The ruling class is not likely to survive very long in situations of scarcity. They have the power and influence they do because they control large amounts of fiat currency backed up by contract law. When push comes to shove, Bezos' billions of dollars worth of Amazon stock won't buy a loaf of bread, nor will they buy the backing of a person with a gun. Politicians, social media influencers and anyone in finance is toast. IT workers probably won't fare well either as the communications infrastructure breaks down.

If things get really bad, the only people who will come out the other side are the ones that can actually grow food and make or repair things.

These "climate change will end humanity" are the worst kind of conjecture premise. Humanity is not going to end. Period. There may be far fewer humans but that is not the same as extinction of the species. Contamination of the planet due to nuclear war might do it but climate change is very unlikely.

Your ignorance of actual facts is truly amazing.

In 2016 (the latest year for which data is available) the top 1% paid more in taxes than the bottom 90%, 37.3% vs 30.5% of total taxes paid. The top 1% earned 19% of total income but paid 37% of the taxes so if anybody is paying for subsidies it is the top 1%.

When I had a computer consulting business in the 90's I told people that whatever MS release as 1.0, look at it to see *what* they were trying to accomplish but don't plan to use it. Large corporate customers will start using it and after reporting back the problems version 2.0 will be a substantial improvement.

IMHO, the answering machine is one of the most significant advancements in technology. The telephone gave us instant communication but unless the person was available at the exact moment communication was needed the only way to send a message to be received "when available" was snail mail. The answering machine changed all of that and decreased the communications round trip time by orders of magnitude.

Email is the text equivalent of the answering machine. Now a person eight time zones away can send a message during their waking hours and the recipient can receive it in theirs.

"E-mail" will go away only when it is supplanted by something that incorporates its utility and ALL of its features. As one of those features is "controllable by the owner" anything that requires a 3rd party message storage automatically fails.

IIRC, assuming the vapor is at 100C then the energy released is 540 calories per gram.

If your capitalist lives under the threat of having his company taken from him on a whim, why would he ever start the company in the first place?

No. A robot will never fix your sink or replace your air conditioner. Non-repetitive tasks will always require people. They key to sustained employment is to learn to learn skills in things that need a human brain. Then an industry disruption doesn't mean you can't move on to something else.

That is the real issue. When I was an engineering student at the University of Texas most of my STEM classes had among the students a significant percentage of immigrant students, often Chinese or Indian. In those classes accents were rarely an issue because the professor was usually US born and the TAs were either also US born or Asian grad students. One year, however, my differential equations class was taught by a visiting professor from Germany with an accent I would say was as heavy in his direction as a typical visiting student's was in theirs. As an American I had no problem understand either accent as I was effectively in the "center." There was often difficulty, however, between the foreign students and the professor as each was far enough from the center that the combined distance from the center made communication a challenge.

It's funny you don't have subtitles on British shows. My wife and I (both Americans) are big fans of police procedurals from the UK so we are actually the reverse, having the subtitles on for anything produced overseas. Sometimes the accents are stronger than others so it helps us to clarify what is being said.

I had a relative with polio. I will not be forgetting how bad these diseases can be.

This never works because of lawyers.

The Blitz company used to make plastic gas cans. They were put out of business by lawyers who sued because people who self selected out of the gene pool died when they poured gasoline directly on a fire and the flame traveled up the stream and blew up the gas can. Lawyers claimed that the company didn't make warnings prominent enough or should have installed filters that get clogged to prevent this. Never mind that the real responsibility lies with parents who failed to teach their children that you don't pour flammable liquid onto an open flame.

If enough children of anti-vaxxers die of a preventable disease, the medical community will be held responsible for inadequately encouraging people to get vaccinated.

At some point idealists, snowflakes and SJW warriors (maybe even Elon Musk) are going to be taught the very harsh lesson that a person is only as valuable to a company as the excess positive value they create. Disruption is negative value. Choose one's actions carefully.

For that to be true the inflation rate would have to be almost 4.5%. If inflation was that high interest rates would be much higher, not 3%. The best measure of inflation is bond markets.

It would be informative to know the rate at which incidents that "total" an ICE vehicle also result in a fire. I know that what an insurance company considers a loss is not necessarily a complete loss. A severely damaged vehicle can be used for salvage parts; in fact, a friend's father once bought two "totalled" vehicles of the same model, one with front end damage and one with rear end damage and made one working car out of them. Once you light it on fire, parts become less useful as salvage.