Any of what shit? Poor? So, a person who drops out of high school, or even graduates high school is entitled $20-30k a year job? Most of them have no marketable job skills. Life sucks when you're just starting out, the vast majority of poor people are not people with degrees, or 20 years experience in their field. When I was in college, I lived on a $10 a week food budget because that's all there was. Now, almost 20 years later I have a fairly comfortable life with a reasonable wage. I'm far from wealthy, but it's pretty rare that I eat PB&J because I have to.

And yes, I agree... being poor does royally suck, just it sucks less here than in other places. We spend just shy of a trillion dollars a year on means tested assistance programs, outside of medicare/medicaid.

Spending is currently around 23-25% of GDP, so 4.7% of GDP is in now way shape or form more than 50% of the budget. Yes, it's a lot. Yes, probably room to trim that back some.

Currently, we in the USA spending about 4.7% of our GDP on defense. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures Historically fairly low. IN fact, we spend over 200 billion MORE on aid for the disadvantaged than we do on defense. The poorest households in the US have a pretty good life when compared to most of the world. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkebmhTQN-4

Unless of course one uses the lasers to kill the beetles. I live on about 9 acres of property in Colorado (outside of Estes Park) and was lucky this year that the beetles seem to like my neighbors trees better.

What part of CO are you in?

3% is not 1/3 of my finger. And if your reading skills were better than your math skills, you'd notice that it's 0.003675% of total atmosphere. So, that's about the same amount of my finger that probably wore off while typing this response. God why am I feeding the trolls?

And, of that 17% increase, how much is attributed strictly to humans? Even if all of it can be, we're still talking about thousands of a percent.

By a LOT you mean about 3% of all CO2 found in the atmosphere? Which is like ~0.003675% of all the atmosphere?

You can count me in the group using smart phones in the bathroom, ever since I first discovered an ebook reader... back on CE 5 or 6. Now my news reader is on my phone too :-)

I think the GP was referring to those who gain a majority of their subsistence through some sort of government payout rather than those who are working to better their lot in life and might need occasional help. With the per median income of that area above $70k per year, I don't think that's the group that was being referred to. The term "productive" is rather broad, and I think you're probably using it in a different way than the GP. For example if we asked "How much wealth does a bus boy generate as compared to a CEO?" compared to "Who does more physical labor, the bus boy or the CEO?". Or am I misunderstanding your statement?

Why only one day a week? If we gave some sort of incentive for companies to let their people work from home more often, then they save on office space and we save on transportation costs.

I used to be 100% remote for a large company, then they spend millions renovating 2 floors of office space and required everyone within 50 miles to be on site every day. Those who were more than 50 miles were let go shortly after. Now workers spend hours driving to work, only to be less productive because it's too damn noisy. The only answer I've ever gotten for this is "because they said so". I'm not sure who came up with the idea, how it got approved but I'm willing to put money on Power Point being used in it. Some of the worst decisions in business history have been made to look good with that damn program.

Do the math, I live an hour away. That's 10 hours a week, 52 weeks a year. That's 520 hours a year. 13 work weeks each year spend driving to and from a job that has been proven successful when done from home office. 20,000 miles at a cost of over 9,000 (at $0.45 per mile) each year.

Oh, and they already issue laptops and require employees to have high speed broadband for on call duty.

I think it's neat tech alright, but I'm not sure converting the heat energy to light energy to electricity is going to be more efficient than converting heat energy to electricity. Since TFA doesn't seem to give us any efficiency stats, it's hard to tell.

What congress passed in April was a "FULL-YEAR CONTINUING APPROPRIATIONS ACT" http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PLAW-112publ10/content-detail.html which is not a full budget, and yet, your point is not invalid because it does fund spending through the end of the year.

We may as well call it a budget for convenience, hell we can call it a purple giraffe if that's what you like. If we agree that I was wrong, and for all intents and purposes it was a budget, can you tell me when the last one was passed before that? My quick research shows that we were funded from 2007-2011 by continuing resolutions, is that correct?

Yes, all spending bills must start in the house so of course the budget must originate there, after the President sends his budget for consideration. Unfortunately, we haven't had a budget passed in something like 840 days now and have been operating under a continuing resolution until the end of FY2011 which was most recently presented and passed with minor spending cuts. As I understand it, the only reason the government wasn't shut down was the bill to make sure our military still got paid was not passed by the Senate. This is the same military the Senate is holding hostage now, along with the threat of default, Social Security and Medicare.

The reason our credit rating is in danger isn't necessarily the threat of default, but is that we have spent close to 9 trillion in the last 2.5 years and can't find cuts 1/3 that amount over 10 years because the senate and president refuse to even consider any bills that don't raise taxes on those who earn 250k or more a year.

I appreciate that we are a republic and not a democracy, plutocracy or monarchy. Presidents have limited power, and still get credit or blame for what happens during their administration, even if they didn't cause it. Fair or not, it's the way it is.

Your arguments on the Constitution are not without merit, and I don't believe that the President is authorized under the Constitution to make such an increase. It's been nice to have a well reasoned discussion with someone who has opposing views, without things turning ugly.

So, you understand that there is enough tax revenue coming in to pay the interest on the debt, social security, medicaid/medicare, education, VA and active duty payrolls. Right? The only way those won't get paid is the government (executive branch) CHOOSES not pay them. There is no real risk to defaulting.

I'm not sure if you've ever had a discussion with a Tea Party member, most of them are fairly reasonable folks and want a return to a government who's spending and legislative powers are bound by the constitution. Sure, there are some nutters there, just like every other group in America.

I think the article fails to take into account the inane ideas that are made to look good via a power point presentation and become policy. Or maybe it's just companies that I have worked for that this happens.