That's true with or without climate change.

Exactly. Lots of people tune things out when others start talking about "doing X for the environment". They are tired of the Chicken Little warnings and the "holier than thou" attitude that often accompanies the message. They do tend to pay attention to "doing X will save you money/make your life more comfortable/whatever".

and even if $Z-Y =0, the person still has to file a tax return with the IRS. For some that can be a significant expense and/or stress that they wouldn't have needed to endure if they were a citizen of some other nation.

and yet the number of people who are renouncing the US citizenship because of tax and other financial reasons is on the increase due to idiotic laws.

The problem is not the lack of a VAT, it is the US corporate tax rates are much higher than the rest of the industrialized world. That is why there is so many news stories about US companies buying other companies that are headquartered in countries with a lower tax rate, and then using that location for tax purposes. It's why Burger King is buying Tim Hortons. I don't see how a VAT is going to put any more pressure on offshore companies than "on-shore" companies. Or are you thinking that since the tax is included in the advertised price that they'll somehow be more competitive than they already are when it comes to pricing their products?

Low class is probably not the correct term. However, if one looks at most of the stuff churned out by the entertainment industry over the last 30-40+ years, the perception is that people who are interested in STEM subjects are the "unpopular or weird kids". The underlying tone is that these people are not normal and should be avoided or mocked.

If CS does become a core subject for US high schools, I'm sure that most of the schools will do just as good of a job as they are doing with other STEM subjects. I'm sure university CS educators are just going to love that!

The question that I have is: can the methane from these seeps be captured and then be used for fuel?

Linux is certainly a hell of a lot better than using Windows and a terminal emulator to sign into some server. At the next job, everyone used Windows 3.1 with Procomm to sign into an overloaded SCO Unix machine. That was certainly a change from having an SGI Indy on my desk. But they paid better.

Yeah, for about as long as it takes to fill up my car with fuel and then use the restroom..about 10-15 minutes.

and more people are leaving the US for México than the other way around since the economy in that nation has been improving and is more diversified than before.

No, it's mechanization. If you were referring to just meat packing plants, you would have a point.

That's easy. Start recruiting at the engineering colleges in México and offer them TN visas for open positions.

Well, in many cases if you got rid of contractors, all that would be left would be managers and interns. Depending on the location, the pay may not be great as a contractor, but it's probably a little better than the equivalent position if you were a govt employee. On the other hand, it's easier for the contract company/govt managers to fire you than it would if the person was a govt employee.

and in some cases it's the salary. I had a .gov job during and after college. The pay was much lower than private sector jobs available at the time. However, they had interesting problems, I got to use real Unix workstations at a time when Linux hadn't reached a 1.0 release yet, and it was close to home.

Also, it is worth noting that the bulk of the employees at this and other civilian govt installations are contractors. The actual government employees were usually managers or interns. When the contracts for the facility were awarded to a different company, the workers were let go by the old contractor and then hired by the new contractor. Same job, usually the same pay, just a different company name on the check and different benefits package. Usually only the main contractor management changed. It wasn't hard to find someone who had worked at the place 15+ years who also had been employed by 3-4 different contractors over that time span.

The attitude towards work can be different too. Ever hear the phrase "it's good enough for Government work"? A good friend and mentor at the facility had once mentioned to me: "We both grew up on farms, so we know that this is a slack job....any office job with A/C is when you think about it...but we work our asses off compared to those in Reston". I would not be out of the ordinary for me to work late into the night or on weekends to find bugs, experiment with new things, wrap of projects, etc.....the sort of things that most software developers do, especially if they're not married. I would have gotten in trouble if I did that at the offices in VA.

The dress code wasn't too bad really. It was just the "business casual" standard that lots of places. The only times I remember having to wear a tie was when the bigwigs and/or some Congress-critters from DC was going to visit or when on travel. However, that was a stark difference between what passed as "ok" in Silicon Valley. In 1990 or so, another guy and I had to visit Pixar's offices in San Rafael to discuss some software of theirs that we were using. The lead engineer was to meet us at the office and we stood around in the parking lot for a while waiting for him (the building lobby wasn't open yet). We saw what appeared to be a homeless guy walking around in the parking lot in a daze. He stopped, looked at us, and asked who we were waiting for. We said the engineer's name and he replied..."oh, that's me...come on inside". There was only one or two developers per office and they had beaded curtains for doorways. Very different than our 70's era govt office decor. :D