The "U3" unemployment rate is downright deceitful; it excludes people who are no longer applying for jobs because they've become discouraged by endless rejections (regardless of whether they became discouraged 2 weeks ago, or 5 years ago). Naturally, U3 is the measure most commonly reported in the mainstream media. As the U3 rate regularly ticks downward because more and more workers become discouraged, it has become rote for the media to release celebratory articles. But more people seem to be waking up to the fact that movements of this number are meaningless outside of the context that explains why it moved.

A true measure of economic health -- which genuinely reflects whether the demand for labor is vigorous or soft -- is the Labor Force Participation Rate (LFPR). It has just fallen to a the lowest value in 36 years. You specifically asked about current prosperity as compared to 10 years ago. You can go here to see a chart showing it's taken a nose dive since 10 years ago: http://static3.businessinsider...

Note that the current LFPR is even worse than it was when the so-called "Misery Index" was at its all-time high (June 1980). And the LFPR is nothing like it was during the boom years of the Clinton Administration.

Our current "booming stock market" is solely a function of the Fed artificially holding interest rates near zero. I.e., the places where "sensible" people traditionally invested money, such as a bank certificate of deposit, are currently not an option unless you're willing to settle for a return that's near zero. (Actually, those near-zero returns are negative, when adjusted for inflation.) That certainly explains why people are pouring a large portion of their savings into the stock market, does it not?

And since you're interested in genuine numbers, I trust you will stop saying that "tens of thousands" died in recent wars. The genuine numbers of combat deaths are: Afghanistan, 1,742; Iraq, 3,527. You have to go back to Vietnam to find a figure in the tens of thousands (47,424).

Has this helped?

In that respect, it's not at all different from Medicaid, food stamps, etc.

That's not at all unusual this century. In this century, Social Security is redistributing income from workers to non-workers at a faster rate than in the previous century. In addition, Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society" programs are now redistributing income to the poor at a faster rate than they did in the 20th century.

Right now, humans make the decisions about what treatments will be denied. That is true in government-run healthcare programs as well as in private health insurance companies. As long as resources continue to be finite, it's a truism that some treatments must be denied. (That is, it will forever be a truism that some treatments must be denied.)

(Ideological tangent: if multiple private insurers compete with each other on the basis of how few treatments they deny, and you can switch to insurer B if you feel insurer A is being too stingy, you're in a good system. If you're covered by a single government-run monopoly and there's nowhere else to turn when their inefficient bureaucracy consumes many of the dollars that should be going toward your treatment, you're in a bad system.)

But in either system, an algorithm could potentially make fairer, more objective decisions than human decisionmakers can.

There's so much wrong with your comment, I hardly know where to begin.

In our current economy, energy is vastly more plentiful and inexpensive than it was 50, 100, or 300 years ago. And that's one of the main reasons the economy is much bigger than it was 50, 100, or 300 years ago, and the standard of living of the average human is much higher than it was 50, 100, or 300 years ago.

Gee... "Having created a biologically accurate computer model of a neocortical column scientists are now planning to model the entire human brain within just 10 years."

Unless you're an absolute pacifist, you agree with the proposition that not only is it ethical to try to control human beings who are attacking you (or attacking your family, or subjugating your nation), it is ethical to kill them.

It follows that it's also ethical to pull the plug on AIs that are seeking to attack you (or attack your family, or subjugate your nation).

As for AIs that are merely competing with humans for resources; will wealthy robots, say, book all the cabins on luxury cruise ships, crowding out the humans? Only if they are programmed to covet such things. (It would make no sense to give them such programming, but that wouldn't be the first time humans have done things that made no sense. So there is perhaps a role for regulations that would prevent AIs from being programmed to lower humans' standard of living by seeking the same resources that humans seek.)

Yep, I'd love to see a dozen more labs replicate this finding.

Now, you are demanding that investigators look for a picogram-level mass delta. But really, how much proof would that add; isn't it much easier to fake a tiny mass delta than to fake an overwhelming shift from Nickel-58/Nickel-60 to Nickel-62?

Probably not a good idea to mention aspirin in conjunction with Ebola treatment. Ebola patients suffer from decreased blood clotting and internal and external bleeding. Aspirin, a blood thinner, would exacerbate that situation.

Thanks... that explains why half the time when I turn on the faucet or the light switch, nothing happens, and the other half of the time, it only works because I've spent a large fraction of my income on maintaining those systems, due to the exorbitant wages those tradesmen are able to demand due to the shortage of those skillsets.

Oh... the previous paragraph wasn't true at all? There isn't a shortage of those skillsets?

Actually, contrary to being a shortage, demand for most kinds of workers is too low. That's why the labor participation rate just fell to a 36-year low.

Most of the worksheets I filled out in school benefitted me, by presenting opportunities to practice valuable skills.

If your school passed out dumb worksheets that didn't reinforce vaulable skills (see: stupid Common Core math worksheet stumps dad with PhD), your school was doing it wrong. Sorry you had to go through that.

See this nice description of a solar power facility on the lunar surface.

Those who participate in net metering are selling surplus power when they have a surplus to sell, and buying power when they don't. It's rather absurd to say the power they purchase at night is "free," when in fact every single kilowatt-hour they purchase eats into the proceeds from their daytime power sales. If they are selling power at, say, a wholesale rate of $0.02 per kilowatt-hour, and buying power at a retail rate of $0.12 per kilowatt-hour, it massively eats into the proceeds from their daytime power sales.

If you were correct that every kilowatt-hour sold by a solar facility has to be "thrown away," or discharged into the ground, then you would also be correct that that's not a sustainable business model. But you present no evidence for this. Here I present evidence to the contrary:

A utility can look at the forecast for how sunny it will be, and then conservatively scale back production at its peaking plants and at its load-following plants, to minimize the amount of solar power that needs to be "thrown away."

Wrong for several reasons.

Some households that participate in net metering are net producers of power, "exporting" more than they "import." Other households have remained net consumers of power. But no household has perfectly balanced exports with imports, resulting in zero net usage.

And even if a household did happen, one month, to export exactly the same number of kilowatt-hours as it imports, the fact of net metering does not guarantee that the utility will pay retail price for the exported power. The term "net metering" also applies when a utility pays wholesale price:

It doesn't make sense that a utility should be forced to pay retail price for each tiny trickle of power generated by amateur mom-and-pop producers, when bulk power generated by professionally-managed plants can be purchased at wholesale price.

Nope... that means it will fail, on average, every 50 - 100 years. That's a pretty good service life for any device... and if it became commonplace for households to have a flywheel, failure should be covered by homeowner's insurance, just as roof replacement is (which needs to be done every 20 - 30 years).

GP did specify a buried flywheel. If pieces of flywheel become embedded in the soil four or five feet under my lawn, I fail to see the catastrophe. A one- or two-percent annual failure rate for a device like that would be quite acceptable.