If it's opt-in, or you can very easily opt out without giving up anything else, then it's a subscription. Otherwise, it's a tax.

Sheesh.

Businesses hire people when they have a job that needs doing, provided that it's worth the cost. Not every potential job is worth its cost, and minimum wage artificially raises that cost, with the obvious result that some jobs simply go undone.

There is also the matter of competition which is not subject to the minimum wage—not just under-the-table employment and offshoring, but also automation. With the increased minimum wage, businesses may find that it's now cheaper to employ a machine, where before they would have given the job to a human. Or perhaps they simply increase their existing employees' workloads rather than hiring someone else to handle the "unskilled" jobs.

Even if every business did act like it was insensitive to wages, as you seem to think, that would just mean that the marginal ones are no longer profitable and thus go out of business, further reducing both the supply of goods and the demand for labor.

Emphasis very much on the "figuratively"—and it's not the employer holding the gun. If the worker does not consent then he is merely left in his original state, and is no worse off than he would be in the absence of the employer. Regardless of any external pressures, whether from nature or the government or other sources, the employer-employee relationship itself is completely consensual. A free market is one where people's natural rights are respected, not one where everyone is guaranteed an equal bargaining position. The fact that the job means more to the worker than it does to the employer does not prevent this from being a free market.

In these difficult times of wars and crisis, Obama is one of the best presidents Americans could have hoped for.

Are you serious?

Obama is completely disengaged from the turmoil happening in the world. I don't think it is him being "stand offish", I don't think he actually knows WHAT to do and is paralyzed by that.

No one in the world has respect for the US admin...he doesn't know when to make a stand, nor will he stand on it. And the world knows this and is testing this right now.

You would think that Tesla would build the plant in Detroit, not only is land cheap and most likely loads of incentives but it would be a direct slap in the face to the big three automakers.

The trouble in setting up there would be, what are you going to use for a workforce?

Likely as not, not locals, and how are you going to convince folks to me to Detroit, not much incentive to move to a barren, economically sparse, drug infested/violence infested area. I mean, Tesla can't possibly pay THAT high of wages to give folks incentive to brave it by moving there.

The over regulation and high taxes in CA are the killer for any business possibilities there. Large companies are leaving California due the the bad fiscal management out there and overbearing govt restrictions on businesses out there.

You'd think at some point, sensible folks would see this and do something to curtail the problem, but when you let political philosophy outweigh what common sense should present to the current vision, you get much of what you see in CA, and more recently in the entire Federal admin overall.

Sadly, some seem to hold their philosophical vision over and above solutions that could fix things at ALL costs. Some folks wold rather fail by breaking, rather than to bend and survive.

Bitcoin has an extremely predictable rate of supply inflation (the kind meant here) which follows an exponential decay curve and will be under 1%/yr. by 2020 or so. There could be some very minor supply deflation after that point due to people losing their keys, but it should never become a major factor.

The price inflation and deflation you allude to is partly due to being a very young high-risk/high-reward venture. If Bitcoin is to reach even a fraction of its potential as a currency, the price per bitcoin must end up several orders of magnitude higher than it is now to match the increased demand, or there simply wouldn't be enough to go around. On the other hand, concerted political opposition could render it useless in most of the major markets. Whether the innovators or the politicians will win in the long run is anyone's guess at this point, thus the risk.

The other part, which is likely to dominate in the long-term if Bitcoin succeeds, is a reflection of normal changes in the demand for money. Central banks usually try to dampen out demand-driven price swings by manipulating the supply of money, but they are in fact an essential part of balancing present and future demand for goods, and suppressing them leads to an economy-wide misallocation of resources.

That depends on what you're trying to trace. While it's true that the transactions themselves are public knowledge, they don't include any personally identifiable information. Tracing the movement of bitcoins through a series of single-use addresses on the blockchain is easy; tracing the changes in real-world ownership is an entirely different matter. Unlike money moving through a series of bank accounts, there is no central entity to tell you who controls each address.

The difference is that, unlike wild horses, a free market is made up of free individuals with individual rights. You're talking about putting reins on people and channeling their efforts toward ends you consider productive. Think about that for a moment. There's a word for harnessing people and putting them to work for you without regard for their rights: slavery.

The unharnessed free market may not be quite as "productive" (from your perspective) as a captive, harnessed, non-free market, but a choice between "productive" slavery and "unproductive" freedom is really no choice at all. Slavery isn't an option.

It must be horrifyingly frustrating to work for a company like Verizon as a tech, know that you can fix a problem by adding a few more links between two switches, and being told my management that you cannot because of idiotic reasons.

I'd be half tempted to just fix the issue behind their back, but then of course I'd likely be fired for insubordination!

Imagine that, fired for improving network performance. Might even be worth it if the tech doing it had another job lined up at a company that isn't as evil.

Pedantic fail^2

64K = -209.15 degrees Celsius = -344.47 degrees Fahrenheit

This because the much loved /. editor doesn't allow the degree symbol nor the & deg; html entity which I have to write with an extra space.

Jusy like phones, right?

I'm on the ground floor...