Yes, appointments are often rubber stamped, but some appointments are killed by the opposite party for political milage. If your representative comes form the opposite party, they might take your letters as evidence that derailing this particular appointment benefits them politically. You just need to convince them that this particular prosecutor spent all his time chasing harmless geeks which ignoring real dangerous criminals.
There is broadly applicable principle that laws should not usually yield counter intuitive results. If they do, the odds favor the law itself being unjust. In this case, we're punishing a harmless-but-stupid mechanic for making otherwise legal car customizations only because our perverse drug laws created an unreasonable situation. Also, the DEA and DOJ got pissed that he feared the drug dealers more than them.
There is ample evidence that drug prohibition causes crime and prevents treatment, making all the DEA agents, DOJ prosicutors, and prison contractors who lobby for unjust intimidating laws wholly responsible for the drug related deaths, addiction cases, etc. All the ridiculous scenarios like asset forfeiture cases or locking up mechanics who make otherwise legal mods flow entirely from the underlying corruption in our prison-industrial-complex.
There is one small measure I'd suggest that might reduce the problem somewhat : Do not permit federal prosecutors to become federal judges or win primaries for elected office. Any time we hear about a proposed judicial appointment or a new candidate in some race, just google them and find their past jobs. If they were a federal prosecutor, then google more to find if they ever brought charges under the CFAA, DMCA, etc. or if any drug cases stand out as unjust. If so, then make a stink online to help derail their career advancement. If federal prosecutors cannot usually become federal judges or representatives then they'll lose considerable lobbying power over time.
Just make a stink about low quality pirated copies and sell better quality copies online after a short while. Any serious fans will love the excuse to rewatch all the shows at higher quality.
So the US DOJ is a terrorist organization because they intimidate suspects? Heck they're at least using the threat of violence.
Actually, you're claim doesn't make anywhere near that much sense. Fear is not lose of confidence.
You lose almost all credibility when you apply the word terrorist to any non-violent activity. If you want to keep that credibility, you should either work around using the word terrorism by saying stuff like "confidence" or else try to invent some phrase like non-violent terrorism that exposes your bullshit.
Irrelevant, they're asking undergrads, not real scientists. For all we know, the academic hiring and grants game makes scientists much less ethical. Amongst undergrads, science majors appear more ethical though.
In my personal experience, there is a certain appreciation for ethics amongst academics that the tech work force exhibits less frequently. As an example, I said SendGrid legally sent email spam in the Adria Richards thread. Almost immediately several people defended wasting your customers time by inundating them with garbage emails. Yet, clearly sending crappy advertising emails is immoral because it wastes people's time, even if you've enough business relationship to make sending them legal. Now I'd imagine most tech workers would consider SendGrid analogous to spammers in this "they waste people's time" sense, but presumably a much higher percentage of academics would feel that way.
Is this the partially off-topic subthread or the wholly off-topic subthread? You really should not put the wholly off-topic one at the start, so I'll assume this is the only partially off-topic subthread, or else hope this comment fixes that.
At present, BitCoin has "rampant inflation" in that each block makes a fair number. In theory, they'll near the 21M BTC limit eventually, but..
Who controls the BitCoin protocol change vote? Ain't the people who own BitCoins. It's the people who mine BitCons. Why won't they simply vote themselves more BitCoins by removing the 21M BTC limit? Of course they'll do exactly that! duh! People always vote themselves free money.
In fact, if BitCoin actually annoyed government inflationary policy, the government could even arrest any large scale miners who held out against the "vote ourselves more money" crowd. Any American doing something interesting commits felonies under the CFAA, etc., but really they just need their miners shut down long enough for the vote to go through. A DDOS could maybe do it too.
I posted a bunch of details here but the main point is :
Richards had pissed off people by pulling similar publicity stunts before. Amanda Blum was one of those people Richard had pissed off. She sent a constructive email to SendGrid suggesting how one keeps such loose cannons under control. SendGrid simply read Blum's email as past behavior and fired Richards rather than taking Blum's constructive advice.
It's worth noting that Richard actions constitute libel in the U.K. I donno if her accusation of the forking remark constitute libel in the U.S., perhaps given that it's false. I'd assume that her accusation of the dongles remark does not constitute libel in the U.S., being true.
Yes and no. I'm easily made uncomfortable by people talking about sexuality in ways that surprise me. I'm also wrong.
Really, I'm simply wrong to feel that way. It's a real personality flaw that cost me several relationships and makes me slow to start them.
What is true is that women put up with a fair bit of sexual harassment. Worse, it's not always obvious when the innocent sexual themed chatter stops and the sexual harassment begins. We must find way to prevent the sexual harassment but the personal consequences for silencing the random sexual themed chatter are way too high to do it as simply as prudes like Richards would like.
There was a much more informative post that got skipped : http://slashdot.org/submission/2558213/pycon-twitter-callout-incident
A few details you might wish to know about the incident :
0. SendGrid is an email spammer. Yes, they only send legal spam, stuff the direct marketers want you to call bacn, but really most of the emails they send you do not want. Anything bad that happens to SendGrid is a good thing.
1. Apparently mr-hank only made one sexual crack, the dongles one. He apologized for that one quickly. Richards miss-interpreted his "forking" comment as sexual, actually homosexual. If you really believed she took offense to what he actually said, then you'd eventually conclude that she was a homophobe. That isn't correct. She simply miss-heard him.
2. Richards has pissed people off by pulling similar publicity stunts several times before : http://amandablumwords.wordpress.com/2013/03/21/3/
3. Ms Richards defense of her actions was completely fucking bonkers. Some girl "would never have the chance to learn and love programming because the ass clowns behind me would make it impossible for her to do so." Really? Joan of Arc? Really? Pfff. She's simply grandstanding to her twitter followers. https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/313442430848487424
4. Richards made a much worse joke about some guys balls much more publicly on twitter earlier in the day. https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/312265091791847425
5. PlayHaven isn't such a nice company either. In game micro-transactions sounds like your business is built upon ripping off poor people. It doesn't bother me as much as spam since I don't play any games like that, but worth mentioning.
Anyways I hope Mr-Hank and Richards find new jobs quickly and that SendGrid continues to lose business.
I'm reminded that Clinton's administration created a fairly good email archiving system. Bush's people dismantled it upon taking office because they knew they were there to commit fraud even before 9/11.
You're much too soft on the DOJ though. They're the ones asking for laws like the CFAA.
We need a detailed list of every federal prosecutor that has ever brought a CFAA indictment so that we can make sure none get judgeships or political gigs.
It's not about being rich. It's about family living in a society that wants people to compete for the necessities of life.
28k euros/y is perfectly livable in many European countries. I've lived extremely well on 24k euros/y in France.
These numbers are poverty level in the U.S. though in that you cannot buy a house or afford for healthcare when nearing retirement. NZ has a healthcare system, so this isn't a problem for you.
Academia is extremely nepotistic in many if not most European countries, much more so than the U.S. I never lived in Austria or Switzerland. Germany is nepotistic compared with the U.S., although nothing like France, let alone Italy or Spain. Austria is therefore probably more nepotistic than Germany, not sure. Switzerland is seemingly not nearly so nepotistic as such, but..
Switzerland is a uniquely well paid science gig world wide. Most scientists cannot even hope for a job in Switzerland because nobody in their field works there. You got lucky by being in the right place at the right time. Most people don't.
Also, there is no way European academia can absorbe all the surplus PhDs produced in Europe, much less the incredible American surplus. A PhD hasn't really meant an academic job since the 60s, probably before.
At the moment, the place for PhDs to go is Asia. And I know more American PhDs living in Asia than Europe. These people will never earn enough money to retire in the U.S. An academic career is largely a one-way ticket, like I said.
I work outside the U.S. but mostly the money sucks. Middle east pays okay, but fuck living there man.
If you restrict yourself to countries with a nicer lifestyle than the U.S. that's basically only Europe plus a few Asian places, Australian, or NZ. In Europe, only Switzerland would pay you $90k, well maybe Norway, not sure. Asia, Oz, etc. aren't likely to be paying $90k either. All these places have their own political problems. Canada is maybe easier than the U.S. or Switzerland, but not by much.
So where does an academic earn $90k without playing any political games or getting overworked? Middle east I bet.
In spirit, your comment is correct of course. You can live abroad quite well, but you'll remain poor by U.S. standards. Your life will be culturally richer than theirs, but you'll find yourself disconnected from your parents.
In fact, this is basically what I have done in western europe. It's simply that if you spend your life this way, then you will never have the money necessary to move back to the U.S.
There are effectively no well paying jobs in academia.
Any good academic jobs that exist have a few thousand applicants and require moving to the middle of a corn field. If you're good, you'll get one or two interviews per year for good jobs, but only while you're under 35. So, if you're good, expect 6ish interviews for jobs you want over your academic career, but all located in places that suck of course.
After that, your third postdoc ends and nobody wants you anymore. Now, you've got a PhD so you get an okay job doing anything else because at least you've proven your ability think. *But* industry doesn't want "academic types" so you'll need to appear good and desperate before they'll decide they want you.
I donno what salary industry starts these desperate ex-academics at because somehow people keep giving me money to do weird mathy things for them and I never asked the friends upon who the above is based about how much they get paid.
Returning to the academic jobs, I'll describe the existing job categories : - Grad student $25k/y = Young cheap short term labor - Post doc $55k/y = Inexpensive short term talent - Adjunct $5/hour = Exploited dumb ass stooge - Lab tech $55k/y = Inexpensive disposable but dumb labor - Genius Professor $90k/y = Not you, really you aren't smart enough - Politician Professor $110k/y = Top of the food chain, you can dream about this job, your research is better than theirs, but you lack the social and political skills to bullshit your way here.
Statistically, almost everyone in academia is a grad student or a postdoc. You cannot realistically spend more than 10 years of your life as a postdoc before being demoted to lab tech or adjunct. You should not spend more than 4 if you want a professorship.
Falkvinge set up an email list that lets people email every MEP. So maybe they merely banned Falkvinge email list, rather than filtering out the email on the ban.
I'm completely fine with voters emailing every MEP when they care about an issue, but (a) send a different email to your own MEPs so that they know you know their names, and (b) doing so via an email list downgrades the importance further.
As MEPs are nationwide, these issues are already sorted out partially by simply the language and dialect the email is written in. If you email an Italian MEP in English they probably won't give your email too much weight, although a British person living in Italy does vote for Italian MEPs.
Ideally, Falkvinge should set up mail too links page that addresses each country specifically, offering emails in all national languages and english for non-natives who wish to customize it. If you want to click em' all, that's great.
I've used Jitsi for over a year, but this new version has fucked me up. It now puts my facebook friends group at the top.
WTF?!? Why the hell would anyone want their facebook friend's list at the top of their IM groups. Just fucking asinine. Also the piece of shit opens the facebook friend's lists whenever anyone logs into it. What stupid behavior.
Rand Paul is frequently a tard. And not a good grumpy cat tard either. Just stupid and harmful.
But obviously this is a very good thing. I cannot vote for Rand Paul but I can vote for Saxby Chambliss.
Saxby Chambliss is much much worse than Rand Paul overall. Really, Chambliss sucks. I'll potentially vote for him after this though if he doesn't manage to really piss me off and the democrats don't run anybody really good.
It's not that this is soo important, it's simply that it's more than congress does on any other police state over reaches.
Wyden is actually a really good guy here. Vote for him if you can.
Interesting link, really informed my views, thank you!
It's more complicated than simply "blame entitlements" though, ala demographic shifts, etc..
In particular, you'll notice the lion's share of the increases are health care, right? You'll recall that healthcare delivery costs have grown massively cheaper as technology improves, right? So how the fuck is healthcare eating up half the spending increase?
Well, demographic contributes, but healthcare has grown so much more efficient that healthcare costs should increase slower than social security costs, which presumably cannot grow more efficient.
So the correct answer is : Rent extraction. Insurance companies plus hospital billing practices.
In essence, all costs have declined across the board because technology improves efficiency. So some prices have declined, but.. Any prices dominated by rents have increased because extracting rents has grown more efficient too. This is true if the rents are lobbyists, lenders, whatever.
What about that 1% increase in law enforcement? I'd wager law enforcement has grown spectacularly more efficient since 1972, both in good and bad ways. Who's eating up that money? Ain't hard. We imprison a spectacular number of people for asinine reasons. Who profits from that? Well, the police, DOJ, contractors, etc. So again we're spending significantly more while the costs decline dramatically but graft eats up the rest.
I'd imagine even defense costs have actually declined, but again the contractors ate the rest.
Slashdot Mirror
And just how do you imagine they handle promotions?
Yes, appointments are often rubber stamped, but some appointments are killed by the opposite party for political milage. If your representative comes form the opposite party, they might take your letters as evidence that derailing this particular appointment benefits them politically. You just need to convince them that this particular prosecutor spent all his time chasing harmless geeks which ignoring real dangerous criminals.
There is broadly applicable principle that laws should not usually yield counter intuitive results. If they do, the odds favor the law itself being unjust. In this case, we're punishing a harmless-but-stupid mechanic for making otherwise legal car customizations only because our perverse drug laws created an unreasonable situation. Also, the DEA and DOJ got pissed that he feared the drug dealers more than them.
There is ample evidence that drug prohibition causes crime and prevents treatment, making all the DEA agents, DOJ prosicutors, and prison contractors who lobby for unjust intimidating laws wholly responsible for the drug related deaths, addiction cases, etc. All the ridiculous scenarios like asset forfeiture cases or locking up mechanics who make otherwise legal mods flow entirely from the underlying corruption in our prison-industrial-complex.
There is one small measure I'd suggest that might reduce the problem somewhat : Do not permit federal prosecutors to become federal judges or win primaries for elected office. Any time we hear about a proposed judicial appointment or a new candidate in some race, just google them and find their past jobs. If they were a federal prosecutor, then google more to find if they ever brought charges under the CFAA, DMCA, etc. or if any drug cases stand out as unjust. If so, then make a stink online to help derail their career advancement. If federal prosecutors cannot usually become federal judges or representatives then they'll lose considerable lobbying power over time.
Just make a stink about low quality pirated copies and sell better quality copies online after a short while. Any serious fans will love the excuse to rewatch all the shows at higher quality.
So the US DOJ is a terrorist organization because they intimidate suspects? Heck they're at least using the threat of violence.
Actually, you're claim doesn't make anywhere near that much sense. Fear is not lose of confidence.
You lose almost all credibility when you apply the word terrorist to any non-violent activity. If you want to keep that credibility, you should either work around using the word terrorism by saying stuff like "confidence" or else try to invent some phrase like non-violent terrorism that exposes your bullshit.
Irrelevant, they're asking undergrads, not real scientists. For all we know, the academic hiring and grants game makes scientists much less ethical. Amongst undergrads, science majors appear more ethical though.
In my personal experience, there is a certain appreciation for ethics amongst academics that the tech work force exhibits less frequently. As an example, I said SendGrid legally sent email spam in the Adria Richards thread. Almost immediately several people defended wasting your customers time by inundating them with garbage emails. Yet, clearly sending crappy advertising emails is immoral because it wastes people's time, even if you've enough business relationship to make sending them legal. Now I'd imagine most tech workers would consider SendGrid analogous to spammers in this "they waste people's time" sense, but presumably a much higher percentage of academics would feel that way.
Just fyi, the posts link failed for me. Try these :
http://www.xconomy.com/national/2013/03/27/kleiner-sequoias-fund-returns-could-be-exposed-in-ca-lawsuit/
http://www.xconomy.com/national/2013/03/27/kleiner-sequoia-fund-returns-could-be-exposed-in-ca-lawsuit/
Is this the partially off-topic subthread or the wholly off-topic subthread? You really should not put the wholly off-topic one at the start, so I'll assume this is the only partially off-topic subthread, or else hope this comment fixes that.
Obligatory SMBC : http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2923#comic
At present, BitCoin has "rampant inflation" in that each block makes a fair number. In theory, they'll near the 21M BTC limit eventually, but..
Who controls the BitCoin protocol change vote? Ain't the people who own BitCoins. It's the people who mine BitCons. Why won't they simply vote themselves more BitCoins by removing the 21M BTC limit? Of course they'll do exactly that! duh! People always vote themselves free money.
In fact, if BitCoin actually annoyed government inflationary policy, the government could even arrest any large scale miners who held out against the "vote ourselves more money" crowd. Any American doing something interesting commits felonies under the CFAA, etc., but really they just need their miners shut down long enough for the vote to go through. A DDOS could maybe do it too.
I posted a bunch of details here but the main point is :
Richards had pissed off people by pulling similar publicity stunts before. Amanda Blum was one of those people Richard had pissed off. She sent a constructive email to SendGrid suggesting how one keeps such loose cannons under control. SendGrid simply read Blum's email as past behavior and fired Richards rather than taking Blum's constructive advice.
It's worth noting that Richard actions constitute libel in the U.K. I donno if her accusation of the forking remark constitute libel in the U.S., perhaps given that it's false. I'd assume that her accusation of the dongles remark does not constitute libel in the U.S., being true.
Yes and no. I'm easily made uncomfortable by people talking about sexuality in ways that surprise me. I'm also wrong.
Really, I'm simply wrong to feel that way. It's a real personality flaw that cost me several relationships and makes me slow to start them.
What is true is that women put up with a fair bit of sexual harassment. Worse, it's not always obvious when the innocent sexual themed chatter stops and the sexual harassment begins. We must find way to prevent the sexual harassment but the personal consequences for silencing the random sexual themed chatter are way too high to do it as simply as prudes like Richards would like.
It's complicated.
Another good related discussion from a couple months ago :
http://www.metafilter.com/122432/privilegechecking-and-callout-culture
There is a cute shirt about the incident here : http://forkmydongle.com/
There was a much more informative post that got skipped :
http://slashdot.org/submission/2558213/pycon-twitter-callout-incident
A few details you might wish to know about the incident :
0. SendGrid is an email spammer. Yes, they only send legal spam, stuff the direct marketers want you to call bacn, but really most of the emails they send you do not want. Anything bad that happens to SendGrid is a good thing.
1. Apparently mr-hank only made one sexual crack, the dongles one. He apologized for that one quickly. Richards miss-interpreted his "forking" comment as sexual, actually homosexual. If you really believed she took offense to what he actually said, then you'd eventually conclude that she was a homophobe. That isn't correct. She simply miss-heard him.
2. Richards has pissed people off by pulling similar publicity stunts several times before :
http://amandablumwords.wordpress.com/2013/03/21/3/
3. Ms Richards defense of her actions was completely fucking bonkers. Some girl "would never have the chance to learn and love programming because the ass clowns behind me would make it impossible for her to do so." Really? Joan of Arc? Really? Pfff. She's simply grandstanding to her twitter followers.
https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/313442430848487424
4. Richards made a much worse joke about some guys balls much more publicly on twitter earlier in the day.
https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/312265091791847425
5. PlayHaven isn't such a nice company either. In game micro-transactions sounds like your business is built upon ripping off poor people. It doesn't bother me as much as spam since I don't play any games like that, but worth mentioning.
Anyways I hope Mr-Hank and Richards find new jobs quickly and that SendGrid continues to lose business.
I'm reminded that Clinton's administration created a fairly good email archiving system. Bush's people dismantled it upon taking office because they knew they were there to commit fraud even before 9/11.
You're much too soft on the DOJ though. They're the ones asking for laws like the CFAA.
We need a detailed list of every federal prosecutor that has ever brought a CFAA indictment so that we can make sure none get judgeships or political gigs.
It's not about being rich. It's about family living in a society that wants people to compete for the necessities of life.
28k euros/y is perfectly livable in many European countries. I've lived extremely well on 24k euros/y in France.
These numbers are poverty level in the U.S. though in that you cannot buy a house or afford for healthcare when nearing retirement. NZ has a healthcare system, so this isn't a problem for you.
Academia is extremely nepotistic in many if not most European countries, much more so than the U.S. I never lived in Austria or Switzerland. Germany is nepotistic compared with the U.S., although nothing like France, let alone Italy or Spain. Austria is therefore probably more nepotistic than Germany, not sure. Switzerland is seemingly not nearly so nepotistic as such, but..
Switzerland is a uniquely well paid science gig world wide. Most scientists cannot even hope for a job in Switzerland because nobody in their field works there. You got lucky by being in the right place at the right time. Most people don't.
Also, there is no way European academia can absorbe all the surplus PhDs produced in Europe, much less the incredible American surplus. A PhD hasn't really meant an academic job since the 60s, probably before.
At the moment, the place for PhDs to go is Asia. And I know more American PhDs living in Asia than Europe. These people will never earn enough money to retire in the U.S. An academic career is largely a one-way ticket, like I said.
I work outside the U.S. but mostly the money sucks. Middle east pays okay, but fuck living there man.
If you restrict yourself to countries with a nicer lifestyle than the U.S. that's basically only Europe plus a few Asian places, Australian, or NZ. In Europe, only Switzerland would pay you $90k, well maybe Norway, not sure. Asia, Oz, etc. aren't likely to be paying $90k either. All these places have their own political problems. Canada is maybe easier than the U.S. or Switzerland, but not by much.
So where does an academic earn $90k without playing any political games or getting overworked? Middle east I bet.
In spirit, your comment is correct of course. You can live abroad quite well, but you'll remain poor by U.S. standards. Your life will be culturally richer than theirs, but you'll find yourself disconnected from your parents.
In fact, this is basically what I have done in western europe. It's simply that if you spend your life this way, then you will never have the money necessary to move back to the U.S.
Academia? LOL
There are effectively no well paying jobs in academia.
Any good academic jobs that exist have a few thousand applicants and require moving to the middle of a corn field. If you're good, you'll get one or two interviews per year for good jobs, but only while you're under 35. So, if you're good, expect 6ish interviews for jobs you want over your academic career, but all located in places that suck of course.
After that, your third postdoc ends and nobody wants you anymore. Now, you've got a PhD so you get an okay job doing anything else because at least you've proven your ability think. *But* industry doesn't want "academic types" so you'll need to appear good and desperate before they'll decide they want you.
I donno what salary industry starts these desperate ex-academics at because somehow people keep giving me money to do weird mathy things for them and I never asked the friends upon who the above is based about how much they get paid.
Returning to the academic jobs, I'll describe the existing job categories :
- Grad student $25k/y = Young cheap short term labor
- Post doc $55k/y = Inexpensive short term talent
- Adjunct $5/hour = Exploited dumb ass stooge
- Lab tech $55k/y = Inexpensive disposable but dumb labor
- Genius Professor $90k/y = Not you, really you aren't smart enough
- Politician Professor $110k/y = Top of the food chain, you can dream about this job, your research is better than theirs, but you lack the social and political skills to bullshit your way here.
Statistically, almost everyone in academia is a grad student or a postdoc. You cannot realistically spend more than 10 years of your life as a postdoc before being demoted to lab tech or adjunct. You should not spend more than 4 if you want a professorship.
Interesting, although surely you could continually update the site's in house ads so that AdBlcok failed.
If you serve the ads yourself, then afaik no ad blockers block them.
I'm strongly pro-pirate party but..
Falkvinge set up an email list that lets people email every MEP. So maybe they merely banned Falkvinge email list, rather than filtering out the email on the ban.
I'm completely fine with voters emailing every MEP when they care about an issue, but (a) send a different email to your own MEPs so that they know you know their names, and (b) doing so via an email list downgrades the importance further.
As MEPs are nationwide, these issues are already sorted out partially by simply the language and dialect the email is written in. If you email an Italian MEP in English they probably won't give your email too much weight, although a British person living in Italy does vote for Italian MEPs.
Ideally, Falkvinge should set up mail too links page that addresses each country specifically, offering emails in all national languages and english for non-natives who wish to customize it. If you want to click em' all, that's great.
I've used Jitsi for over a year, but this new version has fucked me up. It now puts my facebook friends group at the top.
WTF?!? Why the hell would anyone want their facebook friend's list at the top of their IM groups. Just fucking asinine. Also the piece of shit opens the facebook friend's lists whenever anyone logs into it. What stupid behavior.
Rand Paul is frequently a tard. And not a good grumpy cat tard either. Just stupid and harmful.
But obviously this is a very good thing. I cannot vote for Rand Paul but I can vote for Saxby Chambliss.
Saxby Chambliss is much much worse than Rand Paul overall. Really, Chambliss sucks. I'll potentially vote for him after this though if he doesn't manage to really piss me off and the democrats don't run anybody really good.
It's not that this is soo important, it's simply that it's more than congress does on any other police state over reaches.
Wyden is actually a really good guy here. Vote for him if you can.
Interesting link, really informed my views, thank you!
It's more complicated than simply "blame entitlements" though, ala demographic shifts, etc..
In particular, you'll notice the lion's share of the increases are health care, right? You'll recall that healthcare delivery costs have grown massively cheaper as technology improves, right? So how the fuck is healthcare eating up half the spending increase?
Well, demographic contributes, but healthcare has grown so much more efficient that healthcare costs should increase slower than social security costs, which presumably cannot grow more efficient.
So the correct answer is : Rent extraction. Insurance companies plus hospital billing practices.
In essence, all costs have declined across the board because technology improves efficiency. So some prices have declined, but.. Any prices dominated by rents have increased because extracting rents has grown more efficient too. This is true if the rents are lobbyists, lenders, whatever.
What about that 1% increase in law enforcement? I'd wager law enforcement has grown spectacularly more efficient since 1972, both in good and bad ways. Who's eating up that money? Ain't hard. We imprison a spectacular number of people for asinine reasons. Who profits from that? Well, the police, DOJ, contractors, etc. So again we're spending significantly more while the costs decline dramatically but graft eats up the rest.
I'd imagine even defense costs have actually declined, but again the contractors ate the rest.
In short, the rent is too damned efficient!