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Those are international numbers

Citation needed.

You mean like the $100 Billion (time.com) that has gone into every single nuclear pant ever built since the beginning of the DOE?

I appreciate your attempt to provide a citation here, but am compelled to point out, it failed.

This is pure Econ 101. If a $1billion solar plant has the same CapEx as nuclear plant [...]

Why, then, aren't private investors lining up to invest in your power plant? Why do you need taxpayers to give you loan-guarantees and grants?

I can put a panel in service every 10 seconds for $150 each

Marvelous. I'm sure, statements like this were made when the Ivanhoe facility was proposed and discussed. So, what would you have done differently from these failures?

We spend $6B/Year on cleanup.

Citation needed. Point remains — none of the nuclear power plants world-wide have had a nuclear explosion so far... Building such a plant in a location, where nukes were once tested, would not have raised risks perceptibly.

Still haven't found a long term storage solution.

Yes, because of the artificially high requirements — set by the government as if seeking to kill off an industry competing with that of the politicians' donors.

Maybe, solar is the way to go. But as long as it needs taxpayers' monies — and thus the favor of government officials controlling the funds — it will be a corruption-breeding disaster.

You are missing a point. Interstate travel simply does not matter to many many (my estimation the large majority of people).

I'm not sure that I missed that point. If this was of paramount importance to all buyers, there would not be a market for EV's - and there clearly is a market. However, the market hasn't exactly eroded the ICE market (around 60k BEV's against over 17m ICE cars and light trucks sold in the US in 2015). There are many people who do enjoy the convenience that ICE's offer. Others have jobs that keep them on the road all day, and EV's just don't work for that yet.

Collectively we are sick and tiered of paying for features (massive towing capacity and huge ranges on vehicles) that people neither want nor need.

Who is we? Are you speaking for every vehicle consumer in the world? I mean, certainly you're not speaking for the massive amount of Americans who purchased pickup trucks last year. Do you have some sort of data to suggest that Americans are collectively sick of paying for this utility? On the contrary, light trucks outsell cars by quite a large margin. Surely, there are a whole lot of buyers who prefer having this utility available to them.

. The dude who needs to tow his boat long distance can go screw himself, he will have to pay double in a few years as others (via economics of scale) are subsidizing him.

That's an interesting attitude. How are others subsidizing towing? My understanding is that roads are mainly funded by fuel taxes, and towing (or even having a large vehicle that is capable of towing) uses more fuel, generating more taxes. Anyone hauling a boat around is already paying more than double than someone driving a mid-sized sedan. Interestingly, we're subsidizing EV's significantly more than large vehicles towing boats. Beyond the state and federal subsidies for the vehicles themselves, EV's don't generate any tax revenue and do not help to fund the roads that they travel on. Even further, due to the weight of batteries, most EV's are very heavy and thus cause more wear and tear on the road than lighter vehicles. I'm not suggesting that subsidizing EV's is a bad thing...but it's disingenuous to suggest that heavy ICE vehicles are somehow subsidized and EV's aren't.

I'm not trying to suggest that electric cars are terribly impractical and will never feasible. However, your position doesn't reflect the reality of the current market.

Even if the crop wasn't consumed directly, it arguably displaces food crops from aerable land, and could be used to feed livestock. The same objection holds with switchgrass, which can also be used for grazing.

The link between ethanol subsidies and world hunger has quite a lot of data behind it. The New York Times editorialized specifically on the effect on Guatemalan food prices due to the shift of US corn production from food to fuel. Or there is this artcile from Forbes. Or the Wall Street Journal.

Many of the crimes in the US are committed by illegal immigrants — an indisputable fact, even if we can not agree on the exact figures.

False.
Saying its indisputable doesn't make it so.
There are what, 10mil illegal immigrants?
Compared to 320mil legal residents?
And you expect us to believe they commit more crimes than legal residents?
Even as a percentage that just isnt supported...anywhere.

http://i.huffpost.com/gen/1742...

Oh gee. Looks like they aren't connected after all.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/th...

Doh, not there either.

http://openborders.info/hispan...

Damn.
Still more numbers.

so much for "indisputable".

That building a border-wall would greatly reduce their numbers — indisputably proven by Israel's border wall.

Really? Indisputably? Again?

Ok...here we go:
The wall has done very little to stop attacks or crossings.
Even Israel's own right wing factions acknowledge the wall has played little part and is ineffective.
That credit goes to waning support for violence, and the ability of the Israeli Intelligence to disrupt them.
The real reason for the wall is to further expand the territory they have, since possession is 9/10 the law.
http://972mag.com/wave-of-stab...

The Second Intifada ended for a number of reasons, only one of which was the separation barrier. That becomes especially clear when you look at how little of the barrier had actually been constructed by the time the attacks stopped.

The violence of the Second Intifada wound down because Israeli intelligence managed to wear down armed Palestinian groups. Popular Palestinian support for the violent uprising slowly dwindled due to the painful consequences, namely Israeli military operations, sieges, closures and curfews, which affected more and more of Palestinian society with little to show for their suffering. And finally, momentum simply fell off; the First Intifada also lasted for roughly five years before slowly coming to a halt.

Even a 10% reduction in crime will pay for the wall within one year. Maybe, the 10% figure is exaggerated, but 1% is certainly reasonable. So the wall will pay off in 10 years instead — still a big win.

No, it's not reasonable.
And you've clearly ignored upkeep costs.

The wall Trump wants would cost a minimum of 30 billion to build.
that's just in materials, and does not include labor or logistics. which would easily be 2/3 or more of the total project cost.
so to build out you're talking ~70-90 billion.
(All that....and defeating it as simple as spending ~30$ at Home Depot on a ladder.)

The harsh desert sun and wind would quickly put it into poor shape, so regularly maintence is a must.
maintenance costs alone would exceed the initial build cost after only 7 years. so annualized that's ~10 billion a year (at 70b build cost).
plus, because walls are stupid-easy to defeat with ladders and tunnels, you're still going to have to man it, which means even more border agents, cameras, monitoring equipment than we currently have. so thats even more money.

So, even going conservatively, 10 year cost total comes to 170billion.

Annually, crime costs ~15b in economic losses, and ~180b in government spending fighting it.
That's ~200b a year.

So no, you're not paying it off after 10 years.
Or ever really.

And thats again ignoring that the wall will not reduce crime anyway because your entire premise is that immigration is the source of the majority of crime, whic

Government is uniquely positioned to take longer term bets that the corporate world will not take.

Bullshit. Absolute stinking cow manure.

You would not offer citations for your claim, but here are counter-examples:

the max horizon is 3 years out.

Another steaming pile of excrement — five, not three years is considered the "traditional" investment period in the above cases.

Different people have different investment priorities, that's true. But some do have long-term ones.

by taking a longer term view they will quite regularly waste money

It is not the length of the term, that wastes money — it is the incompetence of the folks doing the "investing" coupled with the absence of self-interest and personal risk. A private investor putting his millions into Solyndra would not have anything left to invest again. How many bureaucrats got similarly disqualified at the DOE?

Before complaining about it, learn how a loan guarantee is different from a loan.

I know the difference very well, thank you. At best, the US would've been left with nothing. At worst, we were $1.6bln short. And we never stood a chance at making profit.

BTW, this "worst" has happened long before this fire. In March the plant was already reported on the verge of closing — and asking for a federal grant (not even a loan!) of $539 million (that's three times Google's investment!) to help them pay off earlier debts.

Your gasping at straws is pathetic...

spent on the US Military

Maintaining capable military is a responsibility explicitly given to the federal government by the US Constitution. We may be (are!) spending too much, but there is nothing wrong with such spending in principle.

why the auto companies aren't required to pay back the gov't in full for getting their asses bailed out

Another no-brainer. Because that would hurt the labor unions — part of the electorate solidly in bed with the party in power. Your attempts to switch subject are just as pathetic.

I made the above comment in good faith, as I did with a similar comment elsewhere in this thread. Both are at -1.

The effect of hosting the Olympics on Greek debt has been widely reported.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-08-02/how-the-2004-olympics-triggered-greeces-decline
http://www.news.com.au/sport/sports-life/a-dark-olympic-legacy-for-greece/news-story/8dcf6d1e8df9fe2e0f93ff12e74b1b72

Furthermore, there are economic studies in the US that show that public subsidies for sports venues aren't worth it.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/use-of-taxpayer-money-for-pro-sports-arenas-draws-fresh-scrutiny-1425856677

My comments are supported by plenty of research on these topics. There's no good reason why my posts were modded down. I'm not sure why I bother trying to make good posts if moderators are going to downmod them to -1 where most people won't see them. I can only assume I was modded down because someone disagreed with my posts, which is a blatant abuse of moderation.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB...

Chuck Schumer didn't do us any favors when he added fuel to panic and caused a bank run on IndyMac.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.co...

http://www.cnbc.com/id/2565430...

http://money.cnn.com/2008/07/1...

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB...

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

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

Contrary to headline though accurately stated in summary, Buffett wasn't behind decision to buy Apple; it was others at Berkshire.

Actually, Samsung beat Apple in profits a few years ago.

Samsung has beat Apple for short periods from time to time but over longer periods Apple has substantially out performed Samsung in profits from smartphones. With some slightly odd mathematics last year Apple had 92% of all profits from smartphones. Samsung had about 15%. Together they actually have more than 100% of the profits because other smartphone makers actually lost money. Nobody else made any meaningful profits. You are correct that Samsung has taken the low margin high volume route and they have done well but they haven't been able to match Apple's profits.

Not Buffet, his lieutenants. They're trying to prove themselves in a big way. We'll see...

Ok, it's UPenn, not Penn State. But this has apparently been around for a while at other schools:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/am...

I don't know what planet you live on, but here on planet earth Subway overtook McDonald's some time ago as the fast food chain with the largest number of locations world wide. They are continuing to open new locations - in the US and around the world - at a much faster clip than McDonald's as well. Even with most of their locations franchises, how would they be able to keep opening so many new restaurants if they were not doing well? They would have a hard time convincing franchisees to put down the capital to open a new location if they were doing poorly.

Are you sure about that? http://www.wsj.com/articles/su...

Whoops, my picture is of an identical looking Mercedes one.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB...

Second picture down, has the same markings, looks the same. Anyway.

but cars & trucks are being sold at the clip of ~17M/year these days in the US. That investment is not going to disappear overnight. Same with petrol vehicles vs. battery powered. I think self-driving is a great idea, but things like construction zones, weather events, downed trees, nearby idiots make me always want to have the ability to drive myself. BC Reference: http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-...

Of the four depressions in the list you provided, one was not in the US at all (the Greek depression), and the others aren't obviously supportive of the "one worse than the last" claim.

Worse — for your argument — even if it were true, having a depression "every few decades" is still much better, than having a famine or a mass-murder, which Communism and Socialism (a.k.a. Communism-lite) bring about with alarming persistence. One is unravelling in Venezuela right now — which is far worse off today, than it was before it elected a Socialist to help divide the spoils of oil-wealth "fairly".

Despite being insanely wasteful, it [FDR's first 8 years in office -mi] was hugely successful at solving economic problems

Was it successful? Or did it simply perpetuate the depression — making it much "greater" than it had to be?

UN Human Development Index is a measure of success

Lies, damn lies, and benchmarks... A measure of success according to who? Bureaucrats sent to the UN by their governments? Of course, they are going to consider Statist countries more "successful". For just one example, this index of yours awards extra points simply for "years of schooling" the country provides...

What would yours be?

I would consider GDP per capita and the attractiveness to (would-be) immigrants.

Article has misread the report it links to, which says by 2020.
2017 is when they will start testing it.

Proof you are wrong, sir: Hugo Chávez won all his elections fair and square, according not just to himself but to former US president Jimmy Carter, who was quoted saying "Venezuela probably has the most excellent voting system that I have ever known".

...

BULLSHIT

Academics' Study Backs Fraud Claim In Chavez Election

Two Venezuelan academics claim to have found statistical evidence of fraud in last month's referendum on President Hugo Chavez, fueling the opposition's claims of a rigged vote and raising the possibility that despite Mr. Chavez's victory, the country's tense standoff will continue.

The claims were made Sunday by Ricardo Hausmann, a professor at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government and former chief economist at the Inter-American Development Bank, and Roberto Rigobon, a professor of applied economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management.

The pair issued a report that tried to measure the possibility that the vote was clean using two separate analyses of the official results. In both cases, they said, the chances of a clean vote were less than one in 100.

...

The study compared the votes obtained by the opposition during the recall vote with the signatures gathered in November 2003 requesting the referendum. For the recounted votes, the correlation between the number of "yes" votes matched the 2003 petition numbers at a rate that was 10% higher than in the ballot boxes that weren't recounted. They calculate the probability of this taking place by chance at less than 1%.

The government's sample recount "was not a random sample, and I can say that with 99% confidence," Mr. Hausmann said in a telephone interview.

The academics used another technique to look for suspicious patterns in the results, using the 2003 petition and an exit poll on the day of the vote as a vague measure of a voter's intention. Because both measures are imperfect for different reasons, the academics argued, the measures should make different mistakes in predicting the final result.

But the academics found that each method had similar margins of error when compared with the official results, something that would happen only one in 100 times without fraud, they argued.

Fool.

Trying to find the reports I was looking at. Slashdot carried an article several months ago about Uber getting hit up in California because, across the whole state, they've had 25 assaults on passengers in their entire operating history; I did a bunch of research on the topic then, and concluded that Uber isn't specially safer, just not specially more dangerous. A lot of comments had horror stories about how taxis are so constantly dangerous to passengers, but that's the same kind of wargarble on the other side.

This one isn't strong enough. It makes a lot of logical arguments and carries some data (passenger assaults on drivers), but not the data I want (driver assaults on passengers). Still, the argument that fingerprinting might possibly carry more than 7 years of non-conviction arrests while Uber's background checks get all of that data *except* the non-conviction arrests is ... telling (what, not guilty, but not *really* innocent because you *did* get arrested some 20 years ago, even if the judge decided you didn't commit any crime? They're going to ban you from driving Uber for that? That's a lot of grasping for straws).

A Chicago study says taxi crimes went down when Uber entered the market; I think they just shifted taxi service to Uber and didn't count Uber crime. New York reports a rise in taxi cab sexual assault reporting, I think because people are chattering about how possibly dangerous Uber/Lyft might be and now are primed to be more vocal about getting groped in a taxicab. I also found a newspaper with the 2016 headline, "New York taxi drivers banned from flirting with or ejaculating on passengers" ... ... wtf?

This is impossible today. If you put "taxi assault statistics" into Google, you get 16 pages of highly-political, heavily-biased pages about Uber/Lyft, and how taxis *must* be safer because of insurance or background checks, or how Uber *must* be safer because it has *better* insurance or background checks (and tons of technology tracking everything that happens). Most studies are localized, not nationalized, and so you come across Chicago and Detroit and New York and "our city police don't specially-track who was committing a crime, so we can't know how many taxi drivers actually assault passengers". News outlets aren't particularly invested in settling the dispute, either, because it creates fear and draws eyeballs.

Great. Now I have to wait for both some institute to publish statistics *and* the news to latch onto it and make it popular so it doesn't vanish into the black hole of shit-you-can't-find-on-the-Internet.

In Asia only people are "fat" that want to be fat. Because it is a sign of success and luck. Or they don't care for their body.

That's not going to be true for much longer.

The difference between the Finnish and the US system isn't profits.

Yes, yes it is. It's not the only difference between the 2 systems but it's a major one.

even significantly higher than private insurance in the US.

This is simply not true. Source

As younger baby boomers join Medicare, the average amount that the program spends per beneficiary will be slightly reduced over the next decade. Overall, however, it appears that public programs control per capita spending somewhat more effectively than private coverage does. That may be just the opposite of what many would presume in a country where the private market is generally expected to outperform the public sector.

Here’s another way to think about it: While Medicare and Medicaid are far from perfect, the purchasing power and policy levers available to large public programs appear to give them an edge over our fragmented private insurance system when it comes to controlling spending.

The problem with trying to have his discussion with you is that you're misinformed about facts, and make claims that are not consistent with reality.

Yeah, but... well, your Wikipedia link makes my point for me, linking to Matt Ridley's acticle.

And your point is that I shouldn't listen to the warnings from scientists, because they're all hysterical, but i should listen you ?
so we should do nothing until we're sure we're all going to die or something ?

Your statement assumes I'm not a scientist. The funny thing is if you read the opinions of some very well-informed papers in climate science, as others have, you'll see the climate scientists still believe in the scientific method and there are many uncertainties that need continued exploration. Journalists, however, not so much.

usa imposed 266% duty on chinese steel imports in march.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-...

seems that failed to help push overpriced bad products

Just the other day, a poll was conducted by Harvard University showing a majority of young people do not support capitalism. Are the times they are a changin' or are people starting to wake up?

"Wake up"? Fall asleep is more like it. If only 37% of highschool seniors are prepared for college Math and Reading, why should their ignorance of Socialism's 100 years of failure be taken as anything other than a similar lapse of their educators?

Solar construction is picking up in the oil states.

Plunging oil and gas has generated more than 84,000 pink slips in Texas, according to the Texas Alliance of Energy Producers. But many rig hands, roustabouts, pipe fitters and even some engineers are finding a surprising alternative in the utility-scale solar farms rising from the desert near the border with New Mexico.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/as-oil-jobs-dry-up-workers-turn-to-solar-sector-1461280612

It happens a lot. I don't know why you think that. There's been a lawsuit on a similar topic for a while.

The remedy for bad speech is not no speech, it's more speech.

Instead of focusing on Trump specifically, they ought to take a position of opposing all candidates. By that I mean make an effort to debunk the bullshit from each candidate. Don't censor the stories about politicians, instead go deeper and make sure that whenever someone gets a story in their feed about a candidate, any claims from that candidate get linked to a "debunker."

For example, in a story that reports on Trump saying mexicans are drug runners and rapists, that line should be linked to a story that analyzes that claim and reports the actual crime rate for legal and illegal mexican immigrants (which in this case is lower than for the native-born population).

Make it an official policy to do that sort of debunking for all candidates and the end result is a more informed electorate. That sort of policy could be expanded beyond just politicians to things like pro-ISIS messaging. For example, every time some ISIS recruiter sends a message about how great it is to live in their 'caliphate' facebook could add a link to a story from ISIS defectors about how shitty it was to live there.

Rarely is an issue black-and-white and any policy of debunking claims will inevitably embody some biases. But the perfect is the enemy of the good. Better to inject some amount of counterpoint with ethical guidelines that are fully public than to apply censorship or even do nothing. For better or worse, facebook is a middleman, they should use that position to increase speech, not reduce it.

One, it is pointless because it won't happen.

If you told me 20 years ago, that a self-identified "Democratic Socialist" (and a bona-fide Communist underneath) will soon have a fair shot at becoming President of the US, I would've dismissed it with the same derision... But today's youth does not care any more — the Socialism/Communism's 100 years of failure (and mass-murder) are not taught in schools.

Two, it is a pointless claim because there are no democrats currently in Washington who are willing to propose anything that even slightly resembles an initiative to "give control of healthcare to the government".

Currently is the caveat-emptor, is not it? Look on this very board — numerous people speak in favor of "single payer", and they all vote...

Even the most socialized of all medical systems still give the physicians at least as much autonomy as our system does.

TFA is not about "authority" — it is about incompetence. When doctors become government-employees — as they are in Cuba so beloved by the likes of Bernie Sanders and Michael Moore, and other worker paradises — the healthcare will suck just as it does there.

And we are on our way — by many indications, Obamacare was designed to fail, and is failing as "CO-OPs" go bankrupt, and major commercial insurers threaten to withdraw. It did not "bend the curve" of the costs either — the grows of healthcare costs is accelerating.

It will continue to suck. Which will allow the next "progressive" President to claim "the market approach has failed" — and turn to a government-owned (euphemistically called "single payer") system. Obama himself would've done it — with enthusiastic support from morons like certain anonymous cowards replying to you — but "the nation was not ready" so he simply laid down the ground work for the future:

"I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer universal health care program. I see no reason why the United States of America, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, spending 14 percent of its gross national product on health care, cannot provide basic health insurance to everybody. And that's what Jim is talking about when he says everybody in, nobody out. A single-payer health care plan, a universal health care plan. That's what I’d like to see. But as all of you know, we may not get there immediately. Because first we've got to take back the White House, we've got to take back the Senate, and we've got to take back the House."

In other words, you are just parroting standard slashdot conservative FUD.

You seem like the kind, who'd be trying t

Instead, we're doing great, on track to become the biggest movie exhibitor in the world later this year...

Just wanted to remind people that AMC only projects movies that have been approved by North Korea. Same with Carmike chain, which they're trying to merge-with.

You missed the recent lies told about the abortion comments.

NBC's Chris Matthews asked Trump, if abortion was illegal, should women who get abortions be arrested? Then every report on this seems to conveniently omit the original question when trying to cast him as hating women.

https://www.washingtonpost.com...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03...
http://www.wsj.com/articles/tr...

All three of those articles fail to mention the bolded part above, all Trump was saying is "if it is illegal, of course your should get punished for it", they are all making it out to be that he thinks all women who get abortions should be punished, when he didn't even say that.

The problem for me is that a lot of warmist articles include "facts" that were later proven wrong, and some years ago they were TOLD it is fine to lie in their studies, and deliberately misrepresent data to get people to accept climate change. So much of the warmist FUD looks like a scam to give to key politicians and astroturfing organisations a way to funnel the money back to their coffers.

FTFY

Ok. How about the Wall Street Journal? Falling Chinese Coal Consumption and Output Undermine Global Market

Both coal production and consumption peaked in 2013 and has dropped continuously, falling a further 3.7% in the first 11 months of 2015 compared to the same period the year before. Both coal production and consumption peaked in 2013 and has dropped continuously, falling a further 3.7% in the first 11 months of 2015 compared to the same period the year before.

The central government has curbed construction of new coal fired plants with national regulators ordering in April 2016 a halt to construction in 13 provinces and delays for already approved projects in a further 15 provinces.[5] This is in line with a moratorium issued by the National Energy Agency in 2015 banning new coal mines in China for a period of three years and closure of thousands of small coal mines. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB...

http://www.thecrimereport.org/...

Moneyshot- "Ninety-seven percent of federal criminal prosecutions are resolved by plea bargain. In state courts the numbers are comparable."

And quid pro quo

Parallel construction [wikipedia.org] is an orthogonal (unrelated) problem

[citation needed]

but it has legitimate purposes too

[citation needed]

but a person innocent of substantial wrongdoing is yet to be convicted because of it

[citation needed]

I mean fair is fair, right?

Other sources disagree with Forbes.

For example, The Economist - http://www.economist.com/blogs... - says the formula is changing back, the low point was in the 50s, ever since the ratio of inherited vs. earned wealth has tilted back towards inheritance.

And The Wall Street Journal - http://blogs.wsj.com/wealth/20... - directly picks apart the Forbes article you quote.

Maybe the US or the world is not as twisted as here, I only had numbers for Germany when I posted. But the WSJ article is a good read.

How the hell did one of these equal pay stories get posted where they actually attributed for things like similar job and experience? If they keep this up the 77 cents on the dollar myth will be exposed for the lie that it is.

http://www.washingtonexaminer....
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
http://www.wsj.com/articles/th...

Yet, when the economic windfalls of the welfare state fail to rain down, people move back:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/so...

The only people who would object to such surveillance are those who have something to hide.

If one were to look closely enough at anyone, one can find something they are doing that is illegal. On average, everyone commits three felonies a day. I guarantee you that if I looked into your life, I'd find something to put you in jail for.

And with out wars on drugs, terrorism, child pornography, and the Patriot Act, we have turned into a police state. And with political parties having the elite choose who we get to vote for, I for one do not think we live in a free country any longer.

We have given our freedoms away for security and there's no turning back.

Yeah, about that 97% consensus... It's a pretty cooked statistic, cooked nearly as much as Mann's single bristlecone tree which produced the infamous hockey-stick of warming. But it does make a great talking point, even if it's not true!

What happens, do you suppose, when the first North Carolina transgender teenager has the s--t beaten out of them by the sons of the neanderthals this law is meant to court? I'll tell you what happens.

No, I'll tell you what happens. Assuming they can be identified they'll be arrested and prosecuted for assault just like anyone else. Why would you think anything else would happen? A little anti-American/anti-religious prejudice?

A Federal civil rights challenge that will see NC taxpayers pay out huge amounts of money.

On what basis? There doesn't seem to be one although some Federal judges do have very deep hats to pull things out of, let along a large supply of cloth waiting to be used in a decision.

...but forcing those people to use the men's washroom very likely will end up compromising those individual's civil liberties.

Probably not in the US, not yet. But that isn't a problem in North Carolina since people there that "transition" can have their birth certificates amended and the law is based on what is on the birth certificate.

But that's okay, because your prejudices reign a little longer, until the courts force the whole thing in your face.

Wouldn't it be odd if it turned out the other way and your prejudices were confronted?

And then, as a final sign of your ultimate impotence, you can complain about them thar darned right wing judges and their interfering ways!

FTFY

Having a person who is transitioning from male to female, or someone who has in fact completely transitioned,

You should look into what an early pioneer in that, John's Hopkins, does now: they don't. You might want to look into it and why.

Transgender Surgery Isn't the Solution
  - A drastic physical change doesn't address underlying psycho-social troubles - Paul McHugh - June 12, 2014 7:19 p.m. ET

We at Johns Hopkins University—which in the 1960s was the first American medical center to venture into "sex-reassignment surgery"—launched a study in the 1970s comparing the outcomes of transgendered people who had the surgery with the outcomes of those who did not. Most of the surgically treated patients described themselves as "satisfied" by the results, but their subsequent psycho-social adjustments were no better than those who didn't have the surgery. And so at Hopkins we stopped doing sex-reassignment surgery, since producing a "satisfied" but still troubled patient seemed an inadequate reason for surgically amputating normal organs.

It now appears that our long-ago decision was a wise one. A 2011 study at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden produced the most illuminating results yet regarding the transgendered, evidence that should give advocates pause. The long-term study—up to 30 years—followed 324 people who had sex-reassignment surgery. The study revealed that beginning about 10 years after having the surgery, the transgendered began to experience increasing mental difficulties. Most shockingly, their suicide mortality rose almost 20-fold above the comparable nontransgender population. This disturbing result has as yet no explanation but probably reflects the growing sense of isolation reported by the aging transgendered after surgery. The high suicide rate certainly challenges the surgery prescription.

There are subgroups of the transgendered, and for none does "reassignment" seem apt.

I think you misunderstand the definition of "wage gap." The wage gap is that an equally qualified woman performing an equal job to a man in the same position is earning significantly less (I think the current estimate is around 80%.)

Holy shit, if that is the case why am I not hearing about lawsuits flying around about this? Especially since it would be prima facie against the Equal Pay Act. Hell if I was a lawyer I would be salivating at those cases as a slam dunk win, if what you said was true.
Or you could be pulling shit out of your ass since the wage gap you described has been debunked multiple times. There is no evidence I could find of a pay gap as you described it, There is a gap when looking at all men vs all women but this is because of career choice and hours worked. If you are aware of any woman who is being underpaid as you described I would recommend they contact their nearest competent attorney because they are due a hell of a settlement.

For a chip this complex you need:

How many of those job titles and descriptions actually correspond to a college major that an American citizen can learn?

It's a problem mostly seen in the U.S., say labor-market experts, thanks to a rapidly evolving economy and a divide between the country's educational institutions and employers that isn't there in other advanced economies. In Germany and Denmark, for example, the two groups collaborate to ensure training and apprenticeships lead to jobs after graduation. The gap has helped push U.S. job vacancies to 5.5 million, near historic highs. For most of the past year the number of job openings has exceeded the number of new hires, a reflection of employers' difficulty in filling positions.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/colleges-drill-down-on-job-listing-terms-1459704268

It appears "small" cars account for a disproportionately small segment of total vehicle sales, though;

http://online.wsj.com/mdc/publ...

So sure, you can argue that the average price is skewed because a lot of larger, more expensive vehicles are included. However, the larger, more expensive vehicles also seem to sell more. Perhaps the average sell price and average paid price aren't so different after all.

In fact, since light duty trucks (which includes pickups and SUVs) outsell passenger cars (Small, midsize and luxury), I'd wager that the average amount people spend on a new car is actually *higher* than the average sticker price.
=Smidge=

Or they can get some J1 Visa workers to take the jobs.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB...

http://www.npr.org/2013/03/18/...

With their utter failure to have any meaningful presence in the mobile phone world, Microsoft is using Cyanogen to infiltrate:

http://www.businessinsider.com...
http://www.techtimes.com/artic...
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/20...
http://www.engadget.com/2015/0...

Hey look, in other news, the largest solar install is proving unworkable:

Here’s the story so far. Ivanpah:
- is owned by Google, NRG Energy, and Brightsource, who have a market cap in excess of $500 billion.
- received $1.6 billion in loan guarantees from the Department of Energy.
- is paid four to five times as much per megawatt-hour as natural gas-powered plants.
- is paid two to three times as much per megawatt-hour as other solar power producers.
- has burned thousands of birds to death.
- has delayed loan repayments.
- is seeking over $500 million in grants to help pay off the guaranteed loans.
- burns natural gas for 4.5 hours each morning to get its mojo going.

Source: http://dailysignal.com/2016/03...

Hey look, in other news, the largest solar install is proving unworkable:

Here’s the story so far. Ivanpah:
- is owned by Google, NRG Energy, and Brightsource, who have a market cap in excess of $500 billion.
- received $1.6 billion in loan guarantees from the Department of Energy.
- is paid four to five times as much per megawatt-hour as natural gas-powered plants.
- is paid two to three times as much per megawatt-hour as other solar power producers.
- has burned thousands of birds to death.
- has delayed loan repayments.
- is seeking over $500 million in grants to help pay off the guaranteed loans.
- burns natural gas for 4.5 hours each morning to get its mojo going.

Source: http://dailysignal.com/2016/03...

You're very wrong. Look at the graph here, and you'll see current debt as % GDP is below the average for the past 50 years. https://www.cbo.gov/publicatio... The increase in 2009 was due to the banking and auto industry bailouts both critical to the economic recovery since (and quickly brought down). http://www.nytimes.com/interac... The forecast increase after 2016 is more due to demographics than policy. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01... Regarding hospitals, here is a case from Ascension. http://kff.org/health-reform/i... Specifically "Compared to hospitals in states that did not expand Medicaid, Ascension Health hospitals in states that expanded Medicaid experienced larger increases in Medicaid discharge volumes and decreases in uninsured/self-pay volume from 2013 to 2014". " And "Despite somewhat smaller increases in patient revenue, hospitals in expansion states had larger relative increases in operating margins from 2013 to 2014 compared to hospitals in non-expansion states. Operating margins among hospitals in Medicaid expansion states increased from 2.1 percent in 2013 to 3.4 percent in 2014. Operating margins also increased among hospitals in non-expansion states, but the relative increase was smaller compared to hospitals in expansion states. The increase in operating margins in expansion states was due largely to almost zero growth in the costs of providing health care." To break that down for you: uninsured and self pay have much higher default risk so their reduction improves profitability (revenue forecasts), operating margin is how business make money, and it is increasing faster in states with full ACA rules than others, and quality (successful discharge) is key to avoiding unplanned costs from re-admissions. Notice that the CBO claims non-partisanship, while the other stories are from NY Times Business and Financial news, not the editorial pages. Kaiser Family Foundation covers health industry news, and is considered unbiased by Forbes. For some perspective on why you think they way you do, despite the evidence, see http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/...

There are in fact laws about this [wikipedia.org]: you can't generally serve on the board of companies in the same market.

No, you have that wrong. You can't serve on the boards of two competing corporations. When you say "in the same market" it does not mean the same thing.

The CEO reports to the board, and is chosen by the board, not the other way around.

Here's the article again. You should read it:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/ce...

And here's the study behind the article:

http://jom.sagepub.com/content...