Most first world countries have negative native population growth, despite the government encouraging the opposite. The problem is only getting worse.
The US is doing the best (our native growth is about zero), but countries like Japan, "population decline" is becoming a big political issue. It is starting in Europe, too.
In fifty years, no one will be talking about "overpopulation" anymore.
Imagine you were trying to make the world less messy by cleaning your own house. Which is the best strategy?
1: Picking up all of the junk lying around, do a decent cleaning, and fix up some of the more obvious broken items
2: Build the world's cleanest bathroom and leave the rest of your house wallowing in filth?
These "eco-cities" are a gimmick. The best thing China can do its tackle the biggest messes with the easiest clean-up costs (ie, cost/benefit), not try to maximize one tiny little subset and screw the rest.
The poor spend more of their income than the rich. Therefore, taxing consumption will hit them more than taxing income. My whole point is that you are trying to mix the two into one argument and producing something nearly meaningless.
Sales taxes are typically "regressive" relative to income, but not relative to spending, where they are either flat or progressive (because food is often exempted, though it depends on your state). Comparing sales tax to income is rather meaningless. If a sales tax is fair, it is based on the idea of taxation on consumption, and has nothing to do with income. You are comparing apples and oranges.
If you want to tackle truly regressive taxes, start with the sin taxes. They are terrible for the poor.
But on the other hand, you are making the wrong comparison. If you believe taxation should be based on income rather than spending, that is a good philosophical debate. However, trying to conflate the two just confuses the matter.
The poor are taxed LESS of their spending than the rich. They are taxed LESS of their income than the rich. They are required to put in a larger fraction into FICA but they still get a much better deal than the rich (the rich actually subsidize them).
Is the federal income tax unfair to the poor? Hardly
Are state sales and income taxes unfair to the poor? Generally no
Is FICA unfair to the poor? Assuredly not
Yet you are trying to argue that the sum of these is somehow unfair.
The Great Lakes, particularly Lake Michigan, have some tremendous wind resources. Unlike the open ocean, one would not have to worry about hurricanes. Unfortunately the lakes are extremely deep in most places, making ground-mounted wind unfeasible.
There is potential for this type of technology, whether this particular article is all hype or not.
I always here this. I never see any proof. In fact, most public officials have to put their tax returns into public view. Guess what - the rich ones pay through the @$$.
If you actually bothered to read the tax code, you would note that virtually all loopholes and exemptions particularly do NOT apply to the rich. They phase out after a certain amount.
Of course, this is just an argument for a simpler tax system. Right now, it is impossible to know how much anyone is paying, and therefore impossible to argue that any person's tax should be higher or lower.
There has been a long-running trend in science, exemplified by the winners of the Nobel Prize. The age at which Prize winners (and other researchers as well) do their prize-winning work is occuring later and later in life. This is because each generation has to spend more and more time just climbing up the back of the giants whose shoulders upon which we stand. Now it is typical for a PhD to be in his or her early thirties before his or her first "real" job with significant responsibility and salary, and likely in their forties before they control a significant number of workers and financial resources. This number just keeps moving backwards.
Even at the rate of three journal papers a day (which is serious mental lifting if done thoroughly), it now takes almost a year for one someone with the appropriate training to get a good grasp of a field tangential but close to their own. There are literally thousands of papers to read!
I live in Japan, too, and I completely agree that statistics is going to be only part of the solution.
For example, take the following Japanese children's sentence:
Inu wo mita.
This could mean any of the following:
I saw the dog.
I watched the dog.
I looked at the dog.
I saw a dog.
I watched a dog.
I looked at a dog.
I saw some dogs.
I watched some dogs.
I looked at some dogs.
There are probably more as well. Some of these translations are more likely than others but they all depend on context, without which, the cpu is just guessing between several likely translations.
I do not think it is possible for computers to accurately translate until they are almost as intelligent as we are, and can understand context. However, the statistical approach can probably get us passible loose translations by itself.
where there are entire grammatical concepts that are non-existent in English, or vice-versa. For example, I know a fair bit of Japanese, where there is no idea that corresponds to a/an/the/some etc, which are some of the most common words in European languages!
You might be able to drag up some neo-Nazi-like trash to demonstrate the existence of such an absurd thought, but the assertion that it is in any way mainstream is silly.
Under your logic, you would also permit murder of fully sentient adult humans! After all, you wouldn't want to force your belief that murder is wrong upon others?
It is perfectly logical and self-consistent to use force in order to prevent one person from harming another. I daresay you would hate living in a world that did not adopt this general standard.
If you are alluding to the abortion/stem-cell/IVF debates, the question isn't really weather life begins at conception, but rather moral personhood.
I would have to say that a fertilized egg is "alive" by any meaningful standard you can come up with. Bacteria are indisputably alive, and a fertilized egg is even more complex and larger. The cell has potential to reproduce and is metabolizing, which are often used as tests as to whether something is alive.
The three debates I mentioned above are not technical or scientific debates. Rather, they are moral, philosophical debates. In other words, they are not disagreements about what is, but what ought to be. Science can never answer such questions.
ID. So far, that science has little evidence to back up its theories that certain biological structures are too complex to have formed by random chance. However, this IS a scientific argument.
There is no reason that it should be taught as science in schools until it has a considerable body of evidence to back it up. At this time, it has virtually nothing.
I am in my post-doc (chemistry) phase at the moment, and agree with you 100%. Salaries are low, jobs are hard to find, and I will probably be 32 years old the first time my total gross income exceeds $30,000 in a single year. In the meantime, my friends who went to law school after graduation from my old college have been making $80k for five years now. They have houses, nice cars, husbands/wives, babies, etc.
I specifically chose a post-doc overseas where the work expectations are lower. The difference between working 50h/week and 70h/week is amazing. I had almost forgotten the pleasures of "weekends", "travel" and "dating" as I slogged through graduate school.
I can't believe I wasted over five years of my life for a degree which leads to a mediocre job that is likely to be exported to China next week anyway.
I am a young scientist, as are many of my friends. Many of us are fed up with the profession. It has precisely ZERO to do with ID, political ideology, or any other BS of that nature.
It has everything to do with the fact that our other friends who became doctors, lawyers, MBAs, etc are making more money, at younger ages, than we will.
This isn't rocket science.
Btw, you can't teach someone to think. Quit trying.
The ID debate is a complete non-issue in scientific circles and is completely blown out of proportion by the media. It has almost no impact whatsoever on anyone's choice as to be a scientist or the education of 99.9% of children.
Yes, Americans are scientifically illiterate, but so are people from every other nation. The article completely misses this point. We do worse on some international tests but this is not limited to science, making it an indictment of our education system in general, not a specific evidence of the US being anti-science.
The number of students going into science and engineering is dropping, but that is completely driven by low wages and job security, not the howling of a few marginal partisan freaks.
Slashdot Mirror
you cannot separate science and religion. The only true way to solve this issue is allow parents to decide which schools their children attend.
Though I strongly disagree with the Board's decision, I wonder why it is theirs to make in the first place.
Most first world countries have negative native population growth, despite the government encouraging the opposite. The problem is only getting worse.
The US is doing the best (our native growth is about zero), but countries like Japan, "population decline" is becoming a big political issue. It is starting in Europe, too.
In fifty years, no one will be talking about "overpopulation" anymore.
"production efficiency". Producers are a small fraction of CO2 emissions.
What you are really comparing are automobile habits, home heating habits (and therefore climate), and total consumption and production.
Imagine you were trying to make the world less messy by cleaning your own house. Which is the best strategy?
1: Picking up all of the junk lying around, do a decent cleaning, and fix up some of the more obvious broken items
2: Build the world's cleanest bathroom and leave the rest of your house wallowing in filth?
These "eco-cities" are a gimmick. The best thing China can do its tackle the biggest messes with the easiest clean-up costs (ie, cost/benefit), not try to maximize one tiny little subset and screw the rest.
Until then, this has all the hallmarks of hogwash.
The poor spend more of their income than the rich. Therefore, taxing consumption will hit them more than taxing income. My whole point is that you are trying to mix the two into one argument and producing something nearly meaningless.
Sales taxes are typically "regressive" relative to income, but not relative to spending, where they are either flat or progressive (because food is often exempted, though it depends on your state). Comparing sales tax to income is rather meaningless. If a sales tax is fair, it is based on the idea of taxation on consumption, and has nothing to do with income. You are comparing apples and oranges.
If you want to tackle truly regressive taxes, start with the sin taxes. They are terrible for the poor.
But on the other hand, you are making the wrong comparison. If you believe taxation should be based on income rather than spending, that is a good philosophical debate. However, trying to conflate the two just confuses the matter.
The poor are taxed LESS of their spending than the rich. They are taxed LESS of their income than the rich. They are required to put in a larger fraction into FICA but they still get a much better deal than the rich (the rich actually subsidize them).
Is the federal income tax unfair to the poor? Hardly
Are state sales and income taxes unfair to the poor? Generally no
Is FICA unfair to the poor? Assuredly not
Yet you are trying to argue that the sum of these is somehow unfair.
The Great Lakes, particularly Lake Michigan, have some tremendous wind resources. Unlike the open ocean, one would not have to worry about hurricanes. Unfortunately the lakes are extremely deep in most places, making ground-mounted wind unfeasible.
There is potential for this type of technology, whether this particular article is all hype or not.
I always here this. I never see any proof. In fact, most public officials have to put their tax returns into public view. Guess what - the rich ones pay through the @$$.
If you actually bothered to read the tax code, you would note that virtually all loopholes and exemptions particularly do NOT apply to the rich. They phase out after a certain amount.
Of course, this is just an argument for a simpler tax system. Right now, it is impossible to know how much anyone is paying, and therefore impossible to argue that any person's tax should be higher or lower.
There has been a long-running trend in science, exemplified by the winners of the Nobel Prize. The age at which Prize winners (and other researchers as well) do their prize-winning work is occuring later and later in life. This is because each generation has to spend more and more time just climbing up the back of the giants whose shoulders upon which we stand. Now it is typical for a PhD to be in his or her early thirties before his or her first "real" job with significant responsibility and salary, and likely in their forties before they control a significant number of workers and financial resources. This number just keeps moving backwards.
Even at the rate of three journal papers a day (which is serious mental lifting if done thoroughly), it now takes almost a year for one someone with the appropriate training to get a good grasp of a field tangential but close to their own. There are literally thousands of papers to read!
I live in Japan, too, and I completely agree that statistics is going to be only part of the solution. For example, take the following Japanese children's sentence:
Inu wo mita.
This could mean any of the following:
I saw the dog.
I watched the dog.
I looked at the dog.
I saw a dog.
I watched a dog.
I looked at a dog.
I saw some dogs.
I watched some dogs.
I looked at some dogs.
There are probably more as well. Some of these translations are more likely than others but they all depend on context, without which, the cpu is just guessing between several likely translations.
I do not think it is possible for computers to accurately translate until they are almost as intelligent as we are, and can understand context. However, the statistical approach can probably get us passible loose translations by itself.
where there are entire grammatical concepts that are non-existent in English, or vice-versa. For example, I know a fair bit of Japanese, where there is no idea that corresponds to a/an/the/some etc, which are some of the most common words in European languages!
Why on earth would I visit such a site?
You might be able to drag up some neo-Nazi-like trash to demonstrate the existence of such an absurd thought, but the assertion that it is in any way mainstream is silly.
If the zygote has rights, the fact that it could reproduce does not diminish its rights - it enhances them!
Under your logic, you would also permit murder of fully sentient adult humans! After all, you wouldn't want to force your belief that murder is wrong upon others?
It is perfectly logical and self-consistent to use force in order to prevent one person from harming another. I daresay you would hate living in a world that did not adopt this general standard.
I have never met any American, left, center or right, who is at all pleased with the "mass slaughter of Iraqi and Afghani children".
Can you provide even one example?
Or are you just making "#$# up?
If you are alluding to the abortion/stem-cell/IVF debates, the question isn't really weather life begins at conception, but rather moral personhood.
I would have to say that a fertilized egg is "alive" by any meaningful standard you can come up with. Bacteria are indisputably alive, and a fertilized egg is even more complex and larger. The cell has potential to reproduce and is metabolizing, which are often used as tests as to whether something is alive.
The three debates I mentioned above are not technical or scientific debates. Rather, they are moral, philosophical debates. In other words, they are not disagreements about what is, but what ought to be. Science can never answer such questions.
ID. So far, that science has little evidence to back up its theories that certain biological structures are too complex to have formed by random chance. However, this IS a scientific argument.
There is no reason that it should be taught as science in schools until it has a considerable body of evidence to back it up. At this time, it has virtually nothing.
genetic modification.
The left is just as anti-science as the right, whenever the data conflicts with their agenda.
I am in my post-doc (chemistry) phase at the moment, and agree with you 100%. Salaries are low, jobs are hard to find, and I will probably be 32 years old the first time my total gross income exceeds $30,000 in a single year. In the meantime, my friends who went to law school after graduation from my old college have been making $80k for five years now. They have houses, nice cars, husbands/wives, babies, etc.
I specifically chose a post-doc overseas where the work expectations are lower. The difference between working 50h/week and 70h/week is amazing. I had almost forgotten the pleasures of "weekends", "travel" and "dating" as I slogged through graduate school.
I can't believe I wasted over five years of my life for a degree which leads to a mediocre job that is likely to be exported to China next week anyway.
ID is less than molehill. It is absolutely a non-issue for anyone considering a career in science.
What matters are salaries, funding, lack of good science teachers (because we try to pay them the same as everyone else, while the market does not).
Most of these people howling "the US is anti-science" have probably not been overseas long enough to realize it is the same everywhere else.
are not scientific. They are economic. This is an entirely different field.
I am a young scientist, as are many of my friends. Many of us are fed up with the profession. It has precisely ZERO to do with ID, political ideology, or any other BS of that nature.
It has everything to do with the fact that our other friends who became doctors, lawyers, MBAs, etc are making more money, at younger ages, than we will.
This isn't rocket science.
Btw, you can't teach someone to think. Quit trying.
Few people anywhere can explain such things. The US is hardly exceptional in this matter.
The ID debate is a complete non-issue in scientific circles and is completely blown out of proportion by the media. It has almost no impact whatsoever on anyone's choice as to be a scientist or the education of 99.9% of children.
Yes, Americans are scientifically illiterate, but so are people from every other nation. The article completely misses this point. We do worse on some international tests but this is not limited to science, making it an indictment of our education system in general, not a specific evidence of the US being anti-science.
The number of students going into science and engineering is dropping, but that is completely driven by low wages and job security, not the howling of a few marginal partisan freaks.