The US has troops in over a 100 different countries around the world. If you think the US can be cutoff from fod imports you are delusional. The Ag subsidies go mostly to huge multi billion dollar Food corporations who own most of the farmland in the US (directly or indirectly under contract farming). Its a case of the poor subsidizing the rich.
Entitlements are already paid with their own taxes. They are not part of the federal budget except for Food Stamps (and those are basically agricultural subsiies in disguise). I agree on the defense budget but it would be illegal to take the axe to entitlements. It would be like you cutting down your neighbour's tree or firewood
Actually the high tax states have high taxes because they provide more social services than the low tax states. These social services incease the human capital and efficiency (e.g. subsidized day care lets mothers work instead of being on welfare). This means fewer folks in high tax states depend on Federal welfare. This is the primary reason high tax states do not take as much money from the feds as low tax states. CA could cut its nose to spite its face by cutting taxes, cutting services, crashing its GDP (hence reducing taxes paid to the US) and force more people onto welfare (hence increaisn money got back from the US) . But somehow I think Californians would much rather have a vibrant economy than try to make a point about getting back more from the Feds. Red states on the other hand do the opposite- they perputuate poverty by not spending on social services. All that helps is rich folks in those states while the poor live in 3rd world conditions.
California has some of the biggest military bases and is home to the Pacific fleet. Noone is going to occupy California if it declares Independence. We may have to position some troops on the borders with Oregon and Mexico but the East is protected by the Rockies.
There is a saying in the Army - never give an Order that will not be obeyed. It just breaks down the respect for Authority which is needed for soldiers to take an order which will mean risking their life but will probably save lives during battles. A similar principle should apply to laws - dont pass laws that will not be obeyed. The 21 yr drinking age is a stupid law. If someone is old enough to fuck, go to war, get married and be executed for a capital crime they very well should be old enough to drink. Once you pass laws that are stupid people feel no guilt breaking them and breaking other laws like forgery laws to get around the stupid law.
I remember applying to ITA pre-google. They had some sweet programming questions on their website. It was basically a contest. They would interview anyone who could solve the questions and the questions were damn tough to solve. Hope they kept the same process after joining Google instead of going over to Google's general process of hiring based upon whether the team is comfortable with the guy they are hiring. (not too dumb but more importantly not too much smarter than the rest of the team). Google actually has interviews where kids 2-3 years out of Grad school will interview folks with 20 years industry experience with questions like "Estimate the number of cars in New York" because they read somewhere that is a good question to ask. Go figure.
Its not just the US. Govts have been overthrown in Ukraine, Georgia and across the Arab world through the power of Facebook and Social Media. Social Media and Cell Phones are a very powerful and proven tool. America has been using it to cause mischief all over the world. Now the Russians beat America at its own game. Facebook is powerfull in the same way as Hollywood was at one time - the Soviet Union fell because common Russians believed everyone in the US led the lifestyle they saw in Hollywood movies even though on average the Soviet system was more fair. Social Media is even more powerful because it is tougher to ban Facebook than to ban Hollywood movies. After all the people you are talking to on Facebook are your friends and family and you trust them more than the strangers acting in Hollywood movies.
The point is even if Facebook is towards the bottom of the list (and Google with its ranking of news stories as per their biases during a search is probably on the list too), besides Facebook none of the other tech giants have the kind of society altering (even to a small degree) influence that Facebook has. Hence its valuation. Plus Facebook is earning a ton of money from ads pretty much the same reason Google exists - earn money from ads.
Muslims preserved the knowledge of Greek and Roman cultures while Christians were busy burning it. In fact by the time of the Muslims conquering Egypt the Christians had held sway for centuries in Egypt and the library of Alexandria was long burnt.
When I want to learn about America I dont speak to tele-evangelists or multi-level-marketers. Nobody said there are no shysters in India who will pander to your prejudices while taking you for all you got. Some of these shysters wear suits and some wear saffron robes. Keep imagining Indians cant make decisions and watch your business and professional life burn down.
How valuable Facebook really is,is proven from the fact that Facebook ads can influence an election and give us Trump as President. None of the other 4 (with maybe the exception of Google) have that kind of impact on the real world. An instrument of mind control which users sign up for themselves and is powered by user generated content which is also profitable . If the soviets had managed to come up with something like Facebook , the west would have lost the cold war.
Visa, Master and Swift have been abused so badly in pursuit of political goals in US Primaries that people all over the world have lost faith. Case in point - Sanctions against Iran a country which does not promote Wahabbism whil allowing full trae with Saudi. People have realized that depending on American and Western money networks opens you up to financial blackmail whenever American politicians want to do some dog whistling. Russia has created its own payment network and making it difficult for Visa and Master to operate there in order to drive adoption. China most transactions are moving to Baidu's network. India is now using PayTM. As more and more major economies start moving away from western payment systems the West's power to use sanctions as a policy tool will go away. Since money still needs to move between the competing monetary systems cryptocurrencies will become the interface currency
It is racist towards real Indians. Their name has been misappropriated. How do you think a young boy of Indian origin feels when he sees the word Indians used to describe games like Cowboys and Indians?
If people spent less time watching porn they would spend more having sex. Just saying. Keep porn watching inefficient for the sake of the children (or not for the sake of the children)
Amazon has a camera pointed at your bed. So when you are about to go from foreplay to intercourse and are desperately searching for a condom in your drawer and not finding one you will hear your NEST doorbell go off and an Amazon Delivery drone will come to your bedroom window with a pack of condoms and you can say "Yes Alexa I would like to purchase this item". See AI makes your life easy. (And creepy but focus on EAAAASYYYY)
There are no "cultural pressures" which prevent Indians from making decisions. You don't launch (successful) missions to Mars , by not being able to resolve issues. India is an old civilization. Its people have lived in cities since before USA was settled . Cities are crowded and people have to be polite to their neighbors and colleagues as there simply is not the millions of acres of wilderness to go blow off steam like in the US. So Indians may be more polite than Americans. Doesn't mean they cannot resolve issues and make decisions. There are many different ways to resolve issues and not one perfect way. Thinking your own way is the correct way and everyone else's is "cultural pressures" is idiotic at best, racist at worse.
Nobody is forcing them to buy it. If they know what they want and noone is building it they can go out and build it themselves. I dont complain that a TV show does not follow the storyline I want. The non- techie plebes better get used to their new techie overlords. They will give us their 1000 dollars for phones where we will take away their favorite features and THEY WILL LIKE IT. BWAHAHAH.
Unless you are an openly racist company , it is natural that Indians will rise to Upper Management given that more than 50% of the grunts in the engineering department are Indians. An Indian rising to the top is statistics. No Indians reaching C level positions when most of your on the ground workforce are Indians (both immigrants and US born) is clear sign that your company has a problem.
Microsoft was pretty much leading Mobile OSs till 2007. When the iPhone came out with capacitive touch if Microsoft had quickly launched a capacitive touch phone they would have kept on top and Apple would not have taken off. Instead they hired Rubin to create a whole new OS Windows Phone 7. He wasted 2 years in which iPhone took off and then he left to go found Android. And he stole stuff he developed at Microsoft in Android. There is a reason that Microsoft gets paid 5 dollars for every Android phone that is sold (In fact Microsoft makes more money off Android than Google does)
So not only could they have dominated Mobile they WERE dominating it. But Ballmer was an idiot who gets distracted by Shiny stuff.
Even after the Rubin debacle there was a chance to catch up but instead Microsoft wasted their time buying and destroying Nokia. One more of Ballmer's cockups.
Basically from the time Bill Gates left to Nadella took over its been one disaster after another.
Jones act only prevents shipping from US mainland to PR on non US ships. PR can still directly import oil from west africa on foreign hulls. In fact PR should get into the refining business and then ship the refined gas to the manland. That way the pain of the Jones act comes on the mainland consumers.
I keep hearing this Meme - For the price of Starbucks. Not everyone who buys smartphones buys overpriced coffee. Why is something known to be overpriced and useless used to justify something else?
I hear you. Now Macs are popular again but 8-9 years back when Macs were minuscule part of PC market some of us suspected the Appstore was just an excuse to sell MacBooks to iOS developers.
A significant marketshare of Macbooks was those who bought it to develop Apps and the second largest was probably contractors working at Apple (Everyone was mandated to use a Mac even if they were coding Java)
Slashdot Mirror
The US has troops in over a 100 different countries around the world. If you think the US can be cutoff from fod imports you are delusional. The Ag subsidies go mostly to huge multi billion dollar Food corporations who own most of the farmland in the US (directly or indirectly under contract farming). Its a case of the poor subsidizing the rich.
Entitlements are already paid with their own taxes. They are not part of the federal budget except for Food Stamps (and those are basically agricultural subsiies in disguise). I agree on the defense budget but it would be illegal to take the axe to entitlements. It would be like you cutting down your neighbour's tree or firewood
Actually the high tax states have high taxes because they provide more social services than the low tax states. These social services incease the human capital and efficiency (e.g. subsidized day care lets mothers work instead of being on welfare). This means fewer folks in high tax states depend on Federal welfare. This is the primary reason high tax states do not take as much money from the feds as low tax states. CA could cut its nose to spite its face by cutting taxes, cutting services, crashing its GDP (hence reducing taxes paid to the US) and force more people onto welfare (hence increaisn money got back from the US) . But somehow I think Californians would much rather have a vibrant economy than try to make a point about getting back more from the Feds. Red states on the other hand do the opposite- they perputuate poverty by not spending on social services. All that helps is rich folks in those states while the poor live in 3rd world conditions.
California has some of the biggest military bases and is home to the Pacific fleet. Noone is going to occupy California if it declares Independence. We may have to position some troops on the borders with Oregon and Mexico but the East is protected by the Rockies.
There is a saying in the Army - never give an Order that will not be obeyed. It just breaks down the respect for Authority which is needed for soldiers to take an order which will mean risking their life but will probably save lives during battles.
A similar principle should apply to laws - dont pass laws that will not be obeyed. The 21 yr drinking age is a stupid law. If someone is old enough to fuck, go to war, get married and be executed for a capital crime they very well should be old enough to drink.
Once you pass laws that are stupid people feel no guilt breaking them and breaking other laws like forgery laws to get around the stupid law.
I remember applying to ITA pre-google. They had some sweet programming questions on their website. It was basically a contest. They would interview anyone who could solve the questions and the questions were damn tough to solve. Hope they kept the same process after joining Google instead of going over to Google's general process of hiring based upon whether the team is comfortable with the guy they are hiring. (not too dumb but more importantly not too much smarter than the rest of the team). Google actually has interviews where kids 2-3 years out of Grad school will interview folks with 20 years industry experience with questions like "Estimate the number of cars in New York" because they read somewhere that is a good question to ask. Go figure.
At least he cares about grades. Most student athletes dont.
We may not yet have solved the AI problem but AS seems to be a solved problem
I know lifelong democrats in California who did fundraisers for Bernie who ended up voting for Trump. Thats how bad a candidate Hillary was.
Its not just the US. Govts have been overthrown in Ukraine, Georgia and across the Arab world through the power of Facebook and Social Media. Social Media and Cell Phones are a very powerful and proven tool. America has been using it to cause mischief all over the world. Now the Russians beat America at its own game.
Facebook is powerfull in the same way as Hollywood was at one time - the Soviet Union fell because common Russians believed everyone in the US led the lifestyle they saw in Hollywood movies even though on average the Soviet system was more fair. Social Media is even more powerful because it is tougher to ban Facebook than to ban Hollywood movies. After all the people you are talking to on Facebook are your friends and family and you trust them more than the strangers acting in Hollywood movies.
The point is even if Facebook is towards the bottom of the list (and Google with its ranking of news stories as per their biases during a search is probably on the list too), besides Facebook none of the other tech giants have the kind of society altering (even to a small degree) influence that Facebook has. Hence its valuation. Plus Facebook is earning a ton of money from ads pretty much the same reason Google exists - earn money from ads.
Muslims preserved the knowledge of Greek and Roman cultures while Christians were busy burning it. In fact by the time of the Muslims conquering Egypt the Christians had held sway for centuries in Egypt and the library of Alexandria was long burnt.
When I want to learn about America I dont speak to tele-evangelists or multi-level-marketers. Nobody said there are no shysters in India who will pander to your prejudices while taking you for all you got. Some of these shysters wear suits and some wear saffron robes. Keep imagining Indians cant make decisions and watch your business and professional life burn down.
How valuable Facebook really is ,is proven from the fact that Facebook ads can influence an election and give us Trump as President. None of the other 4 (with maybe the exception of Google) have that kind of impact on the real world. An instrument of mind control which users sign up for themselves and is powered by user generated content which is also profitable . If the soviets had managed to come up with something like Facebook , the west would have lost the cold war.
Visa, Master and Swift have been abused so badly in pursuit of political goals in US Primaries that people all over the world have lost faith. Case in point - Sanctions against Iran a country which does not promote Wahabbism whil allowing full trae with Saudi. People have realized that depending on American and Western money networks opens you up to financial blackmail whenever American politicians want to do some dog whistling.
Russia has created its own payment network and making it difficult for Visa and Master to operate there in order to drive adoption. China most transactions are moving to Baidu's network. India is now using PayTM. As more and more major economies start moving away from western payment systems the West's power to use sanctions as a policy tool will go away. Since money still needs to move between the competing monetary systems cryptocurrencies will become the interface currency
It is racist towards real Indians. Their name has been misappropriated. How do you think a young boy of Indian origin feels when he sees the word Indians used to describe games like Cowboys and Indians?
If people spent less time watching porn they would spend more having sex. Just saying. Keep porn watching inefficient for the sake of the children (or not for the sake of the children)
Amazon has a camera pointed at your bed. So when you are about to go from foreplay to intercourse and are desperately searching for a condom in your drawer and not finding one you will hear your NEST doorbell go off and an Amazon Delivery drone will come to your bedroom window with a pack of condoms and you can say "Yes Alexa I would like to purchase this item". See AI makes your life easy. (And creepy but focus on EAAAASYYYY)
There are no "cultural pressures" which prevent Indians from making decisions. You don't launch (successful) missions to Mars , by not being able to resolve issues. India is an old civilization. Its people have lived in cities since before USA was settled . Cities are crowded and people have to be polite to their neighbors and colleagues as there simply is not the millions of acres of wilderness to go blow off steam like in the US.
So Indians may be more polite than Americans. Doesn't mean they cannot resolve issues and make decisions.
There are many different ways to resolve issues and not one perfect way.
Thinking your own way is the correct way and everyone else's is "cultural pressures" is idiotic at best, racist at worse.
Nobody is forcing them to buy it. If they know what they want and noone is building it they can go out and build it themselves. I dont complain that a TV show does not follow the storyline I want. The non- techie plebes better get used to their new techie overlords. They will give us their 1000 dollars for phones where we will take away their favorite features and THEY WILL LIKE IT. BWAHAHAH.
Unless you are an openly racist company , it is natural that Indians will rise to Upper Management given that more than 50% of the grunts in the engineering department are Indians. An Indian rising to the top is statistics. No Indians reaching C level positions when most of your on the ground workforce are Indians (both immigrants and US born) is clear sign that your company has a problem.
Microsoft was pretty much leading Mobile OSs till 2007. When the iPhone came out with capacitive touch if Microsoft had quickly launched a capacitive touch phone they would have kept on top and Apple would not have taken off. Instead they hired Rubin to create a whole new OS Windows Phone 7. He wasted 2 years in which iPhone took off and then he left to go found Android. And he stole stuff he developed at Microsoft in Android. There is a reason that Microsoft gets paid 5 dollars for every Android phone that is sold (In fact Microsoft makes more money off Android than Google does)
So not only could they have dominated Mobile they WERE dominating it. But Ballmer was an idiot who gets distracted by Shiny stuff.
Even after the Rubin debacle there was a chance to catch up but instead Microsoft wasted their time buying and destroying Nokia. One more of Ballmer's cockups.
Basically from the time Bill Gates left to Nadella took over its been one disaster after another.
Jones act only prevents shipping from US mainland to PR on non US ships. PR can still directly import oil from west africa on foreign hulls. In fact PR should get into the refining business and then ship the refined gas to the manland. That way the pain of the Jones act comes on the mainland consumers.
I keep hearing this Meme - For the price of Starbucks. Not everyone who buys smartphones buys overpriced coffee. Why is something known to be overpriced and useless used to justify something else?
I hear you. Now Macs are popular again but 8-9 years back when Macs were minuscule part of PC market some of us suspected the Appstore was just an excuse to sell MacBooks to iOS developers.
A significant marketshare of Macbooks was those who bought it to develop Apps and the second largest was probably contractors working at Apple (Everyone was mandated to use a Mac even if they were coding Java)