"Social Security and Medicare are financed by a special tax specifically intended for them,"

Not anymore.

That money is treated like all other revenue. Its marked with "IOUs" , but the revenue generated is spent like its in the general fund these days.

The ability for the government to provide water, roads, infrastructure and schools that don't produce idiots is being utterly crippled by entitlements listed above as you can see adds up to the tune of 2 trillion.

The discretionary budget is the actual part of the government actually trying to govern and run things, the statutory part is generally people literally doing nothing productive and receiving money.

By the time you take out defense spending, the budget of the US government is laughably small for 300+ million people.

Doubtful. Read about Srinivasa Ramanujan - some random guy, in random back woods India, randomly gets a boot on math by Gauss, invents / discovers and creates his own notation for himself of all the math discovered since Gauss 1820-1830 to 1900 in his own notation and sends the basis for all super fast pi series (the latest being a improvement of Ramanujan's formula by the Chudnovsky brothers or some such).

Ramanujan dies of a cold in 1920 at the age of 32.

You telling me all the people in a world of 7 billion with minds like this get discovered? Rubbish.

Ramanujan used to say Shiva would come and write formulas in blood in his dreams and people around him though he was a weirdo because he hoarded paper to write this stuff on.

http://cronodon.com/images/Ram...

I doubt you'll find all these minds the way things are today.

Most people around Ramanujan at the time probably acting like the fools in Idiocracy do towards Joe Bauers.

Not sure if you travel much. But please to pay a visit to South Africa, Pakistan or some other places like those and drive around a bit. Any place with high birth rates, and you'll see, just like in Idiocracy, smart educated caring people have less kids to do a better job raising them than the animal-humans in some of the third/fouth world places. The population growth rate has gone down, yes, but the population is still going up.

It is well documented the growth is largely in under and undeveloped countries.

Current annual birth rates are ~ 130,000,000 - about the same as it was in 1980 - but, all the smart countries, Japan, EU, USA, etc, are hanging up the wedding tackle and all the retards are keeping it up.

Also, try giving a steak dinner, a hot shower and a car to drive to work for 7 billion every day. Aint gonna happen anytime soon .

IQ != effective use of intelligence. Smart Germans worked for Hitler, smart people can be poor.

Not that I consider Steven Hawking all that useful, I do like this quote:

"I have no idea what my IQ is. People who boast about their IQ are losers."
The Science of Second-Guessing, Stephen Hawking

If you think there is enough to around to make a First World standard of living you are smoking the good stuff. I'm no Malthusian, but 7 billion people driving to work and taking a hot shower and eating steaks for dinner? Lol.

Would consider the Massachusetts supreme court a kangaroo court of traitors.

The governments in the USSA are police state loser governments. Broke, debased currency, terrible schools, jackbooted military and LEO thugs getting pay and pension to do the dirty work of a corrupt government, they cant even provide proper roads or water supply anymore.

As the 21st century began... human evolution was at a turning point. Natural selection, the process by which the strongest, the smartest... the fastest reproduced in greater numbers than the rest... a process which had once favored the noblest traits of man... now began to favor different traits. Most science fiction of the day predicted a future that was more civilized... and more intelligent. But as time went on, things seemed to be heading in the opposite direction. A dumbing down. How did this happen? Evolution does not necessarily reward intelligence. With no natural predators to thin the herd... it began to simply reward those who reproduced the most... and left the intelligent to become an endangered species.

Some had high hopes that genetic engineering... would correct this trend in evolution.

But sadly, the greatest minds and resources... were focused on conquering hair loss and prolonging erections. Meanwhile, the population exploded, and intelligence continued to decline...

Private Joe Bauers, the definition of "average American", is selected by the Pentagon to be the guinea pig for a top-secret hibernation program. Forgotten, (he awakes 500 years in the future) he awakes in 2014. He discovers a society so incredibly dumbed-down that he's easily the most intelligent person alive.

Looks like the Joseph Smith's Kirtland Bank three dollar bill all over again. Mixing religious devotion to monetary policy.

I dislike central banking myself, but to invent another unbacked currency to replace another seems a step backwards.

Interesting to see Anonymous supporting bitcoin here. I have a feeling there is a campaign which is subverted trying to push this stuff. Its not backed, and it has severe implications when stolen. The currency of the future has ridiculous flaws out the starting gate. And if Jeff Bezos, a big time oligarchical collectivist is in love with it, I am wary.

If that's true - if its so great, back it.

Bitcoin is deflationary in a world with increasing population. Also BTC has made land grabbers and early adopters rich - it doesnt look like the currency of the future to me.

The other issue is that it cannot be recovered when stolen - this makes the identity theft issue utterly lethal.

If something similar to BTC came about that was convertable to energy or bullion that would be of interest - then the whole digital-only nature of the currency would be alleviated to some degree (a computer/HDD crash can wipe you out is a valid fear).

The other thing that needs to come about is transaction escrow. Some mutually agreed on non-governmental third party should provide escrow for large transactions.

I think that Amazon and others love BTC simply because they dont have to pay a tithe to credit card companies, but credit card companies help us deal with fraud, bad products, identity theft, etc. If you pay your credit cards off in time you get a company that can be helpful in dealing with fraud and identity theft vs nothing.

BTC is like walking around with krugerrands and bearer bonds without security.

I have used Straight Talk for years. They sell BYOP activation kits. It comes with 4 sim card and a CDMA activation code. micro/nano AT&T, micro/nano T-Mobile. I use AT&T Straight Talk.

With the Nexus 5 you take the micro AT&T, and you get unlimited talk, text and data (up to 3GB on 4G, the rest on a throttle) for 45/mo. Its also got LTE as well as HSPA+/HSDPA.

There is a 60/mo plan that allows SMS and calls to international numbers if you need it.

I prepay a year at a time and get this for $495 for 12 months.

I use a rental SIM when traveling to Japan from here ( http://jcrcorp.com/mobile/mobi... ) . Europe I've used Swisscom prepaid.

Anyways, the Nexus 5 D820 seems to go everywhere and work.

I'm not sure why they couldnt just natively EFI boot Surface Pro OS (Win 8.1) on the Macbooks. That seems like a sounder strategy to get converts than throwing away hardware. Apple hardware is the only reason to use Apple these days. (Nice touch pad, nice keyboard, relatively durable, good display).

What's so funny? The fact total outlay is the same or higher, costs are rising and the readyness of the air force is going down with more expense than ever in part due to rising costs, the deleterious effects of inflation and ineffciency. If we the people can't make you honest maybe the chicoms and Putin can remind you.

You are a pawn in a larger game. The total amount being consumed is going up but your fiefdom may be going down. I covered this in the post. Good job trying to defend baseline budgeting with ad hominem and nothing to back it up.