Both points are arguable.

A lot of military spending goes to troops benefits, which high-income people have less personal interest in.

Arts spending, a lot goes to community projects or grants for artists, which may enrich our culture for all, but supports the lives of academics and artists - which probably aren't high income.

This doesn't even go into progams specifically meant to help people.

IMO, people need to be pragmatic about the actual money trail of government spending, if they want to truly make meaningful cuts that don't hurt us. 1.9 million dollars to study ants (for example) sounds like a waste, but you're paying a lot of people in the process, and these people spend their money domestically on goods and services, creating demand for jobs.

Money that very quickly finds it's way to the top of the financial ladder is where the waste is. This money is both horded, and much of it simply put into investment trading or goes overseas. They aren't hiring more people with this money or bringing jobs back to the US, because an influx of cash does not motivate you to suddenly run an inefficient business. But paying it out to shareholders makes your stock worth more.

So, you just need to follow the trails of where money is very quickly going into the pool that simply circulates around the top. A lot of medicare/medicaid results in increase spending through freed up resources to do other things than pay for healthcare, but a lot of it also pretty much goes straight into the business side of healthcare - be it pharma or highly profitable private hospitals, etc. Medicare and Medicaid are very efficiently RUN programs - and even the running of it employs middle-income people, so that probably isn't a loss. You'd need to have true healthcare reform to really lower the costs of these programs in meaningful ways so that a smallwe percentage isn't just going straight to the top. There needs to be a great deal more transparency in the business of providing healthcare.

But for the most part, I would say spending isn't our problem. We're in this situation because of the crowd pleasing policies of cutting taxes and keeping spending. Very nearly all of what the fed spends our money on is either meaninful or unavoidable, and not just wasted - which is why it's so hard to actually cut spending when you get out the microscope. We just need to PAY for 1st world lifestyle that we have, and accept that you can't have what we have in this country for free - it costs a LOT of money.

To say it screws everyone equally is wrong.

Most higher income citizens couldn't care less, personally, about nearly all government programs. They still may support their funding and existance, but they wouldn't personally be hurt much if programs went away entirely.

So no, it is not 'equal screwing' in reality, only politically - and in the end who's politics wins or loses is meaningless.

Look at ANY game. Look at LIFE.

If something is easy to get, everyone will get it. And once they get it, they toss it aside easily.

I got Ashkandi after months and months of raiding; it was a symbol of achievement in both patience and ability. Still keep it in my bags at level 85. All that badge gear? Destroyed.

The actual leveling part of WoW is not very grindy, and the gearing part has gotten MUCH less so but you still need SOME because it teaches you how to play your character and work through your strengths/weaknesses. What if everyone had a max level max geared character of ever class? How boring would that be....

Everyone wants to get to max level in a week and gear up in just as much time, without realizing that is infinitely more boring in the long run.

Problem is, how do you make it 'difficult' without being 'grindy' outside of PvP, and still making it attainable for everyone with the dedication.

It sounds a lot like my experience with Linux.

I hate feeling like I have to turn in my geek card to use Windows, but Linux has always felt like the place for hobbyists-turned-career, while you go with the MS solution if you have other things to spend your time on than coming up with clever ways to make things actually work.

IMHO, of course.

I hear this plan has a security hole where the men can see it all...

So under peer pressure from my fellow geeks, I joined the smartphone revolution and bought an HTC EVO. What do I do on my new smart phone? Call people, receive calls, check voicemail, and text. What is harder to do on a smart phone? Call people, receive calls, check voicemail, and text. What do I not do with my smart phone? Read my e-mail, shop, get directions, remote into my PC, sling video, watch TV, play MP3s, tether, control my TV, play games, etc. I regret my smart phone move, and fact is, there will always be a segment of people who will have no desire to use their phone for anything but communicating with people in a space and energy efficient manner.

It's about time someone made a crisis out of educated people making more money than everyone else; all the crying over our society's devaluing of education was getting old.

http://www.fender.com/promos/2010/rockband3 Only cheaper, easier, and most likely better interaction with the game.

The only possibility of better quality sound might be USB devices, because the signal is purely digital until converted in the external box - or some kind of digital wireless technology that completely separates the PC from the DAC and amp without introducing noise or lost bits. I challenge anyone to find an internal sound card that provides the quality they are looking for, because it doesn't exist. Every consumer sound card on the market up-samples, so it is reprocessing the sound internally before pushing it out, and this is creating noise. Some professional equipment MIGHT not do this, but you can't always rely on their spec page to tell you about this specific feature(I know, I've bought a midiman sound card). This internal processing is the reason I've gone as far as pushing out S/PDIF do an external $300 DAC, and still got background noise. If the analog conversion is happening in a noisy environment, then that's as good as it'll get. You either learn to put up with it, or start going for really specialized setups.