Actually it's even worse than that 178 gallons per capita per day ~ 670 liters. A lot of that is probably due to watering lawns though, something you don't need to do much in the UK I imagine. Swimming pool evaporation is another one you don't have much of.

I wonder where the rest of the difference goes? Less efficient clothes and dish washing machines maybe?

This isn't the biggest reason people actually own cars. People own cars because they need to get to work.

What does this even mean? Isn't any government a sociology project?

Waste is everywhere. In fact, Americans in general are the moste wasteful people in the world. Just look at their energy consumption and refuse production per capita. Just because government is wasteful doesn't mean that we should just abandon it completely. Many of our government services (protection, education, utilities, law enforcement...) we don't have a more efficient alternative for. Yes, you can privatize them, but only at the expense of losing control over them.

Also, private doesn't necessarily mean more efficient. Just look at the US's health care system. It is far less cost-efficient than the public systems of Europe.

If you want to think of "American" as a sub-species, then yes, Americans are definitely becoming more Latin.

Well, 150 years is 6-8 human generations, so while selection certainly *could* happen, it would really have to be very strong to be observed. As in "tall Dutch people have twice as many healthy offspring".

Or maybe it's because (in the case of imputed) we need to quantify the value of someone owning their home and living in it. Consider that if everyone owned a home, but rented it to someone else (and rented a home for themselves with the proceeds) , you would have the exact same situation as if everyone just lived in their own home. Except that without imputed value the latter would contribute nothing to GDP, while the former would contribute massively.

To remove the (artificial) fluctuations from people switching from ownership to renting, we just calculate it as if everyone was renting.

In the end all that really matters is that you calculate GDP consistently from year to year - and including hedonic and imputed values makes our measurements more consistent. All that matters is the trend.

...because there are none of those in Greece? Not to mention, 12% is *still* less than half of Greece.

You can't be serious. Greece's debt to gdp ratio is 175% - the USA's is 100%. USA unemployment is 5.5%, Greece's unemployment is 26%. TWENTY SIX PERCENT.

The USA has some economic issues, sure, but comparing them to Greece is just idiotic. Extremely idiotic.

From TFA:

Say what you want about fear-mongering, that's a pretty crazy statistic. Sounds like I should invest in some Korean laser correction company.

Only if there are no other deliveries to be made anywhere near you.

I would assume you could see search results but can't open any of the links... which would be incredibly frustrating.

In some sense, yes, that is exactly the problem with Big Data. Many people expect it to be some panacea, when it is merely a tool. A tool that is difficult to use effectively.

You're missing the point of the analysis (as is this Housman fellow). Which browser is the better choice is irrelevant. The analysis shows that better employees are currently more likely to use Chrome or Firefox. Whether or not Firefox/Chrome are better doesn't matter, all that matters is that, on average, better people use them (according to their measures).

I fail to see how trucker is a "solid blue-collar job" while "gas station refueler" is somehow an "entry-level service type job". They're both pretty typical blue collar jobs.

I would say adding a full-service attendant at every truck stop gas station is probably the least complicated and easiest-to-implement part of an automated nation-wide self-driving truck shipping system. You're really focusing on the simplest part of the problem.

I don't believe all telephone conversations and text messages are recorded... but I could be wrong...