I guess my point is, 50 years ago you couldn't. The logistics alone would be too much, let alone setting up the manufacturing...

that you can go from jack squat to worlds largest producer in a few years? I'm not saying they aren't gonna do it, I'm just saying it's crazy how fast their doing it. 50 years ago this would be a massive undertaking with a whole town built up around it. Now? I think the factory's gonna have a couple hundred employees. It's just nuts how few people you need in manufacturing anymore...

I saw a CNN article about hard workin' CEO types. One guy spent 4 hours a day hanging out minding his kids chatting up sales prospects on the phone. This is a damn sight different than 4 hours waiting tables.

Doesn't being at the right school at the right time make you Rich? Works for Legacies at the Yale/Princeton/Harvard.

that's the problem with America. I think it was John Steinbeck that made the point. In America, there is no poor, we're all just temporarily inconvenienced millionaires...

I've never read up on it, so if you asked me I might say "I don't know". That doesn't mean I don't accept a scientific explanation for the creation of the Universe, it just means I don't know enough about it to say "Yep, that's what happened".

Canada can build their own export facilities and deal with the environmental mess when their pipeline bursts (and their taxpayers can pick up that bill.

The problem isn't just that it's not _benefiting_ America, the problem is that it's not benefiting America AND there's a substantial risk that there will be a large scale environmental disaster that the company who owns the pipeline will never pay to clean up.

We have no reason to OK it and every reason _not_ to OK it.

It represents mass organization of a group of people in order to achieve a common goal that otherwise wouldn't be possible.

I sincerely hope you're trolling and that you don't really believe what you just wrote.. Blacks never had a chance. Ever. You seem to forget that until 1865 Blacks were barely considered human, and had no rights whatsoever. Go read "A people's History of the United States" for a start, and google about the gangs of roving private citizens that terrorized the Black majorities in the 1800.

You are right about one thing, slavery was going away for economic reasons. Slaves where slightly less disposable than immigrants. But racism in the South Was about more than money. It was about oppressing the _white_ man too. Rich Southern Landowners uses the Blacks as a lower class for the poor whites to look down on. It created a class system similar to what you have with India's "Untouchables". It kept White Southerners from asking "Why do I have so little, when they have so much?".

what are you going to do about it? Remember Occupy Wall Street? It was systematically put down using the anti-terrorism tools from 9-11 that everyone pinky-sweared wouldn't be used on Americans.

Don't get me wrong. I'm in favor of _more_ federal gov't. Civil rights for Black People in the Southern American States only happened because the Federal Government stepped in with the National Guard. Hell, we had outright terrorism in the south up until the late 50s early 60s. Mega corps are just too powerful to be reigned in with any less than a National Government. It's a double edged sword. But it's the only sword big enough...

Keystone is at best a waste for America and at worst a natural disaster waiting to happen. It's a pipeline down to Mexican refineries so Canada can sell cheap tar sands oil to China. The problem is it's a _long_ pipe line, and they have a history of breaking and nobody noticing (since it costs lots of $$$ to monitor them) until after a community's ground water is heavily contaminated. If it happens in a mid sized town or city where it's too expensive to buy everyone out those people are just screwed.

The problem is these sorts of things are only a matter of time. With current tech maintenance costs more than allowing the disaster to happen. If the companies were severely punished for the spills that wouldn't be an issue. But if BP had to clean up their last mess they wouldn't exist as a company, and the owners would be broke. Those guys just buy off politicians until their in the clear. Heck, the CEO of TEP cried a little on Camera and got away with giving thousands of people cancer because he wouldn't pay to upgrade the safety on his factory. It was called a "Once in a 100 year event", but there were records showing it had been 100 years since the last one. That's some Mighty fine work there, Lou.

So to summarize my rant: You're asking me, as an American, to take a big risk that sooner or later is practically guaranteed to end in an etiological disaster in exchange for at best a few thousand jobs and a bit of cheap oil for China? I think This just about sums up my feelings.

I hardly know where to begin, but I'll say this:

If socialist policies don't fix everything, we'll try again. And again. We'll pay attention to what we did right, and what we did wrong. We'll do better. We'll make progress. That's why we're called 'progressives'.

What we will _not_ do is stick our heads in the sand and pretend some mythical 'invisible hand' is going to make it all better. Name me one complex problem that was made better by doing nothing about it?

The University's are in the process of being privatized here. A few Venture Capitalists noticed our Federal Gov't would give guaranteed loans out to any school with accreditation. So they bought up a bunch of old Secretary Schools that has accreditation from the 40s and 50s and used those to get loans for students to go to their diploma mills.

Meanwhile we've got a political movement to lower taxes while keeping spending constant so that our country goes massively in debt. The debt isn't really a problem (we owe it to ourselves) but it frightens people. After 30 years we have people exploiting that fear to get cuts in education in the name of saving money. The whole scheme is called "Starve the Beast" and was thought up by our Republican and Libertarian parties. The result is most of our subsidies for state education have been cut.

Positive Sum Gaming would work if the rich didn't gain when you lose. But they do. They gain power. See here.. Adaption is a slow, painful process. When the industrial revolution hit in the mid 1700s millions were impoverished by automation before the economy caught up in the 1800s. 60+ years of misery. We've seen it happen, I don't see any good reason we should let it happen again just to preserve a misguided notion of "freedom" at all costs.

You're also assuming we have to have 80% of humanity living in abject poverty. But is that really true? Are we as a people so weak that we can't feed or cloth one another? We already know the answer is no. We already produce enough food to feed everyone on the planet, we just need people willing to say it's OK for people to have food, even if they didn't work themselves to death to get it.

right now. But wages have been in decline for 30 years. A little mis management is one thing (Mitt Rhomney was famously so broke at one point he had to sell the stocks his dad gave him to make ends meet :P ), but we're getting to the point where it's impossible to "work your way through college".

For one thing, when we say "Wages Adjusted for Inflation" we mean inflation as a whole, but the cost of food and shelter (what college kids spend most of their money on, jokes about Ramen & Natty Lite aside) have gone up much faster than inflation. The sort of job you can hold while in College is gonna pay $8-$15 an hour depending on where you live. I know ppl at that income level working part time because the economy sucks and they made mistakes. They're not making it, and somehow I doubt the added expense/stress of school would help them, especially after they graduate with $150k in loans... If you're one of those super humans that doesn't need sleep and can go to class and the work 8 hours then spend 8 hours doing homework you might make it. Everyone else will just drop out. The consoles tell you this when you apply, and a lot of the big majors (Math, CS, MIS, Medical) won't take you if you're working full time.

What sucks is we're so much more productive, you'd think we'd be working less. But why the hell would we give anything to anyone if they didn't "work" for it?

True, I do sometime forget how small and poor Russia really is. Sorry, American here, and we've been told for 60 years the big bad Russians are coming for us any day now...