Well, you're right, I can't say that. I haven't tried it. The thing was that back when I tried it people were saying the same thing. People who work very hard on these kinds of things want so bad for it to be a good product. People, who for one reason or another want something that will compete with a Microsoft product, will say that it is as good if not better even when it is not. I'll go try it, because for my own reasons I don't like to support Microsoft any more then I have to.
But the people who said that Mozilla, and the other browsers, were better before weren't telling the truth. And if I weren't open to the idea that someday they are going to be better then I may never try them again. I'm just saying that if you really want something to succeed maybe it's not a good idea to hype it before it's ready just because you want to see it happen. When you're rock-solid sure that it's better then's the time to hype it.
I've downloaded and tried just about every free alternative to IE that I could find. Now it was a while ago, so a lot of them have probably improved while IE has most definitely not improved, but they were all HORRIBLE. I'm talking about the user experience in just surfing around looking at websites. Anything based on the Mozilla engine crashed all the time. Phoenix, ditto. Opera, the same. I actually prefer the old Netscape engine just because if it didn't like something it would just not show it instead of locking up all to hell. If this is the crap that passes for competition I'm not surprised that IE is winning at least for Windows. The only thing that gives me hope is that these other browsers are constantly improving while IE is not. And like I said, that was a while ago so maybe they are already better.
Actually, I do operate my own business part-time, as an independent contractor. It's a sole proprietorship, as opposed to being incorporated. As such I am personally liable for my actions and the actions of anyone else I hire. It's a totally different situation from a corporation because I am not shielded by law from taking responsibility.
The people who can be held personally responsible for willful negligence are the corporate officers, or I believe in some cases the members of the Board of Directors. The actual owners of the business, the stock holders, are not responsible. They are completely shielded from liability for the actions of the corporation. I'm not saying that this is a bad thing, as it would be kind of difficult to make shareholders liable for the actions of any company that they own stock in. I'm just saying that without this responsibility a corporation should have to give up some rights.
People or corporations that get rights without having to be responsible end up acting irresponsibly. Errr, if that makes any sense. I think it does. Maybe I should go get some coffee.
Last time I heard the Constitution doesn't give rights to corporations. That whole idea is based on some bogus court case in the late 1800's. The fact is a corporation is a legal device created for the purpose of avoiding responsibility. Basically a corporate charter is a piece of paper that says the the people who own the business (through stock or whatever) can't be sued personally for anything that the corporation does wrong.
In my opinion, that lack of responsibility should also come with a lack of rights associated with it. The legal fiction that corporations have some kind of status as persons under the US Constitution is based on a completely bogus premise. People have rights, but they also bear the obligation of responsibilities. The charter of a corporation has no purpose but to attenuate the personal responsibility of those who own a corporation.
Ok, I've read most of them and here's my take ....
on
Ask Neil Gaiman
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· Score: 1
1) Don't answer any question with an etc in it.
2) Don't answer any question you've ever answered before.
3) Definitely respond to as many trolls as possible, on/. sometimes the trolls are the most insightful things on here in some perverse way.
4) Questions using the term genre are right out.
5) Consider responding to any comment with a misspelling that is also a valid english word with an eye towards answering the question the misspelling asks, not the intended comment.
6) Comment frequently on Anonymous Cowards questionable lifestyle choices if so inclined.
7) Definitely answer any question followed by a response that resembles "I will cry if this question gets asked." See the Gaiman vs Pratchett professional wrestling question for an excellent example.
8) Respond only cryptically to any question involving a serious social issue. Consult the I Ching for details.
9) Seriously consider avoiding questions that use the words impact or influence.
These are really helpful hints for anyone doing any kind of interview on/. actually. Kudos to me for coming up with them. I am a genius of Daliesque proportions.
I don't mind if the trucking industry is damaged as long as it happens over a long enough time frame that there isn't a major economic disruption. Trucking should compete on a level playing field with rail, and other forms of transport. The fact that trucking is dominant may just be an accident of history, an artifact of bad public policy. Trucks should pay a fair share of road upkeep based on the effect they have. If this has to be phased in gradually to avoid economic problems then so be it, but taxpayers shouldn't have to subsidize one form of transportation over another.
I'm not trying to be uppity or whatever. But I would, in fact, suggest that a little less "suburbanization" of rural places would not be a bad thing. My point had less to do with the fact that people in rural areas shouldn't have roads, as much as that everyone else shouldn't have to pay for it. If taxes or usage fees more accurately reflected the cost of the upkeep of the whole system you could still live in the country and drive 100 miles to work every day if you wanted to. You would just pay a heck of a lot more then now. Also, there's a good chance that if rail were competing on a fair basis there would be a lot more access to it than there is now. I live in Central PA, and the closest passenger rail stop is about 60 miles away (I think.) But back before the highway building boom in the 50s I could have walked to the rail station from my house. That railway is long gone, now it's a bike path. But the only reason it's gone is that politicians decided that it made sense to spend trillions of dollars to build roads that go everywhere.
I think that this makes a lot of sense. Taxing gasoline at a rate that pays for road maintenence and construction would make the automobile compete on a more level playing field. Conservatives seem to complain an awful lot about the subsidization of Amtrac or passenger rail service(at least in America,) but the subsidization of the automobile costs a lot more. In a free market the cost of externalities (hidden factors) would be decreased so they could compete on a purely economic basis. Right now taxpayers (some of whom don't drive) pay a lot of money that doesn't show up in the cost of operating a car. I could even go as far as to say that the cost of the war in Iraq should be passed on almost entirely in the form of gasoline taxes. I know, I know freedom and WMD and all that kind of crap. Yada yada yada. It's just kind of odd that everytime a Texas oil millionaire becomes president we go invade Iraq. Maybe I'm just being paranoid.
If you don't need the torque for towing, etc, an AWD minivan might be a good choice. You sacrifice a bit in the ability to handle snow, but you get double the gas mileage.
Wearable computing sounds cool and all. But all I really need is a concealed radio that I can wear to work. Anyone have any ideas on this? The really small ones usually get really crappy reception. Ideally it would be somehow built into a hat. I am allowed to wear a hat. Hell, I'll just google it. But to bring it back to topic, the wearable computing thing sounds kind of cool. I could listen to streaming internet radio at work. That would end the tyranny of crappy radio stations.
The ability of a jury to decide not just matters of fact, but also matters of law is firmly enshrined in the American legal system.
From www.caught.net/juror: "As recently as 1972, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia said that the jury has an " unreviewable and irreversible power... to acquit in disregard of the instructions on the law given by the trial judge.... (US vs Dougherty, 473 F 2d 1113, 1139 (1972))" This principle goes back to the English common law that US law is based upon.
The fact that people aren't informed of their rights as jurors is a shame. That doesn't change the fact that it is a right.
With respect to the JNOV, in most states the JNOV, if contested, would lead to an automatic retrial. Whether or not the new jury would also rule in the face of law would have to be determined at the retrial. A refusal to find on the side of the law by multiple juries would be a sign, at the least, that a law was unjust, and the judge would probably hesitate to enter a second JNOV on the same case.
This doesn't apply in criminal cases, although the law varies. In some cases jury nullification would provide immunity from new prosecution under the idea of "double jeopardy."
Part of the reason that the cost is so high is that DSL is a monopoly. A free market only works when you have several smaller firms competing. If one big firm has all the marbles the free market isn't so free.
Setting aside the decision of the jury that a defendent is liable under the law, or guilty in a criminal case, there is still the principle of jury nullification.
This principle states that a jury can rule in favor of a defendant, even if they think he is guilty, if they believe that the law that he was found guilty under is unjust. Although I have heard of this happening more in drug related cases, I would not be at all surprised to find out that it had happened in an IP case.
Take for example Mr A. Poor Schmow, who is being sued by the RIAA for a gazillion dollars in a civil case. He downloaded the music. The RIAA proves it in court. The law says that the RIAA can get the gazillion dollars. A jury composed of individuals, who themselves may have downloaded music at some time, finds in favor of Mr Schmow. Copyright law, as it is currently written and enforced, is not fair, and it is not just.
All respect to the lawyers at the DoJ who are doing their job enforcing the laws, but the people of the United States are the ones who should be deciding what the laws are. And when everyone and their mother are downloading files, it sure seems to me that the laws need to be changed. And if the RIAA lobbyists pay congressmen too much, then it's up to the juries to refuse to convict in the face of unjust laws.
The cars weren't crap because of the workers. The cars were crap because of the people in charge. The guy who practically invented quality control (Deming) went to Detroit first, to the heads of American car companies. They laughed at him. So he went to Japan (where's he's a hero.)
The average worker on the line didn't have anything to do with that decision. If management had decided to implement quality control they would have gone along with it. The CEOs of the big three automakers were asleep at the switch. It was their screw up that cost the US all those jobs. Deming practically begged them to implement quality control, he was an American, and he wanted American companies to use it. It's one of the big ironies of the whole thing that the resurgence of Japanese manufacturing is largely due to an American. And most Americans have never even heard of him.
And that is unions. I'm really surprised that organized labor, and really everyone who works at a real life job isn't screaming and yelling trying to get the right to unionize included in trade agreements. Then the people in sweatshops can get together and decide that they don't want to be chained to their sewing machines for 12 hour days. If these overseas factories had to maintain better working conditions, and pay a bit better, the shipping of American jobs overseas might slow.
The fact is, that free trade isn't about the people who do the work. It's about the people who make the money off of the people doing the work. If Americans don't wake up soon, they aren't going to need robots to come along and take all of the jobs. Because poor people in other countries will already have all of the ones that pay more then minimum wage. I think it's about time those poor people in other countries have the health benefits and retirement packages they deserve.
Then we can hire the unemployed robots to work in the little gardens that we have to grow our food in. Thus giving our unemployed asses just that much more time to watch TV.
Buy two big high output fans, the biggest and most powerful that will fit in the door to the server room. Stack them one on top of the other in the door. Face the one on the bottom in to suck relatively cooler air from the floor into the server room, and the one on the top out of the room, to suck the relatively hotter air at the top of the room out. This will work better if you can get the one on top all the way to the top, and seal the rest of the space in between. Also, this isn't going to be as effective as the server room opens onto a long hall, as if it opens onto a big room.
If the server room is on the bottom floor of your building you could also prop open the fire doors on the stairs so all the cool air in the building flows downhill to the floor your computers are on. This is going to be a fire code violation if your building is tall enough.
where someone will be paid minimum wage to play an in game "Non-Player" character. Much cheaper then inventing AI. Give them a script for some events and have them wing it on other occasions. Of course, if you have too many people playing NPCs it could get prohibitively expensive.
Or you could offer someone free in game time or items if they spent a certain amount of time playing a character. It would be kind of funny if teenagers could earn minimum wage sitting behind the counter in a virtual shop, just like they can IRL.
This became a problem when people were buying cartridges that were already out of date, not because the cartridges sat around too long after they bought them. There was a workaround developed, but it again involved disabling the printer's ability to tell how full the ink cartridge was.
I have a friend who is working on a project to put computers in some countries in Africa. Part of the problem that he has is that the electric grid goes down all the time. Plus there is a lot of dust. These might be great for that kind of application. You could probably run if for quite some time off of a UPS. And since it's a sealed unit, the dust wouldn't be such a big problem.
Basically that's what a patent does. It gives you a monopoly for a certain period of time. This encourages innovation, because if you come up with a new idea you can make money off of it for that time period. Personally, I think the whole idea of patenting a business model is retarded. And I apologize in advance to anyone who is retarded who reads this. They really don't deserve to be compared to the idea.
Except for the fact that they are probably all going to be sued too. Because they charge a flat monthly fee. Muhuhuhahahahahahha. I've got dibs on a system where I charge a yearly fee.
I don't claim to be a scientist, but one thing struck me when I was reading the page about your project. At the end you kind of complain about the ambient temperature in the room from your cooling system. But you also complain that your stage 3 temperatures were higher then your Stage 2 temperatures. Yeah, I'll bet. If you really want to know what is just from the cooling system you have to adjust the room temperature so it is constant.
I mean, it it's the winter time in the first example and your temperature is low, but your room temperature is 65F, then that's one thing. But, if your temperature is high and it's the summer and your room temp is 85F then that's something else entirely.
It seems to me it's possible you have an uncontrolled variable roaming around destroying your data.
The US tax rates on the highest bracket are the lowest they have been since 1928, the year before the big crash. In the 1950s, that Golden Era of Republicanism, the top tax rate was 78 percent. It remained that high until JFK cut it. How tax and spend of him.
I'm rambling too, so I'll just reiterate, the idea that the rich are taxed for the benefit of the poor is nonsense. What is happening is that the middle class is being taxed for the benefit of both the rich and the poor. This allows the current American political system to continue as the middle is played off against both ends. If the middle class ever decided that the taxes they pay should be used for their own benefit, then things might change.
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Well, you're right, I can't say that. I haven't tried it. The thing was that back when I tried it people were saying the same thing. People who work very hard on these kinds of things want so bad for it to be a good product. People, who for one reason or another want something that will compete with a Microsoft product, will say that it is as good if not better even when it is not. I'll go try it, because for my own reasons I don't like to support Microsoft any more then I have to.
But the people who said that Mozilla, and the other browsers, were better before weren't telling the truth. And if I weren't open to the idea that someday they are going to be better then I may never try them again. I'm just saying that if you really want something to succeed maybe it's not a good idea to hype it before it's ready just because you want to see it happen. When you're rock-solid sure that it's better then's the time to hype it.
I've downloaded and tried just about every free alternative to IE that I could find. Now it was a while ago, so a lot of them have probably improved while IE has most definitely not improved, but they were all HORRIBLE. I'm talking about the user experience in just surfing around looking at websites. Anything based on the Mozilla engine crashed all the time. Phoenix, ditto. Opera, the same. I actually prefer the old Netscape engine just because if it didn't like something it would just not show it instead of locking up all to hell. If this is the crap that passes for competition I'm not surprised that IE is winning at least for Windows. The only thing that gives me hope is that these other browsers are constantly improving while IE is not. And like I said, that was a while ago so maybe they are already better.
Actually, I do operate my own business part-time, as an independent contractor. It's a sole proprietorship, as opposed to being incorporated. As such I am personally liable for my actions and the actions of anyone else I hire. It's a totally different situation from a corporation because I am not shielded by law from taking responsibility.
The people who can be held personally responsible for willful negligence are the corporate officers, or I believe in some cases the members of the Board of Directors. The actual owners of the business, the stock holders, are not responsible. They are completely shielded from liability for the actions of the corporation. I'm not saying that this is a bad thing, as it would be kind of difficult to make shareholders liable for the actions of any company that they own stock in. I'm just saying that without this responsibility a corporation should have to give up some rights.
People or corporations that get rights without having to be responsible end up acting irresponsibly. Errr, if that makes any sense. I think it does. Maybe I should go get some coffee.
Last time I heard the Constitution doesn't give rights to corporations. That whole idea is based on some bogus court case in the late 1800's. The fact is a corporation is a legal device created for the purpose of avoiding responsibility. Basically a corporate charter is a piece of paper that says the the people who own the business (through stock or whatever) can't be sued personally for anything that the corporation does wrong. In my opinion, that lack of responsibility should also come with a lack of rights associated with it. The legal fiction that corporations have some kind of status as persons under the US Constitution is based on a completely bogus premise. People have rights, but they also bear the obligation of responsibilities. The charter of a corporation has no purpose but to attenuate the personal responsibility of those who own a corporation.
1) Don't answer any question with an etc in it. 2) Don't answer any question you've ever answered before. 3) Definitely respond to as many trolls as possible, on /. sometimes the trolls are the most insightful things on here in some perverse way.
4) Questions using the term genre are right out.
5) Consider responding to any comment with a misspelling that is also a valid english word with an eye towards answering the question the misspelling asks, not the intended comment.
6) Comment frequently on Anonymous Cowards questionable lifestyle choices if so inclined.
7) Definitely answer any question followed by a response that resembles "I will cry if this question gets asked." See the Gaiman vs Pratchett professional wrestling question for an excellent example.
8) Respond only cryptically to any question involving a serious social issue. Consult the I Ching for details.
9) Seriously consider avoiding questions that use the words impact or influence.
These are really helpful hints for anyone doing any kind of interview on /. actually. Kudos to me for coming up with them. I am a genius of Daliesque proportions.
I don't mind if the trucking industry is damaged as long as it happens over a long enough time frame that there isn't a major economic disruption. Trucking should compete on a level playing field with rail, and other forms of transport. The fact that trucking is dominant may just be an accident of history, an artifact of bad public policy. Trucks should pay a fair share of road upkeep based on the effect they have. If this has to be phased in gradually to avoid economic problems then so be it, but taxpayers shouldn't have to subsidize one form of transportation over another.
I'm not trying to be uppity or whatever. But I would, in fact, suggest that a little less "suburbanization" of rural places would not be a bad thing. My point had less to do with the fact that people in rural areas shouldn't have roads, as much as that everyone else shouldn't have to pay for it. If taxes or usage fees more accurately reflected the cost of the upkeep of the whole system you could still live in the country and drive 100 miles to work every day if you wanted to. You would just pay a heck of a lot more then now.
Also, there's a good chance that if rail were competing on a fair basis there would be a lot more access to it than there is now. I live in Central PA, and the closest passenger rail stop is about 60 miles away (I think.) But back before the highway building boom in the 50s I could have walked to the rail station from my house. That railway is long gone, now it's a bike path. But the only reason it's gone is that politicians decided that it made sense to spend trillions of dollars to build roads that go everywhere.
I think that this makes a lot of sense. Taxing gasoline at a rate that pays for road maintenence and construction would make the automobile compete on a more level playing field. Conservatives seem to complain an awful lot about the subsidization of Amtrac or passenger rail service(at least in America,) but the subsidization of the automobile costs a lot more. In a free market the cost of externalities (hidden factors) would be decreased so they could compete on a purely economic basis. Right now taxpayers (some of whom don't drive) pay a lot of money that doesn't show up in the cost of operating a car. I could even go as far as to say that the cost of the war in Iraq should be passed on almost entirely in the form of gasoline taxes. I know, I know freedom and WMD and all that kind of crap. Yada yada yada. It's just kind of odd that everytime a Texas oil millionaire becomes president we go invade Iraq. Maybe I'm just being paranoid.
If you don't need the torque for towing, etc, an AWD minivan might be a good choice. You sacrifice a bit in the ability to handle snow, but you get double the gas mileage.
Wearable computing sounds cool and all. But all I really need is a concealed radio that I can wear to work. Anyone have any ideas on this? The really small ones usually get really crappy reception. Ideally it would be somehow built into a hat. I am allowed to wear a hat. Hell, I'll just google it. But to bring it back to topic, the wearable computing thing sounds kind of cool. I could listen to streaming internet radio at work. That would end the tyranny of crappy radio stations.
The ability of a jury to decide not just matters of fact, but also matters of law is firmly enshrined in the American legal system.
From www.caught.net/juror: "As recently as 1972, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia said that the jury has an " unreviewable and irreversible power... to acquit in disregard of the instructions on the law given by the trial judge.... (US vs Dougherty, 473 F 2d 1113, 1139 (1972))" This principle goes back to the English common law that US law is based upon.
The fact that people aren't informed of their rights as jurors is a shame. That doesn't change the fact that it is a right.
With respect to the JNOV, in most states the JNOV, if contested, would lead to an automatic retrial. Whether or not the new jury would also rule in the face of law would have to be determined at the retrial. A refusal to find on the side of the law by multiple juries would be a sign, at the least, that a law was unjust, and the judge would probably hesitate to enter a second JNOV on the same case.This doesn't apply in criminal cases, although the law varies. In some cases jury nullification would provide immunity from new prosecution under the idea of "double jeopardy."
Part of the reason that the cost is so high is that DSL is a monopoly. A free market only works when you have several smaller firms competing. If one big firm has all the marbles the free market isn't so free.
Setting aside the decision of the jury that a defendent is liable under the law, or guilty in a criminal case, there is still the principle of jury nullification.
This principle states that a jury can rule in favor of a defendant, even if they think he is guilty, if they believe that the law that he was found guilty under is unjust. Although I have heard of this happening more in drug related cases, I would not be at all surprised to find out that it had happened in an IP case.
Take for example Mr A. Poor Schmow, who is being sued by the RIAA for a gazillion dollars in a civil case. He downloaded the music. The RIAA proves it in court. The law says that the RIAA can get the gazillion dollars. A jury composed of individuals, who themselves may have downloaded music at some time, finds in favor of Mr Schmow. Copyright law, as it is currently written and enforced, is not fair, and it is not just.
All respect to the lawyers at the DoJ who are doing their job enforcing the laws, but the people of the United States are the ones who should be deciding what the laws are. And when everyone and their mother are downloading files, it sure seems to me that the laws need to be changed. And if the RIAA lobbyists pay congressmen too much, then it's up to the juries to refuse to convict in the face of unjust laws.
You have to use I believe.
The cars weren't crap because of the workers. The cars were crap because of the people in charge. The guy who practically invented quality control (Deming) went to Detroit first, to the heads of American car companies. They laughed at him. So he went to Japan (where's he's a hero.)
The average worker on the line didn't have anything to do with that decision. If management had decided to implement quality control they would have gone along with it. The CEOs of the big three automakers were asleep at the switch. It was their screw up that cost the US all those jobs. Deming practically begged them to implement quality control, he was an American, and he wanted American companies to use it. It's one of the big ironies of the whole thing that the resurgence of Japanese manufacturing is largely due to an American. And most Americans have never even heard of him.
And that is unions. I'm really surprised that organized labor, and really everyone who works at a real life job isn't screaming and yelling trying to get the right to unionize included in trade agreements. Then the people in sweatshops can get together and decide that they don't want to be chained to their sewing machines for 12 hour days. If these overseas factories had to maintain better working conditions, and pay a bit better, the shipping of American jobs overseas might slow.
The fact is, that free trade isn't about the people who do the work. It's about the people who make the money off of the people doing the work. If Americans don't wake up soon, they aren't going to need robots to come along and take all of the jobs. Because poor people in other countries will already have all of the ones that pay more then minimum wage. I think it's about time those poor people in other countries have the health benefits and retirement packages they deserve.
Then we can hire the unemployed robots to work in the little gardens that we have to grow our food in. Thus giving our unemployed asses just that much more time to watch TV.
Buy two big high output fans, the biggest and most powerful that will fit in the door to the server room. Stack them one on top of the other in the door. Face the one on the bottom in to suck relatively cooler air from the floor into the server room, and the one on the top out of the room, to suck the relatively hotter air at the top of the room out. This will work better if you can get the one on top all the way to the top, and seal the rest of the space in between. Also, this isn't going to be as effective as the server room opens onto a long hall, as if it opens onto a big room.
If the server room is on the bottom floor of your building you could also prop open the fire doors on the stairs so all the cool air in the building flows downhill to the floor your computers are on. This is going to be a fire code violation if your building is tall enough.
where someone will be paid minimum wage to play an in game "Non-Player" character. Much cheaper then inventing AI. Give them a script for some events and have them wing it on other occasions. Of course, if you have too many people playing NPCs it could get prohibitively expensive.
Or you could offer someone free in game time or items if they spent a certain amount of time playing a character. It would be kind of funny if teenagers could earn minimum wage sitting behind the counter in a virtual shop, just like they can IRL.This became a problem when people were buying cartridges that were already out of date, not because the cartridges sat around too long after they bought them. There was a workaround developed, but it again involved disabling the printer's ability to tell how full the ink cartridge was.
I have a friend who is working on a project to put computers in some countries in Africa. Part of the problem that he has is that the electric grid goes down all the time. Plus there is a lot of dust. These might be great for that kind of application. You could probably run if for quite some time off of a UPS. And since it's a sealed unit, the dust wouldn't be such a big problem.
Basically that's what a patent does. It gives you a monopoly for a certain period of time. This encourages innovation, because if you come up with a new idea you can make money off of it for that time period. Personally, I think the whole idea of patenting a business model is retarded. And I apologize in advance to anyone who is retarded who reads this. They really don't deserve to be compared to the idea.
Except for the fact that they are probably all going to be sued too. Because they charge a flat monthly fee. Muhuhuhahahahahahha. I've got dibs on a system where I charge a yearly fee.
I don't claim to be a scientist, but one thing struck me when I was reading the page about your project. At the end you kind of complain about the ambient temperature in the room from your cooling system. But you also complain that your stage 3 temperatures were higher then your Stage 2 temperatures. Yeah, I'll bet. If you really want to know what is just from the cooling system you have to adjust the room temperature so it is constant.
I mean, it it's the winter time in the first example and your temperature is low, but your room temperature is 65F, then that's one thing. But, if your temperature is high and it's the summer and your room temp is 85F then that's something else entirely.
It seems to me it's possible you have an uncontrolled variable roaming around destroying your data.
Most taxes don't come from the rich and go to the poor. The rich (I'm talking top 1 percent here, not merely upper middle class) pay tax consultants to reduce their taxes to almost nothing. Not to mention that I never hear on talk shows how too much of our tax money is going to the rich. But farm subsidies aren't going to small farmers. They are going to billion dollar companies with fabulously wealthy CEOs who can afford to buy congressmen.
The US tax rates on the highest bracket are the lowest they have been since 1928, the year before the big crash. In the 1950s, that Golden Era of Republicanism, the top tax rate was 78 percent. It remained that high until JFK cut it. How tax and spend of him.
I'm rambling too, so I'll just reiterate, the idea that the rich are taxed for the benefit of the poor is nonsense. What is happening is that the middle class is being taxed for the benefit of both the rich and the poor. This allows the current American political system to continue as the middle is played off against both ends. If the middle class ever decided that the taxes they pay should be used for their own benefit, then things might change.