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US Population to Top 300 Million
An anonymous reader writes "The number of Americans will surpass 300 million this month, a milestone that raises environmental impact questions for the only major industrial nation whose population is increasing substantially. The US census bureau says the 300 million mark will be reached 39 years after US population topped 200 million and 91 years after it exceeded 100 million. That makes US the third most populous country behind china and india. It is noteworthy that sheer number of human beings do not necessarily have the heaviest impact on the environment. Instead environmental impact is a calculation that involves population, affluence and technology. The US consumes nearly 25% of the world's energy though it has only 5% of the world's population and has the highest per capita oil consumption worldwide. Each American produces about 2.3 kg of trash a day, a rate about 5 times that in developing countries."
The population of the US may be increasing, but only in certain desirable areas. The "Rust Belt" - cities like Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, and Pittsburgh - continues to shrink. Pittsburgh alone has lost over HALF of its population from nearly 700,000 in the 1960s to barely over 300,000 today (and not just due to people leaving for the suburbs). If you're willing to tolerate the winters there's plenty of room up here!
Re: The US consumes nearly 25% of the worlds energy though it has only 5 % of the worlds population and has the highest per capita oil consumption worldwide. Each american produces about 2.3 kg of trash a day, the current rate is about 5 times that in developing countries."
Just like the last story, cue the anarcho-capitalists who will ask "Would you rather have it any other way?"
They just dont get it.
Maybe if we adopted stringent population controls like china did, we'd be better off.
I wonder what would happen if China decided to relax those controls, I'm relatively sure the population would explode and almost double within a decade.
Americans aren't pumping out puppies, it's that we welcome people looking for a better life. So lay off the environmental left wing crap, those people would be somewhere creating pollution.
Run and catch, run and catch, the lamb is caught in the blackberry patch.
Asia has too many, Europe has a decreasing population, America is just right. Whats your secret?
Shit! Quick, go to a school and start a killing spree! It's the only way to keep this thing under control.
Meta will eat itself
Neat double-entendre use of the word "taco" in an article mentioning burgeoning overpopulation in the US. I like the way you think, sir.
If you make our over 6 billion people live in the state of Texas, you'll have roughly 100 square meters for every person...
and the rest of the world for everything else!
"The US consumes nearly 25% of the worlds energy though it has only 5 % of the worlds population..." We can do better than that. Thanks to ATI / nVidia and their 1.21 gigawatt next gen GPUs, I'm confident we can shatter this number by next year.
I is blaym are Amercan publik skool sisdum.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
Maybe if we adopted stringent population controls like china did, we'd be better off.
Maybe if China was more like the US, they'd be better off.
Of course, China *HAS* to adopt strict population controls, because of all those people from the neighboring companies constantly crashing their borders to sneak into China for the better life it offers them there.
Oh, wait...
Holy super-freaking-crowded roadways Batman! Where the hell will 120 MILLION additional people go? Probably straight out on the roads to turn my 30-minute commute into 1-1/2 hours.
So, while we do, in fact, have a large global consumer footprint, we still, as a nation of plenty, have to capacity to contribute back resources.
Actually, US population is growing too slowly to keep up with the baby boomers' retirement demands. It's far worse in Europe, which will be basically Muslim within a generation, its entire culture and history pushed into slavery (dhimmitude). So please take this whining somewhere else. It's this attitude that lead to our culture's potential extinction in the first place.
This is old news. We're talking cover story on news magazines two weeks ago old.
Here is one I love.
Each american produces about 2.3 kg of trash a day, the current rate is about 5 times that in developing countries.
Does this mean the current trash production rate in the developing world is ~.45 kg of trash per person per day or does it mean that the current trash production rate in the developing world is ~11.5 kg of trash per person per day?
What usually happens... famine.
You mean from North Korea?
A large part of the growth of the US population is from the large amount of immigration the US has, both legal and not legal. Also, the OP stated that they compared the per capita usage to developing countries, not industrialized countries. It sounds like someone's cherry picking stats to make it sound bigger than it is.
If you think education is expensive, you should try ignorance -- Derek Bok, president of Harvard
The linked article says nothing about concerns over Americans energy usage or anything of the sort. Why did the submitter have to add this when the article itself doesn't mention it. In fact, no articles I've read about US hitting 300 million are really concerned about energy consumption. The US will manage it just fine.
The last point of the slashdot writeup is pure flamebait designed to generate the typical flamewar on here. CmdrTaco, instead of being a responsible editor, let this piece of gratuitious US-bashing through.
Shame on you submitter and CmdrTaco.
By simply plugging this data into an XY chart and creating a trendline we should hit 400 million right around year 2050 and 600 million by 2100. And we are trying to solve everyone else's problems.
"The number of Americans will surpass 300 million this month, a milestone [...] for the only major industrial nation whose population is increasing substantially"
Wrong! Canada (member of the G8, so technically a major industrial nation, even though a little over a tenth the size of the US) is increasing in size faster. More new immigrants settle in Greater Toronto Area every year than any other N. American city, including LA and Miami. Since I first came to Canada 10 years ago, I've seem the population grow from 28 million to 32. The last government was trying to increase the inflow of immigrants. Yes, it's easier to have a higher growth rates on lower numbers, but the impact on things like services (medical, roads, education, etc) and the enviroment are still proportionally higher.
go to war with China (those bastages are taking all the oil we need), we need to increase population to catch up to them...It is all part of the administration's master plan for when Jeb becomes president.
Uh, if nobody uses the energy then the power companies will simply generate less. Thus less usage of natural resources (fossil fuels, etc) and pollution.
Anyone can "stand up for what they believe", but it takes a very brave individual to change what they believe. - Loundry
I found this US Census page, but I can't find the "live" moving clock. It seems, to me at least, that a 1% yearly growth in population isn't really anything to be alarmed about. In fact, if you look at population density, our population density is less than average: 31 people per km compared to the world average of 48 km. That's less than 10% of the density in Japan or India. Some European countries are way up there as well. Germany and the UK both have more than 200 people per km. Even without Alaska, we're still only at about 37 people per km.
If we had Germany's population density, the US would have 2.2 billion people (and still only about 400 interested in the World Cup).
The question isn't about density, as it is about resources and the ecological footprint that Americans have. We're terribly, awfully wasteful. If we all became more conscious about resource use, in twenty years, even with 360 million people, we could use less resources then than we use today. At that point, the economic benefits of population (and immigration) outweigh the other costs.
I'd be a lot more worried if we've maxed out our resource use efficiency and there was simply no way to improve. No, we've got a lot of improvements we can do. If we follow through with them, US population growth won't be a problem in the next century.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
It would be one thing if the US had accumulated its wealth in fair and equal competition with the rest of the world. But I doubt anyone would claim that to be true...
"You need 50 more units of WOOD to finish constructing this BABY."
Is there any class of people other than Slashdot editors that doesn't recognize "buereau" as a mispelling? I mean, misspelling.
The 5-25% phrase bugs me. It's designed to make the US look wasteful while that's definitely not the case.
i stics/horizontal-file_2006.xls]world population and GDP .xls[/url], the US GDP is 8.2 billion and the world's 38.9 billion. So the US accounts for 21% of global economical output using 25% of energy resources. That's below average and something to think about, but it definitely puts a different perspective on matters.
According to Angus Maddison's [url=http://www.ggdc.net/maddison/Historical_Stat
And that is why computers have a hard time understanding human written text, spoken text is even worse.
Humans know the context, so I would know that in a third world country when that person lives in the dessert and is lucky if he can eat some bugs cannot produce 11 kg worth of trash.
%25 of worlds energy, %5 of population. Awesome! Energy use is strongly equated to wealth, you know. And who's to say we don't use the energy here more efficently in many cases (of course, towards our own selfish ends, (damn freedom!.. my neighbor buying a jetski when he could be subsidizing space elevator research! (which whould be preferable to giving money to the poor)).. Argh. I'm ranting. Too tired for this right now... but, I suppose I should sum up by saying that, although there are many critiques I could make of modern american society.. it's consumption and enjoyment of a large share of earth's wealth (assuming a zero-sum game without innovation) is a pretty awesome thing to me. Go america! Just don't expect it to last with the recent hi-tech modernization of many other competitors in the world. May the best, and most technologically sucessfull and productive culture win!
---
the pen is mightier than the sword, the sword is mightier than the court, the court is mightier than the pen.
You think Ethiopians have a need for the energy we have?
Yes.
KFG
I ask that you use the proper capitalization of American when slamming my nation's environmental record, sir.
-- Minds are like parachutes... they work best when open.
People in America are plenty familiar with a kilo. They are smallish bricks that are relatively easy to stash in vehicle cutouts and can be used to negotiate for cash with shady characters at the local strip club.
At least that's what the movies tell me.
Remember, You are unique...just like everyone else.
It would be one thing if the US had accumulated its wealth in fair and equal competition with the rest of the world. But I doubt anyone would claim that to be true...
I think we've been playing the same game as everyone else has been for the last 100-150 years. We've just been better at it. We've bent the rules at times, but so has every other country. Where, exactly, do you propose that the US has been getting this unfair advantage from?
I know your post is a joke, but I thought I'd point out the problem with the quotation you listed: "Each American" does *not* produce 2.3 kg of trash. 2.3 kg is the result of dividing daily trash output by people. If you look at any household, they most certainly do *not* use that much trash on average. What's bringing up the figure is heavy industrial processes. It's fun to blame individual Americans and all, but most of that trash is due to the decisions of a relatively small number of people, so even if households cut their trash back by ~50%, it wouldn't make much of a difference.
Just wanted to let everyone know what policies are pointless.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
The United States of America is the only country in the world with the word 'America' in its official name, and therefore referring to it as 'America' and its inhabitants as 'Americans' is reasonable. Other constructs, such as 'United Statesian' run into the problem of name-collisions with countries like Los Estados Unidos Mexicanos.
No one gets mad when you refer to people from that big island in the South Pacific as 'Australians', despite the fact that people from New Guinea also live on the continent of Australia.
1. Immigration, both legal and illegal. The US still has one of the least-irritating systems of harassment toward people looking to flee into the country. I'd love to see population percentages based on sheer land mass. Keep in mind, we're a bit more temperate than Russia, as well.
:P
2. Energy use: I'd love to know how much 'energy' is taken up via cars. Again, see large population plus vast swaths of land. Same for oil.
3. Waste: Damned if it's my fault that Newegg just sent me a laptop hard drive and ram chip in a small box, encased by an absolutely huge god damned box filled with about a cubic meter of packaging peanuts.
The environazis can complain about trash all they want; I'll wholeheartedly agree with 'em that it's bad. But I'll laugh in their faces when they start whining about population and energy use. For the love of god, the majority of the country is still very sparesely populated. Oh noes! We have a large population!
Guess what? We've got plenty of room for many times what we've got now. And surprise! As population increases, energy use will decrease - if only because some poor fool out in the middle of one of those lovely flat, boring square states that make up the majority of our land mass won't have to hop in their car and drive an hour to the nearest store.
America has a disposable culture. Even things that are made to last for more than one use have a limited lifespan. Things are not engineered to last, and are cheap enough to replace rather than repair. Durable goods used to be things that were expected to be last for at least 10 years. This included cars and refrigerators. Over time the definition of durable goods has changed so that they are only good for 3 years, and only includes cars.
Even our cars are pretty much designed to fall apart after 3 years of regular use. How can American's not be leaders in producing trash in this kind of environment. Only good note is my mother in the law is a packrat and has not thrown hardly anything away for the last 30+ years. But I guess she is just a minor rounding error on the average.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
That is odd the current projections by the UN's Population Division, based on the 2004 revision of the World Population Prospects database shows that the population of the world is decreasing and this one claims that the US population is increasing.
Seems that while we have fewer people in the world, those that are born head to the US.
Source
You may also note the US population growth rate @ 0.91%
Oh and as to the oil usage, So what! Look at what we give the world back for the oil we use.
agricultural products (soybeans, fruit, corn), industrial supplies (organic chemicals), capital goods (transistors, aircraft, motor vehicle parts, computers, telecommunications equipment), and consumer goods (automobiles, medicines) (In order of quantity)
We really need to find a way out of this dessert...
Nunez?
NUNEZ!!!
http://www.pbfcomics.com/?cid=PBF066AD-Nunez.jpg
1kg is 2.2lbs, thus 2.3kg is 5lbs.
This is supposedly a techy site; even if you aren't familiar with SI units, google is over thataway ->.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
*Area of Rhode Island: 3,144 square km
(And we thought that the US education system was bad.)
*Areas from wikipedia
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
Let's say the average person dump 2 hg of poo every day, this means that with a population of 300 million, America produces 60 million kilos of poo every day, or 21,9 billion kilos of poo each year. That's a lot of poo.
My other account has a 3-digit UID.
According to the Wikipedia article Demographics of the United States, 80% of the population lives in urban and suburban areas, and yet only 9 cities in the USA have a population of more than one million. Is this just a weird effect of the way that American city limits are drawn? By which I mean, if you included the greater metropolitan areas of cities in their population count would you actually end up with many many more cities with more than a million people? I just can't work out how you fit 80% of 300 million people into such small cities.
Umm, I hate to break it to you, but we don't measure in meters per gallon. The rest of the world actually uses kilometers per litre.
funny i wonder how i got that number in meters.
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
Everyone knows that Rhode Island really isn't a state, it just a joke perpetuated by New Englanders on the rest of the country for their own amusement.
New England is really one state, it just gets twelve Senatorial votes and has a particularly byzantine internal tax code.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
It's far worse in Europe, which will be basically Muslim within a generation,
Oh, and what do you suggest we do about that? You see, putting kids on the world without having the required finances and infrastructure (adequate housing) is insanity. I do want kids (and so wants my wife), but there is no way I can raise a bunch of them in the small apartment we live. Moving to something bigger is impossible since we don't have the finances. Vicious circle. Many young european couples are in that situation.
So, yes, "muslimification" will continue, but only because they don't seem to care in what conditions their kids grow up.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Per dollar GDP, the US is nowhere near being the world's worst polluter. China and India both have far far worse pollution based upon that metric (which presumably is a better measure of productivity than the mere presence of a person), which is, of course, why the US chose not to participate in the Kyoto agreement.
Whats the oli per hactare cost of producing all that food.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
nature has a way of dealing with runaway popultions like this. Its called disease. Aids, avian flu, ebola and probably worse in the future will go a long way yo controlling the poulation in the world. That and there is are 9 other planets and tons of moons in the solar system...
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
through nuclear reactions matter is actually converted to energy. then you need to account for entropy.
i support the right to offend.
I am dumbfounded that out of 300 MILLION PEOPLE we can ever only find TWO SLEAZY, SCUMBAG BOZOS to prop up to vote for.
Whatever happened to of the people, by the people and for the people???
andand
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
I don't know who else is going to consume that energy, but considering that your country has a national debt of 8.5 trillion dollars http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/ I'm thinking that most Americans shouldn't have the wealth and products they currently have.
Then I'd have low housing prices and probably better pay.
As the baby boomers would be gone.
Unfortunately I'm on the tail end of the baby boomers and I will see the fall of Social Security as it leaves me seeing it as a government theift of me the tax payer. And to think, that theift started before I was born.
When I look at my mother's house, I can think of several things that have lasted over 10 years (my house for instance). My mom's washer and dryer lasted for at least 14 years before being replaced; her refrigerator may be older than I am (it does not even have an ice maker). The two cars that I have driven (hand-me downs from my grandparents) are a 1993 Toyota Camry (which is on its last legs, sadly) and a 1998 Nissan Altima (which is still in good shape). My mom still uses my first TV (a TV/VCR combo that I got when I was seven); however, the vertical sync is off a bit.
Anyway, gadgets did last longer 30-50 years ago, but they were also more expensive. Western Electric phones were designed like tanks because AT&T rented phones (at $5 per month), and it was cheaper to design a long-lasting phone than to constantly replace broken ones. Also, from what I have heard, automobiles are designed so that they do not break down as often as they broke down twenty years ago.
---- "XML is like violence. If it doesn't fix the problem, you aren't using enough."
The US consumes nearly 25% of the worlds energy though it has only 5 % of the worlds population and has the highest per capita oil consumption worldwide.
I really doubt that's true. Not that 25% of the world's energy use takes place in America, but that a good energy accounting system would assign all that use to Americans.
Say what?
What I mean is, America uses more energy per capita in a simple account, but think about what we're using that energy for. At least some of it is going toward production of goods & services for export. Should the energy used to manufacture and ship a computer be assigned to us, or to whoever buys it in another country? I think the latter.
Even taking that into account, I would guess that we still use more per capita. But not 5x as much.
This article points out that Europe and Japan have a declining population. Except for stating that the locals aren't having enough kids it doesn't really explain why. What do we know about these countries with declining populations immigration policies? I'm curious so if anyone's got stats to point out I'd be willing to read/listen.
This article also points out some stats about consumption. As some of the postings point out there's missing information, or rather information thought not to matter from a "Wow, news!" point of view. What's the USA consumption to waste ratio? I assume this is a statistic that is recorded or somehow calculated. If this isn't a way to measure efficiency how does one measure efficiency? Are we an efficient nation compared to others? Of the more efficient ones what do they do to be so efficient? Can we can learn from them?
It's far worse in Europe, which will be basically Muslim within a generation, its entire culture and history pushed into slavery (dhimmitude).
Yet another example of bigotry and ignorance on Slashdot. You've been reading far too much jihadwatch.com or listening to the likes of Daniel Pipes for your own good. Even if "dhimmitude" did amount to slavery, which it most certainly doesn't, you would still have more rights than you cede to the W regime.
I agree the people complaining about America/USA are pedantic dickwads, but, just to be a pedantic dickwad:
> No one gets mad when you refer to people from that big island in the South Pacific as 'Australians', despite the fact that people from New Guinea also live on the continent of Australia.
No, they live on the continent of Australasia
http://rareformnewmedia.com/
Where the hell will 120 MILLION additional people go?
My hope is Montana, North Dakota, Nevada, and Alaska....
But then the Governator might get upset if Alaska surpasses California in population.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Each american produces about 2.3 kg of trash a day
/. posts? Because some of us should be well over 2.3 kg.
Does that include
And what are these kg's anyway? I thought we were talking about americans? Can't we use big macs or something STANDARD to measure things?
[an error occurred while processing this sig]
"Each american produces about 2.3 kg of trash a day, the current rate is about 5 times that in developing countries."
Is this supposed to read:
a) Each American produces about 2.3 kg of trash a day, which is about 5 times the rate in developing countries.
or b) Each American produces about 2.3kg of trash a day. In developing countries the rate is about 5 times that.
Don't worry. 300 Million---9 digits. Social security number---also 9 digits. Very soon we will run out of numbers, and that will be the fall of social security (hopefully).
I once had a signature.
More God-bothering, greedy, gun-obsessed, sickos and psychos!
Just what the World needs.
When so many decisions are made in Washington, it's awfully damn hard to feel represented if you don't have a major lobby to counter the fact that you're lost in a sea of constituents.
Jesus told him, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me. - John 14:6 NLT
Source: http://www.cis.org/articles/2005/back1105.html
here's a quote from that source:
Now why is it that so many people choose to immigrate to the US? And what would become of these people if they didn't emmigrate from their home countries? Answer: they would still add to the world population. So, the US isn't inflating the world population, it is merely responsible for a re-distribution. The real question here is why do so many people move to the U.S. versus, say Europe or Japan?
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
Sorry all,
My manager thought it would be nice to post a few mindless, incenduary comments while I was away from my desk.
Good job Garry Copeland - you fucking jerk.
Sorry, the US gov't is far from welcoming the tired, poor and huddled masses anymore. Now, I'm a US citizen and I love my country despite so many of our mistakes and troubles, but legal immigration to the US is a nightmarish hassle. I know for a fact since my wife, who is a Chinese national, has been doing the immigration dance since March of 2006. It takes a lot of time and money (poor or even average income people from third world countries can just forget it). Also they put you through a series of humiliations. For example there is only one hospital in all of Beijing that is certified to get your health check, and the people there know it so they charge a lot of extra money and treat you very poorly. There are several decent hospitals in Beijing so there is no reason for this rule, but I guess someone somewhere is getting a kickback for this.
:)
Now, I'm not sure if this is good or bad (it's been bad for me of course) for the country as a whole. We need to have a sane immigration policy that looks after the people already here, I understand that. Also a lot of immigrants do feel welcomed after they get to the US (and a lot face serious racism of course) but the gov't process is very bad and unwelcoming. Since this is most immigrants first view of the US I can't see how it will not negatively color their perception of the Country.
Of course this is a bigger problem, since the actions of the US gov't have long negatively affects peoples view of the country and the people, but that's another posting
So that's why so many people simple sneak into the country. It's actually much easier to get in that way versus the legal way. If my wife was just going to come here to live with me and not work I'd be tempted to go that route, and save her the humilation of the process.
Peace, or Not?
Hmm. When there were only a billion people, population apparently wasn't controlled very well at all. World agreements were reached by sending lots of young men out to blow each other up.
You never really know how close to the edge you can go until you fall off.
Today happens to be garbage pickup day where I live. Our garbage container, like most in the area, holds about 70 pounds of garbage. The average family around here has a little over 2 people in it. 2 people * 5 pounds/day * 7 days = 70 pounds. And the garbage cans are always full. Some have 2 or 3 times as much garbage sitting beside their one can. Not counting the recycling -- we can put out as much recyclables as we want -- and this can run to 25 or 50 pounds per household. Not counting leaves, grass clippings or other yard waste -- put out in special (enormous) yard waste bags. These can run to several hundred pounds for some houses.
"2.3 kg" (i.e. about 5 pounds) per person for personal waste production sounds exactly right to me. Without mentioning the waste created when 400 ton mining trucks remove mountain tops to tap veins of coal and other resources.
By the way, our "output" is about the average, except we have 5 people in the household (I married into them, didn't make them, for those wanting to jump on that). Today I have just 60% of one garbage container filled, barely a bucket of recyclables a week are put out, and no grass or leaf bags ever make it to the curb (we compost them).
The average American is horribly wasteful. Simple as that. And only higher costs will change the average American's habits. Unless they marry a Canadian, as my wife did.
I come here for the love
I don't know where you were, but I think you're vastly overstating the durability of previous-generation automobiles and appliances.
Cars today are far more reliable than cars were 40 or 50 years ago. You can take pretty much any car today, and expect to get 100,000 miles out of it, properly maintained. This is not just Japanese cars, most domestic cars will last this long too. A whole lot of cars didn't used to have odometers that even went beyond 100k; it was just assumed that it would be scrapped by that point. Plus, they're more efficient, safer, and cost less in real-dollar terms. Not to mention a lower defect rate and less production waste. In short, you get a lot more for your dollar when you purchase a 2006 automobile than its 1956 equivalent.
Maintainance statistics on refrigerators I don't have as readily, but I'm willing to bet that you're viewing the past with some rose-colored glasses there, too. Most major appliances today will easily last ten years, in fact I'll bet that more of them are thrown away because they're no longer stylish, than because they actually break.
There are certain legitimate criticisms of the way a lot of mechancial devices are currently designed (sealed units, difficult to repair), however the upshot of this is that they're both more reliable, require less maintainance (when's the last time you had to have the coolant in your fridge topped off?), and far less expensive than they were in the past.
The reason you don't see very many older cars on American roads is not because they all die, but because we as a whole, don't like to drive them. Rather than driving them until they're actually at the end of their mechanical life, they either get sold to other countries (Mexico imports tons of used cars from the U.S.), or are cut up for parts or scrap rather than being reparied after some non-fatal damage. I suspect that in any major U.S. junkyard, you could very quickly put together enough parts to have a working automobile; it's simply not worth the labor for a skilled mechanic to do so. In other countries, or in the U.S. in the past under different economic conditions, this wouldn't be allowed to happen.
There are lots of things I'm nostalgic about the past for, but I have no illusions about the strides we've made in product engineering over the interim. That we've taken those engineering gains and used them to create a disposable culture is a social, not technological, problem.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
According to Nation Master, who gets there information from the CIA fact book, the USA is 17th in oil consumption per capita.
Interesting to note: Luxembourg is number 7 and most of the largest consumers per capita are Island Nations.
That's about 22 million American tons of people. If you're checking my math, remember to allow for kids.
Look up your own satirical comparison here, for example New York alone allegedly produces that much waste anually.
Reduce, reuse, cycle
What you say is only partially true. In David Brooks latest book, he points out that Pittsburgh - while losing population (not the figure you give which is the city proper and NOT the metropolitan area) is in the midst of a suburban sprawl that rivals the high growth east coast cities.
The reason being Pittsburgh has a lot of things going for it that Buffalo and Cleveland lack... namely CMU and the University of Pittsburgh.
On topic: aren't there huge expanses of the US where no-one lives? It's not like you're going to run out of room!
Don't you just hate it when people reply to your signature?
Isn't that that the name of the tectonic plate? I think the most widely used name is Oceania
MikMik Baby Organics Mikkaworks
The Republicans want to include all the embryos, but just wait until the Democrats get done including all the dead people...
(insert dead baby joke here)
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
"Actually, US population is growing too slowly to keep up with the baby boomers' retirement demands. It's far worse in Europe, which will be basically Muslim within a generation,"
Exept the fertility rate of your typical natural-born US citizen resembles that of your average European. Nearly half of our current population increase comes from immigration. If Europe is becoming "Muslim," then the US is becoming Mexican and Chinese (et al), and at a far faster rate (even in this day and age we're more immigrant-friendly than most of Europe).
"its entire culture and history pushed into slavery (dhimmitude)."
Xenophobe much? If the US isn't speaking Gaelic after the huge influx of Irish immigrants we've had over our history, why do you believe that immigration from the Middle East and north Africa will change Europe so drastically? Especially when they're coming to Europe to get away from stuff like that?
No, a few sporradic incidents of "honor killings" does not make a general consesus, it's just good copy for sensationalist news outlets.
"It's this attitude that lead to our culture's potential extinction in the first place."
Culture adapts, otherwise most of the music on your hard drive would involve a harpsichord somewhere. No culture on the planet would be in its current state were it not for the cross-pollenization of art and ideas across cultures. One could make the case that the culture of the United States is the dominant one on the planet because of our immigration policies, allowing a blending of cultures to happen on the typical street corner rather than being confined to the esoteric collections of elitist patrons that can afford to import cultural artifacts from abroad.
It's interesting the way "culture" has become the new euphamism for race (does this make "culture" the new "last refuge of a scoundrel?"), I'm a little curious to see what it will be next. Instead of trying to focus on such broad, vague terms like "culture" that can be defined in any way you want to define to satisfy your arguments, perhaps you should focus on particular ideals that are important, such as republicanism. However, letting the people decide for themselves what their "culture" will look like one minute to the next is the exact opposite of the top-down imposition of "good culture/bad culture" that you seem to favor.
Of course, I can't think of any better way to stem the tide of Islamic immigrants to Europe than to impose such a European sharia in the name of preserving European culture. Why would someone looking to get out from under such a system bother moving to Europe then?
America still has all their natural resources left.
Us in Europe used all of ours rather heavily in the last centuary.
Whereas at the time the Indians in Amnerica at the time were managing a country that would last them an enternity.
Unfortunately for them us Europeans used our natural resources to steal it from them and create the United States as it is today.
I dont read
Can we get some cites for these numbers? not saying they are wrong, but it's nice to have sources. Numbers like these are always politically charged, so you need stringent fact checking.
Don't worry. I'm sure they'll be +5 Insightful in no time.
"So, yes, "muslimification" will continue, but only because they don't seem to care in what conditions their kids grow up."
Um... they're coming to Europe to have children precisely because they care what kind of conditions their kids grow up in.
...about American society.
It's been proven statistically that birth rates tend to be inversely proportional to literacy rates and the level of both wealth and education within a given population. (If you don't believe me, look it up) Then there's the issue of the average teen mother not usually having more than a ninth grade education. The recent discouragement of birth control can't be helping, either.
Overpopulation is a problem in most places these days, it seems...it worries me what the outcome of it could be.
*dons sarcastic pessimism hat*
True, but if you generate less, and sell less, that means the revenue is less which means we have to lay workers off and can't pay back the bonds which were used to build the power plants. This means that power plant jobs will be lost, as well as the investors losing their money on the bonds, which will create panic in the streets.
The *true* solution is to waste MORE, so that we can create more jobs supporting and cleaning up the waste!
*removes sarcastic pessimism hat and fades into the shadows*
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
What an artfully cherry-picked bunch of statistics!
That makes US the third most populous country behind china and india.
True, as far as it goes, but those countries are 3-4 times larger.
Instead environmental impact is a calculation that involves population, affluence and technology.
Population density is worth at least a mention, no?
Each american produces about 2.3 kg of trash a day, the current rate is about 5 times that in developing countries.
Since the US produces more waste per person than any country in the world, why set up the comparison against developing countries? The US produces more than twice the trash per person of the more efficient industrialized nations. Isn't that trouble enough?
US environmental impact is an important problem that shouldn't be undermined by spinning the statistics. The reality of the problem is more than bad enough.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
But we also produce that. OK, a good chunk we buy from Venesuela or Saudi Arabia, but we discovered the means to use turbines to turn water into power, to harness internal combustion, to turn fission into electricity, to transport electricity long distances, to use solar and wind technologies into electricity, etc. etc. etc. It isn't at all like that percentage of the world's energy would still be floating around, waiting for Costa Rica or Yemen to plug in if we didn't create it.
I'm wondering if they're counting goat carts and wind-powered grain mills in that statistic.
The number of Americans will surpass 300 million this month. . .
The article does not state that at all. It states that the U. S. population will likely surpass 300 million soon.
There are debates here all the time about how hard it should be to immigrate. In general, most immigrants are educated. One of the main issues now is that it's too hard for professionals to get their credentials recognized, and they end up driving taxis.
Anyway, in regards to your experience. It may be possible that to those fast-food workers it was you who had the hard to understand accent. Maybe someone born and raised in Toronto can understand you just fine, but they'll still detect an accent. For someone who speaks english as a second language, and is used to hearing Canadians, I can understand how some American accents could be hard to understand. I myself have never had a problem with a fast-food worker of any nationality getting my order right. But I'm not from North Dakota.
Cleveland has CWRU (my alma mater), and John Carroll. And Cleveland State and Cuyahoga Community College.
the US gov't is far from welcoming the tired, poor and huddled masses anymore.
And we never did.
The whole "give us your tired, your sick" crap was just that, crap. The U.S. has never been particularly interested in taking refugees; exceptions to this are just that -- exceptions -- and not the rule.
I don't know what drives this constant temptation to embellish the past, but it wasn't this wonderful place of sunshine and light. Most of the people who were allowed to immigrate into the United States throughout its history weren't allowed in out of some sort of self-righteous pity, but because they were needed in order to meet the demand for labor. Lots of sick people got sent right back on the boats they came over on, and even if you were young and healthy, you still had to have someone willing to vouch for you here in the States before you were allowed in.
We need to stop deluding ourselves about our past immigration policies. While they may have ended up being more liberal than the rest of the Western world's at the time, that was only because Europe had more people than it knew what to do with, and the U.S. was starved for labor and people to tame the new lands it was in the midst of acquiring. As a nation we needed more people, and as a result we became more welcoming; the latter was a response to the former, not the other way around.
The needs of the United States have always been the driving force in our immigration policy historically; if it worked out well for the immigrants then all the better for them. It's mostly after the fact that people have congratulated themselves for being so high-minded.
Now it's disappointing to me as an American that our immigration process wasn't easier for your wife, who I am assuming is probably educated and employable -- in short, exactly the type of people we need to be encouraging to come here. However, I don't think that as a nation we should be guilt-tripping ourselves into rolling out a red carpet to everyone who needs a place to live, particularly to those without skills, for whom there is little demand today and less so in the future; we have never engaged in this historically, and there's no reason to start now.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
And with it's roughly 25% usage of the world's energy supplies (including oil) what does the US do with it? Create an even greater percentage of the world's goods
WRONG
World GDP = 60,000 Bn
US GDP = 12,000 Bn
Share of US in World GDP : 20%
Amazingly enough, the US are less energy efficient than the RoW.
If you're looking for an exceptionally efficient economy, try the EU.
It would be nice to be sure of anything the way some people are of everything.
The major population problem facing the developed world (and even China) is not over-population, but population aging. This is driven by increased longevity *and* low birth rates. If you check the UN projections for the next 50 years or so, the picture looks bleak for Japan and Europe, with an increasing number of seniors per productive worker. The US picture is bad, but not as bad as the rest of the developed world - thanks in large part to higher birth rates and immigration.
...
What can I say? Malthus is alive and well on Slashdot
Imposing Libertarian views on everyone online since 1992.
Allah seems to be kicking the Christian God's ass...all those God Fearin' Soldiers corpsing it up in Iraq...and then all the poor bastards losing limbs and what not. The US Army, highest-tech weapons available, being stymied by goat herders with post WWII weapons and improvised explosives.
Fuck your god, he can't even protect his own people.
Blar.
you're on the right track, but in every conversion there is a loss.
i support the right to offend.
What is the multiplication factor if you count corpses in developing countries as trash?
Neat double-entendre use of the word "taco" in an article mentioning burgeoning overpopulation in the US.
Because 'eating tacos' creates new people? Wah?
I drank what? -- Socrates
Dare I say "typical" American?
when in doubt press enter and we'll figure it out later..
The birth rate for immigrants is much higher than the birth rate for native born US people. That where the growth is coming from. Their birth rate will drop in a couple of generations. But as we "welcome" new immigrants, the overall US birth rate stays level.
SI has unabmiguity in its favour. It's a pain in the ass trying to have a fuel efficiency conversation on Slashdot because you never know if people are using a UK gallon (4.5 l) or a US gallon (3.8 l).
Personally I've taken to taking fuel consumption figures in miles per litre, because the pumps in Scotland are in litres but car odometers are still in miles.
The number of Americans will surpass 300 million this month, a milestone that raises environmental impact questions for the only major industrial nation whose population is increasing substantially. The US census buereau says the 300 million mark will be reached 39 years after US population topped 200 million and 91 years after it exceeded 100 million.
Don't worry, the World War III is coming and will quickly solve this issue.
I've heard some pretty hideous things about Rochester, Syracuse, etc. and apparently it's all true. Thanks for the insight.
Bullshit.
If you don't want to have kids, fine - that's your choice. "Moving to something bigger is impossible since we don't have the finances" is a cop out. Just have 1-2 kids, then, instead of "a bunch". Kids don't need square footage, they need food, clothing, a roof over their heads, and parental love and attention. You have the fod, clothing, and shelter for yourselves; perhaps you may have to sacrifice some of that to give to kids. Thats called being a parent - doing without for your kids.
As for "So, yes, "muslimification" will continue, but only because they don't seem to care in what conditions their kids grow up": sit back, say that out loud, and listen to what a racist you are.
You "want" kids, but you don't want to sacrifice to have them. The brown people can do it, only because of their inferiority.
And before you ask - I have 2 kids, 1 income, and live in a small condo.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy
_ law_of_thermodynamics
basically, a transfer is not 100% efficient and heat (enegery) is "lost" (absorbed by the air around the transfer). I suppose it would be arguable that since it can be accounted for in heat, it is not lost, but the common understanding (unless i am not remembering my physics correctly) is that the heat, not being sustainable, is a result of energy not transferred. i dont know, but i believe that this is based int he second law of thermodynamicshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second
i support the right to offend.
Really? Then why was the balance of payments deficit for goods for 2005 a record $782 billion? The last time the United States had a positive balance of payments was in 1973, and the deficit has been on an almost steady increase for the past two decades. Read the figures published by the Census Bureau (warning PDF link), or if you prefer, a a graph from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. With these figures, the only reason why the United States hasn't yet suffered an Argentina-style economic collapse is that other countries keep buying up US debt...
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
I cant agree more. American = people who belongs to the American Continent (South America, Central America and North America). Bye.
>why do so many people move to the U.S. versus, say Europe or Japan?
There are many immigrants moving to Europe, and many Europeans aren't happy about that: There have been problems. Think French riots, Turks in Germany, "Swedish jobs are for Swedes," and new Dutch immigration laws. It is likely that many countries will follow the Netherlands' lead.
And all that's nothing next to Japan, which is famously xenophobic. To preach national and racial superiority is a great deal more mainstream there than it is in the U.S. Japan is investing so heavily in robotics, for example, largely because it'd rather have machines do work in the country than Filipino immigrants.
I expect that much of this difference is because the U.S., unlike European countries and unlike Japan, is not a nation founded on a unique existing culture or an ethnic identity.
Then again, maybe G*D is on our side after all! We got the "New World", all you guys got was a crummy "Old World". All we had to do was get rid of the people that were on our land before we got here and voila' - instant success story.
You're just jealous 'cuz your world is out of warranty!;^D
At what point is enough people enough? If we don't so something mother nature surely will. Actually we should have done a lot in the 1970's to reduce population growth, now I don't see anything but catastrophe in our future. Reducing consumption by 50% and doubling your population buys you nothing. Due to the lifetime of humans it is better late than never at seriously curbing population growth. Go to the CIA world fact book and look at children per woman for various countries. For example Iraq it is 4.18 and the population is young so even if the birth rate drops to about 2, there still will be a large increase in population. This means lots of young men have no hope or jobs and are attracted to the dark side. Another factoid: I remember reading a few years ago that if women in India only had two children from now on the population would level off at about two billion towards the end of this century. Is it possible for India to support twice its population, especially with end of cheap energy which equals cheap fertilizer and transporation? I don't think so. Maybe some of you can offer some hope but I don't see much.
Replying to this post and the one beneath, none of those are rights in a traditional society. The fact that one is taxed is very minor. In case you didn't know, those who join the military are exempt from such taxation. Please tell me you aren't paying taxes now. Muslims must also pay a tax, which non-muslims are exempt from paying. You probably didn't know that in the earlier societies, through the end of the Ottoman empire, many of the highest positions in society were occupied by non-muslims. One also enjoys the right not to be spied upon by their government. Who can raise their hand today and say with any level of certainty that that is a right people enjoy today?
Who can raise their hand and say that spousal abuse, rape, murder doesn't happen at such a prolific level that these crimes almost enjoy the status of a right? Every 2.5 minutes, somebody in America is sexually assaulted and people are rapping on muslim countries for what in comparison are isolated incidents? That is absolutely ludicrous.
It should happen almost halfway through the month on the 12th .57 of the way through the day according to the US POPClock Projection.
I could not imagine a worse time...Ocotober 12th, 1:40:01 PM? way to close to Columbus Day...
(8^)
How many people here read Aljazeera? Read the English version sometime - it really gives you insight into how much hate the average Muslim has for the US. It doesn't matter what the topic is, the US is on the bad side. Muslim good, everyone else bad. Muslims wouldn't burn nuns in churches if only those darn Popes would stop quoting bad texts. Just to show you how nonviolent Muslims are we killed all those that said we were violent.
The only hope is the US Muslims, and to a lesser extent the European Muslims - but think about it, which Muslims are going to move to the "Great Satan"? It is not going to be the radicals...
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According to the CIA factbook....$12.36 trillion! Next time either don't use unreliable sources, i.e. http://www.ggdc.net/maddison/Historical_Statistics /horizontal-file_2006.xls, or read/transcribe them correctly.
I lived in Denver for three years. Everybody there complained that weren't being understood by the hispanic immigrants at the drive throughs.
Canada is based on a compromise between two cultures that have spent centuries at war. From this comes Canada's support of multi-culturalism and the embracing of foreign ideas and cultures. It's the exact opposite of the American melting pot, IMHO. Yes, there are stresses, but so far it seems to work. Compared with my birth country, I think it's the amount of space that really makes people get along better though.
Personally I haven't experienced too many problems as you describe. People often have problems with my accent (English), but nothing like on the levels I had in the US were it seemed that 1 in 20 (irrespective of social background) had extreme difficulty understanding me. I go to Chinatown in Toronto and can't read most of the labels - so what? It's part of the experience and I love it. I just have to be more patient and understanding when I go there, which is probably better for me as a person.
Also, it's no good just bringing in highly qualified people. How will all of the other jobs be filled without massive wage inflation (e.g. for taxi drivers, labourers, etc) that will cripple the economy and discourage the highly qualified from coming in the first place?
You "want" kids, but you don't want to sacrifice to have them.
No, I want my kids to have the same opportunities that I had. I evidently can't give them that. I'd condemn them to a life in poverty. How could I do that in good conscience when I have been brought up in relative wealth? Having kids is not about just fucking your brains out and then see what you can do. It's about providing a future for them. This includes all you said, plus keeping them out of poverty. I've got already enough trouble keeping my head above the water without kids.
say that out loud, and listen to what a racist you are.
Racist? Me? I'm fucking a foreigner in this country. You won't find less racist than me. What I cannot tolerate is having up to six kids in cramped space, living on wellfare (after all, we're talking about Europe), and the parents not really caring for them. This is not racism, this is realism.
You "want" kids, but you don't want to sacrifice to have them. The brown people can do it, only because of their inferiority.
Absolutely not true.... I am willing to sacrifice a lot, but I do not want to sacrifice *their* (=my potential kids) future. Besides, nowhere, I talk about "brown people". There are white muslims too, and I never complained about either brown or white muslims. The original poster claimed that Europe will be a muslim region in 10 years, and I just tried to explain the causes. I'm not going to "fight", against them. I'll just let them silently take over and hope that they will be tolerant, just as I am right now.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Why would someone looking to get out from under such a system bother moving to Europe then?
How do you get this when more than half the Muslims in Europe say they wish they could impose/live under Sharia in Europe? Basically, I see this whole situation as people ignoring the cause/effect relationships. They really think that Europe is nice because it has somehow "stolen" something from them - they don't see that Sharia is what destroyed their countries. In most Arab nations, oil propps up the what they call the local economy - but it is not a true economy. In many ways I think the oil wealth has been extremely bad for the people of the middle east.
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Usually, the word 'populous', applied to a geographic region, refers to population density. As In "one of the most populous countries in the world is Bangladesh, with 985 people per square kilometer". The population density of the USA is, by contrast, a mere 31 people per square kilometer. India and China too are well down the list, although above the USA.
We're Americans, we measure our trash output in pounds, not kilograms. The metric system is for those snooty Europeans.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
This was first said in the 70's when the environmental movement was trying to call attention to waste in the U.S.
Since then fuel standards have risen, pollution has fallen, and energy efficiency has begun to be built into products as a matter of course. Despite the current administration and Congress's attempts to unravel all that, we're still much further along than we were 30 years ago. So this "25% of the world's energy, but only 5% of the world's population" line is quite outdated and threadbare.
Now, there could certainly be a transition away from a car culture to mass transit, and a full conversion from oil to renewables, and all that good stuff. But it's China's and India's following in the US's consumption footsteps that's an even bigger problem. Unlike the US, which is 5% of the world population, China and India combined are about 50% of the world's population. If their per capita consumption rose to that of the US, we'd need several more Earths just to supply them with raw materials.
So a better thing to do is not wallow in self-hatred nor finger pointing, but to find a sustainable way to raise standards of living for everyone. Think of it as an exercise in balancing an equation.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Point taken. I made the mistake of comparing families of 6 in a cramped apartment, to families of 12 in a tent in the middle of the desert. Compare that family of 6 in a cramped apartment to western standards and you might understand my argument. For the immigrants it's an improvement, for us it sounds scandalous. However, the next generation will want our standards, and they won't have kids either because of the same reasons Western couples can't have kids: not enough space and money.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
So was our involvement in Viet Nam, but my cousin (who spent three tours there on the front line) still has a T-shirt which proclaims "Participant, Southeast Asian Wargames - Second Place".
Your post - isn't funny, insightful, interesting, informative - isn't overrated, offtopic, trollish or flamebait - in short, your post doesn't seem to exist. I think I'd rather be "-1 funny" than -----.
Wait - aren't we at war with them?
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you can calculate your envrionmental footprint.
at : http://www.myfootprint.org/
My results are something like this (# are in Hectares)
Food = 1.1
(vegitarian)
Mobility = 0.2
(bike/bus to work)
Shelter = 0.9
(apartment)
goods/services = 0.8
(I shop at the Sallvation Army)
Total = 3.0
If everyone lived like me we would need 1.7 planets.
--meh--
Of course, the saddest thing is, if we would only bother getting our shit together, and apply some will in to seriously funding space tech, we could be enjoying the bounties of our solar system (and hopefully the galaxy later on), instead of fighting over scraps here on earth.
Even the extremist nutjobs can benefit from this -- fanatical Muslims can fuck off and go build the Mecca 5 space station; Bible-thumpers can go terraform Mars and create Bible-World, and so on...
Everybody CAN be a winner. But I'm just a fucking dreamer. Will never happen.
Dear aunt, lets set so double the killer delete select all
Swimming across the Rio Grande is significantly easier than swimming across either the Pacific or Atlantic Oceans.
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
And that is our problem because why?
Seriously comeon in, the waters great!
"Personal ownership is a hallmark of conservative capitalism. And I don't believe I am entitled to anything that I did n
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_ ratio_of_GDP_to_carbon_dioxide_emissions
Doesn't look to bright for the US, does it?
Screw the FSM - Real geeks believe in the Invisible Pink Unicorn
It would be one thing if the US had accumulated its wealth in fair and equal competition with the rest of the world. But I doubt anyone would claim that to be true...
Just like how Europe accumulated its wealth in fair and equal competition.
Yes, and my ancestors started coming over here in the 1870s. They worked hard and were discriminated against.
And here in California, there is fruit rotting in the fields because border tightening has cut the supply of farm workers.
So you out of work IT folks, get out there and pick lettuce, corn, tomatoes and pears!
"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." -- Albert Einstein
I would compare CWRU favorably to CMU. But to try to compare Cleveland State and a community college to the University of Pittsburgh is a reach... a big one at that.
Maybe if folks in Ohio wouldn't equate Ohio State football with being a juggernaut academically, Ohio wouldn't be in the sad shape its in.
People should need a lisence to reproduce.... It should also be based on income to proffesion, IQ, and education.
Application to reproduce denied.
Hey, this could work...
Blank until
According to a quick Google, the fertility rate of the US is ~2.13. Demographers say that the replacement rate (that is, the fertility rate necessary to maintain a level population) is 2.1. Thus, the US's fertility rate is right on target. Of course, we also have immigration, but immigrants would exist on the earth no matter where they lived, so we should not factor them into worries of hazardous growth. Some more quick Googling of "us fertility rate" reveals links which allege the native USian's fertility rate is at the replacement level only, but that the immigrant fertility rate is at Baby Boom levels. This seems to be the real worry.
Is this another argument in favor of restricting immigration to the US? I don't know, and I'm not going to make that argument at 11:30 in the morning, but it's something to think about (note: I think immigration with favoritism shown towards educated people is acceptable, and don't have a very strong opinion about illegal immigration, so don't think I'm one of those "THEY'RE TAKIN' OUR JOBS" type people).
> > That makes US the third most populous country behind china and india.
> True, as far as it goes, but those countries are 3-4 times larger.
How do you figure? Seems to me and wikipedia that the US is around twice as large as India, and China is a little bit bigger.
Quiet... The Highlands are FULL damnit!
Deleted
Ironically, the US population would be *decreasing* if it were not for immigration from Mexico. Then again, I am not terribly confident in the Census Bureau's ability to account for the homeless and illegal aliens. Maybe tacos are somehow to blame?
Anyway, asbestos on and checked, flame away ;)
Everything I needed to know about life, I learnt from Blake's Seven
It's not just undocumented immigration to the U.S. that keeps population increasing. All immigration is what keeps population going up. Most studies figure Mexican immigration is only about 1/3 of total immigration to the U.S.
Now, if there was just some way to keep the Anglos from moving down to the south-west, where my family have lived, since the early 1600's...
I drank what? -- Socrates
According to this study...
1. Switzerland ~9M
2. Denmark ~5M
3. Sweden ~9M
4. United States ~300M
5. Germany ~82M
6. Japan ~127M
7. Austria ~8M
8. Norway ~4M
9. France ~59M
10. Belux ~10M
Interestingly, the top 3 have their wealth spread over only 20M folks. Of course if you took a look at some regions with 20M folks out of 300M in the US (say california or new york), there's an interesting comparison there...
Fight to export the great American Way Of Life! So that all the poor people in the world can join in.
Hm, perhaps I only read it on bad days normally - typically my impetus to read it is to see the Muslim world's reaction to an event like 9/11, Hezbolla's attack on civilians, etc. When I check, the only reaction I see is that it is the US's fault (bad policies, etc), that the Isrealies are killing civilians (which they were, of course, but no mention was made of the civilians Hezbolla was killing). Today's version seems pretty normal - though still anti-west, of course.
..."
Really, did you read the article about the Pope?
"If Muslims close ranks and unite, no one in the world would dare to attack them and insult their religion and Prophet. Those who accuse Islam of intolerance and violence are either ignorant or full of enmity,
This is the guy that Aljazeera says is peaceful and tolerant: essentially, if you accuse me of intolorance your an idiot or bigot. Um, tolerance is accepting the insult and not retaliating, not scaring everyone so much that they don't dare to insult you!
Do you also read the Chinese news, Xinhua? That also provides interesting insights...
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Except why aren't people moving from Central Asia, Eastern Europe, and the Caucases at the same rate that Mexicans are moving to the U.S.?
As I recall, the romans were sending christians to the lions and the christians were killing heretics, both in europe. Seems to me that both of these religions weren't very tolerate towards adaptation. Eventually, they somehow managed to adapt (well sort of)...
Some people would say that in some parts of europe, the "secular" government started out compromised by religion (germany, denmark, sweden, austria, switzerland, finland all collect church taxes from their citizens in some form or another, but strangly they give nothing to muslim religious institutions). Perhaps that's changing now, but to me it's a little like the pot calling the kettle black...
Does anyone know what the numbers are? How much of our population growth is from immigration vs birth rate and increased longevity?
I'm no economist, but IIRC, the GDP includes things like property/house value increases. If you buy a house for $100k and it becomes worth $300K well congratulations: you've contributed $200K to the GDP, yet no "goods" have been created for the world.
Likewise, a huge economic force in USA is the medical sector where everything seems to cost a lot more than most other parts of the world. Your $50K surgery might cost only one fifth of that in China/India. In GDP terms, the USA output would be measured as $50k vs $10k, yet the contribution to the world is one surgical operation.
I expect that if a more sane measure than GDP was used to measure the USA's output the numbers would look very different.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
And here in California, there is fruit rotting in the fields because border tightening has cut the supply of farm workers.
Are you sure that isn't from excess supply?
As a resident of one of the many Detroit suburbs (which, as a whole, rival most other cities') I often wonder at this blind bashing of Detroit.
I think that's a self-answering question. We ain't talking suburbs here.
My parents grew up in Detroit during the 40s/50s/60s and I can tell you that it was a rival of most other US cities at the time.
Not contested...during that time period.
Unfortunately, race riots and a crooked mayor served to destroy the city's core over the course of two decades (70s/80s).
You forgot the complete implosion of the economy round about that time, which is still struggling to recover.
Actually I have. I've been there more than once, in fact; I wouldn't describe the place as particularly friendly.
Ask yourself, what was the purpose of Ellis Island? Why didn't they just let the boats tie up at a pier in New York or New Jersey and let people off. That would be the more "welcoming" thing to do, if that had really been the U.S.'s principal motivation at the time.
Ellis Island existed principally because of the immigration rules I discussed above. It was a final check to make sure that not only were you basically healthy and disease-free, but that your papers were in good order, and that you had someone in the United States that was willing to vouch for you and keep you off of the public dole. (At times these rules were more relaxed than others, granted.)
If you were sick when you got to Ellis Island, you got put in quarantine; if you turned out to have a chronic or contagious disease (or what we'd today call a mental illness), you went back on the next ship to wherever you came over from. Admittedly the rejection rate was fairly low -- around 2% if I remember -- probably because few people who weren't in good health would attempt the trip in the first place.
The Wikipedia article on Ellis Island has a nice list of the various codes that would be chalked on rejected would-be immigrants, they ranged from being pregnant to having conjunctivitis, poor or absent travel papers, or a bad back.
America was not nearly as indiscriminate in terms of who it let in, even during the boom years of the 19th century, as most middle-school civics classes and politicans' rhetoric would have one believe. The U.S. had the good fortune of needing people at a time when millions of people in Europe needed a place to live, it is only natural that the two needs fulfilled each other.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
How did your big millenium party on Dec 31, 2000 go?
You know, if you don't like Slashdot, you can go find your intelligent news elsewhere.
Just because you can, does not mean you should.
Whatever became of the Zero Population Growth movement?
it seems the appliances of yesteryear (at least the ones that are around and we remember, rather than the ones that sucked so much we got rid of them and forgot them), tended to be at the higher end of quality. (emphasis mine)
I think this is an important point to make as well. If you look around at appliances that are in use right now, it might seem like the further back in time you go, the more durably stuff was made.
Of course, this is because anything that's 30 years old and still working today, probably was built like a tank to begin with. If it hadn't been, it would have died a long time ago. Stuff made in the same era that wasn't as well-built is long since gone and forgotten, thus it doesn't get factored into the mental calculation.
Looking at what's around today is a heavily biased sample; of refrigerators made in 1980, only the good ones are left. Of ones made in 2003, both the good ones and the crap ones are left.
Also, there's another issue: devices which are really expensive are generally made better than ones which are cheap commodity goods. Take a look at some early microwave ovens, for example. They were insanely expensive -- the equivalent of thousands of dollars today. (The calculation is difficult since you also have to factor in that people were less willing to buy on credit as they are today, which creates a sort of mental cost deflation today.) As a consequence, they were well made. If you were going to spend a month's pay on an appliance, in cash, you were probably going to want something that was solid. The cost to get a well-made microwave was a small part of the purchase price of one in the early days of the technology.
Over time, as the cost of production decreased, models could be manufactured that cost less. These appealed to a different type of consumer, and the lower cost meant that people didn't necessarily want to pay extra to get one that was as heavily overbuilt. Today, you can get a microwave for less than a day's labor at minimum wage. It's not built like an Amana Radarange, but neither does it cost anything like it.
The quality devices are still out there -- I can tell you that if you shop around and are prepared to spend a few thousand dollars, you can get a microwave that's of nearly equivalent quality to an old Amana. (Say, a brand new Amana RC30S, list price $4,388.00) You'll be shopping in restaurant-supply stores, but they exist. So it's not as if we've lost the capability of producing equipment that's as well-built and reliable (in fact probably the same number of "good" microwaves are made now as then), it's just that there is a lot of relatively low-grade stuff manufactured as well, which clutters up the present-day marketplace to a casual observer.
You can see this pattern occur with microwaves and personal computers (ever picked up an IBM Model 5150? Talk about solid), as well as many other devices. Most things are built to a higher perceived quality when they represent a bigger fraction of a person's income. If you were willing to pay that fraction of your income/labor today, you could probably still buy that sort of quality, but few people want to.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Because if you follow the rules and get your ticket stamped at the border and enter the country legally the US is a FAR more accomodating society than either the Japanese or Europeans. There are multiple generations of people living in those countries that are considered "Gast arbeiters" or "Gaijin" even if they have been born there. For as much trouble as the US has sometimes on the immigration issue (which has been around since the founding of this country, this current round just a variation on the same theme) the US has always accommodated and incorporated new citizens.
Just in case you didn't know, plastic bags are much better for the environment than paper bags.
here is some info about energy needed to manufacture and recycle both types of bags.
Personally, I get more bags than I need somehow. Every time I shop I bring my own and get a nickel off for each bag. I seem to get about 5 uses out of each bag, and they come into my life a bit faster than they wear out.
Man, you really need that seminar!
This post struck me as interesting enough to do the research. The numbers were pulled together from various sources (linked) and may be incorrect. The computations did present the image of a HIGHLY efficient US workforce though, which manages to produce 20% of the world's GDP with only 5% of the population.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by
US produces 20% of GDP with 25% of the energy and 5% of the population
EU produces 20% of GDP with 21% of the energy and 7% of the population
China produces 15% of GDP with 15% of the energy and 20% of the population
32% of the global population produces 55% of the wealth using 60% of the energy.
Atanamis
They just get smaller, lighter, and flimsier. I'm sure they're move efficient and cost less to produce and ship (by dint of being lighter) but I'd rather trade a little efficiency for 2-3x the lifespan (and with that, less-used landfills) and some user-serviceable parts.
The material needed to make an appliance is not the only parameter, it is also how much resources it consumes. If your new washer uses half the water, it makes good sense to replace the old still functioning washer.
No, that wasn't the question...my question was - how many people have actually been to the city that are making negative comments? I didn't answer my own question. And neither did you for that matter. For the record, I wasn't talking about suburbs either. I simply mentioned I was from the suburbs, hence, given my proximity to and knowledge of the city, my interest in the question.
OK, evangelize on the qualities of Detroit. Is your contention that it isn't a shithole? Then prove it. My understanding of the place is high crime, population flight, and unemployment. Are these premises incorrect? Even the Wikipedia entry, of all things, paints the same basic picture: city just barely starting to emerge from decades of depression, with half the population it had 50 years ago. It has the highest unemployment in the country. Poorest city in the country. Most dangerous city in the country. That meets my definition of "shithole" when you hit the crap trifecta.
True, but at the same time, the race riots, white flight, and crooked mayor had a more profound and deep affect. I think had these not occurred, the city would presently be in much better shape than it is now....despite the economic conditions of the 70s/80s. In any event, my other question was - why not see what the city's like first before commenting on it? You didn't answer that question either.
In the end, the cause doesn't matter since my assertion was the effect. If your contention is that a non-crooked mayor would have somehow attracted tons of industry to replace that of the auto makers who ran the hell away from Detroit, that's a tough assertion to prove, though it may not be wrong. But in the end, it's irrelevant. And in making that case, you seem to implicitly agree with my original assertion that Detroit has a lot of economic problems that haven't been fixed...my original point.
In any event, my other question was - why not see what the city's like first before commenting on it? You didn't answer that question either.
Same reasons I don't take vacations in Gary, IN.
On a different note, I wanted to comment that the moderation of the three relevant postings here seems particularly biased. Or more bluntly, sucks. Apparently anything that disputes a negativism or shows a hint of optimism/upside deserves a 0 score, while anything negative and close-minded should be applauded with a 1+
Perhaps no one agrees with you?
Oh. boo f*cking hoo!
Either do it better, find a market with enough demand or just simply get out of the way.
Tell me... why should we NOT sell cheaper agricultural products to africa? Just so an African farmer can be employed? Do you realize in that case that you might be allowing a single person to flourish while punishing everybody else who is forced to pay more for their food than if you were there??
Subsidies or not, we are supplying the same, or better, product cheaper and there isn't a valid reason not to do so.
And, yes, I gree with you. We should abolish subsidies... ALL of them, every last one. Get rid of all the entitlements too while you're at it. But that is all a different rant.
I will never live for sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.
In any event, my other question was - why not see what the city's like first before commenting on it? You didn't answer that question either.
Same reasons I don't take vacations in Gary, IN.
I accidentally drove through there back in '98. I count myself lucky to have gotten out alive!
There's no way I'm taking a trip to Detroit to "see what the city's like first before commenting on it". Cities don't develop reputations that bad for nothing.
No wonder this story was submitted anonymously. They couldn't spell bureau and don't understand the concept of capitalizing proper names.
That list is ostensibly missing most of the Arab nations that are far wealthier per capita than their European counterparts. For example, last I looked the UAE was the second-wealthiest nation in the world per capita. Cultural bias? Maybe, but this Wikipedia entry seems to get to the bottom of things. Apparently, many of the Middle Eastern countries are not considered "developed" according to some arbitrary criteria, so they're not counted in these cheesy rankings.
Just wanted to add that I forgot to take into account who may or may not be counted when per capita wealth is calculated. Considering a country like the UAE is set up to support the Emirates (natives), with every ex-pat, Pakistani, or Puerto-Rican immigrant treated like the "help," it's likely that non-Emirates would not be accurately counted. That would leave you with literally a nation filled with millionaires, which of course skews the numbers.
I accidentally drove through there back in '98. I count myself lucky to have gotten out alive!
My old man has a similar story from the 60s. Some things never change, eh?
There's no way I'm taking a trip to Detroit to "see what the city's like first before commenting on it". Cities don't develop reputations that bad for nothing.
Yeah, what, am I going to looked at some bombed-out crackhouses first? #1 unemployment + #1 crime + #1 poverty = stay away.
That and it's simple - when everybody's moving out and no one moves in, what else do you need to know? As for it's self appointed defendant in this thread - he doesn't live in Detroit either. Not in the city. Wonder why?
Oops, you are right. I meant GDP per unit CO2 emitted to atmosphere. Which isn't the same as amount of fossil fuel use, but should be a good indicator.
Yeah, if he thinks Detroit is so great, why doesn't he leave his comfortable suburban house and move downtown to 8 Mile? I saw a movie about that area; it looked like a really nice place to live.
Hey, he's got no excuse, real estate down there is practically free.
In case you didn't notice, the US has been "import[ing] the trash from other countries" as long as there has been European settlement on North America, for varying definitions of trash as religious, racial, ethnic, and class biases change over time. Your post smacks of ignorance, class bias, and, yes, racism. (You can't be seriously suggesting that hating one ethnic group in particular is not racism if you like all the others.) I guess it's the immigration policies of Australia and New Zealand that have allowed those countries to become superpowers with the most dynamic population and greatest technological advances, while the United States remains some backwater flooded by Spanish-speaking, Catholic, generally uncivilized Mexicans? Do you see anything wrong with that sentence? Get off your high horse.
Since the US is still growing, it'd be about time to build good transportation in densely populated areas, like Personal Rapid Transit. It would be more energy efficient than trains, buses, or automobiles, and would be more time efficient for the passengers, both for waiting-to-get-in-a-vehicle and non-stop-travel categories.
For the inquiring minds out there, the population equation refered to is I=PAT, where I= influence on the environment, P= population, A=affluence, and T=technology.
"How do you get this when more than half the Muslims in Europe say they wish they could impose/live under Sharia in Europe?"
Got a source?
If you're able to read English as a first language - and not Spanish or Arabic - this should piss you off. Birth rates aren't at the level of replacement, let alone growth, and legal immigration is scant. The majority of that growth is coming from illegal immigration and their native-born offspring.
It's also a large part of the reason why our medical programs are in big trouble.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Actually the European Union has over 461 million citizens, and next year it will include another 20 million (Romania and Bulgaria). And the EU is not Europe.. there are millions of Europeans outside!
What utter rubbish! In fact what has strained our "socialist" welfare system is the very group you are talking about! Of course "non-White" immigrants and "white" immigrants from Eastern Europe are included under our welfare system(s). However since the EU is not national government - it is the member countries that decide what, how and who benefits. Even illegal immigrants without citizenship are given welfare benefits in Europe! That includes housing, food/clothing and education. And the sheer amount of money in benefits given to recently arrived immigrants are fortunes in their home countries - and reports show that this money is of incredible importance to their home countries economies.
Many Europeans actually view (mostly non-White) immigrants as a huge burden on our welfare systems because they are often not able to find work as they lack social and language skills, education or training neccessary in a modern industrial nation. Peasants from Africa do not fullfil a need here as farmers. And then there is the cases in the media of abuse of the system like claiming benefits for multiple non-existent children, unemployment benefits when working etc.
You do not seem to have any in-depth knowledge of how the many different European nations organize their social-Democratic welfare systems. In fact even calling it a "socialist" system is very wrong from a European perspective. Socialism and Social-Democracy is not the same. Today the "socialists" are even more market friendly (in some countries) than their opposition.
The whole "jobs Americans don't want to do" line is a convenient lie, fed to the public by both sides.
There is no such thing as a job Americans don't want to do, just jobs people (with any rights) won't do for the wage. Companies don't want to engage in capitalism and raise wages, so they try to get people with no rights, that will take anything they can get, because they can't get many other jobs in their situation.
Republicans want to legalize the practice of companies exploiting foreigners (guest worker program), while the Democrats want the xenophobic voters to be less worried about losing their jobs to foreigners.
As for "jobs Americans don't want to do..." It isn't illegal immigrants jacking off horses to collect sperm, cleaning up the droppings of zoo animals, working at landfills, sewage plants, oil platforms, Alaskan crab fishing, etc. etc. The most awful jobs in the world, are done by good old Americans, who supposedly don't have the stomach for picking fruit.
You make it sound like there's some inherent reason people would NOT to do the job... Hell, there are many people who PAY for the privledge of visiting orchards so they can pick fruit for themselves.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
before Tony Blair every Prime Minister (both tory and labour) from about 1962 onwards (Wilson, Heath, Thatcher,.. and the leaders of the opposition, too) went to (state-funded) "grammar schools", the same sort of institution that I attended. In fact it's something held against Blair, that he went to the highly prestigious, expensive & "posh" public school, Fettes.
I'd like to point out for all of my fellow Americans here, who are not yet aware of it, that what the friendly chaps across the pond refer to as "public schools" are what we here in the States call "private schools", i.e. schools which are not tax-funded.
I'm curious though, OriginalArlen - what would the term "private school" refer to in England? The state-funded schools? (Doubtful). And how is it that something which is privately owned is called a "public school", in contrast to publicly (state) owned schools? This has always confused me. What does the "public" in that term refer to, and in contrast to what?
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
Perhaps you are thinking of the French ban on the Hijab? To properly understand why this is NOT a lack of religious tolerance you should read more on the French Republic. The French maintain that religion is a private matter and as such you should not talk about it in public or make it an issue in school. So naturally you may not carry or wear large symbols of any religion in French schools and Universities! This includes crosses, stars of David and Muslim hijab or burqa. The ban thus ensures a true freedom of and from religion.
"Islam is NOT merely another culture that you can merge into other cultures."
How convenient for your distaste for Islam that it just happens the lone outlier in your worldview of culture, isn't it?
"The underlying belief system of Islam won't tolerate it and the reason is simple: It is a capital punishment to leave the faith."
Assuming that this is true (can you find the relevant passages from the Qur'an?), am I to believe that it is the only religion with such a policy? Considering all the acts that the Bible/Torah considers to be punishible by death or mutilation, it's hard to claim a qualitative difference.
"Just for your own understanding, study the liberties and freedoms 'enjoyed' by non-Muslims in ANY country with a Muslim majority."
Turn the clock back 150 years and replace the word "Muslim" with "Catholic." One of the chief arguments against Irish immigration into the United States was the fact that they were predominantly Catholic, coming into what is generally a Protestant country. And, of course, there were bloody clashes between Catholics and Protestants within the United States. In many respects, this antagonism continues into modern times, with John F. Kennedy's Catholicism having been viewed as a liability in elections.
Guess what: we're still here. We learned, we adapted, we persist. There was no great cataclysm, no great apocalyptic battle between two cultures many viewed as mutually exclusive. There has been and continues to be tension, but American style republicanism and secularism persists.
There is no good reason to believe that the phenomenom of Muslims going to Europe is completley unique and without any sort of precedent. The only possible reason to view it as such is to disguise your own irrational discomfort with the idea that some around you might want to go off someplace quiet with their prayer rugs a few times a day. The only source of conflict would if the Europeans choose to make one, and you'd accomplish little more than to demonstrate that the much-vaunted new, enlightened European secularism is a sham.
I understand the concept of mass immigration is new to Europe. Learn to deal with your own feelings before you end up making worse mistakes than we did. Or do you wish to see Europe continue to do little more than play second fiddle to North America?
This must of come from a non American author that is just upset that the Jehad movement hasn't killed all of the Americans yet. 25%? So? Why should I care.. I'm just a dumb American. Honestly it's like this. Is it our fault America is successful? Damn right. What the author fails to mention is the following: China grows by 7 million people a year. In Shanhi Alone 600 new cars are put on the road every day. Shanhi is about 12x's larger than New York City. China produces more polution with coal than the United States does. China has increased it's need for oil by 6% in the last 3 years alone. China's population is more than all of Europe and the US combined. and guess what, The United States is China's largest buyer of goods. If the United States didn't exist China would not be at the point they are at now. If the United States didn't exist all Europe would be speaking German right now. If the United States didn't exist Mexians wouldn't have a place to illegally find a job in. If the United States didn't exist no one in the world would be allowed to own a gun. If the United States didn't exist the fall of the Soviet Union would never have happened. 25%? The world is a big place and because we use 25% of what the world can produce we have provided for billions of jobs and trillians of dollars so that other people can live and work. Other countries will catch up, it's just a matter of time. The US will not always be a super power, but the US will be an economic super power for years to come. God Bless America and the Hell with those sandy ass rag heads that want to kill us.
Obama = Socialism.
I don't want to stand out in the sun all day, day after day picking fruit. Even if
;)
picking fruit all day payed better than IT does, I think I would find something else to do.
On top of that, when the three week pear season is over, you have to find another crop to pick.
So drive your family to the part of the country that has that crop.
I would much rather let someone who wants to do the work come to this country and
continue to have them do it.
People pay a lot more per pound for Alaskan Crab than they do for pears. If the pears start
costing what the crab costs, I think they will eat more crab.
Some people talk about what it costs to provide services for illegal immigrants. What about the value of the work they bring here?
With pears being produced in other countries at lower prices, the farmers here will not be able to pass on price increases in order to pay higher wages. In the California Farm Bureau article I linked to in the GP, the farmer was talking about other pear farmers in the area buldozing their orchards.
They are lobying for guest workers. If that fails, their bluff will be called and we will see how many farms shut down. Some farms are a marginal business with a lot of risk.
Other farms make good money.
On a side note, I once had a supervisor who owned a pear orchard. When the pears ripened,
he dissappeared from his IT job for the three weeks it took to harvest.
But he didn't pick them himself. And he was a naturalized citizen.
If our current government wants to see what happens to the economy when you remove
20 million hard-working, low paid illegal immigrants, they can go ahead.
Maybe next year WalMart will have a shortage because all their workers left to
go pick pears for more money.
So perhaps we will seal the border. We can have Mexican people who want to pick fruit
stuck on one side, and farmers who need someone to pick the fruit on the other.
Where we once exported lots of food abroad, maybe we can buy more food from countries
that don't have our labor laws.
Or better yet, block the imports and let food get expensive enough so that farmers
can pay wages high enough to draw all those Americans back to the farms to pick fruit and vegetables like they did 150 years ago!
Anyway, I did not start the GP so much for political argument. I was just driving
along the Sacramento River and saw pears on the ground in the orchards.
I short while later, I heard that it was because they couldn't get enough people to
pick all the pears.
California grows a lot of food and it is wierd to see it sitting on the ground rotting.
"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." -- Albert Einstein
Here's one thing that will pretty much put an end to people being able to fix their dishwashers, microwaves, clothesdryers and other modern whitegoods: those nice flashy control panels with lots of LEDs and membrane buttons tend to use PIC controllers. Now it's just lucky for the manufacturers I guess that some of these devices have built-in ROMs that they know will evaporate after a few years. The result is that the mechanics might be DIY repairable but if the smarts in the controller panel is gone, it ain't going to function no matter what you do. My washing machine has a mechanical program selector, I know that I at least have a chance of repairing it.
As far as I understand the whole idea of currency is that it allows you to compare different goods from the economical point of view, based on their monetary value. Which reflects (among other things) amount of the resources spent in making them. Otherwise I don't know what is the reason for you to say that making a bottle of wine require spending less resources than 10 bushels of corn meal.
From the practical point of view I very much doubt that USA is exporting more raw resources than Hi-Tech products (like copies of Microsoft Windows or drugs, for example).
About the value of dollars - I don't understand what you mean. Because if the dollar on the world market is overvalued (i.e it doesn't worth those resources it's being used to buy) then it means that USA is doing a very cool trick of exchanging goods and natural resources for wortless pieces of green paper (which is what is going on actually, but it is not the topic I am going to discuss here).
--
Excuse my English.
More snobs ... great, that's the solution.
.
Good for you. I'm rather sure 80+% of the population disagrees, however. Myself included.
Mexicans don't want to do the work any more than Americans do. They do it because it's the only option they have, considering their illegal status. Make them legal, and they will go to other jobs that pay more, or demand higher wages for their work, just like every other American.
Indentured servitude isn't a good policy, even if it's necessary to make US-grown pears profitable...
It doesn't matter who eats what. Crab fishing is the hardest, most dangerous job in the world, yet it's all Americans that do it, not illegal immigrants... Because the pay is high enough to live on, unlike what farmers currently pay.
Good for them. It's plain and simple economics.
If your business model depends on slave labor to be profitable, you don't import slaves, you change the business model.
Subsudising the "marginal" farms with illegally-cheap labor, is not a smart move on any account. In a capitalist society, those companies NEED to go out of business, to make way for stronger competitors that can pay decent wages.
I can only hope... That could only possibly raise the standard of living for the working-poor in this country.
Funny you'd say that, since your solution to this problem is to sweep aside our labor laws, and allow indentured Mexicans to work for less-than minimum wage.
Hell, maybe it would suddenly be profitable to have farms IN MEXICO, where the Mexicans have rights, aren't afraid of being exported if they complain, etc.
Employers have historically pulled LOTS of dirty tricks in the past, to try and get better deals on labor. It wouldn't suprise me if they are doing it again. After all, more expensive employees are far better than no employees at all.
At worst, if I was a farmer, I'd probably put up a sign along the lines of "Pick your own pears $5" and make some money, if not as much as usual. That's how capitalism works, when the situation changes, you change your business model the best you can. In the long term, MANY businesses profit far more, when they are finally forced to come to terms with changes, and think up new business models for their industry.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Touche...
Meta will eat itself
Maybe the US are only 5% of world population, but with 30% (90 milions) of obese and 5% (7.5 milions) of severe obese people they probably weight more or less 25% of world's human fat!
this post contain no useful information, no need to mod it down
Here. OK, so it is only 4/10, slightly less than half. The point is still valid - these people are not trying to escape Sharia.
(And that only took a few seconds on Google, and has been reported on Slashdot before!)
while (sig==sig) sig=!sig;
i figured our british cousins still used the gallon.
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
Uh, time to get out of the crib and start learning something of economics for a change.
Also, if you think the US hasn't accumulated its wealth in fair and equal competition - then you need to learn the actual meanings of those words as well as need to learn something of real economics.
The reason why we consume so much is because we produce so much. If someone does it more efficiently, well, try to get a job now at a typewriter manufacturing company. Hint - there aren't any left.
If you want to blame america for - whatever - then you'll need to go beyond black 'copters and in to the realm of the US created and funded communism and built the soviet union in order to freeze out competition. What other way could possibly keep vast amounts of natural resources and people from creating a vibrant economy?
As for the amount of trash we produce - what actually becomes 'pollution' versus what is taken care of by societal rules. Compare that to the ethiopian who has very little trash but all of it becomes pollution. Also, since ethiopia ceased being a food producing/exporting nation and turned into another socialist utopia of the starving, who do you think is feeding them too?
If you looked at the pop. growth, you should have noticed that it is occurring in the third world. It's only growing here in the US because of the massive invasion from the third world.
It seems that those Zero Population Growth pervs (or evidently former zpg )didn't comprehend much of anything - or were simply lying about it if they did. High average birth rates don't continue on as technology moves to the farm and infant death rates plummet in a society. The choice between a new kid and a new tv or a new car tend to limit the number of new kids.
There's plenty of things people don't like about the US. Demand for illegal drugs has created violence and death around the globe. The sewage from holy-wood purportedly depicting american life has offended many. Then, there is that plain old jealously that exists in many people no matter where they live.
But don't worry about it much. The US education system teaches self esteem and confidence about working math instead of how to work math. Hence, we're already down to something like 39th in industrialized societies for math education. I doubt I can blame some foreigners for their dislike of the undeserving as well as a dislike for those who don't know or appreciate what they've got.
Unwilling? Talk about reading what you want in to other peoples opinions. Of course we prefer integrating people into our
societies and economies. I just pointed out that so many are unable or unwilling to work that our system is in heavy demand. This would be exactly the opposite of your claim that Europe does not take care of its immigrant populations!! Not to mention the general nature of your claim.
Immigration from some areas of the world are harder to tackle (Africa) especially the illegals ones. In some cases me calling them "peasants" is correct and reflects their skills. European farmers are not exactly looking to expand - nor do they need traditional small scale African agriculture methods. It is not always easy to make first generation immigrants productive when they come from non-industrial countries. It does not stop them from claiming benefits and hanging out with their fellow countrymen. Nor does it stop them from far too easily falling into crime. As statistics will show you they are proportionally overrepresented. And not just because they dont have skills - simply basic knowledge of the language would help. Most countries offer free language training classes. But even after twenty years in Europe there are still immigrants that speak little or nothing of the local language.
Then again even if they are doctors, engineers or lawyers they often arrive in countries with unemployment problems themselves - and I am not even touching the question of compatible/acceptable educational backgrounds, social networks and language skills. We speak more than just English in Europe you know?
My point was that many of them have need more investment to make them productive. Some Eastern Europeans have a far easier task of finding work because at least they come from industrial nations. And often have good enough language skills to be useful. But they all receive the generous welfare benefits and services citizens are entitled to.
Not all - just that the "socialists" are more or less reformed and have nothing to do with their past semi-communist history. Calling Europe socialist is so old. Today Europe is mostly run by Social-Democractic or Center-Right governments. The biggest party group in the European Parliament is the right wing EPP.
Hehe, I do not think so but if they apply maybe they will get work visas. The greatest problem I see with immigration is that many economic migrants falsely apply for asylum claiming discrimination back home. Far too many of the immigrants arriving in Europe are of this kind. My own country only accepts UN quotas and asylum seekers, so that just leaves asylum claims.
My 'contention' is that the city may not currently be as horrible as its inflated reputation, which is certainly the only basis from which you're making your judgements and completely prejudiced statements.
I'm not talking 'may.' If you're to refute my assertion that Detroit's not a shithole, you need proof. I've supplied statistics showing that it is in fact a shithole. Where is your proof?
All you're doing is reiterating things you've read in the newspaper, on the internet....or, for God's sake, read in Wikipedia? Get real.
The links are valid, even if Wiki's not. And so far, it's the best source in this discussion, since we're not admitting you as a primary source.
The issue I have is that if people blindly assume it is a shithole without ever having been there, it will continue to be so in their minds even if it becomes less of a shithole, and makes strides to become a better place.
So wait, are you admitting it's a shithole?
You're apparently averse to open-mindedness, or the fact that things can actually change.
Nope, I've asked you to supply evidence to counter my current opinion. I even looked up some stats to see if things changed as you claimed. I found mucho evidence to suggest they haven't changed much at all.
It's the same attitude I see here on slashdot, with so many topics it literally makes me ill.
Don't cry little emo! It'll be OK. ;)
In the end, I have to blame this falsely superior, myopic attitude on these craptastic moderators who continue to mark your and others posts as somehow insightful, when they're actually narrow-minded, petty, and at times quite obtuse. They must be so tickled and amused by your wonderful witticisms like 'crap trifecta' that they can't help but add points. I know I was impressed. A+
And in return, instead of countering my points, you whine, piss, and moan. I'm likewise impressed. Like I said, prove me wrong. Until then, a shithole Dee-troit will remain.
A city, by the way, you don't actually live in, I'll point out again. Suburbs ain't the city.
Another blind generalization which isn't true. I sense a theme here.
It's not a generalization. The population has been cut by half. What do you not understand?
I'm not trying to defend Detroit so much as open up some god-d*mned minds
An open mind doesn't mean adhering to your opinion. My mind is open. It's waiting for counterevidence that doesn't come. But if you're expecting me to take your word for it that Detroit's a fantastic place, you better be compelling. Which you haven't been to date. In fact, your main gripe isn't that Detroit's a crappy place to live - you seem to be angry that anyone talks about it. Well, tough shit. Until it proves otherwise, Detroit's earned it's reputation.
It's a very difficult task as everyone here displays grand omniscience from reading Wikipedia and a few random online opinion pieces.
And yet you still have no evidence to counter those references? I can cite unemployment rates, crime rates, and poverty rates. How do you argue those away? And your assertion is insufficient, why are you a better reference than those I can find myself?
"OK, so it is only 4/10, slightly less than half. The point is still valid "
The article also mentions that a plurality is against it and an additional 20% are still undecided.
However, what the article does not mention is what exactly that 40% were thinking when they said they were in favor of imposing "sharia law" in their communities. Aside from varying from country to country, sharia law encompasses a very wide array of subjects. Did every person who ticked off the "yes" option on that poll think about cutting of a thief's hand, or simply punishing public intoxication? On that note, they may have simply been looking to outlaw alcohol (something more than one Western country has dabbled in without the help of Muslims).
Even if they were looking for the imposition of something as drastic as capital punishment, were they thinking of executing people for homosexuality, as is done in Iran and Saudia Arabia, or were they thinking of executing people for aggrevated murder, as is done in the United States and Japan?
Instead of delving these questions, it seems the pollsters and the media outlets that reported on their results decided to simply leave things hanging with the inflammatory phrase "sharia law," because (as I mentioned before) fear-mongering sells copy. This reeks of sensationalism taking advantage of the then-recent July attacks in London, which makes one wonder why people are surprised British Muslims feel persecuted.
"and has been reported on Slashdot before!"
News for knee-jerking? Stuff that pushes buttons?
All you say is (or at least may be) true. Sharia may mean eating only pickles to these people, we will never know. However, it does establish beyond a doubt that these people were not fleeing from Sharia - and that was the point I was responding to.
while (sig==sig) sig=!sig;
"However, it does establish beyond a doubt that these people were not fleeing from Sharia"
Then I'll both point out that I was referencing sharia the same way you were (you'll note I mentioned "honor killings" in that particular post) and also that 61% seems to be quite a bit of doubt.
Not entirely true, or more accurately, entirely untrue. US agriculture + shipping is in no way cheaper than localized agriculture in Africa. The reason it comes on the market cheaper is that your tax dollars are spent to buy a surplus for the high US price, to ship it to Africa for free, and to sell it there for a lower price. The only reason that US agriculture kills domestic agriculture in Africa is because the income of all Americans is used to make that happen. For instance, the US IT industry subsidizes American food export, and the suppression of the makings of an African economy. At the same time, import tariffs are used to keep that part of African agriculture out that is competitive with this practice. All in all, international food trade in no way resembles a free nor a competitive market, and arguments to that effect hold no water. Unless this situation is rectified, there's no chance in hell that Africa will ever be able to build up its own economy.
95% of world population still not American. Rest of world says "Ameri-where?"
Sure! I'll even discount my services to $50 an hour!