I watch roughly the same amount of hours of TV shows/week and go out to see the same amount of movies/year (around 5-7?). The change was I switched from downloading TV shows after they have aired to PVR'ing every series I might want to watch. No more movies are watched, if anything I watch less if I download less. I changed to the PVR instead of downloading because I was worried about exposure to those legal notices and I am too lazy to do a vpn, though I would if I had to cancel my cable

The bottom line is I do not have any extra money for more content through 'legal' means.

I am capped out on entertainment spending and its getting less and less by the year if not month.

If I have extra dollars they will go to new sports equipment, a dinner out, extra food to have friends over...

We DO NOT have any more money to give them, if anything there is less, so they can cut their prices by 10%, I still might cut the cord. These services are the first to be cut in the budget, not the last.

Regardless of where minimum wage goes or does not go. Labour needs to be valued higher. Over the last few decades we have increased in efficiencies so that we need less labour to produce more, though we have not increased what we value labour at. So we have been able to produce more, from less (both labour and materials), but that trade off has not helped increase labour costs.

A re-balancing needs to happen where we value labour more than we do other costs of business, then maybe everything might slowly shift back into focus where Walmart employes can afford to shop at Walmart for the goods that cost very little to make in the first place.

It would be interesting to see the ratio of labour costs vs material costs it took to produce various types of objects in the past vs now... I realize its hard to compare on a quality perspective as many items we use day to day are much more productive than those in the past due to invention/inovation, but I'm sure there are some examples and I would think the ratio has moved towards more cost on the materials and less on labour than they did in the past.

I agree with this, I would have also pointed out that the 'poor productivity spending' mechanisms that the poor have are now surpassed in harm by the ones the rich have, such as certain 'financial services' which do nothing for providing productivity. The ones with a lot of money used to have to cycle that money back into the economy in order to get more money out, thus splitting the gains between themselves and the people they employed/companies they invested in... more and more there is less of a 'split'.

It could be, just guessing, that the labor is getting the $15/hr job instead of the $10/hr job, or at least there is competition for the higher paying wage and the lower offering is not getting any applicants.

You mentioned 'in the suburb', so I figure its from somewhere close by Seattle?

No. There has to be a need before you get production. The need comes from customers, what customers can pay influences the prices of goods, what they pay is what they have in their pocket, what they have in their pocket is influenced by what they get paid.

It is a circle, but the driving factor is a need from a customer for a product, not the fact that a product has been produced. Customers have less need for non-essentials when they do not have the money to spend on them, then less money is there to pay the customer and its a downward spiral.

You can produce all the art you want, but if there is no need for the product and no expendable cash to buy the product then you will not be a 'job creator' no matter how much you produce or how efficiency (re: how little you pay your employees) you produce it.

If all the minimum wage jobs are taken by people out of school, then that is a good situation... it means lower unemployment with adults. What will happen though is you will have the same amount of jobs available for kids once a certain portion of adults go back to work. If LA loses any jobs due to wage increase and stores not able to compete, that is a different story and something businesses in the area are going to have to adapt to, but I think they will be able to as there is still going to be demand, if not more, for shops in the area... that wont stop.

What you have is a few educated and tech savvy people making comments trying to stimulate discussion, but a selection of not-so-educated and/or not-so-tech-savvy population with a voice misinterpreting their comments to be phobic. Unfortunately, most will believe the media hype and not worry about the discussion, including politicians. Its like an echo chamber where the wrong points gets magnified, modern day media.

I'm not going to say anything for or against this new connection USB-C, but if I were you I would look into the abuse your systems are taking, specifically while plugged into a charger... it seems all your power connections are being stressed to breaking, maybe charge in stationary positions and then take it off charger if you need to move around?

No Throttling: broadband providers may not impair or degrade lawful Internet traffic on the basis of content, applications, services, or non-harmful devices.

The existing rules on phone usage limits, home connection usage limits, are fine and will stay... what they cannot do in the new rules is discriminate the type of traffic based on where it is coming from or going to.

"one-fize-fits-all rules" are exactly what is needed. These ISP's are the gateway to internet content, that content being whatever YOU decide it is, not THEM. Their job is to provide a road/pipe/path/wire/way for you to connect to the system, thats it, thats all, nothing further... The way they maintain that connection and how much you are allowed to use it, is between you and them, but WHAT you get should not be policed, monitored, prioritized, or discriminated against. This is what Network Neutrality is meant to do.

Plus your current system, without attempts to change, will slowly devolve into the ISP's being gatekeepers to your information where they can take money from both ends, at their discretion, with no benefit to the consumer in the end.

This -> The Government providing for and emphasizing the needs of the few over the needs of the many -- , is part of the downfall of American politics. Other countries have tried to limit this shift and some to take it out almost all together, but these few have their claws in really deep and it will take generations to claw their society back from the idealism's of the few.

Just for future reference... is there somewhere to get a price list on each piece of legislation. Just so we know how much they are spending every time we shoot something down (or forget to and it gets through)...

In Canada here they do the same thing so it would really be nice to have this posted. Like a pricing spreadsheet, making sure it lists the price of each elected (and non-elected) publish official, and the legal processes.

Just for reference...

You forget that the search for extra terrestrial life is backed by one scientific basis.. Humans

We are here, we exist, we are proof that life is possible and so the search for it elsewhere in this universe has us as a template. The more we understand how we work and what circumstances allow for us to live helps us in the search for extra terrestrial life.

The belief in God or whether (s)he created us is not relevant... unless you believe that (s)he created us and only us, but it is still irrelevant in terms of scientific process as there is no testable proof (yet).

Two separate arguments

There are infinite ways to create 'barriers to entry' that do not involve government as all they are are 'issues' created by an already established player to hinder existing and/or new players in the market. Type of product (network infrastructure, mining/resource harvesting), trade secrets (do patents and/or copyrights apply to 'free markets?), etc.. Free Market as an ideal is a goal that will never be fully realized as much as 'Total Control' cannot be realized. We have to live in the grey area between all extremes and as such we need to way the pro's and con's and be ever vigilant as a voting populace to the always evolving ways of certain groups of people to try to corrupt and control for their own benefits vs the people's benefits.

Saying the DMCA takedown process is broken is certainly true. This was known by those against the system from the start, but was inevitably only going to rear its head when those that are not major content providers (aka. those with money) started to game the system... This is all a distraction though as the argument that preceeds this whole DMCA thing is the business models that depend on artificial scarcity of digital goods, the idea that people need to pay for every little idea (sound clip, article, presentation, graphic, video) that moves around the internet. This is an outdated thought and I am not sure what will evolve out of our new age of digitizing everything, but I certainly hope we do not hinder progress (well much beyond what we have done already) due to our inability to conceive of new business models and ways of reshaping our society to embrace the advantages of digital content.