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Comment It was already low before (Score 2) 528

I mean i recall paying like something 500 DM for a year ? And that was in the end of the 90ies. Same in France a bit earlier, mod 90ies. Tuition fee /admin fee have always been very very low in west Europe, so we never really can grasp how you, living on the other side of the pond, can be buried in student loan. I had more cost staying in a low rent flat (25 m^2 on my own for 200 DM, later in a university communal apartment for student 12 m^2 - 150 DM about 75$ + 5 or 10 DM per month for university high speed internet) than in tuition. Heck food was higher cost than tuition.

Comment That is why we use celsius (Score 1) 830

Which is kelvin shifted by 270Â approx. With celsius the zero is the temperature of pure ice melting/freezing at standard STP, and 100ÂC the temperature of boiling water. The scale zero and 100 were precisely used due to that, to the point it was kept for kelvin and jsut shifted to the new hypothetical zero. 1ÂK=1ÂC.

Comment Hu ? (Score 1) 408

Aren't the canadian paying for netflix ? So it would be more like canadian coming through the frontier and buying stuff then bringing them back to the US, thus making the US economy getting more money ? Or does she sees American coming in canada to buy prescription drug as "stealing" from canada ? What the heck is she smoking ?

Comment Then allow the market to handle this wihtin law (Score 2) 614

"The days of American IT workers commanding above-average salaries for their work are numbered and fading away. "

If it was TRULY the case, then company would not need to use tricks to bypass the law and outsource outside. What would happen is company STOP hiring worker at that price, forgoing the task to be done, and would let wage drop down and would yell "too many worker ! Too many worker!". But this NOT what is happened. At the same time as they are yelling "not enough worker !" to get H1B, they pretend like you that local people are too expansive. And this is where they show their true reason. The *SOLE* reason is that US worker are too expansive, and they perfectly know very well there is no shortage of them.

And by abiding to the company having lot of H1B and not showing the door to the company asking for more H1B, the US government show perfectly clearly who they are doing governance for : not for the people, but for the companies. Well thanks for clarifying that to us.

Comment That makes no sense (Score 1) 692

Let's say an age cure is released tomorrow. It will be priced specifically for a certain percentage to afford.

Hu. no. Unless you are into CT, such a cure would be available to everybody at a price the market can bear. If the material energy and engineering cost is high, then only few will get it. but if it is an easy mass marketable product ? No it won't be available only for rich. Even if it was that way in the US, in Europe or any other county somebody would reproduce the "cure" and spread it. The only way to have the scenario above is have a conspiracy and have the cure maintained "secret". fat chance of that seeing msot doctor/biologist mindset.

Comment Not really (Score 1) 743

When times are hard, people tend to go back toward the "community" , group together to weather better the storm, a group is less likely to fail if individuals fails if other fare better and compensate. Thus the trend toward socialism/communism and other similar politics which tend to favorize the group and the lowest worker classes. It is just plain logic on the individual level.

Comment You are underestimating it (Score 2) 743

it will be a long and hard period (perhaps even 10 years) of adaptation

You are *severly* udnerestimating it. It is not only that greece wll have tod efault, but also that greece will still be noted as junk as far as bond goes so will not be able to borrow again at good rate EVEN after default, but also that now that greece is outside of the eurozone, it will have to either junk their own currency so far down the rabbit hole to make export / import not kill them that the inflation in the subsequent decades (note the plural) will take a long time to stabilize the economy. And once out of the eurozone , guess what ? Greece will STILL have to have cut back on cost or have extreme inflation , maybe hyper inflation and their own bank default, if they start issuing bond on their own currency and spend like no tommorow.


Greece is a warning to France or even spain, italy and other of the eurozone with ramping up debt : get your table cleaned or it might get burn down as a sanitisation process by others.

Comment Wrong (Score 1) 1094

http://federal-budget.insidego...

"The U.S. government collected $80.9B in tax revenues and spent a total of $117B in its 1940 budget" So it was not 135 but 117, which is near enough but nowhere near the inflation adjusted number. I call BS on that because an inflation adjusted number for 135 would be around 10 billion 1940 dollar.

By the way the number is confirmed by government spend in % of GDP : it was 10% in 1940 a year which was *specially* suspiciously used, and it was between 16% and 22% ever since after WW2. The fact that in percentage GDP it stayed stable or had barely growth completely destroy the original argument.

Comment Why was this modded insightful ? (Score 2) 1094

You're right, let's get ahead of the game now and make the minimum wage in LA $1,000/hr. Better yet, do it at the Federal level

You see often cited as conservative/republican mouth point. But this is an utter stupid viewpoint - why it is modded as insightful is beyond me. Interesting maybe at most.

The reason why this is stupid is as follow : when you rise minimum wage you rise slightly the living of people but you also partially rise inflation. Rise too much and the inflation will eat most of it. So the economic of it is to rise only slightly and try to minimize inflation. Rise it to 1000$ or 100000000$ and you got hyper inflation and your $ is worth as much as zimbabwe dollar. That type of stupid argument (1000$ hourly wage) by the way is the same slippery slope argument republican make for gay mariage "but then after that they will want to marry horse or multiple people or children"

Comment That is STUPID : inflation (Score 4, Informative) 1094

the government collects 30 times as much in taxes in CONSTANT DOLLARS as they did in 1940

Bullshit the inflation from 1940 is already ~15 times. In fact looking at your next sentences:

Now, they ran a deficit in 1940 as well, but let's think about this for a minute. If $135 Billion in 1940 would have been enough to make ends meet, then how come with three times the population now, it takes $3.2 trillion?

Because 135 billion alone in 1940 is 2.2 trillion to 2.3 trillion of today in constant dollar. Any CPI calculator will confirm that baring a few % +/-. The delta of 900 million is from federal programs which did NOT exists in 1940. From environmental protection, drug enforcement, NASA, EPA, etc...etc...

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