Best estimate I can find suggests a supervolcano could throw 10^19 kg into the air. Let's assume that's just 1km into the air, I come up with ~ 10^23 joules, and I think that's very conservative (the big question is how much of that mass hits the plume height of greater than 50 km, and I took the lowest estimate of the density of the plume I could find).
Total worldwide power usage is less than 10^21 joule/year.
It would be an impressive engineering feat to put together a single power plant that could power the entire world, and even so, you'd only put a tiny dent in that energy reserve. But it seems just barely possible that over 10k years you could make a meaningful difference to the power output of that event.
Meh, there are a lot of meaty animals around if we get hungry. Why, I recently heard of this one species with 7 billion members, spread all around the world. Plenty to eat for years.
In the US we don't actually have much of a problem with it. Social welfare benefits are so small they are hard to live off of, so pretty much no one does.
And yeah, our homeless are largely mentally ill as well. And there's no treatment for them. It's a pretty sad situation.
No, what people don't want to believe in the US is that our social $ are going 95+% to the elderly, who paid into the system with a promise of benefits when they got old.
Do you trust consumer reports? They are bought and paid for by the reviewees. If you want a positive review, you send them money, and they 'round up' a bunch of your competitors and tell everyone how you beat them. Seriously, look around at how many 'but but.. consumer reports said this would be good' reviews there are all over the place.
Good grief yes. Deregulators drive me crazy. As if regulations didn't exist precisely because someone screwed up big enough to make us say: 'ok, now we have to regulate that so we don't have someone do that again.' As soon as you deregulate, you get 'that' again, whatever that was.
Also (sorry for the two replies... sleepy), clothing insecurity (as well as the other type of insecurities) is meant to refer to people who are right on the edge. For example, imagine living in a situation where ripping the pair of pants you are wearing means no more pants because you can't afford to replace them.
Clothing insecurity is getting less and less common thanks to the general rise in durability combined with short cycles of style resulting in large surpluses. At least in this country, donated clothing can be had for very cheap (though that only indirectly helps the homeless and those in such severe situations).
I'd say it's all about finding the right balance. For people who can work (the rules for the handicapped or mentally ill should be different), it should be mandated to work to receive benefits. Even if it means make-work projects like cleaning public parks, I see no reason we can't force people to work for benefits. That should eliminate the perverse incentive. And it should always be clear that what you'll have would be so much better if you found paying work: we don't have to build the indigent luxurious housing. 100 sq ft / person with a communal mess is plenty, but it should be clean, safe, and warm. When I advocate providing the basics, I really mean the absolute basics, and the real tragedy is the people who are living without those basics.
That definition works fine for me too. We could still prevent anyone in this country from falling below that floor too. All it would take is will, we have the resources.
Are you suggesting that what made Jobs succeed as Apple's CEO was being a good homebrew computer engineer? What made him work out was being a perfectionist asshole who drove others to succeed.
Wrong, our society has enough productivity to provide for the basic needs of everyone, it just chooses not to. We could do a better job of forcing that choice.
The real reality is that your life opportunities are not determined by your education, and that a significant fraction of the poor do not have access to that kind of high school education, even in this country. What percentage of billionaires are inner city kids who were forced to drop out of high school to feed themselves or escape abuse? When that number rises above 10% I'll be convinced that opportunity is there for anyone to turn their lives into whatever they want.
Yes, I agree, destitute is a more precise word, but it's not me that's responsible for using poor and destitute interchangeably in the media, with the preference for using poor to represent this state of being.
No, at any company large enough to really warrant having a CEO, being technically capable of the work the business is in is almost certainly irrelevant. CEO is a strategic/interface role.
Set the strategic direction for the company, make decisions that those below her are too afraid to, meet with the heads of business partner companies.... what do you think a CEO does in general?
You misunderstood me, I was not suggesting that it was the poor who needed to do the work. It's the rich who could eliminate the poor by giving enough to ensure that everyone's basics are covered. And make no mistake: there is enough to go around that if the rich gave up enough of their wealth, the poor would not be poor any more.
The point is that there are plenty of people who don't even have those three. Maybe we come up with a new definition of poor after we fix that, but until then....
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I'm not doing anything. My family celebrates Halloween instead.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween
Please use the preferred spelling.
Meaty animal species?
We have about 1M oil wells with an average depth of about 2km. Getting 13K pipes down to 5km doesn't seem beyond the realm of possibility.
Best estimate I can find suggests a supervolcano could throw 10^19 kg into the air. Let's assume that's just 1km into the air, I come up with ~ 10^23 joules, and I think that's very conservative (the big question is how much of that mass hits the plume height of greater than 50 km, and I took the lowest estimate of the density of the plume I could find).
Total worldwide power usage is less than 10^21 joule/year.
It would be an impressive engineering feat to put together a single power plant that could power the entire world, and even so, you'd only put a tiny dent in that energy reserve. But it seems just barely possible that over 10k years you could make a meaningful difference to the power output of that event.
Meh, there are a lot of meaty animals around if we get hungry. Why, I recently heard of this one species with 7 billion members, spread all around the world. Plenty to eat for years.
In the US we don't actually have much of a problem with it. Social welfare benefits are so small they are hard to live off of, so pretty much no one does.
And yeah, our homeless are largely mentally ill as well. And there's no treatment for them. It's a pretty sad situation.
No, what people don't want to believe in the US is that our social $ are going 95+% to the elderly, who paid into the system with a promise of benefits when they got old.
The democratization and violence is what I'm advocating for.
Do you trust consumer reports? They are bought and paid for by the reviewees. If you want a positive review, you send them money, and they 'round up' a bunch of your competitors and tell everyone how you beat them. Seriously, look around at how many 'but but .. consumer reports said this would be good' reviews there are all over the place.
Good grief yes. Deregulators drive me crazy. As if regulations didn't exist precisely because someone screwed up big enough to make us say: 'ok, now we have to regulate that so we don't have someone do that again.' As soon as you deregulate, you get 'that' again, whatever that was.
Also (sorry for the two replies ... sleepy), clothing insecurity (as well as the other type of insecurities) is meant to refer to people who are right on the edge. For example, imagine living in a situation where ripping the pair of pants you are wearing means no more pants because you can't afford to replace them.
Clothing insecurity is getting less and less common thanks to the general rise in durability combined with short cycles of style resulting in large surpluses. At least in this country, donated clothing can be had for very cheap (though that only indirectly helps the homeless and those in such severe situations).
It's funny til you think about it.
People living on the street have their clothes stolen frequently. The loss of a good coat can be a matter of life and death in that situation.
I'd say it's all about finding the right balance. For people who can work (the rules for the handicapped or mentally ill should be different), it should be mandated to work to receive benefits. Even if it means make-work projects like cleaning public parks, I see no reason we can't force people to work for benefits. That should eliminate the perverse incentive. And it should always be clear that what you'll have would be so much better if you found paying work: we don't have to build the indigent luxurious housing. 100 sq ft / person with a communal mess is plenty, but it should be clean, safe, and warm. When I advocate providing the basics, I really mean the absolute basics, and the real tragedy is the people who are living without those basics.
That definition works fine for me too. We could still prevent anyone in this country from falling below that floor too. All it would take is will, we have the resources.
Are you suggesting that what made Jobs succeed as Apple's CEO was being a good homebrew computer engineer? What made him work out was being a perfectionist asshole who drove others to succeed.
Wrong, our society has enough productivity to provide for the basic needs of everyone, it just chooses not to. We could do a better job of forcing that choice.
The real reality is that your life opportunities are not determined by your education, and that a significant fraction of the poor do not have access to that kind of high school education, even in this country. What percentage of billionaires are inner city kids who were forced to drop out of high school to feed themselves or escape abuse? When that number rises above 10% I'll be convinced that opportunity is there for anyone to turn their lives into whatever they want.
Bad moderation alert.
Go get 'em metamods.
Well, I've never seen that usage of 'poor'. The liberals are in my experience much more concerned with inner city blacks with no hope of escape.
Yes, I agree, destitute is a more precise word, but it's not me that's responsible for using poor and destitute interchangeably in the media, with the preference for using poor to represent this state of being.
No, at any company large enough to really warrant having a CEO, being technically capable of the work the business is in is almost certainly irrelevant. CEO is a strategic/interface role.
Set the strategic direction for the company, make decisions that those below her are too afraid to, meet with the heads of business partner companies .... what do you think a CEO does in general?
You misunderstood me, I was not suggesting that it was the poor who needed to do the work. It's the rich who could eliminate the poor by giving enough to ensure that everyone's basics are covered. And make no mistake: there is enough to go around that if the rich gave up enough of their wealth, the poor would not be poor any more.
The point is that there are plenty of people who don't even have those three. Maybe we come up with a new definition of poor after we fix that, but until then ....
It means you need to not have serious doubts about whether you are going to have anything to wear tomorrow.
Poor has a well defined floor, though. If you have food, shelter, and clothing security, there's no need to consider you poor.