FDR imposed wage and price controls because the US wartime economy was already going at full tilt. Everybody was working maximum hours at maximum effort to produce all of the goods and services required by our military in a time of total global warfare. There was essentially zero unemployment and no spare capacity in the economy. Under these conditions it was necessary to impose wage and price controls because without spare capacity the economy was very sensitive to inflation pressures that would have occurred had employees been able to demand and receive higher wages which they wouldn't have been able to spend on consumer goods anyway or only at very inflated prices. I'm not saying that wage and price controls are always good, but at that particularly time in history there were necessary. There is much to criticize concerning FDR, especially from a conservative's point of view, but wartime wage and price controls aren't a good source for reasonable critiques.

This is the natural position of the Social Democratic Left which runs Europe. It's the same tendency that you see here in the United States in President Obama, the Democratic Party and liberals in general. They believe that the people are too stupid to decide their own lives and therefore it's not only right but necessary to remove from them the "burden" of making their own choices, healthcare being a prime example, for their own good; Even if that means that personal freedoms or individual liberty must be sacrificed to do so. It's a sad commentary on the US citizenry these days that many of them agree with this nanny state coddling and willingly surrender their freedoms for the syrupy sweet paternalism offered up by the liberals. It seems that they'd rather have 24/7 access to the lives of the Kardashians or fritter away their time on such mindless entertainments as "American Idol", "Dancing with the Stars" or the endless red carpet circle jerks put on by the Hollywood elites and their fellow travelers instead of getting off their collective asses and taking responsibility for their own lives and making their own decisions.

It's not just your funeral we're talking about here, but everyone else you share the road with too. If it's my ass on the line out there then you damn well will be licensed just like the rest of us, automated car or not, or you won't be driving on the public right of way. BTW that's the position of the California DMV too. In fact, they're considering additional knowledge and training requirements, similar to those required for the motorcycle endorsement on the class C license, to include knowledge of override procedures and failure modes in the automated driving systems. I agree with that and I think that most other voters here in California would too.

They have a legitimate gripe. The regulators are forcing them to sell the car at a loss by regulating the price in relation to other cars that they sell which forces Fiat to either eat $14,000 for every 500e sold or raise the prices on all of their non-electric vehicles to compensate. Who gets hurt by this? It isn't the rich man driving his luxury Tesla Model S. No, it's the middle and working class Californians who pay for this subsidy with higher prices on low and mid market vehicles. California has found yet another back door way to tax the middle class while leaving the rich untouched. What will they think of next?

The affordable model is always two years away with Tesla. Frankly, I don't think that Musk cares very much about offering something that the average American can afford. Oh, he'll pay lip service to that idea because doing so is politically correct, but privately he almost certainly doesn't care. Actually it makes sense that the Model S costs $70,000+. It's not so much environmentally friendly as it is a way for rich people to enjoy some conspicuous luxury consumption. It's conspicuous because it's Tesla and luxury because it's both expensive and impractical. The rich driver of the Model S is signaling to the average peasant that he can afford to spend $70,000+ on an impractical car, driven on weekends for pleasure, while they are forced to drive a 10 year old beater or take public transportation and struggle to pay the bills.

Which is the most economically sensible thing for them to do. They know that electric cars are money losers for them, so they try to minimize their losses if they cannot avoid them entirely. If I were the CEO of Fiat I would order my production plants to incorporate non-removable weights into the frame of the 500e to further reduce the attractiveness of the car to potential buyers by radically reducing both the range and the cargo capacity.

I doubt that. Fiat Chrysler makes practical cars that ordinary working people can afford. In fact, the luxury car brands historically end up being bought and owned by the mass market companies. For example, Porsche, Lamborghini and Bugatti are owned by Volkswagen Group while Fiat owns Ferrari. I would be very surprised if the Tesla investors turned down an attractive buy out offer from one of the big auto groups, keen to run Tesla as a luxury brand, in the years ahead.

The only way to fix this is to break the monopoly that public schools have on public education and the best ways to do that are vouchers and charter schools. Everyone except the teachers and their unions can see this but as Upton Sinclair said, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it."

Sounds like Ninja Gaiden . That had to be the most artificially hard game available for the NES. It was just brutal, especially in the later levels.

This is yet one more example illustrating precisely why ad blocking is necessary. The bloggers and others who make their living in the content business howl with righteous indignation at those of us who use these tools, but I submit that their anger is misdirected. On the contrary, it's the advertising networks who rightly deserve their wrath for allowing their business to become a cesspool of infectious viruses, worms and frankly worthless crap. Indeed, it seems that their motto is, "our advertising services are the right thing for anyone with a credit card, no questions asked." So I ask you, why should visiting your site without ad and script blocking enabled be akin to walking into the darkest corner of the bathhouse, bending over and letting everyone have their way with nary a condom nor a reach around in sight?

Which is precisely what they will do, so I'd rather just keep the money thank you.

Maybe so, but one cannot criticize the Koch brothers' political spending while at the same time turning a blind eye to that of Tom Steyer or George Soros or even Gates. If people are against "money in politics" or believe that "money is not speech", which seems to be the new rallying cry of the left, then it's hypocritical to criticize the Kochs while Steyer and other champions of the left get a pass; It's classic, "do as we say and not as we do" limousine liberalism. Do the Koch brothers begrudge Tom Steyer's right to spend his money in politics as he chooses? Of course not. Now some on the left have criticized the "money is not speech" slogan as a glib simplification of a complex problem that is likely to backfire, but that hasn't stopped others of them from repeating it ad nauseam anway. I want to see the Koch bashers stand up and give Tom Steyer the same treatment, which of course they won't because they're hypocrites.

To be fair, some of these costs would exist in any business. There are always capital equipment costs, employee costs, administration costs and in some cases research and development costs. However, you are on the right track with your criticism of artificially high medical device costs. Indeed, these high costs can be seen not just in prosthetic hands or limbs but also in more mundane devices such as hearing aids and prescription eyeglasses. In my estimation there are two main reasons for this:

First, the devices are sold through specialized middlemen who bill your insurance company which in turn bills you and perhaps your employer for premiums. This is the classic third party payer problem that exists throughout the healthcare industry here in the United States and is in no small part responsible for the high costs which are ultimately borne by the consumer in the form of higher premiums and higher out of pocket costs.

Second, and related to the first point, the market for FDA approved medical devices here in the United States is highly regulated and therefore high cost. There is a great deal of regulatory rigmarole and ceremony required to bring a product to market. This imposes costs of course, but it also results in delays while the product winds it's way through the circuitous approval processes. By the time something is approved for sale as a medical device it's not only expensive but often obsolete or at least several generations behind the state of the art technology.

Finally, it ought to be remembered that medical devices are now assessed an additional tax under Obamacare, on top of any previous expenses. It's hard to see how this will lower costs, especially for those who find themselves in need of a medical device. Although, I suppose that "reform" is in the eye, or the hand in this case, of the beholder.

The same upgraded power grid or the nuclear reactors that would certainly be involved in powering it, since no other method would even come close despite what the wind and solar boosters would have you believe, could also be used to produce artificial gasoline from coal, natural gas or even sea water feedstocks using gas to liquids technologies. The US Navy is exploring these same technologies to produce jet fuel from sea water and have had some success on an experimental scale.

The IRS doesn't want to pre-populate your tax forms, aside from lobbying by self interested tax preparation firms like Intuit or H&R Block, because (1) it might be construed as an "official" invoice of what was owed and therefore "complete and correct" and (2) it might serve to tip off potential tax cheats as to what the IRS does and does not know about their income. The IRS enjoys certain advantages from forcing citizens to fill out the forms themselves, under penalty of law for failure to report, and remaining cagey about what they do and don't know to discourage cheating. It's similar in concept to the panopticon. You know that they could be watching anyone and anything at anytime even if they cannot as a practical matter watch everyone and everything all of the time. Because taxpayers are kept in the dark with regard to what the IRS knows about their income, they behave as if the IRS knows everything and that everyone and everything is being watched all of the time. This panopticon effect magnifies the effectiveness of limited IRS auditing and investigative resources because many people behave themselves, even though they aren't being given special attention, merely because they fear what will happen if the IRS does catch them in a deliberate lie.

Not me. I'm just as merciless with my own code as I am with others' when writing tests. Proper testing involves taking on the role of the malicious agent who is actively trying to break the code, feed it bad inputs and generally muck up the works. If the code passes those tests then it stands a much better chance of rolling with the punches in the real world of production.

I've never been paid in foreign currency or paid foreign taxes, so I cannot speak from personal experience, but I think that the basic concept is sound. If you work in Europe say and are paid in Euros and pay European taxes then you ought to be able, at the very least, to write off that amount that you paid in European taxes from your gross income so that your US taxable income reflects the fact that you paid foreign taxes. Otherwise, you're being taxed on taxes and it's tough to argue that relief from that is a "loophole".

A modest refund is alright and I get that your time is valuable and that you have had yearly life events, but when I hear of people who aren't receiving the Earned Income Tax Credit having 3000 refunds it's a bit shocking that they wouldn't rather have an extra 250 dollars per month in their pocket. As you said, you probably won't be buying houses, getting married and having kids every year for the next ten so eventually when things settle down you may want to have another look at that withholding or you estimated tax payments because nobody that I know ever wishes that they put more into the escrow account with Uncle Sam at zero percent.