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average water usage in the usa is 525L
Water usage for several european countries and mexico are over 300L per day by the same measure.

This sounds crazy high since my water usage is under 1000G per month or under 126 liters per day. I don't know how much under because that's the minimum bill.

http://www.data360.org/dsg.asp...

A huge factor would be more lawns in the U.S. since we still have low population density. If our population was as dense as europe, then our water usage per citizen would be way lower because more people would not have lawns.

2000 liters/day is a lot. About how much a U.S. family of 4 uses. You can make do with a lot less. India is around 130 liters/person-day. So I suspect this is more a one per 100-300 people concept, meant to provide potable water (drinking and cooking) so existing water sources can be used for things like bathing and laundry. That would help avoid things like the arsenic poisoning fiasco caused by relief agencies drilling fresh water wells in Bangladesh.

That's a lot of electricity. Does Cali have the generating capacity available?
Maybe simple conservation would help.

What you are looking at IS the State, unless you stay constantly vigilant.

Yes, exactly. And obviously we are not there yet. However, from what I can see, we are going towards this. It may not be once corporation, but even if it is ten, twenty or thirty corporations that control most economic activity, this is concerning to me. Of particular concern is the American food supply, both its creation and its distribution. Small farms are disappearing, with huge corporate owned farms becoming dominant. I believe this is a dangerous concentration of power.

However, the elephant in the room is wealth distribution. The wealthiest Americans own a concerningly large portion of the national wealth right now. And it is a simple mathematical fact in the American system that wealth leads to political power. Thus, the American political system is now acting primarly in the interests of the most wealthy. The right wing, which is the most owned by the wealthy, push "low tax" and "small government" policies, whose sole aim is to increase the wealth of the most wealthy relative to the rest of the nation. And the "tea party" movement will not fix this. It will in fact make it far far worse.

It is a historical fact that the ONLY way America has found of leveling out wealth distribution is via a progressive income tax system. Following WWII, the top tax bracket (over $500000) was more than 90%. These tax rates effectively created the American middle class. In 1980, the upper tax bracket rate collapsed, and this began the decline of the American middle class. Seemingly paradoxically, the decline of the middle class has led to economic decline as well.

I would advise that if you value the future economic well being of your children and grand-children, that you perform a political and economic reality check.

Oh if you want a fascinating exercise, go look up precisely why schools use bells.

My google search says that it's to keep students/teachers on time. Psychological warfare? Hardly. Using bells to signal time/events has centuries of tradition behind it. Electronic bell systems are cheap, reliable, and efficient.

If you think about it, you realize that this problem is too widespread and too systematic, too uniform to be the result of a few isolated bad actors.

If I think about it, I realize that we have over 100k primary schools in the USA. 100k is fairly significant to me, because if you look at individuals with that many people you're statistically going to have quite a few crimes, even a few murders. With 100k schools, you're going to have some 'bad eggs', and there will be enough of them to generate a 'horrible school scandal' every week or so even if there are only a 'few isolated bad actors'. Add in the occasional international bad school incident(such as from the UK), and short memories so that a repeat incident from a single school and/or even just a follow up on a previous incident is seen as a new one and you have even more frequent impacts on the public concious.

it's invested in low-risk, high to moderate-liquidity investments.

So it's just like a bank account, except they get MORE money than what they put in?

I see. You don't know what an investment is. Reference back to the post you responded to and read what I wrote about how investments feed back into taxable businesses.

Stock dividends are capital gains, which are taxed

Capital gains taxes go down every year, and are now lower than the income tax rate

Umm, no, capital gains taxes do not go down every year. They've gone up and down over time. The most recent change was an increase. In any case, capital gains taxes can be changed at will by a simple act of Congress.

Since you don't seem to be willing to do your own basic research: http://www.data360.org/temp/ds...

Even if it's shipped offshore, it can be taxed if there is political will to do so.

There doesn't seem to be "the will to do so" in Ireland, Bermuda, or the Cayman Islands, which is where most of these offshore account are.

Irrelevant. The money has to get to the offshore accounts from the countries where it's generated, and it has to come back in order to be used. The will that matters is in the countries where it's generated or spent.

You should seriously consider reading a book on basic economics. I highly recommend this one.

Now look at how the death rate has changed over time - it dropped dramatically by 1990, and remained at that lower number even as the number of ascents soared. So talking about the death rate going back to the 1950s is quite misleading.

How is any reconstruction not "cherry picked"?

Where would you have it start? At the end of the ice age? Why not at the end of Ediacaran period? No? How about Permian? What period would you start with and why?

It's ALL cherry picked to support the conclusion they want to reach.

Nonsense. If it has been warming from 1997 to date, it has been warming from 1996 to date, it has been warming from 1995 to date, etc.; it has been warming from 1999 to date, it has been warming from 2000 to date, it has been warming from 2001 to date, etc.; but it has NOT been warming from 1998 to date, and you conclude from that that the climate has now switched over to cooling, that is very definitely cherry picking, even if you fuzz it up as "Global Cooling that has been going on for the past 15 or so years", as though you could pick any year back then, rather than it's just your faulty memory which has some faded postit note saying "see, AGW is fake after all" without marking what particular specific year is the only one that works for your argument.

Here's a nice piece of cherry picking by Roy Spencer, utilizing not just 1998, but also March 2011.
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/uah_march2011.png
which is conveniently forgotten 18 months later, back to the default just 1998 cherry picking
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/UAH_LT_1979_thru_Dec_2012_v5.51.png

see also
http://www.data360.org/temp/dsg1655_990_600.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7e/Satellite_Temperatures.png/800px-Satellite_Temperatures.png

For the rest of us "gee. 1998 was a freakishly hot year, wasn't it?"

So, 2009 is now only the second hottest year in recorded history, not the first hottest.A lot of folks might think that having the two hottest years in the past few centuries all within 15 years might be an indicator that it's warmer now; particularly if you notice that the first half a decade of the 21st century was also right up there.

Of course, if you took seriously the denialist arguments that "there are lots of things that affect climate" and "climate is cyclic", you'd notice that the high points of the El Nino (hot) years starting 1998 till now are on the average suddenly about 0.2 degrees C hotter than they were 1980 through 1995, just as the high points of the La Nina (cool) years from 1996 to 2008 are on the average suddenly about 0.15 degrees C warmer than they were from 1979 through 1989.

Why stop there? It has definitely cooled from noon today till midnight now, I therefore declare that we are in a cooling trend.

[citation needed]

Meanwhile, I found data that completely reverses your assertion.

Average Wage in US:
Dec. 1970 = $3.70
Dec. 2010 = $19.24

Are you sure your source wasn't already inflation adjusted?

The State has dramatically increased its spending for decades, gobbling up the advances in the private sector... and for what? Most of it has gone to waste feeding the political power structure, buying votes with destructive social welfare programs, crony capitalism corporate subsidies, and making war.

Your chart gives a list of debt to GDP ratios for the US government. I would argue that the growing debt to GDP ratio over the last few years does not necessarily indicate a massive surge in government spending, but instead a massive decrease in tax revenues. I would speculate that that decrease is in large part due to a massive decrease in tax rates on the most wealthy. As anecdotal evidence, I give Warren Buffet's statements that he pays 17% income tax while the tax rate on his secretary is 35%. As further evidence, I remind you that the US income tax rate on individuals from 1942 to 1963 for money earned over $200000 was 92%. This was in fact a time of economic prosperity. I would also argue that the economic decline of the US has accelerated since the enacting of neo-conservative/neo-liberal economic policies since the 1980's. Even the Democrats followed these policies under Clinton.

You mention the problem of crony capitalist subsidies. Well I'll agree with that, with the caveat that many or most of those subsidies come in the form of differential tax breaks, where large corporations end up paying little or no tax. I think that falls in with the picture I am painting of an increasingly regressive taxation system. The costs of making war are an example of the government acting more for the private interest, in taking money from the broad population and giving it to a narrow group of individual organizations.

I believe that the current system of government in the US is profoundly corrupt, and I suspect you agree. The system has been captured by the most wealthy and powerful, and they use it to their own private ends. They cause the government to enact legislation that serves largely their own ends, and not the Public Good (SOPA for example). Where we digress from you I suspect is that I believe the Middle Class should be, must be the dominant economic and political influence in the nation. I believe that we must do everything we can to support the well being of the Middle Class, including enacting truly progressive income tax rates, and using tax revenues from the wealthy to build public work projects that support the Public Good. I believe that if you give the most wealthy too much economic and political power, that they will not use that power for the good of society, but instead for the good of themselves. That includes the removal of their money from the nation to other countries who will help to enrich them even more. They will use their money and power to further corrupt the government away from acting for the Public Good.

You obviously misunderstand the relationship between tax policy, economic growth, and tax revenues. You've bought the line that increased tax percentage means higher tax receivables. You don't understand that high taxes destroy economic growth, drive businesses overseas and end up lowering tax revenues.

I understand the theories referred to above quite well actually, possibly better than you do. I just don't agree them. I believe that the economic theories espoused by for example the Chicago School of Economics are deeply logically flawed, starting from their most basic assumptions. The "Efficient Market Hypothesis" is at the core of modern economics. It implies that market actors are rational, an assumption that has been deeply shaken after the recent housing and stock market crash. If the core assumption of a neoliberal economics is only true sometimes, how probable is the truth of its predictions and conclusions?

There's no need for indexing or backing for a [national] currency. There's a built in limit to money printing so even the normal expectation of not printing obscene amounts is enforced.

That doesn't work when money can be created electronically, by the central bank simply making an unmatched entry in its balance sheet.

According to the data, the US money supply (M2) has doubled since the year 2000, during a time period in which the total size of the backing economy has not kept up. Inflation, in other words. That means that the US has pilfered back between one-third and one-half of the value of the $3 trillion US dollars held in China's central bank.

Funny, isn't it? For the last twenty years, they've told us to worry about China owning too much US debt... and now we just snatched back a huge chunk of it by having some guy in Washington add a row to a spreadsheet.

I have to wonder at the Chinese. Wasn't it obvious the US would inflate its way to reduced debt? It seemed the obvious way out to me.

$1.5 trillion is still a crazy large amount of money to owe though.

There's no need for indexing or backing for a [national] currency. There's a built in limit to money printing so even the normal expectation of not printing obscene amounts is enforced.

That doesn't work when money can be created electronically, by the central bank simply making an unmatched entry in its balance sheet.

According to the data, the US money supply (M2) has doubled since the year 2000, during a time period in which the total size of the backing economy has not kept up. Inflation, in other words. That means that the US has pilfered back between one-third and one-half of the value of the $3 trillion US dollars held in China's central bank.

Funny, isn't it? For the last twenty years, they've told us to worry about China owning too much US debt... and now we just snatched back a huge chunk of it by having some guy in Washington add a row to a spreadsheet.

It's called Google. My mistake for thinking people on Slashdot would be technically competent enough to use it to check things for themselves if they feel so inclined. Try it, it's not hard.

But if you're lazy/struggling still try here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate

or here:

http://www.data360.org/graph_group.aspx?Graph_Group_Id=441

It was growth in GDP (inflation)

"Growth in GDP" is not the same thing as "inflation", and in fact real (inflation-adjusted) GDP has also increased since WWII (link)

Honestly, assertions are my favorite. It makes arguments so easy to win.

Yes and when WW2 was over (1945), the Depression snapped right back and people were jobless again.

No, unemployment rates stayed low and and GDP did not drop. So the real question is, are you purposefully ignorant or just being a troll?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Us_unemployment_rates_1950_2005.png
http://www.data360.org/dsg.aspx?Data_Set_Group_Id=230

Also there's nothing productive about a war, which is basically equivalent to building a bunch of products and then blowing them up. A war is *destructive* not productive. It wastes resources and money and labor hours. It's the Glazier Paradox - smashing windows just to make work. It would be wiser not to smash the windows in the first place.

War is enormously profitable for the winning country, especially when you get to control precious resources as a result. The Glazier Paradox does not apply - we were smashing millions of dollars of weapons into things we didn't repair with our own money. WWII involved a lot of nation building, and our workers provided the manufacturing for most of the planet since Europe and Japan were in pieces. (Not that I agree this is the way to come out of the recession, but it is important to remember history amid your vague rhetoric involving paradoxes.)

Similarly throwing a bunch of money at fiber installs, without considering whether the market will use them, or whether they will just sit unused (dark fiber) is about the same as building a bunch of bridges that lead to nowhere (don't connect to roads). That too is a waste.

Mass transit and communications infrastructure are investments in the future. Even if it there's a bit of waste here and there, it beats giving it to the financial industry, who do nothing useful for the economy at large.

This is the purpose of government. Keep the economic machine running by ignoring the rules when they stop working. Keep income equality high so there's meritocracy instead of aristocracy. Enforce policies to make sure that the economy is well educated and capable of performing complex functions to yield good results for investment.

The relative power of federal, state, and local governments is something that can be argued, but the larger point still remains.

Yet, Aussies and Americans consume a great deal more water than people in other countries, developed or not.
Source: http://www.data360.org/dsg.aspx?Data_Set_Group_Id=757

Consider that an average Australian consumes 3 times as much water as an average Brit! This is actually quite puzzling considering that many Australian municipalities are actually quite strict about water wastage. From what I hear, the waste water is metered in every house as well.

The only thing I can think of is that Aussies and Americans love their lawns and their swimming pools, and they both seem to be have horrible ecological footprints.

The M-I C actually was dramatically downsized during...

I don't know where you got that impression? The data looks anything but "dramatic".
Perhaps you mean GDP adjusted/as a percentage of the overall budget.
One would be hard pressed to call that downsizing though (unless your a politician, of course), especially given that much of the funds are just printed up to pay for it all out of our pockets.

GP don't cite reference for his numbers where as at least one can argue with the numbers in the BBC article. Vietname war cost 111 billions the GDP of the US was roughly 3500+ over the years of the war so 111 billion total cost is NOWHERE near 9.4% it is at most 3% of any given year. Furthermore inflation adjusted dollar this is roughly 450 billion of today (see same GDP page as before). today gdp is 11000 billion so an estimated Irak total war cost of 500 billion is higher in percent of GDP (5% today compared to aforementionned 3%) and higher inflation adjusted.

Anyway there is a cost which is not really counted or accountable in vietnam war : the cost of the dead and veteran (human cost) the same for the Irak war. Ples the resulting international terrorism for vietnam war was zero (or at least I am not aware of it) whereas one can certainly argue this is relatively open for Irak war and could certainly rise. Finally I am not certain comparing TOTAL cost over many years to GDP is really that useful a comparison anyway. It should be comapred to say, day to day cost of education to day to day cost of the war in both case and see what comes out. I am too lazy to do it ;).

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19374216/
29% of men 9% of women have had 15 or more partners. (meaning 71% have had less)

http://www.durex.com/cm/gss2004Content.asp?intQid=401
average around the world 10.5

http://www.physorg.com/news10824.html
this ones neat because men claimed an average of 31. but 21% of those admitted to lying, to boost their numbers on the the same survey, and of the group that claimed more than 50 partners over 50% of them also admitted to lying.

http://aspe.hhs.gov/HSP/97trends/sd4-4.htm
69% of sexually active teen males reported http://www.denverpost.com/ci_6204119
"Almost one in three American men say they've had sex with at least 15 partners in their lives, triple the rate of similar behavior found in interviews with women, according to a government survey. "

Meaning 2 in 3 have had less.

"The average number of female sexual partners for men was 6.8, said Kathryn Porter, a medical officer for the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics in Hyattsville, Maryland, and one of the study's co-authors. Women reported an average of 3.7 male sexual partners, she said."

http://www.data360.org/dsg.aspx?Data_Set_Group_Id=1100
This one is neat too, because it breaks down by country, the USA is ~10.5 (it apparently is based on the same data as the durex link.) Turkey ranks highest at 14.5.

The numbers are apparently going up though, when you compare 1960s and 70s surveys to more recent surveys... or maybe people just lie more. After all the sixty's was the era of 'free love'.

Apparently it also varies heavily based on where you live. I think I read somewhere that New York city is apparently double or triple the national average.

Hmm. I am very hesitant about allowing this to devolve into a "Who is worse" contest; killing is killing and none of it is "better". --I realize that my original post was constructed in a comparative manner, but my intention was to offer examples refuting the notion that the U.S. Government does not bear any resemblance to a totalitarian regime and that people should in effect, stop complaining.

The problem is that there are now rumblings in the West about perhaps focusing military solutions on Pakistan. I find this very disturbing, and so I will offer some comparisons with the intention of perhaps alerting people to the false logic and hypocrisy in such lines of thinking. . .

Try 3 million in 1971 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1971_Bangladesh_atrocities) There is a difference between people killed in the exigencies of war (as in US involvement in Iraq), a transient phenomenon, and the pervasive intolerance and violence all across Pakistan, which lasts for decades.

Well, without wanting to ignore such mass-killings, it is worth noting that according to that wiki article, the final figure (3 million) you quote is actually hotly disputed. --Though, more to my main point, it is worth pointing out that the U.S. war machine is pretty much jammed in the 'On' position. While the names of the conflicts and regions may change, I think calling the endlessly bloody results of U.S. military endeavors "exigencies" or a "transient phenomenon" is a wee bit disingenuous.

and 500-3000 women a year (http://archives.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/asiapcf/south/12/11/pakistan.women/), and numerous religious minorities.

With regard to the deaths of woman, I can only say that the Pakistani civilian culture is certainly riddled with violent behavior. I do not argue that. And while this public behavior is in many cases sanctioned by government policy, it seems to me that this problem is more cultural than political. No doubt, Pakistan is a mess.

However. . , is this a reason to condemn Pakistan and perhaps even levy Western military pressure upon the region?

Well, to me this idea seems more a result of media spin in support of the Military Industrial Complex than anything else. So I thought. . , I know! Let's compare violent crime in the U.S. civilian population to that in Pakistan, and I bet we'll discover that the U.S. is at least as violent, if not more so; heck, the murder rate in California alone is usually at least a couple thousand annually. --Then I can ask such thought-provoking and debate-killing questions as, "Given such figures, shouldn't the world community instead be sending military forces to control the rampant violence in the U.S.?"

So I looked up some figures, and I'll be blowed if the first item I came across wasn't this comparative chart, which actually places Pakistan as being the least violent place with regard to homicide rates by country, with the U.S. and Poland coming in the middle immediately after all the most screwed up countries on the world map.

So what do we do with this kind of information?

Well, for one, we have to stop right away the, "Who is worse" game. Killing is bad, period. And again, I want to stress that I only offer these comparisons to shake people up and stop them from thinking of the Middle Eastern countries as, "Bad Places Which Need Western Guidance." That message is pure war-monger nonsense, and I doubt very much that they come from people like you; such messages are marketing spin which were probably very expensive and labor-intensive to produce. The truth of the matter is that humans are treating each other abysmally all over the planet, and that evil government is a deep and wide-spread problem. And finally, I think that military intervention is the LAST thing which should be considered in any situation. --Indeed, I'm not convinced that it shou