On the other hand, an exception could be made on the grounds that it would make electric cars more common, which would be a net gain for the environment even with a polluting factory.
Then why not force TESLA to build its factory someplace with the most poverty?
Globally poverty kills 18 million per year, which is 32% of an deaths. Its the #1 killer, way ahead of even the most dire global warming scenarios.
So if you are going to make exceptions based on "net [environmental] gain" then the argument is immediately undermined by its own logic. The impacts you have decided are important (environmental) are extremely insignificant in comparison to both the effects and the scale of other (economic) impacts.
What of the folks that purchased these chips for these specific instructions? Surely many optimization experts (...assembler gurus) are going to feel quite burned...
So it seems like a good idea to let the compiler do the work once and save on hardware. Except for one major monkey wrench: Memory load instructions
Thats not the only monkey wrench. Compilers simply arent good enough in general, and there is little evidence that they could be made to be good enough on a consistent basis because architectures keep evolving and very few compilers actually model specific architecture pipelines...
This is why Intel now designs their architectures to execute what compilers produce well, rather than the other way around. Intel would not have 5 asymmetric execution units with lots of functionality overlap in its latest CPU's if compilers didnt frequently produce code that requires it...
Which leads to compiler writers spending the majority of their effort on big picture optimizations because Intel/etc are dealing with the whole low level scheduling issues for them... the circle is complete.. its self-sustaining.
Out of order execution can only do one thing actually: cope with varying latency of operations.
It also covers up the sometimes bad instruction ordering of compilers, which has predictably led to compilers being even worse at it. No point modeling which execution units are free when the OOE pipeline reduces all the important inner loop stuff to the latency of the longest dependency chain after just a couple iterations...
The old fashioned blackboard and a degree of discipline plus drive are what our kids need.
Its possible that a "smart black board" would be an upgrade, but probably the costs are way too high right now to even think about it. I'm not thinking about a huge touch-screen here... but more along the lines of a projector with a camera attached for interaction with the computer driving the projector.
QED is 'only' at about 12-14 order of magnitude of accuracy
Irrelevant to weather it is a success or not. You seem to think that success means 'measured to within a certain accuracy' --- no sir, success means that explained many things, predicted many more things, and knowing it is required to be on the cutting edge of just about everything technological today.
Relativity doesnt hold a handle to that. Not even close. Aside from GPS satellites, how has our understanding of relatively improved your life? It hasn't. QED has in so many ways that those ways arent even practically enumerable any longer.
We are aware because you mention it every single time that netflix is mentioned. What you fail to realize is that we don't care. it is your problem, not ours. Perhaps you should treat it as such?
Please check out "QED" by Richard Feynman. Well we actually don't know how that works ether, but we've figured out the math to make very precise predictions that usually match reality so we must be on the right track.
Indeed, QED is the most successful theory that man has ever formulated, and Feynman was IMHO far greater than Einstein or Hawking.
When the first shuttle blew up, NASA picked up the phone and called Feynman, someone that never did anything for NASA before and was not involved in any way with the shuttles, rockets, or even anything astronomy. Feynman figured out what happened quite quickly, went before congress and both explained and demonstrated the problem.
Einstein has a brilliant idea. Hawking had a brilliant idea. Feynman was simply raw brilliance.
...but... but... they cant always have the latest iPhone.. sometimes their iPhone gets old and they have to wait another year for their cell phone contract to be up in order to get the new one...
Yes, thats literally what the poor people the GP were talking about have to deal with. He of course wants to paint the picture that all the people in his statistic are living in slums with only tattered rags for possessions...
..the reality is that we calculate our poverty threshold differently than most other countries. Our poverty threshold is an absolute number that only takes into account cash income while most countries factor in non-cash benefits (such as welfare, foodstamps, subsidized housing, etc.) as well. The poor in our poverty statistic also get those non-cash benefits but it doesnt count against the statistic like it does elsewhere.
I agree that there are too many government rules, taxes, regulations, litigation costs. But you can't use that to justify what these companies did. It was wrong, plain and simple, as well as being illegal.
How was it "wrong" and why is "illegal" something we care about?
Behold the ordinance of laborers which made it illegal to "entice away" other peoples employees (and also fixed waged to low levels, and required everyone under the age of 60 to work.)
Just because the government says its illegal that does not make it wrong. As you see here one of the first labor laws of the western world pretty much mandated exactly what these two companies were doing. It can be argued that such laws were necessary at the time because there was an extreme labor shortage. Well now there is an extreme jobs shortage. It is clear is that governments do not always enact laws that are to the benefit of the working class, and that changing conditions can also alter what is beneficial and what is not.
Now, for something to be "wrong" as you declare then you need to argue the morality of it. This is something you have not done but instead have simply taken it for granted that these agreements are wrong.
If you hold the belief that the liberty of all people should be equal, then I believe that your morality should lead you to the conclusion that these sorts of agreements are not "wrong." To outlaw these agreements is to weigh the liberty of the worker above that of the liberty of the employer. I personally think that a discriminating application of liberty is despicable. I believe that you could argue a philosophy that put such discrimination into the "morally right" category but I do not think that you would feel good about yourself while making it because you would know that the philosophy itself is reprehensible.
"but they are rich!" is not an excuse any more than "but they are black!", "but they are women!", or "but they are gay!"
Although... I'm having a lot of trouble seeing the apple pulling on the earth as hard as the earth is pulling on the apple. How could it?
How could it not?
I think the fundamental problem here is that you don't accept that the force is mutual. There arent two forces (one pulling on A and the other pulling on B).. there is a single force between the two (the force between A and B)..
Its what happens when the force is applied that reveals the differences you observe. In plain english what we call inertia is an objects resistance to changes in motion. Objects with more mass have more inertia. The earth resists changes in motion far greater than the apple does. So while the force between Apple and Earth is a single thing, the acceleration imparted is not equal.
"Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers. The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present – and is gravely to be regarded. Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite. The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present – and is gravely to be regarded. It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system – ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society." - President Dwight D Eisenhower, Jan 17, 1961
Not crimes, civil charges that were entirely disputable.
His 2 counts of wire fraud were not 'civil charges' -- nor were his 11 criminal violations of the computer fraud and abuse act.
How exactly do you think? Is it that if you know that you dont know anything about a subject that you will act like an expert anyways because you really feel that you are THAT fucking special as to not actually need to know anything at. fucking. all?
Fine, no. But worth 30 years in prison when even all the wronged parties did not want to continue the prosecution. FUCK NO.
Lets be completely honest about this.
He was neither convected nor sentenced. The claim that he faced 35 years jail time is highly disingenuous since he had been offered a plea bargain that carried only 6 months in a low security prison, but he turned it down.
The story after his suicide was one disingenuous load of crap after another. If the guy killed himself because of the jail time he faced, then even 6 months was too much for him.
I dont see how 6 months is out of line for the crimes that he admitted to committing.
. I.e. co-locate the two (e.g. panels & cars at home; panels & cars at work) or network them together (e.g. panels at home, cars at work.)
Even assuming co-location is a viable thing (probably not yet) it will still be a very slow roll-out. Global panel manufacturing capacity absolutely could not support anything even close to resembling a fast roll-out, and you can forget about battery manufacturing which would be needed for both the electric vehicles and the homes that charge them. That gigafactory isnt even going to be operational until 2020 or later, and will only support at most the production of 500,000 electric vehicles per year.
Morgan Stanley has other motives. Unfortunately they are hard to figure out because it almost certainly has nothing to do with the actual operation of their business which is financial services. They dont invest in anything. They get other people to invest in things.
I think its more correct to say that its difficult to make money from them because the biggest portfolios are already on it. Macroeconomics is too simple. Before anyone retorts about banks needing bailouts... banks arent holding companies. Look at what Warren Buffet is doing (ignore what he is saying, although what he says often jives with what he does)...
Berkshire Hathaway (Buffets holding company) current has over one billion invested in each of these companies respectively:
Wells Fargo, Coca-Cola, American Express, International Business Machines, Wal-Mart, Procter & Gamble, Exxon Mobil, U.S. Bancorp, DIRECTV, DaVita HealthCare, Moody's, Goldman Sachs, USG, and General Motors
They are ordered from highest ($23 billion) to lowest ($1 billion)
The only energy company, Exxon, is primarily oil and doesnt do much in the generation business. Most of his money is riding on banks right now, and most of those that arent banks are putting out healthy dividends.
In the real world, not some Hollywood thriller, what are the odds that Google, or some Google employee, is actually going to target an individual in such a manner, electronically forging content and framing him?
The same odds as that of the original email picture being a plant. Dont pretend that these other planting methods are less likely, or their occurring simultaneously as being less likely... its all the same likelihood.
Consider what frequently happens when police make an over-zealous arrest after overstepping their bounds. Isnt there always a dozen different charges? Its because if you are going to make one thing up, then its actually advantageous to make more things up.
The odds go up dramatically if you figure the possibility of it *every* happening
..the odds also go up if a member of government wants it to happen. Still think its so unlikely? The only thing missing was the idea.. now its on the table.
It is not like you never hear of rich people trying to game the system or outright steal.
Society has laws to punish them when they are caught. Society actively seeks to minimize this behavior. Thats a good thing, of course.
However, we've all heard the argument that nobody wants to be poor and that there is a social stigma associated with it, and that that is motive enough to help minimize the entitlements given to the poor.
My observation is that such claims simply arent true in most cases because it isnt just the poorest of the poor that receive these entitlements. Free lunch program for needy kids? Sounds great until you realize that it is also funding free lunches for kids that would otherwise be fed by their parents if the program wasnt there. The poorest parents might be embarrassed about needing the handout but those families in the upper end of the qualification bracket arent the poorest of the poor and are arguably justified to feel entitled because their taxes are paying for the program.
Now THAT is what those conservatives are actually talking about. We've got large groups of people receiving one entitlement or another and are arguably justified to feel entitled to it.
That is why they are called entitlement programs to begin with. Can anyone honestly say that people should be entitled to the safety net we provide? There is a difference between a society declaring that they cannot in good conscience let people fall through the cracks and society orchestrating the safety net in a way that people really do feel entitled to take advantage of it any chance they get.
So what happens politically is that when its suggested that such programs be cut back a bit, well those people that are really just taking advantage are unlikely to be voting for the person that says such things. They have a lot of skin in the game so they show up to vote.
This is true on much broader scales too. The middle class looks out for itself. Look at the majority demographic that is taking advantage of higher education entitlements and you see that its the middle class. Its not the most needy among us that benefits the most here but they are the ones that really do feel entitled to it, because after all their taxes pay for it so why shouldn't they.
The idea that entitlements are for the needy needs to stop, because it very rarely works that way and the peoples that actually feel entitled are the least needy of those getting it.
Slashdot Mirror
We can continue to blame the corporations for this. Clearly its the fault of evil corporations. Government isnt the one creating the problem.
On the other hand, an exception could be made on the grounds that it would make electric cars more common, which would be a net gain for the environment even with a polluting factory.
Then why not force TESLA to build its factory someplace with the most poverty?
Globally poverty kills 18 million per year, which is 32% of an deaths. Its the #1 killer, way ahead of even the most dire global warming scenarios.
So if you are going to make exceptions based on "net [environmental] gain" then the argument is immediately undermined by its own logic. The impacts you have decided are important (environmental) are extremely insignificant in comparison to both the effects and the scale of other (economic) impacts.
All it requires is: the state must publish a list of chemicals known to cause cancer or reproductive harm
oh, thats all?
Complete list of things that give you cancer (according to epidemiologists)
Acetaldehyde, acrylamide, acrylonitril, abortion, agent orange, alar, alcohol, air pollution, aldrin, alfatoxin, arsenic, arsine, asbestos, asphalt fumes, atrazine, AZT, baby food, barbequed meat, benzene, benzidine, benzopyrene, beryllium, beta-carotene, betel nuts, birth control pills, bottled water, bracken, bread, breasts, brooms, bus stations, calcium channel blockers, cadmium, candles, captan, carbon black, carbon tetrachloride, careers for women, casual sex, car fumes, celery, charred foods, cooked foods, chewing gum, Chinese food, Chinese herbal supplements, chips, chloramphenicol, chlordane, chlorinated camphene, chlorinated water, chlorodiphenyl, chloroform, cholesterol, low cholesterol, chromium, coal tar, coffee, coke ovens, crackers, creosote, cyclamates, dairy products, deodorants, depleted uranium, depression, dichloryacetylene, DDT, dieldrin, diesel exhaust, diet soda, dimethyl sulphate, dinitrotouluene, dioxin, dioxane, epichlorhydrin, ethyle acrilate, ethylene, ethilene dibromide, ethnic beliefs,ethylene dichloride, Ex-Lax, fat, fluoridation, flying, formaldehyde, free radicals, french fries, fruit, gasoline, genes, gingerbread, global warming, gluteraldehyde, granite, grilled meat, Gulf war, hair dyes, hamburgers, heliobacter pylori, hepatitis B virus, hexachlorbutadiene, hexachlorethane, high bone mass, hot tea, HPMA, HRT, hydrazine, hydrogen peroxide, incense, infertility, jewellery, Kepone, kissing, lack of exercise, laxatives, lead, left handedness, Lindane, Listerine, low fibre diet, magnetic fields, malonaldehyde, mammograms, manganese, marijuana, methyl bromide, methylene chloride, menopause, microwave ovens, milk hormones, mixed spices, mobile phones, MTBE, nickel, night lighting, night shifts, nitrates, not breast feeding, not having a twin, nuclear power plants, Nutrasweet, obesity, oestrogen, olestra, olive oil, orange juice, oxygenated gasoline, oyster sauce, ozone, ozone depletion, passive smoking, PCBs, peanuts, pesticides, pet birds, plastic IV bags, polio vaccine, potato crisps (chips), power lines, proteins, Prozac, PVC, radio masts, radon, railway sleepers, red meat, Roundup, saccharin, salt, sausage, selenium, semiconductor plants, shellfish, sick buildings, soy sauce, stress, strontium, styrene, sulphuric acid, sun beds, sunlight, sunscreen, talc, tetrachloroethylene, testosterone, tight bras, toast, toasters, tobacco, tooth fillings, toothpaste (with fluoride or bleach), train stations, trichloroethylene, under-arm shaving, unvented stoves, uranium, UV radiation, Vatican radio masts, vegetables, vinyl bromide, vinyl chloride, vinyl fluoride, vinyl toys, vitamins, vitreous fibres, wallpaper, weedkiller (2-4 D), welding fumes, well water, weight gain, winter, wood dust, work, x-rays.
What of the folks that purchased these chips for these specific instructions? Surely many optimization experts (...assembler gurus) are going to feel quite burned...
So it seems like a good idea to let the compiler do the work once and save on hardware. Except for one major monkey wrench: Memory load instructions
Thats not the only monkey wrench. Compilers simply arent good enough in general, and there is little evidence that they could be made to be good enough on a consistent basis because architectures keep evolving and very few compilers actually model specific architecture pipelines...
This is why Intel now designs their architectures to execute what compilers produce well, rather than the other way around. Intel would not have 5 asymmetric execution units with lots of functionality overlap in its latest CPU's if compilers didnt frequently produce code that requires it...
Which leads to compiler writers spending the majority of their effort on big picture optimizations because Intel/etc are dealing with the whole low level scheduling issues for them... the circle is complete.. its self-sustaining.
Out of order execution can only do one thing actually: cope with varying latency of operations.
It also covers up the sometimes bad instruction ordering of compilers, which has predictably led to compilers being even worse at it. No point modeling which execution units are free when the OOE pipeline reduces all the important inner loop stuff to the latency of the longest dependency chain after just a couple iterations...
Submitter should be stopped from posting any more stories until he figures out exactly what is tech worthy.
If it was possible to stop timothy, it would have already happened. Ergo, he is apparently unstoppable.
The old fashioned blackboard and a degree of discipline plus drive are what our kids need.
Its possible that a "smart black board" would be an upgrade, but probably the costs are way too high right now to even think about it. I'm not thinking about a huge touch-screen here ... but more along the lines of a projector with a camera attached for interaction with the computer driving the projector.
QED is 'only' at about 12-14 order of magnitude of accuracy
Irrelevant to weather it is a success or not. You seem to think that success means 'measured to within a certain accuracy' --- no sir, success means that explained many things, predicted many more things, and knowing it is required to be on the cutting edge of just about everything technological today.
Relativity doesnt hold a handle to that. Not even close. Aside from GPS satellites, how has our understanding of relatively improved your life? It hasn't. QED has in so many ways that those ways arent even practically enumerable any longer.
We are aware because you mention it every single time that netflix is mentioned. What you fail to realize is that we don't care. it is your problem, not ours. Perhaps you should treat it as such?
Florida gets half to one quarter the solar energy at the rooftop that California gets
Well fuck, you solar nuts are now making up shit that isnt even halfway believable.... or should I say not even a quarter of the way believable...
Please check out "QED" by Richard Feynman. Well we actually don't know how that works ether, but we've figured out the math to make very precise predictions that usually match reality so we must be on the right track.
Indeed, QED is the most successful theory that man has ever formulated, and Feynman was IMHO far greater than Einstein or Hawking.
When the first shuttle blew up, NASA picked up the phone and called Feynman, someone that never did anything for NASA before and was not involved in any way with the shuttles, rockets, or even anything astronomy. Feynman figured out what happened quite quickly, went before congress and both explained and demonstrated the problem.
Einstein has a brilliant idea. Hawking had a brilliant idea. Feynman was simply raw brilliance.
...but... but... they cant always have the latest iPhone.. sometimes their iPhone gets old and they have to wait another year for their cell phone contract to be up in order to get the new one...
..the reality is that we calculate our poverty threshold differently than most other countries. Our poverty threshold is an absolute number that only takes into account cash income while most countries factor in non-cash benefits (such as welfare, foodstamps, subsidized housing, etc.) as well. The poor in our poverty statistic also get those non-cash benefits but it doesnt count against the statistic like it does elsewhere.
Yes, thats literally what the poor people the GP were talking about have to deal with. He of course wants to paint the picture that all the people in his statistic are living in slums with only tattered rags for possessions...
I agree that there are too many government rules, taxes, regulations, litigation costs. But you can't use that to justify what these companies did. It was wrong, plain and simple, as well as being illegal.
How was it "wrong" and why is "illegal" something we care about?
...liberty and justice for all.
Behold the ordinance of laborers which made it illegal to "entice away" other peoples employees (and also fixed waged to low levels, and required everyone under the age of 60 to work.)
Just because the government says its illegal that does not make it wrong. As you see here one of the first labor laws of the western world pretty much mandated exactly what these two companies were doing. It can be argued that such laws were necessary at the time because there was an extreme labor shortage. Well now there is an extreme jobs shortage. It is clear is that governments do not always enact laws that are to the benefit of the working class, and that changing conditions can also alter what is beneficial and what is not.
Now, for something to be "wrong" as you declare then you need to argue the morality of it. This is something you have not done but instead have simply taken it for granted that these agreements are wrong.
If you hold the belief that the liberty of all people should be equal, then I believe that your morality should lead you to the conclusion that these sorts of agreements are not "wrong." To outlaw these agreements is to weigh the liberty of the worker above that of the liberty of the employer. I personally think that a discriminating application of liberty is despicable. I believe that you could argue a philosophy that put such discrimination into the "morally right" category but I do not think that you would feel good about yourself while making it because you would know that the philosophy itself is reprehensible.
"but they are rich!" is not an excuse any more than "but they are black!", "but they are women!", or "but they are gay!"
So much so that Skype could not receive incoming calls on WP7 unless the app was open (and not in the background).
Sounds like a feature.
Although... I'm having a lot of trouble seeing the apple pulling on the earth as hard as the earth is pulling on the apple. How could it?
How could it not?
.. there is a single force between the two (the force between A and B) ..
...with a little algebraic voodoo, this becomes
I think the fundamental problem here is that you don't accept that the force is mutual. There arent two forces (one pulling on A and the other pulling on B)
Its what happens when the force is applied that reveals the differences you observe. In plain english what we call inertia is an objects resistance to changes in motion. Objects with more mass have more inertia. The earth resists changes in motion far greater than the apple does. So while the force between Apple and Earth is a single thing, the acceleration imparted is not equal.
After all,
force = mass * acceleration
acceleration = force / mass
"Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers. The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present – and is gravely to be regarded. Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite. The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present – and is gravely to be regarded. It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system – ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society." - President Dwight D Eisenhower, Jan 17, 1961
Not crimes, civil charges that were entirely disputable.
His 2 counts of wire fraud were not 'civil charges' -- nor were his 11 criminal violations of the computer fraud and abuse act.
How exactly do you think? Is it that if you know that you dont know anything about a subject that you will act like an expert anyways because you really feel that you are THAT fucking special as to not actually need to know anything at. fucking. all?
Apparently the young man committed suicide due to the threat of severe charges and punishments.
He was offered a 6-month sentence in a low security prison. Turned it down.
Fine, no. But worth 30 years in prison when even all the wronged parties did not want to continue the prosecution. FUCK NO.
Lets be completely honest about this.
He was neither convected nor sentenced. The claim that he faced 35 years jail time is highly disingenuous since he had been offered a plea bargain that carried only 6 months in a low security prison, but he turned it down.
The story after his suicide was one disingenuous load of crap after another. If the guy killed himself because of the jail time he faced, then even 6 months was too much for him.
I dont see how 6 months is out of line for the crimes that he admitted to committing.
I'd be seeing where they put their money before I believe what they say.
This is a financial services company.. the only place they put their own money is in acquiring other financial services companies.
. I.e. co-locate the two (e.g. panels & cars at home; panels & cars at work) or network them together (e.g. panels at home, cars at work.)
Even assuming co-location is a viable thing (probably not yet) it will still be a very slow roll-out. Global panel manufacturing capacity absolutely could not support anything even close to resembling a fast roll-out, and you can forget about battery manufacturing which would be needed for both the electric vehicles and the homes that charge them. That gigafactory isnt even going to be operational until 2020 or later, and will only support at most the production of 500,000 electric vehicles per year.
Morgan Stanley has other motives. Unfortunately they are hard to figure out because it almost certainly has nothing to do with the actual operation of their business which is financial services. They dont invest in anything. They get other people to invest in things.
I think its more correct to say that its difficult to make money from them because the biggest portfolios are already on it. Macroeconomics is too simple. Before anyone retorts about banks needing bailouts... banks arent holding companies. Look at what Warren Buffet is doing (ignore what he is saying, although what he says often jives with what he does) ...
Berkshire Hathaway (Buffets holding company) current has over one billion invested in each of these companies respectively:
Wells Fargo, Coca-Cola, American Express, International Business Machines, Wal-Mart, Procter & Gamble, Exxon Mobil, U.S. Bancorp, DIRECTV, DaVita HealthCare, Moody's, Goldman Sachs, USG, and General Motors
They are ordered from highest ($23 billion) to lowest ($1 billion)
The only energy company, Exxon, is primarily oil and doesnt do much in the generation business. Most of his money is riding on banks right now, and most of those that arent banks are putting out healthy dividends.
In the real world, not some Hollywood thriller, what are the odds that Google, or some Google employee, is actually going to target an individual in such a manner, electronically forging content and framing him?
The same odds as that of the original email picture being a plant. Dont pretend that these other planting methods are less likely, or their occurring simultaneously as being less likely... its all the same likelihood.
Consider what frequently happens when police make an over-zealous arrest after overstepping their bounds. Isnt there always a dozen different charges? Its because if you are going to make one thing up, then its actually advantageous to make more things up.
The odds go up dramatically if you figure the possibility of it *every* happening
It is not like you never hear of rich people trying to game the system or outright steal.
Society has laws to punish them when they are caught. Society actively seeks to minimize this behavior. Thats a good thing, of course.
However, we've all heard the argument that nobody wants to be poor and that there is a social stigma associated with it, and that that is motive enough to help minimize the entitlements given to the poor.
My observation is that such claims simply arent true in most cases because it isnt just the poorest of the poor that receive these entitlements. Free lunch program for needy kids? Sounds great until you realize that it is also funding free lunches for kids that would otherwise be fed by their parents if the program wasnt there. The poorest parents might be embarrassed about needing the handout but those families in the upper end of the qualification bracket arent the poorest of the poor and are arguably justified to feel entitled because their taxes are paying for the program.
Now THAT is what those conservatives are actually talking about. We've got large groups of people receiving one entitlement or another and are arguably justified to feel entitled to it.
That is why they are called entitlement programs to begin with. Can anyone honestly say that people should be entitled to the safety net we provide? There is a difference between a society declaring that they cannot in good conscience let people fall through the cracks and society orchestrating the safety net in a way that people really do feel entitled to take advantage of it any chance they get.
So what happens politically is that when its suggested that such programs be cut back a bit, well those people that are really just taking advantage are unlikely to be voting for the person that says such things. They have a lot of skin in the game so they show up to vote.
This is true on much broader scales too. The middle class looks out for itself. Look at the majority demographic that is taking advantage of higher education entitlements and you see that its the middle class. Its not the most needy among us that benefits the most here but they are the ones that really do feel entitled to it, because after all their taxes pay for it so why shouldn't they.
The idea that entitlements are for the needy needs to stop, because it very rarely works that way and the peoples that actually feel entitled are the least needy of those getting it.