What did we get out of the last big housing crisis? There's a ever loving economic crash every 10 years like clockwork. The Republicans pull back the regulations, the economy crashes when rampant speculation runs out of control, the gov't bails out the rich and well connected and the Democrats get voted in to clean up the mess. It's been like this since the 70s, probably since before that.

Christ, the things that get modded up on /. these days...

The US Constitution was written by a bunch of wealthy land owners. Our representative gov't was specifically designed to ensure they'd keep that land and that the rabble wouldn't get too uppity. They weren't shy about it either. You can read plenty of documents from the time where they talk about it.

Republicans are in favor of Civil Asset forfeiture laws. It fits in well with their tough anti-crime stance. So it's not much of stretch to see them opposing this. Even Rand Paul pretty quickly dropped his bill banning civil asset forfeiture (or at least quietly let it die, which is the same thing). This is the first real step taken towards ending the practice since it began.

The real question is: after 40 years of non-stop tax cuts (especially for top earners) how are we going to fill the gaping hole in local law enforcement budgets this'll leave?

because I live in America, and our economic system isn't designed to handle a world of expert systems that replace all but the top and bottom 5% of workers; leaving the remaining 90% without the means to secure food, shelter and health care.

We have a dualapoly because of a lack of regulation. at&t and Verizon have been buying up competitors for years. There's a funny video of one of the guys from The Daily Show showing how AT&T undid their breakup through mergers

to rubber stamp 'em. U of Phoenix got it's start when a guy bought a secretary school so he could use the accreditation.

they're the ruling class. America has one. We just don't like to talk about/acknowledge our social betters.

by definition having them in the country reduces the prevailing wage...

It's using the phrase "offshoring" to mean Americans losing jobs to cheaper foreign workers in general. Probably because by now everyone understands that "offshoring" == "bad".

It doesn't change the fact that the basic point (the death of American IT) is correct. If you can bring anyone in with an "Advanced STEM" degree then India will just open more schools to rubber stamp 'em. Race to the bottom.

the only reason we do fire drills is their mandated by law. Every business I know of is trying to cut IT costs. There's no way in hell this idea would fly. It's always cheaper to pick up the pieces as long as you don't really care about the damage.

"The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel"... On my kid's TV a dead channel is blue now.

and it still gets rings run around it by an 830M. Heck, the AMD stuff out performs it. It just seems silly to have that much processor and an integrated graphics chip...

Capitalism doesn't require faith to work because it's basically anarchy. The "invisible hand" Is basically a nice way to say you're leaving things to chance...

and I made the call. It's my account after all.

like most things once it's a large scale business somebody is going to look to cut corners. You don't do it directly. You just cut everybody's budgets until it happens "out of sight, out of mind". Heck, you don't even need to cut their budgets, just don't _raise_ them and wait for inflation to do it for you. At 2-5% every year that's a nice profit margin increase.

So you don't check/change the filtration equipment as much anymore. Your guys are working 16 hour shifts for 20% less than minimum wage 5 years ago thanks to inflation and driving them to work more hours. Suddenly stuff gets into the water that shouldn't. Maybe a few people get sick, maybe a few over 50 die....