These guys have several models that include vibrator (not that kind...) attachments and lamp outlets to which you could plug in either a lamp or said air compressor and train whistle.
I can't speak for the UK, but in the US, financial need is determined rather callously. A student who has worked since age 15 may still be considered a dependant of the parents. If the parents are the child's employer, what may happen (this happened to me) is that 100% of both incomes are considered fair game. Essentially this boiled down to "your corporation pays your child $20,000 and you get paid $60,000, which is $20,000 above average, so your expected family contribution is $40,000 so you get nothing." I received merit grants of $10,000, which covered half the tuition. In the end, I had $50k in debt for my BA. A close friend of mine who came from greater need, his family was homeless for godssake, but had a deadbeat father who was distinctly not homeless, was saddled with $75k.
What is really asinine is that the system here only looks back to the prior year. So, for instance, I took a year off school to work, made about $70k, went back to school and got ZERO financial aid. I then studied abroad, resulting in an income of about five dollars. When I came back and practically got a full ride.
Pardon, but I have referenced my sources. If as you suggest, the US GPD is a third of world GDP, then the fact that Germany's GDP alone is one fifth of the US would seem rather odd indeed.
All numbers 2002 US$ from cia.gov http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factb ook/
Germany: $2.16T Frace : $1.55T UK : $1.52T China : $5.98T USA:$10.45T Japan : $3.65T India : $2.66T Russia : $1.40T
Hey, look, the US is already only 1/3 of those countries and we've left out over 180 countries. You know, little ones like Canada, Mexico, Brazil, the entire Middle East, all of Africa and 3/4 of Europe.
DO go check your own numbers before you make basless accusations about mine. I claim no infallibility, but your math is far shy of any basis in reality. I'll studiously avoid proceding to attack any arguments you've made on such a foundation in bullshit.
Of COURSE if you go to something like the UAW you are going to get higher wages. Wages vary greatly between SIC codes geographic locations and individual circumstances. A highly entrenched union like UAW obviously is going to have higher wages. Christ.
According to the BLS, the average wage across all professions is $17.18. That's Bill Gates down to the migrant farm worker. The average for "blue collar" workers is currently about $8.10, which includes everything from 747 engine mechanics to underwater demolition and strawberry picking. If $8.10 is the AVERAGE and you have a bevy of "blue collar" professions paying $50-60k/year in the same box, a huge number of people must be making less than $8.10. Besides, realize that the specific figures from the BLS as delineated by SIC code are themselves averages. So, if it says some position makes "$7" it is highly likely that given three employees, you have a possible range of $5-9, although given a large sample the range could be larger.
An example would be pulling up the wages for tipped employees in the District of Columbia. That figure gets averaged over Maryland and Virginia so it is reported that they earn $7/hour. The statutory wage is $2.33 in DC, but that data is not available in th BLS statistics. Do they make it up in tips? Hell, to talk to tipped employees around here, you'd think they were making $30/hr, unfortunately when the rent check bounces, one loses that impression rather quickly.
No it isn't. All of the money involved makes it into the economy at some point and will be accounted for. Do you honestly think that the US black market economy is more than eleven trillion dollars? That's 440,000,000 kilograms of cocaine. about five pounds for every man woman and child in the country or about three pounds of heroin. That's a hell of a lot of smack, man.
At any rate, any formal analysis, economic or otherwise, uses (or should use) clearly defined parameters and known variables. Things like the fact that X% of Sudafed is used in the production of methamphetamines is of no use when all you're interested in is how much Sudafed was sold. Really, if you wanted to know how much money was involved in the market for marijuana, you could just total the fast-food receipts between midnight and 4am.
At the end of the day, money must change hands and that money is eventually counted.
Yeah, great, unfortunately there is almost nothing that cannot be produced between China and India. Really, what couldn't be produced cheaper elsewhere? The problem is that the CEOs don't see their own pink slips coming, they just see cheaper production. In the _best_ case scenario, wages would equalize across the globe. This means, Joe American's paycheck gets cut in half while his bosses' paychecks pentuple. This is not "good." This happened in the 1990's already, but people didn't seem to notice. It is getting worse, so, please, people, at least "notice."
The point is that to double in twenty years would require only a very modest level of growth. What is important is that manufacturing is becoming a smaller portion of our economy and, yes, I know what "real" means, thanks.
So what? In the six years between 1995 and 2001, we lost three million manufacturing jobs. Now, roughly speaking, if we assume that 18% of GNP represented and equal share of the population (a safe assumption), that's a loss of 7% of the manufacturing jobs, 22% of which were lost just in 2001, which is 9% higher than in the five years prior. 650,000 manufacturing jobs in one year is very much a "big deal."
And, no, since the 1940's this has NOT been happening consistently. See below:
http://www.bea.gov/bea/dn2/gpo.htm
From 1946 until 1970, manufacturing accounted a flat 26% of GDP. Between 1970 and 1987 it dropped gracefully to 19%, largely due to the Tokyo round of GATT talkst that ended in 1979. It did not begin to dip below 19% until 1990. After ten years, manufacturing dropped 5% of GDP to 14%. This is recent. This is primarily the result of the Uruguay round of GATT preceding the WTO, which ran from 1986 to 1994.
What is problematic is not the loss, but the acceleration. Because most of this is so recent, it is impossible to just say, oh yeah, it's like that. No, we have never had an economy like this and would be very irresponsible to think this is just a matter of course. Along with other issues of political economics, this should be tremendous cause for pause.
Yeah, brilliant stuff. It's amazing how people simply don't (or won't) refer to the basic metrics to judge their perceptions. He does a great job of cutting out the bullshit to the point of "it quacks like a duck, swims like a duck and flies like a duck. It's a freakin' duck, already." I don't care if Chris Matthews puts it in heels and swears it's Charo. It's still a duck, damn it, and it's ugly one at that.
Manufacturing has not doubled. In twenty years it has added about 60%. That's not even 2.5% per year. Inflation over the same period was 3.1% per year. Besides, the concern is that as a function of per capita GNP, which is obviously a function of popluation, is changing and not in an upward direction. You've failed to site direct references to authoritative sources, so here's mine:
http://www.bea.gov/bea/dn2/gpoc.htm
You will notice that we have dropped from total manufacturing being about 18% of GNP to 14% of GNP between 1987 and 2001. You will also notice that we have added roughly 30 million in population. In terms of electronics manufacturing, we've lost nearly 30% in that sector just between 1994 and 2001 (.020% of GNP to.014% of GNP). "Soaring" my ass. YES, GNP has increased so that.014% of X may be greater than.020% of Y, but the real gains were in finance and services. YES, absent huge increases in unemployment that means we are shifting jobs around. However, as you have keenly noted, "blue-collar" jobs often pay around the median (read: not "well," just not "badly"). Service jobs usually pay at or near the minimum wage, which is $2.33 where I live.
As for your statement about "bogus zero-sum economics," well, having studied economics, and given the above facts, I see no problem with what is an accepted model in such obvious cases. Ask any unemployed software engineer if he thinks Indian outsourcing is a zero-sum game and I'm sure you'll get a "yes." He loses a job, India gains a job. It may be part of a larger game, but at that level of analysis, it is a zero-sum game and it is perfectly reasonable to view it as such. In terms of trade deficit, if China exports twice as much as it imports, it IS a zero sum game. They win, we lose. Make no mistake, trade deficits are -bad-.
The median income, that is the maximum of what the bottom 65 Million Americans earn, is $28,117 per year. That's $13.50 per hour. I'm not sure where you got your figures, since you didn't bother to provide a reference, so here's one of mine:
Of that, 13 million make less than $5,121. So we have 78 million out of 130 million taxpaying, working adults who make less than your purported "average blue-collar wage."
Admittedly, it is quite difficult to really see the entire picture in a/. post. Econometrics are far too complex for this venue. However, it is safe to say, things are not so rosy as you seem to hope.
However, the ability to flood the market with goods produced without tariff from such vastly cheaper locations is a recent development. At some point you must question the ability of an unemployed population to purchase anything at any price rather than buying what they have produced themselves because not even the Chinese can produce a DVD player for free. The problem is that money being a store of value essentially representing labor, if a product is produced with local labor, it will be inherently affordable to that local population. Once production is shifted to locations so drastically cheaper, there is a downward pressure on the cost of labor in the local economy. Thus, those things that _can_ be imported become much more affordable, but those things that cannot, like land, housing, and by extension education and entrepreneurialism in general, quickly become too expensive for all but the wealthiest and you have a population of indentured servants.
So, sure, if you envision a United States where the wealthy support a massive underclass employed purely for mutual personal service, then allowing this to go uncontrolled is fine. I'd prefer a different future where those around me are skilled at something more than wiping my ass for me. Some things, I just don't want to outsource.
It isn't "miraculous" at all. It's obvious and the last two centuries have largely shown determined efforts to prevent this from happening because it is so obvious.
There are only so many things that can be imported. Take, for instance, Kuwait. 95% of Kuwaiti exports are in petroleum, which makes up over half of GDP, since it is essentially their only natural resource. Nearly 100% of food is imported as agricultural capacity is nearly zero. The United States, on the other hand, has no reason to import anything except to lower the price. There are very, very limited exceptions, mostly in precious and semi-precious metals used in manufacturing where trading is based on necessity. Relying on unnecessary imports (note that something being "cheaper" does not make it "necessary") creates a succession of structural unemployment, depressed wages and/or government subsidy to keep uncompetitve sectors from producing millions of homeless people. At some point you simply must accept that the guy across the street in New York will not be able to produce anything for you at the price available in New Delhi and that some services must be provided in terms of your local economy, unless you envision a future at the homeless shelter.
Realize what is happening: production is MOVING not dramatically INCREASING. If production moves and is not quickly replaced, your GDP suffers because, obviously, you're no longer PRODUCING. We haven't found anything yet to replace what we're shipping offshore, so hey, if you've got any ideas on the "next big thing" that can only be produced here, you just fire away.
The total global economy is now about $110 Trillion, or about ten times that of the United States. The total global population is about 6 billion. That's an average GDP per capita of $18,333/year, which is HALF the current GDP/capita of the United States, but it is twice that of Poland and nearly five times that of China and almost ten times that of India. Now, considering the amount of production moving to China and India, which represent a third of the world population, and that the United States represents 10% of the global economy, one can assume that for every $1000 increase in GDP per capita in China and India, it will cost the United States $868 in GDP per capita. Why? Getting India and China to $18k/capita through exports would take transfers of $34,000,000,000,000 per year in production, 10% of which by definition would come out of the United States (in reality the US takes 20% of their exports, while India imports half as much and China practically nothing), unless new production is created, which to date has not happened (remember all the talk of "jobless recovery?"). That $3.4 Trillion would represent nearly a third of our economy, say, equivalent to losing California, New York and Texas.
Since 1983, GDP in real terms has only increased by about 18% while imports have increased from 8% to roughly 14% of GDP. In current dollars, that's $750 billion in production already shifted, equal to $2,900 in GDP/capita. The minimum wage of $3.80 in 1983 would require $5.70 today, but that wage is now only $5.15, which is a loss of 11% in standard of living, or about $1100/year. Since this is generally the wage we pay our manufacturing line workers, do you think these things are unrelated?
I don't reject the idea of equalizing incomes globally through trade. However, the current pace is suicidal especially when thinking in terms of moving production to countries with more than five times the human resources and one tenth the cost of labor already used to export to the United States three times what is imported. That kind of relationship cannot possibly be mutually beneficial to any sustainable degree. We already have a trade deficit of nearly $550 billion, which is $2000/year for every man, woman and child in the country, thus a family of four is already supporting $8,000 in trade-related waste. Escaping that scenario would take a miracle that cannot be imported from China.
Denon manufactures DVD players in Fukushima, Japan. Linn manufactures DVD players in Scotland and Krell does so in Connecticut.
So no, you can't waltz into Wal*Mart and find a non-chinese model, but if you truly do want to support labor standards with your purchases, you DO have choices. Of course, to purchase a DVD player manufactured by Krell in Connecticut, you will have to cough up $8000, not $80. The Scots will provide you with a Linn model for around $2200 and Japanese labor will produce a Denon for an average of around $800, with the cheapest being about $300.
...as unamerican as John Ashcroft, anyway, and I don't see the Marines storming the doors of the DOJ. Quite seriously, a great number of people sworn to "defend the constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic" are presently alseep at the wheel.
Unfortunately, the "Great Society" experiment you so abhor exists in every advanced democratic country. It is distinctly not the solitary brainchild of Lyndon Johnson. Anyone who has stepped five feet across the border realizes that. Now about a trillion dollars of the budget (somewhere around 13% of GDP and nearly half the budget) goes to various health-related programs. That's not just welfare queen handouts, that's preventing your sorry ass from being infected with all manner of things that in the last two centuries made having a family of fifteen a necessity for anyone who wanted their children to outlive them--you know the bad old days when typhoid, tuberculosis, polio and all manner of nasties like e.coli and hepatitis were daily experiences. The fact that most people can reasonably expect to finish high school, go to college, make $40,000/year and not die of an infectious disease before they're 30 is almost entirely due to the various pieces of "Great Society" legislation. Did you think this stuff just came out of thin air?
If you want to live without taxes you have two choices: move somewhere populated by those who need no support, like, say, Monaco, or move somewhere that has no government services like, say, Western Sahara. If neither of these options appeal to you, deal with the fact that someone, somewhere must pay for all the crap that makes an advanced democracy, well, "advanced." Also realize that 85% of the population earns less than $75k/year and that $75k/year is equivalent to $50k ten years ago and only about $34k twenty years ago. That just ain't alot of money, honey. It sure as hell isn't going to buy you a condo in Monaco. In the meantime realize that 85% of us need the sum of other people's taxes to live in this Great Society. Basically, you're on the dole, whether you know it and/or like it or not.
As for the military, I totally agree, but, on the other hand, if we were to rapidly roll back the military to 10% we'd have 12 million people without a source of income. You want to talk about "Great Society" welfare, try dealing with 16% unemployment. Swords to plowshares, blah blah blah, the fact is if you just yank the rug out, you're going to send millions of people straight to the welfare office and not all military expenditures are for blowing shit up. A great deal of it is behind things like making Internets and vaccines and general aerospace and I'd much rather be paying the military to fund that than pay their employees for eating Cheetos and watching soap operas because we felt like canning them all en masse.
The Columbia Accident Investigation Board Report, Volume One, Section 6.4, PAGE 173
http://www.caib.us/news/report/volume1/default.h tm l
THAT'S what I'm talking about.
Of course, many people don't bother to read the facts before they make the baseless accusations that are so popular in this thread. Since you are probably STILL unlikely to read the report, here is a brief snippet:
"Following the debris strike discovery on Flight Day Two, Mission Managers requested imagery by Flight Day Three. That imagery was inconclusive, leading to a decision on Flight Day Four to perform a spacewalk on Flight Day Five. That spacewalk revealed potentially catastrophic damage. The crew was directed to begin conserving consumables, such as oxygen and water, and Shuttle managers began around-the-clock processing of Atlantis to prepare it for launch. Shuttle managers pursued both the rescue and the repair options from Flight Day Six to Flight Day 26, and on that day (February 10) decided which one to abandon."
WHAT PART OF THAT IS AMBIGUOUS? Christ, from the blathering in this thread you'd think none of the above occured. All these people talking about "oh, the imagery, the imagery, they never got the imagery." HELLO!!!!! They went on a walkabout to see it right smack in front of their faces! For fuck's sake, people, READ! It's a primary-school skill, USE IT!
Does that explain "what the heck I'm talking about" or should I upload a big red crayon copy for 'ya?
Makes me feel so much better about a project I was on where the manager's idea of version control was a big metal filing rack. We spent 20% of our time printing up reams of useless crap for his "system" when everything was in CVS anyway. He blew through a million bucks and then fired the whole team with nothing but a stack of proofs of concepts for the most obviously feasible technologies to show for it. Amazingly, he still has _his_ job. Personally, I'd prefer being IM'ed to death to the endless hour-long pre-meeting meetings before the actual three hour meetings followed by the hour-long post-meeting meetings. Breaking concentration for email and IMs may kill a few minutes, but being dragged across the building and between floors for pointless managerial stroke-a-thons will kill an entire day. Unfortunately, it won't kill the managers who no doubt are now salivating at the thought of the post-post-meeting meeting wrap up via IM. Ugh.
The Rocket Scientists at NASA were abundantly aware of the problem from day one after the event. They had imagery by day eight. By day 26 the option of an Atlantis intercept was impossible and, no, it was not a seven day deployment, it was at least two weeks--the schedule at the time they began 24/7 processing for that option (which, incidentally, was almost immediate) was that Atlantis would otherwise be ready to launch in two months. After two weeks, that option failed.
Given the futility of the latter option, the ground crew had _zero_ options but those of advising the crew of the shuttle of anything they could do while in orbit, which was basically nothing.
Hindsight is 20/20. They shoulda, woulda, coulda done quite alot to _prevent_ the event, but after the event actually occurred, there was little to nothing anyone could do to save the shuttle and/or crew.
We've been at this business only twice as long as we've been able to fly. Many more people will die as we explore spaceflight. Accept it. The astronauts accept that risk and the public should reasonably respect their acceptance of that risk. Not recognizing that is a monumental insult not only to them, but to nature as well. It's the same hubris that has caused the outrage of innumberable failures of man against nature.
Put it in context: roughly 35,000 people die from operating automobiles every year in the United States alone. We lose on average one person per year in spaceflight--and we didn't lose a single soul for sixteen years. Those are pretty impressive odds and are more of a testament to success than this recent unfortunate event is to failure.
First, as should be obvious, I am not a NASA employee. I suggest you send them your hatemail.
Second, it was clear that there was damage 23 days before the decision to return and the crew was aware of it.
What people seem to wholly disregard is that the astronauts who were lost were as much a part of the decision making process as anyone on the ground--after all they were, in all but one of the possible solutions, the only ones capable of executing any repairs or modifications. In the end, the re-entry was initiated by those onboard the shuttle. Few people seem to acknowledge that fact and create this environment where all risk, responsibility and blame falls on the bad parenting of NASA.
The fact remains that 16 years separate the shuttle tragedies. Compare that to Apollo. I have suffered losses of family members due to automobile accidents with the same frequency.
It appears to me that it requires severe hubris to expect spaceflight to go nearly 20 years without loss of life.
Atlantis WAS stepped up to 24/7 processing, the crew DID start conserving consumables almost immediately, but by day 26, after two weeks of 24/7 processing, the Atlantis option was not going to happen and the crew would be dead in five days anyway.
Haven't you read the report?
No, the short answer is: "The Atlantic Monthly had an opinion" and you get your opinion from "The Atlantic Monthly." This does not mean that your opinion derived from "The Atlantic Monthly" is "right" or that mine is "wrong" or, hey, I'm fair, that I'm "right" and you're "wrong." Although I can safely say that you ARE wrong to assume that your opinion is "right" simply because it comes from "The Atlantic Monthly." However, I do have a certain affinity for this article there:
http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2003/05/lewis. ht m
You seem to disregard that their odds of survival in a perectly functioning shuttle beyond a total of 31 days were already zero and there was nothing anyone could do about that. Their non-perfectly-functioning shuttle would NOT have made it to ISS, the repairs they MIGHT have been able to do very likely would result in a complete disintegration of the shuttle on touchdown--not much of an improvement. Why is it so impossible to accept that every conceivable option included the risk of violent death?
I'm not defending NASA as having not erred, please, there were plenty of errors. I just find it patently obvious that even if NASA did everything remotely possible at the time without error, the result might just have likely been the same.
And, yes, I HAVE read the report. I suggest more people on/. do just that before carrying on with pointless conspiracy theories and baseless rescue scenarios. Hell, if the Wonkavator could have saved them I'm sure Gene Wilder would have jumped to the rescue with a gaggle of purple midgets.
You assume the damned thing could change orbit and catch up with the ISS. It had enough fuel to do a de-orbit burn and that's it. Also, Columbia wasn't outfitted to rendezvous with ISS in the first place: that's NO DOCKING RING. So great, you've got a snowball's chance in hell of getting to ISS, after which you've now hosed your ability to "safely" de-orbit if possible and even then, the entire crew has to walk over to the station risking flying off into the wild black yonder. At the end of the day, you've got an untethered beheamoth listlessly dangling right next to the ISS with no gas.
That's like setting your brother Billy-Bob's R.V. on a hill pointing at your house with no brakes hoping that Bobby-Ray will show up with the truck to haul it away before it drives through your living room.
As mentioned in another response to someone else eager to crucify me for stating the obvious, READ THE DAMNED REPORT. They estimated that at best the repairs that were remotely possible might still result in an on-approach crew bailout as the wings might still be so damaged on re-entry that the shuttle would disintegrate on touchdown as essentially they'd be working with toiletpaper and bond-o.
They had two weeks of food and three weeks of oxygen. The only options visited in the accident investigation reports are a rapidly deployed Atlantis and on-orbit repair. The former would provide a maximum window of five days assuming absolutely zero error in processing. Considering that would be rolling a three-month process down to two-weeks, one can imagine that likelihood. The latter solution included the possibility of a crew bail-out in case the wings were expected to completely collapse on landing.
Bottom line: THREE WEEKS. You don't just lob a Soyuz into the air and hope it hits a shuttle in THREE WEEKS. Sure, there are lots of things that could do the job, but organizing that to happen in less than a month? The crew would die on flight day 31 due to lack of oxygen and it took until day eight just to get all the imagery in line.
Now, I don't claim to be qualified in astronautics, but I'm going to give the benefit of the doubt that three weeks is a pretty tight schedule to execute an impromptu orbital rendezvous.
Rather than accusing a casual observer of being ignorant, go read the damned report. I trust the findings there to any armchair astronauts on/.
http://www.caib.us/news/report/pdf/vol1/full/caib_ report_volume1.pdf
Since they had no way of repairing anyway, not enough reserves to get to ISS and no "life boat," what difference does it make? I imagine the crew would rather risk re-entry than definitely freeze to death while sitting in a quickly decaying low orbit that would result in burning up anyway....just a thought.
Slashdot Mirror
These guys have several models that include vibrator (not that kind...) attachments and lamp outlets to which you could plug in either a lamp or said air compressor and train whistle.
http://www.sonicalert.com/
I can't speak for the UK, but in the US, financial need is determined rather callously. A student who has worked since age 15 may still be considered a dependant of the parents. If the parents are the child's employer, what may happen (this happened to me) is that 100% of both incomes are considered fair game. Essentially this boiled down to "your corporation pays your child $20,000 and you get paid $60,000, which is $20,000 above average, so your expected family contribution is $40,000 so you get nothing." I received merit grants of $10,000, which covered half the tuition. In the end, I had $50k in debt for my BA. A close friend of mine who came from greater need, his family was homeless for godssake, but had a deadbeat father who was distinctly not homeless, was saddled with $75k.
What is really asinine is that the system here only looks back to the prior year. So, for instance, I took a year off school to work, made about $70k, went back to school and got ZERO financial aid. I then studied abroad, resulting in an income of about five dollars. When I came back and practically got a full ride.
It's a splendid system.
Pardon, but I have referenced my sources. If as you suggest, the US GPD is a third of world GDP, then the fact that Germany's GDP alone is one fifth of the US would seem rather odd indeed.
b ook/
:$10.45T
All numbers 2002 US$ from cia.gov
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/fact
Germany: $2.16T
Frace : $1.55T
UK : $1.52T
China : $5.98T
USA
Japan : $3.65T
India : $2.66T
Russia : $1.40T
Hey, look, the US is already only 1/3 of those countries and we've left out over 180 countries. You know, little ones like Canada, Mexico, Brazil, the entire Middle East, all of Africa and 3/4 of Europe.
DO go check your own numbers before you make basless accusations about mine. I claim no infallibility, but your math is far shy of any basis in reality. I'll studiously avoid proceding to attack any arguments you've made on such a foundation in bullshit.
Of COURSE if you go to something like the UAW you are going to get higher wages. Wages vary greatly between SIC codes geographic locations and individual circumstances. A highly entrenched union like UAW obviously is going to have higher wages. Christ.
According to the BLS, the average wage across all professions is $17.18. That's Bill Gates down to the migrant farm worker. The average for "blue collar" workers is currently about $8.10, which includes everything from 747 engine mechanics to underwater demolition and strawberry picking. If $8.10 is the AVERAGE and you have a bevy of "blue collar" professions paying $50-60k/year in the same box, a huge number of people must be making less than $8.10. Besides, realize that the specific figures from the BLS as delineated by SIC code are themselves averages. So, if it says some position makes "$7" it is highly likely that given three employees, you have a possible range of $5-9, although given a large sample the range could be larger.
An example would be pulling up the wages for tipped employees in the District of Columbia. That figure gets averaged over Maryland and Virginia so it is reported that they earn $7/hour. The statutory wage is $2.33 in DC, but that data is not available in th BLS statistics. Do they make it up in tips? Hell, to talk to tipped employees around here, you'd think they were making $30/hr, unfortunately when the rent check bounces, one loses that impression rather quickly.
No it isn't. All of the money involved makes it into the economy at some point and will be accounted for. Do you honestly think that the US black market economy is more than eleven trillion dollars? That's 440,000,000 kilograms of cocaine. about five pounds for every man woman and child in the country or about three pounds of heroin. That's a hell of a lot of smack, man.
At any rate, any formal analysis, economic or otherwise, uses (or should use) clearly defined parameters and known variables. Things like the fact that X% of Sudafed is used in the production of methamphetamines is of no use when all you're interested in is how much Sudafed was sold. Really, if you wanted to know how much money was involved in the market for marijuana, you could just total the fast-food receipts between midnight and 4am.
At the end of the day, money must change hands and that money is eventually counted.
Yeah, great, unfortunately there is almost nothing that cannot be produced between China and India. Really, what couldn't be produced cheaper elsewhere? The problem is that the CEOs don't see their own pink slips coming, they just see cheaper production. In the _best_ case scenario, wages would equalize across the globe. This means, Joe American's paycheck gets cut in half while his bosses' paychecks pentuple. This is not "good." This happened in the 1990's already, but people didn't seem to notice. It is getting worse, so, please, people, at least "notice."
The point is that to double in twenty years would require only a very modest level of growth. What is important is that manufacturing is becoming a smaller portion of our economy and, yes, I know what "real" means, thanks.
So what? In the six years between 1995 and 2001, we lost three million manufacturing jobs. Now, roughly speaking, if we assume that 18% of GNP represented and equal share of the population (a safe assumption), that's a loss of 7% of the manufacturing jobs, 22% of which were lost just in 2001, which is 9% higher than in the five years prior. 650,000 manufacturing jobs in one year is very much a "big deal."
And, no, since the 1940's this has NOT been happening consistently. See below:
http://www.bea.gov/bea/dn2/gpo.htm
From 1946 until 1970, manufacturing accounted a flat 26% of GDP. Between 1970 and 1987 it dropped gracefully to 19%, largely due to the Tokyo round of GATT talkst that ended in 1979. It did not begin to dip below 19% until 1990. After ten years, manufacturing dropped 5% of GDP to 14%. This is recent. This is primarily the result of the Uruguay round of GATT preceding the WTO, which ran from 1986 to 1994.
What is problematic is not the loss, but the acceleration. Because most of this is so recent, it is impossible to just say, oh yeah, it's like that. No, we have never had an economy like this and would be very irresponsible to think this is just a matter of course. Along with other issues of political economics, this should be tremendous cause for pause.
Yeah, brilliant stuff. It's amazing how people simply don't (or won't) refer to the basic metrics to judge their perceptions. He does a great job of cutting out the bullshit to the point of "it quacks like a duck, swims like a duck and flies like a duck. It's a freakin' duck, already." I don't care if Chris Matthews puts it in heels and swears it's Charo. It's still a duck, damn it, and it's ugly one at that.
Duh, eh?
Manufacturing has not doubled. In twenty years it has added about 60%. That's not even 2.5% per year. Inflation over the same period was 3.1% per year. Besides, the concern is that as a function of per capita GNP, which is obviously a function of popluation, is changing and not in an upward direction. You've failed to site direct references to authoritative sources, so here's mine:
.014% of GNP). "Soaring" my ass. YES, GNP has increased so that .014% of X may be greater than .020% of Y, but the real gains were in finance and services. YES, absent huge increases in unemployment that means we are shifting jobs around. However, as you have keenly noted, "blue-collar" jobs often pay around the median (read: not "well," just not "badly"). Service jobs usually pay at or near the minimum wage, which is $2.33 where I live.
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/. post. Econometrics are far too complex for this venue. However, it is safe to say, things are not so rosy as you seem to hope.
http://www.bea.gov/bea/dn2/gpoc.htm
You will notice that we have dropped from total manufacturing being about 18% of GNP to 14% of GNP between 1987 and 2001. You will also notice that we have added roughly 30 million in population. In terms of electronics manufacturing, we've lost nearly 30% in that sector just between 1994 and 2001 (.020% of GNP to
As for your statement about "bogus zero-sum economics," well, having studied economics, and given the above facts, I see no problem with what is an accepted model in such obvious cases. Ask any unemployed software engineer if he thinks Indian outsourcing is a zero-sum game and I'm sure you'll get a "yes." He loses a job, India gains a job. It may be part of a larger game, but at that level of analysis, it is a zero-sum game and it is perfectly reasonable to view it as such. In terms of trade deficit, if China exports twice as much as it imports, it IS a zero sum game. They win, we lose. Make no mistake, trade deficits are -bad-.
The median income, that is the maximum of what the bottom 65 Million Americans earn, is $28,117 per year. That's $13.50 per hour. I'm not sure where you got your figures, since you didn't bother to provide a reference, so here's one of mine:
http://www.irs.gov/taxstats/article/0,,id=10288
Of that, 13 million make less than $5,121. So we have 78 million out of 130 million taxpaying, working adults who make less than your purported "average blue-collar wage."
Admittedly, it is quite difficult to really see the entire picture in a
However, the ability to flood the market with goods produced without tariff from such vastly cheaper locations is a recent development. At some point you must question the ability of an unemployed population to purchase anything at any price rather than buying what they have produced themselves because not even the Chinese can produce a DVD player for free. The problem is that money being a store of value essentially representing labor, if a product is produced with local labor, it will be inherently affordable to that local population. Once production is shifted to locations so drastically cheaper, there is a downward pressure on the cost of labor in the local economy. Thus, those things that _can_ be imported become much more affordable, but those things that cannot, like land, housing, and by extension education and entrepreneurialism in general, quickly become too expensive for all but the wealthiest and you have a population of indentured servants.
So, sure, if you envision a United States where the wealthy support a massive underclass employed purely for mutual personal service, then allowing this to go uncontrolled is fine. I'd prefer a different future where those around me are skilled at something more than wiping my ass for me. Some things, I just don't want to outsource.
It isn't "miraculous" at all. It's obvious and the last two centuries have largely shown determined efforts to prevent this from happening because it is so obvious.
There are only so many things that can be imported. Take, for instance, Kuwait. 95% of Kuwaiti exports are in petroleum, which makes up over half of GDP, since it is essentially their only natural resource. Nearly 100% of food is imported as agricultural capacity is nearly zero. The United States, on the other hand, has no reason to import anything except to lower the price. There are very, very limited exceptions, mostly in precious and semi-precious metals used in manufacturing where trading is based on necessity. Relying on unnecessary imports (note that something being "cheaper" does not make it "necessary") creates a succession of structural unemployment, depressed wages and/or government subsidy to keep uncompetitve sectors from producing millions of homeless people. At some point you simply must accept that the guy across the street in New York will not be able to produce anything for you at the price available in New Delhi and that some services must be provided in terms of your local economy, unless you envision a future at the homeless shelter.
Realize what is happening: production is MOVING not dramatically INCREASING. If production moves and is not quickly replaced, your GDP suffers because, obviously, you're no longer PRODUCING. We haven't found anything yet to replace what we're shipping offshore, so hey, if you've got any ideas on the "next big thing" that can only be produced here, you just fire away.
The total global economy is now about $110 Trillion, or about ten times that of the United States. The total global population is about 6 billion. That's an average GDP per capita of $18,333/year, which is HALF the current GDP/capita of the United States, but it is twice that of Poland and nearly five times that of China and almost ten times that of India. Now, considering the amount of production moving to China and India, which represent a third of the world population, and that the United States represents 10% of the global economy, one can assume that for every $1000 increase in GDP per capita in China and India, it will cost the United States $868 in GDP per capita. Why? Getting India and China to $18k/capita through exports would take transfers of $34,000,000,000,000 per year in production, 10% of which by definition would come out of the United States (in reality the US takes 20% of their exports, while India imports half as much and China practically nothing), unless new production is created, which to date has not happened (remember all the talk of "jobless recovery?"). That $3.4 Trillion would represent nearly a third of our economy, say, equivalent to losing California, New York and Texas.
Since 1983, GDP in real terms has only increased by about 18% while imports have increased from 8% to roughly 14% of GDP. In current dollars, that's $750 billion in production already shifted, equal to $2,900 in GDP/capita. The minimum wage of $3.80 in 1983 would require $5.70 today, but that wage is now only $5.15, which is a loss of 11% in standard of living, or about $1100/year. Since this is generally the wage we pay our manufacturing line workers, do you think these things are unrelated?
I don't reject the idea of equalizing incomes globally through trade. However, the current pace is suicidal especially when thinking in terms of moving production to countries with more than five times the human resources and one tenth the cost of labor already used to export to the United States three times what is imported. That kind of relationship cannot possibly be mutually beneficial to any sustainable degree. We already have a trade deficit of nearly $550 billion, which is $2000/year for every man, woman and child in the country, thus a family of four is already supporting $8,000 in trade-related waste. Escaping that scenario would take a miracle that cannot be imported from China.
Denon manufactures DVD players in Fukushima, Japan. Linn manufactures DVD players in Scotland and Krell does so in Connecticut.
So no, you can't waltz into Wal*Mart and find a non-chinese model, but if you truly do want to support labor standards with your purchases, you DO have choices. Of course, to purchase a DVD player manufactured by Krell in Connecticut, you will have to cough up $8000, not $80. The Scots will provide you with a Linn model for around $2200 and Japanese labor will produce a Denon for an average of around $800, with the cheapest being about $300.
So, really, how dedicated are you to the cause?
...as unamerican as John Ashcroft, anyway, and I don't see the Marines storming the doors of the DOJ. Quite seriously, a great number of people sworn to "defend the constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic" are presently alseep at the wheel.
Unfortunately, the "Great Society" experiment you so abhor exists in every advanced democratic country. It is distinctly not the solitary brainchild of Lyndon Johnson. Anyone who has stepped five feet across the border realizes that. Now about a trillion dollars of the budget (somewhere around 13% of GDP and nearly half the budget) goes to various health-related programs. That's not just welfare queen handouts, that's preventing your sorry ass from being infected with all manner of things that in the last two centuries made having a family of fifteen a necessity for anyone who wanted their children to outlive them--you know the bad old days when typhoid, tuberculosis, polio and all manner of nasties like e.coli and hepatitis were daily experiences. The fact that most people can reasonably expect to finish high school, go to college, make $40,000/year and not die of an infectious disease before they're 30 is almost entirely due to the various pieces of "Great Society" legislation. Did you think this stuff just came out of thin air?
If you want to live without taxes you have two choices: move somewhere populated by those who need no support, like, say, Monaco, or move somewhere that has no government services like, say, Western Sahara. If neither of these options appeal to you, deal with the fact that someone, somewhere must pay for all the crap that makes an advanced democracy, well, "advanced." Also realize that 85% of the population earns less than $75k/year and that $75k/year is equivalent to $50k ten years ago and only about $34k twenty years ago. That just ain't alot of money, honey. It sure as hell isn't going to buy you a condo in Monaco. In the meantime realize that 85% of us need the sum of other people's taxes to live in this Great Society. Basically, you're on the dole, whether you know it and/or like it or not.
As for the military, I totally agree, but, on the other hand, if we were to rapidly roll back the military to 10% we'd have 12 million people without a source of income. You want to talk about "Great Society" welfare, try dealing with 16% unemployment. Swords to plowshares, blah blah blah, the fact is if you just yank the rug out, you're going to send millions of people straight to the welfare office and not all military expenditures are for blowing shit up. A great deal of it is behind things like making Internets and vaccines and general aerospace and I'd much rather be paying the military to fund that than pay their employees for eating Cheetos and watching soap operas because we felt like canning them all en masse.
The Columbia Accident Investigation Board Report, Volume One, Section 6.4, PAGE 173
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http://www.caib.us/news/report/volume1/default.
THAT'S what I'm talking about.
Of course, many people don't bother to read the facts before they make the baseless accusations that are so popular in this thread. Since you are probably STILL unlikely to read the report, here is a brief snippet:
"Following the debris strike discovery on Flight Day Two, Mission Managers requested imagery by Flight Day Three. That imagery was inconclusive, leading to a decision on Flight Day Four to perform a spacewalk on Flight Day Five. That spacewalk revealed potentially catastrophic damage. The crew was directed to begin conserving consumables, such as oxygen and water, and Shuttle managers began around-the-clock processing of Atlantis to prepare it for launch. Shuttle managers pursued both the rescue and the repair options from Flight Day Six to Flight Day 26, and on that day (February 10) decided which one to abandon."
WHAT PART OF THAT IS AMBIGUOUS? Christ, from the blathering in this thread you'd think none of the above occured. All these people talking about "oh, the imagery, the imagery, they never got the imagery." HELLO!!!!! They went on a walkabout to see it right smack in front of their faces! For fuck's sake, people, READ! It's a primary-school skill, USE IT!
Does that explain "what the heck I'm talking about" or should I upload a big red crayon copy for 'ya?
"SIIIIIIIIIIIIGH." -- Al Gore.
Makes me feel so much better about a project I was on where the manager's idea of version control was a big metal filing rack. We spent 20% of our time printing up reams of useless crap for his "system" when everything was in CVS anyway. He blew through a million bucks and then fired the whole team with nothing but a stack of proofs of concepts for the most obviously feasible technologies to show for it. Amazingly, he still has _his_ job. Personally, I'd prefer being IM'ed to death to the endless hour-long pre-meeting meetings before the actual three hour meetings followed by the hour-long post-meeting meetings. Breaking concentration for email and IMs may kill a few minutes, but being dragged across the building and between floors for pointless managerial stroke-a-thons will kill an entire day. Unfortunately, it won't kill the managers who no doubt are now salivating at the thought of the post-post-meeting meeting wrap up via IM. Ugh.
The Rocket Scientists at NASA were abundantly aware of the problem from day one after the event. They had imagery by day eight. By day 26 the option of an Atlantis intercept was impossible and, no, it was not a seven day deployment, it was at least two weeks--the schedule at the time they began 24/7 processing for that option (which, incidentally, was almost immediate) was that Atlantis would otherwise be ready to launch in two months. After two weeks, that option failed.
Given the futility of the latter option, the ground crew had _zero_ options but those of advising the crew of the shuttle of anything they could do while in orbit, which was basically nothing.
Hindsight is 20/20. They shoulda, woulda, coulda done quite alot to _prevent_ the event, but after the event actually occurred, there was little to nothing anyone could do to save the shuttle and/or crew.
We've been at this business only twice as long as we've been able to fly. Many more people will die as we explore spaceflight. Accept it. The astronauts accept that risk and the public should reasonably respect their acceptance of that risk. Not recognizing that is a monumental insult not only to them, but to nature as well. It's the same hubris that has caused the outrage of innumberable failures of man against nature.
Put it in context: roughly 35,000 people die from operating automobiles every year in the United States alone. We lose on average one person per year in spaceflight--and we didn't lose a single soul for sixteen years. Those are pretty impressive odds and are more of a testament to success than this recent unfortunate event is to failure.
First, as should be obvious, I am not a NASA employee. I suggest you send them your hatemail. Second, it was clear that there was damage 23 days before the decision to return and the crew was aware of it. What people seem to wholly disregard is that the astronauts who were lost were as much a part of the decision making process as anyone on the ground--after all they were, in all but one of the possible solutions, the only ones capable of executing any repairs or modifications. In the end, the re-entry was initiated by those onboard the shuttle. Few people seem to acknowledge that fact and create this environment where all risk, responsibility and blame falls on the bad parenting of NASA. The fact remains that 16 years separate the shuttle tragedies. Compare that to Apollo. I have suffered losses of family members due to automobile accidents with the same frequency. It appears to me that it requires severe hubris to expect spaceflight to go nearly 20 years without loss of life.
Atlantis WAS stepped up to 24/7 processing, the crew DID start conserving consumables almost immediately, but by day 26, after two weeks of 24/7 processing, the Atlantis option was not going to happen and the crew would be dead in five days anyway. Haven't you read the report?
No, the short answer is: "The Atlantic Monthly had an opinion" and you get your opinion from "The Atlantic Monthly." This does not mean that your opinion derived from "The Atlantic Monthly" is "right" or that mine is "wrong" or, hey, I'm fair, that I'm "right" and you're "wrong." Although I can safely say that you ARE wrong to assume that your opinion is "right" simply because it comes from "The Atlantic Monthly." However, I do have a certain affinity for this article there:
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/. do just that before carrying on with pointless conspiracy theories and baseless rescue scenarios. Hell, if the Wonkavator could have saved them I'm sure Gene Wilder would have jumped to the rescue with a gaggle of purple midgets.
http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2003/05/lewis
You seem to disregard that their odds of survival in a perectly functioning shuttle beyond a total of 31 days were already zero and there was nothing anyone could do about that. Their non-perfectly-functioning shuttle would NOT have made it to ISS, the repairs they MIGHT have been able to do very likely would result in a complete disintegration of the shuttle on touchdown--not much of an improvement. Why is it so impossible to accept that every conceivable option included the risk of violent death?
I'm not defending NASA as having not erred, please, there were plenty of errors. I just find it patently obvious that even if NASA did everything remotely possible at the time without error, the result might just have likely been the same.
And, yes, I HAVE read the report. I suggest more people on
You assume the damned thing could change orbit and catch up with the ISS. It had enough fuel to do a de-orbit burn and that's it. Also, Columbia wasn't outfitted to rendezvous with ISS in the first place: that's NO DOCKING RING. So great, you've got a snowball's chance in hell of getting to ISS, after which you've now hosed your ability to "safely" de-orbit if possible and even then, the entire crew has to walk over to the station risking flying off into the wild black yonder. At the end of the day, you've got an untethered beheamoth listlessly dangling right next to the ISS with no gas.
That's like setting your brother Billy-Bob's R.V. on a hill pointing at your house with no brakes hoping that Bobby-Ray will show up with the truck to haul it away before it drives through your living room.
GREAT.
As mentioned in another response to someone else eager to crucify me for stating the obvious, READ THE DAMNED REPORT. They estimated that at best the repairs that were remotely possible might still result in an on-approach crew bailout as the wings might still be so damaged on re-entry that the shuttle would disintegrate on touchdown as essentially they'd be working with toiletpaper and bond-o.
i b_ report_volume1.pdf
http://www.caib.us/news/report/pdf/vol1/full/ca
They had two weeks of food and three weeks of oxygen. The only options visited in the accident investigation reports are a rapidly deployed Atlantis and on-orbit repair. The former would provide a maximum window of five days assuming absolutely zero error in processing. Considering that would be rolling a three-month process down to two-weeks, one can imagine that likelihood. The latter solution included the possibility of a crew bail-out in case the wings were expected to completely collapse on landing. Bottom line: THREE WEEKS. You don't just lob a Soyuz into the air and hope it hits a shuttle in THREE WEEKS. Sure, there are lots of things that could do the job, but organizing that to happen in less than a month? The crew would die on flight day 31 due to lack of oxygen and it took until day eight just to get all the imagery in line. Now, I don't claim to be qualified in astronautics, but I'm going to give the benefit of the doubt that three weeks is a pretty tight schedule to execute an impromptu orbital rendezvous. Rather than accusing a casual observer of being ignorant, go read the damned report. I trust the findings there to any armchair astronauts on /.
http://www.caib.us/news/report/pdf/vol1/full/caib_ report_volume1.pdf
Since they had no way of repairing anyway, not enough reserves to get to ISS and no "life boat," what difference does it make? I imagine the crew would rather risk re-entry than definitely freeze to death while sitting in a quickly decaying low orbit that would result in burning up anyway. ...just a thought.