When these politicians give tax payer money to private companies to create "jobs" the tax payers get such a raw deal.

If we just put the trillion in the bank at 4% interest rate, you would get 40 billion dollars a year, It could pay 1 million people 40K a year. None of these projects ever create even a large fraction of a million jobs. Even if it uses the money to hire half million people to dig a trench and the other half to close it up it would provide greater economic impact to the economy than such boondongles.

At least the ITEF can afford it. TOR could well have to close up after they are sucked dry of every dime, even if they win....

Most delivery fleets can go electric, they have predictable routes, a home base, time to charge and the range is not very critical to them.

Solar panel prices are falling through the roof, scratch that, there is no damage to the roof. Some studies show that SolarPV might deliver electricity cheaper than grid in 25 states in just two years. Energy storage price break through is likely to happen first to homes than cars because storage for home does not have weight, volume and crashworthiness constraints. Already utility companies are worried and doing what they do best. Lobby the local government and utility commissions.

But one sure fire way to keep their customers tied to the grid is to encourage electric cars. If every home is charging two or three cars overnight they might not be able to ditch the grid. Since night load for the utilities is just 66% to 70% of peak day time load they can serve this market without additional investment in power plants.

Peeling off a large customer base from gasoline companies to the grid would be in the long term interests of the electric utilities. Why aren't they doing it?

Almost every gasoline car sold in America today can go 300 miles on a tank of gas and in 10 minutes be refueled to go another 300. So most people don't rent cars. If the car rental companies come up with some kind of monthly fee based car rental program targeted towards electric car owners, it would be creating a new market segment for itself. May be a 10$ a month plan that gives you access to cars/pickups at some fixed rate. Or a 20$ a month plan that gives so many rental-days which get accumulated in the account. Many pricing models would work. Throw in some free charging when the customer has checked out a gas car, allow them to choose between cars, pickup trucks and moving vans... Or a 250$ a year plan that gives 14 rental days sold through electric car dealerships... or electric car makers...

Helping a big part of American car owners to switch to electric cars would create a huge market segment for the gas car rental companies. Why aren't they doing it?

Yeah, why can't we empower most human beings to be programmers? Hey, why not empower them to be hedge fund managers or rocket scientists? If Joe sixpack wakes up one day and feels like picking up a scalpel and perform a simple appendectomy why shouldn't he be able to do it? Why are we stopping him?

Even with training most people could not paint a simple landscape or compose new music or even come up with an original joke. So why should everyone be "empowered" to be programmers? Who is stopping them anyway? Heck we don't even have the equivalent of AMA that can sue people for programming without a license. In fact that rant would have more validity against the legally chartered professional organizations that have the monopoly in issuing credentials and stopping people from practicing law, medicine, accounting etc without license.

I agree with you. I mean, if I have a class JonSkeet and I need to create an instance of it, I would not name it Westley. Bad programming practice.

Joking aside, your post here clearly shows that you belong to the all time great people list. People with good name recognition who are not jerks are quite rare.

The animation studios are all in Bangalore. Except for a few script writers and some production managers, almost all other jobs are in India. For your information look at the movie of Superstar Rajnikant, Enthiran the Robot. An all Indian production.

I saw another Tamil movie of a murder victim reincarnating as a house fly to take revenge. The kind of graphics and CGI done by them is incredible.

There is a threat to Hollywood dominance too. Bollywood, the Indian cinema was the only one that withstood the assault of Hollywood while the French, German movie industries collapsed. Bollywood movies are as silly as the Hollywood ones but it connects with the Eastern audience well. Another movie by the Superstar, called Muthu, is a cornier than the farmlands of Iowa. Friendship, sacrifice, moral values, suffering while taking the high road... it got it all. That became a super hit in Japan! Got rave reviews contrasting the great inspiring storyline of that cornfest with the triteness of Hollywood.

Even Hollywood would not save America's bacon for long

Dead on buddy. Exactly what happened in feudal Europe.

The the 9% machinery operators and the 10% riot suppressors have children who might not make it to the 9% or the 10%. They are the ones who will provide aid, logistics, intelligence to the mass of 80%. But if the social machinery operating and the riot suppressing become hereditary, then the situation becomes stable. Children of 1% stay in 1%. Children of the 9% and 10% stay in their "station", since they realize how lucky they are for not being in the 80%, and they fear being dropped into the unwashed masses, they enforce the system with great vigor. That is exactly how caste system in India and the mandarin system in China and the feudal system in Europe survived for centuries.

Among the 9% machinery operators, the top one advice the 1%. They already are pushing the society to a less socially mobile system. Inherited wealth outstrips earning your way into the system. By calling estate duty death tax they are able to pass wealth down the generation more with less attrition. The super high tuition rates is merely an identification system to distinguish the 9% and 1% from the rest so that they are on the track to get the jobs. Basically we are setting up the stage for a few centuries of rule by the 1% with the help of the riot suppressors and the social machinery operators.

When farming fell from 90% to 3% of work force in USA, it was an exporting nation. America was just sucking in jobs from India and China. Those countries were so politically naive they did not even know they were being decimated in the economic warfare then. Now as the manufacturing has fallen below 20%, where are we sucking in jobs from?

1. People who lose jobs are not the ones who are going to get the newly created jobs.

2. World population finally seems to have started stabilizing. It took longer to add the last billion than the previous billion. We are still adding but heading towards 9.5 billion rather than 12 billion. So number of new jobs created is less than the number of jobs being lost to automation.

3. Most people can only do regular humdrum routine jobs. We evolved to hunt/gather do routine things. Not be on an ever accelerating treadmill of productivity and intellectual labor. I have performed at the top 1% of intellectual labor treadmill for 30 years now. Frankly I am tired. It ain't as much fun as people make it out to be. It is not sour grapes or anything, I got adequate returns for the labor. Still, I now realize routine humdrum jobs are the staple for humanity.

It has happened already. First time it is lapping up the shores of the West. Transferring wealth from countries that could protect themselves in economic warfare (India, China) to military nations. Then from parts of European nations to others. Then from the lower economic strata of the rich countries to the richer people, in the last 35 years. Now finally there is no one left to sustain a productive economy. And the rich people are sitting on piles and piles of cash. Natural next step is the middle class of G7 nations waking up to the reality they are going to be thrown off the ship too.

That you can capture passwords with a camera.

WTF .. This place is really gone to the dumps..

Yes, they have a chainsaw under the seat.

Last i heard, if you dont protect your trademark you lose it. I dont think there are any 'humanitarian exceptions' to that rule.

However, they could 'lease' the rights to his family to use it, lets say for a dollar... Then they dont look like jerks, and dont risk the legal implications for inaction.