Actually federal spending as a percentage of the GDP is not significantly different now than it has been historically. The tax burden has shifted quite a bit though. Corporations used to account for about 30% of federal income tax receipts and the wealthy used use to have a top marginal rate well over 50%. Now the burden has shifted toward the middle class. After all, Bill Clinton balanced the budget and had a surplus when he left office and that was only with an extra 4 or 5% tax on high income earners. But then we had a major commitment of our military without raising taxes to help pay for it as we have in past wars. 3/4's of the federal debt was accumulated under Republican's because all they want to do is cut taxes but they're afraid to cut the spending by a commensurate amount because they know they'd be out on their asses at the next election if they did. Cheney said "Deficits don't matter." but what the Republican's really mean is they only matter when there's a Democratic president so they can make political hay out of them.
If you're going to make it a matter of personal responsibility to secure your own medical care then you have to allow emergency rooms to turn away people who don't have the means of paying for the care the need. Otherwise taxpayers and/or people who do have the means to pay end up paying for them anyway. If you're not going to do that then the least expensive way for the society as a whole to do medical care is to make sure everyone is in on it.
When the 400 wealthiest people in the US have more wealth than the bottom 150 million it's not that unreasonable of a statement. Unions would be lucky if they could spend 1/10th of the amount that corporations can spend on politics.
The single most effective way to slow down population growth is to educate women. The places with the highest birthrate are generally where women are considered chattel or below men. In those societies the women are not well educated. Educated women more than any other single thing will reduce the birthrate.
The main reason the US has so many people in jails is stupid drug laws. I'd bet far less than half of the prison population here would be a danger to the general public because of firearms issues.
Comparing Krakatoa to the Yellowstone super-volcano is like comparing a magnitude 4 earthquake to a magnitude 9. Krakatoa ejected about 21 cubic kilometers of material, the Yellowstone eruption about 640,000 years ago ejected around 1,000 cubic kilometers.
Oregon is not particularly well prepared. There are tsunami warning sirens in most of the cities and they are making tsunami danger zone maps but they are not complete. There are signs on the coast highway waring about tsunami danger areas. Anything built more than about 20 years ago probably won't stand up very well to the big one when it comes unless its been upgraded. We're working on upgrades but not very fast.
Based on past frequencies the Cascadia Subduction Zone quake could come any time in the next 200 or 300 years. If this theory that we're getting a cluster of earthquakes now and the Sumatra to Chile to Japan pattern continues then the Cascadia fault is then next in line.
The Cascadia and San Andreas faults are tied to each other where they meet off Northern California and a major quake on the Cascadia fault will probably lead to some large quakes on the San Andreas complex of faults.
Yes, as I was writing that I thought there probably is a little hydrogen produced by all those neutrons flying around but I figured it wasn't enough to be that notable and I wanted to keep the post short so I didn't include that.
Thanks for the information. I didn't realize they equipment for flaring the hydrogen. I'm still thinking though that maybe the hydrogen was being produced at rate that overwhelmed the equipment.
H2O2 is hydrogen peroxide, not heavy water. Heavy water is H2O made with a high proportion of deuterium atoms.
Nuclear plants don't have any built in equipment to flare off hydrogen. Maybe they should but hydrogen is not produced by a nuclear reactor in normal operations. It only gets produced when the core gets hot enough to dissociate the water that's cooling it producing a perfectly explosive mixture of hydrogen and oxygen. All it takes it the spark to set it off. I imagine once the dissociation gets started it can run at such a prodigious rate that it might be difficult to build something that could handle it.
The numbers are for net worth, not income. Here is the quote from the working paper:
The share of the top 1 percent advanced from 34.6 to 37.1 percent, that of the top 5 percent from 61.8 to 65 percent, and that of the top quintile from 85 to 87.7 percent, while that of the second quintile fell from 10.9 to 10 percent, that of the middle quintile from 4 to 3.1 percent, and that of the bottom two quintiles from 0.2 to -0.8 percent. There was also a large expansion in the share of households with zero or negative net worth, from 18.6 to 24.1 percent.
So, the top 20% own 85-87.7% of the nations total net worth.
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center which covers the Pacific Ocean was established in 1949. The 2004 quake you refer to was in the Indian Ocean which wasn't covered at the time. Since then the PTWC has extended its coverage to the Indian Ocean and the Caribbean Sea until suitable centers can be organized there.
The models the PTWC uses are quite accurate and so are very useful in sending out timely warnings. But if you're close enough to feel the quake you shouldn't expect to get a warning. You should just head to high ground if you're in a tsunami zone.
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Actually federal spending as a percentage of the GDP is not significantly different now than it has been historically. The tax burden has shifted quite a bit though. Corporations used to account for about 30% of federal income tax receipts and the wealthy used use to have a top marginal rate well over 50%. Now the burden has shifted toward the middle class. After all, Bill Clinton balanced the budget and had a surplus when he left office and that was only with an extra 4 or 5% tax on high income earners. But then we had a major commitment of our military without raising taxes to help pay for it as we have in past wars. 3/4's of the federal debt was accumulated under Republican's because all they want to do is cut taxes but they're afraid to cut the spending by a commensurate amount because they know they'd be out on their asses at the next election if they did. Cheney said "Deficits don't matter." but what the Republican's really mean is they only matter when there's a Democratic president so they can make political hay out of them.
It recently narrowly avoided meltdown in the spent fuel ponds due to an unobserved leak, ...
They don't have an automatic water level monitor on the spent fuel ponds to sound an alarm?! That's irresponsible to me.
Insurance is insurance. Its a for profit industry that has squeezed the living shit out of both doctors and patients.
Now if we could just squeeze the dead shit out of the insurance industry. It really stinks.
If you're going to make it a matter of personal responsibility to secure your own medical care then you have to allow emergency rooms to turn away people who don't have the means of paying for the care the need. Otherwise taxpayers and/or people who do have the means to pay end up paying for them anyway. If you're not going to do that then the least expensive way for the society as a whole to do medical care is to make sure everyone is in on it.
When the 400 wealthiest people in the US have more wealth than the bottom 150 million it's not that unreasonable of a statement. Unions would be lucky if they could spend 1/10th of the amount that corporations can spend on politics.
Good luck getting that past the Supreme Court.
Unions have a fraction of the amount of money corporations have to spend on politics.
If we are truly at peak oil petrol will probably be too expensive by then to use in the average vehicle by then anyway.
Banking may be more lucrative than tech but I don't know that I'd call it more productive unless money is the only thing that matters to you.
The single most effective way to slow down population growth is to educate women. The places with the highest birthrate are generally where women are considered chattel or below men. In those societies the women are not well educated. Educated women more than any other single thing will reduce the birthrate.
Get an LED headlight and/or flashlight. The batteries last far longer than with incandescent bulbs.
The main reason the US has so many people in jails is stupid drug laws. I'd bet far less than half of the prison population here would be a danger to the general public because of firearms issues.
I keep my rocket launcher in case I get hungry and need to hunt rabbits.
And the advantage to that is the rabbit is not only killed but cooked as well.
Wouldn't the Cascadia Subduction Zone make more sense? It's the same kind of fault zone as the Sumatran, Chilean and Japanese faults.
Comparing Krakatoa to the Yellowstone super-volcano is like comparing a magnitude 4 earthquake to a magnitude 9. Krakatoa ejected about 21 cubic kilometers of material, the Yellowstone eruption about 640,000 years ago ejected around 1,000 cubic kilometers.
The San Andrea fault is more likely to affect the Long Valley Caldera> near Bishop, CA than it is Yellowstone.
Yes, an 8.3 is in the category of Great quakes but the 9.0 the Cascadia fault is likely to have is like 8 times as powerful.
Oregon is not particularly well prepared. There are tsunami warning sirens in most of the cities and they are making tsunami danger zone maps but they are not complete. There are signs on the coast highway waring about tsunami danger areas. Anything built more than about 20 years ago probably won't stand up very well to the big one when it comes unless its been upgraded. We're working on upgrades but not very fast.
Based on past frequencies the Cascadia Subduction Zone quake could come any time in the next 200 or 300 years. If this theory that we're getting a cluster of earthquakes now and the Sumatra to Chile to Japan pattern continues then the Cascadia fault is then next in line.
The Cascadia and San Andreas faults are tied to each other where they meet off Northern California and a major quake on the Cascadia fault will probably lead to some large quakes on the San Andreas complex of faults.
Yes, as I was writing that I thought there probably is a little hydrogen produced by all those neutrons flying around but I figured it wasn't enough to be that notable and I wanted to keep the post short so I didn't include that.
Thanks for the information. I didn't realize they equipment for flaring the hydrogen. I'm still thinking though that maybe the hydrogen was being produced at rate that overwhelmed the equipment.
Maybe we''ll finally get our sharks with lasers.
H2O2 is hydrogen peroxide, not heavy water. Heavy water is H2O made with a high proportion of deuterium atoms.
Nuclear plants don't have any built in equipment to flare off hydrogen. Maybe they should but hydrogen is not produced by a nuclear reactor in normal operations. It only gets produced when the core gets hot enough to dissociate the water that's cooling it producing a perfectly explosive mixture of hydrogen and oxygen. All it takes it the spark to set it off. I imagine once the dissociation gets started it can run at such a prodigious rate that it might be difficult to build something that could handle it.
Where I work we design and manufacture avionics. All of our new stuff is ROHS compliant. We are in the US.
The numbers are for net worth, not income. Here is the quote from the working paper:
The share of the top 1 percent advanced from 34.6 to 37.1 percent, that of the top 5 percent from 61.8 to 65 percent, and that of the top quintile from 85 to 87.7 percent, while that of the second quintile fell from 10.9 to 10 percent, that of the middle quintile from 4 to 3.1 percent, and that of the bottom two quintiles from 0.2 to -0.8 percent. There was also a large expansion in the share of households with zero or negative net worth, from 18.6 to 24.1 percent.
So, the top 20% own 85-87.7% of the nations total net worth.
... The bottom 50% of the population? Around 10% of the total wealth.
Actually the bottom 60% of the population own 2.3% of the nations wealth according to a working paper by Edward Wolff.
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center which covers the Pacific Ocean was established in 1949. The 2004 quake you refer to was in the Indian Ocean which wasn't covered at the time. Since then the PTWC has extended its coverage to the Indian Ocean and the Caribbean Sea until suitable centers can be organized there.
The models the PTWC uses are quite accurate and so are very useful in sending out timely warnings. But if you're close enough to feel the quake you shouldn't expect to get a warning. You should just head to high ground if you're in a tsunami zone.