OTOH, some of the mid-range Android stuff is quite good, and much cheaper than iPads. There may be better edu software for iOS, though, as another commenter claims.

An SUV plus a utility trailer does fill the role of a pickup truck.

The cost of a minivan plus a pickup plus the fuel to commute in the pickup is greater than the cost of an SUV plus a small sedan plus the fuel to commute in the sedan.

Depends somewhat on lifestyle. If I'd had a minivan, I'd also have needed to buy a pickup truck. An SUV fills both roles. Neither quite as well as the ideal vehicle, but well enough that it makes more sense than two vehicles... actually three since we also needed a commuter vehicle.

Agreed, unless you also need to tow stuff and/or go off road. Even if you don't do that stuff very much, renting an SUV or truck for those occasions isn't feasible, because as far as I can tell all rental car companies prohibit towing and off-road use. I do tow stuff regularly (boat, camp trailer, ATV trailer, utility trailer), and need to seat at least six people, which has made an SUV the practical and logical choice.

Now that my kids are moving out I no longer need so much seating, so a pickup truck is becoming the practical and logical choice. I'd like to upgrade to a bigger camp trailer, so one with a powerful diesel engine is looking particularly attractive.

If you think I'm conservative and pro-gun, then you've clearly never read any of my other posts. In fact, if your entire reply is not just an ad hominem, but one attacking views that are diametrically opposed to the ones that I've publicly stated on numerous occasions, I can only assume that you are completely lacking any meaningful responses.

hogwash. It's a law. Laws are passed by elected representatives, which is the form that we, as society, have agreed upon. Saying "this wasn't society" is the same handwaving as saying "it wasn't me who pulled the trigger, officer, it was my finger".

Which is why it exists in a hundred other countries who don't have the US racism, yes? Try again, maybe with an argument that survives for three seconds.

If you don't like democracy, how about you say it outright? If you have a couple million people, then no matter what you will always find "plenty of people" who disagree. You could pass a law that says the sky is blue and you'd find people who dislike it. That doesn't prove a thing and it's not an argument. We live in a society that has agreed that majority decides which way we go. If you don't like it, at least say you hate democracy. But I'm pretty sure you don't - you only hate it when you're not part of the majority, right?

Yes, but in that case there is an objective, rational reason for it. That's quite a different category from "I and some other people don't like it".

You are entitled to your own opinion. You are not entitled to your own facts. Unless you have actual evidence of economic damage, you're spreading lies here.

Maybe you shouldn't throw cheap ad-hominem attacks on people whose educational background and profession you don't know. There's a real danger it'll make you look like a complete idiot later in the discussion. ;-)

That's true.

It depends. What you basically end up with here is custom fiat money. It's the digital version of IOWs. It is worth what I say it is worth multiplied by your trust in me actually holding up my bargain. It's interesting, but we agree that it goes too far on the customizability end.

How many factory workers were middle class, during this heyday of which you speak?

That's a distinction without a difference.

It looks like they thought it was a Ukraine military plane and were a bit too trigger happy, not realising it was a civilian aircraft until too late.

Here's the thing: if the Ukraine were responsible, then Russia would have a vested interest in a visibly transparent investigation and be in a position to ensure that it happened. If they could convincingly portray the Ukraine as having shot down a civilian aircraft then that would significantly alter the political sympathies in the current conflict. Instead, they have done everything in their power to block it.

The problem is in your phrasing of it as 'government abuses'. In the most part, it's not 'the government', as a monolithic entity acting based on policy that is abusing the power, it's individuals whose abuses are enabled by the government's programs. There's a political split over whether you can trust 'the government', but both sides agree that you probably can't trust an underpaid civil servant with a napoleon complex.

Basically: Most of the rich really like having their money in some tax heaven, but they don't want to live there.

No, it is not. You are complaining that people who are "worth" less than X cannot be differentiated out. But that, exactly, is the point. Society says that below X, we do not want to differentiate anymore, because the cost to society for doing it is higher than the benefit. We should probably do the same at the other end of the spectrum, but that's a different discussion.

It works the other way around. If your business needs the job done, it will pay minimum wage. Your decision is not between different people, your decision is whether or not this job is worth hiring someone for at all.

Not really. Lots of people are stuffed into projects, short-term contracts that pay next to nothing, or encouraged to start their own business even though they know nothing about business and will certainly fail - all so they drop out of the statistics.

There's a huge amount of actually unemployed people who don't count, but the exact number is everyones guess.

In everything, there is good and bad. While the past 20 years are largely bad, there are some good things I'd like to keep. For example, privatization is a huge failure at massive costs in most industries, but in telecommunications it worked pretty well and gave us DSL and three mobile networks to choose from. (though I agree right now half of the telcos have become scumbags after realizing their own price wars have driven them to the brink of not being profitable anymore).

I was being intentionally inaccurate to draw attention, in the same way that ads do it. ;-)

Of course it works. But if you don't know how and can't reliably predict when, then for practical purposes it is far, far less useful than the people selling you the advertisement want to make you believe.

Of course, but it's far from scientific. As I said: Controlled tests are difficult. You know that you did your campaign in this week and these are the sales figures for the week, and the weeks before and the weeks after.

But firstly there could be other effects and secondly it's very hard to establish what worked and why. That's why many companies these days simply run image campaigns - they're not promoting a product, they're just pushing a brand name into your brain.