How about we look at this again but eliminate several typical graphing mistakes....
First, let's have all axes start at zero, not at, say, 33% of the range. This would immediately show that there is less disparity between average lifetime then the presenter attempts to make you perceive.
second let's have a non-logarithm axes for a typical unit that is thought of as linear... money.
Third, if we are going to compare wealth then we should be comparing amount of money held vs what it can buy, not just raw money per person. Sure people in the Congo have far less dollars per person than Japan. But a loaf of bread and the supplies they want to buy are far, far cheaper. In other words, it is possible for a smaller amount of currency from economy A to buy more goods and services in economy B. You need to account for this in determining "wealth". You can't just exchange currency rates to determine who is better off.
Lastly, You also have to dollar adjust for inflation even for specific countries over time. A typical mid-range american car in 2010 costs around US$25000; in 1977... US$5000. So, yes we might have more dollars per person in the US today but you're going to need 5 times as many dollars as you had 33 years ago in order to just break even.
And, while we are at it. I would get rid of the enthusiastic and "compelling" presentation acting. This is always a sign of attempting to market more than is really there. It is science through how the presenter can make you "feel" and it leads to poor knee-jerk decisions.
Wait, hasn't emacs and unix's "man" pages been doing this forever? In emacs I can type ctrl-s and then a search term and all instances are highlighted. In man I can type
And both of these existed LONG before 1999. How the hell did this get a patent?
When the hell are security "professionals" going to wake up and realize that secure access to something requires three items: identification, authentication and authorization. You CANNOT store the authentication credential with the identification. It is 100% stupid to store the pin on the identification device. Authentication credentials and authorization decisions must be kept by, and made by, the service provider. The only item that should be left with the consumer is an identification badge.
For instance, a national "ID Card" is actually a good thing IF the only thing it has stored on it or about it is the owners identification, i.e. name and unique ID number. The ONLY thing the card should provide is a way to contact a national database/server which requires two things, the unique, public ID number from the card and a fingerprint (which is NOT stored or printed on the card in any way). The ONLY information the server should return is "Yes" or "No". But see... the fingerprint cannot be stored on the card in way for the same reason that the pin in the post should never be stored on the card. If somebody other than the legitimate owner comes into possession of the card then he possesses both the identification AND the authentication pieces of the puzzle and can do whatever the legitimate owner was authorized to do.
Security: it's simple. f*cking learn it.
Please, for the love of facts and reason go look some up before blaming defense spending that brought citizens a multitude of technological innovations for their investment. Military spending (all of it) doesn't even make 54% of the budget. it's actually less than half of what you quoted for 2009. And MOST of that isn't to fund the two wars you speak of.
Though I will give you credit for correctly identifying the looming crisis that is the unfunded liabilities.
First: history has shown that Americans don't care for rail transportation. Otherwise Amtrak would actually make a profit. But instead Americans choose the efficiency of time, and take a plane, or the efficiency of their schedule and take their cars when and where they want.
Second, while high speed rail works well in Japan or Europe, do you have any idea how much bigger the United states? The single state of Alaska is bigger than all of Japan and Texas alone is over half its size. And if you haven't traveled across Texas or other large states such as Montana, Wyoming or Nebraska... THERE AIN'T NOTHING THERE. There's nothing worth while to stop a train at. So while Japan can count on the commerce and traffic from Osaka, Nagoya, Kyoto and Tokyo on a rail line... In the same distance in california from Los Angeles... Nothing. Maybe San Diego and almost to San Francisco. But quite frankly, there isn't enough inter-city commerce between these locations to support commuter rail service. This might work from Washington DC to New york city but even that's a stretch. The distances are so great it just makes it more valuable for the few who need to commute it to do so by air.
So yeah. 'nother super waste of tax payer dollars. You'd be better off just dividing the $8B and give 100,000 homeless people $80K each. But sure, we're $3 TRILLION in debt for just the last two years, why not go for broke... literally.
Proof that women ARE actually smarter than men.
IT jobs suck. I've been a systems and network administrator. It really, really sucks. The job is an endless list of problems that everybody expects you to solve instantly. Nobody realizes that the number of pieces of technology that you mastered outnumbers their marketing/managing/accounting skills 10:1 and are more complex. You're viewed as nothing but a cost; nobody attributes any profit to you. They always think their technology ideas are better than yours. You get labeled as anti-social and unfriendly because you wind up living isolated at night fixing trouble calls that woke you up. "Oh, you know about computers... Can you take a look at mine?" is acceptable but "Oh, you know accounting... can you do my taxes for me this year?" is not.
So yeah. Women are proving they're smarter than men by avoiding all this anguish and lack of appreciation.
Easy. Stop carrying bulk mail. Raise envelope postal rates to $2 per message. I'll easily pay $50/year additional to not get junk bulk mail.
But basically... they're screwed. We shouldn't be sending anything that can fit in an envelope anymore. Send it as a PDF or email instead. Then you could simply restrict deliveries to individual recipients instead of long routes. Turn USPS into UPS.
Hmmm. China outstripping the US in terms of advancement? you don't say. How could a country unburdened with civil rights or workplace safety laws, unbound by global health treaties or other economic regulations, willing to consume energy at an unlimited place possible be outstripping a country paralyzed by an abundance of laws, regulation, politics and bureaucracy??
Face it were doomed. The president and congress have no desire to trim down all that crap. And yet, we keep voting their type into power. Face it, it is not the president that Bill Gates & Friends should be talking to about this problem... it's the American people that need this education.
fundamentalist wackos
Need I say more? We reasonably reject your ideas but your counter-argument is we're "wackos". I also like that you stacked a heavily flawed recent theory in the same category as a much more solidly proven theory. I can't believe in the one without believing in the other? Otherwise, I'm a wacko. Nice.
If we could only learn about other cultures, we wouldn't want to go to war.
What??? You seriously believe this?? We live in an age of communication. Where any information can be learned from any point on the globe. We know where every culture is and what political decisions they made that morning. And yet... war... everywhere you look. Intolerance and strife between cultures abounds unchecked.
"learning about other cultures" does jack-squat to prevent wars. Wars are not the result of culture ignorance.
Where there's a will, there's a relative.