Don't you worry about what the education system has done for me. What people should be worried about is that morons like you are actually working as teachers in the US education system:
Left-wing extremist. Expertise in critical theory and post-WWII literature. Published in six languages, none of which are Esperanto, unfortunately.
The biggest single source of political donations has traditionally been the teachers unions. This has resulted in terrible corruption of the political process and lousy educational outcomes for kids, placing the personal interests of teachers ahead of those of children. The fact that in recent years, supporters for charter schools and private donations have managed to reach similar contributions is a glimmer of hope. But even money aside, teachers' unions still have way too much political power, and charter schools are really not a good solution either.
If they asked "Would you buy a smart gun?" they were in effect asking "Would you buy a smart gun [assuming it works nearly perfectly and doesn't cost significantly more than a regular gun.]"
The question they should be asking is: "Would you prefer a smart gun if it costs than a regular gun and fails to work with high probability under real-world conditions." In particular, the idea that anything that uses a fingerprint sensor can be a reliable tool for self-defense is a joke; even the best fingerprint sensors fail frequently when hands are dirty, cold, sweaty, or dry.
The fact that these "researchers" aren't specific about what they asked and didn't address questions of cost or reliability in their press release shows that they are dishonest, manipulative, and partisan. Also, the idea that a "web based survey" is "nationally representative" is a joke.
The argument was that remove the glyphosate use, if it is dangerous against removing the opportunity to use it by avoiding use of GMO plants tolerating it.
Yes, that's what I'm saying: people lost the argument for prohibiting glyphosate use, so they are trying to introduce these restrictions by badmouthing GMOs. Thanks for at least admitting that kind of dishonest strategy. And what's particularly evil about that strategy is that it threatens lots of GMO plants that are clearly beneficial and could help alleviate malnutrition around the globe.
Yeah, holy Monsanto did research that their product indeed is OK, other research questioning safety was made laughable, more research did not found anything and... drum roll, it's safe - who is pulling the strings on the US bribed "democratic" political show, trust anyone that you are not taken for a ride?
There are numerous research studies, both experimental and epidemiological; you can look at them yourself. Whatever effect glyphosate may have at the concentrations found in food, it is so small that it is hard to measure. For practical purposes, that means it's not worth worrying about.
If you are still worried about glyphosate residues in food, you have the option of buying organic foods. If enough people do that, glyphosate use will cease. But it is arrogant, selfish, and stupid of you to try to manipulate other people into buying one or the other product because you happen to be scared by it. And your kind of misbehavior is at the root of the "bribed 'democratic' political show" in the US: look in the mirror, you're the culprit.
The probability of that happening is about 0.007 percent. "Basically it shouldn't happen randomly," Brown says. "So we thought something else must be shaping these orbits."
What they did was perform a bunch of simulations and found that this combination of six orbits occurred with that frequency by chance. Does that mean "the probability of that happening are 0.007 percent"? I don't think that's true. The simulation uses "that happening" in the sense of "given six randomly chosen orbits, what is the probability of 'that happening'", but the question they are attempting to answer is "given the large, biased sample of orbits we have in our catalog, what is the probability of 'that happening' in a subset of them". The latter probability is much higher than the former, but not knowable with any precision. By analogy, the probability of rolling snake eyes is 1:36. But the probability of seeing snake eyes during an evening of playing dice is close to one. The simulations Brown performed are reasonable and interesting. His interpretation of the probabilities, however, is sloppy.
Remove Roundup-Ready GMO crops and the amount of Roundup use in food crops will shrink significantly because the crops need to be shielded from Roundup spray. Ergo...
Ergo what? Which part of "both the US and the EU regulatory agencies have determined that it is, in fact, not toxic as used in agriculture and permit its continued use" did you not understand?
The true hazard from GMO crops lies elsewhere, in it's putting control of the world's food supply into a small number of very powerful corporations and the possible dire consequences for being able to feed the global population in case of a calamity that made those GMO seeds unavailable.
You'll just have to get used to the fact that living in a modern, prosperous world means that you are dependent on a huge, interconnected web of trade, business relationships, and corporations, as well as lots of intellectual property and patents.
GMOs ought to be among the least of your worries. Selling GMOs doesn't prevent people from cultivating traditional seeds. In addition, patents on GMO plants run out and afterwards the plants become public domain. So the idea that GMOs create a perpetual dependency on a few big corporations is pure fiction. There are thousands of patents whose reckless use would be a much bigger threat to worldwide food safety than some GMO crops; of course, corporations don't do such stupid things anyway because they are reliably profit driven. That is, unlike mindless self-proclaimed do-gooders like you, a corporation isn't going to try to starve other people through sanctions because there is no profit in it: "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest." And if scurrilous of a patent were a real threat, governments can (and do) invalidate it.
Let me quote your own words back at you: "See, it's shitstains like you that cause the problems. If we could just get the bigots to shut the fuck up and quit agitating everyone maybe we could fix some things". Your own words fit you perfectly.
White employees accounted for 50.6%, Asian for 42.1%
So, what are those numbers even "supposed" to be? The "white" percentage is way below US population averages, and likely between US customer demographics. Depending on how big Apple is in Asia, the current statistics may well represent Apple's worldwide customer base.
Can some progressive expert in the calculus of intersectionality and race explain what the percentages ought to be and why?
Tools are judged by their ability to do the job repeatedly and without fail.
Not necessarily. If a tool is cheap enough, it becomes essentially disposable. Many things that used to be expensive and require expensive repairs are now simply thrown away when they are worn or obsolete.
Its when you use it to introduce resistance to toxic chemicals that you start to have a real problem. That resistance not only allows to overuse of toxic chemicals (to the point of saturating the local environment),
Presumably, you are referring to glyphosate resistant crops. If you think glyphosate (or some other GMO-related chemical) is "toxic", why are you arguing against GMOs and not what is actually toxic? Oh, yes... because both the US and the EU regulatory agencies have determined that it is, in fact, not toxic as used in agriculture and permit its continued use. Now, this issue may be revisited by the courts, but until then, the science is settled, at least from a legal point of view.
you also introduce a form of addiction where the farmer becomes dependent on the chemical. This addiction dooms the farmer to a form of indentured servitude and will eventually result in their exiting the market due to unsustainability
Saying that farmers become "addicted" to glyphosate is disingenuous and manipulative. What happens is that GMOs actually result in lower costs and higher yields, so farmers that don't use it can't compete (unless they manage to sell into the "organic" market). In different words, what you are actually saying is that GMOs and glyphosate work as advertised.
Face it, you have lost the scientific and economic arguments. GMOs and glyphosates are generally considered safe and they are (by your own reasoning) effective at what they promise to do, namely increase productivity.
Now, having said that, I am perfectly sympathetic to wanting to eat "natural" vegetables without any GMO or herbicides involved in their production. But unlike you, I don't fool myself into believing that that is a rational preference; it's the same kind of preference I have for natural fiber over synthetics, and wood over plastic. And when I indulge in that preference, I'm willing to pay the higher price for the vegetables myself, instead of trying to bamboozle others with fake scientific arguments about "toxicity" and "addiction".
However, if the median is staying the same, at least half the people aren't benefiting no matter how you define it.
No, that is mathematically false. The median can stay the same even if almost everybody's income increases significantly.
You seem to feel that the median household income can stay steady, but not be bad because it mixes some things up.
I don't "feel" anything about the median, I'm simply saying that your statement is mathematically false. But your error in understanding the median is only one of your errors, and a comparatively minor one compared to the others.
Sure, if I wanted to spend the $2.5K my first computer cost, I'd get a lot better one now, and I'm not figuring constant dollars, but I don't spend that much on computers any more, and that's why it's relatively unimportant what computer economics do.
The fact that a $500 computer dollar will suffice now where you used to pay $2500 means that you have $2000 extra dollars to spend on other stuff; that's in addition to the fact that the $500 computer is still a couple of orders of magnitude more powerful than the $2500 computer used to be.
My current house is a lot better than the one I grew up in, but what really matters is where the rent on an X-bedroom apartment is going.
I assume what you are trying to get at is that the minimum cost of having any kind of dwelling hasn't gone down the same way costs for computers have gone down. The same is true for cars, airline tickets, and education. The reason for that isn't that evil billionaires are hogging all the money, it's that government mandates amount to setting a minimum price for those things. That is, not only is the entry-level house you can buy today bigger and safer than the one you might have bought 50 years ago, government has taken away the option of buying the same house you would have bought 50 years ago, which would be much cheaper today.
The point of giving everyone a good start in life is to give everyone a solid shot at success. However, right now we take some kids and keep them in poverty without real hope of getting rich. Some people not having the same chance to succeed as other people is bad.
You're confusing cause and effect. Whether kids get a good start in life depends primarily on the parents. First, it depends on the environment parents create for their children and what they teach them. But it also depends on parents delaying having kids until they are economically capable to provide for them. Parents that have kids without planning for them or being ready for them will give them a bad start, and, generally, no amount of money you give them is going to change that. Economically, if you subsidize single parenthood, premature parenthood, joblessness or minimum wage jobs, you simply get more of that. And that's exactly what decades of failed anti-poverty programs and massive increases in spending on education in the US have shown that. Government spending does not transform people into better people, it doesn't give them a short term boost to get out of some temporary problems, it transforms them into long term, inter-generational dependents.
To put this into perspective, my parents started out dirt poor, and I grew up (outside the US) far below a US middle class income, yet I probably get a "better start" than most Americans. Giving kids a good start is simply not a question of money.
However, inequality per se isn't necessarily bad. Poverty is bad.
Poverty comes in two measures: relative and absolute. The US has pretty much eliminated absolute poverty. Relative poverty, on the other hand, can never be eliminated; it's a mathematical impossibility: there is always going to be a bottom 25% and a top 1%.
Every one of us living in the first world is privileged.
You are now rich and privileged relative to the the average American.
Yet, I want society to have the benefits of an improved transportation system that would benefit all people, rich and poor alike.
No, what you want is for government to provide comfortable, high tech transportation that matches the preferences of people like you.
I still don't see how any claims of privilege are relevant.
It's relevant because it explains why you can delude yourself into believing that the high tech boondoggle you advocate "benefits all people".
The claim was that buses don't need massive federal spending, and you have failed to provide any evidence for that whatsoever. I, on the contrary, have provided evidence that they are receiving it
Actually, your own data supports my point: there are about a million passenger buses on the roads today in the US. You point to annual federal spending of about $1.3 billion, which purchases about 3000 buses, and that's not counting operating costs. Obviously, federal funding is a drop in the bucket.
The first place we should implement PRT is within cities,
PRT has failed everywhere it has been tried. And it costs as much per mile as half a dozen passenger buses. It's a dead horse. It's the kind of stupid boondoggle privileged techno nerds like you like while showing off to their buddies how socially conscious and concerned they are.
Since most places in the USA already have bus systems that shit all over the poor in a broad variety of ways
If your premise is that we should have publicly financed transportation, then the only choice really is buses. Yes, it's not a nice way to travel, but it's comparatively cheap and it gets people who have no other choice from point A to point B.
while siphoning money out of everyone's pockets, and which are funded at least in part by federal taxation
And an even better solution is not to "siphon money out of everyone's pocket" and get rid of all public funding for public transit. If need be, increase welfare and unemployment insurance to help poor people get cars.
Europe's economic "growth" is anemic at best: http://tinyurl.com/j7nyh8a And that's not even taking into account the widespread misrepresentations in European economic statistics.
Journalism used to be effectively a highly controlled one-way channel where a small club of well-connected intellectuals would disseminate their political, social, and economic views. And since the masses had no way of responding, pretty much everything these people said went unchallenged. Even when the members of that club disagreed with each other, they usually didn't take the gloves of. And since they controlled access to the club and competition was difficult, they were highly paid too.
These days, any article online is analyzed, picked apart and criticized the minute it goes up on some newspaper web site. In addition, publishing news has gotten so cheap that there is tons of competition and the news cartel has been broken up.
And you know what? We are a lot better off because of the demise of newspapers and professional journalists. The incentive structure of professional journalists has never been in the interests of the people; their primary interest used to be to make their editors and their influential pals in politics happy.
How does that differ from bus stops? People can't afford to move closer to them, and they don't put them where the poorest people can use them.
Light rail costs tens of millions of dollars per mile and takes many years (often decades) to plan and deploy. It also requires a large, stable ridership to break even. Light rail vehicles cost several million dollars a piece. A bus route can be put in anywhere on short notice and a bus costs $300000. And modern buses are often more comfortable than light rail (as long as they aren't operated by public agencies).
I've never promoted light rail, it is shit for the same reasons as buses.
PRT is "shit" for the same reason light rail is: it costs millions of dollars per mile (cheaper than light rail but still expensive) and years of planning. But unlike light rail, it's never actually been successfully deployed as a large scale transit system, and the few places that had trial deployments have effectively dropped after several years of trying it.
As a kid, I had to walk miles to a bus stop.
I get it: you didn't have a lot of money as a kid. Join the club. What matters is what you obviously are today, namely someone who thinks society owes him a comfortable subsidized automated ride in a high tech vehicle. And you don't really give a fuck that that means that other people will "have to walk miles to a bus stop", because that's what wasting money on your favorite high tech boondoggles amounts to.
Eventually, there will be something like "PRT", but it will come in the form of wheeled electric vehicles with automated drivers and Uber-like hailing apps, together with fleets of electric buses for high volume routes and commuting, largely privately operated. The days of putting in any form of rail infrastructure are over.
The reality is that half of our military spending, none of which currently goes to fund or support troops, would pay for universal healthcare, fund social security and a whole bunch of other programs
Current US Medicare/Medicaid spending alone is about $1.2 trillion / year, or about $3900 / American / year. That is more than the UK spends per person per year in their public and private system combined ($3600). So, the reality is that Medicare/Medicaid alone would pay for universal health care in the US if it was spent properly. The idea that any additional spending is needed to give the US universal health care is therefore false.
To be crystal clear about this: the problem with US health care isn't that we don't spend enough money on health care, it's that services in the US are far more expensive than elsewhere, largely because doctors, hospitals, and drug companies have lobbied Congress for massive handouts.
I've ridden the bus. The bus is shit. That it is better than walking is not an endorsement.
Incidentally, I took buses everywhere until my mid-20s. Neighborhoods closer to light rail or train stations were simply too expensive. So spare me your sob stories. And it's pricks like you that lobbied cities to waste money on light rail for the more expensive neighborhoods instead of expanding their bus lines to help everybody.
Median household income in constant dollars has been fairly steady for quite a few years now, while productivity went up.
That is literally true, although you seem to have no understanding what it actually means.
In other words, inequality of wealth in the US means that relatively few people benefit when we become wealthier
That's nonsense in so many ways. First of all, you compare median household income to average productivity. And a stagnating median doesn't mean that "relatively few people benefit"; in fact, we know who has benefited, namely a substantial part of the middle class has increased its incomes significantly, and the way the median works, that can happen without any decrease in the incomes of people below the median. In addition, household demographics have changed dramatically, so comparing "household incomes" over time is meaningless, and "constant dollars" is likewise a meaningless comparison of "benefit", since even in constant dollars, the "same" amount of money buys much better stuff today than it did a few decades ago. And to the degree that incomes haven't grown as much as they should, that's largely the fault of government redistribution and regulation.
Education should reduce inequality, by giving everyone a good start in life.
Quite the opposite. There is a wide range of genetic potentials people inherit from their parents. When education is limited, people with good genetic potential don't have much opportunity to advance much beyond people with much less potential. As education and job opportunities increase, people more and more realize their full potential, and since that potential has a very wide spread, inequality increases.
Why is it that people readily accept genetic differences when it comes to height or weight or aptitude for sports, but then assume that with the right education, everybody can be a Steve Jobs or Thomas Edison? Do you also think that with the right education you can turn a Danny Devito into a LeBron James?
For now. How would things be in eg America if the government had to balance its budget?
EU members are forced to balance their budgets, and countries like Ireland and Germany have improved their economies as a result. Countries like Greece and Spain are suffering not because they are forced to balance their budgets, but because they didn't balance their budgets soon enough.
Probably be done through extreme austerity
No, it could simply be done by cutting government programs back to the levels of a couple of decades ago, cutting the military, and getting rid of all those "stimulus programs", which are really just crony capitalist handouts.
and all those Walmart workers would suddenly have a hell of a time making ends meet without government help.
So you are saying that you favor government subsidizing Walmart workers? Or what?
That's not inconsiderable, but calling me "privileged" like I'm unusually so is beyond ridiculous.
I didn't say that you grew up privileged, I'm saying that you are privileged now: a white middle class American IT worker living in a small town (according to your online resume at least). You have evidently perfectly assimilated into the American middle class and its sense of entitlement and the gigantic chip on its shoulder.
Bullshit, and also, bull fucking shit.
The fact that the federal government hands out a lot of money for buses doesn't mean that it needs to do so; anymore than the fact that the federal government spends $1500 for a toilet seat means that toilet seats actually need to cost $1500.
The end of communism, better education, and increasing use of technology all widen inequality. They also make people richer. In free, industrial societies, increasing inequality correlates with overall increase in wealth; and while groups benefit disproportionately, everybody still benefits.
If they want to cut the death toll, the answer is obvious: spend the money on public transportation.
The answer is obvious and wrong. Even in places like Germany, France, and the UK, the countries with the most highly developed public transportation systems, 85% or more of passenger miles are traveled by passenger car (and that number is increasing over time), and less than 10% by rail. http://tinyurl.com/zw7bdos So, even if we managed to achieve the same public transit ridership as, say, Germany, it would decrease the number of fatalities by maybe 10% (to get a better estimate, you have to take into split between long distance/local trips, fatality rates of public transportation, etc.). But that would be after massive spending and continuing subsidies, giving a lousy return on investment in terms of lives saved.
(Incidentally, the US has the biggest rail system in the world and it is utilized nearly 100% for freight. If you were to focus more on passenger transport by long distance rail, you'd end up pushing freight traffic to the roads.)
I prefer PRT (e.g. Skytran [wikipedia.org]), because it offers all of the common practical advantages of automobiles yet also uses the best and most highly-developed technology for automated vehicle guidance: rail.
PRT is a wonderful boondoggle for privileged middle-class snobs like you. However, when it comes to cost-efficient, sensible urban transportation that actually helps people who need public transit, buses are the right choice. Of course, they are cheap and unglamorous, so people like you don't support them. Buses also don't need massive federal spending.
Agree, except that it's a non-renewable resource: once a cemetery, always a cemetery
Bullshit. Uranium is a non-renewable resource. A cemetery is just land, no more and no less of a "non-renewable resource" than other land, it just happens to be owned by a trust right now, but that can change.
Stupid fear mongering.
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The biggest single source of political donations has traditionally been the teachers unions. This has resulted in terrible corruption of the political process and lousy educational outcomes for kids, placing the personal interests of teachers ahead of those of children. The fact that in recent years, supporters for charter schools and private donations have managed to reach similar contributions is a glimmer of hope. But even money aside, teachers' unions still have way too much political power, and charter schools are really not a good solution either.
The question they should be asking is: "Would you prefer a smart gun if it costs than a regular gun and fails to work with high probability under real-world conditions." In particular, the idea that anything that uses a fingerprint sensor can be a reliable tool for self-defense is a joke; even the best fingerprint sensors fail frequently when hands are dirty, cold, sweaty, or dry.
The fact that these "researchers" aren't specific about what they asked and didn't address questions of cost or reliability in their press release shows that they are dishonest, manipulative, and partisan. Also, the idea that a "web based survey" is "nationally representative" is a joke.
Yes, that's what I'm saying: people lost the argument for prohibiting glyphosate use, so they are trying to introduce these restrictions by badmouthing GMOs. Thanks for at least admitting that kind of dishonest strategy. And what's particularly evil about that strategy is that it threatens lots of GMO plants that are clearly beneficial and could help alleviate malnutrition around the globe.
There are numerous research studies, both experimental and epidemiological; you can look at them yourself. Whatever effect glyphosate may have at the concentrations found in food, it is so small that it is hard to measure. For practical purposes, that means it's not worth worrying about. If you are still worried about glyphosate residues in food, you have the option of buying organic foods. If enough people do that, glyphosate use will cease. But it is arrogant, selfish, and stupid of you to try to manipulate other people into buying one or the other product because you happen to be scared by it. And your kind of misbehavior is at the root of the "bribed 'democratic' political show" in the US: look in the mirror, you're the culprit.
What they did was perform a bunch of simulations and found that this combination of six orbits occurred with that frequency by chance. Does that mean "the probability of that happening are 0.007 percent"? I don't think that's true. The simulation uses "that happening" in the sense of "given six randomly chosen orbits, what is the probability of 'that happening'", but the question they are attempting to answer is "given the large, biased sample of orbits we have in our catalog, what is the probability of 'that happening' in a subset of them". The latter probability is much higher than the former, but not knowable with any precision. By analogy, the probability of rolling snake eyes is 1:36. But the probability of seeing snake eyes during an evening of playing dice is close to one. The simulations Brown performed are reasonable and interesting. His interpretation of the probabilities, however, is sloppy.
Ergo what? Which part of "both the US and the EU regulatory agencies have determined that it is, in fact, not toxic as used in agriculture and permit its continued use" did you not understand?
You'll just have to get used to the fact that living in a modern, prosperous world means that you are dependent on a huge, interconnected web of trade, business relationships, and corporations, as well as lots of intellectual property and patents.
GMOs ought to be among the least of your worries. Selling GMOs doesn't prevent people from cultivating traditional seeds. In addition, patents on GMO plants run out and afterwards the plants become public domain. So the idea that GMOs create a perpetual dependency on a few big corporations is pure fiction. There are thousands of patents whose reckless use would be a much bigger threat to worldwide food safety than some GMO crops; of course, corporations don't do such stupid things anyway because they are reliably profit driven. That is, unlike mindless self-proclaimed do-gooders like you, a corporation isn't going to try to starve other people through sanctions because there is no profit in it: "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest." And if scurrilous of a patent were a real threat, governments can (and do) invalidate it.
Let me quote your own words back at you: "See, it's shitstains like you that cause the problems. If we could just get the bigots to shut the fuck up and quit agitating everyone maybe we could fix some things". Your own words fit you perfectly.
So, what are those numbers even "supposed" to be? The "white" percentage is way below US population averages, and likely between US customer demographics. Depending on how big Apple is in Asia, the current statistics may well represent Apple's worldwide customer base.
Can some progressive expert in the calculus of intersectionality and race explain what the percentages ought to be and why?
Not necessarily. If a tool is cheap enough, it becomes essentially disposable. Many things that used to be expensive and require expensive repairs are now simply thrown away when they are worn or obsolete.
Presumably, you are referring to glyphosate resistant crops. If you think glyphosate (or some other GMO-related chemical) is "toxic", why are you arguing against GMOs and not what is actually toxic? Oh, yes... because both the US and the EU regulatory agencies have determined that it is, in fact, not toxic as used in agriculture and permit its continued use. Now, this issue may be revisited by the courts, but until then, the science is settled, at least from a legal point of view.
Saying that farmers become "addicted" to glyphosate is disingenuous and manipulative. What happens is that GMOs actually result in lower costs and higher yields, so farmers that don't use it can't compete (unless they manage to sell into the "organic" market). In different words, what you are actually saying is that GMOs and glyphosate work as advertised.
Face it, you have lost the scientific and economic arguments. GMOs and glyphosates are generally considered safe and they are (by your own reasoning) effective at what they promise to do, namely increase productivity.
Now, having said that, I am perfectly sympathetic to wanting to eat "natural" vegetables without any GMO or herbicides involved in their production. But unlike you, I don't fool myself into believing that that is a rational preference; it's the same kind of preference I have for natural fiber over synthetics, and wood over plastic. And when I indulge in that preference, I'm willing to pay the higher price for the vegetables myself, instead of trying to bamboozle others with fake scientific arguments about "toxicity" and "addiction".
No, that is mathematically false. The median can stay the same even if almost everybody's income increases significantly.
I don't "feel" anything about the median, I'm simply saying that your statement is mathematically false. But your error in understanding the median is only one of your errors, and a comparatively minor one compared to the others.
The fact that a $500 computer dollar will suffice now where you used to pay $2500 means that you have $2000 extra dollars to spend on other stuff; that's in addition to the fact that the $500 computer is still a couple of orders of magnitude more powerful than the $2500 computer used to be.
I assume what you are trying to get at is that the minimum cost of having any kind of dwelling hasn't gone down the same way costs for computers have gone down. The same is true for cars, airline tickets, and education. The reason for that isn't that evil billionaires are hogging all the money, it's that government mandates amount to setting a minimum price for those things. That is, not only is the entry-level house you can buy today bigger and safer than the one you might have bought 50 years ago, government has taken away the option of buying the same house you would have bought 50 years ago, which would be much cheaper today.
You're confusing cause and effect. Whether kids get a good start in life depends primarily on the parents. First, it depends on the environment parents create for their children and what they teach them. But it also depends on parents delaying having kids until they are economically capable to provide for them. Parents that have kids without planning for them or being ready for them will give them a bad start, and, generally, no amount of money you give them is going to change that. Economically, if you subsidize single parenthood, premature parenthood, joblessness or minimum wage jobs, you simply get more of that. And that's exactly what decades of failed anti-poverty programs and massive increases in spending on education in the US have shown that. Government spending does not transform people into better people, it doesn't give them a short term boost to get out of some temporary problems, it transforms them into long term, inter-generational dependents. To put this into perspective, my parents started out dirt poor, and I grew up (outside the US) far below a US middle class income, yet I probably get a "better start" than most Americans. Giving kids a good start is simply not a question of money.
Poverty comes in two measures: relative and absolute. The US has pretty much eliminated absolute poverty. Relative poverty, on the other hand, can never be eliminated; it's a mathematical impossibility: there is always going to be a bottom 25% and a top 1%.
Now, what about those campaign promises he made and has yet to deliver on?
You are now rich and privileged relative to the the average American.
No, what you want is for government to provide comfortable, high tech transportation that matches the preferences of people like you.
It's relevant because it explains why you can delude yourself into believing that the high tech boondoggle you advocate "benefits all people".
Actually, your own data supports my point: there are about a million passenger buses on the roads today in the US. You point to annual federal spending of about $1.3 billion, which purchases about 3000 buses, and that's not counting operating costs. Obviously, federal funding is a drop in the bucket.
PRT has failed everywhere it has been tried. And it costs as much per mile as half a dozen passenger buses. It's a dead horse. It's the kind of stupid boondoggle privileged techno nerds like you like while showing off to their buddies how socially conscious and concerned they are.
If your premise is that we should have publicly financed transportation, then the only choice really is buses. Yes, it's not a nice way to travel, but it's comparatively cheap and it gets people who have no other choice from point A to point B.
And an even better solution is not to "siphon money out of everyone's pocket" and get rid of all public funding for public transit. If need be, increase welfare and unemployment insurance to help poor people get cars.
Europe's economic "growth" is anemic at best: http://tinyurl.com/j7nyh8a And that's not even taking into account the widespread misrepresentations in European economic statistics.
It's like the Obamacare penaltax: its meaning changes according to circumstances. But because it's good for you, you should stop complaining about it!
These days, any article online is analyzed, picked apart and criticized the minute it goes up on some newspaper web site. In addition, publishing news has gotten so cheap that there is tons of competition and the news cartel has been broken up.
And you know what? We are a lot better off because of the demise of newspapers and professional journalists. The incentive structure of professional journalists has never been in the interests of the people; their primary interest used to be to make their editors and their influential pals in politics happy.
Light rail costs tens of millions of dollars per mile and takes many years (often decades) to plan and deploy. It also requires a large, stable ridership to break even. Light rail vehicles cost several million dollars a piece. A bus route can be put in anywhere on short notice and a bus costs $300000. And modern buses are often more comfortable than light rail (as long as they aren't operated by public agencies).
PRT is "shit" for the same reason light rail is: it costs millions of dollars per mile (cheaper than light rail but still expensive) and years of planning. But unlike light rail, it's never actually been successfully deployed as a large scale transit system, and the few places that had trial deployments have effectively dropped after several years of trying it.
I get it: you didn't have a lot of money as a kid. Join the club. What matters is what you obviously are today, namely someone who thinks society owes him a comfortable subsidized automated ride in a high tech vehicle. And you don't really give a fuck that that means that other people will "have to walk miles to a bus stop", because that's what wasting money on your favorite high tech boondoggles amounts to.
Eventually, there will be something like "PRT", but it will come in the form of wheeled electric vehicles with automated drivers and Uber-like hailing apps, together with fleets of electric buses for high volume routes and commuting, largely privately operated. The days of putting in any form of rail infrastructure are over.
Current US Medicare/Medicaid spending alone is about $1.2 trillion / year, or about $3900 / American / year. That is more than the UK spends per person per year in their public and private system combined ($3600). So, the reality is that Medicare/Medicaid alone would pay for universal health care in the US if it was spent properly. The idea that any additional spending is needed to give the US universal health care is therefore false.
To be crystal clear about this: the problem with US health care isn't that we don't spend enough money on health care, it's that services in the US are far more expensive than elsewhere, largely because doctors, hospitals, and drug companies have lobbied Congress for massive handouts.
Incidentally, I took buses everywhere until my mid-20s. Neighborhoods closer to light rail or train stations were simply too expensive. So spare me your sob stories. And it's pricks like you that lobbied cities to waste money on light rail for the more expensive neighborhoods instead of expanding their bus lines to help everybody.
That is literally true, although you seem to have no understanding what it actually means.
That's nonsense in so many ways. First of all, you compare median household income to average productivity. And a stagnating median doesn't mean that "relatively few people benefit"; in fact, we know who has benefited, namely a substantial part of the middle class has increased its incomes significantly, and the way the median works, that can happen without any decrease in the incomes of people below the median. In addition, household demographics have changed dramatically, so comparing "household incomes" over time is meaningless, and "constant dollars" is likewise a meaningless comparison of "benefit", since even in constant dollars, the "same" amount of money buys much better stuff today than it did a few decades ago. And to the degree that incomes haven't grown as much as they should, that's largely the fault of government redistribution and regulation.
Quite the opposite. There is a wide range of genetic potentials people inherit from their parents. When education is limited, people with good genetic potential don't have much opportunity to advance much beyond people with much less potential. As education and job opportunities increase, people more and more realize their full potential, and since that potential has a very wide spread, inequality increases.
Why is it that people readily accept genetic differences when it comes to height or weight or aptitude for sports, but then assume that with the right education, everybody can be a Steve Jobs or Thomas Edison? Do you also think that with the right education you can turn a Danny Devito into a LeBron James?
EU members are forced to balance their budgets, and countries like Ireland and Germany have improved their economies as a result. Countries like Greece and Spain are suffering not because they are forced to balance their budgets, but because they didn't balance their budgets soon enough.
No, it could simply be done by cutting government programs back to the levels of a couple of decades ago, cutting the military, and getting rid of all those "stimulus programs", which are really just crony capitalist handouts.
So you are saying that you favor government subsidizing Walmart workers? Or what?
I didn't say that you grew up privileged, I'm saying that you are privileged now: a white middle class American IT worker living in a small town (according to your online resume at least). You have evidently perfectly assimilated into the American middle class and its sense of entitlement and the gigantic chip on its shoulder.
The fact that the federal government hands out a lot of money for buses doesn't mean that it needs to do so; anymore than the fact that the federal government spends $1500 for a toilet seat means that toilet seats actually need to cost $1500.
The end of communism, better education, and increasing use of technology all widen inequality. They also make people richer. In free, industrial societies, increasing inequality correlates with overall increase in wealth; and while groups benefit disproportionately, everybody still benefits.
The answer is obvious and wrong. Even in places like Germany, France, and the UK, the countries with the most highly developed public transportation systems, 85% or more of passenger miles are traveled by passenger car (and that number is increasing over time), and less than 10% by rail. http://tinyurl.com/zw7bdos So, even if we managed to achieve the same public transit ridership as, say, Germany, it would decrease the number of fatalities by maybe 10% (to get a better estimate, you have to take into split between long distance/local trips, fatality rates of public transportation, etc.). But that would be after massive spending and continuing subsidies, giving a lousy return on investment in terms of lives saved. (Incidentally, the US has the biggest rail system in the world and it is utilized nearly 100% for freight. If you were to focus more on passenger transport by long distance rail, you'd end up pushing freight traffic to the roads.)
PRT is a wonderful boondoggle for privileged middle-class snobs like you. However, when it comes to cost-efficient, sensible urban transportation that actually helps people who need public transit, buses are the right choice. Of course, they are cheap and unglamorous, so people like you don't support them. Buses also don't need massive federal spending.
Bullshit. Uranium is a non-renewable resource. A cemetery is just land, no more and no less of a "non-renewable resource" than other land, it just happens to be owned by a trust right now, but that can change. Stupid fear mongering.