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Someone who converted to a religion that forbids drinking. Alexandria became Islamic territory.

Islam didn't always forbid alcohol. Only drunkenness.
http://www.economist.com/node/...

Any organized religion operating in any country are required to operate within the laws of the lands they reside in, just like people. Scientology is often considered a cult / secret organization because of secret doctrine, non-transparent rules for church structure, and the fact that you pay to elevate yourself in the order. I'm sure there's more, but I don't spend much time caring about the org.

They are fine in calling it a secret order and have all the right to do so, but its no a religion just because people rely on the org to fix their sad lives. Germany isn't the only one either. The UK also doesn't consider them a religion.

http://www.economist.com/blogs...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G...

Agriculture is the big culprit, taking 80% of the state's water (and in return ag and mining together only make up 2% of the economy). Its a totally unsustainable situation that has to be remedied sooner or later.

That said, I do have hope for the future of desalination. Not with current techs (as with the one in the article, they're energy hungry and expensive), but potentially with new techs that don't rely on electricity as their power source. One I find interesting is this one. Basically, it relies on evaporation, which isn't unique... but *not* by capturing the evaporated water. It's just concentrated salt solution that's desired, which means that you don't need some sort of elaborate vapor capture system and sealed tanks, just simply any sort of open area that can hold water - even an endoherric basin or jettied-off chunk of ocean. Far, far cheaper.

Concentrated brine is turned into freshwater via ion bridges: it's connected to two tanks of normal seawater, one by a positive ion bridge and the other by a negative ion bridge. The brine greatly wants to dilute into the normal seawater, but it can't because the ions would be imbalanced in the two side tanks. So these two side tanks are connected to a third tank of seawater with the opposite ion bridges, so that salt can dilute from the brine into the two seawater tanks, but only if they also "suck" the opposite ion out of the final seawater tank. Since the brine concentrated brine wants to dilute so much, the action is energetically favorable and continues until there's no salt left in the third tank - aka, it's freshwater. (An actual implementation would be a continuous process, not fixed tanks, of course)

Apart from basic pumping needs, there's no electricity needed. The energy source is just "sun falling on any water chunk of seawater that's not free to circulate with the open ocean". You might even be able to have it filled automatically in some places via the tides or waves breaking over a jetty without having to pump new seawater in, leaving the only pumping needs for distribution.

Of course, the main tech limitation right now is making the salt bridges have high enough throughput and reliability to justify the capital costs.

I'm happy as the next guy to pillory Halliburton, which deserves little but scorn for its shocking profiteering in US government contracts. But you probably don't want want to cite dated Chavezista leftie Froot-Loops talking about how the rapidly disintegrating former Venezuelan economy is a model for anything except citizen outrage.

Just ask the folks living in the former Socialist Paradise where condoms now cost $755/pack on the black market because the Bolivar is worth less than toilet paper and it turned out that Chavez was mortgaging his country's future to buy temporary popularity with oil dollars.

the EU is more prosperous than the US, with a similar population, higher GDP, healthier economy, healthier people, more econonomically secure people, people who live longer, and people who wont far as far or as fast because they have ACTUAL welfare (unlike the POS we call 'welfare' in this nation).

the EU does all this, while having more regulations in their economy. ie, theire economy is "less free" than the US's.
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as for your question of why the US is successful?
Cotton and slave labor.
That's why.
The US benefited from a unique confluence of circumstances. Much of colonial expansion by the european powers was driven by economic desires, such as the desire to grow cotton (England controlled India in order to grow contton). The US also had prime cotton growing capability. And the US also still had something else, something that England was slowly abandoning: cheap labor in the form of slaves.

The US came to dominate the world cottom market, growing hte lions share. But the margins even larger than everyone else because they didnt have to pay their workers. Everyone bought the cotton, bringing money into the US economy. Money that was invested and used to buy other things.

Really, the economy of hte entire western world was built on Cotton, primarily US cotton, and by extension then on slavery. The US was simply the biggest beneficiary, and that momentum carried our country's economy for many many decades, and really, still is. even the majority of current economic wealth is traced backwards through history, through each subsequent investment, originates in cotton profits.

http://www.gilderlehrman.org/h...
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/africa...
http://www.labornotes.org/blog...
http://www.economist.com/news/...
http://news.nationalgeographic...

The governor’s order focused primarily on urban water use, even though California’s $45 billion agricultural industry accounts for the bulk of the state’s water consumption: roughly 80%

Source: http://www.economist.com/news/...

it's hard to get mad at farmers growing kale and artichokes.

No, its very easy to get mad. The government is clamping down on people who use 20% of the water . . . while leaving the Big Farming industry, who use 80% of the water untouched.

California needs to scale back on its farming industry. That's where the biggest savings in water usage could be made. The Feds could help out as well, by refusing to pay subsidies to farmers who try to raise crops in a desert.

Do you have evidence that they were pursuing The Bomb in violation of Clinton era agreements? [...] all the information I can find seems to show the entire thing went into a rapid "build a nuke quick" tailspin only after Bush called them part of the Axis of Evil

First of all, according to the timetable in the above highly "informative" post, NK started to demand compensation from the US on pain of having their nuclear program restarted in 2000 — before Bush even got elected. They increased the demands and threats by June 2001 — three month before 9/11 and the very coinage of the "axis of evil" term (January 2002). That takes care of any accusation, Bush's rhetoric was somehow responsible for aggravating the gentle hearts of the North Korea rulers.

Do I have evidence of them continuing their nuclear-weapons work after promising to suspend it in 1994? Of course — that they were confident in making the above-mentioned threats is the evidence, they kept on the work. And that they were able to test a nuke shortly afterwards is proof.

What *was* Clinton's damage?

His fault, if we must, once again, lies in supplying North Korea with foodstuffs and energy, which helped (if not allowed) the regime to continue nuclear-weapons work and hastened the work's completion. But whether or not Clinton was stupid is not so relevant now — for Obama certainly is.

The naivete was and remains astounding — who, but a pampered Westerner could believe, a belligerent hermit like North Korea or Iran would ever stop trying to arm itself over a piece of paper?

Iran has seen, what happened to North Korea, which fooled the West, and to Libya's Qaddafi, who came clean. Both lessons are clear and expecting Iranians to be dumb enough to not make the right conclusions is to exhibit racist anti-Persian bigotry.

You're not overestimating the enemy's impact, you're accusing your ideological opponents of being stooges.

The links I've posted by now confirm beyond reasonable doubt, that they (or some of them, anyway) are, in fact, stooges. That's a settled question. Just how many — that's a problem of (under/over)estimation.

There will always be stooges in any movement, suggesting that delegitimizes the movement is a completely different standard,

a) People expect a lot more of the US than Russia

Khm, it does not seem like many people think, Russia is doing anything wrong.

I have no idea what people you're thinking of. Outside of Russian I've only encountered a very small handful who supported Russia, and they wrote and argued so badly I actually felt bad engaging since I thought they were dealing with legitimate mental illnesses.

b) by invading Iraq it helps legitimize things like Ukraine

Your Bush-blaming fails. Putin's number one justification (at least within Russia) was not Iraq, but Kosovo — for over a year now Russians online are arguing, that if it was Ok for the US to run a referendum there, it is Ok for Russia to run one in Crimea. (That, unlike Americans in Kosovo, Russian occupiers of Crimea had an obvious conflict-of-interest seems to have escaped their attention.)

Kosovo is the big justification (because of their traditional alliance with the Serbs) but Iraq is certainly part of the narrative. And I only brought up Iraq because you explicitly mentioned it as an example of a protest movement that didn't have proper justification. As it turns out it was actually a very well informed protest movement as the invasion of Iraq was by any metric a disaster.

Greece in particular might have a legitimate problem

Greece is an EU-member and can break the union's consensus-driven foreign policy.

One of the things that makes it a real problem

in the English speaking West Russian propaganda is a joke.

It is good, you've kept a level head, but I've already given you a number of links to English-speaking opinion-makers, who were affected by KremlinTV.

Fringe opinion-makers whom I'd never heard of. I don't think they're really affecting anything.

Another aspect you are ignoring is the Russian-diaspora living in the West. They still watch nostalgic movies on Russian channels and the propaganda "analysis" in between. Then, when asked about current events by their non-Russian peers, they help spread Putin's point of view.

I don't know many so I can't really speak to it but I doubt many are actually backing the invasion. It's also probably that their opinions have nothing to do with the propaganda, they're still Russian, they'll have a strong urge to identify with and defend their home country.

It should be noted that the West's hands aren't completely clean in this. NATO was started as an anti-Russia alliance, expanding into former Warsaw pact countries after the end of the Cold War was absolutely moronic. Without that expansion there's a decent chance that everyone is still on relatively good terms.

I just came back from Germany — both in Munich and Frankfurt there are pro-Putin signs on the walls and fences. His support there is mostly among Socialists, but those assholes are a considerable power there — and Merkel has to defend herself from their sniping.

Putin's evil is, indeed, obvious to those paying attention, but there are too few of those in

You're not overestimating the enemy's impact, you're accusing your ideological opponents of being stooges.

The links I've posted by now confirm beyond reasonable doubt, that they (or some of them, anyway) are, in fact, stooges. That's a settled question. Just how many — that's a problem of (under/over)estimation.

a) People expect a lot more of the US than Russia

Khm, it does not seem like many people think, Russia is doing anything wrong.

b) by invading Iraq it helps legitimize things like Ukraine

Your Bush-blaming fails. Putin's number one justification (at least within Russia) was not Iraq, but Kosovo — for over a year now Russians online are arguing, that if it was Ok for the US to run a referendum there, it is Ok for Russia to run one in Crimea. (That, unlike Americans in Kosovo, Russian occupiers of Crimea had an obvious conflict-of-interest seems to have escaped their attention.)

Greece in particular might have a legitimate problem

Greece is an EU-member and can break the union's consensus-driven foreign policy.

in the English speaking West Russian propaganda is a joke.

It is good, you've kept a level head, but I've already given you a number of links to English-speaking opinion-makers, who were affected by KremlinTV. Another aspect you are ignoring is the Russian-diaspora living in the West. They still watch nostalgic movies on Russian channels and the propaganda "analysis" in between. Then, when asked about current events by their non-Russian peers, they help spread Putin's point of view.

I just came back from Germany — both in Munich and Frankfurt there are pro-Putin signs on the walls and fences. His support there is mostly among Socialists, but those assholes are a considerable power there — and Merkel has to defend herself from their sniping.

Putin's evil is, indeed, obvious to those paying attention, but there are too few of those in the comfortable West today — the others' short attention spans can be easily swayed by his propaganda efforts.

And here's a link to the "negative aspects across the globe" that she's clearly misrepresenting or doesn't have the first fucking clue about.

exactly how many plane hijackings have been prevented by locked doors in the last 14 years ?

All of them? None of them?

THE REINFORCEMENT of cockpit doors on most commercial airliners was perhaps the most important change to air travel in the wake of the September 11th attacks.

There's security theater (screening everyone; banning liquids and gels over a certain amount) and prudent security measures. The only thing were really need is to have a metal detector, bomb sniffer and locked cockpit doors to prevent hijacking of aircraft and their use as flying weapons. That will stop most of the terrorists from hijacking a plane or causing an air disaster.

From time to time IKEA actually has to do something to earn that tax-free charity status.

A collective entity is sometimes treated like a plural in sentences, as explained in The Economist style guide. I agree that Reuters should be singular, for several reasons, but it's understandable that people sometimes overshoot with the pluralization.

I guess "Reuters" looks explicitly plural, but it was founded by a chap called Reuter, and once called Reuter's Telegram Company, so the current name is probably just a typographical contraction. IMHO, it's obvious that a business entity should be singular, even if it represents a collective effort, that's pretty much the idea behind corporations.

Fee Fie Foe Fum... I Smell ENRON!

ENRON. The latest wonder-tool of the late 90s, a bold new approach to the distribution and settlement policies of grid energy [or water!] suppliers. You have all been losing money trying to buy and sell your product among yourselves. Now it is time to buy and sell your product through US. We'll take a percent and you will have MORE.

ENRON. Let us make everything into a stock market, a futures market. Let us negotiate on your behalf (said to both halves at once). Let us woo you with impressive corporate speak and wooly acronyms to describe what is essentially a transparent middleman-insertion tactic.

ENRON. Tired of trying to sell your customer base on some desired tactic by disclosing said tactic to the PSC and the public? Tired of those public hearings? Let ENRON come to the rescue. Tell us what you need to happen and we'll see that back-room conspiratorial tactics can ease your pain, by making all other options seem more expensive.

ENRON. Ask us how triggered brownouts [or droughts!] and planned resource shortages can improve your bottom line [and ours]!

ENRON. Because if energy [or water!] were priced properly, it is a safe bet that people would waste far less of it. We can help.

ENRON. Because no one needs to innovate or improve infrastructure. We just need to make life suck a little more, cost more, and people will demand less. More complicated is BETTER.

This message brought to you by The Smartest Guys In The Room.

This plan seems to forget that it takes time to grow these crops. It takes 3 years for your first crop of almonds and 8 before the tree is delivering anything like commercial quantities.

You think California's water crises are just going to disappear in a decade? This is a long-term problem. The long timeframes on crop switchovers for certain types of crops is just more reason one needs to take immediate action.

There are lots and lots of ways to lower the water usage of both the general population and water intensive applications such as farming.

And all of them will be properly handled if there's a fair market pricing for water.

Using RO membrane treatment plants the water is purer then what falls from the sky

Are you talking RO of salty or fresh water? Even RO of freshwater can be pretty expensive; RO of saltwater is in most places cost prohibitive (not to mention a massive energy consumer). Though there are some interesting alternative technologies which may provide for affordable desalination in the future.

Don't buy any furniture at IKEA either...

http://www.economist.com/node/...

And a major reason people want to control other people is... getting needed resources. :-)

Of course, since "needed resources" for some people can include specific mates (who need to be impressed or dominated or whatever), there is complexity there. James P. Hogan talks about the issue of achieving status in a post-scarcity economy in his 1982 sci-fi novel "Voyage From Yesteryear".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V...

But, while prestige and status of a country relative to other countries is a cause of war (including to deter aggression), the personal level of status is rarely the reason entire nations are convinced into going to war. That is true even if personal status among leaders may have something to do with why leaders try to convince their countries to foolishly go to war.

For example, in this survey of the causes of war in 2008, every one except the top one of "ideological change" essentially comes down to control of resources.
"Why wars happen"
http://www.economist.com/node/...

And I'd suggest even "ideological change" most often has a strong component of access to resources in order to manage them in specific ways (for example, having enough territory to implement some vision of some form of law or politics).

Anyway, this is a complex topic. There are many lists of reasons on why wars happen. I'm trying to say that issues of perceived scarcity drive a lot of them. Also, scarcity-thinking also often keeps people on a treadmill where they never seem to have time to learn about alternative ways of handling conflict than knee-jerk violence. And then further, fighting over perceived scarcity with super powerful tools of abundance (like computer code that can cause billions of potentially useful things to happen all at once across the world) is what creates the biggest current risks (like nuclear war). Without these tools of abundance like computers, communications, nanotech, biotech, nuclear power, advanced materials, rocketry, and so on, we would not be worried about the end of the human race by just some few people in one small area throwing rocks at each other.

Yes, there are drawbacks (especially the taxes ones) but I think the wave of citizenship renunciations going on are a sign that the strange treatment of non-residents will change in the next couple of years. FATCA is the best thing to happen to US taxpayers abroad in a long time.

I think the benefits outweigh the costs. If they don't get it before their 18th birthday, it will be much harder. They can always renounce it later, though.

Having traveled a lot, having a US passport is very beneficial for ease of passage across borders and protection when abroad. EU passports are almost at the same level though.

Take a look at this article: http://www.economist.com/node/... It has some good information about it.

Good luck!

If anything, the digital revolution obviates the need for tedious, drudgerous work. In the 1960s that was George Jetson speak! Poor George had to work an entire hour per day! But now that we've adopted far-right, archaic ideology and let the super-wealthy get all the spoils of the digital revolution, suddenly "eliminating drudgery" means "eliminating jobs".

The digital revoluion is set to disemploy up to 50% of Americans over the next 2 decades. It's going to get lots worse before it gets better. That is, unless you are a software engineer.

thanks for your pointless sophistry

the simple fact is we do not fund american infrastructure enough, and this hurts our economy in relation to places that do

it's not complicated nor difficult to understand

here, educate yourself:

http://www.economist.com/news/...

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/fa...

http://www.infrastructurerepor...

after you have some actual understanding of a topic, only then should you speak on the topic

Almost all of the design and administration of Apple is done in California. But surprisingly the "Company" is a foreign company where they have no factories, no designers, no corporate officers and just a bank account.

So yes, by using the talent and ingenuity of US workers and then claiming that they're an Irish Company they are stealing the value that US Society has invested into its workforce (and supplied the infrastructure for that workforce to get to the job site etc).

Personally I believe that we should tax not based on where they are located but where most of the value is created. If you are Microsoft and 90% of your workforce is in Washington State but you are incorporate in "Nevada" because you have a PO Box there then you should be taxed at 90% Washington 8% California and 2% Nevada tax rates. Similarly if 80% of your operations are in the US then you are 80% a US company and 80% of your revenue is taxable under US tax law.

Everybody knows that Apple is a California company. To say otherwise is dishonesty. It might legally be correct that Apple is a subsidiary of an Irish shell corporation but they're cheating the system and doing something that doesn't pass any sort of sniff test of truthfulness.

Shouldn't overlook Ikea which is, after all, a not for profit company registered in the Netherlands.
http://www.economist.com/node/...

What is to stop companies registering themselves elsewhere so that they are no longer US companies

Obama's solution is to make the laws even more restrictive by banning companies from leaving. Basically, erect a "Berlin Wall" for business. Of course, this is economic insanity, but it wins him plenty of applause from the Elizabeth Warren wing of the party. Here is an article that explains the issues pretty well.

If US companies can be barred from leaving, what's to stop the Feds from taking the next step and barring US individuals from leaving (or renouncing citizenship)?

What is to stop companies registering themselves elsewhere so that they are no longer US companies

Obama's solution is to make the laws even more restrictive by banning companies from leaving. Basically, erect a "Berlin Wall" for business. Of course, this is economic insanity, but it wins him plenty of applause from the Elizabeth Warren wing of the party. Here is an article that explains the issues pretty well.

Here's a better link to an article from The Economist: http://www.economist.com/blogs...

AS one country after another on the periphery of the euro zone had to swallow painful reforms and fiscal austerity as the price for their bail-outs between 2010 and 2013, the surprise was that by and large they accepted the medicine without a large-scale populist revolt. But Sunday’s result in the Greek election marks a turning-point because Syriza, the radical-left party that has prevailed at the polls, campaigned on casting aside austerity, backtracking on the reforms and renegotiating the vast debt that Greece owes its European creditors. These policies are unacceptable to the euro-zone countries, especially Germany, that have lent Greece so much money. The outcome of the election could also have wider implications. Why does the Greek result matter?

A clash is impending because the Greeks see their recent history in a very different light from that of the Germans and other Europeans who have bailed them out. From the perspective of Northern creditor nations, Greece was the architect of its own misfortune by mismanaging its public finances on a staggering scale. It has been lent an astonishing amount of money in not just one but two bail-outs, amounting to €246 billion ($275 billion), worth more than the country’s entire economic output. From a Greek perspective, however, the country has suffered a calamitous decline in GDP, which at its low in late 2013 was 27% down on its pre-crisis peak. Harsh spending cuts and tax rises have been imposed again and again as conditions for further economic support. Greeks feel that they have lost control of their country, which is now instead being directed by the hated troika: the European Commission, the IMF and the European Central Bank.

Syriza won on Sunday because Alexis Tsipras, the party's leader, offered a message of hope to a country still in despair, even though the economy is now recovering. But the difficulty with his plan for Greece is that it requires other Europeans to finance it—or to countenance a reversal of reforms they regard as vital for Greece to cope with euro-zone membership. If Mr Tsipras makes good on promises of higher spending and lower taxes then Greece will fail to meet its objective of running a big primary budget surplus (ie, before interest payments), which would make it far harder to get its debt down from 175% of GDP. And if he reverses reforms such as the ones that have brought down wages, then Greece will head back towards the uncompetitive economic mess that, along with budgetary mismanagement, got it into trouble in the first place.

In the negotiations that will now occur between Mr Tsipras and Greece’s creditors, Germany will give little ground. Angela Merkel, too, must pay attention to domestic opinion, which would be hostile to any concessions. The German chancellor also has to reckon with the wider impact of any deal that appeared to reward Syriza in emboldening populist revolts in other countries in the euro area, notably in Spain. For any country to leave the euro will be destabilising because it would break the supposed irrevocability of membership. But if Mr Tsipras were to get his way then the euro area would become a club where borrowers rather than lenders called the shots, which would be unsustainable. That is why Mr Tsipras will, before long, face a difficult choice between backing down on his demands—or presiding over a ruinous Greek exit.

What can possibly go wrong?

"It's 106 miles to Chicago, we got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark... and we're wearing sunglasses."

Just my favorite line from the movie.

  Anyway seeing as I wasn't familiar with their government, decided "why curse the darkness when you can light a candle"

http://www.economist.com/news/...

Since then the Nordics have changed course—mainly to the right. Government’s share of GDP in Sweden, which has dropped by around 18 percentage points, is lower than France’s and could soon be lower than Britain’s. Taxes have been cut: the corporate rate is 22%, far lower than America’s. The Nordics have focused on balancing the books. While Mr Obama and Congress dither over entitlement reform, Sweden has reformed its pension system (see Free exchange). Its budget deficit is 0.3% of GDP; America’s is 7%.

On public services the Nordics have been similarly pragmatic. So long as public services work, they do not mind who provides them. Denmark and Norway allow private firms to run public hospitals. Sweden has a universal system of school vouchers, with private for-profit schools competing with public schools. Denmark also has vouchers—but ones that you can top up. When it comes to choice, Milton Friedman would be more at home in Stockholm than in Washington, DC.

It seems they have a very interesting hybrid model based around pragmatism rather than ideology. So they fail Marx and Engels on the mandatory state control of the means of production.

Switzerland seems to have had good results by giving heroin away free to addicts. The key is to give it to them in a way that discourages them to stop.

There was an article in the economist about how statisticians also served in WW II. They were indispensable to making sure that Britain did not starve. Before WW II the country imported most of its food. They enabled it stay in the war undefeated until the entry of the USA.

Among the instances of their success was their analysis of the distribution of German bombs falling on London each day. They concluded that the Germans were trying to destroy the docks but missing. They conducted quality-control in the manufacture of aircraft components, and the calculation of the distribution of stresses on aircraft in flight. The aimed to load planes up to the point that the wings were about to drop off. The research meant the RAF dropped more bombs, and brought more pilots safely home, than it would have otherwise.

They used sequential methods for the first time in trials of medical treatments. Analyzing the results of a trial bit by bit, rather than all at once when it was finished, meant it could be stopped straight away if it became clear that the new treatment was so good that everyone should be getting it, or indeed useless or even dangerous. This simple-sounding idea, now standard in medical trials, requires great statistical sophistication—and saved many lives.

But after the war, so much of this was not integrated into the British educational system. I remember taking a GCSE in math and having to do a project. We had to figure our how to calculate the area under a curve. I asked almost every adult I ran into if they could help me and give me some ideas. No-one had a clue and this included college educated people. It was so sad that no-one recognized this as as the primary question behind integration and half of calculus. British people had forgotten all that Newton and Leibniz (albeit that he was not a Brit) had accomplished.

No-one told us that 60 miles up the road DNA's structure had been discovered at Cambridge by Watson and Crick on 1953. No-one talked about Allan Turing and his Turing Machine. No-one would teach me anything about electronics in high school despite my begging and interest beyond a basic physics class. No-one talked about James Clerk Maxwell and his relations in thermodynamics. No-one had a clue about statistics. No one screamed off the rooftops the central dogma of biology - we merely had to memorize the names of bones and muscles in the human body. The phrase 'normal distribution' was not used. People in the USA at least have a vague sense of what 23 and me is. In the UK so many people I know have no idea. They see genetics as so foreign - oh the irony. The math and science teachers were mean and the books not very helpful. I learned all about British STEM history but only when in the USA.

There was a time when inventors, manufacturing, science, technology and innovation was celebrated in Britain. Now the only time you hear about science is when people are discussing global warming. They spend their energy in opposition to building anything new. There are parts of London where 1/3 of the buildings are listed and cannot be torn down and rebuilt. People oppose new high speed rail projects. They oppose new home building despite the data showing the UK being short of 1 million homes. They axiomatically oppose genetically modified crops disregarding that at least some of them are helping to alleviate malnutrition. Where has your sense of innovation gone, United Kingdom? You argue now about whether to be in the EU, whether Scotland should leave, and whether more spying will solve your Islamic extremist problem.

Why not aim to spend 1% of GDP on R&D and build institutions like the NIH and NSF? Why not have almost all school children complete the equivalent of pre-caclulus, Calc I and Calc II, and intro to statistics by age 16? Why not set aside land to allow high end manufacturing using 3D pri

Nope. You're also wrong about the development of the language. Care to cite something?

"He who bestows his goods upon the poor shall have as much again, and ten times more."
John Bunyan (1626-1688).

Goods + 10 x Goods = 11 x Goods

This has not changed in the last 350 years.

This document, titled "Common Errors in Forming Arithmetic Comparisons" might help. See "Seven Common Errors" number 6.

Confusing ‘times as much’ with ‘times more than’: If B is three times as much as A, then B is two times more than A – not three times more than A. The essential feature is the difference is between ‘as much as’ and ‘more than.’ ‘As much as’ indicates a ratio; ‘more than’ indicates a difference. ‘More than’ means ‘added onto the base’. This essential difference is ignored by those who say that ‘times’ is dominant so that ‘three times as much’ is really the same as ‘three times more than.’

Or how about this one, from The Economist magazine's style guide:

Take care. Three times more than x means four times as much as x."

Perhaps you might be interested in the style gude from the Institute of Physics.

"Five times as much" does not mean the same as "five times more than" (i.e. six times as much) –the first is multiplicative, the second additive.

English speakers really only started getting sloppy with this in the last 100 years or so.

If you're wrong once, and then you're wrong two more times, how many total times are you wrong?

At this point, it's pretty obvious that you are the troll.

That article expresses one theory. Of course it doesn't mention the fact that the economy in Texas has been besting the national average since long before the shale boom. Since right about time we started electing Republican governors, of turns out.

But saying it doesn't make it so. You cite no metric, or evidence, or source to support - or even clearly define - your claim.

Lets take a look to see if this is real, or good old Texas bragging.

Since the current Republican hold on the governorship began with Bush in 1995, lets look at an actual chart of Texas relative performance. What we see is that the ratio of the Texas per capital GDP to that of the overall U.S. sank after 1997 (it did worse than the rest of the nation) and did not recover to its same relative economic performance until 2010, with the recovery occurring after 2006 --- or just at the time oil shale arrested Texas's declining oil production.

So no, your claim is a fantasy.

I charted the data and like looked anxiously to see which party had better economic growth. It turned out that both parties had years of high growth and low, all over the place. The chart made one thing very obvious, though. Economic growth had ALWAYS improved under every Republican administration, and always got worse under every Democrat administration's budgets. No exceptions.

My, my, my. What a nice little story. Full of angst, with a surprise, and to you, heart-warming ending.

It is a shame we have only your word that you didn't just, you know, make this all up. You cite no specific figures for any administration, or overall figures, that could be easily checked to see if you did any of the math correctly. I guess you figured that everyone would have to perform (I won't say "replicate") the whole analysis to check to see if you aren't just blowing smoke.

Problem is, lots of other people have done this exact same analysis, and consistently come to the opposite conclusion. Just try Googling it. Look for example at the Conservative British economics journal The Economist. Their analysis is interesting because they find it embarrassing to admit and look for ways to turn a silk purse into a pig's ear.

According to the best estimates out there, the US pays substantially more for Medicare fraud (even excluding Medicaid fraud, which is something state governments would handle) than for unreimbursed care. But don't let reality interrupt your little fantasy of how the world works.

Some (muslims) seem to agree with you:

http://www.economist.com/blogs...

I can't believe nobody has mentioned this, but "daily commute", even when it's not all that long, is consistently among the most hated timesinks. I don't think results like this are terribly surprising: http://www.economist.com/blogs.... A technical and economic advantage is you can do something else while "driving" between home and work, without taking on the compromises of public transit (which may not be available at all, may take a long time or be beholden to a schedule that's incompatible with your lifestyle, or may otherwise be unpleasant).

I can't *wait* to have a self-driving car.

was under the impression there is a relationship between supply and demand

There's a relationship, but like all commodities it's more complicated than that. But the futures markets and all sorts of stuff completely unrelated to supply and demand also are huge factors.

It is long past the point where these things happen in isolation.

I seriously doubt even this comes close to explaining it:

The oil price is partly determined by actual supply and demand, and partly by expectation. Demand for energy is closely related to economic activity. It also spikes in the winter in the northern hemisphere, and during summers in countries which use air conditioning. Supply can be affected by weather (which prevents tankers loading) and by geopolitical upsets. If producers think the price is staying high, they invest, which after a lag boosts supply. Similarly, low prices lead to an investment drought. OPEC's decisions shape expectations: if it curbs supply sharply, it can send prices spiking. Saudi Arabia produces nearly 10m barrels a day--a third of the OPEC total.

Four things are now affecting the picture. Demand is low because of weak economic activity, increased efficiency, and a growing switch away from oil to other fuels. Second, turmoil in Iraq and Libya--two big oil producers with nearly 4m barrels a day combined--has not affected their output. The market is more sanguine about geopolitical risk. Thirdly, America has become the worldâ(TM)s largest oil producer. Though it does not export crude oil, it now imports much less, creating a lot of spare supply. Finally, the Saudis and their Gulf allies have decided not to sacrifice their own market share to restore the price. They could curb production sharply, but the main benefits would go to countries they detest such as Iran and Russia. Saudi Arabia can tolerate lower oil prices quite easily. It has $900 billion in reserves. Its own oil costs very little (around $5-6 per barrel) to get out of the ground.

I'm not playing with words at all. I'm saying that modern economics is FAR more complex than "when demand goes up price goes up". Modern economics is full of vagaries, speculation, collusion, and other bullshit.

Despite claims to the contrary, economists don't know much more about how the economy works than you or I ... because economics is at least 50% ideology.

You look for, and see, the outcomes you believe in.

What economics is not, is an objective natural law. It's a series of observations which may or may not extend as far as people who use it claims, and whose premises may or may not be reliable.

Economics is NOT a real science. There's a lot more voodoo in it that people admit.

I know you're being facetious, but there are people in the real world working on maximum safety without compromising our ability to get shit done: see the article "Why Sweden Has So Few Road Deaths". While of course expecting zero traffic deaths is not particularly reasonable as an actual expectation (some idiot will always try hard to spoil your stats...), it's worth noting that they've been successful at making their roads the world's safest, and lower speed limits are part of the formula.

Easy thing to say when you aren't the guy working 16 hours without a break making over-priced iShinies.

Yet, if you actually ask factory workers in poor countries what they want, one of their biggest desires is for LONGER HOURS. Many of them are rural migrants, often women, separated from their spouses and children. Their focus is on making as much money as possible, in the shortest time, so they can go back to their home village. They are not interested in TVs in the break room, spacious dormitories, or other things that YOU may think are important. Stop projecting your values and priorities onto people that you know nothing about.

Instead of looking at factory workers as unthinking drones, that need first-world do-gooders to decide what is best for them, perhaps you should consider what they have to say, about their own lives:

Do campaigns for “ethical supply chains” help workers?
The voices of China's workers

Apparently the real culprit is Montessori schools.

http://www.economist.com/news/...

The happy clappy, drippy hippy, touchy feely bastards,

> Wow. I mean, I travel a ton and get annoyed by the TSA as much as the next guy, but you really think it's OK to take a gun onto an airplane?

What matters here is the context - the TSA needs to justify its 7+ billion dollar budget. Add to that the net drain on national economic productivity of all the time wasted by every single passenger who is slowed down by the excessive process, plus the cost of all that personal stuff they make people dump in those collection barrels. All that money, and all they are catching are a bunch of idiots who forgot that they were carrying.

When you consider that the TSA has a detection failure rate of 70% that means for every gun they do confiscate, 2 more get through. And yet we have had zero gun related problems on aircraft for the entire lifetime of the TSA. So, that says to me that while letting people carry guns on planes isn't the wisest idea, it isn't all that much of a problem. Certainly not a 7 billion dollar problem.

According to the Economist, in the future we will all live to 300 and work.

Buses do nothing when they're stuck in the same traffic everyone else is.

I would take exception to this!

1) Time spent on a bus is time not spent concentrating on traffic. Relax, read a book, maybe do some work.

2) Every person on a bus is a car not on the road, and that results in sharply lighter traffic.

I honestly have no idea why buses aren't free. Putting a bit of economics behind the problem can make a dramatic difference, even eliminating traffic jams completely.

Haha, wow... What an incredibly narrow view of the world you have. These "laws" are absolutely not nonsense. It is a real, broadly documented effect that the cost to produce goods in a large industry continually declines as a manufacturer learns over and over all the places they can reduce costs. http://www.economist.com/node/... [economist.com]
I would rather say: what an idiotic few of the world you have, or on economics.

You can not reduce cost for manufacturing something below the costs of the raw materials, the energy and transportation of said thing.

If your idea would be right prices would drop all the time instead of INCREASING all the time, ah, you did not notice that beer, bread, milk butter: IS NOT CHEAPER than 30 years ago?

These laws apply to all kinds of things though... I'm sure it applies to tires, paper, pencils, shoes, televisions, LEDs, batteries, windows, magnets, etc. As long as an industry is growing - there will be money to invest in lowering costs. No it does not ... a magnet is a magnet is a magnet ... there is no way to make a stronger one or a significantly cheaper one ... costs can not lowered to zero. It is as simple as that.

Haha, wow... What an incredibly narrow view of the world you have. These "laws" are absolutely not nonsense. It is a real, broadly documented effect that the cost to produce goods in a large industry continually declines as a manufacturer learns over and over all the places they can reduce costs. http://www.economist.com/node/...

A manufacturer may come up with a trick to increase yield one year, so that there is 10% less product that falls out of the line after manufacturing due to defects. They may build more factories closer to consumers to reduce delivery costs. They may buy bigger machines to spit out twice as much goods for the same amount of labor, cutting labor costs in half. Their suppliers could get better at making the machines, offering faster machines for the same price - cutting down on overhead costs per part. The mines who supply the silicon could get more customers and invest in better machinery too, similarly decreasing their costs (which they can pass on to the consumer of those materials). Researchers can find new materials (like carbon for solar) that are cheaper than traditional materials. They could double efficiency for the same amount of material, cutting costs in half again.

Companies continually improve their processes to maintain their edge in a competitive marketplace. There is always someone who will come in and undercut you, so you need to be able to continually improve your processes or you will die. The whole phenomenon of continually lower prices was identified in the 1960's, and has repeatedly been shown to be valid over long terms. Moore's law for semiconductors is one great example, and solar panels still have huge demand above what we currently need them for. These laws apply to all kinds of things though... I'm sure it applies to tires, paper, pencils, shoes, televisions, LEDs, batteries, windows, magnets, etc. As long as an industry is growing - there will be money to invest in lowering costs.

You do need a place to put solar panels, but every rooftop in the country has more than enough room to power the underlying building with solar using just today's 20% efficient solar cells. We need power at night, but Elon Musk thinks lithium batteries will work just fine, and we have enough lithium to increase our use 20% every single year for 30 years before we'd need to even look for more. Lithium is one of the most abundant materials on the planet and the batteries are easy to recycle. Musk has said he plans on selling 30% of the batteries from his new factory to solar home customers (and he already owns a solar panel factory and a solar installation and leasing company). A solar-driven world seems very, very plausible.

Plus, we literally cannot afford to keep burning fossil fuels. We have no choice but to go carbon neutral and nuclear is not the option. We get free power from the sun. It is absolutely silly not to take advantage of it. Those fossil fuels we love? They were originally plants that grew from the sun or animals that ate plants that grew from the sun. Everything on Earth exists because of the vast power of the sun.

My experience is that most companies do NOT check. I have worked for half a dozen tech companies, over several decades, and have been involved in hiring over a hundred people. Except for a couple cases that involved security clearances, we never did a criminal background check. Why should we? Studies have shown that people with criminal backgrounds tend to do no worse on the job. You are better off screening out people that use MSIE to fill out their application, since that is actually correlated with poor job performance.

From the economist article: "For instance, firms routinely cull job candidates with a criminal record. Yet the data suggest that for certain jobs there is no correlation with work performance."

That implies that for some or most jobs, having a criminal record does correlate with doing a worse job. I feel really sorry for the original poster. I hope he/she can find a good job. However as someone who has had to hire people I can attest to the fact that even relatively minor criminal offenses seem to indicate irresponsibility. I can't say I have a big enough statistical sample. However recently I hired someone who had previously committed a DUI. That was their only criminal offense.

It became quickly apparent that they should never have been hired. I had to deal with someone who regularly took time out of work to carry out personal errands. I had to stop them from going home in the middle of the day to pick something up - and they had no expectation of making up the time. I asked them to carry out a task in a specific way, aware of the pitfalls of the alternatives. They were obstinate and as a consequence wasted a lot of my time. They were a little dishonest about the time they put in at work. On their first day they forgot to bring necessary items to work.

I had a similar experience with someone else. IMHO the issue with breaking the law is not so much the act itself. Rather, it is indicative of someone who does not think about the consequences of their actions, does not responsibly think through whether something is a good idea and not just act on an impulse, does not think about how an action will effect other people, and lacks a sense of what is appropriate social behavior. It also often indicates a lack of respect for other people's property. Finally they often lack the inability to coherently think about a problem and then formulate a plan that addresses it considering possible things that might go wrong. This is also why credit scores are so useful - they often communicate in might finer detail the degree to which someone grapples with these issues.

The last point is quite salient. Quite often if the criminal would have considered how their action addressed their problem, they would have realized that the long term consequences of the action don't justify the action as a solution to their problem. For example: stealing from a store may get you the iPad but it isn't worth going to jail over. And indeed those who have occasionally broken the law and gotten away with it due to precise and intricate planning may not have that problem. (Not that I am in any way condoning such behavior.)

At this point, if I was hiring someone with a drug abuse history, I would be somewhat forgiving about their being an addict. But I would want to know why they took their first puff or drink or injection. They weren't addicted at that time. There is no 'right answer' to that question but I think it might allow me to see what sort of person I am dealing with. If they say 'I don't know', then clearly I cannot hire them - they lack insight and probably cannot think about their actions and their repercussions. If they say that they were pressured into it by a group of their peers who called them a pussy for not taking a smoke at a party - well I would be a lot more understanding.

Notaries are possibly the highest paid professionals in Italy, thanks to the government tightly limiting their numbers: http://www.economist.com/node/...

While it sucks, there's a good reason why companies have asked people about their past criminal history or have done searches.

My experience is that most companies do NOT check. I have worked for half a dozen tech companies, over several decades, and have been involved in hiring over a hundred people. Except for a couple cases that involved security clearances, we never did a criminal background check. Why should we? Studies have shown that people with criminal backgrounds tend to do no worse on the job. You are better off screening out people that use MSIE to fill out their application, since that is actually correlated with poor job performance.

Quite often it isn't about whether they can do the job, it is about legal liability. like it or not hiring a known felony can have other legal knock on effects for the organisation, similarly not doing those background checks can be even worse from a liability perspective as it shows a failure to do due diligence should an incident occur. It can also have many other side effects like make it difficult to travel to other countries, a huge issue in many roles, it can also be an issue in obtaining certain contracts that stipulate you have background checks on everyone and that they are not felons.

While it sucks, there's a good reason why companies have asked people about their past criminal history or have done searches.

My experience is that most companies do NOT check. I have worked for half a dozen tech companies, over several decades, and have been involved in hiring over a hundred people. Except for a couple cases that involved security clearances, we never did a criminal background check. Why should we? Studies have shown that people with criminal backgrounds tend to do no worse on the job. You are better off screening out people that use MSIE to fill out their application, since that is actually correlated with poor job performance.

Thanks for the link, AC: http://www.economist.com/blogs...
"Working hours: Get a life ... The Greeks are some of the most hardworking in the OECD, putting in over 2,000 hours a year on average. Germans, on the other hand, are comparative slackers, working about 1,400 hours each year. But German productivity is about 70% higher. ... So maybe we should be more self-critical about how much we work. Working less may make us more productive. And, as Russell argued, working less will guarantee âoehappiness and joy of life, instead of frayed nerves, weariness, and dyspepsia"."

Interesting comments there like on work culture in South Korea, and I've just read the first couple comments of hundreds...

So, back to Cabrini Green? I'd also like to know where you get your numbers from.

How about a fact-check of a statement by theHUD secretary?

I had to look up Cabrini Green, and have to say 'not really'. The individual housing areas would be much smaller in number. The housing project you mentioned was originally aimed at low-income people, not the outright homeless.

Half the sentence? Okay. Less likely to come back? You can't guarantee something like that.

Put unstated 'on average' in there and you most certainly can. We've long passed the point of efficiency. Heck, compare our success rate with nordic countries and it shows that despite longer sentences we have worse outcomes, and that's after you control for crimes committed and everything else. Long prison sentences for stupid shit(like drug use) don't work, especially when the expense of the long sentence means that you end up not treating, rehabilitating, and training the prisoner.

If anything, I was being conservative about the benefits. Nordic countries manage to have 1/3rd the recidivism with 1/3rd the prison sentence(on average). Given how much we pay to incarcerate somebody for a year, how could this NOT be cheaper?

As for 'dumping recidivist offenders back on the street' - that's the POINT of making prison about reform - so they AREN'T nearly as likely to re-offend the moment they get back on the street. A 20% recidivism rate after 5 years of prison means LESS CRIME on the street than a 60% recidivism rate after 15.

Or did you NOT notice that the country's multi-TRILLION dollar debt load.

Ahem, original post: "help with the federal deficit". Besides that, I'm not sure how you came to the conclusion that I was ignoring our debt load when proposing 3 major policy changes all centered around saving money. Fortunately our deficit is down below $500B this year, which means that with only a minimum of extra belt tightening(see my proposals) to actually balance the thing. Then we can start paying off the debt.

Of course, attacking me as opposed to a strawman wouldn't let you do a good rant, now would it?

Oh. That's cute. Expecting the state governments to kick in money out of the goodness of their hearts.

You need to work on your reading comprehension. I'll restate: The federal and state governments combined already spend more than enough on healthcare to cover everybody in the USA under a system that reduces healthcare costs in the USA to the median of developed nations. Indeed, since the Federal government alone could cover 90% of the bill with CURRENT spending, on average individual states would experience SUBSTANTIAL SAVINGS.

Sorry, unless someone's pockets are being lined at every step of the way, don't expect it to EVER get done.

That's an excuse to do nothing about anything and you know it. We're not going to fix the problems we face doing nothing.

You're also expecting 100% participation, no recidivism, and nobody abusing the system.

...Boy, you don't know me at all.
100% participation - Why do I need this? 100% participation in what?
No recidivism - 'less likely to come back(to prison)' is certainly not 'No recidivism'. In the case of the reforms I'm looking at, it's more like reducing the current 60% return rate down to 20%.
Nobody abusing the system - Not writing a book, but I always figure on a certain level of abuse. That's what auditors and such are for, to keep that to a minimum.

" And the actual metric you attempt to generally cite is bogusmips."

Here is a citation for you:

"This week the International Monetary Fund updated its data on the world economy. For the first time it ranks China’s economy as the world’s biggest in purchasing-power-parity terms. Historians, though, point out that China is merely regaining a title that it has held for much of recorded history. In 1820 it probably produced one-third of global economic output. The brief interlude in which America overshadowed it is now over."

http://www.economist.com/news/...

I assume you meant a chart like this one. The other link you provided sends me to a gas cost calculator.

I love how the chart purposefully EXCLUDES countries with large land masses and lower population density like Australia, Canada, Norway, Russia, etc. Unfortunately, it's a complete no-brainer that countries with higher population density need to prevent people from driving their own car. One way is to increase the gas tax. The other way is to make the drivers license for new drivers insanely expensive and almost impossible to get.