There was a narrowing of the achievement gap in the 1960s and 1970s. Then the narrowing stopped. Since then, blacks have done better, but whites have done better too, resulting in the gap staying about the same. You can see a graph of the gap here. It reached a minimum in 1988, and has actually been growing again since then. If the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow was the only cause of the gap, one would expect the gap to continue to narrow, and also to see a smaller gap in northern or western states that never had slavery or Jim Crow. Neither of those things is true. There is an ongoing debate about the causes, but it is doubtful that there is any one simplistic answer.

Nonsense. Britain has a significant Afro-Caribbean population. France has a large West African population. Sweden has many Somali immigrants. All of these groups have educational achievement gaps with their white countrymen comparable to the gap in America. South Africa is the only country in Africa with a large white population, and the achievement gap there is far wider than in America.

The point is you are an ignoramus of enormous proportions. The rise in wealth in USA was due to the so called 'robber barons', which created entire new industries and allowed the economy to flourish around them. The 'trust busting' was the beginning of the DESTRUCTION of the economy, as it started destroying the principles of private property rights. Government destroys the economy, it doesn't create it, the economy has to be created first for it to be destroyed by the government, and the private sector in the USA built a mighty economy that it took the growing USA government this long to destroy it.

Internet is critical infrastructure, which is precisely why it must NOT be in the hands of any government (and no other infrastructure should either, because it is illegal, immoral but also really stupid - if you want something to work, you don't give it to government).

To be blunt: black people, and to a lesser extent, first generation Hispanics. The difference is that Hispanics tend to approach the mean for their socioeconomic status by the second generation. Blacks have made progress, but just enough to keep the gap from widening even more.

There is nothing specifically wrong with America's education system. When you correct for demography, America does about as well as anywhere else. Norwegian kids in Norway do great. Americans of Norwegian descent do just as well. Blacks do poorly in America. They also do poorly everywhere else. There is no obvious "quick fix" that is supported by actual evidence, and pointing to something that works well in Singapore or Stockholm, and saying it is the solution to the problems in Detroit is just stupid.

As a matter of fact, if civilization were to break down, starvation would be our main problem very soon, because for the first time in history, we have > 50% of the population living in cities world-wide (and > 90% in the west), and we have maybe 1% of the population involved in food production, so if something catastrophic were to bring down the logistics of moving the stuff into the population centers, our supplies would run out really, really quickly.

There's often someone who did predict something, or something similar. But in general, the future predicted 50 years ago is not the future we're in today, and the same will be true of any catastrophy scenario.

Submitter has read too many bad books.

Remember, in stories, the world works the way the author needs it to work for dramatic purposes, not necessarily the way that it most likely would in reality.

The typical Mad Max scenario is unlikely. Just like SciFi authors thought we'd have flying cars and take our vacations on the moon, but didn't forsee the Internet and mobile phones, the real scenario will very likely be quite different from the movies you've seen.

Which basically means: Who the fuck knows which skills will be useful and which ones won't? Maybe computers will be worthless and shooting is important. But maybe supply of ammunition runs out a lot faster than electricity which we increasingly generate decentralized with solar and wind farms.

Maybe something entirely unexpected turns out to be the most important skill to have.

Also: Looking at history, civilization-destroying catastrophies are incredibly rare. Most civilizations enter a phase of decline and slowly fade away.

If your UPS dies, a suspended machine is screwed just the same. There's rather little point in suspending a server: even ones that are off outside business hours are better off hibernating rather than suspending.

In Chinese, the word used for North/South America means the United States when used in isolation. This is also true in most other languages I am familiar with. The only exception I know of is Spanish. Spanish speakers are not "most of the rest of the world", although they are most of America (in the Spanish sense).

Her connections can help them influence government regulation, and win contracts.

There are some things that shouldn't be tolerated. War mongering is one of them. Thousands of American families lost a son, brother, or husband in a pointless counter-productive war because of this woman's lies and incompetence. The number of Iraqi families affected is a hundred times higher.

Dropbox has the right to have her on their board. I have the right to speak my mind, and take my business elsewhere.

There is also the certainty that their will, eventually, be another school stabbing like we had this week. So should every student wear a hockey mask and knife proof vest? There are BILLIONS of places where a rifle shot could cause damage. Yet it almost never happens. Lightning strikes are a thousand times more likely. Instead of trying to think of a million scenarios where a trillion in spending could prevent some black swan event, it would be far better to spend that money on flexible rapid response repair teams (useful for lightning strikes as well as drunk teenage "terrorists"), general law enforcement, mental health programs, etc.

Yet there is no evidence that they are planning to do so, or that they have any motive to do so. The plan you describe would require the covert cooperation of hundreds people that you describe as "morons", without a single one leaking the plan. How likely is that?

Chicken Little has been making predictions even longer than that.

The people spinning the "deliberate and calculated" interpretation are the same people that benefit from increased security spending. According to William of Ockham, it was a drunk teenager.