There are thousands upon thousands of studies conducted on global warming to support the theory of AGW. I see anti-AGW claims debunked over and over again, yet repeated even after they're debunked. If you still believe AGW is a lie and some massive conspiracy, you obviously have a bias in selecting information that fits your world-view.
What the HECK are you talking about? There are very few scientists who "disagree" with AGW and provide peer-reviewed evidence as to why they disagree. The vast majoirty of deniers are idiots who use propaganda and no science to convince people they're right and all the scientists are wrong.
Woah, that's a pretty amazing breakthrough. I think the big thing there is they're already preparing to scale up for standard cell-size testing. Holy cow, 80+% efficiency. That's insane. How could that article not get a Slashdot submission?
Does it really matter if we are warming the planet or not?
Even if we are how are we going to fix it? Limit CO2 emissions by something like cap and trade? Great concept but India, China etc are not going to play in
a game that is detrimental to their growing manufacturing industries. Or perhaps we create green energy solutions, problem is none of those solutions are cost
effective to be self sustaining. If we are warming the planet who is to say it is not actually a positive thing?
I see this argument rather often, and I think it fails to see the point. The US has the largest GDP in the world BY FAR. It has the biggest and most robust economy by an order of magnitude, and nearly all gigantic leaps in technological innovation occur here because of the vast consumer market and potential profits (at least when Republicans aren't stymying innovation by giving away money to the rich).
If the US creates a cap and trade system that rewards innovators and penalizes fossil fuel users, there is no doubt an explosion of innovation will arrive in the field. Companies like nanosolar would be only the tip of the iceberg.
Most European and Asian countries already have gas prices more than twice as high as ours. Just imagine the massive shift in capital to innovative startups that would have occurred over the last two decades had the US taxed gasoline appropriately. Imagine the massive private expenditures into developing consumer-grade alternative energy products. It's just mind-boggling to think what the US could do if it were as forward thinking as some other countries are.
I might even buy the book to see if his debunking of the debunking is correct.
Frankly, I don't think he would risk sinking his career (further) by publishing more inaccurate statements.
Lomborg doesn't have a career. No real scientist takes him seriously. This is why he submitted his "research" in the form of a book instead of to peer review. The whole thing was one massive fabrication, a lie to mislead the public. The scope of his deception is quite stunning. He must have been paid quite handsomely by his leash-holders.
One of the things that REALLY bugs me about climate research is seeing LEGITIMATE scientists use the word "SKEPTIC" as a SMEAR.
Scientists are SUPPOSED to be skeptic, and I understand that this is not what the phrase is meant to convey, but the mere idea of labeling a scientists "skeptic" to smear him shows how political scientists in general have become. Remember when they were all about the pursuit of truth and knowledge?
I guess it sounds better than "denier", (which sounds like some McCarthy-era witch-hunt-ism), but why can't scientists keep their professionalism in situations which become politicized?
All scientists are skeptics at heart. Global warming denalists are not true skeptics, as they do not debate their ideas in the scientific forum where peer reviewers can tear through their research to find errors. They simply lie to the public and make boisterous claims about completely unfounded nontruths. They don't actually bring anything to the table.
So now we have a celebrity science pissing-match on our hands. This is simple, IPCC was married with politics, like much of the entire debate. Everyone back to the lab, the field, the research. Stop pandering to politicians and environmentalists, and come up with some science! Until then, no I'm not taking you seriously.
That's absurd. Your sweeping generalization ignores the decades of research poured into the topic by research groups from all over the world. There is ongoing research continually improving upon current models with updated and refined data. You can go take a look at the thousands upon thousands of journal articles written by these scientists, assuming you can even understand the jargon.
This is, of course, not evidence that Anthropogenic Climate Change is real, but that public critics of ACC feel they can profitably resort to dishonesty to prove their point
You know Lomborg was dishonest? Based on what?
You know he was WRONG? Based on what?
Maybe Lomborg was wrong, but you didn't read or research Friel's work, you're just assuming it's correct, which is precisely what the AGW folks are complaining about in regard to Lomborg's work.
You do realize, too, that we actual have HARD PROOF that global warming "scientists" were dishonest in their research, research that the IPCC relied on for its conclusions... right?
Even if Lomborg was dishonest -- and you have no evidence of that -- the AGW side has been dishonest too, so by your own argument, anyone else could say, "grant-receiving scentists pushing AGW feel they can profitably resort to dishonesty to prove their point."
So what you're saying is you're not going to read Yale's research that proves Lomborg was wrong, but you will make completely uncited and unfounded accusations that there's "hard proof" the IPCC was wrong. Brilliant. Why does America house so many nutjobs?
In every thread about global warming I see the same nutjob denialist theories debunked over and over again, yet with no change in the opinions of the hardcore denialists.
Here we have yet another denialist conspiracy to mislead the public debunked by actual science. Previously we had the "smoking gun" theory debunked by a blogger.
How many times do these theories need to be debunked before denialist nutjobs give up their crusade against rational science? It's like dealing with a bunch of raving Creationist lunatics.
Basically you have no idea what you're talking about. Looking at thousands of years of ignorance and stupidity does not help the countless children who were forgotten about as the tales of the successful were told.
Your armchair opinions such as "Humans are really good at acting the way they are expected to act" belie your own ignorance in the matter. Why not try to read up a little bit on child psychology before talking out of your behind?
I'm sorry, what? DS games don't sell well? Are you mad?
Top ten Nintendo DS games.
* Nintendogs All versions (22.27 million)[70]
* New Super Mario Bros. (21.39 million)[69]
* Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day! (18.59 million)[69]
* Pokémon Diamond and Pearl (17.39 million)[69]
* Mario Kart DS (17.28 million)[69]
* Brain Age 2: More Training in Minutes a Day! (13.71 million)[70]
* Animal Crossing: Wild World (10.79 million)[71]
* Super Mario 64 DS (7.5 million)[71]
* Pokémon Platinum (6.39 million)[69]
* Mario Party DS (5.85 million)[70]
You don't understand what you're talking about. The human brain undergoes massive changes during your teenage years, rendering you incapable of properly assessing risk until your mind has fully developed. In fact recent studies have shown that physical brain development that leads to changes in personality and increased "maturity" continues into the mid to late 20s.
Ah yes, denialism at the armchair critic's level of expertise. The vast body of child and teen psychology amassed over the last several decades pales in comparison to your personal genius. How dare we consider that humans must "grow" into their responsibilities, and that transitions from childhood freedom to adult responsibility are not instantaneous. Foolish psychologists and social researchers.
I know right? I clicked on the comments section for this Slashdot article and the first thing I see is a +4 informative post about how global warming has been occurring long before humans have ever existed on the planet.
I'm starting to suspect Slashdot is populated by a mob of rednecks. The sheer stupidity is mind-boggling. It makes me sick that the US, with an economy an order of magnitude larger than any other in the world, has fallen behind in new technology and research and development while spending trillions on wars and worthless bailouts.
It's not even the fate of the US that bothers me. It's the fate of the world. Technological breakthroughs and developments the US could produce can be horizontally transferred all over the world, decreasing energy consumption, greening our power supplies, aiding in the suffering of billions. Our entire world suffers because the US is run by a bunch of paranoid, red-tinted retards.
Those coming late to high speed actually have an advantage - there is not the existing infrastructure to still pay off, nor the first adopter costs rolled in. It is also easiest to deal with midsize cities than big cities for this sort of thing - it is better to have density, but not dense enough that anywhere you dig, you hit pipes/wires (see New York). Norway may have less density, but it has pockets of high density. The US seems to favor sprawl rather than villages.
Payoff infrastructure? Are you utterly insane? How long do you think the copper's been in place for? It's been over a century you narrow-minded twit. Copper, even cable coax lines have all been long paid off for.
Don't be an idiot. If merchants could just raise prices arbitrarily why would they wait until they received a fine? The market's supply and demand curve sets the prices. Merchants can't control the market outside of obvious collusion. Anything they're charged with eats into their profits. You can't expect merchants to play police on every customer. That's just stupid.
Also, the nature of energy companies selling large volumes of a commodity will tend to keep the price/revenue ratio down even in a high profit/high cost environment because the total revenues in the denominator get so big. It would be interesting to see data on the return on total assets or some similar factor.
I don't get why people don't understand that corporations don't pay taxes. Taxes are just another expense that gets added into the final price of the product. It doesn't matter that they actually write the check, you pay Microsoft's corporate taxes every time you buy one of their products. We should eliminate them entirely. Nearly every company in the world would want to be headquartered in the US if we had no corporate taxes, imagine how many jobs that would create. The end result would be a wash for the average United States citizen, prices would drop across the board, but we could add in a federal sales tax to make up for the revenue shortfall and our goods would be competitive in the world market again.
It's a shame that you were modded insightful. If you "don't understand", Google it. It takes all of 5 seconds to Google "corporate taxes passed on to consumer, true, false".
You obviously demonstrate a lack of understanding of how a supply and demand model works.
Product prices will be the highest the market can bear, regardless of expenses. Software already has massive profit margins, so taxes merely eat into those profits, thus depriving the company from money they can use to buy other companies, run ad campaigns, pay bribes and manipulate market in other ways.
Which costs more, $9.99 worth of gas, or a video game priced at $9.99 on the shelf? The video game, of course, because tax is included in the price of gas but not the price of software. You're not wrong, but perception is key. There's a reason that game doesn't cost $10.00; it's the same reason that $999 is a magical price point for many desktop/notebook makers.
Let's go to a different world for a minute, where all sales prices include tax... do you think a laptop would still go for $1078? Probably not. Maybe $1049, but $999 would draw enough attention to be worth the loss of some per-unit profit. In either case, there is an overall loss of some profit.
So, taxes really don't eat into profits as much as you seem to suggest by asserting that the corporations directly pay them. In other words, the market can "bear" the taxes a little more simply because perception of the pricing structure tends to pass more of that burden on to the naive consumer.
What exactly are you trying to say? That every market is driven by perception of price and value? Are you nutty? Consumers value lower prices more than anything else.
There is a point on a supply-demand curve where supply meets demand, and the price that leads to maximum profit is determined. Taxes do nothing to change this curve other than eat into corporate profits. This idea that corporations pass on taxes to the consumer is just a stupid Republican talking point that is provably false, along with almost every other talking point Republicans make.
Product prices will be the highest the market can bear, regardless of expenses. Software already has massive profit margins, so taxes merely eat into those profits, thus depriving the company from money they can use to buy other companies, run ad campaigns, pay bribes and manipulate market in other ways.
That's ridiculous. The optimal pricing in the market most certainly is influenced by the price of operation... particularly in tax, which are across the board, and influence ALL competitors in a market.
Besides, your comment is irrelevant anyway, because you miss how GOOD it is for all of us to have profitable companies. Do you think corporate profits go into a large vault where the money is held for years? No, it is spent; spent on things and people, in the most rewarding and efficient way that the company and/or its shareholders can imagine. This is generally MUCH more efficient than money the government taxes, because the government needn't worry about competition.
Is that so? So then why has Comcast pooled their massive profits over the last several years in order to buy NBC?
Why has funding for Bell Labs decreased to the point of it simply being an also-ran?
Corporate profits are stockpiled by companies and handed to CEOs. They do *not* stimulate the economy.
Economists noted how Bush's massive tax cuts for corporations and the rich failed to stimulate the US economy, resulting in the slowest decade-long GDP growth rate since the 1930s. Unfortunately, our tax rates actually stimulated France's economy due to the increase in foreign goods purchased.
Oh please. The vast majority of investors don't care about what dividends their company hands out, as they don't even pay attention to their stock/retirement portfolios. In the long run everyone benefits from the increased output in common societal goods when taxes levied upon a corporation are used to build infrastructure and pay for appropriate social nets. Corporate profits simply end up in a corporation's bank account, where they can stockpile enough to merge with other giant corporations and bribe politicians, ever degrading the overall output and quality of the capitalist market.
Whether or not we have high taxes, a company that can will always take their manufacturing business elsewhere and supply it with child/slave wage labor in undeveloped countries. A developed country simply can't compete in the pure manufacturing industry. That is why developed countries must constantly innovate new industries by investing in R&D. Investment into long-term, basic research is absolutely critical to this, and this is where corporate taxes and government spending comes into play.
High tech companies can't offshore their bases, simply because the infrastructure and education does not exist in those countries. Why do you think companies like NanoSolar are not basing their operations in China?
Not true. What you're thinking of is LTE evolution, which is still being tested by carriers in other countries. Verizon's LTE is *not* 4G.
From wiki: Being described as a 3.9G (beyond 3G but pre-4G) technology the first release LTE does not meet the IMT-advanced requirements for 4G also called IMT Advanced as defined by the International Telecommunication Union such as peak data rates up to 1 Gbit/s.
Fortunately, LTE Advanced should be compatible with first release LTE equipment, and should share frequency bands with first release LTE.
So if Verizon ever fancied upgrading, they could easily do so. Of course, with little to no competition in the US this is obviously not going to happen.
Slashdot Mirror
There are thousands upon thousands of studies conducted on global warming to support the theory of AGW. I see anti-AGW claims debunked over and over again, yet repeated even after they're debunked. If you still believe AGW is a lie and some massive conspiracy, you obviously have a bias in selecting information that fits your world-view.
Um...yes they do? Do you even know what the scientific method is?
What the HECK are you talking about? There are very few scientists who "disagree" with AGW and provide peer-reviewed evidence as to why they disagree. The vast majoirty of deniers are idiots who use propaganda and no science to convince people they're right and all the scientists are wrong.
Woah, that's a pretty amazing breakthrough. I think the big thing there is they're already preparing to scale up for standard cell-size testing. Holy cow, 80+% efficiency. That's insane. How could that article not get a Slashdot submission?
Does it really matter if we are warming the planet or not?
Even if we are how are we going to fix it? Limit CO2 emissions by something like cap and trade? Great concept but India, China etc are not going to play in a game that is detrimental to their growing manufacturing industries. Or perhaps we create green energy solutions, problem is none of those solutions are cost effective to be self sustaining. If we are warming the planet who is to say it is not actually a positive thing?
I see this argument rather often, and I think it fails to see the point. The US has the largest GDP in the world BY FAR. It has the biggest and most robust economy by an order of magnitude, and nearly all gigantic leaps in technological innovation occur here because of the vast consumer market and potential profits (at least when Republicans aren't stymying innovation by giving away money to the rich). If the US creates a cap and trade system that rewards innovators and penalizes fossil fuel users, there is no doubt an explosion of innovation will arrive in the field. Companies like nanosolar would be only the tip of the iceberg.
Most European and Asian countries already have gas prices more than twice as high as ours. Just imagine the massive shift in capital to innovative startups that would have occurred over the last two decades had the US taxed gasoline appropriately. Imagine the massive private expenditures into developing consumer-grade alternative energy products. It's just mind-boggling to think what the US could do if it were as forward thinking as some other countries are.
I might even buy the book to see if his debunking of the debunking is correct. Frankly, I don't think he would risk sinking his career (further) by publishing more inaccurate statements.
Lomborg doesn't have a career. No real scientist takes him seriously. This is why he submitted his "research" in the form of a book instead of to peer review. The whole thing was one massive fabrication, a lie to mislead the public. The scope of his deception is quite stunning. He must have been paid quite handsomely by his leash-holders.
One of the things that REALLY bugs me about climate research is seeing LEGITIMATE scientists use the word "SKEPTIC" as a SMEAR. Scientists are SUPPOSED to be skeptic, and I understand that this is not what the phrase is meant to convey, but the mere idea of labeling a scientists "skeptic" to smear him shows how political scientists in general have become. Remember when they were all about the pursuit of truth and knowledge? I guess it sounds better than "denier", (which sounds like some McCarthy-era witch-hunt-ism), but why can't scientists keep their professionalism in situations which become politicized?
All scientists are skeptics at heart. Global warming denalists are not true skeptics, as they do not debate their ideas in the scientific forum where peer reviewers can tear through their research to find errors. They simply lie to the public and make boisterous claims about completely unfounded nontruths. They don't actually bring anything to the table.
So now we have a celebrity science pissing-match on our hands. This is simple, IPCC was married with politics, like much of the entire debate. Everyone back to the lab, the field, the research. Stop pandering to politicians and environmentalists, and come up with some science! Until then, no I'm not taking you seriously.
That's absurd. Your sweeping generalization ignores the decades of research poured into the topic by research groups from all over the world. There is ongoing research continually improving upon current models with updated and refined data. You can go take a look at the thousands upon thousands of journal articles written by these scientists, assuming you can even understand the jargon.
This is, of course, not evidence that Anthropogenic Climate Change is real, but that public critics of ACC feel they can profitably resort to dishonesty to prove their point
You know Lomborg was dishonest? Based on what?
You know he was WRONG? Based on what?
Maybe Lomborg was wrong, but you didn't read or research Friel's work, you're just assuming it's correct, which is precisely what the AGW folks are complaining about in regard to Lomborg's work.
You do realize, too, that we actual have HARD PROOF that global warming "scientists" were dishonest in their research, research that the IPCC relied on for its conclusions ... right?
Even if Lomborg was dishonest -- and you have no evidence of that -- the AGW side has been dishonest too, so by your own argument, anyone else could say, "grant-receiving scentists pushing AGW feel they can profitably resort to dishonesty to prove their point."
So what you're saying is you're not going to read Yale's research that proves Lomborg was wrong, but you will make completely uncited and unfounded accusations that there's "hard proof" the IPCC was wrong. Brilliant. Why does America house so many nutjobs?
Right, let's just accept that we're doomed and billions of people will have to suffer. Yay!
In every thread about global warming I see the same nutjob denialist theories debunked over and over again, yet with no change in the opinions of the hardcore denialists.
Here we have yet another denialist conspiracy to mislead the public debunked by actual science. Previously we had the "smoking gun" theory debunked by a blogger.
How many times do these theories need to be debunked before denialist nutjobs give up their crusade against rational science? It's like dealing with a bunch of raving Creationist lunatics.
Basically you have no idea what you're talking about. Looking at thousands of years of ignorance and stupidity does not help the countless children who were forgotten about as the tales of the successful were told. Your armchair opinions such as "Humans are really good at acting the way they are expected to act" belie your own ignorance in the matter. Why not try to read up a little bit on child psychology before talking out of your behind?
I'm sorry, what? DS games don't sell well? Are you mad? Top ten Nintendo DS games. * Nintendogs All versions (22.27 million)[70] * New Super Mario Bros. (21.39 million)[69] * Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day! (18.59 million)[69] * Pokémon Diamond and Pearl (17.39 million)[69] * Mario Kart DS (17.28 million)[69] * Brain Age 2: More Training in Minutes a Day! (13.71 million)[70] * Animal Crossing: Wild World (10.79 million)[71] * Super Mario 64 DS (7.5 million)[71] * Pokémon Platinum (6.39 million)[69] * Mario Party DS (5.85 million)[70]
You don't understand what you're talking about. The human brain undergoes massive changes during your teenage years, rendering you incapable of properly assessing risk until your mind has fully developed. In fact recent studies have shown that physical brain development that leads to changes in personality and increased "maturity" continues into the mid to late 20s.
My god you idiot. Stop using that retarded and idiotic meme. It's called inductive reasoning you retard.
Ah yes, denialism at the armchair critic's level of expertise. The vast body of child and teen psychology amassed over the last several decades pales in comparison to your personal genius. How dare we consider that humans must "grow" into their responsibilities, and that transitions from childhood freedom to adult responsibility are not instantaneous. Foolish psychologists and social researchers.
I know right? I clicked on the comments section for this Slashdot article and the first thing I see is a +4 informative post about how global warming has been occurring long before humans have ever existed on the planet.
I'm starting to suspect Slashdot is populated by a mob of rednecks. The sheer stupidity is mind-boggling. It makes me sick that the US, with an economy an order of magnitude larger than any other in the world, has fallen behind in new technology and research and development while spending trillions on wars and worthless bailouts.
It's not even the fate of the US that bothers me. It's the fate of the world. Technological breakthroughs and developments the US could produce can be horizontally transferred all over the world, decreasing energy consumption, greening our power supplies, aiding in the suffering of billions. Our entire world suffers because the US is run by a bunch of paranoid, red-tinted retards.
Those coming late to high speed actually have an advantage - there is not the existing infrastructure to still pay off, nor the first adopter costs rolled in. It is also easiest to deal with midsize cities than big cities for this sort of thing - it is better to have density, but not dense enough that anywhere you dig, you hit pipes/wires (see New York). Norway may have less density, but it has pockets of high density. The US seems to favor sprawl rather than villages.
Payoff infrastructure? Are you utterly insane? How long do you think the copper's been in place for? It's been over a century you narrow-minded twit. Copper, even cable coax lines have all been long paid off for.
Don't be an idiot. If merchants could just raise prices arbitrarily why would they wait until they received a fine? The market's supply and demand curve sets the prices. Merchants can't control the market outside of obvious collusion. Anything they're charged with eats into their profits. You can't expect merchants to play police on every customer. That's just stupid.
Also, the nature of energy companies selling large volumes of a commodity will tend to keep the price/revenue ratio down even in a high profit/high cost environment because the total revenues in the denominator get so big. It would be interesting to see data on the return on total assets or some similar factor.
I don't get why people don't understand that corporations don't pay taxes. Taxes are just another expense that gets added into the final price of the product. It doesn't matter that they actually write the check, you pay Microsoft's corporate taxes every time you buy one of their products. We should eliminate them entirely. Nearly every company in the world would want to be headquartered in the US if we had no corporate taxes, imagine how many jobs that would create. The end result would be a wash for the average United States citizen, prices would drop across the board, but we could add in a federal sales tax to make up for the revenue shortfall and our goods would be competitive in the world market again.
It's a shame that you were modded insightful. If you "don't understand", Google it. It takes all of 5 seconds to Google "corporate taxes passed on to consumer, true, false". You obviously demonstrate a lack of understanding of how a supply and demand model works.
Product prices will be the highest the market can bear, regardless of expenses. Software already has massive profit margins, so taxes merely eat into those profits, thus depriving the company from money they can use to buy other companies, run ad campaigns, pay bribes and manipulate market in other ways.
Which costs more, $9.99 worth of gas, or a video game priced at $9.99 on the shelf? The video game, of course, because tax is included in the price of gas but not the price of software. You're not wrong, but perception is key. There's a reason that game doesn't cost $10.00; it's the same reason that $999 is a magical price point for many desktop/notebook makers.
Let's go to a different world for a minute, where all sales prices include tax... do you think a laptop would still go for $1078? Probably not. Maybe $1049, but $999 would draw enough attention to be worth the loss of some per-unit profit. In either case, there is an overall loss of some profit.
So, taxes really don't eat into profits as much as you seem to suggest by asserting that the corporations directly pay them. In other words, the market can "bear" the taxes a little more simply because perception of the pricing structure tends to pass more of that burden on to the naive consumer.
What exactly are you trying to say? That every market is driven by perception of price and value? Are you nutty? Consumers value lower prices more than anything else.
There is a point on a supply-demand curve where supply meets demand, and the price that leads to maximum profit is determined. Taxes do nothing to change this curve other than eat into corporate profits. This idea that corporations pass on taxes to the consumer is just a stupid Republican talking point that is provably false, along with almost every other talking point Republicans make.
Product prices will be the highest the market can bear, regardless of expenses. Software already has massive profit margins, so taxes merely eat into those profits, thus depriving the company from money they can use to buy other companies, run ad campaigns, pay bribes and manipulate market in other ways. That's ridiculous. The optimal pricing in the market most certainly is influenced by the price of operation... particularly in tax, which are across the board, and influence ALL competitors in a market. Besides, your comment is irrelevant anyway, because you miss how GOOD it is for all of us to have profitable companies. Do you think corporate profits go into a large vault where the money is held for years? No, it is spent; spent on things and people, in the most rewarding and efficient way that the company and/or its shareholders can imagine. This is generally MUCH more efficient than money the government taxes, because the government needn't worry about competition.
Is that so? So then why has Comcast pooled their massive profits over the last several years in order to buy NBC?
Why has funding for Bell Labs decreased to the point of it simply being an also-ran?
Corporate profits are stockpiled by companies and handed to CEOs. They do *not* stimulate the economy.
Economists noted how Bush's massive tax cuts for corporations and the rich failed to stimulate the US economy, resulting in the slowest decade-long GDP growth rate since the 1930s. Unfortunately, our tax rates actually stimulated France's economy due to the increase in foreign goods purchased.
Oh please. The vast majority of investors don't care about what dividends their company hands out, as they don't even pay attention to their stock/retirement portfolios. In the long run everyone benefits from the increased output in common societal goods when taxes levied upon a corporation are used to build infrastructure and pay for appropriate social nets. Corporate profits simply end up in a corporation's bank account, where they can stockpile enough to merge with other giant corporations and bribe politicians, ever degrading the overall output and quality of the capitalist market.
Whether or not we have high taxes, a company that can will always take their manufacturing business elsewhere and supply it with child/slave wage labor in undeveloped countries. A developed country simply can't compete in the pure manufacturing industry. That is why developed countries must constantly innovate new industries by investing in R&D. Investment into long-term, basic research is absolutely critical to this, and this is where corporate taxes and government spending comes into play.
High tech companies can't offshore their bases, simply because the infrastructure and education does not exist in those countries. Why do you think companies like NanoSolar are not basing their operations in China?
Not true. What you're thinking of is LTE evolution, which is still being tested by carriers in other countries. Verizon's LTE is *not* 4G. From wiki: Being described as a 3.9G (beyond 3G but pre-4G) technology the first release LTE does not meet the IMT-advanced requirements for 4G also called IMT Advanced as defined by the International Telecommunication Union such as peak data rates up to 1 Gbit/s. Fortunately, LTE Advanced should be compatible with first release LTE equipment, and should share frequency bands with first release LTE. So if Verizon ever fancied upgrading, they could easily do so. Of course, with little to no competition in the US this is obviously not going to happen.