+1

And add to that the mid-managers who promise the execs something will be done in time for christmas, tell the devs to stop everything and work on an emergency audit, then go bat-shit crazy when project A isnt done on time.

Often times, the regulations are there for good causes.

In the case of a regulation stating that cars must be sold by an independent dealership.
Perhaps this was meant to prevent manufacturers from directly selling to buyers. If they were to sell directly, they could undercut the local dealerships and put them out of business. Many people would think that sounds reasonable.

A similar law was passed which prevented Kodak from developing its own film.

Those kinds of regulations are not limited to Texas. In California there are laws stating that any new dealership must be approved by a panel of existing dealers. (hmm going from memory, may be confusing with schools) This was intended to keep an area from being over-saturated with dealerships. I do remember a story about someone trying to setup an online car dealership that was smothered by local dealership regulations.

Problems with seemingly good regulations occur when the governing bodies are controlled by the companies they regulate. Large corporations dont just payoff government. They also plant representatives on comitties, board members, and trade organizations. These different powers separately are easy enough to bypass. But when organized into a single weapon can effectively block innovation.

Are there any of these games available as an app or free download?

Nonsense!
Congress does not get to soley decide how money is spent. They just start the process.
Any bill needs to be agreed upon by the congresss, senate, and president.
Didn't you watch schoolhouse rock?

Otherwise, whats to stop them from not paying for anything they dont like? Revoking the salaries for judges that dont agree with them? Or not paying for fuel for Air Force 1?

Congress needs to pass a budget that will pass senate and not get veto'd. Knowingly passing a budget that will not complete is purely political. Its normal and accepted for most things, but for the budget it is downright evil.

I think the strong point for these CEO's is their enthusiasm, involvment, and empowerment. Executives, managers, and workers all benefit from these traits. I have seen most CEO's to far removed from the reality of their company and too insulated from their problems to be effective. Managers tent to be too powerless to control anything around them just give up and shrug.

The term micromanagement has a different connotation for me though. I have seen the downsides of it firsthand. Executives who read all the self-help books and throw around buzzwords without listening to their employees or being open to others ideas.

Maybe the cost is not so rediculously high if you consider that serious journals pay for the staff and resources to actuially read what is being submitted.

Actually we had a budget surplus during the Clinton years and then Bush ruined us. Also remembe that Bush signed the bailout, $700 billion TARP program, while Obama signed the Ecenomic Stimulous act (equally expensive).

damnit, theres a really good chart of federal spending and deficit that XKCD put out.. I cannot find it.. help please?

"Unbelievable. I really can't understand this reasoning. You ADMIT that the government is incompetent in how they spend the public's money ('while not providing any healthcare") while wanting to take a well working health care system and dismantle it and give it to the government to control! This is just insane thinking."

-I think some people view the individual mandate of the ACA as a half-ass solution. The real solution being national healthcare plan. Actually we already have this, medicare and medicaid are well managed and well priced for consumers. They already cover a good chunk of the population.

"There were far simpler and cheaper solutions than this monster. Pre-existing conditions? Maybe move them to Medicare coverage for JUST those conditions."

-That would make it all too easy for health insurers to drop anyone with a cronic condition. The list of "pre-existing" conditions is decided by each insurer, and is pretty vast. I was denied insurance because my migraines qualified as a pre-existing condition. So anyone the insurers think would loose money on, they would just kick over to the government. That would leave the taxpayers paying for all the expensive patients, and the insurers making money on all the cheap ones. How is that better than the ACA?

Your flame is pointed in the wrong direction! 1. Who the hell cares if some high-power bokerage shaved a few cents off the cost of a big transaction. Is that going to affect the unemployemnt rate or anything that you ranted on about? NO! If anything, some of those transactions actually made some money for some auto-workers retirement funds. Great! 2. Regarding your rant. How does someone making large amounts of money equate to kicking the poor? There is no mandate that rich people who use their wealth, political power, and intellegence to make more money are evil. In fact there are many who try to do good for their community. Of course their are some that abuse that power as well. The modern age has made educated people much more able to reap the benefits of that education. 3. Re: great empires fall. It's not just the elite that dont give a fuck about the poor. The poor dont give a fuck either. Just look at the voter regestration percentages. Only 57% of voters regestered in 2012 in the USA. Almost half of americans dont even care enough to decide their own fate. "Whateva" should be their motto. Reading the propositions and the candidate bios is just too much work! Its easier to just collect my unemployment check. Further proof: after 2008 financial crisis, what luxury did americans give up last? Their cable TV. Comcast shares went down, but their customer base just kept going up. Hey americans want their MTV. And that shit is expensive! Some plans rival a new car payment. -Walmart is another good example. Walmart did not brainwash people into buying their products. People flocked there because all people care about is me me me and the biggest TV they can afford on their credit limit. They didnt care if the as-seen-on-tv products really work, only bthat they saved $10!. They dont care if their imported vegetables were grown according to EPA standards cause they are only 99cents a pound!. 4. So yeah, the USA is in a downward trend, but thats to be expected, normal, and is even good in some respects. We made a ton of money by innovating, engineering factories and having a cheap labor force. We amassed a huge amount of money and have the luxury of buying many imported goods that no one else has access too. Now our currency is trading high so it makes it imposible to compete on manufactured goods. That is a great opportunity for other countries. Yeah some trade tarriffs wouyld have been nice to slow the decline but hey people want their cheap toaster, so everyone welcomed the 'free trade agreements'. yay. But things will normallize eventually as other countries become wealthy and start buying some of our stuff. Yeah it will suck for amny people but there is still a ton of opportunity in the US. It is still one of the best for human rights, infrastructure, environmental protection, and healthcare. I love this country and we should try to help each other personally, financially, or politically. Many ways to do each that accomplish more than raging about the rich.

One more thing.. after the initial release of Diablo iii, I expected the economy to collapse and the good gear would get reasonably priced. Instead, just the opposite happened. The gold got cheaper.. about 30 million for $10.. But the gear just inflated even more! -So say a wand that cost about 1 million gold during the first few months now costs 100 million.

Again, where are the economics teachers??

In Diablo, the real problem was the loot itself. They were all random drops, and even the named epic drops had random stats.

To put it in perspective, there were about 30 different random attributes. All builds require 4-5 of these attibutes.
All resist
str/dex/int depending on class
crit
crit damage
vitality
If you dont have ALL of these abilities on most of your gear, you simply cannot complete end-game content.
Well what are the chances of finding an item with all these abilities? I estimate about 1 in 150,000 drops have all 5.
But also consider that each of these stats will havev a randomly generated value. So you may have All Resist +10 when you need +70. Consider about 1/10 of any needed stat has good values, and that is 1/10000 of 1/1500,000 drops will have usable equipment for the highest level play.

That is a shitload of grinding. It is much better to spend about 50$ and buy enough gold for the AH to buy your gear. Also, the top-end gear is hugely inflated! all farmers need to do is kep on the lookout for any end-level gear, buy it and then turn around and sell it for 100 times what they paid for it. There is not enough of the top-end gear to go around, so the market is crazy inflated. It is a great example of how a hyper-competitive market is bad for the consumer. Snipers with multiple accounts and bots leverage their strength to price things up to astronomical amounts. Some of these things cost billions of gold when my grinding yeilds a few thousand per drop. Economic teachers should use it as a case study.

BUT IS IT REALLY WORTH IT?
I mean really, after you grind away or spend your hard-earned cash to fully equip your character, what is your reward?
YOU GET TO GO THROUGH THE SAME CONTENT YOU ALREADY CLEARED OVER AND OVER AGAIN!
YAYYYY!!!!!

/Agree.. I think Obamacare did not go far enough. The truth of the matter is that healthcare is balloning and eventually it will burst, with or without obamacare, but everyone will blame it on obamacare anyway. Also.. how is insurance different than taxes? I pay money out of my hard earned salary to pay for the cancer, heart disease, and diabetes of others. My employer even pays for some of it.. sounds like a tax eh? Free market? LOL i get whoever my employer has contracted with. Get my own insurance? -dont get the subsidy from my employer, the plans are confusing and hard to compare, and i got denied anyway because of previous conditions (migrains).