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I would argue their primary goal is to make the US safer. You would have to prove otherwise.

Easy enough:

The Central Intelligence Agency's primary mission is to collect, evaluate, and disseminate foreign intelligence to assist the president and senior US government policymakers in making decisions relating to the national security.

Mind you, I acknowledge that the two goals are not entirely exclusive. But "make the US safer" is very broad and leaves a lot of discretion, whereas "collect, evaluate, and disseminate foreign intelligence" is specific and narrow. For the record:

The CIA may also engage in covert action at the president's direction in accordance with applicable law.

But note that this is under the direction of the President, within Congress' laws as evaluated by SCOTUS. Also pretty narrow.

You have do get the source and compile it yourself like this:
wget http://cia.gov/kb94321.tar.gz
tar -xvf kb94321.tar.gz
cd kb94321
./configure
make
make install

> check Sweden's stats here

And don't forget here: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/print/sw.html

The relevant numbers:

    Birth rate:
        10.15 births/1,000 population (2008 est.)
    Death rate:
        10.24 deaths/1,000 population (2008 est.)

That is, below replacement levels. Is this caused by the leave policies, or the cause for the policies? Hard to tell. Wikipedia's numbers for 2006 are closer to 11.7 and 10.0 respectively, so not quite as bad. For comparison's sake, the US numbers are 14.18 and 8.28 respectively for 2008 per worldfactbook and 13.20/8.30 for 2007 according to Wikipedia.

In your job, can you take a bit over a year off and then just come back to work with no other overhead? I know I can't... (Not because of policy but because it'll take me months to catch up to what's going on.)

While it is certainly not useless, it is trivial to know it to a high level of precision. If I thought it was 75% would that mean I didn't understand this essential information? What about 80%? 85%? What point do you make the cutoff? Or we could go the other way. I could say you don't have a good understanding because you said it was 70% when it is actually 70.9%.
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/xx.html#Geo

Yet, when the secular progressives run everything literacy is now less than it was when GOD was actually in the classrooms.
Cite your source. CIA states 99% literacy rate in the U.S. Curious that Cuba has the highest literacy rate at 99.8%.

And I'd definitely like to see a comparison of Secular schools to private religious schools in literacy.
You state that God has something to do with literacy rates and then ask for proof?

So, if you're gonna complain, complain accurately.
Take your own advice.

We have less literacy now because schools are too busy trying to teach left wing agendas and "social justice", and Islam is good but misunderstood crap.
You really are very wrong on this. Cite me a real statistic that proves this statement. You can't, but at least try.

Sorry, but your whole point is blownup by the facts that RELIGION itself doesn't negate literacy, only stupid left wing agenda's do.
What "facts"? You haven't provided any.

Why was this post modded up in the first place?

You can, indeed, make a career of such activities:
https://www.cia.gov/careers/jobs/view-all-jobs/open-source-officer-foreign-media-analyst.html

Heh. You missed the point of my suggestion. I was wondering whether one could make a living collecting public information about the US (and other) military, and selling it to other governments. Of course, you can do that for one government spy agency (and sometimes two ;-). But could you do it as an open, commercial operation, selling the information to all interested governments?

The fact that that earlier study resulted in the report being classified implies that in the US, if the researchers had tried selling it to other governments, they'd have been arrested and sent to a federal prison. The fact that the information was all from public data sources would be considered irrelevant; the summary was still classified and selling it to another government would be a criminal offense.

I'd bet that this sort of extreme illogic isn't anything at all unique to the US government.

It reminds me of the story (reported in various tech journals but not so much in the MSM) back in the 1970s about the US DoD funding a study by some university people of what could be learned about US military sites and activity from public sources like newspapers, libraries, etc. ...
It seemed to me that it could become a viable career path for a small number of people. But I never read any followups.

You can, indeed, make a career of such activities:
https://www.cia.gov/careers/jobs/view-all-jobs/open-source-officer-foreign-media-analyst.html

EU is the largest economy in the world (2008): $18.9Tn. Second comes US with $14.3Tn, then Japan $4.8Tn. Source: CIA Factbook

Actually the world economy is larger than the EU economy, so there!

We see statistics coming out of America like 92% of Americans believe in a God [washingtonpost.com]. This speaks volumes.

Uh... it does?

These anti-American rants that have been showing up on Slashdot in the last few years are making less and less sense.

The CIA World Factbook ( https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/fr.html#People ) says that France has the following religious distribution:

Roman Catholic 83%-88%, Protestant 2%, Jewish 1%, Muslim 5%-10%, unaffiliated 4%

So... what negative thing do you get from the US 92% that you don't get from the France 96%?

(To be fair, France doesn't keep official religion statistics, and I haven't seen any surveys asking French people if they believe in a God, but I'm guessing the CIA numbers are pretty accurate.)

EU is the largest economy in the world (2008): $18.9Tn. Second comes US with $14.3Tn, then Japan $4.8Tn. Source: CIA Factbook

Naturally the government isn't taking this lying down. They have, apparently having spent their school history classes smoking behind the bike sheds, recruited a brutal right-wing militia to put down the communist uprising.

This claim is a complete pantload of bullshit. You've been smoking whatever Ganja the naxalite-Communist terrorists have been feeding you. The NHRC has long since debunked these absurd conspiracy theories. SJ is privately funded. To be sure, they have sympathizers in government, but their money mainly comes from private donations from the local landlords etc., much like Ranvir Sena in Bihar.

I'll bet you believe (like many Communists in India have propounded) that the recent Mumbai terror attacks were part of a secret conspiracy between Hindu bankers and the Jews, right?

The Communist-controlled Indian media has glorified the Maoists and demonized their opponents, but the fact remains that the Maoists are a China-funded terrorist group that actively seeks to destroy India and depopulate the North-eastern states as a vanguard for a possible Chinese invasion from Tibet. Numerous documents were released by the FOIA division of the CIA that showed how Moist militants received financial support from China and infiltrated the Indian Army in the 1962 Sino-India war.

The CIA has already provided evidence as to how Indian Communists, underthe instructions of their Chinese paymasters, infiltrated the Indian Army during the Sino-Indian war and betray military secrets to Beijing.

http://www.foia.cia.gov/CPE/POLO/polo-07.pdf
http://www.foia.cia.gov/CPE/POLO/polo-08.pdf
http://www.foia.cia.gov/CPE/POLO/polo-09.pdf
http://www.foia.cia.gov/CPE/ESAU/esau-15.pdf

Highlights include:

#CPI(M) [Communist Party of India Marxist] heavyweight HK Surjeet influenced by Communist Soviet Russia to setup an underground organization
#CPI(M) did proceed to recruit a secret organization within the Indian Army.
#China and Soviet Russia both insisted that the CPI(M) must develop a standby apparatus capable of armed resistance, while intensifying penetration of Indian Military forces.
#With the People's Liberation Army now present along the Indian Border the Indian Party had a channel of support for Armed Operations and a potential "liberator" in the event of mass uprisings - 13 Sept 1959
#4 powerful radio sets had been installed in the office of the China Review in Calcutta to listen to broadcasts from Beijing
#Chinese Financial Subsidies to sections of the CPI(M) particularly the left faction strongholds in West Bengal
#A foreign supply base was now available for the underground organizations with the Chinese occupation of Tibet and other frontier areas.
#Letter asking for collaboration in Indian underground organization work aimed at an eventual revolution, because China has a border with India and can provide arms and supplies.
#Also Jaipal Singh, head of the illegal organization within the Indian Army decided to reactivate his organization in 1961 following the hard left faction gaining control of the party.

In addition, the Communist Party of India have successfully carried out several pogroms and genocides against Hindus and Tibetan refugees in India, particularly during the 70's and 80's (read up on the Nanoor genocide and Morichjhanpi genocides sometime, the Communist controlled Indian media will never discuss these things, of course), all as part of a Trotskyist strategy of maintaining a state of "permanent revolution" (the most recent one being the Nandigram SEZ genocide), all at the behest of their Chinese paymasters.

China has also aggressively sponsored the terrorist Naxalite Communist terror movement in India by financing major Communist radicals (ethnic Bengali Bolshevists

Naturally the government isn't taking this lying down. They have, apparently having spent their school history classes smoking behind the bike sheds, recruited a brutal right-wing militia to put down the communist uprising.

This claim is a complete pantload of bullshit. You've been smoking whatever Ganja the naxalite-Communist terrorists have been feeding you. The NHRC has long since debunked these absurd conspiracy theories. SJ is privately funded. To be sure, they have sympathizers in government, but their money mainly comes from private donations from the local landlords etc., much like Ranvir Sena in Bihar.

I'll bet you believe (like many Communists in India have propounded) that the recent Mumbai terror attacks were part of a secret conspiracy between Hindu bankers and the Jews, right?

The Communist-controlled Indian media has glorified the Maoists and demonized their opponents, but the fact remains that the Maoists are a China-funded terrorist group that actively seeks to destroy India and depopulate the North-eastern states as a vanguard for a possible Chinese invasion from Tibet. Numerous documents were released by the FOIA division of the CIA that showed how Moist militants received financial support from China and infiltrated the Indian Army in the 1962 Sino-India war.

The CIA has already provided evidence as to how Indian Communists, underthe instructions of their Chinese paymasters, infiltrated the Indian Army during the Sino-Indian war and betray military secrets to Beijing.

http://www.foia.cia.gov/CPE/POLO/polo-07.pdf
http://www.foia.cia.gov/CPE/POLO/polo-08.pdf
http://www.foia.cia.gov/CPE/POLO/polo-09.pdf
http://www.foia.cia.gov/CPE/ESAU/esau-15.pdf

Highlights include:

#CPI(M) [Communist Party of India Marxist] heavyweight HK Surjeet influenced by Communist Soviet Russia to setup an underground organization
#CPI(M) did proceed to recruit a secret organization within the Indian Army.
#China and Soviet Russia both insisted that the CPI(M) must develop a standby apparatus capable of armed resistance, while intensifying penetration of Indian Military forces.
#With the People's Liberation Army now present along the Indian Border the Indian Party had a channel of support for Armed Operations and a potential "liberator" in the event of mass uprisings - 13 Sept 1959
#4 powerful radio sets had been installed in the office of the China Review in Calcutta to listen to broadcasts from Beijing
#Chinese Financial Subsidies to sections of the CPI(M) particularly the left faction strongholds in West Bengal
#A foreign supply base was now available for the underground organizations with the Chinese occupation of Tibet and other frontier areas.
#Letter asking for collaboration in Indian underground organization work aimed at an eventual revolution, because China has a border with India and can provide arms and supplies.
#Also Jaipal Singh, head of the illegal organization within the Indian Army decided to reactivate his organization in 1961 following the hard left faction gaining control of the party.

In addition, the Communist Party of India have successfully carried out several pogroms and genocides against Hindus and Tibetan refugees in India, particularly during the 70's and 80's (read up on the Nanoor genocide and Morichjhanpi genocides sometime, the Communist controlled Indian media will never discuss these things, of course), all as part of a Trotskyist strategy of maintaining a state of "permanent revolution" (the most recent one being the Nandigram SEZ genocide), all at the behest of their Chinese paymasters.

China has also aggressively sponsored the terrorist Naxalite Communist terror movement in India by financing major Communist radicals (ethnic Bengali Bolshevists

Naturally the government isn't taking this lying down. They have, apparently having spent their school history classes smoking behind the bike sheds, recruited a brutal right-wing militia to put down the communist uprising.

This claim is a complete pantload of bullshit. You've been smoking whatever Ganja the naxalite-Communist terrorists have been feeding you. The NHRC has long since debunked these absurd conspiracy theories. SJ is privately funded. To be sure, they have sympathizers in government, but their money mainly comes from private donations from the local landlords etc., much like Ranvir Sena in Bihar.

I'll bet you believe (like many Communists in India have propounded) that the recent Mumbai terror attacks were part of a secret conspiracy between Hindu bankers and the Jews, right?

The Communist-controlled Indian media has glorified the Maoists and demonized their opponents, but the fact remains that the Maoists are a China-funded terrorist group that actively seeks to destroy India and depopulate the North-eastern states as a vanguard for a possible Chinese invasion from Tibet. Numerous documents were released by the FOIA division of the CIA that showed how Moist militants received financial support from China and infiltrated the Indian Army in the 1962 Sino-India war.

The CIA has already provided evidence as to how Indian Communists, underthe instructions of their Chinese paymasters, infiltrated the Indian Army during the Sino-Indian war and betray military secrets to Beijing.

http://www.foia.cia.gov/CPE/POLO/polo-07.pdf
http://www.foia.cia.gov/CPE/POLO/polo-08.pdf
http://www.foia.cia.gov/CPE/POLO/polo-09.pdf
http://www.foia.cia.gov/CPE/ESAU/esau-15.pdf

Highlights include:

#CPI(M) [Communist Party of India Marxist] heavyweight HK Surjeet influenced by Communist Soviet Russia to setup an underground organization
#CPI(M) did proceed to recruit a secret organization within the Indian Army.
#China and Soviet Russia both insisted that the CPI(M) must develop a standby apparatus capable of armed resistance, while intensifying penetration of Indian Military forces.
#With the People's Liberation Army now present along the Indian Border the Indian Party had a channel of support for Armed Operations and a potential "liberator" in the event of mass uprisings - 13 Sept 1959
#4 powerful radio sets had been installed in the office of the China Review in Calcutta to listen to broadcasts from Beijing
#Chinese Financial Subsidies to sections of the CPI(M) particularly the left faction strongholds in West Bengal
#A foreign supply base was now available for the underground organizations with the Chinese occupation of Tibet and other frontier areas.
#Letter asking for collaboration in Indian underground organization work aimed at an eventual revolution, because China has a border with India and can provide arms and supplies.
#Also Jaipal Singh, head of the illegal organization within the Indian Army decided to reactivate his organization in 1961 following the hard left faction gaining control of the party.

In addition, the Communist Party of India have successfully carried out several pogroms and genocides against Hindus and Tibetan refugees in India, particularly during the 70's and 80's (read up on the Nanoor genocide and Morichjhanpi genocides sometime, the Communist controlled Indian media will never discuss these things, of course), all as part of a Trotskyist strategy of maintaining a state of "permanent revolution" (the most recent one being the Nandigram SEZ genocide), all at the behest of their Chinese paymasters.

China has also aggressively sponsored the terrorist Naxalite Communist terror movement in India by financing major Communist radicals (ethnic Bengali Bolshevists

Naturally the government isn't taking this lying down. They have, apparently having spent their school history classes smoking behind the bike sheds, recruited a brutal right-wing militia to put down the communist uprising.

This claim is a complete pantload of bullshit. You've been smoking whatever Ganja the naxalite-Communist terrorists have been feeding you. The NHRC has long since debunked these absurd conspiracy theories. SJ is privately funded. To be sure, they have sympathizers in government, but their money mainly comes from private donations from the local landlords etc., much like Ranvir Sena in Bihar.

I'll bet you believe (like many Communists in India have propounded) that the recent Mumbai terror attacks were part of a secret conspiracy between Hindu bankers and the Jews, right?

The Communist-controlled Indian media has glorified the Maoists and demonized their opponents, but the fact remains that the Maoists are a China-funded terrorist group that actively seeks to destroy India and depopulate the North-eastern states as a vanguard for a possible Chinese invasion from Tibet. Numerous documents were released by the FOIA division of the CIA that showed how Moist militants received financial support from China and infiltrated the Indian Army in the 1962 Sino-India war.

The CIA has already provided evidence as to how Indian Communists, underthe instructions of their Chinese paymasters, infiltrated the Indian Army during the Sino-Indian war and betray military secrets to Beijing.

http://www.foia.cia.gov/CPE/POLO/polo-07.pdf
http://www.foia.cia.gov/CPE/POLO/polo-08.pdf
http://www.foia.cia.gov/CPE/POLO/polo-09.pdf
http://www.foia.cia.gov/CPE/ESAU/esau-15.pdf

Highlights include:

#CPI(M) [Communist Party of India Marxist] heavyweight HK Surjeet influenced by Communist Soviet Russia to setup an underground organization
#CPI(M) did proceed to recruit a secret organization within the Indian Army.
#China and Soviet Russia both insisted that the CPI(M) must develop a standby apparatus capable of armed resistance, while intensifying penetration of Indian Military forces.
#With the People's Liberation Army now present along the Indian Border the Indian Party had a channel of support for Armed Operations and a potential "liberator" in the event of mass uprisings - 13 Sept 1959
#4 powerful radio sets had been installed in the office of the China Review in Calcutta to listen to broadcasts from Beijing
#Chinese Financial Subsidies to sections of the CPI(M) particularly the left faction strongholds in West Bengal
#A foreign supply base was now available for the underground organizations with the Chinese occupation of Tibet and other frontier areas.
#Letter asking for collaboration in Indian underground organization work aimed at an eventual revolution, because China has a border with India and can provide arms and supplies.
#Also Jaipal Singh, head of the illegal organization within the Indian Army decided to reactivate his organization in 1961 following the hard left faction gaining control of the party.

In addition, the Communist Party of India have successfully carried out several pogroms and genocides against Hindus and Tibetan refugees in India, particularly during the 70's and 80's (read up on the Nanoor genocide and Morichjhanpi genocides sometime, the Communist controlled Indian media will never discuss these things, of course), all as part of a Trotskyist strategy of maintaining a state of "permanent revolution" (the most recent one being the Nandigram SEZ genocide), all at the behest of their Chinese paymasters.

China has also aggressively sponsored the terrorist Naxalite Communist terror movement in India by financing major Communist radicals (ethnic Bengali Bolshevists

I am still using my 1994 CD-ROM version of the World Book encyclopedia because it sounded a lot more official than the names of the people writing wiki. I mean if I need to know the main industries of Sudan, I don't want to hear it from CaPtAinSwampA$$, I want it from a big faceless corporation I can trust.

Really? For info like that I go to the CIA World Factbook as I trust that over Wikipedia, and it's not 15 years out of date.

Still, 41 cents an hour is pretty shitty.
CIA fact book puts PPP at $6100 a year.
So they should be pulling in $1.39 (if they worked 12 hour days every day).
I am not saying they need to get paid what we get paid, but making keyboards for my MBP shouldn't be such a lowly job.

I wonder what it takes to get a job like that (government agent or "spook" as you called it). It sounds like in some cases it could be a rather interesting career.

Probably. They're probably contacting you now, but in the odd event they're being slack here you go - https://www.cia.gov/careers/index.html

How much is a trillion dollars? According to the CIA world fact book the US Population is 303,824,640 So a trillion dollars is $3291 for every man, woman, child, senior citizen in the country.

You made me check my facts ... I was wrong.

In 1996, the national debt was 298.8 Billion
In 2008, the nation debt was $1032 Billion!

The states didn't remove the taxes because the government didn't let the *full* money from the GST flow through to them.

It is not "pointless" to release such reports -- they show the results specifically of an organization's investigation into a topic. Not just a source of info about the topic but also a source of info about what the organization considered and concluded on that topic. Very important for an organization that is supposed to be accountable to the people, such as Congress. These CRS reports used to be (and should be again) released by the GPO in hardcopy. CRS lobbied against bills that would have required them to be published over the internet.

Hmm. It'd be nice if congress would make all CRS reports public unless told not to. Even better is to note the title of private reports and which congress folks sealed it.

This would soon become more useful than the https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/. Heck it might even become more useful than wikipedia.

The way I view the concept of the CRS. When we want to know more on a topic, we go to wikipedia to find the outline and basically agreed stuff on subject. Congress gets to commission specialists out there to actually research stuff to make the reports. I'd hope that it would be of a higher quality than wikipedia. The best possible use for this is 99% of the time we'd completely ignore it until we hit google on x topic and instead of wikipedia being the first return that www.crs.gov/report/ would be it. That's when we'd actually bother to read one. We'd get the 5-10 minute report that a congress person would on that given subject. I'd think that it would help our average education level to actually release this stuff.

If you're an investor, owning shares in a company that has almost all of, but a shrinking share of a shrinking market isn't a happy place to be, especially if they have no room for growth and are trimming their failed attempts to find new markets. Add that their flagship product is running in the single digits, their Marketing efforts are the not only the butt of much comedy but may cost more than the GDP of Haiti and you have the perfect storm.

It's more fun to be holding a company that's growing share, sales and profits too. A company that only holds 10% of its target markets. A company that can report record profits in a bloodbath holiday quarter in the middle of a dire recession? A company whose advertising is so enjoyable that it's viral. A company that's innovating and inventing new markets. That's more fun. That's a winner.

And that winner isn't MSFT. Their stock is where it was 10 years ago. Over the same period Apple is up 1000%. Unlike Microsoft they have 90% of the established market to get yet, and the prospect of undiscovered country.

/14 links? That's informative. Pretty sure you regret posting that now. Let's go again.

Currently the EU has ca. 500 million people, while Europe as a whole has closer to 700 million citizens.

What hate America, left wing source gave you that information and tried to compare us to Egypt in terms of democracy?

The CIA?

The population of Ireland is somewhere around 6 million - what does every *else* do there?

Farm potatoes and brew Guinness.

Actually, the population of Ireland is only a little over 4 million, according to this source. That's a lot smaller than I thought.

Well the Vatican has a population of 824 according to the World Factbook. Do they need a bailout?

As a rather extreme example, a far left wing reporter might put out a story that President Bush has been communicating with members of the armed forces without going through the DoD, and make it sound like he's planning a coup to stay in office.

You mean, let's take a fictional example rather than the real situation in which reporters suck up to President Bush http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Miller_(journalist) and believe his lies https://www.cia.gov/library/reports/general-reports-1/iraq_wmd/Iraq_Oct_2002.htm until he fucks up so completely that the truth becomes undeniable and even his sycophants desert him.

To put everything in context :

1 barrel of oil (bbl) is 42 gallons, so 340 million gallons of oil is a little over 8 million bbl.

How many bbl do we use in the US? According the the CIA world factbook, the US consumed 20.8 million bbl/day in 2005. (It's almost certainly higher today.) That means we've just found enough oil to replace about 2/5ths of one day's worth of oil demand in the US.

It's a baby step in the right direction...

Yep, AC hits the nail on the head here... if 21 million is allegedly 3 in 4 German bank accounts, then there's only 28 million accounts in Germany and the remaining 82,369,552 Germans (minus the 14% under 15, say) obviously keep their cash in their mattresses.

You do realize that the USA has 24.4 times the land as Japan , right?

So if you were going to plot the bandwidth as a function of surface area to cover and say that since Japan has 1/24th as much that it should have bandwidth about 24 times better it should have 120mbit lines now. I realize this isn't entirely realistic, but it does take considerably more fiber or copper lines to cover.

Now how about population density? It's only a sound business idea to wire up reasonably densely populated areas. Japan has a population density of 337/km^2, while the USA has a population density of only 31/km^2. Which do you think it's more financially sound to wire up?

If you want comparison that's even slightly scientific, try comparing only areas between the two with equivalent population densities. Say a few highly dense areas, a few median areas, and a few low density areas. Until you accompany your whines with those types of comparisons, they'll sound like nothing but xenophilia to me.

You do realize that the USA has 24.4 times the land as Japan , right?

So if you were going to plot the bandwidth as a function of surface area to cover and say that since Japan has 1/24th as much that it should have bandwidth about 24 times better it should have 120mbit lines now. I realize this isn't entirely realistic, but it does take considerably more fiber or copper lines to cover.

Now how about population density? It's only a sound business idea to wire up reasonably densely populated areas. Japan has a population density of 337/km^2, while the USA has a population density of only 31/km^2. Which do you think it's more financially sound to wire up?

If you want comparison that's even slightly scientific, try comparing only areas between the two with equivalent population densities. Say a few highly dense areas, a few median areas, and a few low density areas. Until you accompany your whines with those types of comparisons, they'll sound like nothing but xenophilia to me.

According to the CIA World Factbook entry on the United States, the total population of people 15+ in the states is 242,677,893. Let's assume for the sake of discussion that each and every one of these people had a job and was eligible for an even cut of the $700bn dollars. That would work out to only $2,884.48, give or take a few cents for postmarking the checks. What's that, one or two mortgage payments? Maybe 2-3 months rent?

Most of it is invested into other parts of the economy. Providing jobs and growth. It would be better if wealth were more evenly distributed but it's not that bad. In effect they are paying everyone elses wages at market rates, ie. supply and demand sets the price not them.

When you have most of the supply locked up, you call the tune. Wealthy individuals and companies don't operate in markets, they use their wealth to control markets.

The investment class doesn't "provide jobs and growth" so much as it skims wealth off of the top. The U.S. GDP is about $14 trillion, the workforce of about 150,000,000: the average American worker creates about $93,000 worth of value per year.

But the average annual wage is only about $39,000.

So where does the majority of that value created by workers go? GDP = rents + interests + profits + wages + some statistical fudge factors. Most of the value created by the average worker goes to the investing class in the form of "unearned" income - profits, interest, and rents.

This idea that we should be grateful to the wealthy for giving us jobs and growth is like beggars at the back door of the palace heaping praises on the nobility for passing out scraps from the banquet. I say fsck the nobility, time for a little peasant uprising.

You can't be serious.

Thats right! Direct democracy can never work. Which is what made Switzerland such a hellhole

Switzerland Pop. 7,591,500

U.S.A. Pop. 305,690,000

California Pop.36,553,215

So you see, direct Democracy sort of works in California. But as you see, the majority just put a minority into a second class status. I cannot image the horrors of letting over 300 million people vote on issues of Rights. Switzerland doesn't even have the population of Los Angeles county, 9,878,554. So your example is not very valid when talking about USA.

Thats right! Direct democracy can never work. Which is what made Switzerland such a hellhole

Harvard and other big-name schools like that, especially Ivy schools which are older than the Revolutionary War, have endowments in the tens of billions. As you can see here, Harvard has nearly $40 billion on hand -- more than the GDP of some countries in the world.

Who the hell is going to try and push back against Harvard and why would they need government support? I think that's hardly a fair indicator.

just to straighten something out here, and for whichever knee jerking mods who didn't notice anything either..check parent to my reply for a clue. YOU might want to improve your reading and forum surfing leet skilz. I was replying to the guy with the ties to bangladesh, *not* the maldives. And I was going from memory when I guessed at their population in bangladesh, which will be experiencing the same sort of widespread flooding if the oceans rise, so I just looked now, a scosh over 150 million, and they are real dang poor for the most part.

She does all the work of raising her crop of tomatoes and getting it to market. No leeching there, she doesn't get government farm subsidies, she just works. But, whatever she makes for selling her crop, it depends in large part on having roads to transport it. It's not that she's a leech, nor lazy...

Using public goods, or other common resources, is not leaching off of others. I'm speaking of the parasitic nature of the "investment class", the absentee owners of capital, who do no productive work yet reap dividends.

Consider a worker on an assembly line. She assembles parts into a product worth (as valued by a free market) $10. Lets say that the parts that she starts with, plus the support services (the power and maintenance costs of the factory, the back office costs, and so on, again at a fair market value) come out to $7. Does she make $3 on the deal? No. Because the investors, who are not doing any work here, have to get their cut.

Let's look at some numbers. These are back-of-the-envelope calculations, but the U.S. GDP is about $14 trillion. With a workforce of about 150,000,000, that's about $93,000 per capita - $93,000 worth of value, created by the average American worker per year.

Does the average American worker make anything like $93,000 a year? Not even close. The average (which seems to be mean, here) annual wage is about $39,000; the median, about $26,000.

So where does the rest - the lion's share, indeed - of that value created by workers go? GDP is rents + interests + profits + wages + some statistical fudge factors; basically, about $50,000 of the value created by the average worker goes to the investing class in the form of profits, interest, and rents.

Why is a new lunar rover going to take 11 years to go into production when technology is so much more advanced now and innovation is at a faster pace than ever?

Well for one we're not going to land on the moon for at least another 11 years. I think it will probably be more like 15. The lunar rover isn't the slow part. The slow part is the lack of funding. Right now they have to fund both the shuttle program and development of Constellation. In 1965 the GDP was $712 Billion with a NASA budget of a little more than $5 billion or about 0.7% In 2007 the GDP was about $13.8 Trillion with the NASA budget at about $17 billion, or about 0.12%. It's not the scientists and engineers, it's the politicians.

Because consistency has long since evaporated. There are plenty of commercial sites running a .org and the .net tld is nowadays meaningless (unless the meaning is "I couldn't afford a .com"). Also, think of all the organisations that use another country's tld, rather than their own. (.tv anyone?)

Population of Tuvalu <12000. ICANN screwed up initial allocations in the first place by not putting US domains in .us and global thigns in the gTLDs.

It's been no secret to me that Saudi Arabia has always been a poor country, and it's citizens have become poorer over the decades.

Beggars hawk bottles of water at intersections. Penniless women huddle in strips of shade outside their crumbling mud-brick houses, begging for money. Many families in the capital are so poor they can't afford electricity. Raw sewage runs through parts of Jidda.

- http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3412.htm

The princes have treated the country's wealth of oil and minerals as their personal domain and made themselves famous for their extravagant life style. Some princes have accumulated enormous personal wealth; with King Fahd bin Abd al-Aziz, the reigning monarch, topping the list with a personal fortune estimated at $20 billion.

...

A Saudi newspaper speculates that while the unemployment rate is estimated at 20 percent it could be as high as 30 percent. The irony of the situation is that the Saudis employ 6 to 7 million foreign workers, including 3 million maids and drivers.

And it's obvious why the Saudi's prefer foreign workers:

current situation: Saudi Arabia is a destination country for workers from South and Southeast Asia who are subjected to conditions that constitute involuntary servitude including being subjected to physical and sexual abuse, non-payment of wages, confinement, and withholding of passports as a restriction on their movement; domestic workers are particularly vulnerable because some are confined to the house in which they work unable to seek help; Saudi Arabia is also a destination country for Nigerian, Yemeni, Pakistani, Afghan, Somali, Malian, and Sudanese children trafficked for forced begging and involuntary servitude as street vendors; some Nigerian women were reportedly trafficked into Saudi Arabia for commercial sexual exploitation.

- https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/print/sa.html

Sorry to burst your bubble, but it hasn't worked anywhere

Really?

Notwithstanding the problems with the NHS, the UK has longer life expectancy than the US, lower rates of child mortality, and spends less than half as much on healthcare per head as the US.

And don't forget that private healthcare is available (and cheap too) in the UK, so you could spend the extra $3,400 per year per person you're spending on healthcare on private cover in the UK.

According to this the population of America is just a hair over 300 million people.

The bailout is 700 billion

That is more than two million dollars per person!

Want to see some economic change? Want those debts to suddenly become good again? Want to see some solid upward velocity of wealth in our country? Why not just give that money to the citizens? Give it to the people who are getting screwed instead of the people who screwed us. It would only be a matter of time before most of that money would flow back up into the hands of the wealthy anyway...but things would be a helluva lot better for it.

More realistically speaking, a dump like that would do crazy things to inflation and to the economy....people across the nation would quit their dead-end jobs only to discover that they can't buy anything because everyone that would operate the register also quit their dead-end jobs...it would actually do more harm than good.

But what might have worked better would be to use that bailout money to set up a mortgage assistance fund with some kind of phase out....people with incomes within specific ranges could get a portion of their mortgage paid for by the government for the next five to ten years....something like that would make those toxic mortgages viable again and create positive cashflow for the banks, thus still bailing-out those who gave us the shaft...but it would also make life a lot easier on those who are really suffering and would have earned *huge* public approval for whoever supported the measure.

But, alas, we live in a world where those who already have money are entitled to receive more of it for free while those who don't have it must toil all their lives to earn tiny bits of it.

And the majority seem to like it that way...

Then upgrade the backbone. Instead of limiting the speed for end users, invest in the backbone and eliminate the clogging. I'm guessing Japan doesn't have that big of a problem with the backbone though. (neither does Sweden it would appear, I can easily reach 100 Mbps if I download directly from someone else on a 100 Mbps connection within Sweden)

Its a lot easier to upgrade infrastructure in a smaller place then it is in a bigger one. Sweden and Japan are small assed nations compared to the USA, so the cost of long haul fiber would be cheaper for those nations, then it would be for the USA.

Do you need a quick physical geography lesson to see this?

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_surface_area_of_Japan
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/sw.html
http://open-site.org/Regional/North_America/United_States/

Can you afford to help run high capacity and long haul fiber optic cable from Annapolis, Md to San Francisco, Ca so everyone can be all happy and content with their broadband? As well as to connect each and every house hold in the US to be able to use this new High Capacity and long haul fiber back bone network? I dont think you can, so please stop sounding like you are smart, because quite frankly you are not.

The world's average is 30%

Inaccurate.

According to this site the average unemployment rate world-wide is 13.5%. The site cites the CIA World Factbook as its source.

Perhaps the 30% you were referring to is the statistic of combined unemployment and underemployment rate of many non-industrialized nations (found here) ?

In that case: apples and oranges, friend.

Low per capita GPD can also mean that they still have many, many people not working in a fully industrialized economy. You know, dirt poor people doing subsistence level farming.

Looking up some numbers from the CIA World Factbook, it looks like China is running 11.4% GDP real growth rate, where the US is at 2.2% (it says these are 2007 estimates). Also, China's current account balance, again 2007 est, is $360.7 billion where the US is listed as -$738.6 billion. Please correct me if these are not the correct figures, but based on this it appears that they are both "swimming in money" and have very strong economic growth. Also, -$737.6 billion? Ouch.

China https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ch.html

USA: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/us.html

Low per capita GPD can also mean that they still have many, many people not working in a fully industrialized economy. You know, dirt poor people doing subsistence level farming.

Looking up some numbers from the CIA World Factbook, it looks like China is running 11.4% GDP real growth rate, where the US is at 2.2% (it says these are 2007 estimates). Also, China's current account balance, again 2007 est, is $360.7 billion where the US is listed as -$738.6 billion. Please correct me if these are not the correct figures, but based on this it appears that they are both "swimming in money" and have very strong economic growth. Also, -$737.6 billion? Ouch.

China https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ch.html

USA: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/us.html

And in the workplace, which skill is required the more: writing documents or building operating systems? Which do you think is going to be more relevant to the average child when he or she grows up?

Personally, I think the money spent on OLPC would be better employed in teaching the 12% of people who are illiterate how to read and write.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/print/pe.html

>Now in fact, there are more Muslims in India than in Pakistan

Actually, no. This is a surprisingly common claim, given that it's easily verified that it's false.

1. According the Census of India, 13.4% of the Indian population is Muslim. See http://www.censusindia.gov.in/Census_Data_2001/India_at_glance/religion.aspx

2. According to the Census of Pakistan, 96.28% of the Pakistani population is Muslim. See http://www.statpak.gov.pk/depts/pco/statistics/other_tables/pop_by_religion.pdf

3. CIA Factbook (https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2119rank.html) says the current population of India is 1,147,995,904 and the current population of Pakistan is 172,800,048. (July 2008 numbers for both)

4. So the Muslim population of India is 13.4% of 1,147,995,904 = ~153.8 million.

5. And the Muslim population of Pakistan is 96.28% of 172,800,048 = ~166.4 million

6. So Pakistan has ~12.5 million more (roughly 8% more) Muslims than India. It's also often said that India has the second-largest poulation of Muslims (after Indonesia), when actually Pakistan has the second-largest population.

No, there's plenty of natural gas. Known reserves worldwide are about 172 trillion m^3. One m^3 of gas has about as much energy as one liter of oil (38.4 MJ/m^3 vs 38.6 MJ/l).

So 172 trillion m^3 of gas is the energy equivalent of about 172 trillion liters of oil = 1.47 trillion barrels of oil.

Worldwide oil consumption is about 80.29 million barrels per day, or about 30 billion barrels per year.

So if we could instantaneously convert all our oil consumption into natural gas consumption, the known gas reserves would last us 49 years. There's plenty of gas.

The problem with natural gas is its extremely low volumetric energy density. That makes it expensive to store and transport. It's such a hassle that a lot of oil wells (especially offshore) simply burn any extraneous gas which comes up with the oil, instead of trying to capture and store it. The 3600 psi CNG tank in a Honda Civic GX CNG takes up most of the trunk, and only provides as much energy as 8 gallons of gasoline.