Actually, more like "poor birth choices" in the united states.
15% of the top 1% are children of the top 1% 20 years ago.
30% of the bottom 20% are children of the bottom 20% 20 years ago.

Interestingly, a portion of the top 1% also flips back and forth between being in the top 1% and a negative income or zero income.

If you are born poor, educated by substandard schools, lack a stable family- your odds of "making poor life choices" is much higher.

It's still decaying. Slowly.

Humans have lived in close proximity to dirt for a long time. What is so special about Martian dirt that makes it more harmful than terrestrial dirt? Lunar dirt is different, because there is no wind or water erosion, so fine particles have sharp edges that never get rounded off. Mars doesn't have water, but it does have wind and dust storms, so it will be more like terrestrial dirt than lunar dirt.

Well, in this case, the judge sided with the citizen, right?

Don't lose all hope in the justice system.

Judiciary is a separate branch from the police.

That's odd because by normal procedures the bystander's entire video should have been made available to the police officer's defense attorney during discovery.

So either he had a spectacularly bad defense attorney or else the entire film wouldn't improve the officers position.

I advocate comprehensive, server uploaded filming by police officers while they are on duty. It's the best protection for the officers and the citizens.

Ahhh.

Okay, I'll grant that manufacturing employment has improved for people able to work at $217 to $500 dollars per month wages.

Even so, as I said.. china's already automating heavily - so even the incredibly low wages there are not preventing automation.

http://online.wsj.com/news/art...

"Delta is testing a one-armed, four-jointed robot that can move objects, join components and complete similar tasks. By 2016, Delta hopes to sell a version for as little as $10,000, which would be less than half the cost of current mainstream robots.

That price is also cheaper than the salary of a Chinese worker, and the robot can work around the clock."

Ironically, the manufacturing is likely to return to the U.S. in that case, but not the jobs.

We've already seen around the world that even in the harshest regimes, once people lose hope and enjoyment in living, it gets pretty hard to intimidate them.

North Korea seems to have done a pretty good job of it tho. So I guess it will have to get that bad.

Employment in manufacturing in the united states is down over 30% in 40 years.
In that time, the population has quadrupled from 76 million to 308 million.
Manufacturing employees have dropped from 18 million to 12 million.
Manufacturing jobs have dropped from 23% to 4% of jobs.
Similar declines in UK and Japan.

A less steep decrease in the EU area generally.

The amount of goods the united states manufactures with those employees has increased. Since china joined the WTO, the number of manufacturing jobs in the united states has taken an even steeper drop with an estimated 2 million more jobs lost which would put manufacturing employees at 10 million. Many of the jobs lost from factories that previously employed 1000 or more employees.

And now (even at china's low wages), they've started to automate as well.

What were you trying to say? I don't think you could be off that dramatically so could you explain a bit more what you mean?

I think this depends on the nature of space itself. Are we just objects sitting on top of space, or are we composed of space in the same way that the the surface of a balloon is? If we look at your model, it looks as if you're postulating a kind of "friction" between objects and space. That's why the discs with springs will only move further apart a little bit. If the rubber sheet was completely smooth, there would never be any increase in distance whatsoever since they'll just "slip" over it.

If there is no friction, then it doesn't matter even if there is acceleration. Like if it was a sheet of ice instead of rubber, everything would just sort of slide around. What is this friction, how do we measure it, what causes it...? I'm not really aware of such a mathematical quantity. For these reasons I'm just assuming that we're more than just objects in space. We are space.

And of course I could be wrong. I have no idea really...

Well, in a spring case the attraction increases with distance (upto a point of course). But I think if the rubber sheet was stretching and pulling the two balls along with it (balls are 3-D objects, so to make it a better analogy we should perhaps be talking about infinitely thin disks sitting on the rubber sheet) then the spring will eventually stretch, stretch and snap...

In this case, yes the line is paint and is sitting on the surface of the balloon. It's an imperfect analogy. But we're not just objects "on" space. We are space in addition to bending/warping it or whatever. So while all objects will increase in size, I don't think there's any data to indicate that the fundamental constants will change. So in a simplistic model if we look at the force of attraction between a nucleus and an electron via the inverse square law of electromagnetism, the increased distance will eventually reduce the force between the two causing the electrons to slip away. And the nucleus itself will burst apart.

Of course it could also be that I understand none of this and that I'm talking off the top of my head :) . In fact, that is most likely the case!

We are using different terminology.

The bottom 80%'s share of the national wealth has been dropping and the bottom 80%'s share of the income has been dropping.

If the wealth had continued to be shared as it had in the past, the effective middle income would be closer to $70,000 per year instead of $50,000 per year.

If you look at things as a "checkmark", it looks better. You have a TV, Refrigerator, etc. as long as you can keep a job.

But the lifespan of all the appliances is a third of what it was. Repairman took a 31 year old capacitor out of my air conditioner last month. He said, "What I'm replacing this with won't last 7 years."

At amusement parks you have two ticket prices. The $70 tickets that provide much lower service than used to be provided and $250 tickets where you get much better service (cutting to the front of the line, even reserved ride times).

Clothing is less durable and of lower quality.

Food is less nutritious and of lower quality. (Go buy some real cage free eggs like everyone used to get back in the 70s. Compare them to supermarket eggs. When scrambled the supermarket eggs are almost white these days.) Real eggs of the same quality people used to get cost $5 per dozen.

Beef becomes less affordable every year.

The beaches are divided into uncrowded luxury areas and smaller and smaller grossly overcrowded - not even "free" areas. You have to pay $10 for what used to be free.

Television shows used to be 52 minutes of content. Most TV shows 42 minutes of content and one recent show was 39 minutes of content.
You can buy a microwave- yup- $80 to $200. It will last under 7 years. If you buy a microwave made the way they used to make them- its $1000.

And so on.

I'm not saying it's all bad. I'm just saying we are the frog in the stew pot. The change has been so slow, we didn't notice it. And young people don't even know what they've lost.

In this case, you're not pulling the ruler. You're stretching the very fabric of reality itself. The ruler becoming longer is just a side effect. Think of it as a line on a balloon. When you blow air into the balloon, you're not pulling the line itself. But because the balloon is becoming larger, the line just happens to increase in length.

No.. but giving oil 3 trillion and then saying "well solar can't compete on an even playing field" is kinda ludicrous, ain't it?