Read the book.... Not the one the article is about but "The Mythical Man Month" by Fredrick P. Brooks, Jr. Specifically Chapter 16 (and 17 if you are lucky enough to get the 20'th anniversary edition.)
This book is 30 years old and STILL speaks truth about what software engineering really is. The book discussed in the above article is from some newbie who doesn't know computer history and has fallen for the color glossy sales literature from software tool vendors.
There truly is NOTHING new under the sun... Trust me kids, we thought we where hot stuff too, we where just as wrong as this book's author is. Slightly different spin, but Chapter 16 and 17 still apply. If you don't know what I'm talking about, look it up on Google...
Oh please... I'm an old guy who cut his teeth on "C" programs, but your attitude is just wrong.
Tools change, languages change, computers change, methods change, but programming remains the same under all the trappings. Who's a better programmer? One that does Java or one that hacks out Assembly? Neither. Yes the programing model changes and the tokens you use to manipulate this model changes, but I don't care what you code in or how familiar you might be with some past tool I've used, if you program, you use the same skills I used hacking out "C" even if you are using some language I've never heard of.
Fredrick Brooks spoke to this idea way back in the 1970's and rightly concluded that programmers are going to be with us forever. The author of TFA needs to read and understand "The Mythical Man-Month" (2nd Edition) by Fredrick P. Brooks, mainly Chapter 16, but likely the whole book. This book should be REQUIRED READING for ANY computer related undergraduate degree program.
There is NO silver bullet. You will always need and have programmers. It was true 30 years ago and it's true now. We have not automated our way out of needing programers to ply their craft. Yes, we have "automated" a lot of logistics around computer operations, but this has ALWAYS been a low skill job. Back in the day they ran punch card readers and hung data tapes, none of which took too much knowledge of computers or programming. You needed a system programmer to make the system do anything different than what it did before. System programming was a highly skilled task.
The names and languages have changed, but you have "operators" and "system programers" still today. We call them Administrators and Programmers today. One operates the machines, loads software, manages backups and keeps paper in the printers, the other comes up with programs and systems that do new and unique things. The latter still requires the unique programming skills.
This author is wrong, and would have known had they done their reading.
IMHO, Vegan is fringe.. But I do live in the BBQ capital of the world. I would guess that I've only known ONE person who even approached Vegan, and even she found it very difficult to make it work for long periods and had to consume some non-vegan supplements to get by. Last I heard she gave the full Vegan idea up, it's just not natural for humans to eat that way. I found the whole thing STUPID, but hey, more meat for me so knock yourself out.
OTOH, a prison serving Alpo and maggots every night while laughing about your "fancy pants USDA approved diet" might be going a bit far, don't you think?
If that's what society finds to be a "normal"diet then you get what you get. Look, it is at "cruel and unusual punishment" where we draw the line. In the USA, such a diet would clearly NOT be normal so I think "unusual" would apply to your hypothetical situation. Vegan is NOT normal, in fact, some would consider it fringe. It is NOT normal diet and therefore prisons are NOT required to accommodate it. Your moral objections not withstanding.
Funny that people would make this a "moral" argument, when prison is reserved for those who lack enough moral constraints to keep from violating the law.... But I digress..
So if I have a "moral" belief that says I can only eat PRIME beef in proportion with Lobster and an expensive vintage wine, cooked in a specific way and accompanied by a rotating set of side dishes, the prison system is now required to provide for my "morally" dictated diet? Of course not.
What the prison system is required to provide is basic food. If that does not meet your "moral" requirements then don't eat. or eat as your choose. This "normal" diet is not cruel or unusual punishment. If the prison system chooses to provide more than that, it is up to them, but those who break the law, get what they get and I'm tired of all the complaining about it being unfair or wrong.
I wan to remind folks that prisons have come a long way. It wasn't that long ago being in prison meant you starved and spent your time in hard labor. Prisons where seen as punishment. In may places in the world they still are this way. In some ways we've made prison too cushy if you ask me.
So, if you are sent to prison (or jail) I suggest you not expect your vegan diet choice to be accommodated, just like mine won't be either. Learn to live with eating what you can, or if it means enough to you, starve yourself to death for your morals. I'm all for you exercising your morals, I just wish you had a bit more moral clarity on your activities that got you in trouble in the first place...
Generally routers fiddle with packets all the time, usually not at the application layer though. Firewalls routinely do this as well as intrusion detection and protection systems.
SO... I don't think Verizon is going to be liable for messing with your http packets. Not to mention that if you are downloading a Disney DVD, you are unlikely to be using http anyway, so Verizon isn't likely to do much to the torrent packets, assuming they even care.
Naw, you where not that sheltered.... I grew up on 130 acres in Southwest Missouri 2 miles from or nearest neighbor, with no TV, no computers, no air conditioning near a town which was population 49 according to the signage (which I think is a huge stretch, unless they did the census on Tuesday night when the sale barn is in operation.) I was very sheltered.
I saw ET in the theater as well as played with various Atari systems regularly...
You mean the guy running the small business he owns, who pays corporate taxes doesn't mean anything to you? Or that all the stocks you hold in your 401k wouldn't do better without corporate taxes? There are taxes assessed on nearly every transaction and investment known to man, except perhaps for the money you stuff in the mattress but don't spend.
Yea, I know what's coming next... Well you didn't pay that tax, the corporation did. Yea, but I own stock in that company, and/or I purchase their products so the taxes get baked into the cost cake, so even if they are not a line item on the bill of sale, they are costing me. Then there is the poor small business owner (the backbone of the economy by most measures) who has to pay taxes every which way you can imagine, INCLUDING income and sales taxes who could use the money to pay for more labor, buy more materials or even pay himself more. So yea, corporate taxes matter to the individual a lot more than your average working for a pay check Joe likely imagines, and more than you are likely to admit.
You do understand that I really do not care about the "progressive" or "regressive" nature of taxes persay, they are both bad. Taxes in general are evil and should be avoided. Taxes are sometimes a necessary evil, but any tax on a transaction, discourages that transaction, providing disincentive for economic activity. We tax way to many things in way to many ways and we suffer lower economic activity as a result. We tax in so many ways that your average Joe doesn't realize just how much he's paying... That has to end.
Not even close to "end of story" as I understand it.
Look I'm not saying this wasn't the "issue" only that until we have the FINAL report, any conclusions being drawn are premature and are to be taken with a huge grain of salt. "Pilot error" seems too convenient to me and although that generally IS a factor. The release of this now benefits Virgin so I'm suspicious of this rush to blame a dead pilot. But I don't think there is any tin-foil hat here. I'm saying that we should hold any and all conclusions over what caused this until the NTSB finishes and the dust has settled. All we know is that the Co-pilot (now dead) operated a control. We don't know if it was SOP or not, if that was how he was trained or not, or if it was some kind of mistake or actually part of the planned flight. WE DO NOT KNOW.
I did the same thing when the Asiana flight 214 went down in SF. It was pretty obvious that the pilot got too low and too slow on final approach and landed short, but you never know for sure until the investigation is done. It could have been something like BA 38 which looked almost the same, but actually didn't turn out to be the pilot's mistake.
We have to wait on the NTSB, and not this jumping to conclusions and blaming the co-pilot.
You want to go to Total Tax paid as a basis of comparison of who pays what? You do realize that this is a double edged knife and it cuts both ways.
Yes, I was limiting my discussion to "Income taxes" but as you point out there is a LOT more to this story. Your average guy off the street doesn't think about corporate taxes, inventory taxes, property taxes and sales taxes. Most people don't even know the difference between Federal Income Tax, Medicare and Social Security or even why they are on the pay stub. All they know is that every time they notice a "tax" someplace (on their check stub, or on a receipt for something they buy) it costs them money and they can thus buy less.
Now you want to open the aperture up to ALL taxes and discuss who pays what? You either don't understand how much the average Joe pays in taxes, or you are trying to cherry pick your numbers as suits your argument, even though you end up comparing apples, oranges, grapes and all sorts of varying fruit. Personally, I prefer to keep it simple and just talk income taxes, but I'm game for going whole hog and talking about ALL taxation because it really helps my argument for less taxation.... On everybody....
It's about the wealthy getting disproportional benefits and services from a government they've co-opted for their own benefit.
You didn't address my argument, yet insist on reiterating yours. I don't agree with you. The "rich" pay more in taxes than the "poor" and in many cases the "poor" actually pay negative taxes (They get a check for a "refund" which is bigger than what they paid in deductions).
But I ask you the *real* question here. Do we have private property in this country or not? Is the government's job to act like Robin Hood and take more from the rich to give to the poor or is it to stimulate economic growth and the creation of wealth? Unfortunately, you cannot do both because raising taxes leads to less economic growth and less wealth overall. (In short, the poor get poorer when you raise taxes). But if government's role is that of Robin Hood, taking from the rich to give to the poor, where does it stop? What are the limits of government's power to take? Personally, I don't want to live in a country where my government can just take, even from the super rich. If they can take from somebody else, they can take from you too and unchecked they eventually will.
I'm sorry.. I misquoted my source... It's the top 10% of tax payers pay half of the taxes.... http://taxfoundation.org/blog/... And the Bottom 1% usually pay negative taxes (they get refunds for money they didn't put in).
On the "framing of the question" idea, I've made some suggestions about how to make the tax system more fair, but I'm open to discussing the real impacts on people. I would argue that taxing WEALTH is not a good idea, nor is taxing capital gains. I'm not sure how you would even determine wealth, because just taking x% of cash on deposit won't work very well and asking folks to tell you how much they are worth is going to be as problematic as asking them to tell you how much they earn. Taxing capital gains really amounts to taxing the same money twice, or in some cases taxing paper gains which are due to inflation. Neither of these situations are good for economic activity.
Personally, I think a national sales tax makes sense and is pretty fair. You are taxed on what you spend, not what you earn or make on capital gains. I think if you put exceptions on necessities like food, medicine and possibly housing the impact on the less fortunate would be limited. The rich would pay more because they consume more and the poor wouldn't pay much at all because the bulk of their income is spent on the necessities.
Nothing will be perfect, but I think we can all agree what we have now is pretty broken and extremely complicated.
What PR departments do is to spin things into the best light they can for the company that pays them. In order to control the spin, you must be quick. Being honest and direct can sometimes fall to secondary status (i.e. get ignored altogether) depending on the moral and ethical stance of the company and people involved. When lots of dollars are involved, sometimes folks think that the short term gain from a quick lie is worth the long term damage it may cause so you will get quick, direct lies from the PR department.
So I agree with you...Everything being said right now by companies involved should be taken with a huge grain of salt.
This is not about the NTSB being taxpayer funded (it simply has to be), Your argument is about class envy and not really who's paying the NTSB.
If you want to argue that the tax system in the USA is unfair, I'm not going to argue that much with you, the system is broken. Personally I think it is WAY too complex and that leads to perceived unfairness. But the fact remains, the top 1% of tax payers in the country pay 50% of the taxes. If anybody has a gripe, it's them, because the bottom 10% don't pay a dime in income taxes...We can argue about numbers all day long, the real question is how can we make it fair?
Do you care to suggest a way we can *fix* the tax system? Say doing away with deductions or perhaps moving to something like a national sales tax or even a flat tax?
Well, I don't disagree with your complaint, but let me try and explain why the NTSB gets involved here.
Virgin is trying to do COMMERCIAL flights, not just experimental flights. They are going to take paying passengers. This means that the FAA must certify the craft as airworthy and approve the operation's safety. Being commercial, the safety standard is *really* high. They will be shooting for something on par with your average commercial air carrier.
So why the NTSB? Because of the "Safety" word in it's name. You see the FAA is not responsible for investigations of accidents only for the regulations and monitoring compliance with these regulations. The NTSB is a separate organization charged with the investigation of lapses of safety and routinely makes recommendations to the FAA (and other agencies) for rules and procedure changes. The NTSB is charged with determining the SAFETY of transportation, but has zero authority to make and enforce regulations about it.
This is actually a very ingenious arrangement. Because the NTSB is independent, you get the unvarnished truth about incidents it investigates. Where if the FAA did the investigation, or Virgin did it, there would be a tendency for bias in the results which would/could impact the real safety of the paying passengers.
So, I do not share your view. Sure the investigative expenses will be carried by the US tax payers, but you'd be surprised how much of the actual taxes collected actually come from the "rich" over the middle class. Of course, it depends on where you draw the line between "rich" and "middle class" but if you draw it at about $250K/year, you will find that the BULK of taxes paid in comes from the "rich" side of that line by a wide margin.
Slashdot Mirror
Read the book.... Not the one the article is about but "The Mythical Man Month" by Fredrick P. Brooks, Jr. Specifically Chapter 16 (and 17 if you are lucky enough to get the 20'th anniversary edition.)
This book is 30 years old and STILL speaks truth about what software engineering really is. The book discussed in the above article is from some newbie who doesn't know computer history and has fallen for the color glossy sales literature from software tool vendors.
Cars make people worse at riding horses.
But you can wreak a car a LOT faster and easier than a horse.
Kids These Days!
You are right! Mythical Man Month to the rescue!
There truly is NOTHING new under the sun... Trust me kids, we thought we where hot stuff too, we where just as wrong as this book's author is. Slightly different spin, but Chapter 16 and 17 still apply. If you don't know what I'm talking about, look it up on Google...
Oh please... I'm an old guy who cut his teeth on "C" programs, but your attitude is just wrong.
Tools change, languages change, computers change, methods change, but programming remains the same under all the trappings. Who's a better programmer? One that does Java or one that hacks out Assembly? Neither. Yes the programing model changes and the tokens you use to manipulate this model changes, but I don't care what you code in or how familiar you might be with some past tool I've used, if you program, you use the same skills I used hacking out "C" even if you are using some language I've never heard of.
Fredrick Brooks spoke to this idea way back in the 1970's and rightly concluded that programmers are going to be with us forever. The author of TFA needs to read and understand "The Mythical Man-Month" (2nd Edition) by Fredrick P. Brooks, mainly Chapter 16, but likely the whole book. This book should be REQUIRED READING for ANY computer related undergraduate degree program.
There is NO silver bullet. You will always need and have programmers. It was true 30 years ago and it's true now. We have not automated our way out of needing programers to ply their craft. Yes, we have "automated" a lot of logistics around computer operations, but this has ALWAYS been a low skill job. Back in the day they ran punch card readers and hung data tapes, none of which took too much knowledge of computers or programming. You needed a system programmer to make the system do anything different than what it did before. System programming was a highly skilled task.
The names and languages have changed, but you have "operators" and "system programers" still today. We call them Administrators and Programmers today. One operates the machines, loads software, manages backups and keeps paper in the printers, the other comes up with programs and systems that do new and unique things. The latter still requires the unique programming skills.
This author is wrong, and would have known had they done their reading.
IMHO, Vegan is fringe.. But I do live in the BBQ capital of the world. I would guess that I've only known ONE person who even approached Vegan, and even she found it very difficult to make it work for long periods and had to consume some non-vegan supplements to get by. Last I heard she gave the full Vegan idea up, it's just not natural for humans to eat that way. I found the whole thing STUPID, but hey, more meat for me so knock yourself out.
I just wish you had a bit more moral clarity on your activities that got you in trouble in the first place...
Yes, because what is illegal is immoral, and what is legal is moral.
Moral/Ethical behavior is USUALLY legal. However, the converse is not true. Many things are "legal" but are neither moral or ethical.
OTOH, a prison serving Alpo and maggots every night while laughing about your "fancy pants USDA approved diet" might be going a bit far, don't you think?
If that's what society finds to be a "normal"diet then you get what you get. Look, it is at "cruel and unusual punishment" where we draw the line. In the USA, such a diet would clearly NOT be normal so I think "unusual" would apply to your hypothetical situation. Vegan is NOT normal, in fact, some would consider it fringe. It is NOT normal diet and therefore prisons are NOT required to accommodate it. Your moral objections not withstanding.
Funny that people would make this a "moral" argument, when prison is reserved for those who lack enough moral constraints to keep from violating the law.... But I digress..
So if I have a "moral" belief that says I can only eat PRIME beef in proportion with Lobster and an expensive vintage wine, cooked in a specific way and accompanied by a rotating set of side dishes, the prison system is now required to provide for my "morally" dictated diet? Of course not.
What the prison system is required to provide is basic food. If that does not meet your "moral" requirements then don't eat. or eat as your choose. This "normal" diet is not cruel or unusual punishment. If the prison system chooses to provide more than that, it is up to them, but those who break the law, get what they get and I'm tired of all the complaining about it being unfair or wrong.
I wan to remind folks that prisons have come a long way. It wasn't that long ago being in prison meant you starved and spent your time in hard labor. Prisons where seen as punishment. In may places in the world they still are this way. In some ways we've made prison too cushy if you ask me.
So, if you are sent to prison (or jail) I suggest you not expect your vegan diet choice to be accommodated, just like mine won't be either. Learn to live with eating what you can, or if it means enough to you, starve yourself to death for your morals. I'm all for you exercising your morals, I just wish you had a bit more moral clarity on your activities that got you in trouble in the first place...
Generally routers fiddle with packets all the time, usually not at the application layer though. Firewalls routinely do this as well as intrusion detection and protection systems.
SO... I don't think Verizon is going to be liable for messing with your http packets. Not to mention that if you are downloading a Disney DVD, you are unlikely to be using http anyway, so Verizon isn't likely to do much to the torrent packets, assuming they even care.
Why? Seems to me Verizon is getting ready to dump a lot of coin in their laps..
At least it's not an IPV6 address..
Naw, you where not that sheltered.... I grew up on 130 acres in Southwest Missouri 2 miles from or nearest neighbor, with no TV, no computers, no air conditioning near a town which was population 49 according to the signage (which I think is a huge stretch, unless they did the census on Tuesday night when the sale barn is in operation.) I was very sheltered.
I saw ET in the theater as well as played with various Atari systems regularly...
I've been waiting to post that to the intertubez for thirty years!
(groan) Should have just given up waiting..
You are either a youngster, or way too sheltered. ET was/is a classic for it's day and EVERYBODY at least played on an Atari of some kind...
You mean the guy running the small business he owns, who pays corporate taxes doesn't mean anything to you? Or that all the stocks you hold in your 401k wouldn't do better without corporate taxes? There are taxes assessed on nearly every transaction and investment known to man, except perhaps for the money you stuff in the mattress but don't spend.
Yea, I know what's coming next... Well you didn't pay that tax, the corporation did. Yea, but I own stock in that company, and/or I purchase their products so the taxes get baked into the cost cake, so even if they are not a line item on the bill of sale, they are costing me. Then there is the poor small business owner (the backbone of the economy by most measures) who has to pay taxes every which way you can imagine, INCLUDING income and sales taxes who could use the money to pay for more labor, buy more materials or even pay himself more. So yea, corporate taxes matter to the individual a lot more than your average working for a pay check Joe likely imagines, and more than you are likely to admit.
You do understand that I really do not care about the "progressive" or "regressive" nature of taxes persay, they are both bad. Taxes in general are evil and should be avoided. Taxes are sometimes a necessary evil, but any tax on a transaction, discourages that transaction, providing disincentive for economic activity. We tax way to many things in way to many ways and we suffer lower economic activity as a result. We tax in so many ways that your average Joe doesn't realize just how much he's paying... That has to end.
Not even close to "end of story" as I understand it.
Look I'm not saying this wasn't the "issue" only that until we have the FINAL report, any conclusions being drawn are premature and are to be taken with a huge grain of salt. "Pilot error" seems too convenient to me and although that generally IS a factor. The release of this now benefits Virgin so I'm suspicious of this rush to blame a dead pilot. But I don't think there is any tin-foil hat here. I'm saying that we should hold any and all conclusions over what caused this until the NTSB finishes and the dust has settled. All we know is that the Co-pilot (now dead) operated a control. We don't know if it was SOP or not, if that was how he was trained or not, or if it was some kind of mistake or actually part of the planned flight. WE DO NOT KNOW.
I did the same thing when the Asiana flight 214 went down in SF. It was pretty obvious that the pilot got too low and too slow on final approach and landed short, but you never know for sure until the investigation is done. It could have been something like BA 38 which looked almost the same, but actually didn't turn out to be the pilot's mistake.
We have to wait on the NTSB, and not this jumping to conclusions and blaming the co-pilot.
You want to go to Total Tax paid as a basis of comparison of who pays what? You do realize that this is a double edged knife and it cuts both ways.
Yes, I was limiting my discussion to "Income taxes" but as you point out there is a LOT more to this story. Your average guy off the street doesn't think about corporate taxes, inventory taxes, property taxes and sales taxes. Most people don't even know the difference between Federal Income Tax, Medicare and Social Security or even why they are on the pay stub. All they know is that every time they notice a "tax" someplace (on their check stub, or on a receipt for something they buy) it costs them money and they can thus buy less.
Now you want to open the aperture up to ALL taxes and discuss who pays what? You either don't understand how much the average Joe pays in taxes, or you are trying to cherry pick your numbers as suits your argument, even though you end up comparing apples, oranges, grapes and all sorts of varying fruit. Personally, I prefer to keep it simple and just talk income taxes, but I'm game for going whole hog and talking about ALL taxation because it really helps my argument for less taxation.... On everybody....
Your argument is about class envy
It's about the wealthy getting disproportional benefits and services from a government they've co-opted for their own benefit.
You didn't address my argument, yet insist on reiterating yours. I don't agree with you. The "rich" pay more in taxes than the "poor" and in many cases the "poor" actually pay negative taxes (They get a check for a "refund" which is bigger than what they paid in deductions).
But I ask you the *real* question here. Do we have private property in this country or not? Is the government's job to act like Robin Hood and take more from the rich to give to the poor or is it to stimulate economic growth and the creation of wealth? Unfortunately, you cannot do both because raising taxes leads to less economic growth and less wealth overall. (In short, the poor get poorer when you raise taxes). But if government's role is that of Robin Hood, taking from the rich to give to the poor, where does it stop? What are the limits of government's power to take? Personally, I don't want to live in a country where my government can just take, even from the super rich. If they can take from somebody else, they can take from you too and unchecked they eventually will.
I'm sorry.. I misquoted my source... It's the top 10% of tax payers pay half of the taxes.... http://taxfoundation.org/blog/... And the Bottom 1% usually pay negative taxes (they get refunds for money they didn't put in).
On the "framing of the question" idea, I've made some suggestions about how to make the tax system more fair, but I'm open to discussing the real impacts on people. I would argue that taxing WEALTH is not a good idea, nor is taxing capital gains. I'm not sure how you would even determine wealth, because just taking x% of cash on deposit won't work very well and asking folks to tell you how much they are worth is going to be as problematic as asking them to tell you how much they earn. Taxing capital gains really amounts to taxing the same money twice, or in some cases taxing paper gains which are due to inflation. Neither of these situations are good for economic activity.
Personally, I think a national sales tax makes sense and is pretty fair. You are taxed on what you spend, not what you earn or make on capital gains. I think if you put exceptions on necessities like food, medicine and possibly housing the impact on the less fortunate would be limited. The rich would pay more because they consume more and the poor wouldn't pay much at all because the bulk of their income is spent on the necessities.
Nothing will be perfect, but I think we can all agree what we have now is pretty broken and extremely complicated.
To get rid of your BitCoin because you can bet the exchange rate will be trending down as they sell...
Good point...
I'll agree with "quickly" for sure.
What PR departments do is to spin things into the best light they can for the company that pays them. In order to control the spin, you must be quick. Being honest and direct can sometimes fall to secondary status (i.e. get ignored altogether) depending on the moral and ethical stance of the company and people involved. When lots of dollars are involved, sometimes folks think that the short term gain from a quick lie is worth the long term damage it may cause so you will get quick, direct lies from the PR department.
So I agree with you...Everything being said right now by companies involved should be taken with a huge grain of salt.
This is not about the NTSB being taxpayer funded (it simply has to be), Your argument is about class envy and not really who's paying the NTSB.
If you want to argue that the tax system in the USA is unfair, I'm not going to argue that much with you, the system is broken. Personally I think it is WAY too complex and that leads to perceived unfairness. But the fact remains, the top 1% of tax payers in the country pay 50% of the taxes. If anybody has a gripe, it's them, because the bottom 10% don't pay a dime in income taxes...We can argue about numbers all day long, the real question is how can we make it fair?
Do you care to suggest a way we can *fix* the tax system? Say doing away with deductions or perhaps moving to something like a national sales tax or even a flat tax?
Well, I don't disagree with your complaint, but let me try and explain why the NTSB gets involved here.
Virgin is trying to do COMMERCIAL flights, not just experimental flights. They are going to take paying passengers. This means that the FAA must certify the craft as airworthy and approve the operation's safety. Being commercial, the safety standard is *really* high. They will be shooting for something on par with your average commercial air carrier.
So why the NTSB? Because of the "Safety" word in it's name. You see the FAA is not responsible for investigations of accidents only for the regulations and monitoring compliance with these regulations. The NTSB is a separate organization charged with the investigation of lapses of safety and routinely makes recommendations to the FAA (and other agencies) for rules and procedure changes. The NTSB is charged with determining the SAFETY of transportation, but has zero authority to make and enforce regulations about it.
This is actually a very ingenious arrangement. Because the NTSB is independent, you get the unvarnished truth about incidents it investigates. Where if the FAA did the investigation, or Virgin did it, there would be a tendency for bias in the results which would/could impact the real safety of the paying passengers.
So, I do not share your view. Sure the investigative expenses will be carried by the US tax payers, but you'd be surprised how much of the actual taxes collected actually come from the "rich" over the middle class. Of course, it depends on where you draw the line between "rich" and "middle class" but if you draw it at about $250K/year, you will find that the BULK of taxes paid in comes from the "rich" side of that line by a wide margin.