The overall US tax burden (all taxes, all levels of government), as a fraction of the GDP has shown

The link you offered — whatever its credibility — shows government spending as a percentage of GDP.

This is related to, but not at all the same as the tax burden of individuals.

Now, here is, what happened January 1, 2014 in the US:

• Top Income Tax bracket went from 35% to 39.6%
• Top Income Payroll Tax went from 37.4% to 52.2%
• Capital Gains Tax went from 15% to 28%
• Dividend Tax went from 15% to 39.6%

If that's not grow taxes, what is?

no matter how many times you repeat the "ever growing taxes" lie, it does not become true.

It is true no matter how many times you deny it. And next time, do your own homework, before you accuse someone else of not merely being mistaken, but of lying...

if it's BASH then there could be a *LOT* more exploitable devices out there than people might think.

Only if the shell can be executed from the outside while also providing arbitrary values for any environment variable. The latter part is not true, I'm pretty sure...

No BSD system uses bash — if only for licensing issues (bash is GNU-licensed).. Thus, you are safe (from this bug) on DragonFlyBSD, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD and any other BSD-licensed OS, unless you deliberately installed bash (such as from port) and wrote a CGI-script to use it.

What is this, some sort of dystopian future?

Simply keeping a home used to take so much time, a woman could not work on anything else. Nowadays, with electricity, indoor plumbing, vacuum cleaners, dish- and laundry-washing machines and other labor-saving appliances, it is much simpler and many women do have careers.

But pregnancy remains, for the time being at least, something, that must be done personally — and many women do consider it a burden.

Some day, one hopes, they'll have the option of using an incubator the way today's woman has an option of reheating dinner in a microwave rather than cooking it anew in a brick oven heated by fine firewood.

Those, who consider such future "distopian", will still be welcome to carry the child themselves — and accept the concomitant pains, health-risks, and lost wages...

Given the ever growing taxes in various countries (US included) I find it harder and harder to blame tax-evaders.

If it keeps going like this, modern Robin Hoods may start appearing shooting those drones from the sky the way Mr. Hood was sabotaging tax-collecting efforts of the Sheriff of Nottingham.

That says only, women are paid less then men. It does not account for the fact, that women are also far more likely than men to give birth or to take weeks (and months and years) away from work (and the labor force altogether) to be a mother.

A woman returning into labor force after years will be — justifiably and justly — paid a newby's salary — which will drag down the entire gender's statistics. Indeed, the link you so kindly provided (but, evidently, failed to read) says so upfront:

The statistic does not take into account differences in experience, skill, occupation, education or hours worked, as long as it qualifies as full-time work.

It then cites some anonymous economist, who claimed, even after adjusting for such differences in experience, men still end up paid more, which some explain by discrimination...

Much too often the entire "wage gap" is blamed on discrimination, while, in fact, even that much smaller fraction of it can not be linked to discrimination indisputably...

Bell Labs, Xerox PARC and others existed to do research on things that weren't even close to core business.

Then they must've been looking to expand their core business. Could you provide examples?

The simple fact is there are almost no publicly traded companies today who can dump even a small fraction of their money into researching something that is not directly related to their product line without a shareholder revolt.

Any substantial expense needs — and always needed — to be justified to shareholders, yes. If you are hoping to profit from the research, then you should have no problem convincing the shareholders of the profit-potential. This has always been the case and I fail to see, what, in your opinion, is wrong about it. This does not mean, companies aren't doing scientific work (anymore) — as was alleged earlier in the thread. Not at all.

And I do agree, that convincing a handful of investors is easier than thousands — which does give privately-held companies more freedom to both rise and fail. But this also is not a "sad sign of modern times".

What exactly do you think Microsoft's shareholders would do if MS announced they were getting into gigabit fiber buildouts like Google is doing?

Are you saying, the gigabit fiber buildout Google is doing qualifies as research?

what advances in pay should be based upon, if not performance and time in job.

I don't know... Nor do I really care, because I am not running my own business. What I do know, however, is that any attempts to legislate salary increases will both be unfair and backfire...

is women who do NOT leave for childrearing or other pursuits still being paid less on the basis that males are the breadwinners in their families.

In a free-market society, one gets the salary one is able to negotiate — regardless of one's gender.

The problem is this all too often extends into not giving women promising assignments because she just got married and might start making babies soon. [...]

And they are absolutely correct — that risk does exist, there is no way out of it. That's how mammals are — bearing and rearing the young is primarily the females' burden...

women are still far from equal

They aren't — 100% of births are given by women. 100%! Think about it...

Men face a much higher arrest and conviction rate for sexual assaults. They also face stiffer penalties when convicted.

Worse! A pure 100% of people, who've ever given birth, are women... Until the Feminist movement acknowledges that giant elephant in the room, they can not be taken seriously harping on any other petty "imbalances".

The biggest problem is that women pressure other women to settle for less careerwise in order to put a priority on getting married and having a family. Mothers are the worst at this as they want grand babies.

The phenomenon obviously exists, but why do you attach such negativity to it? Without babies the humanity will cease to exist pretty soon no matter how successful "freed" women are at their other pursuits.

And pregnancy — and subsequent child-rearing — do cost women professionally. Not because anybody is "sexist", but simply because you can not give a promising assignment to an employee, who just is not there (because she is on maternity leave).

Some women may view this as unfortunate, others — as a privilege, but whatever you feel about it, there is no one to blame for it any more, than we can prosecute someone for gravity...

Maybe, some day, we'll have incubation centers freeing women from the need to carry the burden for months. But I'm not very optimistic, given that we are yet to solve even the much simpler problem of breast-feeding.

Women, in the same career field as a man, almost always makes less.

Citation needed.

You say that having sex with any woman that is infertile

You misunderstood. In my opinion, sex with someone, with whom you would not have children, is like that with an inanimate object or a prostitute, yes. You don't have to try to conceive every time to get my approval, but you should only do it with someone, whose baby you are willing (and able) to raise with them if — by nature or a miracle — the conception actually happened.

Also, people like you are the reason there are so many single mothers out there.

Whoa?! Quite the contrary. Men like me would not have had sex (other than with prostitutes) unless they were willing to raise the fruit of the flower they pollinated.

Someday you may grow to learn that women are more than just a vessel for your seed.

Women are much more than that indeed.

The enjoyment of sex, however — and it was that, rather than women's role in anything, that I was talking about — is predicated on the joy of (potential) reproduction implicit in the act with a beloved.

And until you've experienced that joy, you haven't grown up...