Also if you earn more than 1 million dollars, the California tax rate is 10.3. The 9.3 bracket is the one between 47,000 and 1 million

So you would fully support blood sport where two gladiators willingly fight each other to the death?

There is a line where we should not cross, and I find allowing a "drug olympics" is crossing that line.

Japan already has severe problems with its demographics and its only going to get worse. They could use the immigration.

China will also get there not too long from now. Their one-child policy simply was too draconian. Stable - slow population growth is good, shrinking population bad, rapidly growing population with not enough resources -- very bad.

I'm not sure I'd want to be with a girl that "pokes". I guess if that's your kind of thing, go for it.

If you are in the industry and just step back and look at whats going on, its pretty clear why we have the situation of companies complaining that there aren't enough workers and tons of workers looking for jobs.

For software, every company wants to hire only the cream of the crop, because the difference in productivity between the cream of the crop and "average" is so huge (for the sake of argument, lets say N times). If the market was perfect, they should be paid N times the amount the "average" workers get paid. Its not, due to societal issues -- its hard to get people's minds around someone being paid multiple times what you are being paid (although society does tolerate CEO pay being ridiculous, but I digress) and also the fact that being able to tell the difference between the "average" and the cream of the crop is challenging.

I would also argue that its hard to train an "average" worker to have the productivity of a great coder. Even so, companies don't do enough here, and companies that are effective in this may end up just training workers for their competition.

So with this imbalance, economics would predict there being a shortage of the cream of the crop and a surplus of the "average" kind of workers, which is exactly what we are seeing here.

You, sir, do not understand economics. If it were legal to discriminate positively (lower your rates) if you have a "good" DNA test, this will drive up the rates for those who don't or opt out. The insurance companies will have do this if they want to retain their existing revenues and profits.

In short, Stalin was less of a monster because he was an "equal opportunity" monster.

With a retina display, at least they could probably turn off anti-aliasing

Killed, yeah maybe. But increased prices? Demand drops and prices go up? Car parts aren't giffen goods.

For the 100th time, its pretty clear he isn't getting canned because he doesn't have the degree, its because he lost credibility to everyone because of the lie.

I bet you Yahoo has huge issues retaining "good people" right now. If I was still working at Yahoo when I heard that the guy was still (attempting to) stay on, I'd probably give notice and semi-publicly explain why (can't go fully public because it would affect hiring at future jobs). People don't want to work for someone who has no integrity.

Er, the lawyers?

You can say that about nearly every job out there.

Doesn't mean that some effort shouldn't be made to evaluate workers and eliminate poor performers. Its clear that all systems aren't perfect, but no system at all is far, far worse.

Gas prices in Europe are substantially higher than in the US. In Spain, IIRC, it is approximately double the US gas prices.

Bikes are definitely not green.

If you take into account the increased lifespan the rider gets because of more exercise and the amount of CO2 he would generate for that time period due to his need of food, shelter and fuel during the increased lifespan, you come out with more CO2 than if you let the rider die an early death.

Studies have shown this. The only way to make bikes come out ahead is to mandate that the rider not wear a helmet.