A university degree or any high degree for what it matters , should show to potential employer two things : 1) that you are at least have the smart to get to that level 2) that once you "bite" into something you do not let go and continue for long period of time.
2) is especially important if you train somebody for a job.
 
In my experience firms which expect their new employee to be immediately productive are either new start up not having learned the rope, and they will or they will die, or old firm in manager hell. Good firm with manager which are not totally idiot will know and take into account a period of time (varrying depending on the job) in which they consider you to be "in training" and thus only worth a certain percentage of a normal worker workload. I doubt it changed. What probably changed is that in some domain like development, some manager make the mistake of thinking "fuck it, if I have to rain somebody I'll train somebody cheap from india rather than the local guy". but here is your mistake : the architect of your software today, were the apprentice of yesterday. Kill a whole generation of apprentice today, and you will have no architect tomorrow. I expect that roughly 15 to 20 years after the peak of outsourcing, we will see a derth of good software designer , or good software manager. Because those who should have learned the rope on the job and climbed hierarchy, were replaced by cheap worker.

Renewable production reached 30% roughly, but 1) that is gross production not usage AFAIK, and 2) this is only electricity production. Does not count heating (40% energy usage). It is inreality more like11% , a feat, but shows that fully removing CO2 geenrating method a far flung goal:

 

As of the end of 2014, renewable energy sources, such as biomass, biogas, biofuels, hydro, wind and solar, accounted for11.1% of the country's primary energy consumption, a more than doubling compared to 2004, when renewables only contributed 4.5%. Renewable contribute most to the electricity sector with 27.8% (gross-generation), followed by the heat and transportation sector with 9.9% and 5.4%, respectively.

 
You should not use energy==electricity as it is misleading. Always precise what you are speaking of. In the case of the 27% it is gross electricity generation.

Pretty much any commitment for 2030-2100 is so far in the future that it is utterly worthless. In a decades from now political party will have changed, government will have changed, and commitment can be reneged. By 2100 in all practically all politician of today will be long dead. They can commit whatever they want, they will not have to carry any consequence. A small commitment for 2020 or 2025 is much MUCH better than a big commitment for the far flung future. Why ? Because you can step by step reach the target and you can harmonize those little steps by lowering disrupting economy for all. By committing a far future date you have only enforcement legally once 2100 is reached, and you make sure it is a race to the bottom : the one committing more will make its economy far worst comparing to those who commit less, and thus those who do nothing will be better off.

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.

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.

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 ?

"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.

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.

The 5 million private car commute twice per day. The taxi works upward to 24/7. If you got a commute of 1 hour, that is 10 hours per week. Compared to 24*7=168 that is 17 times about a normal commuter car. So more like 4.25% to 8.5% doubling.

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.

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.

"But it's two-year-old level childish thinking at it's finest to think you can get all the free and subsidized stuff out here in the world without the advertising"

Well how about a subscription or money ? I value my privacy and not getting advertising more than anything else.

"Others point out that those who drive electric vehicles need the roads maintained just as much as people still driving gas-powered cars."

Sooooo are truck paying proportionally much much more than hybrid ?

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.

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"