Actually, no. It hasn't. Unless you moved from an area with a regular supermarket to an area with only Whole Paycheck. But don't let the reality to intrude into your delusions - keep believing that Trump will build a wall.
It's price normalized by cattle weight, so the final consumer price is higher (because not all parts of cows are edible). However, beef is still pretty cheap especially since most of the meat is ground beef: http://data.beefretail.org/who...
Why is the parent modded as "insightful"? It's full of bullshit.
For example, the price of beef has NOT tripled: http://www.statista.com/statis... - it went from $2.09 per pound in 2006 to $3.05 in 2015. That's annualized 3.2% price growth rate - quite in line with the official inflation.
And if you don't believe BLS then there's an alternative: http://bpp.mit.edu/usa/ - they collate prices from multiple sources (literally more than a billion price points a day) and compute their own inflation measurements. And it's in agreement with BLS.
Anecdotes like "BLS changes stuff to hide the TRUTH" are totally and ALWAYS a complete bullshit. Always. No exceptions.
I actually enjoy sailing. Cruises on small ships are totally worth it, I even enjoy ferry trips (I live in Seattle)! But not huge soulless liners designed to be moveable shopping malls, with thousands of people.
Funny given the sizes of many of the "cities" you most definitely can explore it. Mind you it's not just cities. Some of the more memorable destinations are islands barely a few km wide, or tiny little port towns.
You're on ship with 8 thousand people. Any "tiny port town" designed to accommodate that many people would be a tourist trap.
If you're cruising to Barcelona and planning to explore the city you're doing it wrong.
Ok, any good advices then? My cruise was a typical Bahamas cruise from Florida.
Yeah because you need to get "drunk" to make it of value. *rolleyes*. Protip: getting yourself wasted will get you banned from drinking, and show me where you can get softdrink and coffee for free too.
I don't drink at all, that was my observation of others' behavior.
And just where are you cruising too? America to Australia? Again, you're doing it wrong. That's not a reflection of the industry, that's a reflection of you not booking something that suits what you want. But even for those cruises which have more than 1 sea day in a row without stopping, there's a huge market for people who go on holidays just to relax.
So no different from staying at home and doing nothing?
Hint: you can not "explore" a city during the several hours you have before returning to the ship. Glimpse it, at most.
What the heck kind of cruise did you go on? The last one I went on had multiple pools, water parks, spas, saunas, massage room, games room, a cinema, a theatre, casino, disco, about 6 bars and restaurants, and all the booze was free.
Yup. The prevailing strategy is to get passengers into a drunken stupor ASAP with cheap booze. Saves the hassle of actually taking care of them.
Not to mention that if you're stuck more than 1 or 2 days on the actual ship itself then you booked a hell of a bad cruise.
Cruise ships move at around 25 mph. So you're looking at most at 600 miles a day of distance traveled. That's not a long distance.
How do you think I left it in the middle of the cruise? We stopped at a port for a day, in the middle of the trip. I was not inclined to continue the trip, so I bought an airplane ticket and went home.
I actually lived for a long time near a mall that had an ice rink, mini-golf, an arcade, and a spa. No swimming pool, but there are several of them nearby.
Huh? I just looked for a random cruise ship, and it had: pools, waterslides, bars, clubs, restaurants, mini golf, bowling, shows, basketball courts, ice skating, 3d movies, spas, hot tubs, gyms, a shopping mall, rock climbing,...
I did say "interesting". And you've pretty much described the content of a typical mall.
But most importantly: The boat actually goes somewhere. Sometimes, it's even cheaper than a flight to the destination + an equivalent resort!
I never understood why people would want to go on a cruise on one of these mega-ships. They have nothing to do with nautical travel - you're no closer to the actual sea than in a beachfront hotel room. You're stuck for many days inside cramped quarters with nothing interesting to do.
Oh, and loading/unloading process is so horrible (doubly so for international travels) that it would make TSA officials go green from envy. Waiting for half a day in line to get off that freaking ship? You betcha!
I had misfortune to lose a raffle and get a ticket for a four-day roundtrip cruise. I left by plane from the midpoint of the trip.
I remember paying my month's worth of pocket money back when I was at school to get a book which described the inner workings of Doom. It came with 10 floppies with the Doom source code and tools.
Incidentally, the book was quite good. It described in details the BSP algorithm used to compute the visible areas, fixed point math and the way Doom used non-standard VGA modes to do backbuffer flips. This book got me started on computer graphics (though I haven't used it much in my career).
After all, a private company is simply exercising its free speech rights. And if Conservatives don't like that, they can certainly switch to another social network (MySpace, perhaps?). After all, if we require Facebook to be "neutral" then the next day somebody would try to force FoxNews or Breitbart to provide a fair and balanced account of news.
It has. The problem is within the democrat party, they're willing to pander to the crazies like it's 1987, notice how shrill the anti-sexual revolution, anti-speech, anti-personal responsibility, pro-protect us from stuff segment is getting these days
Whut? From what is apparent, anti-speech and anti-responsibility group is squarely in the Republican camp. And then there are weaklings projecting their fears on Democrats.
Before we talk about how we're going to destroy 'biodiversity' can we remember that iron... pulling oxygen OUT of the oceans is theorized to be one of the events for the way life evolved on this planet?
Yeah, that was during the period when the most advanced organisms were bacteria that have just invented photosynthesis. We totally want to go back to that period!
I _am_ an H1B worker, though not really a typical one (for one, I'm in the top tax bracket). I also now hold an EB1 green card. I am absolutely for easier immigration rules for highly qualified specialists. The reality right now though is that there are no real alternatives to H1Bs for people willing to immigrate.
H1Bs even if implemented "correctly" are bad for the nation. If that person is so exceptional, the company can pay for them to immigrate
How? There are no real fast ways to get a green card in the US, outside of the EB2 green card program.
If China required unemployment insurance, health insurance, retirement plans, caps on hours a person was allowed to work and/or forced to work, and all of the safety and regulation training companies are required to provide in the US, do you think labor would still be pennies on the dollar in exchange? H1B workers receive huge tax breaks, and allow companies to bypass legal work restrictions.
There are no tax breaks for H1B workers, they actually have to pay Social Security tax even though workers might not stay in the US and receive any benefits from SocSec later in their life. H1B also does not allow employers to work around labor rules.
What H1B does allow is grossly underpaying people for work that requires high qualification. And the easiest way is indeed to have a minimum $110k wage.
Why? Python 2 is clearly superior to Python 3. There's no bullshitty "unicode strings" nonsense in it and it's also very stable.
Why "unicode" strings in Python are nonsense? Simple - they are useless for pretty much anything that deals with the real world. Read and weep: https://lwn.net/Articles/68335...
No, no. Class action requires government intercession. And anyway, you have to sue each power plant INDIVIDUALLY. Then each company that dumps toxic waste. Individually.
Oh, you want a government to enforce results of one lawsuit against all other coal companies? That's Socialism!
I have had much greater economic mobility in the US than in Europe. And the belly-aching from people like you just strikes me as laughable.
And as an immigrant you quite likely have had far more opportunities for mobility than an average European. Likely free or very cheap college education, probably better schools and better child healthcare. So?
And don't "immigrant" me. I was born in Russia, lived for many years in Ukraine, moved to work in Germany then founded a startup in the US. I'm now learning Mandarin as I'm flying back and forth between China and the US periodically. I kinda know what over countries are like.
Actually, there is, and numerous studies have shown that, both at the country and at the state level. http://politicalcalculations.b... [blogspot.com]
They quite literally cherry-picked points to get a weak correlation.
Environmental disasters in the US and elsewhere have been due to government protecting big industries from liability in the past. That kind of environmental protectionism has been reduced over the last few decades, which is a good thing.
You are insane, really. Are you going to sue a coal power plant for damages to your health? How are you going to prove it?
That's nonsense. None of these trends are "overwhelming", and the BLS statistics only account for median gross weekly income, a lousy measure of where people are "moving".
Yes, they are. Otherwise the percentage of the "middle class" would have grown. And BLS has a lot more statistics than weekly income. Anyway, see here: http://www.dailykos.com/story/...
It certainly has grown much less than it should, largely due to costly government mandates and taxes.
No, and it actually can be proven. There is no correlation between US state GDP and income growth and the amount of regulations.
If your goal is to return good old 60-s when rivers were catching fire from deregulated dumping, then I suggest you move to China.
Who do you think is going to pay, say, for ACA? Or new financial regulations?
And who would bear the risks and costs of financial deregulation and ACA repeal? Read my lips: "not the top 1%".
Yes, it's wishful thinking - on part of conservatives whose main goal is to see California failing.
The "unfunded liabilities" are future retirement payments, including for people who are NOT EVEN BORN yet. They can be addressed as they come in many ways. If the state invested in low-risk bonds to start a trust fund then the required expense would still be less than the surplus.
Oh, and if we're talking about retirements then we should definitely mention the libertarian fiscally responsible paradise of Kansas. That is now borrowing money just for regular expenses and has already eaten through its retirement savings fund.
Unlike Kansas, California really is at some risk of collapse, with its dire fiscal situation and failing education system.
Unlike Kansas, California has been running a budget surplus for 4 years straight now. It now has a healthy "rainy day" fund and its financial situation is pretty much assured for the next 10 years or so.
Oh, and even California teachers are better than no teachers in Kansas.
But what it means is that the income distribution is getting longer tailed, mostly towards higher incomes. That is, the middle class is shrinking because more people are getting wealthier. That is a good thing.
No, it's not. Please, do check the BLS statistics - former "middle class" overwhelmingly moves only in the downward direction.
Meanwhile the income both for "middle class" and for pretty much everyone in 90% has stagnated.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, no. It hasn't. Unless you moved from an area with a regular supermarket to an area with only Whole Paycheck. But don't let the reality to intrude into your delusions - keep believing that Trump will build a wall.
It's price normalized by cattle weight, so the final consumer price is higher (because not all parts of cows are edible). However, beef is still pretty cheap especially since most of the meat is ground beef: http://data.beefretail.org/who...
Why is the parent modded as "insightful"? It's full of bullshit.
For example, the price of beef has NOT tripled: http://www.statista.com/statis... - it went from $2.09 per pound in 2006 to $3.05 in 2015. That's annualized 3.2% price growth rate - quite in line with the official inflation.
And if you don't believe BLS then there's an alternative: http://bpp.mit.edu/usa/ - they collate prices from multiple sources (literally more than a billion price points a day) and compute their own inflation measurements. And it's in agreement with BLS.
Anecdotes like "BLS changes stuff to hide the TRUTH" are totally and ALWAYS a complete bullshit. Always. No exceptions.
I actually enjoy sailing. Cruises on small ships are totally worth it, I even enjoy ferry trips (I live in Seattle)! But not huge soulless liners designed to be moveable shopping malls, with thousands of people.
Funny given the sizes of many of the "cities" you most definitely can explore it. Mind you it's not just cities. Some of the more memorable destinations are islands barely a few km wide, or tiny little port towns.
You're on ship with 8 thousand people. Any "tiny port town" designed to accommodate that many people would be a tourist trap.
If you're cruising to Barcelona and planning to explore the city you're doing it wrong.
Ok, any good advices then? My cruise was a typical Bahamas cruise from Florida.
Yeah because you need to get "drunk" to make it of value. *rolleyes*. Protip: getting yourself wasted will get you banned from drinking, and show me where you can get softdrink and coffee for free too.
I don't drink at all, that was my observation of others' behavior.
And just where are you cruising too? America to Australia? Again, you're doing it wrong. That's not a reflection of the industry, that's a reflection of you not booking something that suits what you want. But even for those cruises which have more than 1 sea day in a row without stopping, there's a huge market for people who go on holidays just to relax.
So no different from staying at home and doing nothing?
A typical cruise. I've flown away from Nassau, Bahamas.
What the heck kind of cruise did you go on? The last one I went on had multiple pools, water parks, spas, saunas, massage room, games room, a cinema, a theatre, casino, disco, about 6 bars and restaurants, and all the booze was free.
Yup. The prevailing strategy is to get passengers into a drunken stupor ASAP with cheap booze. Saves the hassle of actually taking care of them.
Not to mention that if you're stuck more than 1 or 2 days on the actual ship itself then you booked a hell of a bad cruise.
Cruise ships move at around 25 mph. So you're looking at most at 600 miles a day of distance traveled. That's not a long distance.
How do you think I left it in the middle of the cruise? We stopped at a port for a day, in the middle of the trip. I was not inclined to continue the trip, so I bought an airplane ticket and went home.
I actually lived for a long time near a mall that had an ice rink, mini-golf, an arcade, and a spa. No swimming pool, but there are several of them nearby.
Huh? I just looked for a random cruise ship, and it had: pools, waterslides, bars, clubs, restaurants, mini golf, bowling, shows, basketball courts, ice skating, 3d movies, spas, hot tubs, gyms, a shopping mall, rock climbing, ...
I did say "interesting". And you've pretty much described the content of a typical mall.
But most importantly: The boat actually goes somewhere. Sometimes, it's even cheaper than a flight to the destination + an equivalent resort!
Except that you're not actually in a resort...
I never understood why people would want to go on a cruise on one of these mega-ships. They have nothing to do with nautical travel - you're no closer to the actual sea than in a beachfront hotel room. You're stuck for many days inside cramped quarters with nothing interesting to do.
Oh, and loading/unloading process is so horrible (doubly so for international travels) that it would make TSA officials go green from envy. Waiting for half a day in line to get off that freaking ship? You betcha!
I had misfortune to lose a raffle and get a ticket for a four-day roundtrip cruise. I left by plane from the midpoint of the trip.
How about I dump a bucket of cow blood on you when you're on your way to an important meeting? It's hilarious!
I remember paying my month's worth of pocket money back when I was at school to get a book which described the inner workings of Doom. It came with 10 floppies with the Doom source code and tools.
Incidentally, the book was quite good. It described in details the BSP algorithm used to compute the visible areas, fixed point math and the way Doom used non-standard VGA modes to do backbuffer flips. This book got me started on computer graphics (though I haven't used it much in my career).
But that's *SO* conservative!
After all, a private company is simply exercising its free speech rights. And if Conservatives don't like that, they can certainly switch to another social network (MySpace, perhaps?). After all, if we require Facebook to be "neutral" then the next day somebody would try to force FoxNews or Breitbart to provide a fair and balanced account of news.
It has. The problem is within the democrat party, they're willing to pander to the crazies like it's 1987, notice how shrill the anti-sexual revolution, anti-speech, anti-personal responsibility, pro-protect us from stuff segment is getting these days
Whut? From what is apparent, anti-speech and anti-responsibility group is squarely in the Republican camp. And then there are weaklings projecting their fears on Democrats.
Before we talk about how we're going to destroy 'biodiversity' can we remember that iron ... pulling oxygen OUT of the oceans is theorized to be one of the events for the way life evolved on this planet?
Yeah, that was during the period when the most advanced organisms were bacteria that have just invented photosynthesis. We totally want to go back to that period!
I _am_ an H1B worker, though not really a typical one (for one, I'm in the top tax bracket). I also now hold an EB1 green card. I am absolutely for easier immigration rules for highly qualified specialists. The reality right now though is that there are no real alternatives to H1Bs for people willing to immigrate.
H1Bs even if implemented "correctly" are bad for the nation. If that person is so exceptional, the company can pay for them to immigrate
How? There are no real fast ways to get a green card in the US, outside of the EB2 green card program.
If China required unemployment insurance, health insurance, retirement plans, caps on hours a person was allowed to work and/or forced to work, and all of the safety and regulation training companies are required to provide in the US, do you think labor would still be pennies on the dollar in exchange? H1B workers receive huge tax breaks, and allow companies to bypass legal work restrictions.
There are no tax breaks for H1B workers, they actually have to pay Social Security tax even though workers might not stay in the US and receive any benefits from SocSec later in their life. H1B also does not allow employers to work around labor rules.
What H1B does allow is grossly underpaying people for work that requires high qualification. And the easiest way is indeed to have a minimum $110k wage.
Why? Python 2 is clearly superior to Python 3. There's no bullshitty "unicode strings" nonsense in it and it's also very stable.
Why "unicode" strings in Python are nonsense? Simple - they are useless for pretty much anything that deals with the real world. Read and weep: https://lwn.net/Articles/68335...
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=coal+poll... [lmgtfy.com]
No, no. Class action requires government intercession. And anyway, you have to sue each power plant INDIVIDUALLY. Then each company that dumps toxic waste. Individually.
Oh, you want a government to enforce results of one lawsuit against all other coal companies? That's Socialism!
I have had much greater economic mobility in the US than in Europe. And the belly-aching from people like you just strikes me as laughable.
And as an immigrant you quite likely have had far more opportunities for mobility than an average European. Likely free or very cheap college education, probably better schools and better child healthcare. So?
And don't "immigrant" me. I was born in Russia, lived for many years in Ukraine, moved to work in Germany then founded a startup in the US. I'm now learning Mandarin as I'm flying back and forth between China and the US periodically. I kinda know what over countries are like.
Actually, there is, and numerous studies have shown that, both at the country and at the state level. http://politicalcalculations.b... [blogspot.com]
They quite literally cherry-picked points to get a weak correlation.
Environmental disasters in the US and elsewhere have been due to government protecting big industries from liability in the past. That kind of environmental protectionism has been reduced over the last few decades, which is a good thing.
You are insane, really. Are you going to sue a coal power plant for damages to your health? How are you going to prove it?
Have you even SEEN what a serious "pollution" is?
That's nonsense. None of these trends are "overwhelming", and the BLS statistics only account for median gross weekly income, a lousy measure of where people are "moving".
Yes, they are. Otherwise the percentage of the "middle class" would have grown. And BLS has a lot more statistics than weekly income. Anyway, see here: http://www.dailykos.com/story/...
It certainly has grown much less than it should, largely due to costly government mandates and taxes.
No, and it actually can be proven. There is no correlation between US state GDP and income growth and the amount of regulations.
If your goal is to return good old 60-s when rivers were catching fire from deregulated dumping, then I suggest you move to China.
Who do you think is going to pay, say, for ACA? Or new financial regulations?
And who would bear the risks and costs of financial deregulation and ACA repeal? Read my lips: "not the top 1%".
Yes, it's wishful thinking - on part of conservatives whose main goal is to see California failing.
The "unfunded liabilities" are future retirement payments, including for people who are NOT EVEN BORN yet. They can be addressed as they come in many ways. If the state invested in low-risk bonds to start a trust fund then the required expense would still be less than the surplus.
Oh, and if we're talking about retirements then we should definitely mention the libertarian fiscally responsible paradise of Kansas. That is now borrowing money just for regular expenses and has already eaten through its retirement savings fund.
Unlike Kansas, California really is at some risk of collapse, with its dire fiscal situation and failing education system.
Unlike Kansas, California has been running a budget surplus for 4 years straight now. It now has a healthy "rainy day" fund and its financial situation is pretty much assured for the next 10 years or so.
Oh, and even California teachers are better than no teachers in Kansas.
But what it means is that the income distribution is getting longer tailed, mostly towards higher incomes. That is, the middle class is shrinking because more people are getting wealthier. That is a good thing.
No, it's not. Please, do check the BLS statistics - former "middle class" overwhelmingly moves only in the downward direction.
Meanwhile the income both for "middle class" and for pretty much everyone in 90% has stagnated.
So yep, oligarchy coming soon.