The National Debt goes up for two main reasons: Social Security and the Trade Deficit.
The Social Security "trust fund" is a bunch of T-bills, and represents the second largest chunk of the National Debt - $2.72 Trillion. Whenever they take in more social security payroll taxes than they pay out in benefits, they put the surplus into T-bills. Those T-bills are then counted as part of the National Debt.
In other words,
1. We owe this chunk of the National Debt to ourselves - to old people and sick people
2. The Social Security Payroll Tax is not really used for Social Security - it just goes right back into the general fund, and even worse, the general fund has to pay interest to Social Security, which means we're even more screwed than you thought.
The other reason the national debt keeps going up is due to the trade deficit.
We buy Chinese goods in Dollars. We pay them in Dollars. They can't use dollars in their domestic economy for anything - worthless paper to them. They'd have to plow the dollars into American goods to make use of them, but they don't do that. They don't buy enough of our stuff, so instead of stuffing that cash in a vault somewhere, they buy a bunch of T-bills so they can collect interest. That accounts for the largest chunk of the national debt, over 5 Trillion.
Important to note that, no matter what happens with spending, the national debt will continue to grow because of these two things. Blaming the national debt on spending alone is not accurate.
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The atmosphere was interesting for the first 5 hours of gameplay, then it just got in the way of trying to play the game.
I got to the point where, every time I'd walk through a door, I'd look to the side and fire into the demon I *knew* was standing there. It was like the line in Last Action Hero where Arnold walks into his apartment, kid in tow, walks into the bedroom and puts a few rounds into the closet door. A ninja falls out of the closet, dead, and the kid says, "How did you know there was a ninja in there?" Arnold says, "There's always a ninja in there."
The only discomfort I felt was when I was squinting and cranking the gamma up just so I could see what I was doing.
The story sucked, too. What do I expect from a FPS? Deus Ex, Bioshock, System Shock, and all their associated sequels, etc. etc.
Fear - the most concise explanation I've read so far for all these shootings. Paranoia, fear, mistrust of the government, of one's own neighbors, of one's own family. You nailed this one on the head.
That fear is bred by our divisive politics and our sensationalist media. I blame the news more than I blame guns and gun ownership. I think gun ownership is another symptom of the problem - not the problem itself. Banning assault weapons won't work.
What's the solution? Funding public mental health hospitals and asylums are a step in the right direction. Treatment over incarceration is the right direction as well. Psychological testing of school children might help identify potential problems and get kids the help they need before it's too late. Finally, ratchet down the political rhetoric.
Ultimately, though, history shows that whenever we have a dramatic shift of how society functions, we have an increase in violence. Either we have a war (American Revolution, American Civil War, etc) or we have riots like in the 60's, anarchist bombings like the Haymarket Riot, assassinations like Lincoln, or many other examples throughout history. Unfortunately, we live in turbulent times currently, where we have a national conversation on moderately changing the entire direction of the country - changing how we operate for the first time since Jimmy Carter left office. Naturally, it's going to lead to a lot of fear, and as a result, a lot of violence.
I heard once that the reason he didn't do anything with SW after ROTJ was because his ex-wife had a clause in the pre-nup that guaranteed her a certain percentage of Star Wars revenue for 10 years after their divorce - he started work on the special editions as soon as it expired.
Just a rumor, though - I have nothing confirming it.
Microsoft isn't forcing me to upgrade - Valve is. I don't have enough memory to play the new games that are coming out. I'll stay on Windows 7 at least until Windows 9. Or maybe I'll switch over to Linux permanently if Valve's Steam for Linux is worthwhile.
4 years back? I'm still gaming on my 6 year old build. The only things I've upgraded are my RAM and video card.
I'm eyeing a new CPU/mobo/RAM combo this winter because 4G of memory just isn't enough anymore. It's a shame - my CPU and the rest of my system are just fine.
The growth is no longer in the PC sector. PC sales have been shrinking fast. In business, growth is everything. Nobody cares about your cash cows - it's the future gains that are what companies are measured by.
I think the idea is that bits are bits, and the voice should all be VOIP over your data connection, and you're charged just for the data which includes the voice.
I've long been thinking that content and delivery need to be separated in the Cable TV industry, and voice and data should be consolidated under the Cellular system as well as POTS.
The cable company or phone company or Google should provide a pipe to our house that we pay maintenance for, and TV channels, websites, VOIP, should all be purchased from separate companies.
If everything is digital, we should be charged strictly for the bits that flow in and out of our house, not separately for different classifications of data.
Never could figure out how to save my game in the original. I bought it, tried to play a couple of times, but then whenever I needed to save and quit, I could never figure out how to do it, and wound up back at the beginning of the game every time. I gave up after about three hours of gameplay.
This is a classic anticompetitive tactic - and the reason that Standard Oil was broken up in the 20th century.
Standard Oil would find a mom-and-pop gas station on a corner somewhere, set up shop across the street, and sell gas for below cost. Once they ran mom & pop out of business, they jacked up the prices of gas on that corner to well above cost.
And that, friends, is how the Rockefeller fortune was made.
Slashdot Mirror
We told you so.
The National Debt goes up for two main reasons: Social Security and the Trade Deficit.
The Social Security "trust fund" is a bunch of T-bills, and represents the second largest chunk of the National Debt - $2.72 Trillion. Whenever they take in more social security payroll taxes than they pay out in benefits, they put the surplus into T-bills. Those T-bills are then counted as part of the National Debt.
In other words,
1. We owe this chunk of the National Debt to ourselves - to old people and sick people
2. The Social Security Payroll Tax is not really used for Social Security - it just goes right back into the general fund, and even worse, the general fund has to pay interest to Social Security, which means we're even more screwed than you thought.
The other reason the national debt keeps going up is due to the trade deficit.
We buy Chinese goods in Dollars. We pay them in Dollars. They can't use dollars in their domestic economy for anything - worthless paper to them. They'd have to plow the dollars into American goods to make use of them, but they don't do that. They don't buy enough of our stuff, so instead of stuffing that cash in a vault somewhere, they buy a bunch of T-bills so they can collect interest. That accounts for the largest chunk of the national debt, over 5 Trillion.
Important to note that, no matter what happens with spending, the national debt will continue to grow because of these two things. Blaming the national debt on spending alone is not accurate.
More reading and sources for my numbers are here.
I prefer "relevant post or GTFO"
Slashdot is moderated. Your submissions are reviewed by the moderator and accepted or rejected. You can go into your profile, view your submissions, and see which ones were accepted or rejected.
Did we play the same game?
The atmosphere was interesting for the first 5 hours of gameplay, then it just got in the way of trying to play the game.
I got to the point where, every time I'd walk through a door, I'd look to the side and fire into the demon I *knew* was standing there. It was like the line in Last Action Hero where Arnold walks into his apartment, kid in tow, walks into the bedroom and puts a few rounds into the closet door. A ninja falls out of the closet, dead, and the kid says, "How did you know there was a ninja in there?" Arnold says, "There's always a ninja in there."
The only discomfort I felt was when I was squinting and cranking the gamma up just so I could see what I was doing.
The story sucked, too. What do I expect from a FPS? Deus Ex, Bioshock, System Shock, and all their associated sequels, etc. etc.
Source for that?
Not that I doubt you, but I'd like to read more...
Nope, they were going down hill long before the Activision merger.
Fear - the most concise explanation I've read so far for all these shootings. Paranoia, fear, mistrust of the government, of one's own neighbors, of one's own family. You nailed this one on the head.
That fear is bred by our divisive politics and our sensationalist media. I blame the news more than I blame guns and gun ownership. I think gun ownership is another symptom of the problem - not the problem itself. Banning assault weapons won't work.
What's the solution? Funding public mental health hospitals and asylums are a step in the right direction. Treatment over incarceration is the right direction as well. Psychological testing of school children might help identify potential problems and get kids the help they need before it's too late. Finally, ratchet down the political rhetoric.
Ultimately, though, history shows that whenever we have a dramatic shift of how society functions, we have an increase in violence. Either we have a war (American Revolution, American Civil War, etc) or we have riots like in the 60's, anarchist bombings like the Haymarket Riot, assassinations like Lincoln, or many other examples throughout history. Unfortunately, we live in turbulent times currently, where we have a national conversation on moderately changing the entire direction of the country - changing how we operate for the first time since Jimmy Carter left office. Naturally, it's going to lead to a lot of fear, and as a result, a lot of violence.
You mean the one they've been ignoring for the last 200 years?
As a gamer, I completely concur.
As an office drone, though, I need some of the more advanced stuff.
I heard once that the reason he didn't do anything with SW after ROTJ was because his ex-wife had a clause in the pre-nup that guaranteed her a certain percentage of Star Wars revenue for 10 years after their divorce - he started work on the special editions as soon as it expired.
Just a rumor, though - I have nothing confirming it.
Union strike? In China?
We've all seen what happens when Chinese people rise up against the establishment.
Call me when they get the price per KWh down to below non-renewable sources.
Chicago
Microsoft isn't forcing me to upgrade - Valve is. I don't have enough memory to play the new games that are coming out. I'll stay on Windows 7 at least until Windows 9. Or maybe I'll switch over to Linux permanently if Valve's Steam for Linux is worthwhile.
4 years back? I'm still gaming on my 6 year old build. The only things I've upgraded are my RAM and video card.
I'm eyeing a new CPU/mobo/RAM combo this winter because 4G of memory just isn't enough anymore. It's a shame - my CPU and the rest of my system are just fine.
Also note that both the New Yorker and the Economist cater to highly educated people.
Fixed that for you.
No, the computer is the cloud - the interface is all you take with you.
The growth is no longer in the PC sector. PC sales have been shrinking fast. In business, growth is everything. Nobody cares about your cash cows - it's the future gains that are what companies are measured by.
I think the idea is that bits are bits, and the voice should all be VOIP over your data connection, and you're charged just for the data which includes the voice.
I've long been thinking that content and delivery need to be separated in the Cable TV industry, and voice and data should be consolidated under the Cellular system as well as POTS.
The cable company or phone company or Google should provide a pipe to our house that we pay maintenance for, and TV channels, websites, VOIP, should all be purchased from separate companies.
If everything is digital, we should be charged strictly for the bits that flow in and out of our house, not separately for different classifications of data.
But they have the [coolest adapters!](http://youtu.be/nf5-Prx19ZM)
Yep, it was lying to me as far as I can tell.
Never could figure out how to save my game in the original. I bought it, tried to play a couple of times, but then whenever I needed to save and quit, I could never figure out how to do it, and wound up back at the beginning of the game every time. I gave up after about three hours of gameplay.
Sure about that?
This is a classic anticompetitive tactic - and the reason that Standard Oil was broken up in the 20th century.
Standard Oil would find a mom-and-pop gas station on a corner somewhere, set up shop across the street, and sell gas for below cost. Once they ran mom & pop out of business, they jacked up the prices of gas on that corner to well above cost.
And that, friends, is how the Rockefeller fortune was made.