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We're more in risk of deflation

That's insane. There isn't a single indicator of possible deflation. Even the people claiming "omg, double dip recession" were proven handily incorrect. All the numbers are either stable or rising. Companies are having blowout quarters beating all estimates, hiring is trending up, unemployment is trending downward, housing is trending sideways. And on top of that, there's the aforementioned commodities spiking that will cause an inevitable increase in the cost of goods (which frankly we've already been seeing for a long time in things like gasoline, but the government just blissfully ignores that when calculating its bullshit CPI number). Hell, decreasing prices at the pump would be one of the best ways to kick the recovery into high gear -- but instead, they're focused on driving oil prices higher via dollar devaluation. Deflation is a near impossibility at this point. It's just another example of the Fed being woefully unaware and asleep at the wheel -- they're going to be once again way late to the party and no amount of slamming on the brakes will be able to slow the rampant inflation to come.

By what evidence do you claim deflation is "more likely", let alone even a remote possibility. The charting trend is obvious, even if you do as the govt does and cheat by excluding food and gas: https://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/14/business/economy/14econ.html. Hell, even the retailers see the writing on the wall: http://inflation.us/blog/2011/03/major-retail-price-increases-coming-in-june/

So, you were in Paris, then, when it was captured and held by the Nazis? No? Perhaps you should choose better analogies in the future. In fact, you could probably learn a little from this.

The Fed made a profit of $82 billion in 2010 and transferred $79 billion the the U.S. Treasury as a result.

Slashdotters need to read more or STFU about finance.

Write it off as part of the cost of raising a child.

No, it's not just you. It's blog spam and the link is at the bottom: http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/14/why-netflix-raised-its-prices/

GE also received some forms of help. http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2008/11/12/fdic-to-back-139-billion-in-ge-capital-debt/

fun fact: porn industry has problems with high definition

The high-definition format is accentuating imperfections in the actors — from a little extra cellulite on a leg to wrinkles around the eyes. [..] "The biggest problem is razor burn," said Stormy Daniels, an actress, writer and director. "I'm not 100 percent sure why anyone would want to see their porn in HD."

You confuse a law for a regulation, and a corporate one at that.

The problem at the DoD is that for any of those procurement processes there are multiple layers of regulations and laws that if violated will allow the contractor to sue the US Government and in some cases the official overseeing the contract. Short of a few anti-trust and contract rules, as an individual corporation you are free to solicit bids from anyone or exclude anyone for (almost) any reason. The Secretary of Defense does not have the same power as the CIO of Microsoft when it comes to procurement. Just ask EADS and Boing.

In 2006 NEC found that a group in China had cloned the NEC corporation. They had factories, office buildings, stationary... the whole nine yards.

They were even receiving royalty payments.

No Survivors Found After West Virginia Mine Disaster

Rescue workers described the blast as overwhelming â" like nothing they had ever witnessed. Rail lines were twisted like pretzels, they said. Mining machines were blown to pieces. The conditions underground were such a mess after the explosion that is was only late Friday that rescuers realized that they had walked past the bodies of the four missing miners on the first day without seeing, a federal mine safety official said.

This weekâ(TM)s blast comes after a year in which the Upper Big Branch mine had repeated problems with methane buildups. Since April 2009, federal regulators have cited the mine eight times for âoesubstantialâ violations relating to the mineâ(TM)s methane control plans, according to the records.

In two instances, the regulators found the mine operator was calibrating methane monitors every three months even though it is supposed to be done every 31 days. The delays in attending to the monitors meant they could not properly detect the gas, a risk inspectors said could lead to severe injuries or prove fatal.

On April 30, 2009, federal regulators found that the mine had failed to follow methane-related safety precautions. Regulators stopped work in a section of the mine until the ventilation was corrected.

Kevin Stricklin, of the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration, said he planned an aggressive investigation of the disaster. âoeI can tell you this: No stone will be left unturned,â he said.

Nobody went to prison, it was forgotten in the bigger news of Lindsay Lohan, Charlie Sheen, and Casey Anthony.

So while we here in Nebraska appreciate the concern, get your ducks in a row and remember who has been stable through the mess the rest of you created. In the meantime, our economy will continue to kick ass despite the best efforts of the coasts.

References:

Blog and newsweek:

http://www.wakeupfromyourslumber.com/blog/andie531/nebraska-bucks-recession

http://www.newsweek.com/2011/01/18/why-the-midwest-fared-best-in-the-recession.html

Happiness:

http://www.mainstreet.com/article/moneyinvesting/news/happiness-index-nebraska-nabs-top-spot

Silicon Valley

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/17/technology/17iht-valley.4.20255686.html Silicon Valley Foreclosure rate

http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2011/02/10/calif-posts-nations-3rd-highest.html

My personal feelings on the death penalty aside...

O rly. There's another person executed by the USAsian rednecks for torturing and disemboweling another person.

Fixed that for you.

O rly. There's another person executed by the USAsian rednecks for murdering another person.

FTFY.

O rly. There's another person executed by the USAsian rednecks for being a retard.

The US supply and a "foreign" rifle are not mutually exclusive.

The US is the WORLD'S BIGGEST supplier of AK-47 (Kalashnikov):

In returning to the Kalashnikov market, the Pentagon has shunned purchases from Russia, opting instead for AK-47 knockoffs available for sale or donation from other countriesâ(TM) stockpiles. (The true AK-47 was short lived and swiftly modified; its many variants, almost all of which the Soviet Union helped create via foreign aid, are often inaccurately called AK-47s, by now universal shorthand.)

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/15/weekinreview/15chivers.html

In Afghanistan, the United States has selected the AMD-65, a short-barreled Hungarian Kalashnikov copy with a forward hand grip and futuristic muzzle, as the standard weapon of the Afghan police. It has received most of its projected 55,600 AMD-65s via its foreign military sales programs, according to data provided by Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan. ...
Another 10,000 Kalashnikov knockoffs were transferred in 2006 to Afghanistan from Slovenia. At least some weapons being handed out, based on an examination of the shipping containers and rifles this spring in Afghanistan, are inexpensive Chinese clones.

Similarly, in Iraq (which once had its own Kalashnikov plant, built with Communist help) the United States scrounged or purchased more than 185,000 Kalashnikov-style rifles and light machine guns for Iraqi security forces from 2003 and 2006, according to the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction.

http://www.mouseguns.com/ak47info/ak47info.htm

The probability that one of these women has breast cancer is 0.8 percent. If a woman has breast cancer, the probability is 90 percent that she will have a positive mammogram. If a woman does not have breast cancer, the probability is 7 percent that she will still have a positive mammogram. Imagine a woman who has a positive mammogram. What is the probability that she actually has breast cancer?

But, a lot of people get this framing right:

Eight out of every 1,000 women have breast cancer. Of these 8 women with breast cancer, 7 will have a positive mammogram. Of the remaining 992 women who don’t have breast cancer, some 70 will still have a positive mammogram. Imagine a sample of women who have positive mammograms in screening. How many of these women actually have breast cancer?

it's been jailbroken: http://gizmodo.com/5821905/ios-434-has-been-jailbroken

Well, of course... Contingencies are planned for. No one thinks that the "security researchers" looking for exploits to enable jailbreaking just stop looking for exploit vectors once they have root access, do they?

IMHO, Mobile device/OS manufacturers should just give their customers (the end users, not the service providers) root access in an "advanced" menu option... Otherwise it's just a matter of time before some of the "jailbreakers" turn into malware authors...

Don't get me wrong; Including a "Got Root?" option wouldn't keep everyone from searching for exploits, but it would remove a current major motivating factor.

Did you know that due to copyright restrictions of software & games bored Bulgarians began to reverse engineer and crack them. Thus at one point in the 90's Bulgaria was the malware capitol of the world -- Responsible for the most and best of all viruses worldwide.

A similar thing happened for bootleggers of older games for Apple, Amiga, Commodore, and other PCs. In fact, the cracks were rated among their peers according to the duration between a game's release and it's crack date eg: Software cracked only 6 weeks after release was rated as a "42-day crack". It was a competition to the hackers, and sometimes they got a hold of pre-releases just to crack them. If the software was exploited on or before its retail release it was the coveted best rating -- A "Zero-Day" crack!... Somehow the term has changed meaning a bit over the years, along with the term "hacker"; C'est la vie.

Accelerated escape from control due to more constriction. You see this sort of thing happening again and again, it applies to just about everything...

The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the faster the spunk will escape from your... fingers.

Uh, the roadster is very much based on the outgoing Elise chassis. See here and here. Notice in the first link The Product will be derived from the federal market LOTUS Elise platform. .

We already do it with retired weapons from Russia, and looks like we might be running low.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/10/business/energy-environment/10nukes.html

Exactly! An economist from Yale, Keith Chen, made this interpretation in 2008, and experimental redesigns and rebuttals have raged since. A (dated) review of the debate is available at http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/27/monkeys-candy-and-cognitive-dissonance/ I had my students at a high school summer math camp perform the M&M experiment with students and instructors in the lunch room. If my memory serves, after 200 trials our rejection rate was ~67%, pretty much perfectly in line with the pre-existing preference interpretation!

I remember a time of "bleeding heart liberals giving it all away", a.k.a. Democrats, now a couple of billionaires, ( a.k.a. the koch brother's ) seem to think that America should live like other 4th world countries is a good thing. Once voters start connecting the events together, and vote accordingly, then the family Kock will go back to molesting clams. But I think this is going to take awhile; there appears to be a lot of White Old Angry People who have found common ground with Koch's, that's until they need medical help.

The summary says the study is by "Men's Health Network", but the linked article says it's by "Men's Health Network and Cephalon". Who's this "Cephalon"? Oh, they're a drug company. What sort of drugs do they make? take a wild freakin' guess.

What's a common side effect of these drugs? Insomnia. Unsurprising as it's just some kind of speed. And the FDA refused to approve it for jetlag, which is quite similar to maladapted shift work.

And still the government was running a deficit.

I believe I covered that here:
The surplus was actually bad for Bush and Congress at that time because it's really hard to say "no" to funding for anything when there is a surplus and deficit spending went through the roof.

In reality, the economy was running full throttle on the back of the crazed housing/lending bubble which everyone knew was unsustainable at the time.

Someone tried to do something about that.

I join as a cosponsor of the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005, S. 190, to underscore my support for quick passage of GSE regulatory reform legislation. If Congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system, and the economy as a whole.
--John McCain

HERE is a NYTimes article on the bill. Why did the bill fail? It never even made it to the floor. Democrats blocked it in committee.

''These two entities -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- are not facing any kind of financial crisis,'' said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ''The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.''

Representative Melvin L. Watt, Democrat of North Carolina, agreed.

''I don't see much other than a shell game going on here, moving something from one agency to another and in the process weakening the bargaining power of poorer families and their ability to get affordable housing,'' Mr. Watt said.

So, if you are blaming the recession on the housing bubble, it appears that it was not only the fault of Congress, which is my primary point, but that Democrats in Congress are the problem, which was my secondary point.

You forgot to mention 'Power: by building a new cadre of unionized public employee voters.'

It's not just corrupt bizznessmen making evile executive decisions. It also involves building a constituency.

Are they? Do you have any support for that statement? Or do you just believe it because you've heard some convincing sounding arguments from Dawkins or whoever and nodded along with them. I'm willing to bet that you haven't given the question any serious thought. This is what actual thinking looks like. Pretending theists all believe in an invisible sky man is just willful ignorance.

Make driving a bigger pain in the ass than it already is..

And the sidebar within the Slashdot linked article on the Seven advanced car technologies the government wants now does not say anything about driverless vehicles. That's what the priority should be. I mean. if reducing the risk of accidents is what you're after...

I'd say what would be "spin" is pretending there isn't a "ban" by playing with semantics.

What semantics? There are compliant incansescents on the market now. There was... wait for it

no

ban.

For reals.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/06/business/energy-environment/06bulbs.html

There never was! There are new efficiency standards, which both GE and Osram Sylvania say they can meet with new incandescents. The whole thing started as a talking point for a Republican primary, and took off when the punditry caught a whiff of it and smelled red meat.

It may not be a ban de jure but it is a ban de facto.

Playing with semantics is what politicians do to fool the ignorant into being ruled. See The Prince, 1984, etc.

Or you could see actual facts. No ban, de facto or otherwise. Here ya go.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/06/business/energy-environment/06bulbs.html

Already do

The Bush ban did not ban incandescents. Incandescents will still be produced, just that they are more effeceint.

Like these

They aren't telling you what kind of bulbs to f*****g bulbs to buy. The energy efficiency standards set to take effect do not specify the specific technology that must replace them. It just says that common application bulbs need to be more efficient. CFLs happen to fit that standard but there are actually alternatives including other incandescent bulbs .

I was looking for the report from Gen. McMaster, and found this site. pptclasses I want to say this is not serious, but it seems satire gets harder to detect all the time. If the site is real, and an indication of reality, I weep for our boys in the field.

The best I could do is find news stories about the report, but not the report itself. It is a fantastic read for anyone in the military or the corporate world. One could change a few words and it would be just as insightful when applied to software engineering or a number of fields. (amusingly enough, while lots of media outlets reported on it, msnbc is silent)

The EU also imposes significant fines on EU companies. For instance, 1.4 billion Euros on a cartel of auto glass makers (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/12/business/worldbusiness/12iht-cartel.4.17767064.html). The biggest single fine in that case was 896 million Euros, or $1.1 billion at the time, for the French glass maker Saint-Gobain.

So heavy fines are not only used on US companies, they are just more than US companies are used to. Compare the settlement in United States v. Microsoft (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft#Settlement), where Microsoft got away with some temporary oversight against future misbehavior.

They got bailed out just like all the other megabanks.

They were not bailed out. They were intentionally given shopping money: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/25/business/25nocera.html?_r=3&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

Although I came up with that by reading the company’s annual 10-k filing with the SEC, ExxonMobil spokesman Alan Jeffers assures me that this is wrong, that Exxon did indeed pay substantial income taxes to the U.S. Treasury in 2009, and that it overpaid taxes in 2008. How much? Well, Jeffers says so far he’s not at liberty to disclose that information. “That’s not something we’re required to disclose, nor do we.”

So, which are we to believe - the actual statement filed, or the word of a spokesperson who refuses to actually divulge any information?

I prefer to go with the facts, until the facts are disproven by other verified statements.

To quote from the other article you cited, re: GE,

And the New York Times was wrong because, even leaving aside the income tax issue, there is simply no way that GE's US tax bill in 2010 can be fairly described as being "none." GE paid many different kinds of US taxes in 2010--state, local, payroll, etc.--and, according to Eisele, its 2010 income tax bill (which still has yet to be determined) is likely to be positive.

...this is conflation of the worst sort.

Leaving it aside is avoiding the facts rather than proving them wrong. We are talking about the amount of money that GE paid as a business. If GE made a profit as a business, it should pay taxes as a business.

And, according to the NY TImes article - which the NY Times stands behind, and which GE has demanded no retractions from: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/25/business/economy/25tax.html

The company reported worldwide profits of $14.2 billion, and said $5.1 billion of the total came from its operations in the United States. Its American tax bill? None. In fact, G.E. claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion. ...Such strategies, as well as changes in tax laws that encouraged some businesses and professionals to file as individuals, have pushed down the corporate share of the nation’s tax receipts — from 30 percent of all federal revenue in the mid-1950s to 6.6 percent in 2009.

So you tell me - what is so hard to understand about that? If GE made a profit, it should pay taxes on that profit. If it is legal for GE to avoid paying taxes on that, then those are legal loopholes that should be closed. And certainly should be closed before we do other things in the name if "budget austerity" like cut off the oil heat for the elderly in winter. Right? If not, why not?

Parent is correct. When you get past the junk science and put credible people under the spotlight Yucca Mountain is understood to be a safe long term solution. I watched the congressional testimony. The DOE had to have it beat out of them, because affirming the safety of Yucca kicks a leg out from under the Administration's policy. NRC scientists affirmed the same thing. There are no technical reasons why we should not open Yucca Mountain. The only actual reason for the shutdown that anyone could cite was the purely political view than Yucca is somehow "unworkable" for reasons known only to Chu.

Even worse was the NRC testimony. I don't believe this level of acrimony has existed at the NRC since TMI-2 melted down. NRC staff members publicly condemned the NRC Chairman Jaczko for politicizing the matter, withholding information from the board, manipulating scientific results and manipulating the process. 'Science based' government my ass. Jaczko is still withholding the completed results of the NRC's scientific assessment of Yucca mountain safety.

From the the NYT story

The [NRC] inspector general’s report said that Mr. Jaczko’s decision to halt the Yucca review was based on politics, however, not on a consideration of the acceptability of the site for long-term storage.

Criticism of the Administration, the DOE and Jaczko by the House committee was nearly bipartisan. Basically we have anti-energy anti-nuke activists playing political games inside the NRC and the DOE, and everyone knows it.

This nonsense needs to stop. We really need to get this waste secured at Yucca before some earthquake/tsunami/tornado/flood/hurricane/meteor/terrorist/busted-water-pump causes widespread nuclear contamination.

Well, it's happened.

Published: September 1, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/05/magazine/05hacking-t.html

IN NOVEMBER 2005, three senior aides to Britain’s royal family noticed odd things happening on their mobile phones. Messages they had never listened to were somehow appearing in their mailboxes as if heard and saved. Equally peculiar were stories that began appearing about Prince William in one of the country’s biggest tabloids, News of the World.

  As Scotland Yard tracked Goodman and Mulcaire, the two men hacked into Prince Harry’s mobile-phone messages. On April 9, 2006, Goodman produced a follow-up article in News of the World about the apparent distress of Prince Harry’s girlfriend over the matter. Headlined “Chelsy Tears Strip Off Harry!” the piece quoted, verbatim, a voice mail Prince Harry had received from his brother teasing him about his predicament.

The palace was in an uproar, especially when it suspected that the two men were also listening to the voice mail of Prince William, the second in line to the throne

The ones in charge, Rupert Murdoch and Rebekah Brooks, have known about this for years and approved of it. They are the ones who should be charged, not the pianists, i.e. the reporters. They did what they were told to do.

Read more at http://www.observer.com/2010/media/new-york-times-goes-after-murdoch-and-news-world-phone-hacking-scandal

"When The Times reporters asked one veteran News of the World reporter how many people in the offices knew about the hacks, the reporter said “Everyone knew The office cat knew."

and

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/12/world/europe/12hacking.html?_r=1&ref=world
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/11/world/europe/11britain.html?ref=world

The evidence is there, and everywhere, Murdoch and Brooks are scum.

Published: September 1, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/05/magazine/05hacking-t.html

IN NOVEMBER 2005, three senior aides to Britain’s royal family noticed odd things happening on their mobile phones. Messages they had never listened to were somehow appearing in their mailboxes as if heard and saved. Equally peculiar were stories that began appearing about Prince William in one of the country’s biggest tabloids, News of the World.

  As Scotland Yard tracked Goodman and Mulcaire, the two men hacked into Prince Harry’s mobile-phone messages. On April 9, 2006, Goodman produced a follow-up article in News of the World about the apparent distress of Prince Harry’s girlfriend over the matter. Headlined “Chelsy Tears Strip Off Harry!” the piece quoted, verbatim, a voice mail Prince Harry had received from his brother teasing him about his predicament.

The palace was in an uproar, especially when it suspected that the two men were also listening to the voice mail of Prince William, the second in line to the throne

The ones in charge, Rupert Murdoch and Rebekah Brooks, have known about this for years and approved of it. They are the ones who should be charged, not the pianists, i.e. the reporters. They did what they were told to do.

Read more at http://www.observer.com/2010/media/new-york-times-goes-after-murdoch-and-news-world-phone-hacking-scandal

"When The Times reporters asked one veteran News of the World reporter how many people in the offices knew about the hacks, the reporter said “Everyone knew The office cat knew."

and

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/12/world/europe/12hacking.html?_r=1&ref=world
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/11/world/europe/11britain.html?ref=world

The evidence is there, and everywhere, Murdoch and Brooks are scum.

Published: September 1, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/05/magazine/05hacking-t.html

IN NOVEMBER 2005, three senior aides to Britain’s royal family noticed odd things happening on their mobile phones. Messages they had never listened to were somehow appearing in their mailboxes as if heard and saved. Equally peculiar were stories that began appearing about Prince William in one of the country’s biggest tabloids, News of the World.

  As Scotland Yard tracked Goodman and Mulcaire, the two men hacked into Prince Harry’s mobile-phone messages. On April 9, 2006, Goodman produced a follow-up article in News of the World about the apparent distress of Prince Harry’s girlfriend over the matter. Headlined “Chelsy Tears Strip Off Harry!” the piece quoted, verbatim, a voice mail Prince Harry had received from his brother teasing him about his predicament.

The palace was in an uproar, especially when it suspected that the two men were also listening to the voice mail of Prince William, the second in line to the throne

The ones in charge, Rupert Murdoch and Rebekah Brooks, have known about this for years and approved of it. They are the ones who should be charged, not the pianists, i.e. the reporters. They did what they were told to do.

Read more at http://www.observer.com/2010/media/new-york-times-goes-after-murdoch-and-news-world-phone-hacking-scandal

"When The Times reporters asked one veteran News of the World reporter how many people in the offices knew about the hacks, the reporter said “Everyone knew The office cat knew."

and

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/12/world/europe/12hacking.html?_r=1&ref=world
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/11/world/europe/11britain.html?ref=world

The evidence is there, and everywhere, Murdoch and Brooks are scum.

Just like the 1000's of flags that came off the same roll of fabric. This little bit is also just a bit of that roll that stayed behind. Sure, it has a sig, but it could just as well be another flag that was signed. Guess it is worth what a fool will pay for it.

Actually this scrap comes from the guy who was in charge of creating the moon flag apparatus. So the scrap does have a pretty good paper trail as coming from the flag that made it to the moon.

"Mr. Moser, then a 30-year-old mechanical engineer, was put in charge of designing a flag mechanism that could not only fit into the lunar module and survive the flight, but also make the flag appear to fly on the windless moon. His solution involved two sections of a staff, a telescoping tube and a nylon flag bought at a local housing goods store (Sears, he thinks). But in order for the flag to fit the staff, its edges needed to be trimmed. “They were throwing it all in the trash,” Mr. Moser recalled of the remnants in a recent interview, “so I picked it up out of the trash can, mounted it and had Neil Armstrong sign it.” Forty-two years later, Mr. Moser is auctioning off those flag remnants."
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/10/science/space/10moon.html

Somebody wouldn't settle for less than $100K for a scrap of cloth that almost was sent to the moon?

I'll settle for a much more reasonable $10K for a scrap of cloth from underwear resembling the underwear worn by Neil Armstrong.

Just make sure is is authentically autographed before and you may find buyers.

A quote from the NY times FA:

“They were throwing it all in the trash,” Mr. Moser recalled of the remnants in a recent interview, “so I picked it up out of the trash can, mounted it and had Neil Armstrong sign it.”

People should get some facts before engaging in these black-and-white discussions.

Taxes on the top 0.01% have fallen dramatically to match those of the top 1%. Does that make sense? Probably not. Is it responsible for our economic problems or debt? Probably not.

http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2011/06/ny-times-who.html

http://visualizingeconomics.com/2007/11/03/nytimes-historical-tax-rates-by-income-group/

Another little fact of interest to this group is where all those "rich people" come from: Silicon Valley and New York. Without those counties, income inequality in the US hasn't increased significantly over the last few decades. Yes, the gap between the rich and the poor that is supposedly condemning us to third world status soon is just the result of the IT revolution.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/21/business/21scene.html

Frankly, most of the taxing or spending decisions currently debated in Congress are irrelevant and merely political posturing. Personally, I think they increase the taxes on the top 1% significantly, but it won't make any difference. But at least they can then move on to more important things.

to pay an ever-increasing tax burden so that perfectly able older, wealthier people can enjoy taxpayer-financed retirement and health care for 20 or 30 years

According to my retirement analyst, the average person has the equity in their home and less than 60k in savings at retirement (also see: http://www.bargaineering.com/articles/average-retirement-savings-by-age.html). It's also almost impossible for people of that age to get affordable individual medical insurance. By these accounts, your questions are flawed. Granted, I agree that there is a lot of over spending - like for the "wars" - but not everything is wasted monies.

As for progressive tax rates, the top rate in the US is currently 35%, but no one - not even corporations - pays that. It's almost always quite a bit less. Hell, my official bracket is 28%, but my effective rate after deductions is 21%. In fact, corporations often pay little or no federal income tax. From http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/03/business/economy/03rates.html?_r=1 :

A Government Accountability Office study released in 2008 found that 55 percent of United States companies paid no federal income taxes during at least one year in a seven-year period it studied.

I'm not really trying to argue with you, merely pointing out that it's not as simple as you portray.

If you tax the hell out of the biggest corporations and wealthiest individuals, what do you think happens? They just throw up their hands and say "You got me this time government!". No, they maintain their profits by cutting costs, hiring less workers and not giving out raises for the ones they have.

Get some perspective, moron. We are far from taxing "the hell" out of anything.

But feel free to be an ignorant liberal and ignore the real massive overspending.

Of course you wouldn't expect a useless moron conservative like yourself to look at facts and data. The bottom line is that Reagan, Bush I and Bush II have contributed most of the U.S. Government debt. Obama is spending at about the same rate as Bush II, but that was all the economic stimulus which was for a better fucking cause than putting a bunch of U.S. soldiers in the way of some Sunnis, Shias and Kurds murdering each other AND is now fading away anyway.

Whether the money goes into the pockets of military contractors or Big Finance doesn't matter, it is still lost to us for no benefit.

You have no idea of what you are talking about. Read the nobel prize winner to understand what's going on. Read the archives: he's got almost a 100% of his predictions right:

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/

Sure, you can continue to be wingnut. You can also base your understanding on sound science and evidence.

This isn't the place!

You could try http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/

Uhhhh...haven't heard about the minerals reports from Afghanistan have you? You might want to read this then simply replace oil with mineral rights. of course We, the People won't see any of that, it'll go to groups like Halliburton.

You see you haven't figured out how the "banana scam" works. here is how it goes: Company A wants land for bananas but country B doesn't want to play ball. A few big fat checks are written to the right people and suddenly it becomes a "national interest" and country B is now the enemy. When all is said and done the USA loses a ton of money but Company A gets their banana and with them massive amounts of MONIES. Yay for massive profits woo hoo!

And THAT is how it works my friend and has been since the end of WII when the MIC saw their massive MONIES were gonna dry up at the end of hostilities and needed a way to keep the cash flowing. The way it is now they make money on both ends, by supplying the weapons AND by picking the corpse of the enemy clean for "national interests".

Anyone up for retirement more than ten years out better have arranged their own finances.

Although I enjoy cranky anti-government fantasies too, it's better to stay closer to reality. The Republicans are beating this anti-Social Security line because they want to say, "Social Security isn't going to be there for you, so let's end it and save you all those tax deductions" (which are the lowest in the developed world).

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/cockroach-ideas/
Conscience of a Liberal
Cockroach Ideas
By PAUL KRUGMAN
March 13, 2011, 12:57 pm

“the Social Security trust fund doesn’t exist”

If Ronald Reagan had said, back in the 1980s, “Let’s increase a regressive tax that falls mainly on the working class, while cutting taxes that fall mainly on much richer people,” he would have faced a political firestorm. But because the increase in the regressive payroll tax was recommended by the Greenspan Commission to support Social Security, it was politically in a different box – you might even call it a lockbox – from Reagan’s tax cuts.

Their answer to the pretty good numbers is to say that the trust fund is meaningless, because it’s invested in U.S. government bonds. They aren’t really saying that government bonds are worthless; their point is that the whole notion of a separate budget for Social Security is a fiction.

But there are two problems with their position.

The lesser problem is that if you say that there is no link between the payroll tax and future Social Security benefits – which is what denying the reality of the trust fund amounts to – then Greenspan and company pulled a fast one back in the 1980s: they sold a regressive tax switch, raising taxes on workers while cutting them on the wealthy, on false pretenses. More broadly, we’re breaking a major promise if we now, after 20 years of high payroll taxes to pay for Social Security’s future, declare that it was all a little joke on the public.

The bigger problem for those who want to see a crisis in Social Security’s future is this: if Social Security is just part of the federal budget, with no budget or trust fund of its own, then, well, it’s just part of the federal budget: there can’t be a Social Security crisis.