How is that evil, let alone EVIL? To err is human. If a company or individual or bank or governmental body makes a mistake and overpays a person or company or bank or government body, the entity that was overpaid has a moral and legal responsibility to paying back the overage.
Also it's okay to be critical about what pictures you accept being associated to on facebook...
Even if you don't associate yourself with a picture on Facebook, a friend can still upload a picture of you and a current employer or coworker or prospective employer, may see it and recognize you. This can cause more trouble than it's worth.
I guess it depends on what activities you partake in in your off-hours, and how you'd feel about your boss or your coworkers or a hiring manager knowing about these activities and seeing them. I have a friend who works as a lawyer for the Federal government that deals with Federal government unions, and she noted that a frequent issue of misconduct or coworker complaint arises from social networking sites. A black coworker might see your Facebook page, click on a friend link, and see a picture of you at a Halloween party dressed in a KKK robe. Or a prudish coworker may see a picture of you at a strip club with your buddies. Etc., etc.
Small, yes (to a Londoner like me). But a "small town"? Once you add a specific noun, you have something to compare it with.
What complicates the comparison more is the word "town," as that word has different connotations in different parts of the world. If I'm not mistaken, in England a "town" is considered to be a place with a small population, and has a connotation of a rural setting. "Village" would be a good synonym.
In the US it depends on where you're from. In New England, for instance, the word "town" has a specific meaning that has nothing to do with the size of the place, but the way the local government is organized. And in the Midwestern part of the country (where I grew up, and where Iowa is part of) most states have a "city" or two and everything else is a town. E.g., in the state of Missouri I think everyone would agree that St. Louis and Kansas City are "cities" because they have an urban center, a skyline, and are the two most populous cities in the state. But there are other places with 100,000-200,000 people (Springfield and Columbia, for instance), that I've always heard referred to as towns.
It's all relative. If you grew up and lived most your life in New York City or Seoul or Tokyo or Mexico City, then 300,000 people spread out over an Iowa mile is indeed "small."
A couple years ago the PBS radio station did a bit on mass transit in my area (San Diego). IIRC, the average annual income of a bus rider in San Diego is $12,000. The median family income is north of $60,000.
(We also have a lightrail trolley system that has the most stops downtown, but also has spurs out to SDSU and some other more residential parts of the city, as well as a spur to the US/Mexican border. The average salary of a trolley rider was north of $40,000.)
It's also an economic and political issue. Even if you have a city with a high population density, it costs money to put in mass transit and it will require (most likely) tearing down some existing infrastructure. The cities in the US that have good mass transit are typically those that are "old" cities and had mass transit built with them as they grew (Chicago is a good example), or had, at one point, the political will to get such an ambitious project done (the BART in the Bay Area, for example).
I live in San Diego. The only mass transit options here are the bus, the trolley, and a commuter train line that runs from downtown to the north suburbs. I don't live in downtown but do live in a beach community with a high population density. While the bus has routes here, there's no way that the city could not afford to buy up the coastal property to put any other sort of mass transit in my neighborhood. Plus there would likely be a shit-ton of environmentalists who'd have something to say about disrupting the coastal environment.
Broadcast TV won't go away... but their programming is going to focus more and more on local news and cheap "pop" programming (like Idol).
And don't forget infomercials. I get seven channels over the ol' bunny ears. On a Sunday afternoon one station may have a football game on, PBS is showing this guy with crazy hair and a smarmy smile playing the violin to thousands of attendees, and the other five channels are showing between them two different infomercials from the possible set of: the px90 workout; the Jack Lerlaine POWER JUICER; Better Trades software for day trading, or whatever; or REIC Foreclosure Auction.
I envy you and others who can get good signals over the air. I live in an urbanized area (San Diego) and still (for a few more days, at least) am using the analog feed. It's a bit snowy on some channels, but watchable, and I can change between two channels very quickly (ideal for football season when there's two games on two different channels).
The digital signal, when it comes in, is very clear and has much better picture and sound. Problem is, aside from the PBS channel the quality is horrendous. It pixelates and pauses a couple of times every minute, on average. And switching between two channels takes a good two to three seconds after the switch is made but before the new channel appears.
I suspect the move to digital will curtail my TV viewing even more unless the stations dramatically improve their signals in the near future.
But Silverlight really seems like a solution in search of a problem.
Take my comments with a grain of salt as I've not used Silverlight at all, but as an experienced ASP.NET developer if I needed to add some RIA features to a web app I would start with Silverlight b/c I am already familiar with the technology stack (.NET, C#, MS Web Services, etc.). So even if it doesn't necessarily offer features above and beyond Flash (which I don't know if it does or doesn't), given that it isn't vastly inferior to Flash it would have a market among.NET developers, I imagine.
It's used in a number of other web properties. For example, the 2008 Summer Olympics website had hundreds of hours of coverage and highlights viewable via Silverlight. It was also used for online streaming of the Obama Innagural Events. It's also used for showing highlights, news conferences, game recaps, etc. on NBA.com.
Ok, you seem to be arguing against something I've never said. I've never said people and other animals are equal. I've just said that in my opinion there are situations where needs of some other animals should be given preference over needs of some people. You seem to think that all humans are unconditionally superior to any animals, and this I disagree with.
My involvement in this discussion started when Thiez said: "Anyway, you can kill people too and you as an individual are (obviously) not needed in the food chain, nor is your family. If I were you I'd hope others hold life in a higher regard than you do."
If you read my direct reply to Thiez I said: "While I'm not in favor of wanton destruction of animal life, and conservation is a goal we should strive toward, but your analogy is specious. A human life is superior to an animal's life." That has been my argument this entire discussion, not that humans are always superior to animals in every single way, but rather that human life is superior to animal life.
People then replied and tried to construct counter-examples. But my point was that it's very difficult to have a counter-example - namely, a person that thinks that human life is not superior to animal life - and have that hypothetical person be morally consistent. Do you disagree?
It would be hard for one who has the moral conviction that human life is not superior to animal life to live a morally consistent life.
Hardly. For example it would be perfectly consistent to consider any individual human more valuable than any individual other animal, while still thinking that a population of animals is more valuable than an individual human, and/or thinking that a species of animals is more valuable than a population of humans.
There are farmers who raise a population of chickens for eggs and meat for no one but themselves, an individual. If your moral code values a population of animals greater than an individual human, how can you sit there and not do something to put a stop to such injustices?
What are you talking about? The farmer is keeping those chickens alive, isn't he? If he stops maintaining them, all of them die... So assuming "cruelty to animals" stuff is in order and chickens aren't essentially tortured, I'd say that's rather a sweet deal for that group of chickens... Then they're much better off than any wild birds, who will be hungry much of the time, are plagued by parasites, and are likely to die in some nasty, excruciatingly painful way.
There are a lot of poor, starving folk in third-world nations who, in their current conditions, suffer from famine, disease, warfare, and other natural and social ills. How about we put them in a facility where they would be fed and have their other essential needs met. The only conditions is that scientists could extract fertilized eggs of the females for experiment and, when the adults reached a certain age they could be slaughtered and eaten. Also, when new children were born, they might be sold or sent to other facilities, separated from their parents at birth.
Such a notion seems absurd when put in the context of humans, but you argue that it's perfectly OK for chickens. Why is that? Clearly there is a moral difference in the eyes of humans between humans and animals. It's there in each and every one of us. And those who claim otherwise are either lying to themselves or are living a morally inconsistent life.
It would be hard for one who has the moral conviction that human life is not superior to animal life to live a morally consistent life.
Hardly. For example it would be perfectly consistent to consider any individual human more valuable than any individual other animal, while still thinking that a population of animals is more valuable than an individual human, and/or thinking that a species of animals is more valuable than a population of humans.
There are farmers who raise a population of chickens for eggs and meat for no one but themselves, an individual. If your moral code values a population of animals greater than an individual human, how can you sit there and not do something to put a stop to such injustices?
However, I was reminded of cultures that practice endocannibalism, which is an interesting concept when discussing the moral implications of cannibalism.
I think things like endocannibalism strengthens my point. I'm not saying that cannibalism is wrong, but rather that in order for one to hold humans and animals lives on the same plane, then the emotions one feels when eating a human should be synonymous to those when eating a cow. While I've not met anyone who practices endocannibalism, I think it's safe to say that the experience is not akin to eating a hamburger. Rather, (I assume) consuming part of the remains of your lost relative is a solemn, moving, grieving, emotional experience, whereas eating a hamburger is just lunch.
How about: human life is not superior to animal life, but my life is superior to all other life? Perfectly morally consistent. Not admirable, but consistent.
That is even harder to live a morally consistent life by, unless you're an utter sociopath. If human life is not superior to animal life (except for yours) then you should feel the same emotions when you eat a human vs. eat a cow, you would feel the same level of remorse when striking a raccoon with your car as you would running over a toddler.
Fair enough, but is a single human life superior to a complete species of mammals?
The answer is still that the human life is superior to the animal (or animals, as the case may be). The question as to whether we need to stop mass killing is still phrased in terms of human impact. I would say we need to stop someone from killing all cows, but not because I feel empathy for the cows that would die but b/c their mass slaughter would gravely impact humans around the world.
And I'd encourage the authorities to stop the mass extinctor by means that do not lead to his death.
I'm not pro-killing animals. I don't think it's right to torture animals or kill them wantonly. But I don't think it's wrong to put animals to work or to kill them humanely for our benefit, and I certainly hold the life of a human in higher regard than an animal, or many animals.
Depends who you ask. I content we are because we are capable of intelligent thought and self-awareness. Douglas Hofstadter would tell you it's because we have a larger "soul" than animals (see this interview). More religious folk might tell you it's because God created us in his image and made the animals for our service.
It would be hard for one who has the moral conviction that human life is not superior to animal life to live a morally consistent life. How could they justify eating meat, that would be tantamount to eating a fellow human's flesh. How could they justify hitting an animal while driving, and continuing on their way. That would be equivalent to hitting and injuring or killing another person and just driving along on your way. How would they defend eating crops plowed by cows - that would be akin to slave labor. (Granted, that's not much of a concern in today's mechanized farms.)
So I ask you: why isn't a human's life superior to an animal's?
Anyway, you can kill people too and you as an individual are (obviously) not needed in the food chain, nor is your family. If I were you I'd hope others hold life in a higher regard than you do.
While I'm not in favor of wanton destruction of animal life, and conservation is a goal we should strive toward, but your analogy is specious. A human life is superior to an animal's life.
And if you disagree, you best think twice before you swat a fly, eat a hamburger, or enjoy produce or goods that were harvested, in part, by the forced labor of animals.
I use SpamBayes to filter the spam as it enters my inbox. So the spam doesn't get into my Inbox, but I see that in a given day I receive 10-20 non-spam messages while my Junk folder gets 100-150 spams, or so.
That's why you treat a two-income household like a one-income one. Make sure your day-to-day necessities (food, shelter, clothing, utilities) are covered entirely by the lower of the two incomes, so in an emergency where one of the two "engines" fails, you still have enough power to stay flying.
That's great advice in practice, but can be hard to implement in reality. If others in society decide to dedicate two incomes to the necessities (rather than one, with one as a backup), then they're going to bid up the price on houses in good neighborhoods with good schools; they're going to pay more for colleges, driving up the price of public and private institutions; they're going to be able to shoulder higher health care premiums. As a result, you are now faced with a dilemma: either stick with your one income for the necessities, one income to save and live in a crummier neighborhood with poorer schools and go with substandard health care, or join in with the crowd and live life on the edge.
This may seem like hyperbole, and it is if you are upper middle class, but if you are making, say, $30,000, and your wife makes $25,000 a year, and you have two kids, it can be hard to put the necessities on just $30k.
Because only one car was needed. But once you start having a two-income family, you need two cars: one for dad to get to work, one for mom to get to work.
Most people actually SAVED for what they wanted and needed.
Agreed. If you look at the statistics you'll see that in 1981 the average family saved 10% of their income and spent 4% on servicing credit card debt. In 2001 the savings rate was negative and the average family spent over 12% of their income on credit card debt.
If most people of 2008 could live with what we had in 1970, they'd do just fine. Our expectations for our lifestyle won't allow that.
The problem isn't that people want to live like celebrities today, and that they were content with less in the past, it is that today families have to have two incomes to keep up and maintain a middle class lifestyle. If you actually look at the statistics, average families today have LESS disposable income than in the 1970s. (And it's that disposable income that's buying the TVs, going on vacation, etc.) Why is there less disposable income? Because the fixed costs have gotten a helluva lot higher. Mortgages are larger. Health insurance costs have skyrocketed, as have costs associated with education.
You ought to read The Two Income Trap, by Elizabeth Warren. It outlines why there is such a squeeze on the middle class these days, and the main reason is because of the higher cost of the middle class "essentials" (safe neighborhood, good schools, and health care). And one of the primary reasons these costs have spiraled out of control is because of the move to two-income families. This has added a lot more income that families can spend to bid up the prices of homes, of schools, and so on, but it puts strain on the family and makes a family more prone to catastrophe from a job loss, illness, etc. The authors argue that THAT is the reason we have seen such a rise in bankruptcy.
This would be like a family with the median of $50,000 having unsecured debt of $55,0000. How they would pay this off would be extremely unclear.
By declaring bankruptcy, of course. We'll just send an apology note to China and let them know that the dollar is no longer backed by our government. We now use the Amero.
Slashdot Mirror
What cave are you living in??? How about Microsoft Asks For a Refund From Laid-Off Workers? That's just EVIL.
How is that evil, let alone EVIL? To err is human. If a company or individual or bank or governmental body makes a mistake and overpays a person or company or bank or government body, the entity that was overpaid has a moral and legal responsibility to paying back the overage.
Also it's okay to be critical about what pictures you accept being associated to on facebook...
Even if you don't associate yourself with a picture on Facebook, a friend can still upload a picture of you and a current employer or coworker or prospective employer, may see it and recognize you. This can cause more trouble than it's worth.
I guess it depends on what activities you partake in in your off-hours, and how you'd feel about your boss or your coworkers or a hiring manager knowing about these activities and seeing them. I have a friend who works as a lawyer for the Federal government that deals with Federal government unions, and she noted that a frequent issue of misconduct or coworker complaint arises from social networking sites. A black coworker might see your Facebook page, click on a friend link, and see a picture of you at a Halloween party dressed in a KKK robe. Or a prudish coworker may see a picture of you at a strip club with your buddies. Etc., etc.
Small, yes (to a Londoner like me). But a "small town"? Once you add a specific noun, you have something to compare it with.
What complicates the comparison more is the word "town," as that word has different connotations in different parts of the world. If I'm not mistaken, in England a "town" is considered to be a place with a small population, and has a connotation of a rural setting. "Village" would be a good synonym.
In the US it depends on where you're from. In New England, for instance, the word "town" has a specific meaning that has nothing to do with the size of the place, but the way the local government is organized. And in the Midwestern part of the country (where I grew up, and where Iowa is part of) most states have a "city" or two and everything else is a town. E.g., in the state of Missouri I think everyone would agree that St. Louis and Kansas City are "cities" because they have an urban center, a skyline, and are the two most populous cities in the state. But there are other places with 100,000-200,000 people (Springfield and Columbia, for instance), that I've always heard referred to as towns.
Isn't the spoken language fun? :-)
It's all relative. If you grew up and lived most your life in New York City or Seoul or Tokyo or Mexico City, then 300,000 people spread out over an Iowa mile is indeed "small."
A couple years ago the PBS radio station did a bit on mass transit in my area (San Diego). IIRC, the average annual income of a bus rider in San Diego is $12,000. The median family income is north of $60,000.
(We also have a lightrail trolley system that has the most stops downtown, but also has spurs out to SDSU and some other more residential parts of the city, as well as a spur to the US/Mexican border. The average salary of a trolley rider was north of $40,000.)
This is a planning issue, not a population issue.
It's also an economic and political issue. Even if you have a city with a high population density, it costs money to put in mass transit and it will require (most likely) tearing down some existing infrastructure. The cities in the US that have good mass transit are typically those that are "old" cities and had mass transit built with them as they grew (Chicago is a good example), or had, at one point, the political will to get such an ambitious project done (the BART in the Bay Area, for example).
I live in San Diego. The only mass transit options here are the bus, the trolley, and a commuter train line that runs from downtown to the north suburbs. I don't live in downtown but do live in a beach community with a high population density. While the bus has routes here, there's no way that the city could not afford to buy up the coastal property to put any other sort of mass transit in my neighborhood. Plus there would likely be a shit-ton of environmentalists who'd have something to say about disrupting the coastal environment.
Broadcast TV won't go away... but their programming is going to focus more and more on local news and cheap "pop" programming (like Idol).
And don't forget infomercials. I get seven channels over the ol' bunny ears. On a Sunday afternoon one station may have a football game on, PBS is showing this guy with crazy hair and a smarmy smile playing the violin to thousands of attendees, and the other five channels are showing between them two different infomercials from the possible set of: the px90 workout; the Jack Lerlaine POWER JUICER; Better Trades software for day trading, or whatever; or REIC Foreclosure Auction.
I envy you and others who can get good signals over the air. I live in an urbanized area (San Diego) and still (for a few more days, at least) am using the analog feed. It's a bit snowy on some channels, but watchable, and I can change between two channels very quickly (ideal for football season when there's two games on two different channels).
The digital signal, when it comes in, is very clear and has much better picture and sound. Problem is, aside from the PBS channel the quality is horrendous. It pixelates and pauses a couple of times every minute, on average. And switching between two channels takes a good two to three seconds after the switch is made but before the new channel appears.
I suspect the move to digital will curtail my TV viewing even more unless the stations dramatically improve their signals in the near future.
But Silverlight really seems like a solution in search of a problem.
Take my comments with a grain of salt as I've not used Silverlight at all, but as an experienced ASP.NET developer if I needed to add some RIA features to a web app I would start with Silverlight b/c I am already familiar with the technology stack (.NET, C#, MS Web Services, etc.). So even if it doesn't necessarily offer features above and beyond Flash (which I don't know if it does or doesn't), given that it isn't vastly inferior to Flash it would have a market among .NET developers, I imagine.
It's used in a number of other web properties. For example, the 2008 Summer Olympics website had hundreds of hours of coverage and highlights viewable via Silverlight. It was also used for online streaming of the Obama Innagural Events. It's also used for showing highlights, news conferences, game recaps, etc. on NBA.com.
Ok, you seem to be arguing against something I've never said. I've never said people and other animals are equal. I've just said that in my opinion there are situations where needs of some other animals should be given preference over needs of some people. You seem to think that all humans are unconditionally superior to any animals, and this I disagree with.
My involvement in this discussion started when Thiez said: "Anyway, you can kill people too and you as an individual are (obviously) not needed in the food chain, nor is your family. If I were you I'd hope others hold life in a higher regard than you do."
If you read my direct reply to Thiez I said: "While I'm not in favor of wanton destruction of animal life, and conservation is a goal we should strive toward, but your analogy is specious. A human life is superior to an animal's life." That has been my argument this entire discussion, not that humans are always superior to animals in every single way, but rather that human life is superior to animal life.
People then replied and tried to construct counter-examples. But my point was that it's very difficult to have a counter-example - namely, a person that thinks that human life is not superior to animal life - and have that hypothetical person be morally consistent. Do you disagree?
It would be hard for one who has the moral conviction that human life is not superior to animal life to live a morally consistent life.
Hardly. For example it would be perfectly consistent to consider any individual human more valuable than any individual other animal, while still thinking that a population of animals is more valuable than an individual human, and/or thinking that a species of animals is more valuable than a population of humans.
There are farmers who raise a population of chickens for eggs and meat for no one but themselves, an individual. If your moral code values a population of animals greater than an individual human, how can you sit there and not do something to put a stop to such injustices?
What are you talking about? The farmer is keeping those chickens alive, isn't he? If he stops maintaining them, all of them die... So assuming "cruelty to animals" stuff is in order and chickens aren't essentially tortured, I'd say that's rather a sweet deal for that group of chickens... Then they're much better off than any wild birds, who will be hungry much of the time, are plagued by parasites, and are likely to die in some nasty, excruciatingly painful way.
There are a lot of poor, starving folk in third-world nations who, in their current conditions, suffer from famine, disease, warfare, and other natural and social ills. How about we put them in a facility where they would be fed and have their other essential needs met. The only conditions is that scientists could extract fertilized eggs of the females for experiment and, when the adults reached a certain age they could be slaughtered and eaten. Also, when new children were born, they might be sold or sent to other facilities, separated from their parents at birth.
Such a notion seems absurd when put in the context of humans, but you argue that it's perfectly OK for chickens. Why is that? Clearly there is a moral difference in the eyes of humans between humans and animals. It's there in each and every one of us. And those who claim otherwise are either lying to themselves or are living a morally inconsistent life.
It would be hard for one who has the moral conviction that human life is not superior to animal life to live a morally consistent life.
Hardly. For example it would be perfectly consistent to consider any individual human more valuable than any individual other animal, while still thinking that a population of animals is more valuable than an individual human, and/or thinking that a species of animals is more valuable than a population of humans.
There are farmers who raise a population of chickens for eggs and meat for no one but themselves, an individual. If your moral code values a population of animals greater than an individual human, how can you sit there and not do something to put a stop to such injustices?
However, I was reminded of cultures that practice endocannibalism, which is an interesting concept when discussing the moral implications of cannibalism.
I think things like endocannibalism strengthens my point. I'm not saying that cannibalism is wrong, but rather that in order for one to hold humans and animals lives on the same plane, then the emotions one feels when eating a human should be synonymous to those when eating a cow. While I've not met anyone who practices endocannibalism, I think it's safe to say that the experience is not akin to eating a hamburger. Rather, (I assume) consuming part of the remains of your lost relative is a solemn, moving, grieving, emotional experience, whereas eating a hamburger is just lunch.
How about: human life is not superior to animal life, but my life is superior to all other life? Perfectly morally consistent. Not admirable, but consistent.
That is even harder to live a morally consistent life by, unless you're an utter sociopath. If human life is not superior to animal life (except for yours) then you should feel the same emotions when you eat a human vs. eat a cow, you would feel the same level of remorse when striking a raccoon with your car as you would running over a toddler.
Fair enough, but is a single human life superior to a complete species of mammals?
The answer is still that the human life is superior to the animal (or animals, as the case may be). The question as to whether we need to stop mass killing is still phrased in terms of human impact. I would say we need to stop someone from killing all cows, but not because I feel empathy for the cows that would die but b/c their mass slaughter would gravely impact humans around the world.
And I'd encourage the authorities to stop the mass extinctor by means that do not lead to his death.
I'm not pro-killing animals. I don't think it's right to torture animals or kill them wantonly. But I don't think it's wrong to put animals to work or to kill them humanely for our benefit, and I certainly hold the life of a human in higher regard than an animal, or many animals.
A human life is superior to an animal's life.
Why?
Depends who you ask. I content we are because we are capable of intelligent thought and self-awareness. Douglas Hofstadter would tell you it's because we have a larger "soul" than animals (see this interview). More religious folk might tell you it's because God created us in his image and made the animals for our service.
It would be hard for one who has the moral conviction that human life is not superior to animal life to live a morally consistent life. How could they justify eating meat, that would be tantamount to eating a fellow human's flesh. How could they justify hitting an animal while driving, and continuing on their way. That would be equivalent to hitting and injuring or killing another person and just driving along on your way. How would they defend eating crops plowed by cows - that would be akin to slave labor. (Granted, that's not much of a concern in today's mechanized farms.)
So I ask you: why isn't a human's life superior to an animal's?
Anyway, you can kill people too and you as an individual are (obviously) not needed in the food chain, nor is your family. If I were you I'd hope others hold life in a higher regard than you do.
While I'm not in favor of wanton destruction of animal life, and conservation is a goal we should strive toward, but your analogy is specious. A human life is superior to an animal's life.
And if you disagree, you best think twice before you swat a fly, eat a hamburger, or enjoy produce or goods that were harvested, in part, by the forced labor of animals.
I use SpamBayes to filter the spam as it enters my inbox. So the spam doesn't get into my Inbox, but I see that in a given day I receive 10-20 non-spam messages while my Junk folder gets 100-150 spams, or so.
What I wouldn't give for one out of three e-mails not being spam. The ratio for me is more 97 out of every 100 e-mails are spam.
That's why you treat a two-income household like a one-income one. Make sure your day-to-day necessities (food, shelter, clothing, utilities) are covered entirely by the lower of the two incomes, so in an emergency where one of the two "engines" fails, you still have enough power to stay flying.
That's great advice in practice, but can be hard to implement in reality. If others in society decide to dedicate two incomes to the necessities (rather than one, with one as a backup), then they're going to bid up the price on houses in good neighborhoods with good schools; they're going to pay more for colleges, driving up the price of public and private institutions; they're going to be able to shoulder higher health care premiums. As a result, you are now faced with a dilemma: either stick with your one income for the necessities, one income to save and live in a crummier neighborhood with poorer schools and go with substandard health care, or join in with the crowd and live life on the edge.
This may seem like hyperbole, and it is if you are upper middle class, but if you are making, say, $30,000, and your wife makes $25,000 a year, and you have two kids, it can be hard to put the necessities on just $30k.
In 1970 many households only had one car.
Because only one car was needed. But once you start having a two-income family, you need two cars: one for dad to get to work, one for mom to get to work.
Most people actually SAVED for what they wanted and needed.
Agreed. If you look at the statistics you'll see that in 1981 the average family saved 10% of their income and spent 4% on servicing credit card debt. In 2001 the savings rate was negative and the average family spent over 12% of their income on credit card debt.
If most people of 2008 could live with what we had in 1970, they'd do just fine. Our expectations for our lifestyle won't allow that.
The problem isn't that people want to live like celebrities today, and that they were content with less in the past, it is that today families have to have two incomes to keep up and maintain a middle class lifestyle. If you actually look at the statistics, average families today have LESS disposable income than in the 1970s. (And it's that disposable income that's buying the TVs, going on vacation, etc.) Why is there less disposable income? Because the fixed costs have gotten a helluva lot higher. Mortgages are larger. Health insurance costs have skyrocketed, as have costs associated with education.
You ought to read The Two Income Trap, by Elizabeth Warren. It outlines why there is such a squeeze on the middle class these days, and the main reason is because of the higher cost of the middle class "essentials" (safe neighborhood, good schools, and health care). And one of the primary reasons these costs have spiraled out of control is because of the move to two-income families. This has added a lot more income that families can spend to bid up the prices of homes, of schools, and so on, but it puts strain on the family and makes a family more prone to catastrophe from a job loss, illness, etc. The authors argue that THAT is the reason we have seen such a rise in bankruptcy.
If you prefer watching instead of reading, check out this lecture by the book's author: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akVL7QY0S8A
Why stop at base 16? We could use base 100,000,000,000,000, then we'd need one and only one digit now and for the foreseeable future.
This would be like a family with the median of $50,000 having unsecured debt of $55,0000. How they would pay this off would be extremely unclear.
By declaring bankruptcy, of course. We'll just send an apology note to China and let them know that the dollar is no longer backed by our government. We now use the Amero.
But political party terminology changes over time. For instance, Abe Lincoln was a Republican, but he didn't hate black people.