Point taken. The difference is that interpreting economics from a Marxist or capitalist viewpoint does not require ignoring well-established physical laws.

This statistic is misleading out of context. Everyone who works pays Social Security and Medicare taxes (currently 7.65%), meaning 100% of people with income pay income tax, and of course sales taxes when they spend it. They also pay property taxes explicitly (if they are property owners) or implicitly (as a hidden part of their rent).

The reason the number who pay income taxes is so low is because wages have fallen so much. So it's actually a symptom of one of the critical problems in our country, rather than in and of itself a problem. Anyway, it's completely criminal that if I sit on my ass doing nothing and let a big pile of money I have make more money for me, I only have to pay 15% on the capital gains, while if I go out and actually work the tax can be significantly higher on my earned income. Lumping capital gains in with earned income (with a maximum marginal rate of 35%) would go a long way in reducing the national debt that people pretend to care about when it is politically advantageous.

Here's an idea to clear up this mess nicely: get rid of all sales taxes. They're extremely regressive and complicate and impede commerce. Increase income, property, and capital gains taxes to compensate.

Thank you for the story, very informative. However, this sort of thinking should not be used as an excuse to absolve Foxconn and the like of their labor practices. You are not the first person I've heard this argument from on this topic, that these factories are such a step up from rural poverty that we should not criticize the companies, and that it is all part of the wonderful and necessary process of industrialization. My question for you would be then, how long do the populations of these countries have to endure miserable factory working conditions until we are allowed to criticize. 5 years? 10 years? 30 years? How much worker abuse is too much? How many hours per day is okay with you? 10? 12? 16? How young can the workers be? 16? 12? How low can the wages be? As far as I'm concerned every worker in the world deserves the same rights as every other worker: reasonable hours leaving time for leisure, a living wage, and a safe workplace. I don't give a damn if they are the first generation off the farm and how much more money they are making compared with that.

Well, at New York LaGuardia if you fly American Airlines, the first class security line is the only one without an X-ray machine. It's been that way the last two times I've flown through there. So FYI terrorists, just get a little more of that Saudi money to fly first class and you can dodge the scanners. I'm so fucking proud of my country.

Hey, they do it with houses now, so why not intellectual property? http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/matt-taibbi-courts-helping-banks-screw-over-homeowners-20101110

I disagree with this to a certain extent. The fact that they are unmanned makes it much more likely they will be used because the risk is lower (sure, it's embarrassing when they get shot down and Iran shows them on TV but imagine how much worse it would be if they had a U.S. pilot instead). Their lower cost also makes them more likely to be used in high-risk situations. They replace on-the-ground operations which, while problematic on their own, are typically less likely to cause civilian casualties than firing missiles from the air. Also, the fact that they are remote piloted so present no risk of operator death likely only magnifies the outrage at their use in the targeted countries. Imagine your fellow citizens are being killed by robot planes in which there is zero possibility of striking back at the person pulling the trigger.

I think the downside is that the drones are used in "secret" CIA wars, routinely kill civilians, have been used by the President for extra-judicial assassination of at least one American citizen, and are increasingly eyed for use in domestic airspace. I'd put their bandwidth usage pretty far down on the list of reasons to be concerned about drones.

Can we dispense with this false dichotomy between "authoritarian" and (I suppose) "democratic" governments. It is part of this great fantasy that this sort of thing will only happen in bad third-world countries whose leaders wear military uniforms and chomp on cigars. Our grand democratic leaders would never do such things, except they do all the time and want to do more of it.

Mod parent up. This isn't 1950, plastics have come a long way and are often the far superior choice for materials. (Coincidentally I was listening to the Kinks' "Plastic Man" on my way to work this morning.)

I've been enjoying my Galaxy Nexus in the U.S. for a week now on the T-Mobile network. I ordered it from the UK and got it in 48 hours. Tethering works without issues. So good to be contract-free. It's a great phone, big minus is the lack of SD card slot but everything else is pretty near perfect.

You make a good point. I believe they needed to know the exact weight of the various craft to calculate required thrust and fuel supply. If the camera weighed enough that could have thrown off their calculations.

Now, if he hadn't spent the last 2.5 years largely doing exactly the opposite of what he campaigned on, angering his base to no end, he might be able to make better use of all of that data management. No amount of carefully worded campaign e-mails are going to convince me to vote for a President who has normalized extra-judicial assassinations of American citizens by the CIA.

A follow up question would be, do they mean that the concepts of religion and science are in always in conflict, or do they mean that religious people and scientific people are always in conflict? I would say the former is true, in that the fundamental bases for religion and science are exactly opposite (faith versus evidence) while people can disagree with one another or hold contradictory ideas in their head and not try to rip each others throats out.

Well, buildings can be named after benefactors whereas the faculty members inconveniently have already been named by their parents.