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Microwave ovens?

Nothing new about microwave ovens:

Percy Spencer is generally credited with inventing the modern microwave oven after World War II from radar technology developed during the war. Named the "Radarange", it was first sold in 1946.

Laser pointers?

Lasers are older than either of us, I imagine:

The first laser was built in 1960 by Theodore H. Maiman

Video teleconferencing?

Some form of video communications are at least a generation old:

An example of that was the German Reich Postzentralamt (post office) video telephone network serving Berlin and several German cities via coaxial cables between 1936 and 1940.[2][3]

Photovoltaics?

This is getting tiresome; photovoltaics isn't a new tech even though it's still evolving:

The photovoltaic effect was first observed by Alexandre-Edmond Becquerel in 1839.[12][13]

Bittorrent?

Really? I mean, it's cool, but...

GPS / Satnav. Nothing even remotely like it in the 1600s.

OK, here's one for ya: speech=>text=>espanol=>habla. That was quite literally a *joke* in a radio show in 1978. Now it's free to download on your phone.

Blockchain technology. Nothing like it even 10 years ago.

If you want to look at air travel, try comparing the number of passengers travelling 30-40 years ago
( Turns out that information is online too: http://data.worldbank.org/indi... )

I think I've shown that most of your examples hardly are new tech that has emerged in the current generation (approximately 25 years in length), and while they've changed the world, it didn't come fast and they are mostly solving the so-called "easy" problems. A simulated universe with sentient elements within it? Stuff of fantasy.

I hear global consumption of fossil fuel continues to increase. Can you stop reporting wishful thinking as actual reality. It's incredibly tiresome.

Yes, it's absolutely surging. Oh, wait...

Guess it depends on where you look. Although to be fair you may be right about the bollocks, the scenario in the article/study is probably unrealistic. The truth, as usual, probably lies somewhere in between.

My shame is being too much like americans and becoming completely fucking useless, like all americans.

So useless that our economy divided up by population is higher than half of Europe? The Per capita GDP of the US is double Spain's, we are so lazy we do double the work output that your country does! Lazy indeed...

http://data.worldbank.org/indi...

Perhaps you should rethink your bigotry about lazy Americans, as it doesn't fit the actual truth of the matter.

I care neither how expensive it is to wire up the US as a whole nor how expensive it is to wire up Sweden as a whole. I do, however, care how expensive it is to, for example, wire up the New York metropolitan area and the Stockholm metropolitan area, or comparable low-density areas of the US and Sweden.

I don't give a fuck what you don't care about: the fact is that the USA has more people living outside of major metropolitan areas than the entire population of Sweden. If you don't think that's going to have an effect on broadband penetration numbers, then you aren't thinking, and no one should care what you have to say on this subject.

The USA has more people than the entire population of Sweden, period - heck, the state of Georgia has more people than the entire population of Sweden, as does the New York metropolitan area. The CIA World Factbook says that the urban population of the US was 81.6% in 2015 and the urban population of Sweden was 85.8% in 2015.

So rather a lot of the land area of which we have a lot doesn't have a lot of people in it, and a lot of those people aren't sprinkled all that liberally throughout that land area, and any thinking person would understand that asking how hard it is to wire up the areas where ~80-85% of the people live and how hard it is to wire up the areas where ~15-20% of the people live are separate questions that must be asked separately. The average population density of a country large enough to have Big Wide Open Spaces and dense cities is a statistic that any thinking person would realize is meaningless for any discussion of, for example, broadband penetration, because we're not talking about wiring up a country of an average of 35 people per square km evenly distributed throughout the country, we're talking about wiring up a country where ~80% of those people live in urban areas and ~20% don't. (BTW, Sweden's average population density, according to that World Bank page, is lower than that of the US, if you're into comparing statistics meaningless from the point of view of broadband penetration.)

So the first question is "Why is Internet service to metropolitan areas cheaper and faster in Asia and Europe than in North America?" The answer isn't "butbutbut look at how big the US is!" You don't have to wire up rural Montana to get cheaper faster Internet to San Francisco or Kansas City.

And it would also be interesting to see how different parts of the world do at wiring up their rural areas.

But people should just stop using "butbutbut look at how big the US is!" as a response to criticism of the quality, or lack of same, of US broadband. It's not as if all that land is uniformly populated; there's a very large variation in population density, so most of the US doesn't have a population density of 35 people per square km - most of it is either significantly above that value or significantly below that value. (Remember, the average human being has approximately one testicle and one ovary.)

"Wiring up the US for broadband" isn't a thing; we're not trying to wire up a large area with 35 people per km^2. For example, "wiring the San Francisco Bay Area for (better) broadband" is a very different thing from "wiring rural Iowa for (better) broadband"; the problems and solutions are probably going to be very different for those two projects.

There is almost no place in the world which is populated which has population densities as low as the USA.

Finland's population density according to World Bank's population density table is half that of the United States, with Sweden between them. Yet I'm told Sweden and Finland have better home Internet connectivity than the United States.

Not only that, but in rural areas also.

The local population density is well below 5h/sqkm here. We live almost 300km from the nearest "large" city (it's about 300 thousand people), and 400km from Helsinki (about a million people). We have 100/100 Mbps internet, uncapped, unrestricted, etc. at home. We also have 20 Mbps uncapped, unrestricted, etc. from our mobile phones.

There is almost no place in the world which is populated which has population densities as low as the USA.

Finland's population density according to World Bank's population density table is half that of the United States, with Sweden between them. Yet I'm told Sweden and Finland have better home Internet connectivity than the United States.

Your comment is misleading.
India has a level of CO2 emissions per capita which is much lower than the world average.

As for the population problem, are you suggesting India should split itself in a dozen of countries? How would that have any effect on global emissions?

Most scientific journals are out there, published and free(ish). Don't cast stones unless you're willing to do the research yourself.

The reason young people care about the environment:
1. Young people are generally less wealthy and so are more concerned about 'social' issues -- http://matrix.berkeley.edu/res...
2. They'll actually be alive long enough to see climate change cause serious ecological and lifestyle damages (and they know it)

I must say though, in terms of lifestyle changes, I've seen people (at least in my city) abandoning car travel in much larger numbers than my generation in the (Gen-X-ish) crowd. Even for people in my age range, I see a heck of a lot more bike riders than I ever did before (All subjective IMHO).
Although, if you look at air travel: http://data.worldbank.org/indi...
Air travel rates are more pegged to economic conditions than anything else, and they seem like we're at historical highs...

So Malthus will always be wrong? The world can sustain an infinite number of people forever?

Malthus will always be wrong because his base assumptions were wrong(That there will be no increase in food production per acre and that the rate of population increase will increase exponentially - both of which we know are wrong). That does not mean Earth can support an infinite number of people, but it can support more people than are going to live on earth in any rational future projection, since population increase slows down as technology improves. Replacement birthrate in a modern society is ~2.1 U.S, Germany, France and many other countries have a birth rate well BELOW replacement rates. http://data.worldbank.org/indi...

No they aren't.

Australia spends less on healthcare as a percentage of GDP than the US and yet has higher life expectancy. Look at the life expectancy from age 25 in the US. It is positively associated with income and education because access to quality healthcare in the US is largely limited to those who can afford it.

The US healthcare system is dysfunctional and inefficient. Australia achieves better outcomes at half the price. For a supposedly capitalist nation, the US is sadly unsophisticated with its healthcare dollars. Where is the business sense in ignoring the problem and continuing with an inefficient model? The US needs to make the hard business decision to change to a model more like the ones developed by Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the UK.

Democrats can't be the night on the white horse if they don't convince you that there is some dire problem for them to solve for you.

It's silly to politicize something like healthcare because it has has easily measurable practical outcomes. The US is falling short and its healthcare model is broken. The smart move is to switch to a more workable model.

Worldwide, just number 64...

Where do you think Google's cash is? Under a fucking mattress? In a big shed at the bottom of someone's garden? It's cash is invested all over the world. It's working to improve the economy because that's what free trade and international investment does. World poverty has fallen by a huge amount over the last quarter century, except in places like Venezuela, where left wing governments express the same kind of thought patterns you do.

Where do you think Google's cash is? Under a fucking mattress? In a big shed at the bottom of someone's garden? It's cash is invested all over the world. It's working to improve the economy because that's what free trade and international investment does. World poverty has fallen by a huge amount over the last quarter century, except in places like Venezuela, where left wing governments express the same kind of thought patterns you do.

Note that kWh per year is a pretty stupid unit, too...

Yes indeed. For example, we're troubling with watt-equivalent measures while phasing out incandescent bulbs. Would it be better had we always used lumen?

Ref [1] has a nice map too, but they don't tell what are those kWh being used for. Since establishing who supplies energy to whom is a political question, (mega)people still has some merits as a unit of measurement.

It's worse than that. If you RTFA, you find the 500 MW is capacity, not actual production. So it's a CSP (concentrated solar power) plant with a peak generating capacity of 500 MW.

Morocco is at about the same latitude as Southern California, and CSP there has a capacity factor of about 33%. So average power generation for the year should be about 500 MW * 33% = 167 MW. Which for 1.1 million people works out to an average consumption of 152 Watts. That's 1332 kWh/yr.

U.S. average is about 13,000 kWh/yr
UK average is about 9450 kWh/yr
Germany averages about 7200 kWh/yr
Frace averages about 7300 kWh/yr
Japan averages about 7800 kWh/yr
S. Korea averages about 10,200 kWh/yr
Morocco's average seems to be about 850 kWh/yr, which suggests their expected capacity factor is substantially lower than 33%. Using the above numbers I get a 21% capacity factor.

You might think that the unit "(mega)people" is standardized, but in fact there's still quite a difference between an American person and an African person [a bit like swallows, I guess.] Concretely, an American uses 12,954 kWh per year[1], while an average Moroccon uses 875 kWh. Thus, the electricity used by 1.1M Moroccons equals the electricity used by 70 thousand Americans. So, while the unit might sound like everyone can relate to it, it's pretty horribly inaccurate.

The Computerworld article doesn't even give total expected production, only MW capacity, which is probably peak capacity, ie only achieved during the day. Wiki [2] gives a production of 370 GWh per year, which is enough to provide energy to just over 400 thousand Moroccans, consistent with providing juice for 1.1M is capacity is roughly tripled. However, if Moroccans start getting up to first-world levels of energy use, the number of people served will swiftly drop by an order of magnitude, even if they don't go all the way to American energy use (e.g. Holland has about half the US energy use, probably due to less need for airco and higher electricity costs)

The water use sounds very problematic, according to wiki it uses 1.7 million m3 per year or 4.6 liters per kWh . To compare, desalination requires 3 kWh/m3, i.e. it would cost about 5GWh to desalinize the amount of water used annually, compared to 370GWh of electrticity produced. So, even if the water draw is compensated by desalinizing water elsewhere, it still comes out ahead.

[1] http://data.worldbank.org/indi.... Note that kWh per year is a pretty stupid unit, too...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

What about the US' ability to attack everyone? How about those pricks disarm and reduce their military to 1/10th the size, stop toppling governments because they don't like them etc?

You're mixing up capability with likelihood. Total risk is the product of the two. The U.S. has had nuclear-capable ICBMs for over 50 years now, but has never used them. So while it has had the capability for a long time, the proven likelihood that it'll use them is very low, even when it's been provoked. The reason people (not just the U.S.) is concerned about North Korea's capability is because its leadership is extremely erratic and unpredictable, so the likelihood it would actually use ICBMs is a lot higher than existing nuclear powers'.

Also, U.S. military spending is huge only if you look at it in raw dollars. That's like looking at the raw dollars a large wealthy household spends on food, and comparing it to what a homeless individual spends. If you insist on looking at it in raw dollars, we could divide U.S. military spending across all 50 states (many of them are larger than most countries) and *poof* - the individual states no longer have the world's largest military spending.

The proper normalized metric is spending (any type, not just military) as a percent of GDP. That eliminates the effect of wealth and population. Basically, what percentage of your citizens' productivity do you direct to your military? By that measure, U.S. military spending is about 3.5% of its GDP. That's only about 1.5x the world average of ~2.3% of GDP. By that measure, the U.S. doesn't even make the top 25 in military spending. And that's not even factoring in Japan, which the U.S. is contractually obligated to defend by the terms of peace treaties signed ending WWII. Include Japan's GDP and U.S. military spending drops to about 2.7% of aggregate GDP. If you cut U.S. military spending to 1/10th what it is now, it would have just about the lowest military spending of any nation on earth.

Incidentally, guess which country spends the most on its military as a percentage of GDP.

Actually Americans as a proportion of there GDP spend more on health (2013 17.1%) than any other country exception of Tuvalu (19.7%) and America is one of richest countries in the world, per person it only it spends more any other country than except Switzerland and Norway (they obviously have a higher GDP per capita) yet Americans life expectancy is ranked 34th, Norway 9th, Switzerland 2nd. Clearly Americans are spending just more to get a worse health care. So who is squandering their money? Insurance companies by definition take their cut, of health care spending, it is in there interest to keep health care cost high so that they can sell insurance in the first place.

Ref: http://data.worldbank.org/indi... , http://data.worldbank.org/indi... , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

These are not extreme cases at all, these are normal cases, people get sick, mostly through no predictable fault of their own. Yes people could save and plan for something happening, but with 11 out of 12 cancer drugs costing more than $100,000 per year (http://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/health/medical-costs/how-much-does-chemotherapy-cost/). The cost of a heart bypass surgery (which is not uncommon surgery) is $70,000-$200,000 without insurance, the main contributing factor to heart disease is genetics. Even the most fugal saver on an average income would probably be ruined by these expenses. This is not the cost of a luxury goods, unless you mean a Ferrari, and staying alive is not a luxury, it is by definition a necessity.

Providing health care to the poor, benefits everyone, rich included. Having a population with lots of unhealthy people can infect the rich as well, a virus does not look at the size of your bank balance before infecting you.

Actually Americans as a proportion of there GDP spend more on health (2013 17.1%) than any other country exception of Tuvalu (19.7%) and America is one of richest countries in the world, per person it only it spends more any other country than except Switzerland and Norway (they obviously have a higher GDP per capita) yet Americans life expectancy is ranked 34th, Norway 9th, Switzerland 2nd. Clearly Americans are spending just more to get a worse health care. So who is squandering their money? Insurance companies by definition take their cut, of health care spending, it is in there interest to keep health care cost high so that they can sell insurance in the first place.

Ref: http://data.worldbank.org/indi... , http://data.worldbank.org/indi... , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

These are not extreme cases at all, these are normal cases, people get sick, mostly through no predictable fault of their own. Yes people could save and plan for something happening, but with 11 out of 12 cancer drugs costing more than $100,000 per year (http://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/health/medical-costs/how-much-does-chemotherapy-cost/). The cost of a heart bypass surgery (which is not uncommon surgery) is $70,000-$200,000 without insurance, the main contributing factor to heart disease is genetics. Even the most fugal saver on an average income would probably be ruined by these expenses. This is not the cost of a luxury goods, unless you mean a Ferrari, and staying alive is not a luxury, it is by definition a necessity.

Providing health care to the poor, benefits everyone, rich included. Having a population with lots of unhealthy people can infect the rich as well, a virus does not look at the size of your bank balance before infecting you.

We're basically talking about how the US compares to other counties in the basic medium that allows us to compete as a world economy

Is that it? The faster your fooking Netflix movie loads, the better America's position against China? Seriously? Yes, decent Internet bandwidth is important, but only to a point — you aren't going to triple a worker's productivity by upping their "broadband" from 15Mbps to 45Mbps. You would not even double it — see diminishing returns.

YES, IT IS AUTOMATICALLY VERY FUCKING BAD.

Fix your CAPS LOCK button, ASSHOLE.

suggesting our country should be able to compete with the rest of the world while they move ahead and we're stuck looking at the inside of our colon is just stupider than shit.

I can't parse the above "insightful" part, but, if you really are worried about America's competitiveness, you should be focusing on things like ease of doing business here.

In that story, the many differences between the federal and private workforces are discussed. One striking difference is the abundance of part time workers (low wages, no benefits) in the private sector.

Even if the federal salaries and benefits are generous when compared to private industry, does that mean they are out of line?

Absolutely, yes. I don't believe most federal jobs are notably more valuable or useful (some have considerable negative value due to the harm they cause to US society).

Everywhere there is evidence of the shrinking middle class dating back to 1970. Does that come about because workers are paid fairly (and those at the top more so)?

It came about because of labor competition with the developing world. It's amazing how many people forget this.

Pensions have disappeared in the private sectorâ"possibly with good reason as most companies are not in a position to make such guaranteesâ"does that mean government pensions should as well?

Oh yes. This is a very strong indication to eliminate public pensions.

Regarding $400 vs $800 million fighter jets, such cost inflation is not the fault of government alone (poor oversight), but also of the private companies contracted to do the work. There is plenty of blame for everyone, why just focus on the government?

Because government is the sole involved party with the money and the responsibility to control that spending.

because it can always run at optimal temperature and RPM.

Basically, you have something spinning, use that to produce electricity, which is then used to make something else spin. Such conversions inevitably eat into efficiency... And then, of course, there are non-trivial losses due to electricity distribution itself.

would actually be a reduction in pollution if all mobile transport was electric, and all the amps generated to do that came from petroleum-based generation

That may be true, but it is far from obvious. Various transports — including Porsche's sole big vehicle — that used the motors to generate electricity, weren't especially fuel efficient.

Hybrid cars aren't new — they just sucked in 1900. And they still aren't very good today.

And maybe... just maybe... if the US loses 200 billion dollars a year in tourism income, our politicians will pull their heads out of their asses and start making some sane national security policies (but I wouldn't hold my breath).

As an American, I call tell you that that is not very likely. Few Americans directly benefit from foreign tourism.

How exactly are you planning to get rid of your multi-trillion deficit if you don't give foreigners an incentive to buy dollars for any purpose?

And maybe... just maybe... if the US loses 200 billion dollars a year in tourism income, our politicians will pull their heads out of their asses and start making some sane national security policies (but I wouldn't hold my breath).

As an American, I call tell you that that is not very likely. Few Americans directly benefit from foreign tourism. Americans in general are somewhat xenophobic and its not unusual for them to think that everybody on earth except maybe people in Canada lives in absolute third world squalor in their pitiful, sad country. Americans don't really care at all - not at all - if foreigners face severe restrictions on coming here. And doing "tit for tat" isn't going to change things because the majority of Americans have never been outside of North America. If you just look at the group of Americans who've been outside of North America and remove the ones who've only been to the UK or France and never anywhere else, then you're looking at a pretty small subset of people. Most Americans could not possibly care at all if they aren't allowed to visit foreign countries or if it becomes more difficult to do so because they weren't going to do that anyway.

There may or may not be a good reason why this family ran into problems, but we're unlikely to ever know what the real reason was. My guess is the UK family is Pakistani, which going forward is going to become more and more of a red flag to American DHS people, and they may be connected to a mosque that is under US scrutiny. Or it may just be a complete bunch of crap but either way we'll never know. Some of this may also be a complete overreaction to the recent San Bernardino shootings where the wife was Pakistani and DHS completely fell down on the job by failing to look into the fact that her husband had never actually met her in person before their marriage when he filed for the fiancee visa to bring her over here. All I can say is that over a decade ago I filed for a fiancee visa (we never got married as we broke up before the very final steps of the process, but I digress) as did a friend of mine. We both had girlfriends in Eastern Europe. It was really easy to prove my girlfriend and I had met as I had photos of us together and phone records and email that I submitted with the application to prove we had met in person. My application got preliminary approval and basically all we had to do was go through the final steps, including her personal interview, and she was going to get the visa. Proving that she and I met was incredibly easy since we actually had done so. In fact, at that time there was some government website you could go to where you could look up fiancee visa applications that were denied and the most common reason for denial was lack of proof of a personal meeting. Meeting in person before you apply for a fiancee visa is an absolute legal requirement. So it may suck, but I suspect even if there is no terrorism link that the family is Pakistani and they're suffering for the sins of others from Pakistan.

As much as I hate to say it, I would say that the best response is to not come to the US for vacation. You can find the equivalent of pretty much anything you might want to see in another country without being treated like a felon from the most wanted list by the DHS and the TSA.

And maybe... just maybe... if the US loses 200 billion dollars a year in tourism income, our politicians will pull their heads out of their asses and start making some sane national security policies (but I wouldn't hold my breath).

Enjoy your shitty internet access, then. Every time you spout this nonsense argument you guarantee the US's internet access will remain cripplingly bad for the vast majority of people for a little bit longer.

You're from the UK, right? Doesn't look like your country (or Europe) is doing significantly better than the US:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

http://www.techinsider.io/akam...

http://data.worldbank.org/indi...

Note also that the Internet in Europe only took off after privatization and deregulation, and the UK today doesn't seem significantly different in how it provides Internet access from the US.

those who benefited through harming others

Just curious, do you think that more people have been harmed than helped? If you do you are an idiot. You are quick to dismiss the number of people that has been lifted out of poverty, have food in their belly, and clean water to drink, and a roof over their head. In 1990, there were 1.95 billion people making less than $1.90 in 2012 it was 896 million. That was from cheap dirty energy.

Your narrative is very one sided and dishonest. It is also missing the economics of energy and global trade.

So why exactly is it wrong to ask them to use those means to do so on behalf of those whom they harmed?

Because the average person isn't harming anyone and is just trying to live like anyone else. They didn't cause this problem. Everyone contributes to it. If you are going to take advantage of modern technology you take part in the responsibility which is nearly everyone. It's everyone's problem and everyone has to deal with it or you will get no where.

Concentrated relief, awesome.

Pointing finger because history. Not so.

There are also the questions of long-term viability of the company, patents and copyright issues on the three-word locations. On their website they promise the tech will always provide free ways for individuals to use it. And in the case the company can no longer maintain the technology (or find another company to do so), they also promise to release the technology and code into the public domain.

what3words will always be free for individuals to use on our own site and apps. If or when we do charge for access to our web API or offline SDK, there will always be ways to use them for free.

In particular, we intend to support fair and equitable use of our core addressing technology. We employ a fee structure that provides qualifying organisations with a range of free and discounted usage plans, in addition to country-based pricing. Qualifying organisations will include humanitarian and not-for-profit entities in any country, and regional and national government and associated organisations registered in countries that fall under the World Bank Low-Income Country (LIC), Lower-Middle-Income Country (LMIC) or Upper-Middle-Income Country (UMIC) categories. Discounts are based on world economic indicator data compiled and published by the World Bank.

Furthermore, we understand that organisations whointegratewhat3words need assurances about the long-term viability of the technology.

Our goal is for what3words to become a global standard for communicating location. At the moment, the core what3words algorithms and data are not in the public domain. In the future, we may release some or all of our source code â" we will continually evaluate the business case for doing this.

In the meantime, we commit to the following:

If we, what3words ltd, are ever unable to maintain the what3words technology or make arrangements for it to be maintained by a third-party (with that third-party being willing to make this same commitment), then we will release our source code into the public domain. We will do this in such a way and with suitable licences and documentation to ensure that any and all users of what3words, whether they are individuals, businesses, charitable organisations, aid agencies, governments or anyone else can continue to rely on the what3words system.

Promise on pricing page.

That's a lot of promising.

I really like the idea but I'd like to know it's free and open for everyone to use without limitation. Like many things, the market will ultimately decide its fate.

USSR was spending 10-40% of their GDP on their military
And if you go through this, Russia outspends America in % of GDP, except when W throw the money away on his wars

But hey, do not let REAL facts get in your way.

See article 1, section, clause 5 of the US Constitution - "No Tax or Duty shall be laid on Articles exported from any State." Thus there are zero export taxes in the US. It's not like it's hard to find the export tax rates for countries. And it's not hard to learn about foreign free trade zones in the US. But hey, I know it's just facts and reality - don't let that stop you from your little, delusional rant! Education is a terrible thing when you have an agenda to push...

Well said and extrapolated! Particularly your quip "Education is a terrible thing when you have an agenda to push" If you do not mind I will use it elsewhere. It cuts to the core of why we need to continue the fight against all political entities that are based upon male domination like the Talaban that exist only by violent brutal intolerance for the benefit of the so called "leaders". The same is true with the petrochemical industrial complex which is controlling far to great a portion of the world's economy. They need to be exposed for what they, are a conglomerate group who really could care less about human life as long as they control the planet.

Who are the they? I can look in the mirror and at times see one myself as I drive my car willy-nilly everywhere. I keenly remember seeing a hippy Volkswagen van once in about 96' with a tattered bumper sticker long after the defeat of Bush after the first and the pseudo religious oil conflict with Sadam over Kuwait (first gulf war). The bumper sticker boldly stated: (NO BLOOD FOR OIL!). The funny part was that it was sitting there running and dripping oil from the engine all over the pavement where it was parked. The oil was going directly down into a storm sewer catchment that lead directly to a fish bearing creek. At the time I was doing environmental stream survey work for logging cut blocks. To cut a long story short I went home and looked in the mirror and realized that poor ol' Al Gore who was recently berated in the press for his anti pollution stance was on to something and there was no chance in hell of him every gaining power. We are all subject to the whim of our ignorance and education can help heal this inner wound. But the greatest failing of the student is always an inability to listen, thus we ignore Rachel Carson and other luminaries like Al Gore at our own intellectual peril!

See article 1, section, clause 5 of the US Constitution - "No Tax or Duty shall be laid on Articles exported from any State." Thus there are zero export taxes in the US. It's not like it's hard to find the export tax rates for countries. And it's not hard to learn about foreign free trade zones in the US. But hey, I know it's just facts and reality - don't let that stop you from your little, delusional rant! Education is a terrible thing when you have an agenda to push...

There's no proof, and the "Global Competitiveness" crap in TFA is irrelevant to the millions of Japanese SMEs, because they are not competing globally.

Japan is on the edge of a demographics crisis. 25% of their population is over 65, compared with 59% that work. Having only ~2.36 people paying into public healthcare and social insurance for each person drawing out is not a good ratio, and with their notoriously low birth rates, is only going to worsen as time goes on.

In the meanwhile, Japan's racking up shittons of debt, and has to import nearly all of their energy.

So, what does this mean? It means productivity is really fucking important. If your aging population has fewer than 2 workers to cover each retiree, those workers better be really fucking productive or those healthcare costs are going to be an incredible burden. If you need to import 94% of your energy at great expense, you better put that energy to really fucking good use--i.e., be productive--or otherwise you're spending everything on coal and petrodollars instead of your own people. If your government debt is skyrocketing, but has fewer and fewer taxpayers to pay it down, those people better be really fucking productive or you're not going to have a government.

That latter point is especially important. Japan can get away with its debt load because of Japan's famously high savings rate--lots of people (or banks using people's savings) buying savings bonds means you can issue those bonds really cheaply. But, when people retire, they by necessity stop saving and start drawing on their savings instead. The government has double their yearly income in what's essentially an adjustable-rate mortgage, and the interest rates are going to skyrocket right as fewer people are there to pay it down.

There's no proof, and the "Global Competitiveness" crap in TFA is irrelevant to the millions of Japanese SMEs, because they are not competing globally.

Japan is on the edge of a demographics crisis. 25% of their population is over 65, compared with 59% that work. Having only ~2.36 people paying into public healthcare and social insurance for each person drawing out is not a good ratio, and with their notoriously low birth rates, is only going to worsen as time goes on.

In the meanwhile, Japan's racking up shittons of debt, and has to import nearly all of their energy.

So, what does this mean? It means productivity is really fucking important. If your aging population has fewer than 2 workers to cover each retiree, those workers better be really fucking productive or those healthcare costs are going to be an incredible burden. If you need to import 94% of your energy at great expense, you better put that energy to really fucking good use--i.e., be productive--or otherwise you're spending everything on coal and petrodollars instead of your own people. If your government debt is skyrocketing, but has fewer and fewer taxpayers to pay it down, those people better be really fucking productive or you're not going to have a government.

That latter point is especially important. Japan can get away with its debt load because of Japan's famously high savings rate--lots of people (or banks using people's savings) buying savings bonds means you can issue those bonds really cheaply. But, when people retire, they by necessity stop saving and start drawing on their savings instead. The government has double their yearly income in what's essentially an adjustable-rate mortgage, and the interest rates are going to skyrocket right as fewer people are there to pay it down.

There's no proof, and the "Global Competitiveness" crap in TFA is irrelevant to the millions of Japanese SMEs, because they are not competing globally.

Japan is on the edge of a demographics crisis. 25% of their population is over 65, compared with 59% that work. Having only ~2.36 people paying into public healthcare and social insurance for each person drawing out is not a good ratio, and with their notoriously low birth rates, is only going to worsen as time goes on.

In the meanwhile, Japan's racking up shittons of debt, and has to import nearly all of their energy.

So, what does this mean? It means productivity is really fucking important. If your aging population has fewer than 2 workers to cover each retiree, those workers better be really fucking productive or those healthcare costs are going to be an incredible burden. If you need to import 94% of your energy at great expense, you better put that energy to really fucking good use--i.e., be productive--or otherwise you're spending everything on coal and petrodollars instead of your own people. If your government debt is skyrocketing, but has fewer and fewer taxpayers to pay it down, those people better be really fucking productive or you're not going to have a government.

That latter point is especially important. Japan can get away with its debt load because of Japan's famously high savings rate--lots of people (or banks using people's savings) buying savings bonds means you can issue those bonds really cheaply. But, when people retire, they by necessity stop saving and start drawing on their savings instead. The government has double their yearly income in what's essentially an adjustable-rate mortgage, and the interest rates are going to skyrocket right as fewer people are there to pay it down.

If that is your opinion about 'government' and hence 'society', why don't you emmigrate to true third world country, like Somalia, Sudan or Nigeria?

Weren't you among those, "threatening" to emigrate to Canada, when Bush got elected? Or was it North Korea — the platonic ideal of government "taking care" of the citizenry's every need? WTF are you still doing here?

The 'governments' there certainly don't feed the poor, house the homeless and treat the sick.

Nice of you to have included Somalia — this whole meme about how Libertarians are supposed to move there is as stupid as it is infamous — the country's current troubles are due to its previous government being Socialist. Venezuela is unravelling into the same direction in front of our eyes — just ask Bernie Sanders, when you next meet him, what he would differently from Hugo Chavez...

Oh, but what about Sudan? Well, they have an ambitious social protection program called the Social Initiative Program. Nigeria does too. Time to update your talking-points card.

And you likely proclaim yourself a Christian even...

Tell me, where in the Christian (or Jewish) dogma is there anything about it being the government's (Cæsar's) responsibility to help the "less fortunate"? It is not — good people are supposed to do it themselves, government spending tax-monies on it is not benevolence.

Throwing numbers at the above population density claim, the European Union has an average population density of 112/km^2. The United States has an average population density of 35/km^2.

I don't think this is actually true, the last time I checked the proportion of male teachers hasn't gone changed significantly, in recent years, although it is remarkably low.
although not many years
http://data.worldbank.org/indi...

At least get your facts straight before calling people names: http://data.worldbank.org/indi... Look at the indicators at the right. Are those "uneducated foodless people without future" continuing to breed like cockroaches or do you see another general trend?

I strongly disagree with your narrative. Cockroaches get up to 400 offspring. And there is no downward trend that I'm aware of.

I agree though that a systematic divide between a skilled/infertile population and an unskilled/breeding population is problematic. Combine exponential growth in one population with exponential reduction in the other, and the unskilled population will vastly outnumber the unskilled population in just a few generations. But there are a few things that makes this a smaller problem than it seems:
- History shows that when children start to survive and grow up in stead of dying then the fertility rate in that population goes down. There is a transition phase for a generation or two though, where it looks a bit ugly and people who have already been through that phase may feel entitled to using terms as 'breed like cockroaches'
- Statistical data shows that this is already happening.
- Female contraceptives has not been easily available within the breeding population.
- The general eductation/skill/resource-level is going up overall.

No, that's not it.

Sorry but you are wrong. In old english 'man' meant person without any gender specification because 'wer' meant male human where is where "werewolf" comes from: literally "male person-wolf". However because we started to use the word 'man' to mean male human this interpretation has now been retroactively applied to words which were derived when the meaning was gender neutral.

And for what it's worth, for all of the complaints given about the US, the US is perhaps one of the least male-dominated societies out there.

Seriously? So how many female government leaders have you had? Your congress has under 20% women compared to ~25% for Canada, UK and Australia and 30% for New Zealand. Even Saudia Arabia has a 1% higher proportion of women in its national parliament than the US. In many European countries the ratio is in the upper thirties to forty percent.

I hate to tell you this but there are a LOT of people living in the American midwest

Don't be no hater, use fewer cliches, and tell me, what is the population density in America East of Las Vegas and West of Pittsburgh... Note, that in Bay Area the density exceeds 1000 people per square mile, while Iowa has less than 55.

If you think you can have America produce food [...]

I really don't care, where food is produced, as long as it is produced. America is currently using only about 44% of its land for agriculture.

You can fit a hundred of Bay Areas (about 100 square miles each) into Iowa's 55 thousand square miles — and still have plenty of room left for corn.

The US spends a lot more because it is the largest economy on the planet, but as a percentage of GDP, it isn't that much at 3.5%. Given that 2% is widely considered to be the baseline of what a nation needs to spend on defense to actually be able to defend itself, you can see that we're really picking up the slack for a lot of our allies. Could we spend what do more wisely? Yes. Ditching the idea that we need a "jack-of-all-trades" airplane like the F-35 would be a good place to start. Developing lots of common subsystems (engines, avionics, radar, etc) to save on development costs while having the airframes tailored to what each service needs would have been a much better strategy. Cutting more is unwise if it impacts training and readiness of these forces, and that is at the point where we're at, especially with the Army. http://data.worldbank.org/indi...

What of all those people in India and China (and other parts of the world) who burn organics like wood or straw or animal dung for heat, cooking, etc? That puts out far more pollution than a gas or even coal-fired power plant per capita.

probably not the case.
For heating/cooking, it is probably more polluting to run your own kerosene stove than to use electricity generated at a power station.

However, if you're using 3rd world heating/cooking methods, you're not driving a 4x4, you're not running a/c, flying, having food delivered by trucks to stores, etc, etc.

Which is why per capita carbon output is much lower in the third world.
http://data.worldbank.org/indi...

> because the rich-poor divide is even wider in India than it is in other nations

India's Gini index is the same as that of Switzerland & Canada and better than US & UK.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
http://data.worldbank.org/indi...
Argue with numbers please, not your prejudices and cliches.

"The fact that we have brains hasn't made the world any safer"

Now, I understand that life isn't a zero-sum game, and I don't want to belittle any of the truly horrible things that are happening in the world right now... but on the whole, the world is a safer place than it's been in probably any point in humanity's history.

Violence is down.

People are, on average, living longer, healthier lives.

Poverty is declining, if only slightly.

And so on... never been a better time than right now.
=Smidge=

We spend about 834 billion a year on government healthcare subsidies.

Actually, plenty of people do want to cut that budget, but can't for ideological reasons.

The US spends just over 17% of GDP on health care, which is a figure only exceeded by Tuvalu. Most developed countries (e.g. most of Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Japan) the figure is around 9-10% of GDP. Even France spends less than 12%.

So, yes, you could cut that figure by a third simply by building a real public health system.

For every dollar in premiums you pay your insurance company, they spend 15-20 cents in administrative costs and profits. (You can see that if you read an insurance company annual report on their web site. The "loss ratio," usually 80-85%, is the money they pass on to the doctor or hospital.)

Then your doctor gets 80 cents. He has to spend another 20 cents in administrative costs to deal with the insurance company. (Compared to less than 5 cents on Medicare.)

So if you just cut out the insurance companies, you'd save 35% right there. Other big expenses here are the cost of drugs, hospital services, and doctor services.

I don't know if Obamacare has helped or will help in any significant way. Given that the AMA supported it, probably not.

There was a good story in the Washington Post, based on a Netroots Nation meeting, which gave a reasonably good brief explanation of how Obamacare got here and why it will fail.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
Liberal activists see Bernie Sanders as champion for causes failed by Obama
By David Weigel
July 20, 2015

Basically, Obama and the advisers he picked decided that the only way to pass a health care bill was to give the Republicans and the corporations everything they wanted. They struck a deal with the insurance companies, the drug companies, the hospitals, the doctors' organizations, etc. to give them everything they wanted. So you have to buy your Obamacare through a private insurer, instead of having the choice of a public option.

The problem with Obamacare is that the premiums and copayments are enormous. A single person making $27,000 a year would have to pay one month's income a year for the premiums. Then (depending on the plan) the insurance wouldn't kick in until she spent $2,000 or $3,000. Then she might have to pay 20% or 40% of the costs, until she reached the maximum, which is $8,000. It benefits somebody who has more than $8,000 a year of medical expenses.

In other words, you wind up paying twice as much as they do in Canada. And in this country, the burden falls most heavily on the lower middle class. It's a regressive tax.

We spend about 834 billion a year on government healthcare subsidies.

Actually, plenty of people do want to cut that budget, but can't for ideological reasons.

The US spends just over 17% of GDP on health care, which is a figure only exceeded by Tuvalu. Most developed countries (e.g. most of Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Japan) the figure is around 9-10% of GDP. Even France spends less than 12%.

So, yes, you could cut that figure by a third simply by building a real public health system.

I don't know if Obamacare has helped or will help in any significant way. Given that the AMA supported it, probably not.

actual interest payments are somewhere around 2.6% to 4.3% of GDP (depending on your calculation method)
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6e55...

greek tax revenue as a proportion of gdp is about 30%
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

so greek interest payments are approx 10% of tax receipts
http://data.worldbank.org/indi...

maybe we just don't care anymore. I grew up believing that at any moment I would be killed in a nuclear holocaust (unless I ducked and covered of course). Just yesterday, feeling nostalgic, I watched Ray Bradbury's Martian Chronicals .. And don't forget Carl Sagan's Cosmos .

I was told that humanity was going to die of over population and that I shouldn't have kids or start a family . The ozone hole was going to kill everyone by skin cancer. Who can forget nuclear winter

.... the effect of ECB quantitative easing and other bond purchase programs.

... which is exactly what the Federal Reserve has done too, in far bigger size than the ECB, and for more years. Which means that the Italian bonds' interest rates would be lower than USA T-bills' anyways. The financial stability of a country depends on the private debt too, not only on the government debt. And - surprise! - the Italians are in a pretty good position on this:

http://data.worldbank.org/indi...

USA: 192% of GDP

ITALY: 117% of GDP

Greece has a military?

Here is a table of per-country military spending, as shared of GDP.

Even after EU-mandated austerity plans, Greece spends more than Turkey, but also more than France, United Kingdom, or China. I guess EU "partners" considered they were the best country to keep the Germany submarine industry alive.