Of course we redistribute wealth to the richest. The biggest tax expense is the military, which the richest suck up like oxygen, no matter how bad for security or our economy (to say nothing of health, life or limb). The second biggest tax expense is on medical care (which overlaps a lot with the military), which is spent on doctors who are among the richest (at $172K general, $275K specialist, they make 7-11x the median income), and pharmacos which are among the richest both as workers and as stockholders. Oil corps get $4 BILLION in tax expenses a year, which is a lot even when they're reporting $10B annual profits before the handout. Then there's the $TRILLIONS in handouts to the banks, their executives, top employees and shareholders, which are both by definition and in practice the richest of the rich.The $BILLIONS in US foreign aid is mostly spent on American products; they're sold abroad by the richest, who arrange that cozy loop.

The top 10% pay 70% of Federal income taxes, but state taxes are mostly regressive (so tax the rich less), and the other substantial taxes like Social Security and sales taxes are purely regressive, so tax the rich less. While the rich have all their income above about $107K (most of their total) protected from the approximately 10% SS tax. The top 10% of wage collectors got over $2.46 TRILLION in 2010, out of only about $6.01T total wages, almost 41%. But the amount of equity trade income that the other $10T in the US GDP pays out a year is vastly more paid to that top 10%, who pay something like half the tax rate on their capital gains than people do on regular income.

Taking less tax money from the rich is giving free government services to them. Apart from all the direct subsidies, the rich get far more government services, including security, the courts that are where they transact so much business, and all the R&D private labs have abandoned to the public to pay for instead that they immediately harness into products and even less tangible sources of wealth.

When you said "I prefer to hope to be one of them" you said it all. That motivation is what keeps most Americans who bother to think about the racket hoping it will continue. Of course the vast majority will never be anything but the victims of the racket.

We can sequence genes. We can edit the sequence of many genes we've identified to switch the phenotype they express among meaningful choices. We can edit retroviruses to make them edit genes from A to B in living cells. We can combine sperm and egg IVF to produce a blastocyst. We can even insert full cell nuclei into collected foreign eggs, which we can cultivate into a blastocyst in a lab. We can convert skin cells into egg cells for that purpose.

How close are we to a synthetic womb that can gestate a full blastocyst into a newborn baby?

"De-evolving" = evolving.

Evolution is only the change in a genome over time. The human genome increasingly contains genetic values that it had less of before, as they were less able to reproduce. That is evolution. It's "de-evolution" only according to your values, which don't count in measuring genetic change.

Nazis don't care about the genetics. They care about scapegoating people powerless to fight back. And then using their example to terrorize each and any other group they construct as the next target. None are spared.

BTW "nationalist socialist" countries are everywhere. The US has always offered "socialism" (government enforced wealth redistribution) mainly to its richest, and is about the most nationalist country behind N Korea. The UK, Norway, Switzerland and many other European countries are pretty socialist, though more equitable in the wealth redistribution source/destination, and are so nationalist they refuse to join the EU. Japan is pretty nationalist, and more socialist than the US.

If you're going to scare people with "nazi", just say "nazi". Stop trying to scare people about socialism, as if the Nazi socialism was representative of socialism any more than East Germany's "People's Republic" represented its people. Nazism was founded on propaganda, and sympathetic propaganda outlets continue to peddle its slanders today.

Even when a complete genome sequence run costs the lab $1000, it's going to cost the patient $100,000 on their bill. Because nothing exists in the medical industry to reduce the prices charged to patients. Even insurance corps' leveraging their own and their cartel's buying power to reduce prices paid to medical providers then slap their own extreme charges and fees (and waste) to raise the retail cost back up.

Though not as much in Europe. So Europeans will get to consume American medical exports like quick, cheap sequencing technology. Evolution in action.

No point exists for which curvature is zero in all reference frames. Since any reference frame in the Universe that has a mass in it exerts gravity on each point, there is no point at which there is 0 gravity. That's why I agree with that previous post. It might be reaching pretty far, but that is the point of having comprehensive theories of gravity - they reach as far as there is.

Yes, that's why the world depends on New Zealand's opinion.

The US of course depends on its automotive industry to drive our entire manufacturing industry, the core of the US economy. Our manufacturing that is still by far the largest in the world, about 20% of global output. Manufacturing employs about 20% of American workers. We invent most of the world's manufacturing techniques, materials and responses like recycling; most of the rest of global manufacturing uses American machinery and feeds America's manufacturing supply chain.

The US automotive industry is the epitome of all that. New Zealanders bought more Ford Rangers last month than any other model car; 5 other Fords were in the NZ Top 25. GM isn't as popular in NZ, but it's the world's biggest car company again, over 10% larger than Toyota. Meanwhile my wife has 2000s Toyota that should have been recalled, and we've watched the later model years of them turn to crap we'd never buy.

And then there's all the great cars made in Germany, which evidently you've never heard of. America might indeed be in pretty deep trouble. But you better hope not. Because if America's manufacturing does collapse around a cratered car industry, we'll stop spending the money shooting movies Americans drive to see. Then your Top 25 will be dominated by classic 1980s Yugos.

Copyrighted works (well, some of them at least) are not particularly fungible so they do not compete against eachother to any large extent.

Yes, retail price cooperation is illegal, but short term collaboration on prices isn't the driving price factor on monopoly goods. For the pricing curve It doesn't really matter if they sit in the same room or not; they'll see the same demand curve and decide on similar revenue maximization points over the longer term, and you'll still get the same rising price until demand fails (through falling disposable income, lack of interest or time, etc).

For a real in-your-face example, note Sony's action on Whitney Houstons death. An expected increase in demand leads to practically real-time raising of prices. The players in the field know exactly how to set prices to exact maximum revenue, and competitive pressure has nothing to do with it.

The curvature is relative to other points, hence the name "relativity".

What we're talking about was the reply to the comment " gravity ain't zero at the space station" , that said "Gravity aint 0 anywhere in the universe." You say it is some places. I say it ain't.

That's entirely possible, but in that case it's because Apple brought a higher end market with them. Revenue with monopoly pricing is maximized by setting prices in relation to what the market can bear. Copyright is not a free market and filing antitrust suits over pricing or price collusion is specious; there is no free market pricing, there is no competition and that is by design.

If the DOJ was at all interested in competition they'd work to abolish copyright and let the Pirate Bay put some competetive pressure on the market.