The FAA is the "corporation" in this case. Just because it gets its money from tax payers doesn't mean it can't abuse its employees and doesn't mean the employees don't get human rights.

Probably so - American workers are much more efficient than in the past which is part of why unemployment is so high. If businesses hired two employees for 30 hours a week rather than one for 60, it'd be much more beneficial to society. Of course there are issues with employee overhead such as health care, but that's just more reason the US needs to meet the level of the rest of the first world countries and provide it.

There are still difference between humans, unions, and corporations. If you think a union is a monopoly on the supply side of labor, then the corporation is a monopoly on the demand side. You also have to remember that monopolies aren't illegal. We have laws against abusive monopolies to protect consumers (people) from abusive corporations. Unions do the same.

Unfortunately, short term gains often come first, so many don't even pay employees a livable wage.

By that logic, the FAA has a monopoly on hiring air traffic controllers, but no one would say that because it's ridiculous. Unions exist because a single employee does not have bargaining power against a corporation. Without them, we'd be working 10 hours a day, 6 days a week with no benefits. People aren't the same as products. They have basic needs and human rights that we prefer them to have.

That's how strikes work - they cripple their industry as an extreme resort for bargaining purposes. You can make it sound very scary for other situations too, like the time the fast-food workers conspired to cripple the nation's fast-food industry - holding the rest of us hostage!

A comparable situation with phones would be when manual patching was needed if the switchboard operators went on strike to demand better working conditions/pay. Strikes are done by employees against the company, not by companies against the government.

You are correct. A union would have been able to negotiate better pay and working conditions.

They aren't hiding it in their mattresses, but they are keeping it in banks and other investments where the money will take a long time to trickle down. It's not getting spent like it would for poorer people.

The nation is also bigger than any time in history. It's not a good method to use the raw numbers, much better to use GDP or some per capita method. The deficit has been shrinking, we're cutting all our most valuable programs mostly because health care costs are rising and eating up the extra income. Defense obviously plays a big role, but recent cuts have reigned that in.

We basically have two options - get medical costs under control (something the GOP won't touch) or collect more (also something the GOP won't touch).

When the amount collected is less than the amount spent, it's a collecting/spending problem. As much as Republicans want you to think it's only one side that matters, it's basic economics that collecting more will help fix the issue better than collecting less.

I paid my taxes online (Federal and state), though I did have to type in a few numbers. Looks like they're fairly close to being able to make it automatic, but I found it pretty weird I had to reference a lookup table in a PDF to get a value based on another value on the form.

Interestingly, the trend has been moving back that way with laptops that have no buttons (though you can get a context menu with two fingers). Most people don't need the extra complexity.

My samsung s5 is allegedly water proof - I've seen people use them under water, just don't feel like drowning mine. It has a little cap that goes over the charging ports that makes it that way.

It's all the people that browse slashdot while running sprints

Corporations aren't usually afraid of guns and I'm pretty sure none of them have been arrested.

When was the last time a corporation was VIOLENTLY tossed in jail?

You can use any phone with SMS support which seems pretty standard. Since people are typically syncing from their iPhones to the iCloud they usually have an iPhone, but it's possible to use a freebie 10 year old brick phone if you wanted.

You're saying patents are useful because they prevent people from patents? I think I can see a solution that could fix this issue - better patent it right away!

But that's pointless and misleading. I don't say my kitchen blender has emissions or my cellphone.

Gasoline has emissions because when you burn it, it releases CO2 (and others). There are also emissions when the gasoline is produced at the refinery.

Electric vehicles produce no emissions when the electricity is used. In some cases, generating electricity does produce emissions.

The advantage is large powerplants can control emissions much easier than a car and even better - they can be replaced by a cleaner source. Cars usually produce more emissions as they get less efficient with age.

Obviously we're not going to replace everyone's car overnight so we have time to improve our infrastructure.

Here in the real world, when players collaborate on something for everyone to use, we call that a "Standard"