At $67K/yr 'average' teachers each earn more than the average US household.

Their income is, by definition, above average.

http://finance.townhall.com/co...

I was in the same situation once. Laid off by Northern Telecom in the late '80s, I started work as a contractor at their head office three weeks later for double what I'd been paid as an employee. :)

- just because you are economically illiterate doesn't make something "a lie".

- if it could and it were economically advantageous for companies to provide it, they would have done it. Nobody had to force the gas stations in the past to provide the service, it was in their best interest to do it because it attracted more customers and there was a competitive pressure to do it.

- precisely why the service can not be "absolutely provided" and what makes you not only economically illiterate but also so confused as to make 2 separate completely contradicting statements in the span of 2 paragraphs.

- that's the propaganda line, sure. The reality is of-course completely different. The wages of the workers have been destroyed by inflation, not by 'corporate profits'. The inflation is created by the Federal reserve bank of America buying up bad USA debt from the Treasury (and the rest of the market) for decades following Nixon's default on the US dollar in 1971.

The corporate profits are driven up by the inflation as well, unless those corporations are selling worldwide and not only within USA itself. It is quite frustrating to be surrounded so tightly by so many people with so little knowledge and so much desire to talk.

And besides, hasn't urban California decided that it now hates tech and the commuter buses it rides in on? As for rural California, just try to get past zoning approval for anything that isn't beige.

Because at that point, it will have used up all the iron ore on Earth for its server storage.

Now my online backup service will smash into my monthly usage cap in the first hour it runs.

When we have rovers that can drill into the icy moons, we will be able to test that idea right in our own solar system.

As with any other medium, Sturgeon's Law applies to TV. THere's a flood of dreck out there, but the best TV is better than ever. Has your PBS affiliate ever carried "The Wire," "Six Feet Under," "The SImpsons," "Breaking Bad" or "Halt and Catch Fire" ?

Maybe you can tell me this, oh wise one, just how many people are supposed to be on welfare provided by a few companies in the world exactly? Let's say the companies make it possible for people to buy enough food and energy and shelter and clothing and medical help to sustain 70 billion people, not 7, should the companies be forced to provide these 'human wages', however you define them or maybe the companies should be forced to pay everybody welfare (the way it is done now)?

Ok, so let's have a 1 working person to 10 parasites ratio, how about 1 to 100, 1 to 1000? The parasites that are given free stuff never fail to procreate, so the ratio will never decrease, it will always go up. So in your generous estimation, do you think that at some point if one person runs a bunch of factories that produce everything that everybody needs, should he be forced to subsidise everybody?

1 to (ALL-1) ratio? Interesting, what if he decides to stop and blows up all of his factories and all of these people are only alive and eating because he is so productive to feed them all? 99.99999% of them will die from starvation, right? Good plan. Let's turn one guy into the slave of the all. That's basically your idea, if not that extreme in the beginning.

- unions pushed for this legislature, normal people did not need any of it. The democracy is broken specifically because it allows large organisations to destroy individual rights of people that are not organised that way, which is why those laws were passed though they benefited very few at the expense of many. These laws prevented people with a lower socio-economic status (at the time mostly non-whites) from competing with the union workers for the jobs.

Union organisation is obviously there to represent the union, not anybody else, not employers and not people outside of the unions. Unions destroyed competition in the job market. You can yell 'hogwash' all you like, but the people who lost the jobs that unions were after actually didn't "pull that trigger" and it wasn't their "finger" either. The finger was given to them.

- actually USA was not the leader in this fight of the unions against disorganised minority labour. New Zealand introduced the first minimum wage laws, those were directed against the aboriginals competing for jobs with the whites. Then it was time for Australia.

Once the precedent was established, the UK stepped into the action, realising that this was a powerful way to gain political support from the unions. USA tried this in 1912 first, then it was deemed unconstitutional, which it was! It was discriminatory and unconstitutional. In 1938 it was pushed through, as many other horrific things that were pushed through during the FDR, where the excuse was always 'Great Depression' (started as a bubble that was inflated by the Federal reserve buying bad UK debt from France and which became the depression during Hoover and FDR due to all of the government meddling and attempts to 'save' the economy from the much needed recession, which was realigning the mis-allocated resources).

When you tell me to "try again", I will most certainly do and tell you exactly what is what, so that maybe you can pull your head out of you know where.

- maybe you should read my comments and my journal entries, I do not like democracy, I can appreciate the difference between a democracy and a republic, which USA was supposed to keep, but it didn't. Democracy is mobocracy which I specifically not only 'do not like', I abhor it. I completely disagree with allowing a majority to destroy rights of a minority, which is what democracy does, which is what destroys the economy when the majority (employees) are pitted against a minority (employers). Employees, business owners will never have the same number of votes allocated to them, so in a democracy first the individual rights of people in the minority are destroyed by the mob and the politicians, who are only too happy to oblige to stay in power and second the business owners then have no choice but to use whatever leverage they can to corrupt the system further by throwing money at it.

If the democracy did not provide the politicians with the method of destroying the Constitutional rights of individuals then the business owners would not be able to use their money to buy any favours, because there would be no favours to sell. Government must not be able to pass business related and money related laws and thus destroy individual freedoms. Government must not be able to tax income, it must not be able to create any type of labour or business related regulations. Once it can do it, then favours for some can be bought at the expense of others. No, I do not like democracy specifically for those reasons. I do not believe that all people are entitled to vote for example simply by birth right, they have to earn that privilege by for example being part of the tax base (not income or wealth related taxes, that again goes against individual freedom, but import taxes and duties, sale taxes, things of that nature.)

- I am not part of the majority on anything, when you find yourself to be 'part of the majority' that is the time to reform yourself. Majority rule is 2 wolves and a sheep voting for what is for dinner.

- right, the point is that it is recognised that minimum wage as a law prevents some people from competing against other people for reasons other than their ability, it prevents people on both sides, those who want to offer their labour for sale and those who are willing to pay a price for that service from finding each other and agreeing on their own terms. It prevents people from working. Those who need labour will find somebody, it will be suboptimal, however those who have really nothing to offer at the level of the legal minimum wage stand no chance to move up in your version of economy.

- the facts are in, I am an employer and I have some people working for me above what you consider 'minimum wage' and some people below it. There is nobody that qualifies to work at any exact artificial number anyway. If I am forced to pay everybody a minimum wage, those who are currently employed below it will not have those jobs. I will have to search harder to find those, who are around that level and hire fewer people of-course (money does not grow on trees here, that's a fact).

- unfortunately you being economically illiterate (regardless of whatever you believe your 'education' is, AFAIC most so called economists today are illiterate economically, including the fakes with the PhD behind their names, the likes of Krugman, who only proves that illiterate fools can too get Nobel prizes) is the actual expensive (not cheap) attack against the economy and society.

First of all this wasn't "society", unions supported the very idea of the minimum wage in order to get rid of cheaper (and at the time blacker) competition. Minimum wage is a vestigal expression of racism in the US. Secondly there are plenty of people that "society" ( in quotes, this is a political creation, society loses because of it) says do not have to be limited by this artificial barrier to entry into the job market. The minimum does not apply to various categories of people, for example the mentally retarded (medical term). An employer would not hire somebody with that type of legal disability if he has to pay the same minimum wage to that person as to any normal one.

Interns in the US cannot be paid. It is either 0 for them or at least minimum wage, which is quite interesting. You cannot pay 1-2 bucks to an intern who is doing a good job even to cover their expenses to get to work and back under the system. Society doesnt give a shit about your silly notion of "differentiating" all of this is a political ploy to give you something to vote on, and since majority of the people are employees and not employers and vast majority (95%) make above the minimum wage, it is a safe "feel good about yourself" economically horrid idea that gives you a fake reason to vote one way or another while hurting those on the lowest end of the economic ladder. Unions still make much more than MW but they will always vote to raise it, it prevents competition and the likes of you are so economically illeterate, you actually believe it is good for society and will vote accordingly.

Employers got into providing health insurance to employees as a way to increase employee compensation when the government changed the tax code and made it a deductables business expense and tax-free for the worker in the 1940s.

http://www.zanebenefits.com/bl...

Oh shut your mouth stupid Americans, ask Kiev to release the confiscated ATC record and explain why MH17 deviated over 500km from its usual flight path? And why was is requested to drop from 35000ft to 33000ft before it got hit?

Vladimir, is that you? Would you care to offer any sort of citation for the claims you have made?

May your fixie be run over by a bus.

Bio-fuels are theory, nuclear power is fact. I was a big proponent of bio-fuels until I realized two things.

First, the resources required to create bio-fuels is enormous. Bio-fuels is a means to store solar power into chemical bonds, the biological processes are an intermediary. As an aside there are other means to store solar power in chemical bonds that does not involve biological processes but they suffer many of the same downfalls. Just the land required alone for bio-fuels is problematic. Sure, we can put the collectors on roofs and perhaps even in the roadways but that only adds to the complexity and cost. There are also limits on where these things can be placed, there must be enough sun and temperature extremes means more cost and complexity. Nuclear and fossil power on the other hand is relative compact, can be placed just about anywhere (even on ships at sea), and can tolerate all kinds of weather.

Second, bio-fuels will always compete with food for resources. Whatever it takes to grow algae, sugar beets, switch grasses, or whatever the favored bio-fuel of the day is takes the same land, water, fertilizers, etc. that food does. People need to eat and people need heat and light, bio-fuels will always have the potential to force people to choose between the two. I will admit that non-food plant life does not need to meet the same rigors of sanitation and such that plants for food does. The problem still remains that any area on this earth suitable for growing bio-fuels will also be suitable for growing food.

Wind and solar power share many of the same problems that bio-fuels do in land, sun, weather, and so on. Humans have only been able to rise above subsistence living once we've moved beyond wind, solar, and bio-fuels. I fear that even with the most advance technology we can dream up cannot over come some real limitations to wind, solar, and bio-fuels. With the promise that nuclear power holds I believe there really is no other choice, we cannot maintain our standard of living unless we move to nuclear power.