Interesting assertion. I think the government (or parts of it) benefits greatly by creating a permanent underclass dependent on government assistance (giving a man a fish while trying to prevent him from learning to fish). We've seen plenty of clear historical and current evidence of people in power using aid to the poor to create a supply of loyal followers. There's little that's more creepy than a "free" school with the patron's picture everywhere and lessons everyday on what a good person the patron is and so on - this is still common today in parts of the world, as is becoming a powerful government/religious leader because of it. And to me, a poorly structured government charity (one that actually penalizes moving to a minimum wage job) has the same creepy vibe, if to a lesser degree.

I give to charities that focus on improving communities become self-sufficient and breaking these kinds of traps (though I do have one religious charity I'm slightly skeptical of, they have a solid reputation). Precisely providing that kind of aid without the "and you only have to me my loyal follower" strings attached.

Do we have much evidence of government assistance that actually fixes underlying problems, rather than help keep people satisfies with things as they are? I like to see some rays of hope in that area, somewhere!

The biggest problem as I see it is that so many people think it's the government's job now. After all, we pay a lot of taxes and the government has a lot of social programs. Why do more? I used to think that way myself.

But these days, I just accept my taxes as a total loss, and only count as charity what I give to good charities that I trust. I also prefer charities focused on fixing the underlying issues, over the merely palliative.

And so a common solution at the time was to occasionally have the cops beat all the beggars out of town with cudgels. No more problem with seeing the homeless.

The issue isn't seeing, the issue is caring. (And personally, my charity goes to people around the world with much worse problems than America's "poor", people whom I will never see, but that's just me.)

People sent texts from protest marches in Iran and some of the Arab spring stuff, and the governments weren't successful in stopping that. Also, you need a bigger hammer to keep people from using their phones to record police shooting at the crowd or other abuses. Remotely wiping the phones is a great win for dictators everywhere.

Wow, I quite the HL franchise halfway through Ep 2 it stank so badly. All subjective I guess.

I still go back and play HL1 every couple of years, followed by OpFor and BlueShift. I think that was the peak of single player FPS gaming, and it's been gradually downhill ever since as focus shifted to multiplayer, or incorporated RPG elements. (Quake 4 was also pretty good, but it was a deliberate throwback to those days).

Not that I hate FPS RPGs, but it's a different genre.

Just watch for the first riot in 2016 under some authoritarian government. They'll "kill" all the cellphones of all the rioters to prevent organization and photography of police, not even a question about it.

Most employers match that at least a little. Long term tax-free growth of "double every 10 years" is reasonable to expect from stocks. After 30 years, having 70 years of savings is a reasonable goal. Of course, your pay's going up and inflation is too and so on, but still, becoming a millionaire from 30 years of 401K savings is quite practical. Doing the same for "millionaire in today's dollars", a far more interesting goal, is quite practical given 40 years of 401K savings.

Of course, best to save more elsewhere, and try to retire earlier than 40 years.

Gold is a good measure of inflation if you take the 10-year-average, or maybe the 20-year, of gold prices. While gold is hopelessly volatile in the short term, it seems to keep reasonably equivalent purchasing power century-by-century.

Home prices work out about the same, BTW. While real estate markets can be just as volatile, long term house prices are flat with inflation, which makes a lot of sense (the % of income people are willing/able to spend on housing won't change unless human nature changes, so you expect the average house to represent a given amount of purchasing power).

Unless the meaning of millionaire is changing to mean "a seven figure income", then why would anyone with a six figure income not expect to become a millionaire? Are people just really bad at saving? That's too low to even be a good retirement goal, unless you're sure of Social Security to compliment it (in which case it's about right - but who doesn't expect SS to be "means tested" and taken away from those who save?)

That's just one of many angles. The biggest may be early access to games for reviewers. A game review is of course more valuable if it's out before the game is, but that requires playing nice with the publishers.

You've never worked for a start up? It's all about the IPO. Technological advancement for the past 15 years or so anyway has been driven by the hopes of IPO, or as "plan B", acquisition by a big company at a price established by what an IPO might bring.

The secondary market sets the benchmark for what a successful small company is worth, which in turn drives the availability of investment in start-ups and other small businesses.

And that's a terrible, terrible thing. We should stop doing that.

You know, I've argued in the past that modern politics has become about "tribal identification" and not about what's best for the nation. But wow; just wow.

Huh, what? You're talking about the first bill Obama signed into law? The GOP is reliably management-vs-labor, to be sure (after all, organized labor is a key element of the Dem constituency, so at least the parties are representing their constituents by their sides there), but how did they kill it?

I did think you were trying to construe the "people can pay for their own birth control" as a women's rights issue, since that's recently in the news - OK, I guessed wrong. So what are you on about?

(BTW, I do wish there was a party I was aligned with, but I just want a small government party, and there's no such animal any more).

I'll have you know my car has a very over-priced mediocre in-car GPS system! Actually, its flaw is no good interface to set a destination address (voice recognition and arbitrary proper nouns is just a bad combination in general). I really want a way to attach a keyboard, or to pull an address from my phone contacts list in some sane and reliable way.

There's real potential there, but I want it to work both ways: the car should accept any screen though some standard interface (2-way HDMI maybe?). The built-in screens will have terrible resolution, no doubt, but it seems like a good part for an aftermarket upgrade.