Our generation is definitely screwed compared to recent past ones, but I don't know enough about the younger kids to say if they've got it any better than us.

I think that if you check, you'll find that pretty much every generation in history has said pretty much the same thing.

I suspect that your analysis of the current generation is about as wrong as all the others....

By the by, do remember that GDP per capita doesn't actually map well with FAMILY income. My parents, for instance, had three kids, with Mom as a stay-at-home mom for all but a few years of my childhood. So five of us were being supported by one salary. So if we had a per capita income of 1/8th your income, as a family we had 5/8th of your income. And while there are a lot of expenses that are proportional to number of people (food, for instance), there are also a lot that are not (home mortgage doesn't really care how many people are in a family - it doesn't go up when another kid is born, ditto electricity, gas, water bills...).

In WW2 we had analog computers that could aim guns at moving targets from moving platforms. This is actually a harder proposition than aiming a laser; bullets don't move at the speed of light and you've got to compute lead. They did it without electronic computers.

They also didn't do very well

Actually, they did quite well. Consider the Prince of Wales, sunk by the Bismark. The Bismark was using just such electromechanical analog computers for fire control.

Likewise every other modern (for the period) cruiser and battleship in the world.

Plus some of the better destroyers....

and after WW2 we allowed the Nazis to remain in power under a different name where in Iraq we kicked out anyone in the Baath party and made them unemployable and then wondered why people began to shoot back at us

It should be pointed out that the people who decided to let the Nazis remain in power after WW2 were thoroughly castigated by pretty much everyone.

So perhaps the lesson learned from that episode was that letting the former government workers continue to work after we'd ousted the government was a bad idea....

The self-driving once

What about the self-driving twice?

Dropping costs have never caused prices to drop. Never.

Never?

The machine I'm typing this on cost less than the computer I was using twenty years ago. And has many times the memory, mass storage, and processor speed.

So MUCH better machine for rather less. Sounds like a price drop as a result of dropping costs to me. Or are you asserting that terabyte hard-drives are just as expensive as they were twenty years ago? Ditto 4gig of RAM, etc...

So, provide your interpretation as to the reasons for my current laptop to be cheaper than what it replaced, that doesn't include lowered costs....

Active advertising is literally coercion

Literally????

Not very effective coercion, then, since I have NEVER found myself buying something based on an ad. Not once in the last half century....

Yeah, God knows we don't need any of that advanced technology crap!

Next thing you know, they might develop big machines to replace covered wagons and plows. Then where will we be, when all those teamsters and farmers are put out of work?

And what's with these "computer" things? Everyone knows a computer is a (usually) young woman who calculates (by hand) the numbers required by Real Scientists (tm). Replace them with machines? I say no!

I say we just destroy all that automation and go back to the tried and true ways we've always known! Ned Ludd Lives!

So, it's our fault that the Russians can't successfully launch a Russian rocket from a Russian launch site?

Interesting theory, that.

Say what you will of Democrats, at least they run on the policies they will implement.

Like ending US involvement in the Middle East? Seems to me Obama ran on that. Seems to me we're still there (and ignores that even his attempts to get us out of there were on Bush's timetable...).

For example, consider the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] The Nisour Square massacres and the rape and murder of Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi were worse than the Boston Massacre, and yet none of those involved got the death penalty. Those responsible for the death of Dilawar didn't even serve jail terms.

Umm, those incidents all happened in places where US law doesn't apply (though US Military law (UCMJ) applied if US military personnel were involved).

No opinions as to whether any of those incidents merited the death penalty under the UCMJ (not even sure the UCMJ has a death penalty at this late date), since IANAL, much less a military one....

In the finest traditions of lobbyist-written laws, congress has declared anything to do with space-launches the be a exempt from any new regulations by the FAA for the next 10 years. That's called the SPACE act ... .
In other words: it has tied its own hands for the next 10 years.

New law always supersedes older law. So all it takes to remove that ten year limit is a law passed by a later Congress.

All this does is prevent regulatory agencies (the Executive Branch, in other words) from making new regulations without Congress' express permission.

Hmm, by that logic, *I* can demand that the Greeks give me a metric buttload of money, and then insist in public that they're evil if they don't, right?

I bet that'll work well....

exactly the folks who Greeks blame for all their problems.

So, the Greeks are blaming the Germans because the Greek government couldn't pay its bills? Interesting....