Wish I had mod points, well said.

We should simply stop giving tax dollars to these companies enabling these huge differences due to inflation paired up with government contracts. Put actual supply and demand in place and the problem they're attempting to address goes away on its own.

I would argue the opposite is more likely to happen. Most parents are not qualified to properly interpret these data, and over-monitoring can cause excessive anxiety and obsessive-compulsive tendencies.

Communism, Socialism, state run healthcare, nanny state programs in general, decreased personal freedoms except those having to do with sexuality - sounds very left to me.

Leftist enslave those who chose to work and blame them for the poverty those who don't work suffer and make sure their buddies have first shot at plundered money and property.

Rightist hold those who refuse to work responsible for their own poverty and ensure their buddies have first shot at everyonne else's plundered money.

I agree with you.

Left and right are mindsets - not political movements. Politicians have figured out how to harness the left and right mindsets to keep us arguing about time-wasting argument fodder to keep us from paying attention to the real problems.

I've given it a lot of thought.

Left wing mindset people drive progress, creativity, and our culture keeping us moving forward preventing cultural and stagnation.

Right wing mindset people harness the ideas often created by the left, make them work smoothly, effectively and keep the lefties from moving us forward over a cliff.

You need both left and right wing people to make the world work properly - as well as a few of us rare "mid minded" people that qualify as both and neither at the same time to patch together the differences.

Politicians have turned it into a cultural war where "both sides" are the same and "either" side winning gets us about the same results, and by keeping the war going and amplifying the differences between the "two sides" they keep those who are fighting from seeing there's really more than two ways to look at it and the very act of fighting this war ensures the wrong side wins.

making fun of Democrats in the US who are the only people in this country actually trying to save it

LOL wut?

Neither of the two major parties in the U.S. is trying to save the country. The OWS crowd is making a misguided effort who's goals would actually make thing worse - but they really do have the goal of fixing the joint, and the Tea Part "proper" is trying to fix a few things while ruining others. These are the major party people with their hearts in the right place.

There's two separate crowds in the country making an effort to save it that actually have the proper goals in mind - the Constitutionalist who want to fix our nation and bring it back to it's chartered place which is quite admirable, and the Libertarians who want to go a step further than the Constitutionalist with a fuck-all get rid of everything else while you're at it attitude.

Your beloved Democrats are making a very visible and direct effort to bankrupt the whole of the people and reduce freedom across the board while their at it.

I don't think right-wing has that cornered these days. Granted, starting with Korea or so a lot of our wars were right-wing, but Obama has sort of swung them back left.

After a human invoked disaster and then Hurricane Ike causing me to lose most everything I had of value twice in a five year period I approach life differently in general.

I am adopting a less hard-core version of the Buddhist "we become slaves to our possessions" philosophy. I've always believed in durable, simple, usable things, I use a cast iron skillet for about 75% of my cooking for example. I used to have a lot of books and physical media. I'm starting to use digital media, if I lose all of my physical belongings I can buy a new Kindle and get most of my books back, buy a new just about anything thanks to Google Play and have all of my music back, I would still be missing 95% of my movies, the prevalence UltraViolet and Amazon video being included with a bunch of my new disks will save a few of those. I've been ripping my disk and putting them on a local hard drive for years, I'm considering a "disk to digital" service so I don't have to worry about movies anymore. I've actually been giving my books away over the past couple of years and even reducing my tech junk laying about that I'm not using.

After the theft and the flood I'm now expecting the fire. When it comes I want it to have minimal impact. I want to buy new clothes, a few electronic devices and continue on. "The cloud" is how I intend to make that happen. My data is my most valuable possession. I need to get my pictures uploaded somewhere - thanks for making me think of that.

Once I get to where I want to be data backup wise with the exception vehicles which have escaped the past disasters, $5,000 to $10,000 should be enough to get me everything I really want and need. I just got married last weekend to someone who does not share in my reduced physical goods philosophy - so my estimates are based on a few months ago thinking. (considering I adopted the mindset a couple of years after the last disaster I'm not setting a good enough example, I haven't been wiped out since Ike). We'll see where that takes us.

What dumbass modded this down? It was hilarious and spot on.

-1 over rated == I disagree with you but I can't find a justifable modification so I'm going to "over rate"

and I'm losing interest in cars.

My bicycle gets me to work and back just fine. I've even decided to man up and ride when it's raining. Almost 13 miles a day round trip, and I see the miles on a bike as money not spent on gas. About 50 gallons saved mostly going to work and back since April. I can easily go a month and half between fill ups now and I really wish I didn't have to drive once every two weeks, but that's the way it works.

Butter's? Is that you? You sure do have a lot of faith in your spiritual companion the government.

When calling attention to the constitution is flamebait then we have strayed too far from our principals. Going Galt has appeal.

36 two weeks ago.

I'm also on my second job doing work for the government during my lifetime.

The only reason I don't work for myself is I would have to hire another person just to take care of the government. I may be able to do that after I've built a foundation, or I may even be able to hit a stride where I can do it myself, but while I'm first starting out I can't do that. Too busy with the other job I have to keep until I get stable and other obligations that are non-negotiable.

Government corruption makes sure our gas prices are high and it's difficult to drill at home. Government corruption is part of what keeps us on gas to begin with. Government corruption means you have to seek licenses and permission to do many, many things that you shouldn't need it for, but it sure does make sure you don't compete with anyone else. Government corruption is why the super rich are super rich and the gap between them and the common guy keeps growing - inflation shoots right into their bank accounts and they trickle out what they want. If we stopped printing money they may have to spend what they have.

No. Shut it down and leave it down - mostly.

Social Security - we need that back. It should have never been established to begin with, but now that we've got it there's lots of people who paid into it all their lives that rely on it, se we need to start it back up.

The military - we need to keep that. We don't need to be the world police, but we need a military. My vision of the military is elite, well equiped, best of the best soldiers in the core military who keep militias and state forces trained and work with them, but not as part of them so that if we do need the miltitary our elite soliders have people they can work with. These militias and states forces will like have quite a few former US soliders in them. Dump shit tons of money into military R&D, give us awesome tech to rely on. You cut the military budget to 1/10th of what it is now, keep our forces at home and stop policing the world, keep them elite, trained and with cutting edge equipment. Money saved, nation protected, world does what the world does, it doesn't concern us unless they try to bring it here. (BTW - make NASA the official R&D branch of all military forces and you justify NASA)

Shut down most national programs and agencies. I mean most of them. Most national agencies serve functions once served by the states, stop taxing the citizens of states so damned much so that instead of "federal funding" fueling everything the states can get their own funding without all the federal middle-man fees between having it extracted from their citizens and getting their sliver back. The states can run their own programs. Powerball exist as a non-federal inter-state program. Why can't there be an inter-state education board? Why settle for one? Why not have two or three competing or "coopeting" with one another? Why not build a high speed rail system where the citizens get to vote on where the train stops go by buying the most train lottery tickets? (radio announcement in Austin) "Looks like San Antonio bought more train lottery tickets than Austin, so the station is going to be a little further south than any of us want to go to pick up our kids from college - how about it Austin? Go out there and buy some train lotto tickets and show San Antonio what's up. Don't forget about Dallas anymore, we don't want just a connecting line to them, we want the main stop, now go buy them! Last weeks winner in El Paso took home a cool twelve million dollars, not like they have too many cities to compete with for a stop out there!"

We don't need to be on the government teet. A graceful shutdown of most programs would be nice.

Article 2 of the constitution pretty much tells us what the feds should be doing and amendments 9&10 back that up. Anything else should be 9&10'ed to the states.

If they actually stay shut down, as in no longer having a fear of being arrested for not paying a fee for growing organic food, no longer worried about being arrested for working without hiring designated bureaucrats, there will be plenty of jobs, rather it's getting hired somewhere else because the costs overhead of supporting the government is gone, or the regulations keeping them from working for themselves are gone.