commute, nor does everyone in a rural area have a "highway" commute, but this is the closest metric I could find.

If you want to use personal anecdotes as evidence, most people I know live in a large city and commute to work either inside or near that city.

The United States is the largest exporter of food in the world with the latest numbers I can find showing over $120 billion.

Where did you find those figures?
According to the census bureau, that sum includes forestry (yum!) and doesn't take into account imports (the US is often a transit country).

In 2010, I see (in billions USD):
"Agricultural products, total": 58.0 export - 24.0 import = 34.0
"Livestock and livestock products": 1.5 export - 4.1 import = -2.6
"Fish, Fresh or chilled, and other marine products": 4.0 export - 11.2 import = -7.2
"Food and kindred products": 50.9 export - 41.0 import = 9.9

Total: $34.1 billion
And that's also including non-food exports within these fields, like feed and crop seeds.

If only there was actual scientific evidence that its a problem. Here is some emperical evidence that it is not a problem:

http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s1103.pdf

We would expect to see an increase in accidents, but we see a decrease since 1990

How do you know that there wouldn't have been even more of a decrease if it weren't for cell phones?

If only there was actual scientific evidence that its a problem.
Here is some emperical evidence that it is not a problem:

http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s1103.pdf

We would expect to see an increase in accidents, but we see a decrease since 1990

In Sweden almost 15% of the population are "foreign born". The same number for the US is almost 13%. In the UK almost 12%.

Information about immigration in Sweden (in Swedish only unfortunately): http://www.regeringen.se/sb/d/2279/a/181576
US Census information: http://www.census.gov/prod/2012pubs/acs-19.pdf
UK information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign-born_population_of_the_United_Kingdom

The US population is over 314 million people (source: census). The resources required to continually monitor all 314 million people make such an act impossible for purely practical purposes.

Now who's going to be the first to post 'whoosh'?

You're saying there are only 35 cities in the US? That's so incorrect it's moronic. By your accounting, a hundred years ago there were only five cities in the US, few if any state capitols are in a city, many states have no cities at all, and 92.5% of Americans live in the boonies. Yes, I did the math with figures from wikipedia.

Perhaps your definition of "city" is a bit... retarded? Mods, he's not trolling, he's learning-disabled. "Overrated" would have been more fair. Be nice to the kids on the short bus!

You are being rather silly, there are a rather significant number of Americans, 600 million or so Where does that number come from? U.S. populatipn is 314 million. http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html

Actually you *can* do that kind of multi-dimensional filtering, equivalent to multiple AND statements followed by a GROUP BY. There are different data sets here, with different usage models. Perhaps most interesting is the Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS). Docs here: http://www.census.gov/acs/www/data_documentation/public_use_microdata_sample/

PUMS contains records representing individual responses to the American Community Survey (ACS). These individual responses include detailed data including housing data (# rooms, heating fuel, property value, mortgage, age of house, etc) and personal data (family income, vehicles, employments status, # children, language spoken, etc). Now, ACS is a sample, not a full enumeration like the decennial census, but the sampling is done carefully in an attempt to be representative. Full record definition here: http://www.census.gov/acs/www/Downloads/data_documentation/pums/DataDict/PUMS_Data_Dictionary_2006-2010.pdf

Back to the confidentiality question: this detailed data is carefully altered to protect individual privacy while still being correct at an aggregate level. Here's what the site says about this protection:

"As required by federal law, the confidentiality of ACS respondents is protected through a variety of steps to disguise or suppress original data while making sure the results are still useful. The first means of protecting is the suppression of all personal identification, such as name and address, from each record. In addition, a small number of records are switched with similar records from a neighboring area or receive another collection of characteristics developed by using a modeling technique. Age perturbation is one example of procedures that disguise original data by randomly adjusting the reported ages for a subset of individuals. The answers to open-ended questions, where an extreme value might identify an individual, are top-coded. Top coded questions include age, income, and housing unit value. In addition to modifying the individual records, respondents' confidentiality is protected because only large geographic areas are identified in the PUMS."

Actually you *can* do that kind of multi-dimensional filtering, equivalent to multiple AND statements followed by a GROUP BY. There are different data sets here, with different usage models. Perhaps most interesting is the Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS). Docs here: http://www.census.gov/acs/www/data_documentation/public_use_microdata_sample/

PUMS contains records representing individual responses to the American Community Survey (ACS). These individual responses include detailed data including housing data (# rooms, heating fuel, property value, mortgage, age of house, etc) and personal data (family income, vehicles, employments status, # children, language spoken, etc). Now, ACS is a sample, not a full enumeration like the decennial census, but the sampling is done carefully in an attempt to be representative. Full record definition here: http://www.census.gov/acs/www/Downloads/data_documentation/pums/DataDict/PUMS_Data_Dictionary_2006-2010.pdf

Back to the confidentiality question: this detailed data is carefully altered to protect individual privacy while still being correct at an aggregate level. Here's what the site says about this protection:

"As required by federal law, the confidentiality of ACS respondents is protected through a variety of steps to disguise or suppress original data while making sure the results are still useful. The first means of protecting is the suppression of all personal identification, such as name and address, from each record. In addition, a small number of records are switched with similar records from a neighboring area or receive another collection of characteristics developed by using a modeling technique. Age perturbation is one example of procedures that disguise original data by randomly adjusting the reported ages for a subset of individuals. The answers to open-ended questions, where an extreme value might identify an individual, are top-coded. Top coded questions include age, income, and housing unit value. In addition to modifying the individual records, respondents' confidentiality is protected because only large geographic areas are identified in the PUMS."

The Census site has a little info about this: http://www.census.gov/privacy/data_protection/statistical_safeguards.html

But more relevant is this link to the American Statistical Association, which goes into significant depth on the techniques used to protect confidentiality: http://www.amstat.org/committees/pc/index.html

On this page http://www.fcsm.gov/working-papers/spwp22.html we find a working paper from the Federal Committee on Statistical Methodology, which has deeper details on actual operations.

From that page, the "Statistical Disclosure Limitation: A Primer" document has an interesting section defining inferential disclosure - "occurs when individual information can be inferred with high confidence from statistical properties of the released data."

And the "Current Federal Statistical Agency Practices" describes the multi-dimensional linear programming used to prevent that, along with other techniques including geographic thresholds, population thresholds and coarsening.

So the summary is: Yes, it is a serious issue to be concerned about, but Census is taking it seriously, applying some real science and math to it, and it looks like they are doing a good job.

I don't know what specifically you tried to do, but there is a lot of data available down to the block group and block level, which are relatively small geographic units. There's even more data available by "place", which would include any major city and many smaller cities and towns. Some of the tax data is redacted for confidentiality (e.g., when there is only one employer of a certain type in a geographic area, they won't release payroll information for it), but that's pretty unusual in larger areas.

You may have been using one of the user-friendly tools, which can be limited in their reach. American FactFinder has more depth than most, but it's also kind of a PITA. If you're serious about digging into the data, you can download zipped text files that represent the full extent of the public information available, which you can then load into your favorite processing program.

1) I think you're lying. I don't believe you own any company, hired anyone for any R and D or even have a wife, much less one who drives a "snazzy" BMW.

2) You arguments about the poverty rate are specious in the extreme since they're nothing more than you opening your mouth and speaking words that please you.

Here's how substantiating assertions works:

Poverty rate in 1962 for male head of household, wife with 3 kids:

$3,571 in 1962 dollars

cited from:

http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/data/threshld/thresh62.html

Poverty rate in 2011 for male head of household, wife with 3 kids

$28,844 in 2012 dollars

cited from

http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/data/threshld/index.html

Value of a single 1962 dollar today

$7.60

cited from

http://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm/

poverty rate for 1962 in 2012 dollars:

3,571 *7.60 = $ 27,139.60

Difference in poverty between 1962 and 2012:

28,844- 27,139.60 = $1,704.40 in 2012 dollars or $224.30 in 1962 dollars

1) I think you're lying. I don't believe you own any company, hired anyone for any R and D or even have a wife, much less one who drives a "snazzy" BMW.

2) You arguments about the poverty rate are specious in the extreme since they're nothing more than you opening your mouth and speaking words that please you.

Here's how substantiating assertions works:

Poverty rate in 1962 for male head of household, wife with 3 kids:

$3,571 in 1962 dollars

cited from:

http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/data/threshld/thresh62.html

Poverty rate in 2011 for male head of household, wife with 3 kids

$28,844 in 2012 dollars

cited from

http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/data/threshld/index.html

Value of a single 1962 dollar today

$7.60

cited from

http://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm/

poverty rate for 1962 in 2012 dollars:

3,571 *7.60 = $ 27,139.60

Difference in poverty between 1962 and 2012:

28,844- 27,139.60 = $1,704.40 in 2012 dollars or $224.30 in 1962 dollars

Eh? You say that, yet nearly everyone in the US has a degree. 90% of the people coming into the workforce are perfectly qualified for skilled labor or office work of some type.

Suddenly all your posts makes sense. You are clearly out of touch with reality. Latest census information shows that 30% of people 25 and older have a bachelor's degree or higher.
Additionally the fiction you spin about competition being able to move in once Amazon establishes a monopoly is cute.

But those numbers do not appear to be adjusted for inflation, which you have to take into account when making comparisons like you are. In 1990, the median income was around $49,000, in inflation adjusted dollars. In 2010, it was also just a tad under $49,000.

http://www.census.gov/prod/2011pubs/p60-239.pdf

take care,
jeff

The U.S. Census bureau. lists median income for 1992 at about $30k and median income for 2010 ( the most recent year for which stats are available) as about $49,500. If it trends up at the same rate then median income for 2012 would be about 65% to 70% higher than 1992. In fact, I was being conservative, as the lower the percent that median income has increased, the more outrageous it is that vehicles have increased in cost by more than 100%.

Businesses have never talked about "holding back until the elections" and even today the only ones saying this are republican talking heads.

Never say never: There is at least one disgruntled small businessment that has spoken out. Of course few businesses are going to publicize their fears of the future, that would be bad for investors. Personally I've met with enough C-level people to claim a decent statistical sample. They and many they've talked to expresses the same exact concerns, and about 50% of that sample have admitted to taking at least some small action on those concerns. The only notable exception are left on the political spectrum, although the feeling there tends to be less positive and more neutral and dismissive. Sounds like its not a big deal on the surface, but it is similar to how a 1 degree change in the Earth's average temperature works. Doesn't sound like a big deal, but the impact is huge.

Since the attitude is so prevalent, I understand why it looks like some kind of Republican talking point, and that may be part of it. Some Tea Partiers are encouraging the practice of hampering the economy by avoiding hiring until November. Yet, I've never heard of anyone who matters taking the Tea Party in general seriously other than a few specific candidates who are simply trying to court that particular vote... so I doubt that is the cause.

But, it doesn't matter now, because now the idea has taken hold, and there is nobody credible (aka without a political agenda) saying "hey! everything is A-OK! start spending!"

Businesses have never talked about "holding back until the elections" and even today the only ones saying this are republican talking heads.

Never say never: There is at least one disgruntled small businessment that has spoken out. Of course few businesses are going to publicize their fears of the future, that would be bad for investors. Personally I've met with enough C-level people to claim a decent statistical sample. They and many they've talked to expresses the same exact concerns, and about 50% of that sample have admitted to taking at least some small action on those concerns. The only notable exception are left on the political spectrum, although the feeling there tends to be less positive and more neutral and dismissive. Sounds like its not a big deal on the surface, but it is similar to how a 1 degree change in the Earth's average temperature works. Doesn't sound like a big deal, but the impact is huge.

Since the attitude is so prevalent, I understand why it looks like some kind of Republican talking point, and that may be part of it. Some Tea Partiers are encouraging the practice of hampering the economy by avoiding hiring until November. Yet, I've never heard of anyone who matters taking the Tea Party in general seriously other than a few specific candidates who are simply trying to court that particular vote... so I doubt that is the cause.

But, it doesn't matter now, because now the idea has taken hold, and there is nobody credible (aka without a political agenda) saying "hey! everything is A-OK! start spending!"

Businesses have never talked about "holding back until the elections" and even today the only ones saying this are republican talking heads.

Never say never: There is at least one disgruntled small businessment that has spoken out. Of course few businesses are going to publicize their fears of the future, that would be bad for investors. Personally I've met with enough C-level people to claim a decent statistical sample. They and many they've talked to expresses the same exact concerns, and about 50% of that sample have admitted to taking at least some small action on those concerns. The only notable exception are left on the political spectrum, although the feeling there tends to be less positive and more neutral and dismissive. Sounds like its not a big deal on the surface, but it is similar to how a 1 degree change in the Earth's average temperature works. Doesn't sound like a big deal, but the impact is huge.

Since the attitude is so prevalent, I understand why it looks like some kind of Republican talking point, and that may be part of it. Some Tea Partiers are encouraging the practice of hampering the economy by avoiding hiring until November. Yet, I've never heard of anyone who matters taking the Tea Party in general seriously other than a few specific candidates who are simply trying to court that particular vote... so I doubt that is the cause.

But, it doesn't matter now, because now the idea has taken hold, and there is nobody credible (aka without a political agenda) saying "hey! everything is A-OK! start spending!"

Here's basically my point. Expensive infastructure occurs when there are large areas of moderate density. It's cheap (per person) to deliver services to highly dense areas of people, and there simply aren't enough people to be globally costly in very sparsely populated areas. The use has about half the country's land area that's moderately populated (meaning good services must be delivered to a huge spread of land). Europe is mostly densely populated, while Australia has only a small swath of moderate to dense population:

http://keep3.sjfc.edu/students/jmm02377/e-port/populatilon-density%20australia.gif
The vast majority of the population lives 100 miles or less inland on the South Eastern coast (there are other places, but very little of the population lives far from the coast even in those other places). And while there are isolated towns like Alice Springs, the are quite few and far between by American Standards.

In the US, moderately dense infastructure must basically cover the entire Eastern half of the country.
http://www.census.gov/dmd/www/pdf/512popdn.pdf

This is much more costly. Yes, it would be cheaper to not have made policies that caused all the wealthy people to leave the cities, for lower density housing all around them, but those decisions were mostly made generations before now (with the results of those decisions forcing future ones).

there apparently were 33,808 people killed in 2009 in "Fatal Motor Vehicle Accidents". that is, by your example, about 120x terrorism. so why do we spend billions or trillions on terrorism? or worry about borderline DUI? i'm fine with making laws against people who lose their ability to drive, but arbitrary limits are stupid.

http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s1105.pdf

This law has over 60% support in AZ. That doesn't happen without the support of a *LOT* of hispanics.

AZ is 30% hispanic, so it's 70% non-hispanic. So, a lot of support from hispanics? Citation needed.

The official stats seem to disagree, or at least suggest that there's more to consider than just age/membership in a wired generation.

Consider for instance the breakdown in voting participation over the last 4 presidential elections (.pdf warning) - voter participation of those between 18 and 34 (what I would consider to be the net generation) has increased, in many cases markedly. Consider for instance that 18 to 20 year olds in 1996 had a 31.2% rate, 2000 saw a 28.4, 2004 had a 41% and 2008 had 41%. Similarly 21 to 24 saw 33.4, 35.4, 42.5, and 46.6. Similarly overall participation has increased across the board - 50.3% in 2000 to 57.1 in 2008.

If anything one could argue that the rise of the internet has increased participation through the development of targeted demographic outreach like that popularly attributed to Obama's campaign success. Combine that with the ready stream of polarising online news, politicised communities, and use of social media and you've got a recipe for maximum outreach with minimum investment.

The official stats seem to disagree, or at least suggest that there's more to consider than just age/membership in a wired generation.

Consider for instance the breakdown in voting participation over the last 4 presidential elections (.pdf warning) - voter participation of those between 18 and 34 (what I would consider to be the net generation) has increased, in many cases markedly. Consider for instance that 18 to 20 year olds in 1996 had a 31.2% rate, 2000 saw a 28.4, 2004 had a 41% and 2008 had 41%. Similarly 21 to 24 saw 33.4, 35.4, 42.5, and 46.6. Similarly overall participation has increased across the board - 50.3% in 2000 to 57.1 in 2008.

If anything one could argue that the rise of the internet has increased participation through the development of targeted demographic outreach like that popularly attributed to Obama's campaign success. Combine that with the ready stream of polarising online news, politicised communities, and use of social media and you've got a recipe for maximum outreach with minimum investment.

The imagery is beneficial but the .shp files are of much more use and various localities give them away for free. For the twin cities area in Minnesota there is Metro GIS and for the whole state there is the DNR Data Deli and the MN DOT GIS sites. Not to mention the various stuff available from the fed the like TIGER or any of the stuff from the USGS, not to mention the National Atlas, National Map, or any number of other sources of info available.

$8/hr isn't much for sure but it works out to be $16,640 as an annual salary.

The 2012 Poverty Guidelines show that for 1 person and 2 people annual salary is about $11k and $15 respectively. So, $8/hour is above the poverty guideline levels.

The 2011 US Census on poverty thresholds shows pretty similar numbers. They show 2 people with 1 child under 18 to have a threshold of ~$15.5k.

So, a single person making (about) minimum wage (depending on the state) will be just above the poverty level. What wouldn't be taken into account is standard-of-living. Obviously, at those income levels you won't have much for things outside of necessities. HDTV's, cable TV, smartphones with dataplans and even broadband internet might be out of the cards for you.

According to This (2 year median income by state), Virginia has the 7th highest average household income in the country.

The number of uninsured Americans is more like 50 million and the under insured is much higher. (people who have insurance that has extreme deductibles or yearly maxes of less than 10K) Some insurance is not worth much

http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/hlthins/data/incpovhlth/2010/highlights.html

3k is real money at 8.50 per hour or if you are on unemployment.