I don't believe WiFi Calling for TMOUS is available on any of the CM builds. You can get *other* WiFi calling apps (i.e. typical SIP client stuff) but nothing that will work like the TMOUS app. Please correct me if I'm wrong here because I'd love to be running CM instead of the older Sense builds I'm forced to run to use the TMOUS app.
You're both right and wrong. TMOUS customers like myself can use WiFi Calling all day long and never take a hit on minutes. The catch is you don't get this capability turned on by default; you have to call customer service and ask for it. I have it and use it even though I have the Unlimited/Unlimited/Unlimited plan for my HTC One S.
Why do I use it if I have unlimited minutes? Because I work at a nuclear power plant which, by virtue of being in the middle of nowhere *and* working inside a concrete building more akin to a bomb shelter, I can't get signal worth a damn. But Wifi Calling let's me use the plant guest WiFi. It's the main reason I'm still on TMOUS and not some other network.
And in case you haven't been paying attention, who do you think does the background checks??
Perhaps I should've been a little clearer: I'm all for background checks *as they are now*. The attempt to close the "gun show loophole" would require *all* gun owners to register, otherwise there's no way you could ever know about private person-to-person sales.
And people wonder why gun owners don't want the Feds to have a central database with all of our names, addresses, etc. in it. I'm all for background checks, but I'll be damned if I let the government develop a database they can "scour" like this for whatever purposes they deem fit in some nebulous future where the party I trust the *least* is in power.
If you make yourself less vulnerable while reducing your offense you make yourself a less likely target.
Exactly how does this work? Targeting likelihood is not based solely upon your vulnerability; it's based on the *value* of the target in the first place. Unless you can find a way to make yourself completely invulnerable to any possible attack scenario, you're *going* to be targeted. In such a case, the best response is to engineer a situation where you make sure whoever is targeting you can't benefit from actually pulling the trigger. We have this already. It's called MAD, it works, and it works so well that there have been no major worldwide wars in over half a century. Examine the 50 years before Hiroshima and Nagasaki with the last 50 and you'll see that, despite the seeming-craziness of MAD, it's done more to bring peace than any other doctrine in the history of mankind.
Basically interstellar travel is impractical. Full Stop.
Assuming there is no way to circumvent c, I would have go agree. However, our understanding of the way space/time works is sufficiently imprecise such that better, more practical methods of getting from point A to point B may well make it worth doing.
You can feed plutonium into some kinds of reactors, in small quantities. IIRC it's actually a strong neutron absorber and will poison the reaction in a traditional light water reactor in more than trace amounts, with the buildup in the fuel being one of the reasons you have to replace it before more than a tiny fraction has actually fissioned.
You need to be specific about what you mean by "plutonium" here. Some isotopes of Pu are *very* fissionable, others are not and *would* poison a reactor. However, the stuff coming out of nuclear warheads tends to be the "very fissionable" stuff since that's generally what you want a warhead to do in the first place.
Because they want puppies to die! And unicorns! And children!!! Won't somebody think of the chiiillllldrrreeeeennnnn????
Please. Might it just be possible that Republicans are against it simply because they believe it would weaken our national defense to levels they feel are unwise? There doesn't always have to be a nefarious, scheming, mustache-twirling, pure evil reason for doing things just because Republicans are involved. If you'd learn to *reason* with your opponent instead of merely demonizing and dismissing him, you'd know that.
First rule of politics: never consult with anyone who's going to give you an answer you don't like *if* you have the power to choose who to consult with. And the Obama Administration has the power to choose as they like. Or did you think this Administration -- hell, *any* Administration -- would ever jeopardize their agenda by allowing dissonant voices to possibly affect policy? Don't be naive.
Sorry but the US gov has a poor record on the truth.
And the Chinese, Russians, Iranians, North Koreans...they all have sterling reputations when it comes to the truth, eh? Nobody is claiming the US is perfect, but exactly who do you want as the top superpower if not the US? And no, you don't get the utopian fantasy where there is no superpower because that never happens. Someone *always* fills that power vacuum.
I realize it's popular and cool to blame the US for everything that's wrong in the world today, but have you ever stopped to consider what things might be like with one of the more unsavory superpowers (or budding superpowers) running the show? It sure doesn't seem like you have.
Even though Iran and North Korea might threaten to send a nuke our way, they won't. There is no "theory of mutual destruction" with Iran or North Korea. There is them launching a nuke, us shooting it down over the ocean, then them getting invaded by the entire civilized world.
The fatal flaw in your argument is you assume the leadership of NK is sane (ha!) and that they'd be unwilling to accept the immense damage to their infrastructure due to a nuclear exchange. Remember, NK is very technologically backwards due to decades of international sanctions. And their people are used to the most horrific deprivations (starvation, disease, etc.). And their leadership doesn't give a shit about their own people. Put it all together and you have a recipe for an everybody-loses-but-we-don't-care scenario.
and reduce the number of weapons which could fall into the hands of a rogue state or terrorist group.
This is questionable. When you decommission a nuclear weapon, you have to do something with the nuclear material used in the "physics package." Usually this is HEU (Highly-Enriched Uranium) or Plutonium. You can't just throw it out with the trash. If you store it somewhere, it's just as dangerous as a stolen fully-assembled weapon. The hard part of building a nuke *isn't* engineering the nuke, it's refining the Uranium and/or breeding Plutonium.
Yes, I'm aware there are several programs in place to "burn" this leftover material in commercial power reactors. These programs are good but they're very slow moving, leaving lots of unused, weapons-grade material vulnerable.
Sorry, I just noticed that the conversation went from bombs to warheads halfway through the thread, and I even said warheads. My bad, you are correct, the average warhead is very small. The average (nuclear) bomb is very large.
The current US nuclear bomb inventory revolves around two models: the B61 and the B83. Both are variable-yield (aka "dial-a-yield") bombs. The former has a blast yield of 0.3-340kT, the latter up to 1.2MT (wikipedia lists no specific lower yield for the B83).
GIven that we've detonated combat-ready nuclear weapons in the tens of megatons, even the B83 isn't exactly "very large" when you stop and think about it. The B61 is more of a tactical nuke, the B83 more of a semi-strategic nuke.
Either way, multi-megaton nukes are of dubious value no matter how you look at them. Unless you just want to kill massive numbers of people and render large areas uninhabitable for a while, you're much better off using smaller -- but vastly more accurate -- weapons. Remember, we had to raze entire cities to win WWII because it took hundreds of bombs to reliably hit one target. With modern guided "smart" weapons, you can take out most everything of military value in a city and leave the city more or less untouched. A small nuke in the tens of kilotons range would take out even the most hardened military bunker. You don't (usually) have to kill every single human being in the country you're attacking; it's usually sufficient to take out the leadership.
Look at who is lobbying for more, and you'll see it is about supporting the US arms industry.
This is a common trope I see trotted out on a regular basis, but it doesn't make any sense when you think about it. "Supporting the US arms industry" would mean we'd have to be building new nukes. We're not doing that. Sure, there's a cost associated with maintaining the existing stockpile, but there hasn't been a new nuclear warhead designed since the W-88 in 1988. And we're not building new ones. So where's this idea come from that this is somehow supporting the military-industrial complex in some meaningful way? Don't they stand to make much *more* money if we downsized our nuclear force but were forced up *upsize* conventional forces to counterbalance?
* Rogue state attacks a protected state - we flatten them, with or without nukes. Everybody's happy.
Well, I wouldn't say *everyone* is happy. If a rogue state mounts a successful attack on a metropolitan center even with only one nuclear weapon, tens of thousands would almost certainly die. Perhaps hundreds of thousands. Even if you glass the entire "rogue state", this doesn't lead to a happy ending.
But you miss the overall *strategic* implication of having these weapons in the first place. Example: side A has nukes, side B does not. Side A can feel very safe using nothing but conventional forces against side B. Conventional warfare, while unpleasant, rarely provokes intense international uproars like using nukes might. But if Side B *also* has nukes, the stakes are immediately raised. Side A can no longer operate with impunity knowing side B can -- and probably would, in NK's case -- use its nukes if it were pushed into a corner. Side B, knowing this, would then be emboldened to push its own policies, perhaps to the detriment of Side A and its allies. And when you're talking about Side B being the NK's, letting them push their own policy is a truly frightening idea, especially if you're a South Korean.
The point of having extra missiles around is quite simple: to have enough surviving missiles left over to completely destroy your attacker *after* he's mounted a successful first strike.
"Very tiny tax"? That's how they all start off. Just pay us a little more. It's not much, so you shouldn't complain. And then it becomes a little more. And a little more. And a little more, until suddenly you find more than a quarter of your annual income is going to fund all kinds of crap you never wanted in the first place.
we've developed a culture where doing the right thing is NEVER rewarded and doing the WRONG thing usually is.
I'd argue that it's not so much about right versus wrong, it's more about the end result trumping the method of getting there. A "win" is considered vindication of the means. If the means are "right" then that's great, but if the means are "wrong", it's too often considered OK to look the other way. The more rewarding the win, the more likely people are to overlook the wrong, especially if those who *should* be doing the looking stand to benefit from the win in the first place. Look at Lance Armstrong. Do you think *nobody* in his inner circle knew he was doping? Sure they did. But they also knew fame and fortune would come from Armstrong's wins, and they could bask in that to considerable benefit. Thus they became complicit.
In a perfect world, there would be ample benefits and public glorification of the person who came forward to expose cheating. Instead, they typically have everything to lose and very, very little to gain by doing so. Hence the culture of cheating prospers in sports, business, academia...pretty much anywhere the stakes are high enough.
Actually, the answers are "yes" and "yes". Just because their first attempt resulted in an object not reaching a stable orbit doesn't mean the design is *incapable* of it.
Also, you're inference of it being unable to hit a target "with reasonable precision" is kind of irrelevant. The Norks have nukes. You don't need pinpoint precision on a nuke unless you're trying to take out small, hardened targets like missile silos. Getting within 10-20 miles of your target is perfectly acceptable if you're lofting a nuke at something as large as a city. Or, with a slightly smaller error radius, a carrier battle group.
Remember, the goal isn't necessarily to develop the capability to go toe-to-toe with a nuclear-armed enemy. The goal is to develop a weapon that gives you *political* leverage and credibility in whatever region you're aiming at. Without nukes and a nuclear delivery system, a carrier battle group is pretty invulnerable to someone like the Norks. Thus U.S. policy can be quite aggressive should we so choose. *With* nukes and a delivery system, the equation changes drastically. The Norks never have to fire a shot, yet they instantly change the game *in their favor* by vastly increasing the vulnerability of the conventional forces they would face in an armed conflict.
Google makes street view, tax money goes to repairing the potholes in your street. And you'd prefer the former? Really?
To refute your *specific* example, potholes are paid for out of gasoline taxes, not income taxes or corporate taxes. Thus, if you don't drive, you don't pay the tax, and if you drive a lot, you pay more tax -- all just as it should be. So, yes, I do actively prefer the former because your argument of the latter is neither analogous nor applicable.
Don't distract the point with government waste.
No, of course not. Let's completely dispense with any consideration of all the pointless, wasteful, negative-return-on-investment projects that suck up billions and billions of tax dollars every year with no useful output. If my argument was in favor of higher taxes rather than private business reinvestment, I'd want to try to get rid of that argument too because it's quite damaging to the "higher taxes" idea.
Yes, there's a lot of Pork Barrel shenanigans that make DC a money pit, but those issues need to be addressed separately.
Cancer is most readily killed by cutting off the blood supply. Out of control spending is most readily stopped by cutting off the money supply and enforcing fiscal responsibility from our elected officials. So long as people -- like you -- continue to freely supply them with tax dollars in the name of "fairness" or "ethical responsibility," they'll keep running up the national credit card to the limit...and then some.
The tax situation is a simple letter of the law vs spirit of the law. The letter of the law allows for google's behavior, even if the spirit of the law requires people to pay their fair share.
Ah...and now we get to the crux of your argument, the so-called "fair share" argument. The implication, of course, is that Google isn't paying its "fair share" and should thus pony up more. So, pray tell, what is "fair" in your world view? Come now! You've asserted Google isn't paying its fair share, thus you must have a figure or percentage in mind of what "fair" is, otherwise you're just frothing. Fess up and enlighten us with your definition of "fair."
The point is that exploiting legal loopholes to avoid your tax burden is unethical. It's unethical when an individual does it, it's unethical when a corporation does it. The fact that it is commonplace does not make it justifiable behavior.
Why is it unethical? Do you skip all deductions available to you when you pay your taxes? Do you pay *more* than your tax form says you're supposed to pay? The tax structure is analogous to the rules of a game: if you follow the rules and win the game, there's nothing unethical about it. If you disagree with the *rules* that's one thing, but to blame the player or condemn the winner simply because he played the game according to the rules is not just illogical, it's silly. If you claim to be a logical person you can't reach the conclusion you've reached, therefore it follows you're arguing from emotion. And despite your protestations otherwise, your commentary is indistinguishable from someone suffering from a severe case of envy and jealousy.
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In the last couple of years though, Diesel engines have gotten so good, there really is no reason whatsoever to buy a gasoline engine
Unless, of course, finding a diesel filling station near your home or work is nearly impossible, which for me it is.
Is it the TMOUS WiFi Calling app or some generic SIP client app? The two are not the same.
I don't believe WiFi Calling for TMOUS is available on any of the CM builds. You can get *other* WiFi calling apps (i.e. typical SIP client stuff) but nothing that will work like the TMOUS app. Please correct me if I'm wrong here because I'd love to be running CM instead of the older Sense builds I'm forced to run to use the TMOUS app.
You're both right and wrong. TMOUS customers like myself can use WiFi Calling all day long and never take a hit on minutes. The catch is you don't get this capability turned on by default; you have to call customer service and ask for it. I have it and use it even though I have the Unlimited/Unlimited/Unlimited plan for my HTC One S.
Why do I use it if I have unlimited minutes? Because I work at a nuclear power plant which, by virtue of being in the middle of nowhere *and* working inside a concrete building more akin to a bomb shelter, I can't get signal worth a damn. But Wifi Calling let's me use the plant guest WiFi. It's the main reason I'm still on TMOUS and not some other network.
Kevin Flynn was trapped in there!
And in case you haven't been paying attention, who do you think does the background checks??
Perhaps I should've been a little clearer: I'm all for background checks *as they are now*. The attempt to close the "gun show loophole" would require *all* gun owners to register, otherwise there's no way you could ever know about private person-to-person sales.
And people wonder why gun owners don't want the Feds to have a central database with all of our names, addresses, etc. in it. I'm all for background checks, but I'll be damned if I let the government develop a database they can "scour" like this for whatever purposes they deem fit in some nebulous future where the party I trust the *least* is in power.
If you make yourself less vulnerable while reducing your offense you make yourself a less likely target.
Exactly how does this work? Targeting likelihood is not based solely upon your vulnerability; it's based on the *value* of the target in the first place. Unless you can find a way to make yourself completely invulnerable to any possible attack scenario, you're *going* to be targeted. In such a case, the best response is to engineer a situation where you make sure whoever is targeting you can't benefit from actually pulling the trigger. We have this already. It's called MAD, it works, and it works so well that there have been no major worldwide wars in over half a century. Examine the 50 years before Hiroshima and Nagasaki with the last 50 and you'll see that, despite the seeming-craziness of MAD, it's done more to bring peace than any other doctrine in the history of mankind.
Basically interstellar travel is impractical. Full Stop.
Assuming there is no way to circumvent c, I would have go agree. However, our understanding of the way space/time works is sufficiently imprecise such that better, more practical methods of getting from point A to point B may well make it worth doing.
You can feed plutonium into some kinds of reactors, in small quantities. IIRC it's actually a strong neutron absorber and will poison the reaction in a traditional light water reactor in more than trace amounts, with the buildup in the fuel being one of the reasons you have to replace it before more than a tiny fraction has actually fissioned.
You need to be specific about what you mean by "plutonium" here. Some isotopes of Pu are *very* fissionable, others are not and *would* poison a reactor. However, the stuff coming out of nuclear warheads tends to be the "very fissionable" stuff since that's generally what you want a warhead to do in the first place.
Why of course?
Why at all?
Because they want puppies to die! And unicorns! And children!!! Won't somebody think of the chiiillllldrrreeeeennnnn????
Please. Might it just be possible that Republicans are against it simply because they believe it would weaken our national defense to levels they feel are unwise? There doesn't always have to be a nefarious, scheming, mustache-twirling, pure evil reason for doing things just because Republicans are involved. If you'd learn to *reason* with your opponent instead of merely demonizing and dismissing him, you'd know that.
d) North Korea is fibbing, makes threats regularly, and always backs down once they're offered what they want.
Neville Chamberlain thought the same as you once. But what happens when "what they want" is something you're not prepared to offer?
Not the administration—the people they consulted:
First rule of politics: never consult with anyone who's going to give you an answer you don't like *if* you have the power to choose who to consult with. And the Obama Administration has the power to choose as they like. Or did you think this Administration -- hell, *any* Administration -- would ever jeopardize their agenda by allowing dissonant voices to possibly affect policy? Don't be naive.
Sorry but the US gov has a poor record on the truth.
And the Chinese, Russians, Iranians, North Koreans...they all have sterling reputations when it comes to the truth, eh? Nobody is claiming the US is perfect, but exactly who do you want as the top superpower if not the US? And no, you don't get the utopian fantasy where there is no superpower because that never happens. Someone *always* fills that power vacuum.
I realize it's popular and cool to blame the US for everything that's wrong in the world today, but have you ever stopped to consider what things might be like with one of the more unsavory superpowers (or budding superpowers) running the show? It sure doesn't seem like you have.
Even though Iran and North Korea might threaten to send a nuke our way, they won't. There is no "theory of mutual destruction" with Iran or North Korea. There is them launching a nuke, us shooting it down over the ocean, then them getting invaded by the entire civilized world.
The fatal flaw in your argument is you assume the leadership of NK is sane (ha!) and that they'd be unwilling to accept the immense damage to their infrastructure due to a nuclear exchange. Remember, NK is very technologically backwards due to decades of international sanctions. And their people are used to the most horrific deprivations (starvation, disease, etc.). And their leadership doesn't give a shit about their own people. Put it all together and you have a recipe for an everybody-loses-but-we-don't-care scenario.
and reduce the number of weapons which could fall into the hands of a rogue state or terrorist group.
This is questionable. When you decommission a nuclear weapon, you have to do something with the nuclear material used in the "physics package." Usually this is HEU (Highly-Enriched Uranium) or Plutonium. You can't just throw it out with the trash. If you store it somewhere, it's just as dangerous as a stolen fully-assembled weapon. The hard part of building a nuke *isn't* engineering the nuke, it's refining the Uranium and/or breeding Plutonium.
Yes, I'm aware there are several programs in place to "burn" this leftover material in commercial power reactors. These programs are good but they're very slow moving, leaving lots of unused, weapons-grade material vulnerable.
Sorry, I just noticed that the conversation went from bombs to warheads halfway through the thread, and I even said warheads. My bad, you are correct, the average warhead is very small. The average (nuclear) bomb is very large.
The current US nuclear bomb inventory revolves around two models: the B61 and the B83. Both are variable-yield (aka "dial-a-yield") bombs. The former has a blast yield of 0.3-340kT, the latter up to 1.2MT (wikipedia lists no specific lower yield for the B83).
GIven that we've detonated combat-ready nuclear weapons in the tens of megatons, even the B83 isn't exactly "very large" when you stop and think about it. The B61 is more of a tactical nuke, the B83 more of a semi-strategic nuke.
Either way, multi-megaton nukes are of dubious value no matter how you look at them. Unless you just want to kill massive numbers of people and render large areas uninhabitable for a while, you're much better off using smaller -- but vastly more accurate -- weapons. Remember, we had to raze entire cities to win WWII because it took hundreds of bombs to reliably hit one target. With modern guided "smart" weapons, you can take out most everything of military value in a city and leave the city more or less untouched. A small nuke in the tens of kilotons range would take out even the most hardened military bunker. You don't (usually) have to kill every single human being in the country you're attacking; it's usually sufficient to take out the leadership.
Look at who is lobbying for more, and you'll see it is about supporting the US arms industry.
This is a common trope I see trotted out on a regular basis, but it doesn't make any sense when you think about it. "Supporting the US arms industry" would mean we'd have to be building new nukes. We're not doing that. Sure, there's a cost associated with maintaining the existing stockpile, but there hasn't been a new nuclear warhead designed since the W-88 in 1988. And we're not building new ones. So where's this idea come from that this is somehow supporting the military-industrial complex in some meaningful way? Don't they stand to make much *more* money if we downsized our nuclear force but were forced up *upsize* conventional forces to counterbalance?
* Rogue state attacks a protected state - we flatten them, with or without nukes. Everybody's happy.
Well, I wouldn't say *everyone* is happy. If a rogue state mounts a successful attack on a metropolitan center even with only one nuclear weapon, tens of thousands would almost certainly die. Perhaps hundreds of thousands. Even if you glass the entire "rogue state", this doesn't lead to a happy ending.
But you miss the overall *strategic* implication of having these weapons in the first place. Example: side A has nukes, side B does not. Side A can feel very safe using nothing but conventional forces against side B. Conventional warfare, while unpleasant, rarely provokes intense international uproars like using nukes might. But if Side B *also* has nukes, the stakes are immediately raised. Side A can no longer operate with impunity knowing side B can -- and probably would, in NK's case -- use its nukes if it were pushed into a corner. Side B, knowing this, would then be emboldened to push its own policies, perhaps to the detriment of Side A and its allies. And when you're talking about Side B being the NK's, letting them push their own policy is a truly frightening idea, especially if you're a South Korean.
The point of having extra missiles around is quite simple: to have enough surviving missiles left over to completely destroy your attacker *after* he's mounted a successful first strike.
You, sir, are a dancing fucking moron.
Actually, Stalin would've called him a useful idiot.
"Very tiny tax"? That's how they all start off. Just pay us a little more. It's not much, so you shouldn't complain. And then it becomes a little more. And a little more. And a little more, until suddenly you find more than a quarter of your annual income is going to fund all kinds of crap you never wanted in the first place.
we've developed a culture where doing the right thing is NEVER rewarded and doing the WRONG thing usually is.
I'd argue that it's not so much about right versus wrong, it's more about the end result trumping the method of getting there. A "win" is considered vindication of the means. If the means are "right" then that's great, but if the means are "wrong", it's too often considered OK to look the other way. The more rewarding the win, the more likely people are to overlook the wrong, especially if those who *should* be doing the looking stand to benefit from the win in the first place. Look at Lance Armstrong. Do you think *nobody* in his inner circle knew he was doping? Sure they did. But they also knew fame and fortune would come from Armstrong's wins, and they could bask in that to considerable benefit. Thus they became complicit.
In a perfect world, there would be ample benefits and public glorification of the person who came forward to expose cheating. Instead, they typically have everything to lose and very, very little to gain by doing so. Hence the culture of cheating prospers in sports, business, academia...pretty much anywhere the stakes are high enough.
Actually, the answers are "yes" and "yes". Just because their first attempt resulted in an object not reaching a stable orbit doesn't mean the design is *incapable* of it.
Also, you're inference of it being unable to hit a target "with reasonable precision" is kind of irrelevant. The Norks have nukes. You don't need pinpoint precision on a nuke unless you're trying to take out small, hardened targets like missile silos. Getting within 10-20 miles of your target is perfectly acceptable if you're lofting a nuke at something as large as a city. Or, with a slightly smaller error radius, a carrier battle group.
Remember, the goal isn't necessarily to develop the capability to go toe-to-toe with a nuclear-armed enemy. The goal is to develop a weapon that gives you *political* leverage and credibility in whatever region you're aiming at. Without nukes and a nuclear delivery system, a carrier battle group is pretty invulnerable to someone like the Norks. Thus U.S. policy can be quite aggressive should we so choose. *With* nukes and a delivery system, the equation changes drastically. The Norks never have to fire a shot, yet they instantly change the game *in their favor* by vastly increasing the vulnerability of the conventional forces they would face in an armed conflict.
Google makes street view, tax money goes to repairing the potholes in your street. And you'd prefer the former? Really?
To refute your *specific* example, potholes are paid for out of gasoline taxes, not income taxes or corporate taxes. Thus, if you don't drive, you don't pay the tax, and if you drive a lot, you pay more tax -- all just as it should be. So, yes, I do actively prefer the former because your argument of the latter is neither analogous nor applicable.
Don't distract the point with government waste.
No, of course not. Let's completely dispense with any consideration of all the pointless, wasteful, negative-return-on-investment projects that suck up billions and billions of tax dollars every year with no useful output. If my argument was in favor of higher taxes rather than private business reinvestment, I'd want to try to get rid of that argument too because it's quite damaging to the "higher taxes" idea.
Yes, there's a lot of Pork Barrel shenanigans that make DC a money pit, but those issues need to be addressed separately.
Cancer is most readily killed by cutting off the blood supply. Out of control spending is most readily stopped by cutting off the money supply and enforcing fiscal responsibility from our elected officials. So long as people -- like you -- continue to freely supply them with tax dollars in the name of "fairness" or "ethical responsibility," they'll keep running up the national credit card to the limit...and then some.
The tax situation is a simple letter of the law vs spirit of the law. The letter of the law allows for google's behavior, even if the spirit of the law requires people to pay their fair share.
Ah...and now we get to the crux of your argument, the so-called "fair share" argument. The implication, of course, is that Google isn't paying its "fair share" and should thus pony up more. So, pray tell, what is "fair" in your world view? Come now! You've asserted Google isn't paying its fair share, thus you must have a figure or percentage in mind of what "fair" is, otherwise you're just frothing. Fess up and enlighten us with your definition of "fair."
The point is that exploiting legal loopholes to avoid your tax burden is unethical. It's unethical when an individual does it, it's unethical when a corporation does it. The fact that it is commonplace does not make it justifiable behavior.
Why is it unethical? Do you skip all deductions available to you when you pay your taxes? Do you pay *more* than your tax form says you're supposed to pay? The tax structure is analogous to the rules of a game: if you follow the rules and win the game, there's nothing unethical about it. If you disagree with the *rules* that's one thing, but to blame the player or condemn the winner simply because he played the game according to the rules is not just illogical, it's silly. If you claim to be a logical person you can't reach the conclusion you've reached, therefore it follows you're arguing from emotion. And despite your protestations otherwise, your commentary is indistinguishable from someone suffering from a severe case of envy and jealousy.