And you got rental privileges. e.g. If it broke it was their responsibility to fix it, not the renter's. These companies are taking a page out of the MAFIAA who like to claim you're buying a license when you try to do anything with the CD or DVD you bought, but claim you bought a product and need to re-buy it if you accidentally break the disc and want a free replacement since you already paid for the license.
Yes there is. It's staring everyone in the face but they don't want to acknowledge it because it amounts to self-sacrifice and tough love. The solution is to help the third world country modernize so their GDP per capita increases until it's roughly on par with developed nations. Then they will be able to afford the software. That's what we were doing with globalization (shifting some developed world jobs to third world countries). But enough people in developed countries got pissed off with "their" jobs going overseas that they've elected nationalist leaders to stop it.
Any other work-around to this problem simply delays the third world country being able to modernize. If they charge a lower price for the software in that country (ignoring the issue of people in developed countries buying it cheaper in the third world country), then that lessens upward pressure on local wages. People there are able to afford the software, so they're less likely to ask for / demand higher wages so they can buy the software (they'll just pirate it instead). Which slows down the rate at which the country's GDP per capita increases.
If you want to help software users in poor countries, the best way to do it is by helping them modernize and grow their economy. Doing them "favors" like giving them cheaper software, or food aid, or charity medical care just hurts them in the long run. (Food aid lowers the value of natively grown crops, making it harder for farmers to earn money to improve their crop yields. Medical charity decreases mortality rate and encourages the population to grow more than the native food production can support, making them even more reliant on foreign food aid. The best way is to help them grow their economy so their own farmers can produce enough crops to feed themselves. And for their own citizens to become doctors so they can open up native hospitals.)
Actually, a fine of $10 per MWh almost exactly eliminates the disparity in Federal subsidies for renewables (excluding biomass aka burning wood) vs fossil fuels. (Table ES2 divided by Table ES3 to get subsidy dollars per BTU, divide by 293071 to convert trillion BTUs to MWh.)
Coal = $1085 million subsidy / 5923 MWh = $0.18 per MWh
Gas = $2346 million subsidy / 8309 MWh = $0.28 per MWh
Nuclear = $1600 million subsidy / 2379 MWh = $0.70 per MWh
Biomass = $629 million subsidy / 1317 MWh = $0.48 per MWh
Hydro = $395 million subsidy / 756 MWh = $0.52 per MWh
Geothermal = $345 million subsidy / 64.5 MWh = $5.35 per MWh
Wind = $5936 million subsidy / 454 MWh = $13.07 per MWh
Solar = $5328 million subsidy / 83.8 MWh = $65.57 per MWh
Total of above four = $12004 million subsidy / 1358 MWh = $8.84 per MWh
So it's not really an unapologetic subsidy for the coal industry. It's a leveling of the playing field.
They'd probably be just fine with a dome over their state. Wyoming only has 586,000 people. Its population density is 1/27th that of New York, 1/16 that of California, and 1/6th the world average. In contrast, their forested area is 1/6th that of New York, 1/2 that of California, and 1/3 the world average. If you put a dome over their state, they could emit roughly 2x more CO2 per capita than the world and New York average, 8x more than California's average, and their air's CO2 concentration would still be lower due to their forests scrubbing it out.
I didn't vote for Trump and am horrified at the thought of what his Presidency could bring. But your mistaken assumption legitimzes what Trump's supporters have been saying about the election results - that the people living in the 2% of U.S. counties which voted for Clinton simply don't understand the problems and living conditions faced by people living in the 98% of the U.S. counties which voted for Trump. In fact if we took your dome idea and applied it across the country, and you added up net CO2 generation minus absorption by vegetation, you'd probably find the Clinton voter counties are net CO2 producers while Trump voter counties are net CO2 reducers by a massive margin. It's the urban areas and the trendy environmentalists which would suffocate first. The rural areas and real environmentalists trying to live sustainably off the land would be just fine.
If you're going to invest your time and money in a creative endeavor, don't base it on someone else's property. That puts you completely at their mercy. Just like Zynga is completely at the mercy of Facebook, you are completely at the mercy of CBS/Paramount if you make Star Trek fiction. They own the creative works, they get to decide what should be granted a reasonable license, not you and me. If they want to be asses about it, they can.
Fanfics are fine since they represent a minimal investment of your time and resources. But if you're going to put enough effort and money into it to make a feature film, you really should be creating your own sci-fi universe. Or before you start production, you can negotiate with CBS/Paramount for a license to use their universe. Intellectual property law is completely made-up, so it isn't grounded by real-world physical limits and economics. That means it doesn't fall under the "easier to beg forgiveness than it is to get permission" rule.
$15/hr * 40 hr/wk * 50 wk/yr (2 weeks vacation) = $30,000/yr. Most people would consider that a living wage. Federal poverty level for a family of 4 is just $24,250/yr.
So the $15/hr target is too high. If you target the poverty level for a family of 4 (assuming it's a single income family), the target is $12.12/hr. Poverty level for a single person is $11,770/yr, which translates into $5.89/hr, which is actually below the current minimum wage of $7.25/hr. So the current minimum wage is in the right ballpark of a compromise between singles and single-income families.
Yes this assumes full employment throughout the year. The minimum wage has to be tied to productivity because wages are tied to productivity. If you try to set the minimum wage based on poverty levels for people not being productive the full year, you end up eliminating jobs of people who are fully employed and productive the full year. Inability to find full employment is an employment problem (number of jobs available), not a wage problem (how much you're paid for a job).
IMHO the problem isn't the minimum wage, it's the capital gains tax is way too high for lower income people. People always complain the 15% capital gains tax is too low without really researching who actually pays a 15% income tax. The tax rate is graduated meaning just because you're in the 25% tax bracket doesn't mean you pay a 15% income tax. The threshold where you actually pay a 15% income tax (single, standard deduction) is about $58,500. The threshold where the average American pays 15% income tax (after credits, exemptions, and itemized deductions) is closer to $90,000 (you can figure this out from the IRS tax stats). So it makes little sense for people making less than this to invest their money when it's going to be taxed more than if they just spent it and increased their income via raises (e.g. raising the minimum wage) rather than investments/savings.
The economy rewards you with income for two things - generating productivity (working), and deciding where productivity is needed (managing/investing). The current flat 15% capital gains tax effectively discourages lower income people from participating in the latter. It needs to be graduated like income tax so lower income people have more incentive to save and invest. (The rationale for the capital gains tax rate being lower than income tax rate at higher incomes is the same. It encourages rich people to invest their money thus re-injecting it into the economy, instead of wasting it on gold toilet seats. Same logic applies to lower income people, except some of them "waste" their money on big screen TVs, iPhones, car leases, etc.)
Crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter try to make it seem like you're pre-paying for a final product, but you're not. You're investing in a business concept - basically you're a venture capitalist. If it works, you'll get your product. if it doesn't, you'll get nothing.
Crowdfunding is actually worse than venture capitalism. With the latter, you the investor get part ownership of the company, so if it becomes successful (e.g. Oculus VR, Pebble) you share in that success. With crowdfunding, all you get is a shiny trinket. If you even get it at all. All the risk, none of the rewards.
People advocating hypotheticals based on popular vote are arguing on the basis that fairness (majority wins) should override methodology (Electoral College). The problem with arguing Clinton should've won the election based on fairness is you're artificially limiting the election to just two candidates. Clinton and Trump only got 93.97% of the vote. Your "fair" projection disenfranchises 6.03% of the voters
So in the interest of fairness, say you include as many of those 6% as you can. If you add up the votes for the liberal candidates (Clinton, Stein, Sanders, Riva), you get 49.22%. If you add up the votes for the conservative candidates (Trump, Johnson, McMullin, Castle) you get 49.89%. So in all fairness, based on the popular vote the correct winner of this election should be a conservative candidate.
Also, California's last Republican Senator was John Seymour. (Appointed to replace Pete Wilson, who ran for and won the governorship in the first election I was allowed to vote in. The Republicans had made it a priority to get him elected as governor because the 1990 census was being conducted and the governor could veto the gerrymandering Democrats had done to the state's districts.) And the problems you cite (weak economy, broke government floated on large companies) pre-date Schwarzenegger. Gov. Davis was recalled due to California's poor economy following the dot-com bubble bursting, and the huge budget deficit. Schwarzenegger didn't cause these problems as you claim - he was elected because of these problems. Finally, the governor doesn't control the budget. The legislature does. All the governor can do is sign or veto whatever the legislature passes. And the last time California had Republicans controlling even one branch of the state legislature was the '95-96 state assembly.
So it was Democrats who are responsible for every California problem you cite.
Signed up for it at the end of their promo a week and half back (100+ channels, gen 4 Apple TV and 3 months service for $105, I added on HBO at $5/mo).
The browser version is unusable. Crashes, glitches (shows freeze or stop playing), gets stuck in low res mode, often can't connect to the stream or gets 5 seconds and stops. I wasn't really planning to use it with the computer so not that big a deal for me. The main drawback is I have no way to stream it to my projector since they haven't added Roku support yet.
The Android version mostly works. I've been using my tablet as a mini portable TV when I'm doing stuff around the house, which was really the point of getting the service. I still have an unlimited phone data plan, and am able to use it + hotspot to use the service on my tablet when I'm traveling. Transition from hotspot to regular WiFi is seamless. A few annoyances I've found.
Occasionally logs you out. This was happening every 30-60 minutes when I first started the service, but it's only happened once in the last few days so they seem to be getting it under control.
Yes they have ABC, NBC, and Fox (CBS wants you to pay for their channel to get OTA shows). But only in certain metro areas. And if you move outside of that metro area, the channels stop working. The Android app needs location permission or it refuses to run. I haven't yet traveled to another supported metro area, so dunno if this is just checks for supported locations, or if it's tied to your home address metro area.
Limited to 2 streams. Not an issue for me, but this will be a deal-breaker for some.
Most streaming channels don't list DirecTV Now as a service. So even though I can watch the Discovery Channel with DirecTV Now, I can't watch their Roku channel since there's no way for me to activate it. Hopefully this is just due to the services being slow to add DirecTV Now as an enabling subscription service. It does work for HBO, and someone else has said it works for ESPN.
Swiping up/down on the guide often advances the show listings forward an hour.
The favorites selection is right next to the channel names. It's easy to accidentally favorite/unfavorite a channel while scrolling through the list, or when selecting a channel to watch.
Favorites list is slow to sync between devices.
Only has a single favorites list. I was expecting multiple favorites like with their satellite tuners.
Guide defaults to all channels every time you open it.
Starts muted when you first start the Android app. This threw me off for a bit as I tried to troubleshoot it. IMHO it should remember the audio state the last time the app was run. (Just checked and looks like the update they released today adds an option to let you set it to on/off on launch.)
Easy to change from partial screen (with a list of recent channels you've watched underneath) to full screen. But impossible to switch from full screen to partial screen.
No configuration options for closed captioning. Text is probably the right size for a phone, but too small for my tablet (2560x1600 screen).
After living with the Roku for a year, it's really horrifying how much of the show times are taken up by commercials.
I'm gonna keep it for now. HBO alone is normally $15/mo, so it's like I'm getting the other 100+ channels for $25/mo. (The 100 channel promo ended Jan 10. It's now priced at $65/mo. $35/mo now gets you just 60 channels.) Yeah they're having a lot of problems, but it seems to me to be teething problems. And my cable company's basic TV plan was nearly double the price for far fewer channels. Here are comparison of DirecTV vs Sling vs Vue channel lineups and features
Harvard has a $37.6 billion endowment. Even with the abysmal 1.38% return in the S&P 500 in 2015, that would translate into $518.9 million in profit. Across 22,000 students, that's $23,585 per student.
So yeah, Harvard is in the unique position to be able to offer something like this. In a better year like 2016 (11.74% return), their endowment would've raked in over $200,000 per student.
I used to run my own personal email server, so when the small business I worked for wanted its own domain and email in 2004, I offered my services to set it up for them. The setup part is easy. The PITA is that every time there's a problem, you have to fix it. Server down? Figure out what went wrong and get it running again. Mail being bounced? Contact the spam list to get you removed. Someone not able to access their emails? Walk them through to troubleshoot the problem.
I lasted less than a year before throwing in the towel. I was spending more time babysitting the email server and acting as email technical support than I was doing my actual job. I signed up the company for Google Apps for Business (basically email hosting for your domain using gmail - it was free back then). Google's staff takes care of all these problems now. I did suggest a pay email service as an alternative, but the company wanted free even if it meant they might be giving up privacy.
1080p 3D TV needs at least a 120 Hz screen refresh rate. 60 frames each second are used to show the left image, 60 frames each second to show the right image, 120 frames per second total. (If the set is designed to eliminate judder when displaying 24 fps movies, it needs a 240 Hz refresh rate to do it in 3D movies shot at 24 fps (48 fps for both views).
The problem is, every 120 Hz or 240 Hz TV I've seen has made this refresh rate internal-only. They only accept a 60 Hz input signal (which is 120 Hz for 3D-only). Probably because HDMI only supports a maximum of 60 Hz (120 Hz for 3D-only). A few times a week, I run across a gamer asking if they can hook up their 120 Hz TV to their PC and play games at 120 fps. And I have to tell them it's not possible - the TV isn't designed to accept a 120 Hz non-3D input signal.
If they had designed the 3D TVs to accept 120 Hz non-3D input, you'd have gamers tripping over themselves to buy 3D TVs to use as 120 Hz monitors, with the 3D stuff being a "free" added capability. A few of them would then probably experiment with playing their games in 3D (where the depth perception can actually be advantageous), and that might have been enough to make 3D displays catch on.
A subsidy for its initial construction is fine. But if the people using a mass transit system aren't willing to pay enough for it to recoup its construction and operation costs, then it is by definition not contributing enough economic efficiency to pay for itself, and is therefore a waste of money.
It may work eventually, but it's a boondoggle for construction companies and mayors/governors
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So I must have been just dreaming when I thought I remembered zipping from London to Paris in just over two hours and sending emails from under the Atlantic seabed.
In 1985 prices, the total construction cost was £4.650 billion (equivalent to £13 billion today), an 80% cost overrun.
I suspect what's going on is a bit more insidious than mere corruption. Construction companies bid low so that they'll win the contract. Then they charge the actual construction costs as cost overruns. What's needed is an incentive to encourage companies to bid a realistic estimated cost, rather than a completely unrealistic underbid just to win the contract. Something like, say, not paying for overruns and holding the company to its original bid price.
I don't disagree with what you're saying, but according to TFA, the woman acquired the bug while in India - a country with the highest percentage of vegetarians in the world. This would suggest basic sanitation and health care, and being sure to complete prescription antibiotic regimens are bigger factors than the use of antibiotics in livestock.
The whole point of the H1-B program (or at least what's supposed to be the point) is to encourage extreme talented people abroad to become U.S. citizens. That way you have a net movement of talented people into the U.S., instead of out of it. If they don't stay in the U.S. and eventually become citizens, that defeats the whole purpose of the program.
It's unfortunate that the program has been abused to replace American workers. (Which is in direct violation of how the program is supposed to work. You're supposed to advertise the job the H1-B is supposed to take for a certain period of time, and only if no qualified American applies for the job can the H1-B be approved. You know those job adverts which are ridiculously specific about which certifications and how many years experience in several different fields are required? Those are H1-B ads - they're specifically tailored to match the H1-B candidate they have in mind, while simultaneously excluding any qualified American.) But don't lose sight of the original goal here.
$60,000 is pretty average or even below-average in terms of STEM jobs. $100,000 is up around where you'd start to think of the person as being talented and worthy of luring into the country and granting citizenship.
No, if 100% of the population had college degrees and those degrees actually helped them work better, that would increase each person's economic productivity. That additional productivity would translate into more sales revenue, which translates into more compensation.
The only way what you say can be true is if those degrees don't help increase your productivity - they are truly credential-only degrees. So the problem is a proliferation of college degrees which don't really help you do a better job at things employers want you to do.
No, they're able to do it for money because Mylan stupidly raised the price. If Mylan had kept the price at what it was before they acquired rights to the EpiPen, it would not have been worth it for a competitor to pay to develop their own pen, put it through the arduous FDA approval process, and put aside money to settle liability lawsuits in case something went wrong. When Mylan raised the price, it suddenly became cost-effective for someone to do all that, so CVS did. They still would've done it even if there had been no outrage, because overpricing something just creates an opportunity for someone else to swoop in and underbid you.
The problem with the free market, and lassaize-faire capitalism is that it is destroyed by the first group that has major success. Becuse the greed that fuels the market can become very destructive as people with pathological levels of it inevitably take over. And the simplistic early agriculture type arguments for it just don't work in a highy technical and mechanized world.
There are so many examples which disprove this that I'm amazed it was modded up: IBM PC, Compaq, Apple iPhone, 3dfx, Blackberry, Palm Pilot, Nokia, GeoCities, Myspace, Wordperfect, Lotus, Silicon Graphics, Kodak, Blockbuster, Sony Walkman, Sears, Pan Am, Schwinn, Motorola, Sun, DEC, Yahoo, Xerox copiers, Nintendo (except they managed to claw their way back with the Wii).
All of these were market leaders who in many cases once owned 80% or more of their respective markets, til they were out-competed and were replaced as king of the hill. Contrary to what you claim, it's harder to maintain a dominant market position in a highly technical and mechanized world. The rapid pace of technological progress means it's very easy to fall behind if you misstep (Yahoo, Sony, Pan Am, Blockbuster), or get lazy (Xerox, Kodak, Myspace, Blackberry), or get out-maneuvered (Nintendo - both ways, WordPerfect, Lotus, Apple iPhone, IBM PC).
The free market works most of the time. Monopolies are the exception, not the norm, and I'm fine with bashing those with government regulation when they happen. Believing that monopolies are inevitable and thus everything must be regulated, is just as foolish as believing everything will work just fine if there is no regulation.
I've been self-employed for a while, so I've paid for my own health insurance for a couple decades. My experience mirrors OP's. My health insurance cost has increased about 2.5x since the ACA was implemented (vs 1.1068x increase in the CPI) . My deductible has gone up (though roughly in pace with CPI). Vision coverage was dropped. My prescription coverage option tripled in price. And my insurer just switched from being a PPO (I can visit any doctor in their network including multiple doctors if I want) to an EPO (I have to pick one doctor in their network, and s/he has total control over if I can visit a specialist - no real point getting this over an HMO now).
Looking over my past premiums, there was a 18% increase from 2014 to 2015. A 24% increase from 2015 to 2016. And a 18% increase from 2016 to 2017. So that may be why your link found such a small increase in premiums. The bulk of the rise in my premiums has been since 2014, when the stats used by Factcheck.org ended. Crunching the numbers, my premiums rose 47% between 2010-2014 (average 8% per year), but 73% from 2015-2017 (average 20% per year).
Anyway, that's just my experience. I'm curious what other people have seen.
California reached a nexus point on this issue in the 1990s. See, emissions testing is cost-effective only if a significant fraction of the vehicles are in violation. If a smog test costs $40, and 10% of the cars are failing, then it's costing the economy $400 to detect each non-compliant car. If the excess pollution the car was putting out costs the economy (say) $1000, then testing is a cost-effective way to get these polluting cars fixed or off the road.
But what if the program is successful and compliance rates increases to 99%? Then you're spending $4000 to detect each non-compliant car, and the cost to detect these polluting cars exceeds the damage they do. That's the situation California found itself in in the 1990s.
The companies which made emissions testing equipment came up with a radical suggestion. Get rid of the annual smog tests. Instead, mount emissions detecting equipment at areas where cars normally slow down to pass. Freeway off-ramps, intersections, etc. The equipment would constantly detect emissions, and when it saw a spike in emissions it would snap a photo of the offending car(s). If the same car's plates showed up in multiple photos, you could send that registered owner a fix-it ticket requiring they bring the car in for testing. This way you're not wasting time or money dealing with the 99% of cars which are in compliance, and only spending extra money testing the 1% of cars which are probably in violation.
Unfortunately by the 1990s, smog testing in California had grown into a billion dollar industry. The service stations and smog test stations lobbied hard in Sacramento to kill this idea. They won, and so we still require smog tests today even though the vast majority of cars pass. It's worth nothing that an on-road emissions detection system would've caught the violating VWs nearly a decade ago when they first started cheating.
Because unfortunately, most people are wired to give more weight to a few standout examples rather than to the overall trend. e.g.
Planes are safer than cars, but many people are afraid of flying when they don't think twice about getting into a car.
People oppose nuclear power because of Fukushima and Chernobyl, when statistically it's the safest power source man has invented. (Yes, safer than solar and wind. They kill more people per unit of energy delivered. The only reason they don't kill many people is because they don't generate much electricity, and when they do it's scattered one here and one there, instead of all concentrated in one place.)
The general belief that child abductions by a stranger are a serious problem, when in fact they represent only 0.01% of missing children cases.
If you want to lead people to a conclusion opposite of the facts, presenting a few contrary examples is a great way to do it. That's why people are obsessed with assigning credit or blame for specific incidents. Kudos to you for seeing the forest despite the trees.
That's really more a consequence of Amazon's delivery contract with UPS. Apparently it's very generous (probably some sort of flat rate based on cumulative weight) so there's little incentive for Amazon to consolidate your orders into fewer boxes. UPS is the one who will have to put pressure on Amazon to reduce the number of boxes. And with Amazon branching out into its own delivery service, I don't see that happening.
With cable TV, the company which owns the pipes (your cable) also provides the service. There is no competition for TV service, so the cable company can charge you whatever they want. This is especially true in the U.S. where most of the cable TV companies have a monopoly granted by the local government.
With streaming TV, the company which owns the pipes (your ISP) does not provide the service. Consequently, there is no service monopoly - any TV streaming service on the Internet could conceivably provide your service. That means they are all competing with each other for best channel selection and lowest price. You'll still get ripped off on Internet service since that's a government-granted monopoly in most of the U.S., but you're not also getting ripped off on TV service on top of it.
Monthly bandwidth limits remain an issue, but my ISP (Cox) is one of the better ones with a 1 TB soft cap for all service tiers. If you go over, they simply reserve the right to kick you off; I haven't heard of anyone actually being booted yet. So it hasn't impacted my TV streaming.
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And you got rental privileges. e.g. If it broke it was their responsibility to fix it, not the renter's. These companies are taking a page out of the MAFIAA who like to claim you're buying a license when you try to do anything with the CD or DVD you bought, but claim you bought a product and need to re-buy it if you accidentally break the disc and want a free replacement since you already paid for the license.
Yes there is. It's staring everyone in the face but they don't want to acknowledge it because it amounts to self-sacrifice and tough love. The solution is to help the third world country modernize so their GDP per capita increases until it's roughly on par with developed nations. Then they will be able to afford the software. That's what we were doing with globalization (shifting some developed world jobs to third world countries). But enough people in developed countries got pissed off with "their" jobs going overseas that they've elected nationalist leaders to stop it.
Any other work-around to this problem simply delays the third world country being able to modernize. If they charge a lower price for the software in that country (ignoring the issue of people in developed countries buying it cheaper in the third world country), then that lessens upward pressure on local wages. People there are able to afford the software, so they're less likely to ask for / demand higher wages so they can buy the software (they'll just pirate it instead). Which slows down the rate at which the country's GDP per capita increases.
If you want to help software users in poor countries, the best way to do it is by helping them modernize and grow their economy. Doing them "favors" like giving them cheaper software, or food aid, or charity medical care just hurts them in the long run. (Food aid lowers the value of natively grown crops, making it harder for farmers to earn money to improve their crop yields. Medical charity decreases mortality rate and encourages the population to grow more than the native food production can support, making them even more reliant on foreign food aid. The best way is to help them grow their economy so their own farmers can produce enough crops to feed themselves. And for their own citizens to become doctors so they can open up native hospitals.)
Actually, a fine of $10 per MWh almost exactly eliminates the disparity in Federal subsidies for renewables (excluding biomass aka burning wood) vs fossil fuels. (Table ES2 divided by Table ES3 to get subsidy dollars per BTU, divide by 293071 to convert trillion BTUs to MWh.)
Coal = $1085 million subsidy / 5923 MWh = $0.18 per MWh
Gas = $2346 million subsidy / 8309 MWh = $0.28 per MWh
Nuclear = $1600 million subsidy / 2379 MWh = $0.70 per MWh
Biomass = $629 million subsidy / 1317 MWh = $0.48 per MWh
Hydro = $395 million subsidy / 756 MWh = $0.52 per MWh
Geothermal = $345 million subsidy / 64.5 MWh = $5.35 per MWh
Wind = $5936 million subsidy / 454 MWh = $13.07 per MWh
Solar = $5328 million subsidy / 83.8 MWh = $65.57 per MWh
Total of above four = $12004 million subsidy / 1358 MWh = $8.84 per MWh
So it's not really an unapologetic subsidy for the coal industry. It's a leveling of the playing field.
They'd probably be just fine with a dome over their state. Wyoming only has 586,000 people. Its population density is 1/27th that of New York, 1/16 that of California, and 1/6th the world average. In contrast, their forested area is 1/6th that of New York, 1/2 that of California, and 1/3 the world average. If you put a dome over their state, they could emit roughly 2x more CO2 per capita than the world and New York average, 8x more than California's average, and their air's CO2 concentration would still be lower due to their forests scrubbing it out.
I didn't vote for Trump and am horrified at the thought of what his Presidency could bring. But your mistaken assumption legitimzes what Trump's supporters have been saying about the election results - that the people living in the 2% of U.S. counties which voted for Clinton simply don't understand the problems and living conditions faced by people living in the 98% of the U.S. counties which voted for Trump. In fact if we took your dome idea and applied it across the country, and you added up net CO2 generation minus absorption by vegetation, you'd probably find the Clinton voter counties are net CO2 producers while Trump voter counties are net CO2 reducers by a massive margin. It's the urban areas and the trendy environmentalists which would suffocate first. The rural areas and real environmentalists trying to live sustainably off the land would be just fine.
If you're going to invest your time and money in a creative endeavor, don't base it on someone else's property. That puts you completely at their mercy. Just like Zynga is completely at the mercy of Facebook, you are completely at the mercy of CBS/Paramount if you make Star Trek fiction. They own the creative works, they get to decide what should be granted a reasonable license, not you and me. If they want to be asses about it, they can.
Fanfics are fine since they represent a minimal investment of your time and resources. But if you're going to put enough effort and money into it to make a feature film, you really should be creating your own sci-fi universe. Or before you start production, you can negotiate with CBS/Paramount for a license to use their universe. Intellectual property law is completely made-up, so it isn't grounded by real-world physical limits and economics. That means it doesn't fall under the "easier to beg forgiveness than it is to get permission" rule.
$15/hr * 40 hr/wk * 50 wk/yr (2 weeks vacation) = $30,000/yr. Most people would consider that a living wage. Federal poverty level for a family of 4 is just $24,250/yr.
So the $15/hr target is too high. If you target the poverty level for a family of 4 (assuming it's a single income family), the target is $12.12/hr. Poverty level for a single person is $11,770/yr, which translates into $5.89/hr, which is actually below the current minimum wage of $7.25/hr. So the current minimum wage is in the right ballpark of a compromise between singles and single-income families.
Yes this assumes full employment throughout the year. The minimum wage has to be tied to productivity because wages are tied to productivity. If you try to set the minimum wage based on poverty levels for people not being productive the full year, you end up eliminating jobs of people who are fully employed and productive the full year. Inability to find full employment is an employment problem (number of jobs available), not a wage problem (how much you're paid for a job).
IMHO the problem isn't the minimum wage, it's the capital gains tax is way too high for lower income people. People always complain the 15% capital gains tax is too low without really researching who actually pays a 15% income tax. The tax rate is graduated meaning just because you're in the 25% tax bracket doesn't mean you pay a 15% income tax. The threshold where you actually pay a 15% income tax (single, standard deduction) is about $58,500. The threshold where the average American pays 15% income tax (after credits, exemptions, and itemized deductions) is closer to $90,000 (you can figure this out from the IRS tax stats). So it makes little sense for people making less than this to invest their money when it's going to be taxed more than if they just spent it and increased their income via raises (e.g. raising the minimum wage) rather than investments/savings.
The economy rewards you with income for two things - generating productivity (working), and deciding where productivity is needed (managing/investing). The current flat 15% capital gains tax effectively discourages lower income people from participating in the latter. It needs to be graduated like income tax so lower income people have more incentive to save and invest. (The rationale for the capital gains tax rate being lower than income tax rate at higher incomes is the same. It encourages rich people to invest their money thus re-injecting it into the economy, instead of wasting it on gold toilet seats. Same logic applies to lower income people, except some of them "waste" their money on big screen TVs, iPhones, car leases, etc.)
Crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter try to make it seem like you're pre-paying for a final product, but you're not. You're investing in a business concept - basically you're a venture capitalist. If it works, you'll get your product. if it doesn't, you'll get nothing.
Crowdfunding is actually worse than venture capitalism. With the latter, you the investor get part ownership of the company, so if it becomes successful (e.g. Oculus VR, Pebble) you share in that success. With crowdfunding, all you get is a shiny trinket. If you even get it at all. All the risk, none of the rewards.
People advocating hypotheticals based on popular vote are arguing on the basis that fairness (majority wins) should override methodology (Electoral College). The problem with arguing Clinton should've won the election based on fairness is you're artificially limiting the election to just two candidates. Clinton and Trump only got 93.97% of the vote. Your "fair" projection disenfranchises 6.03% of the voters
So in the interest of fairness, say you include as many of those 6% as you can. If you add up the votes for the liberal candidates (Clinton, Stein, Sanders, Riva), you get 49.22%. If you add up the votes for the conservative candidates (Trump, Johnson, McMullin, Castle) you get 49.89%. So in all fairness, based on the popular vote the correct winner of this election should be a conservative candidate.
Also, California's last Republican Senator was John Seymour. (Appointed to replace Pete Wilson, who ran for and won the governorship in the first election I was allowed to vote in. The Republicans had made it a priority to get him elected as governor because the 1990 census was being conducted and the governor could veto the gerrymandering Democrats had done to the state's districts.) And the problems you cite (weak economy, broke government floated on large companies) pre-date Schwarzenegger. Gov. Davis was recalled due to California's poor economy following the dot-com bubble bursting, and the huge budget deficit. Schwarzenegger didn't cause these problems as you claim - he was elected because of these problems. Finally, the governor doesn't control the budget. The legislature does. All the governor can do is sign or veto whatever the legislature passes. And the last time California had Republicans controlling even one branch of the state legislature was the '95-96 state assembly.
So it was Democrats who are responsible for every California problem you cite.
The browser version is unusable. Crashes, glitches (shows freeze or stop playing), gets stuck in low res mode, often can't connect to the stream or gets 5 seconds and stops. I wasn't really planning to use it with the computer so not that big a deal for me. The main drawback is I have no way to stream it to my projector since they haven't added Roku support yet.
The Android version mostly works. I've been using my tablet as a mini portable TV when I'm doing stuff around the house, which was really the point of getting the service. I still have an unlimited phone data plan, and am able to use it + hotspot to use the service on my tablet when I'm traveling. Transition from hotspot to regular WiFi is seamless. A few annoyances I've found.
I'm gonna keep it for now. HBO alone is normally $15/mo, so it's like I'm getting the other 100+ channels for $25/mo. (The 100 channel promo ended Jan 10. It's now priced at $65/mo. $35/mo now gets you just 60 channels.) Yeah they're having a lot of problems, but it seems to me to be teething problems. And my cable company's basic TV plan was nearly double the price for far fewer channels. Here are comparison of DirecTV vs Sling vs Vue channel lineups and features
A charge-only USB cable won't protect your phone from a rogue device placed on the bus by a miscreant designed to send 10,000 Volts through the cable.
Harvard has a $37.6 billion endowment. Even with the abysmal 1.38% return in the S&P 500 in 2015, that would translate into $518.9 million in profit. Across 22,000 students, that's $23,585 per student.
So yeah, Harvard is in the unique position to be able to offer something like this. In a better year like 2016 (11.74% return), their endowment would've raked in over $200,000 per student.
I used to run my own personal email server, so when the small business I worked for wanted its own domain and email in 2004, I offered my services to set it up for them. The setup part is easy. The PITA is that every time there's a problem, you have to fix it. Server down? Figure out what went wrong and get it running again. Mail being bounced? Contact the spam list to get you removed. Someone not able to access their emails? Walk them through to troubleshoot the problem.
I lasted less than a year before throwing in the towel. I was spending more time babysitting the email server and acting as email technical support than I was doing my actual job. I signed up the company for Google Apps for Business (basically email hosting for your domain using gmail - it was free back then). Google's staff takes care of all these problems now. I did suggest a pay email service as an alternative, but the company wanted free even if it meant they might be giving up privacy.
1080p 3D TV needs at least a 120 Hz screen refresh rate. 60 frames each second are used to show the left image, 60 frames each second to show the right image, 120 frames per second total. (If the set is designed to eliminate judder when displaying 24 fps movies, it needs a 240 Hz refresh rate to do it in 3D movies shot at 24 fps (48 fps for both views).
The problem is, every 120 Hz or 240 Hz TV I've seen has made this refresh rate internal-only. They only accept a 60 Hz input signal (which is 120 Hz for 3D-only). Probably because HDMI only supports a maximum of 60 Hz (120 Hz for 3D-only). A few times a week, I run across a gamer asking if they can hook up their 120 Hz TV to their PC and play games at 120 fps. And I have to tell them it's not possible - the TV isn't designed to accept a 120 Hz non-3D input signal.
If they had designed the 3D TVs to accept 120 Hz non-3D input, you'd have gamers tripping over themselves to buy 3D TVs to use as 120 Hz monitors, with the 3D stuff being a "free" added capability. A few of them would then probably experiment with playing their games in 3D (where the depth perception can actually be advantageous), and that might have been enough to make 3D displays catch on.
A subsidy for its initial construction is fine. But if the people using a mass transit system aren't willing to pay enough for it to recoup its construction and operation costs, then it is by definition not contributing enough economic efficiency to pay for itself, and is therefore a waste of money.
Emphasis mine. What you say does not contract what OP said. From the Wikipedia article on the Channel Tunnel:
I suspect what's going on is a bit more insidious than mere corruption. Construction companies bid low so that they'll win the contract. Then they charge the actual construction costs as cost overruns. What's needed is an incentive to encourage companies to bid a realistic estimated cost, rather than a completely unrealistic underbid just to win the contract. Something like, say, not paying for overruns and holding the company to its original bid price.
I don't disagree with what you're saying, but according to TFA, the woman acquired the bug while in India - a country with the highest percentage of vegetarians in the world. This would suggest basic sanitation and health care, and being sure to complete prescription antibiotic regimens are bigger factors than the use of antibiotics in livestock.
The whole point of the H1-B program (or at least what's supposed to be the point) is to encourage extreme talented people abroad to become U.S. citizens. That way you have a net movement of talented people into the U.S., instead of out of it. If they don't stay in the U.S. and eventually become citizens, that defeats the whole purpose of the program.
It's unfortunate that the program has been abused to replace American workers. (Which is in direct violation of how the program is supposed to work. You're supposed to advertise the job the H1-B is supposed to take for a certain period of time, and only if no qualified American applies for the job can the H1-B be approved. You know those job adverts which are ridiculously specific about which certifications and how many years experience in several different fields are required? Those are H1-B ads - they're specifically tailored to match the H1-B candidate they have in mind, while simultaneously excluding any qualified American.) But don't lose sight of the original goal here.
$60,000 is pretty average or even below-average in terms of STEM jobs. $100,000 is up around where you'd start to think of the person as being talented and worthy of luring into the country and granting citizenship.
No, if 100% of the population had college degrees and those degrees actually helped them work better, that would increase each person's economic productivity. That additional productivity would translate into more sales revenue, which translates into more compensation.
The only way what you say can be true is if those degrees don't help increase your productivity - they are truly credential-only degrees. So the problem is a proliferation of college degrees which don't really help you do a better job at things employers want you to do.
No, they're able to do it for money because Mylan stupidly raised the price. If Mylan had kept the price at what it was before they acquired rights to the EpiPen, it would not have been worth it for a competitor to pay to develop their own pen, put it through the arduous FDA approval process, and put aside money to settle liability lawsuits in case something went wrong. When Mylan raised the price, it suddenly became cost-effective for someone to do all that, so CVS did. They still would've done it even if there had been no outrage, because overpricing something just creates an opportunity for someone else to swoop in and underbid you.
There are so many examples which disprove this that I'm amazed it was modded up: IBM PC, Compaq, Apple iPhone, 3dfx, Blackberry, Palm Pilot, Nokia, GeoCities, Myspace, Wordperfect, Lotus, Silicon Graphics, Kodak, Blockbuster, Sony Walkman, Sears, Pan Am, Schwinn, Motorola, Sun, DEC, Yahoo, Xerox copiers, Nintendo (except they managed to claw their way back with the Wii).
All of these were market leaders who in many cases once owned 80% or more of their respective markets, til they were out-competed and were replaced as king of the hill. Contrary to what you claim, it's harder to maintain a dominant market position in a highly technical and mechanized world. The rapid pace of technological progress means it's very easy to fall behind if you misstep (Yahoo, Sony, Pan Am, Blockbuster), or get lazy (Xerox, Kodak, Myspace, Blackberry), or get out-maneuvered (Nintendo - both ways, WordPerfect, Lotus, Apple iPhone, IBM PC).
The free market works most of the time. Monopolies are the exception, not the norm, and I'm fine with bashing those with government regulation when they happen. Believing that monopolies are inevitable and thus everything must be regulated, is just as foolish as believing everything will work just fine if there is no regulation.
I've been self-employed for a while, so I've paid for my own health insurance for a couple decades. My experience mirrors OP's. My health insurance cost has increased about 2.5x since the ACA was implemented (vs 1.1068x increase in the CPI) . My deductible has gone up (though roughly in pace with CPI). Vision coverage was dropped. My prescription coverage option tripled in price. And my insurer just switched from being a PPO (I can visit any doctor in their network including multiple doctors if I want) to an EPO (I have to pick one doctor in their network, and s/he has total control over if I can visit a specialist - no real point getting this over an HMO now).
Looking over my past premiums, there was a 18% increase from 2014 to 2015. A 24% increase from 2015 to 2016. And a 18% increase from 2016 to 2017. So that may be why your link found such a small increase in premiums. The bulk of the rise in my premiums has been since 2014, when the stats used by Factcheck.org ended. Crunching the numbers, my premiums rose 47% between 2010-2014 (average 8% per year), but 73% from 2015-2017 (average 20% per year).
Anyway, that's just my experience. I'm curious what other people have seen.
California reached a nexus point on this issue in the 1990s. See, emissions testing is cost-effective only if a significant fraction of the vehicles are in violation. If a smog test costs $40, and 10% of the cars are failing, then it's costing the economy $400 to detect each non-compliant car. If the excess pollution the car was putting out costs the economy (say) $1000, then testing is a cost-effective way to get these polluting cars fixed or off the road.
But what if the program is successful and compliance rates increases to 99%? Then you're spending $4000 to detect each non-compliant car, and the cost to detect these polluting cars exceeds the damage they do. That's the situation California found itself in in the 1990s.
The companies which made emissions testing equipment came up with a radical suggestion. Get rid of the annual smog tests. Instead, mount emissions detecting equipment at areas where cars normally slow down to pass. Freeway off-ramps, intersections, etc. The equipment would constantly detect emissions, and when it saw a spike in emissions it would snap a photo of the offending car(s). If the same car's plates showed up in multiple photos, you could send that registered owner a fix-it ticket requiring they bring the car in for testing. This way you're not wasting time or money dealing with the 99% of cars which are in compliance, and only spending extra money testing the 1% of cars which are probably in violation.
Unfortunately by the 1990s, smog testing in California had grown into a billion dollar industry. The service stations and smog test stations lobbied hard in Sacramento to kill this idea. They won, and so we still require smog tests today even though the vast majority of cars pass. It's worth nothing that an on-road emissions detection system would've caught the violating VWs nearly a decade ago when they first started cheating.
If you want to lead people to a conclusion opposite of the facts, presenting a few contrary examples is a great way to do it. That's why people are obsessed with assigning credit or blame for specific incidents. Kudos to you for seeing the forest despite the trees.
That's really more a consequence of Amazon's delivery contract with UPS. Apparently it's very generous (probably some sort of flat rate based on cumulative weight) so there's little incentive for Amazon to consolidate your orders into fewer boxes. UPS is the one who will have to put pressure on Amazon to reduce the number of boxes. And with Amazon branching out into its own delivery service, I don't see that happening.
With cable TV, the company which owns the pipes (your cable) also provides the service. There is no competition for TV service, so the cable company can charge you whatever they want. This is especially true in the U.S. where most of the cable TV companies have a monopoly granted by the local government.
With streaming TV, the company which owns the pipes (your ISP) does not provide the service. Consequently, there is no service monopoly - any TV streaming service on the Internet could conceivably provide your service. That means they are all competing with each other for best channel selection and lowest price. You'll still get ripped off on Internet service since that's a government-granted monopoly in most of the U.S., but you're not also getting ripped off on TV service on top of it.
Monthly bandwidth limits remain an issue, but my ISP (Cox) is one of the better ones with a 1 TB soft cap for all service tiers. If you go over, they simply reserve the right to kick you off; I haven't heard of anyone actually being booted yet. So it hasn't impacted my TV streaming.