The number of doctors per 100,000 people in the US is a bit higher than this. Per the Kaiser Family Foundation, there were 834,769 professionally active physicians in the US in November, 2012. The US population at the time was 314.8 million (per the US Census Bureau's Population Clock), making the number of doctors per 100,000 people a more reasonable 265. Here's a graph showing the number of physicians per 10,000 (note - not 100,000) people in the US.

It is a sad commentary on programmers as a group that statements like this are posted, and worse that they garner so much support from the chattering masses. Excellent programmers always strive to write code with few bugs; and sometimes they succeed. I personally wrote a package of high-precision arithmetic calculations that was used for many years by a prominent Wall Street firm, and am quite sure (for a variety of sound reasons, not just "belief") that this software (about 4,000 lines of C) is bug-free. For examples that are more publicly known, consider the 420,000 lines of code in the space shuttle, which had a total of 17 detected bugs in 11 major releases (see Good Question – How does NASA write perfect code for the space shuttle computers? by Marshall Brain, May 27, 2009); the whole system is not perfect, but major subsystems are.

[Sorry - I just accidantally posted the text above as Anonymous Coward - not my intention.]

And just after Veteran's Day, how could one forget the G.I. Bill, which helped 7.8 U.S. veterans of World War II with their post-war education? Things like this are worth remembering, most especially when someone asserts that the government never does anything good.

I can't figure out if you're trying to make a point by being silly, or really believe what you've written.

Re 2: we often hear "Government does not create [drive?] innovation" repeated, as if enough repetition will constitute proof that this is correct. It isn't. For a humorous video showing numerous benefits and innovations we receive from our government, I recommend Socialism is BAD! on YouTube.

Re 3: the U.S. Constitution reserves education for the States, so you have a perhaps-unintentional point here. That notwithstanding, there are lots of examples of things the Federal government has done for education, including Pell grants, Brown v. Board of Education, and (to some eyes, at least) "No Child Left Behind".

Re 4: dropping the minimum wage will not increase demand for manufactured items, so is highly unlikely to spur manufacturing in the US - there is widespread agreement among those who have studied it that the US economy is suffering from a shortage of demand, and fixing this problem is part of what must be done to increase in-US manufacturing.

It's time to reclassify Linux as an antivirus product. Experience to date suggests that it is much more effective than single-purpose antivirus products - and it does so much more, for free!

You are being ironic, I hope. The idea that "corporations exist solely to maximize shareholder value" isn't a Given Truth - it's just another idea about how society can organize a (big) part of its activities. As such, it should be evaluated like any other idea: see what it leads to. One direct consequence is the argument that if something is legal and maximizes return to shareholders, a corporation has a fiduciary duty to do it. This argument was made in defense of British ships participating in the slave trade until 1807, even though chattel slavery was declared unlawful in England in 1772 and Scotland in 1776, and slavery itself in 1799. Another consequence is the idea that corporations have no social obligations - that maximizing shareholder return is required, regardless of other consequences such as, say, global economic meltdown and huge government transfers of money to banks and Wall St. firms during the last year or so.

These aren't the only ways for corporations to behave, nor do they appear socially desirable. Here's a reference for those interested in examining this further: http://www.allaboutbranding.com/index.lasso?article=373