Twenty years ago that would have been the most important issue, nowadays "entitlement" spending dwarfs defense spending. Entitlement spending isn't as bad a thing as Republicans make it out to be, however it's also not as beneficial as Democrats claim. Military spending isn't as bad a thing as Democrats make it out to be, but neither is it as great as Republicans claim. In both cases we need to control scope creep, enact moderate efficiency reforms and rein in future growth to more reasonable levels. Good luck on that happening.
I think you'll be surprised how soon the base load issue of solar and wind get solved.
When that happens I'll be one of the first ones clamoring for more, especially wind power as it's less environmentally damaging on the production side. I don't see that happening in the next twenty years though. The sheer magnitude of power storage required means that the solution is fairly challenging.
Living in the Pacific Northwest we have lots of hydro-power and wind.
Yeah and we've been having trouble with that since the water levels and wind levels don't always match up well. On several occasions they've had to pay the wind farms not to produce power.
So let's look at power generation and how environmentalists feel about it in reverse popularity order:
Nuclear - Evil radiation
Oil - Evil drilling and smog
Coal - Evil mining and runoff
Gas - Evil fracking and earthquake hazard
Hydro - Evil fish run interference and silt blockage
Geothermal - Evil drilling and earthquake hazard
Biomass - Evil increase in food crop prices and increased air particulates
Solar PV - Evil mining and hazardous chemicals in construction
Wind - Evil bird killers and scenery destroyers
Solar Thermal - Evil loss of desert habitat
Tide - Evil damage to coastal habitat
Try and build any of those and tell you won't get any environmental lawsuits attempting to prevent or delay construction.
Solar and wind don't currently produce reliable base load, though otherwise they're somewhat reasonable depending on a variety of factors. My preferred strategy would be a paired project where you'd build something like Solar or Wind + Natural gas and a water storage facility to help prevent lost potential energy and smooth out the power flow, that way it's as green as it can be while still providing a guaranteed level of output.
Nuclear is expensive to build but cheap to operate, so it balances out if you can be sure you'll use the full capacity.
The problem with the current system is that it has a static cap that doesn't adjust to meet the actual requirements. In theory, an H-1B worker is someone who has specialized knowledge not available among US citizens. Ok, if that's true then they're exactly the kind of people we need as citizens. I propose the following adaptive system:
1) Every H-1B worker automatically gets a green card at the end of a year of employment. Additionally they get entry to a fast track citizenship application system. Finally, the H-1B cap is raised by one going forward, keep those great talented people coming!
2) If an H-1B worker is employed for less than a year then the H-1B cap is permanently reduced by one and the company is fined an amount equal to the gross wages they've already paid.
3) Henceforth changing the H-1B cap outside of the two provisions above will require a super-majority (2/3rds vote) of both houses.
Unless you accept the very worst of the worst case projections there is still time to make a difference, maybe not enough to avoid the problem entirely, but certainly we still have the capability to keep it within manageable proportions.
I think a more accurate statement of the environmentalist position (at least this environmentalist's) is that if we don't do something to make our civilization more sustainable then it could collapse leading to the death of over half of our population with many of the remaining living in mud huts. It's not a goal but a consequence of ignoring the looming problems.
That's a reasonable and well thought out concern which means you're probably not actually an environmentalist, but a conservationist instead. A quick test, would you vote yes to replace a local coal plant with a nuclear plant of same power output? An environmentalist would vote no because they only accept perfect solutions rather than incremental improvements.
I have never, ever seen a real person argue anything approaching the supposed Environmentalist position. The real Environmentalist position is far more moderate.
The conservationist position (not to be confused with conservatives) is much more moderate, the environmentalist position is not, or at least not much. I did slightly exaggerate both positions to make my point. Most environmentalists are against all forms of power generation and support policies that don't work out when you do the math, for example all organic farming for our entire food supply or recycling for all products even those where recycling uses more energy than building from scratch.
Their budget got gutted because the IRS became a political attack tool of the DNC and then lied to Congress about it.
They certainly had some poor behavior but that's not why their budget got gutted, that was just the pretext. The modern Republican party A) Doesn't believe in taxes, so anything that impairs tax collection is good B) Is deliberately following a "starve the beast" strategy of shrinking government size C) Is against anything that would harm corporations or the wealthy, tax audits being a prime example D) Is not particularly enamored of the idea of "good governance" and so is willing to destroy the function of government departments in order to achieve their other objectives. I'm not particularly fond of the Democrats either, they've got their own set of problems, but that's a separate discussion.
The necessity of time zones wouldn't disappear by changing from a rough egg shape to a rough plane shape, in order to accomplish that you'd have to remove spinning about the axis. You're right about the map printing though.
Human induced climate change is happening, the data seems to leave little question about that. Currently though the models are doing a pretty bad job of predicting how bad it will get and how long that will take. That leaves significant room for argument over the size of the problem and how much should be spent to avoid the worst risks.
The Conservative position: "We should spend nothing as the worst side effect will be an extra day of using my air conditioner once in a while"
The Environmentalist position: "We should immediately liquidate 95% of the population and the remainder should go back to living in mud huts, spare no expense!"
I think it's likely the the correct answer is somewhere in between. I think a fair start would be setting up pigovian taxes on all energy generation activities that force them to internalize all costs. (The proceeds to be used to pay for tax credits for energy efficiency improvements) That alone would probably solve the majority of the problem in a relatively low pain fashion.
Ok, so if taxes and state owned enterprises are out (never liked those anyways) how do you suggest funding government? Voluntary contributions and seigniorage are woefully inadequate.
Sure, dumping high glycemic foods and increasing vegetable intake is a good start. Additionally you'll want to increase protein intake, increase water consumption, perform hypertrophy based exercise and HIIT regularly, cut your overall calories, time your carb intake, utilize periodic refeeds, supplement with omega-3 fatty acids and make a wide variety of other changes that will lead to optimum results.
That's bullshit. Obese people have pretty much the same metabolism as skinny people. It's not your "metabolism" that makes you obese, it's how much and what you eat.
Well, they have the same metabolic system but theirs is out of whack. In most cases they're Leptin resistant which causes them to be hungry when they shouldn't be. Fixing your hormonal balances is possible but it's lot more difficult than "put down the chocolate cake and have some salad once in a while".
It seems that current globablized world (and the one in the years to come) is one of those scenarios that make the exception: the average citizen ends up with less pie now, even if the pie is bigger.
In a global sense wealth is rising dramatically for the average person. Unfortunately much of this progress is coming at the price of stagnation for those in developed countries. Remember though, none of the current developed nations are purely "capitalist" they're all mixed economies of one fashion or another.
I'd mark it at the transition from when things were mostly muscle powered, and thus limited in total energy expenditure by food production, to when most things were powered by other fuel sources. Once that switch occurred our ability to radically reshape the environment leapt upwards by several orders of magnitude.
There is nothing concrete to suggest that women just "don't want to be in tech" and there is nothing to suggest that they are any less apt at excelling in tech.
Well it's anecdotal of course, but the number of women at the Commodore 64 parties at the pizza parlor back in the day: 0 out of 300
As a slightly more up to date and official number, the percentage of computer science degrees awarded to women is only 18%
Yes, or I'd move there. Those three are temporarily propped up by their North Sea oil revenues, take that away and the system won't work. See France for a good comparison of how it looks without oil exports propping things up.
Socialism isn't bad per se, but it has inefficiencies that reduce total wealth creation and tends to promise more benefits than can be sustainably delivered. Any time you're spending more wealth than you're creating it will eventually catch up with you and go badly.
Think of it as being a pie, after all everyone likes pie right? In capitalism there is a lot of pie but the cool kids get all the biggest pieces before everyone else can have any. In socialism the pieces are handed out more fairly but the pie is smaller to start with. In most scenarios the average person ends up with more pie under capitalism even though their share isn't very fair.
No it's not. I'm pro-immigration, we can use all the smart hard working people we can get. I'm anti-H1B, it's a way to get lower cost labor that has less negotiating power than a US citizen.
Slashdot Mirror
1) Call Marine Corps Friday morning
2) Wait till end of weekend
3) Declare victory!
Did you actually find that somewhere or just make it up?
Twenty years ago that would have been the most important issue, nowadays "entitlement" spending dwarfs defense spending. Entitlement spending isn't as bad a thing as Republicans make it out to be, however it's also not as beneficial as Democrats claim. Military spending isn't as bad a thing as Democrats make it out to be, but neither is it as great as Republicans claim. In both cases we need to control scope creep, enact moderate efficiency reforms and rein in future growth to more reasonable levels. Good luck on that happening.
I think you'll be surprised how soon the base load issue of solar and wind get solved.
When that happens I'll be one of the first ones clamoring for more, especially wind power as it's less environmentally damaging on the production side. I don't see that happening in the next twenty years though. The sheer magnitude of power storage required means that the solution is fairly challenging.
Living in the Pacific Northwest we have lots of hydro-power and wind.
Yeah and we've been having trouble with that since the water levels and wind levels don't always match up well. On several occasions they've had to pay the wind farms not to produce power.
So let's look at power generation and how environmentalists feel about it in reverse popularity order:
Nuclear - Evil radiation
Oil - Evil drilling and smog
Coal - Evil mining and runoff
Gas - Evil fracking and earthquake hazard
Hydro - Evil fish run interference and silt blockage
Geothermal - Evil drilling and earthquake hazard
Biomass - Evil increase in food crop prices and increased air particulates
Solar PV - Evil mining and hazardous chemicals in construction
Wind - Evil bird killers and scenery destroyers
Solar Thermal - Evil loss of desert habitat
Tide - Evil damage to coastal habitat
Try and build any of those and tell you won't get any environmental lawsuits attempting to prevent or delay construction.
Solar and wind don't currently produce reliable base load, though otherwise they're somewhat reasonable depending on a variety of factors. My preferred strategy would be a paired project where you'd build something like Solar or Wind + Natural gas and a water storage facility to help prevent lost potential energy and smooth out the power flow, that way it's as green as it can be while still providing a guaranteed level of output.
Nuclear is expensive to build but cheap to operate, so it balances out if you can be sure you'll use the full capacity.
The problem with the current system is that it has a static cap that doesn't adjust to meet the actual requirements. In theory, an H-1B worker is someone who has specialized knowledge not available among US citizens. Ok, if that's true then they're exactly the kind of people we need as citizens. I propose the following adaptive system:
1) Every H-1B worker automatically gets a green card at the end of a year of employment. Additionally they get entry to a fast track citizenship application system. Finally, the H-1B cap is raised by one going forward, keep those great talented people coming!
2) If an H-1B worker is employed for less than a year then the H-1B cap is permanently reduced by one and the company is fined an amount equal to the gross wages they've already paid.
3) Henceforth changing the H-1B cap outside of the two provisions above will require a super-majority (2/3rds vote) of both houses.
Unless you accept the very worst of the worst case projections there is still time to make a difference, maybe not enough to avoid the problem entirely, but certainly we still have the capability to keep it within manageable proportions.
I think a more accurate statement of the environmentalist position (at least this environmentalist's) is that if we don't do something to make our civilization more sustainable then it could collapse leading to the death of over half of our population with many of the remaining living in mud huts. It's not a goal but a consequence of ignoring the looming problems.
That's a reasonable and well thought out concern which means you're probably not actually an environmentalist, but a conservationist instead. A quick test, would you vote yes to replace a local coal plant with a nuclear plant of same power output? An environmentalist would vote no because they only accept perfect solutions rather than incremental improvements.
I have never, ever seen a real person argue anything approaching the supposed Environmentalist position. The real Environmentalist position is far more moderate.
The conservationist position (not to be confused with conservatives) is much more moderate, the environmentalist position is not, or at least not much. I did slightly exaggerate both positions to make my point. Most environmentalists are against all forms of power generation and support policies that don't work out when you do the math, for example all organic farming for our entire food supply or recycling for all products even those where recycling uses more energy than building from scratch.
Their budget got gutted because the IRS became a political attack tool of the DNC and then lied to Congress about it.
They certainly had some poor behavior but that's not why their budget got gutted, that was just the pretext. The modern Republican party A) Doesn't believe in taxes, so anything that impairs tax collection is good B) Is deliberately following a "starve the beast" strategy of shrinking government size C) Is against anything that would harm corporations or the wealthy, tax audits being a prime example D) Is not particularly enamored of the idea of "good governance" and so is willing to destroy the function of government departments in order to achieve their other objectives. I'm not particularly fond of the Democrats either, they've got their own set of problems, but that's a separate discussion.
The necessity of time zones wouldn't disappear by changing from a rough egg shape to a rough plane shape, in order to accomplish that you'd have to remove spinning about the axis. You're right about the map printing though.
Human induced climate change is happening, the data seems to leave little question about that. Currently though the models are doing a pretty bad job of predicting how bad it will get and how long that will take. That leaves significant room for argument over the size of the problem and how much should be spent to avoid the worst risks.
The Conservative position: "We should spend nothing as the worst side effect will be an extra day of using my air conditioner once in a while"
The Environmentalist position: "We should immediately liquidate 95% of the population and the remainder should go back to living in mud huts, spare no expense!"
I think it's likely the the correct answer is somewhere in between. I think a fair start would be setting up pigovian taxes on all energy generation activities that force them to internalize all costs. (The proceeds to be used to pay for tax credits for energy efficiency improvements) That alone would probably solve the majority of the problem in a relatively low pain fashion.
Ok, so if taxes and state owned enterprises are out (never liked those anyways) how do you suggest funding government? Voluntary contributions and seigniorage are woefully inadequate.
Therefore, it is my conclusion, that taxes should be the LAST resort of raising revenue.
You'd prefer state owned businesses?
And even then, when used with a warrant, I see this as preferable to a bunch of cops rounding corners, getting scared and shooting.
With a warrant I think it's a great idea, as a warrantless approach I find it horribly intrusive.
Sure, dumping high glycemic foods and increasing vegetable intake is a good start. Additionally you'll want to increase protein intake, increase water consumption, perform hypertrophy based exercise and HIIT regularly, cut your overall calories, time your carb intake, utilize periodic refeeds, supplement with omega-3 fatty acids and make a wide variety of other changes that will lead to optimum results.
That's bullshit. Obese people have pretty much the same metabolism as skinny people. It's not your "metabolism" that makes you obese, it's how much and what you eat.
Well, they have the same metabolic system but theirs is out of whack. In most cases they're Leptin resistant which causes them to be hungry when they shouldn't be. Fixing your hormonal balances is possible but it's lot more difficult than "put down the chocolate cake and have some salad once in a while".
It seems that current globablized world (and the one in the years to come) is one of those scenarios that make the exception: the average citizen ends up with less pie now, even if the pie is bigger.
In a global sense wealth is rising dramatically for the average person. Unfortunately much of this progress is coming at the price of stagnation for those in developed countries. Remember though, none of the current developed nations are purely "capitalist" they're all mixed economies of one fashion or another.
I'd mark it at the transition from when things were mostly muscle powered, and thus limited in total energy expenditure by food production, to when most things were powered by other fuel sources. Once that switch occurred our ability to radically reshape the environment leapt upwards by several orders of magnitude.
There easily could be a serious problem, it just seems that it's earlier than the hiring stage, most likely much earlier.
There is nothing concrete to suggest that women just "don't want to be in tech" and there is nothing to suggest that they are any less apt at excelling in tech.
Well it's anecdotal of course, but the number of women at the Commodore 64 parties at the pizza parlor back in the day: 0 out of 300
As a slightly more up to date and official number, the percentage of computer science degrees awarded to women is only 18%
In order to excel, first you must have interest.
Yes, or I'd move there. Those three are temporarily propped up by their North Sea oil revenues, take that away and the system won't work. See France for a good comparison of how it looks without oil exports propping things up.
Socialism isn't bad per se, but it has inefficiencies that reduce total wealth creation and tends to promise more benefits than can be sustainably delivered. Any time you're spending more wealth than you're creating it will eventually catch up with you and go badly.
Think of it as being a pie, after all everyone likes pie right? In capitalism there is a lot of pie but the cool kids get all the biggest pieces before everyone else can have any. In socialism the pieces are handed out more fairly but the pie is smaller to start with. In most scenarios the average person ends up with more pie under capitalism even though their share isn't very fair.
In order to have a comparison you have to have two sets of data. You've provided only one set.
No it's not. I'm pro-immigration, we can use all the smart hard working people we can get. I'm anti-H1B, it's a way to get lower cost labor that has less negotiating power than a US citizen.