That's why you carry spare parts with you. And why you "design for maintenance". And why you do extensive development and testing beforehand to figure out what parts are most likely to break. And design parts to be reliable. And reinforce the parts where you can. And...

And after you do all of those things, sometimes something breaks that you don't have a spare for. And when the nearest replacement part is nine months away, you're screwed.

Being able to make spare parts is a GOOD thing. And the fewer things you have to carry along to make spare parts with, the better.

Its the equivalent of adding another $200 billion to your $17.6 trillion credit card balance every year

The Deficit has not been as low as $200B since 1985. It hasn't been as low as $500B since 2008.

And isn't expected to be as low as $500B again....

3D printing is one of those things that will be pretty much essential for successful manned missions farther away than the moon.

Being unable to fix broken things will be fatal if the nearest spare parts are nine months away, and a 3D printer or two can, conceivably, replace a great many individual spare parts....

What solution that provides universal coverage would you advocate?

1) Leave the private health insurance market completely alone.

2) Lower the age of eligibility of Medicare to zero. Do that gradually (five years per year, for instance) if politics require such a compromise. Raise Medicare taxes as required to cover the increased number of people.

Change Medicaid eligibility so that anyone under 18 is eligible, until such time as they're eligible for Medicare (see caveat previous para.).

Done. Net effect should dramatically lower the cost of private health insurance, since Medicare would cover most (if not all) common problems, leaving private health insurance for edge cases.

Adjust Medicare taxes as required to pay the bills.

Note that this isn't quite a National Healthcare System (see UK), but it could easily transition into one later if it works reasonably well.

Done. Simple law, expanding existing program, so unlikely to meet as much opposition from fanatics. No odd cases like "he makes $XX, so he gets 80% subsidy on his health insurance, she makes $XX-1, so she has to pay 100% cost of her health insurance.

1.1 beats per second??

I'm impressed. Or you're dead. Not sure which....

One can see many of the tenants of an oligarch's paradise

Well, I know I'd rent from an oligarch's paradise, so I don't see why they wouldn't have a lot of tenants.

Or did you mean "tenets"? Never mind.

I'm not taking much stock in the overwhelming rise of the majority rule of morning people here

The original comment, that noone is a morning person, was the sort of comment that will only produce responses that contradict it - why would someone bother with "yeah, I can't get things going before noon either"?

So, no, the responses saying, in effect, "I am a morning person you ignorant clod" should not be read as saying anything other than "yeah, there are some people who are morning people. Maybe not many, but some."

For what it's worth, I don't use an alarm to get up. 4:30 to 5:00 is just when I wake up naturally.

Once upon a time, many years ago, I drank a lot of coffee and sodas. I had a hard time waking up, and my ideal was to sleep till 11 or so.

I stopped with the caffeine, and after all the side-effects worked their way through my system, I found that I woke up like switching on a light switch - from fully asleep to fully awake in a second or two....

Who the hell do you know is a morning person?

Well, me, for one. Get up between 4:30 and 5:00 AM every morning, walk several miles before breakfast.

Note that there are 21 States more than twice the size of Scotland, of which eight are more than three times the size of Scotland, of which one each are four times, five times, seven times, and twenty times as big as Scotland.

And, on an unrelated note, for you Texans out there, remember that if Alaska were split into two States, Texas would then be the THIRD largest State....

I love lying to survey takers. If someone wants to waste my time asking me stupid questions, I'll waste his with stupid answers.

Ditto.

After all, what's the point of a poll other than to amuse yourself at the expense of the pollster?

You might have a point with food supplies and resources, if we were not constantly being accused of wasting so much food feeding an nation of obese gluttons.

Assuming, just for the sake of argument, that every single American were living on 5000 calories per day. They aren't, but let's assume an extreme case.

Let's further assume that every single American could manage nicely on 1200 calories per day. They can't, but let's be extreme again.

In that case (large overestimate of food used, similarly extreme underestimate of food needed), we'd be able to feed approximately 1B more people on the food we "waste".

Which is 25% of the expected growth....

Take the greed of the 1% down a few notches

Note that the income of the 1%, if distributed evenly among the 99% would represent only about a 14% pay raise across the board. The wealth of the 1% would nearly double the wealth of the average American, if uniformly distributed.

So, any serious multinational can have the stock distributed enough to get past your first law....

As to your second, at least in the USA, you're going to be blocked by the First Amendment to some extent. After all, "lobbying" is done by people no matter where the money comes from. As is "political activity".

IN other words, you need to think the problem through a little more carefully...

By the by, are you aware that if Google (for example) were paying ZERO taxes in the USA now, and the laws were changed so that they were taxed at 50% on worldwide revenues, their tax obligation would pay to run the Federal government for a bit less than 16 hours.

Do note that Google is paying some taxes in the USA, and corporate tax rates are rather under 50%. Which means the actual benefit from taxing Google's worldwide income would not be nearly so significant as you might think....