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The average price of a new car in the US is $30K nowadays. A BMW 3-series starts at $32K, and given that Tesla started out going after the market dominated by things like the BMW 7 series, S-Class Mercedes, Audi A8 and Lexus LS, it's not surprising that the next market(s) they would go after would be similar -- the SUV will compete against things like the BMW, Mercedes and Lexus models and the smaller car will compete against the 3-Series, Audi A4 and Lexus models. The luxury auto business has higher margins and people who can afford those higher margins tend to want more of the latest anything -- phone, computer, tablet, clothes, thermostat, food/drink, etc. It would probably not be unreasonable to assume that the buyer Tesla is targeting is someone who likely has a fairly recent smartphone, luxury car less than five years old, owns a home, is married, and is in their late 30's to early 50's. They likely have a fairly established career, a family, and an income around $150K before taxes. They aren't going after the people who are shopping the Ford Fiesta, Toyota Yaris and Honda Fit, or recent college grads, or people with their first job. They are pretty much going after the same people Audi did when they were rebuilding themselves.

As someone who is shopping in the $15K range for my next car, and who is very close to hitting 200K miles on the current one, I largely agree with you. I have come around to the point where I'm aggressively eliminating all debt that I possibly can, with the eventual goal of being debt free. Pouring 40K into something that's going to be regularly doused with road salt, snow, rain, mud and will eventually wear out entirely seems like a waste of money. I need a car to get around, get to work, visit family and friends -- for my lifestyle there is definite value which owning an automobile provides, there is no denying that. But at this point in my life I can say that I'd rather spend $15K on a compact sedan that will accomplish all I need it to do than spend $40K on something that largely does the same thing. That extra $25K can go towards retiring debt, funding college for the kids, paying down the mortgage, etc.

Sources on the 30K price:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/mo...
http://www.autoblog.com/2012/0...

Sources on Audi:
http://www.npr.org/2011/11/29/...
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money...

CBC's article is just a Canadian take on things. The original article (just as scary) is here:

Well, yes. But it's hardly "original" -- this is a problem that has been profiled extensively for years, yet few people seem to realize how far it extends. A couple of times over the past year, when posters on Slashdot mentioned random forfeitures that happened to them, they were met with comments saying, "You must have done something suspicious" or "What's the rest of the story," and I tried to provide links to point out the systemic problem, but have been met with ignorance and resistance.

For a sample of past coverage, here's an extensive piece from The New Yorker a year ago, a piece from Reason in 2012, a piece from Forbes in 2011, pieces in Slate and The Economist from 2010, a detailed piece on NPR from 2008, etc., etc., etc. Here's an extensive account of problems with the system from PBS almost 15 years ago (around the time that legal reform forced money to go to local municipalities in many cases rather than the federal government). The ACLU has been fighting this for decades.

I know some people here may be well aware of this problem, and others may find this shocking and new. Regardless, it's very sad that it may take other countries' shaming us into taking action to fix an unjust assault on our citizens that has been going on for many years.

Yeah, small local communities.. like Philadelphia.

It's a brave new world in the USSA. NSA tracking (probably a fraction of what we know about), police kicking you out of your home without charges, and so on. The worst part is we have a whole new generation of cops and lawyers growing up where all this is the norm. It makes the next encroachment seem that much less outlandish.

Either get off the grid or get wealthy / connected. Or be content being cattle.

The New England Patriots make about $428M a year across 16 games, each of which takes an average of 192 minutes. That works out to about $139K per minute. If Bill Belichick thinks he can work more efficiently with papyrus and a scribe, there'd be a tiny replica of the Nile in the basement of Gillette Stadium by the end of the day.

That's how the Harvard kid got busted classically calling in a bomb threat on test day. The feds looked for outgoing Tor traffic from the Harvard LAN, which requires a MAC address BTW.

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

You linked to a Forbes article?

That's how the Harvard kid got busted classically calling in a bomb threat on test day. The feds looked for outgoing Tor traffic from the Harvard LAN, which requires a MAC address BTW.

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

Really vastly right leaning? Did you read about the Pew Research study that showed MSNBC to be even mored biased, and opinionated than Fox News?

I assume you're talking about this study, with further commentary here? This story was then reported by some outlets as saying that MSNBC was most "opinionated" by far (e.g., here).

If so, your use of the word "opinionated" is very misleading, and the study did not even address issues of who is "more biased."

Read the study. It's basically about the difference between type of programming. The cable news networks used to present much more of the traditional anchor looking into the camera and saying, "And now, for our next story..." -- that's "factual reporting," according to Pew.

What this study found was that cable news networks have increasingly moved to "opinion" or commentary-driven shows, with pundits talking or debating, rather than just "reading the news." MSNBC has a LOT of these shows, and much more than CNN or Fox. But that doesn't mean they are more "opinionated" or "biased" -- it just means that they have more commentary-focused shows (probably because it's cheaper to get some idiots to talk ABOUT the news than it is to put actual reporters out into the field and do research).

In any case, this says nothing about bias. It's possible for an "opinion" show to be relatively balanced, for example if guests are invited from across the ideological spectrum and treated with respect. It is also very possible for "factual reporting" to be incredibly biased -- for example, imagine a network that reported every single negative story it could find about a Democratic politician and every positive story about a Republican, but never reported the positive Dem stories or the negative Rep stories. (Or the reverse...) All of the reporting could be "factual" here, but the selection of stories could lead to a much greater overarching bias.

(I haven't really watched either one of these networks in years, so I don't have a personal stake in these arguments. But aside from a different Pew study that found a somewhat greater bias in presentation of candidates in 2012 on MSNBC than Fox, I'm not familiar with any Pew studies that have actually found greater OVERALL "bias" on liberal vs. conservative issues on MSNBC.)

I work for a portal company; if you have one of the major ISPs in the United States, you (well, actually, your non-tech-savvy family members) probably use our services in one way or another. We've been pushing out tablet and phone versions of the portals and we have been forced to add auto-play videos. One of our marketing people was shocked - shocked I say - when he asked me what I thought of our current phone portal and my response was, "I'm glad I have flash blocked and ads blocked." I went on to tell him that I generally don't mind ads if they're not obnoxious, but auto-play videos and all that crap are not only an extremely poor user experience but they also waste tons of bandwidth that I, quite frankly, cannot (and will not) afford on my data plan.

It isn't that us software folks don't tell our marketing folks this stuff. We do. Constantly. We HATE it when we have to add more tracking code and video advertisements and other crap like that, but unfortunately too many companies see only short term dollar signs. They are "Short Term Greedy" instead of "Long Term Greedy" and they will, eventually, be badly hurt because of this.

Why do you think one of the fastest ways to become a millionaire in the US is to be elected to Congress or the Senate?

This comment pre-dated an extremely relevant example by a week, one I felt necessary to mention before the comments go into archive: Former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor has been hired by "small independent investment bank" Moelis & Co. "Moelis & Co.’s new vice-chairman and managing director will get a $3.4 million pay package between September and the end of 2015."

Dude lost the primary because he was too focused on federal matters (and that whole immigration thing...) and, as punishment, he gets a job where he will likely do jack all (to my knowledge he has no experience in investment banking)--except, perhaps, talking to the current crop of Congresscritters about how to best pass laws that help banks--for the tidy sum of $3.4 MILLION for just a bit over a year's work. Jon Stewart does a nice rip of him over this.

That case is under appeal and therefore not in effect.

U.S. Hikes Fee To Renounce Citizenship By 422%

To leave America, you generally must prove 5 years of U.S. tax compliance. If you have a net worth greater than $2 million or average annual net income tax for the 5 previous years of $157,000 or more for 2014 (thatâ(TM)s tax, not income), you pay an exit tax. It is a capital gain tax as if you sold your property when you left. At least thereâ(TM)s an exemption of $680,000 for 2014. Long-term residents giving up a Green Card can be required to pay the tax too.

Now, the State Department interim rule just raised the fee for renunciation of U.S. citizenship to $2,350 from $450. Critics note that itâ(TM)s more than twenty times the average level in other high-income countries. The State Department says itâ(TM)s about demand on their services and all the extra workload they have to process people who are on their way out.

You are no longer born a free person, you are born into slavery. You have to buy your freedom and the price will keep going up. At $450 the price was already 4.5 times higher than in most other countries. Now it will be nearly 24 times more than for other countries.

You should be able to renounce your citizenship and leave for free, instead you are going to be prevented from leaving at all eventually, they'll jack up the price to the share of your national debt that you are born into and that is borrowed on your behalf by your government and only the wealthiest slaves will be able to get out. They will definitely prevent you from leaving eventually if you have any debts at all, including your student debt. The 2350USD change is starting on the 12th of September 2014, you can still get out at a low low price of 450USD.

Those walls they are building on your borders, they are not there to keep others out, they are there to keep you in. IRS is part of that system.

Question, why do you (generally speaking) feel the need to lump all the people who disagree with you together into one group, give that group a sarcastic name,

I call the people involved in this scandal "Social Justice Warriors (SJWs)" principally because I refuse to insult the feminist or progressive movements by calling these people with feminists or progressives. Genuine second-wave feminists have publicly criticised their behaviour.

If you want to understand the difference, look up the #Gamergate and #NotYourShield hashtags on twitter. The Social Justice Warriors are hateful, disingenuous, at times sociopathic bigots. They are adult, internet-empowered versions of the bullies and tormentors which many gamers remember from secondary school.

Gamers are the victims here. The modus-operandi of the SJWs is to cast themselves in the cloth of underprivileged groups -- most SJWs are in fact white, upper middle class, college aged -- then proceed to level accusations of privilege, bigotry, and misogyny against just about anyone involved in gaming for even the slightest perceived infractions. A climate of fear has developed, first in the indie and later wider gaming industry as a result of the "social justice" witchhunts which these people regularly engage in. Worse, this has resulted in SJW-aligned developers and journalists rising to positions of power and being first in line for awards and increasingly development funding, with cronyism trumping competence.

For Gaming, so often a hobby of last resort for the excluded and isolated in society, this is an awful and tragic outcome. For gamers, male, female, straight, gay or trans, it is a frightening development. Their hobby, their refuge, is being taken over by bullies.

Because their rhetoric and especially actions come across as so farcically disingenuous, I don't believe for a second that SJWs actually believe in or support the causes of homosexuals or transgender people in video games. Their support for women is also largely forced, and disturbingly biased towards the conservative view of women as a weaker sex who must be protected/defended (A view consistently challenged by the games industry over the years).

My honest opinion of SJWs is that they are privileged Neo-liberals, who adopt a forced social justice persona both to project their own (increasingly obvious) bigotry onto others, and ultimately to benefit themselves socially and financially. They are disingenuous, extremist bullies, and the gaming community is under co-ordinated PR attack, and has been almost completely censored on gaming websites.

The Social Justice Warriors are right about one thing though; this is a historical moment. Whether they win or lose, the GamerGate scandal will be seen as a watershed moment in the history of online-communities, and who controls them. Two weeks ago, I would never have believed that a clique so small could all but take-over a community so large, but it is becoming clear that this is precisely what (almost?) happened to gaming. There are lessons to be learned here, unrelated to the immediate issues, and I only hope the right people will take note and heed them.

Facebook now taps into smartphone microphones "just to get a 'fingerprint' that we don't save". This will drive up data usage as well, and is also being done clandestinely.

You math is off on a number of counts. The tax incentive is between 5.6% and 17.6% depending on the model, options and state incentives. Tesla Model S prices range from $71,070 to $132,420. Incentives start with a federal incentive of $7,500 plus up to an additional $5,000 incentive depending on your state.

However, I think that your largest mis-calculation is assuming that electric car sales would go down if we eliminated ALL automobile related subsidies. It is easy to see how much the unsubsidised cost of owning and operating an electric car would be, but what would be the impact if we stopped providing oil exploration subsidies, direct oil company operating incentives, and oil shipping lane protection services. I let you off on the cost of wars being that cost is split among protecting oil supplies, protecting international stability, providing humnatarian aid, and just pumping up good ol' American pride. :) Oh, and let's not forget the 100% incentive for purchasing a highend SUV. http://www.forbes.com/sites/ja...

I'll give you a hint . . . the average annual operating cost of a gas powered vehicle would increase by a more than $5,000 per year (assuming oil companies were able to protect shipping lanes at military rates instead of full commercial service rates).

I beleive that a person should make decisions about education for themselves. But, I also think people should use some data in those decisions.

1. Employment Projections from BLS (http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_chart_001.htm)
2. The College Degrees With The Highest Starting Salaries

If you read the chart and the article and then conclude that college is not worth it for your profession, so be it. It is also your prerogative to completely ignore my opinions or any opinions in the original article.

Credit card fraud costs everyone involved $190 BILLION in loses per year alone. I'm pretty sure the tech would be cheaper in the long run.

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

The various flight ceilings on commercial aviation might speak to that, but I seriously doubt any court is going to interpret the law as being about property rights as opposed to public safety / nuisance.

I used to seriously doubt that any court in the US would allow a lawsuit against an inanimate object, but apparently many municipal governments make fat bank doing just that, all the time, with Philadelphia leading the pack.

Now I know better than to "seriously doubt" any of the the idiotic things our legal system allows for.

The Western side of Antarctica has gained some mass but not enough to counteract the much more massive amount the Eastern side has lost. So, a much larger net negative.

What I find most amazing is this: 97% of the best climate scientists we have on earth have concluded that we have a problem. The insurance companies ["How The Insurance Industry Sees Climate Change", "For Insurers, No Doubts on Climate Change", "Rift Widening Between Energy and Insurance on Climate Change", "Insurer's Message: Prepare for Climate Change or Get Sued", "On Climate Change: Get Ready or Get Sued" have concluded we have a problem. But, in the interest of sticking with their political druthers, a significant fraction of the American population has decided that 97% of the climate scientists and the insurance companies must be wrong. These people--Conservatives, essentially--are willing to take a risk that 3% of climate scientists are correct and that the insurance companies and 97% of climate scientists are wrong--merely because it serves their political persuasion.

Do you think that Liberals would be successful at convincing 97% of climate scientists to take our point of view and the insurance companies too if this were bullshit? Yet, all these wiseass Conservatives are willing to take a risk with our frickin' planet just so they can jam a finger in the eye of their political rivals--ignoring the reality that has the potential to end life on the damned planet. In short, WTF is going on in the mind of Conservatives? How do you look at all these insurance companies and think: "It's a Liberal plot!" Can you be so stupid?

You do realize that most of the ethics rules for contributions were written in response to Armand Hammer's blatant purchase of Al Gore Sr? But you just keep believing which PACs are evil.

The Forbes 2014 Billionaires List disagrees with your assessment. Looking at the list:

#6 Charles Koch $41.9 B $0 78 diversified United States
#6 David Koch $41.9 B $0 74 diversified United States

#27 George Soros $23 B $0 84 hedge funds United States

Clearly nowhere near the '20x' mark you cite.

In terms of tactics, clearly the Kochs are amateurs compared to Soros. If I were the Kochs, I'd hire a team to emulate the buying patterns Soros has accomplished for influence. He's almost singularly purchased more media outlets than any other billionaire on Forbe's list, financed 527 organizations with the sole purpose of ousting Bush 43, financed revolutions, created his own personal brown shirts around the world, and had more access to the current President than any other figures of either party. The Kochs could learn a lot from him.

Amazon recently announced it was getting into the advertisement business, and it beat out Google to acquire Twitch.

Pure speculation on my part, but I have to wonder if this is just Google's CEO trying to steal some of the spotlight away from Amazon?

The real reason Amazon scooped Twitch and not Google was Google was worried about anti-trust issues if it bought Twitch .

Amazon didn't get Twitch because they paid more than Google (Google offered more), Google walked away worried. Twitch probably egged Amazon on to get more money from Amazon after Google went away.

Eye Problems From Space Affect At Least 21 NASA Astronauts

Oh noes! All of the future Space Pirates are now in serious trouble!

Captain: Arrr, ye matys! Let's board that tiny hauler thair before they knows what hit them. Ther'll be treasure enough for us all!
Crewmember 1: Arrr, ey, capt'in!
(Captain runs to the gangway in order to board the other ship.) "Open port -- board and attaaaack!"
Crewmember 2: Ey ey, capt'in!
Crewmember 1: But Capt'in! Ey -- my ey! I can't see the controls to dock us! (Door slides open. Entire problem shortly solved.)

Thus, Global Warming continues unabated. The world is doomed. News at 11.
And now, a word from our sponsor: LensCrafters is now selling asbestos-tinted glasses with cutlass frames. Hurry before supplies run out!

Wrong :

- The term "data science" (originally used interchangeably with "datalogy") has existed for over thirty years and was used initially as a substitute for computer science by Peter Naur in 1960. In 1974, Naur published Concise Survey of Computer Methods, which freely used the term data science in its survey of the contemporary data processing methods that are used in a wide range of applications.
- big data history. Words coined at least 15 years old probably more. History, at least back 70 years
- analytics I won't discuss about, so generic terminoly, so old concept.

Yeah, really? How about Forbes: http://www.forbes.com/2010/08/...

Except they do http://www.forbes.com/sites/je... ... even if they shouldn't.

Oh, and if Slate is not enough for you, here's Forbes: http://www.forbes.com/2010/08/... It's even more damning.

Sorry. Wrong.

Nuclear has by far the lowest deathprint.

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

The most efficient project team is one really good engineer and one business person

Business and engineering are not really separate things. Good engineering always considers cost, and engineering problem solving can often be applied to business situations. One third of the CEOs in the S&P 500 are engineers, and their companies are more successful than average.

I started a post with the aim to thoroughly rebuke you and refute your claim. The first place I looked was a Google search for standard warranties which gives US manufacturers' warranties as about the same lengths as foreign warranties. Next I looked for how well manufcaturers actually stand by their warranties. The number of hate articles and lawsuits over various foreign and domestic manufacturers' warranties seems about the same. Cars still on the road is another way to look at reliability. After some research I have come to the conclusion that the oldest cars longevity isn't related to quality of manufacture but rather dedication of the owners, older common cars are foreign -- but that doesn't count toward my point since the increase in US manufacturers' quality is relatively recent -- and common cars aging on the road today are about the same across country of manufacture.*

The late 1980's and early 1990's saw Honda et al. Eating Ford's lunch and US manufacturers' advertising focused on brand recognition. Later ads focused on features. Since this is a case of competing against quality with features (and because Tesla) I'm not even going to contest that US manufacturers ever fell behind on features.

Foreign cars still dominate in the mileage category but that alone is insufficient to state in the grand sweeping way I did that US made cars are inferior.

In short I stand corrected. US manufacturers have fully caught up with foreign makers in most categories of vehicle quality.

*excluding outliers.

I'm always happy to provide citations.

China/Russia dropping the dollar: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7c79...

China/Russia dropping the dollar: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/...

Unfunded liabilities (conservative), with a nod to the horribly underfunded private and municipal pensions: http://www.forbes.com/sites/re...

Keep in mind that once the dollar is effectively an also-ran currency, interest rates will go up on US treasuries. This will make the current debt interest payments unsustainable once the old debt is rolled into newer, higher-interest debt.

What do you have to say when presented with this information?

Are you retarded? Do you have any idea how much the Chinese market is worth to Apple? Here's a clue: http://www.forbes.com/sites/gr...

THE END MARKET is what Apple is going for. Screw the Chinese government. What they're doing is in the interest of the Chinese CUSTOMER.

And if you don't see that, then let's talk again about who's retarded.

Microsoft tried to create a walled garden of its' own for advertisers in the '90s - Microsoft Sidewalk. "The memo described a series of online city guides providing local arts and entertainment listings designed to capture a healthy slice of the $66 billion local advertising market. Microsoft Chief Executive Bill Gates deemed the approach Ãoefriction-free capitalism,à but Nathan Myhrvold, MicrosoftÃ(TM)s chief technology officer, was more direct. He spoke about the software giantÃ(TM)s intention of collecting a Ãoevigà from its web site. Vig, or vigorish, is a gambling term for a bookmakerÃ(TM)s cut of the action." Forbes. This was about the time Microsoft was musing about getting into the ISP business in "certain locations", trying to create a vertical monopoly.

So what? You're not arguing that California is not the number one state for manufacturing, you're just explaining one reason why it is.

It's still not manufacturing if the actual manufacturing was done in another country. It's just assembly. We have both, and both are counted as manufacturing. It's disingenuous.

You forgot to add the citation for that claim.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jo...
http://blogs.wsj.com/corporate...
http://www.epa.gov/ttn/ecas/re...

There is still quite a bit of actual heavy industry in the state, but given its size and population the claim that it's particularly friendly is nonsense.

You also forgot to cite that one.

In fact, the numbers are probably far worse by now. That's how it was over a decade ago. I know you're not too young too remember...

They money is redistributed, not eliminated. The people as a whole have the same amount of money regardless of whether taxes go up or down.

This is why the wealthiest counties in America are all clustered around Washington DC.

Here's the top of the list:

Falls Church City, Va.
Loudoun County, Va.
Los Alamos County, N.M.
Howard County, Md.
Fairfax County, Va.
Hunterdon County, N.J.
Arlington County, Va.

None of these DC counties were on the list in the 90's when government spending was out of control at nearly a trillion dollars. At 3 trillion, look at where all of the wealth is concentrated.

http://www.edf-er.com/AboutWin...

EDF say 20-25 years but then go on to say that the wind turbines built 30 years ago are still going strong. Thankfully unlike nuclear there isn't a risk of the turbines going catastrophically wrong and polluting half the planet.

Forbes on carbon footprint:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/am...

Nature on carbon footprint:
http://www.nature.com/climate/...

Like the Brookings Study you seem to ignore the large amount of energy that mining, transporting and processing the nuclear fuel requires.

Humans have shown themselves to utterly incapable of handling nuclear power without making a mess of it. Sooner or later renewables will be the only option, we might as well start big with it now whilst we still have alternatives as a temporary backup

Over 50 years of nuclear power and still the wrangling over what to do with the waste.

Renewables are cheaper in the long run, far greener, more predictable, capable of running the planet 10x over for possibly billions of years to come.

The Brookings Institute guy is completely wrong, garbage in/garbage out AKA his inputs were all wrong.

Thoroughly debunked here:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/am...

And Here
http://www.nature.com/climate/...

According to Sovacool's analysis, nuclear power, at 66 gCO2e/kWh emissions is well below scrubbed coal-fired plants, which emit 960 gCO2e/kWh, and natural gas-fired plants, at 443 gCO2e/kWh. However, nuclear emits twice as much carbon as solar photovoltaic, at 32 gCO2e/kWh, and six times as much as onshore wind farms, at 10 gCO2e/kWh.

> Someone is making a killing on these things.

Yeah, the paper-pushers are. Your friend better figure that out before jumping into the business else he finds out too late that the margins aren't where he thinks they are.

The cost data were incorrect so the study got it wrong. http://www.forbes.com/sites/am...

Missed that. The date were outdated. http://www.forbes.com/sites/am...

The input data were badly out of date. http://www.forbes.com/sites/am... Wind is the cheapest.

Exactly correct. Using correct number reversed the order. http://www.forbes.com/sites/am...

There were nine number in the analysis which were badly outdated. Doing it right reverses the order. http://www.forbes.com/sites/am...

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

"If and when Valve ever makes Half-Life 3, you wonâ(TM)t have to get Steam to play it. In an interview with IGN, Valve says that it wouldnâ(TM)t dream of using its software division to make exclusive games for the Steam OS, because that just isnâ(TM)t the way Valve looks at the world.

âoeYou wonâ(TM)t see an exclusive killer app for SteamOS from us. Weâ(TM)re not going to be doing that kind of thing,â Valveâ(TM)s Greg Comer told IGN."

"...âoeBecause if it can run in both places, we donâ(TM)t like to create those artificial barriers to accessing content. We believe that, in maybe five years from now, folks will find it a quite antiquated notion that you should assume that when you change devices or platforms, that you lose all of your other games and friends. Weâ(TM)re hoping to unify, to get Steam to be as platform- and context-agnostic as possible. You shouldnâ(TM)t have to shed that every generation, or even slightly shed it.â"

Getting the computations right tells us to phase out nuclear power as too expensive. http://www.forbes.com/sites/am...

Oh, come on, what are the chances that the kid would have grown up to be more useful than its harvested biomaterial? Pretty low if you ask me, especially if the stem cell therapy is expensive. I just hope the aborting mother gets market value for her labor (no pun intended) and goods.

And sometimes you even get a marketable biotech product out of it. Would you rather have 113 patents, or a useless infant? I know which one I'd pick.

I wish that were true. It sure looks like the US funds a vast majority of drug marketing, though.

But for completeness sake, here's some counterpoints.

If you are using a credit card in a store like Target, they not only know your likes and dislikes, they know exactly what you buy. Sometimes they know more about you than your family.

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

> I know it sounds quite bizarre to a Westerner, but the citizens of Singapore *want* this.

(1) How strongly do they want it? How much of it is just inertia and how much of it is something they would still be OK with even if they ended up being persecuted by the system? It is easy to be OK with government policies as long as they aren't directly hurting you.

(2) In the US a majority of the flying public like the TSA.

Steven Seagal, crime fighter, will destroy the houses of the offenders with a tank.

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

America is not actually litigation happy. Stop using the news and pundits as is they are accurate.

The insurance is not that big of a deal.

How do you figure that? U.S. per capita legal liability costs are twice the average European country.

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