I know some great offshore developers, and I also know some American developers that aren't worth their salt. Each assessment needs to be made at a personal level; you can't make a valid blanket stereotyped claim that fits everyone.

I'm in finance, not development. But my experience is that you get what you pay for. Good finance people in India are only slightly cheaper than here in the US; add in the off-shoring complications, it's a losing prospect. We save money on drone jobs, but that's about it.

That's a really good point.

I have nothing to add to it, but since I don't get mod points after an argument with Pudge a few years ago... I just wanted to call attention to your post.

I agree, but...

Don't forget the abundant inflow of cheap labor!

Emphasis yours:

I don't know what country you live in, but in this country, the average salary is over $50,000/yr. That's ample to buy a house in most communities.

To put it another way, you are full of shit.

What country are you in that has an average salary of over $50,000/yr? I assume you are referring to National Account wages, not some other methodology that is known to overstate wages... And using NA methodology, *average* wages in the US are $42k. And why are you referring to average instead of median, which would be more appropriate, since salaries are not a normal distribution? US median wage, for only those 24-69 (the highest earning group, by the way), including only full-time workers, is under $40k.

$40k salary is not enough to afford an average home ($272,900 as per US Census data, 2011).

Speaking of "full of shit" -- if that applies to anyone in this discussion, that person is you.

Both your examples are of technologies that were emergent during the times you reference, and as such are not useful for comparison. They are red herrings. We could look, for example, at food prices. Or fuel prices. Or housing.

You should know that real wages have fallen since 1980. Food, housing, fuel -- these are all more expensive relative to wages today than they were in 1980. You try to explain it away by comparing some consumer goods, but that doesn't prove your point.

The divide of riches in terms of money may be growing slightly, but the divide between low wealth and high wealth certainly is not, it's very much shrinking.

That's laughable. High wealth has skyrocketed. Sure, low-wealth individuals now encompass most of the middle class (because the middle class doesn't accumulate wealth anymore), but working-age people with $2 million in assets live a far different lifestyle than those with no assets.

(Emphasis mine):

The US has the most progressive tax system in the world (when all taxation is taken into account), yet income disparity seems to be positively correlated to the amount of progressiveness in taxation.

That is a gross misstatement. Income inequality (as per Mankiw et al) in the US is driven by lower redistribution than in other OECD countries. In no way is there a positive correlation between "amount of progressiveness in taxation" and income disparity in OECD countries.

If you stand by your outrageous statement, please provide evidence... I'm assuming you have none (hence the weasel word, "seems").

Using a US football analogy, we can't always make a touchdown with every effort isn't a heroic 9-yard run a good start? Being any more ambitious with the President's plan would risk all-out resistance from every billion-dollar lobby and politician.

Except US politics is not American football. You get your 9-yard run, then your team doesn't bother snapping the ball again. "We accomplished this!" they exclaim in their bid to get re-elected. And that's all they're after, a feather for their environmentalist cap.

Congress won't take up legislation on an issue they already "decided on". The marginal political benefit of considering additional pieces of legislation along the same lines is minimal. They'd rather take up a bill on an unrelated topic, so they can crow about some other meaningless "achievement" to attract single-issue voters.

This is the reward we get for having a two-party system wherein we vote for the lesser of two weevils.

No problem here. They'll find something else to do.

OK, so you don't care about efficient allocation of resources. Fine. There go half your economic beliefs. Or you just don't care when that resource is educable labor? Why the discrepancy?

Not at all. When you don't have government running up the cost of education several fold, it'll become quite affordable for the people who want an education to get an education.

I question this pithy assumption, big-time. And even if it were true, it would still limit education on the basis of access to capital, so it doesn't solve the problem, it simply shifts it a little.

A lot of the current problems are due to the dismal performance of public education. When a diploma isn't worth the paper it's written on, then employers are going to look for stuff that is, such as college diplomas.

Which just reinforces my point that public college education is necessary, and useful, both to individuals and to employers.

So, the question is, what justifies the cost of the raise by that much?

In my state, a lot of it is decreases in state funding. Interestingly, the peak state funding for Rutgers in NJ was in 2000, around when you went to school. Now the state funds less than they did in 1995. Not sure if other states have similar trends as NJ in funding higher education, but it wouldn't surprise me at all.

Costs are up in other ways, too... inflation hits the budget of colleges and universities as much as individuals.

We have to pay high interest to cover losses to people who rack up debt studying things like art history, anthropology, and underwater basket weaving.

Not true. The loans are guaranteed by the government; there are no losses to lenders that you have to cover.

You pay a high interest rate simply because lenders have friends in Congress who fix the interest rate to ensure high profits.

If an education is really that valuable, then they'll find a way to pay for it.

And those who are unable to find a way to pay for it don't get educated. And businesses who need educated workers will be unable to find them.

Seems to me like that's a piss-poor way of allocating at least one resource: the workforce. Simply through lack of access to capital, you'd limit the productivity of the workforce.

This problem is why we have public education, and why it's a good thing (even for those at the top of the economic pyramid).

I'm on board with nearly the entirety of your post. However:

ignoring options like scholarships, grants, less expensive school choices, or part time work during college.

One of the issues is that financial aid packages assume loans will be taken out. So if you skip the loan, and work more instead, you may be able to cover the expense. But what happens next year? Oh yeah, your grant is reduced because of the amount of money you made this year. So now you have an even bigger funding gap to close.

Also, the scale at which students take loans means that colleges and universities have no issues raising tuition. College tuition is increasing far faster than inflation -- which already outpaces earnings growth for part-time workers.

Hmm... it appears that my info was outdated. After further research, I see that solar prices have dropped over the past few years. See the news about Suntech today?

Sorry for the error.

I was making a case for entitlement cuts?? Didn't know that...

Don't try to walk it back, here is what you wrote:

Note that Medicare/Medicaid(Fed only)/SSA is ALREADY the majority of the budget - it's not going to get any better without a painful revamp of the way we do things.

You directly linked Medicare/Medicaid/SSA with "a painful revamp" required to fix the budget issues.

The fundamental assumption on the left is that we could balance the budget by reducing military expenditures and raising taxes.

That is nowhere close to a fundamental assumption by the left.

You're tilting at windmills, buddy.

We're on hydro-electric here. Our CO2 doesn't change a lick if we turn out our lights in the PNW.

Umm, bullshit. Hydro produces only about 40% of evening electric supply in the PNW (though at peak demand, hydro is about 70% according to PNWR, an industry lobby group). Fossil fuels are responsible for a higher percentage of evening power consumption than hydro.

At best, a few 'regular people' -might- think about the environment for a few days (or hours), akin to the hype around St. Patty's day this year.

That's not the best-case scenario. Earth Hour a couple years ago is what prompted my wife and I to implement a plan for reducing electricity consumption every day, year-round. This multiplied by thousands (or even millions, in the long run)is the best-case scenario.