The core CPI doesn't measure these things -- but GP was not talking about core CPI, therefore your objection is irrelevant.

Your CPI anecdotal is cute, but wrong. Anecdotally (and in reality), a lot of prices are still below the 2008 level - gasoline, for instance, is still 20% cheaper than at the 2008 peak. (And electronics, of course, are half the price or less for the same performance.) Out of the top-level CPI categories in the US, housing, transportation and recreation are at the same level as in 2008.

The bezel could shrink - but only if your new screen tech consumes a lot less juice. The iPad's dimensions and weight are determined by the massive battery needed to get a 10 hour run time for the LCD, not mechanical constraints. (This is also why smaller tablets like the Fire only run for 6-8 hours.)

If bezel width were determined by mechanical reasons, the bezel wouldn't need to be any wider than an iPhone bezel...

Source? Last thing I heard they were completely dependent on Samsung and desperately trying to get TSMC to step up in case Samsung pulls the rug out. Even the PWRefficent people that they hired were chip designers, not manufacturers.

Hey, have you ever heard of pigovian taxes? Some taxes are levied with the exact purpose of "distorting" the economic system in order to discourage activities with negative externalities that cannot be internalized. Tobacco taxes, alcohol taxes, fuel duties in more enlightened countries... this proposed tobin tax is serving the same purpose - discouraging an activity with negative externalities. (Those being destabilizing financial markets, diverting skilled work and computing resources into an economically unfruitful zero-sum game, and making investment flows more volatile.)

Looks like it requires a subscription to Amazon Prime, but won't cost anything extra.

The OSM maps for my home city, at the least, are massively better than Google's, especially in terms of pedestrian/bike routes.

But the solar panels need smoothing and storage, if you want to have electricity at night. That smoothing is provided by hydro plants on dams. There were plenty of accidents where dams broke and made city uninhabitable or killed a large amount of people -- as opposed to Fukushima's radiation which killed no one so far.

You just dunning-krugered yourself. Me, I am quite certain that you are wrong and that GS common stock entitles you to vote. (Of course, a 1 in 100mn voting share won't help you a lot - each GS employee has at least hundred times as much...)

No you wouldn't, unless you could export the machine and had unique know-how about its manufacturing.

If a machine doesn't save time and money vs. burger flippers, it doesn't get used. In the scenario that you described, McD would have to employ more skilled labour than they did in terms of burger flippers before -- why would they do that? In the workplace, the entire purpose of technology is to do more with less.

An HTC Desire?

Lots of good sources are linked in the Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celebratory_gunfire

You have to think of it in context - the 1.5tn inflation loss on the lent central bank money enabled China to keep its currency cheap and stable. This enabled them to attract FDI and know-how to build exporting factories, which increased the aggregate wealth of China and the Chinese from $4-8tn to about $20tn in the same ten years. A worthwhile investment.

Transparent aluminium? It's called aluminium oxynitride and it's widely used for transparent armor and roofs. Still a bit expensive though ($2k per square foot or so).

This works for the company that is advertising the deals - but it is at best a zero-sum game for restaurants/shops, probably a negative-sum game once every restaurant starts to give deals.

In the long run, the only sustainable sales-increasing promotion is one that segments the market: It has to bring in customers who couldn't afford it previously -- but it has enough low-status signals not to be taken up by customers who can afford the non-discounted version.

That's not a Times article, that's a NYT article. (Be glad that it is, the Times is paywalled off these days.)