People misunderstand what large amounts of wealth really is - a billionaires wealth comes from the people who work for him and the infrastructure he owns if he wants to leave the country the people and infrastructure stays behind - the wealth of the society is unchanged, all he has done is exchanged his assets for some foreign currency slightly modifying the exchange rate - in short let them leave the country and sell their assets - the overall tax base will be unchanged - and good riddance

Well if we don't run out of oil I predict people will be stupid enough to keep burning it until our atmosphere approches that of Venus - but I doubt the mantle of the earth is a gooey delicicous layer of oil - even with the new estimate of oil reserves it amounts to only one year of extra oil consumption

I tend to agree, but you would think game developers, by not having to build a game to take advantage of the next generation hardware, would have more time to focus on making a decent game, so far they have not succeeded in doing that any better, where are the great, creative games?

You are right what is the point of finding a cure for any disease? We should just shoot the disabled and feeble who don't have the money to be cared for - the would save a lot of money - and of course you argue we don't have the money, of course we have the money to currently care for these people, we just don't have any money to really fix the problem, and money is like some sort of magic scarce resource to you instead of just a way of keeping score - saying the government is out of money is like saying you can run out of points at a basketball game - you can't - all that matters is if there are idle resources available to do what you want or not and with 7% unemployment there are plenty of idle resources - in short, sir, you are a nitwit

This is very sad news - I can't say anything more that others on this thread but just to add my voice in saying thank you

Russsia by far bore the brunt of casualties during WWII, but the US was critical to winning, in 1940 the US GDP was greater than the rest of thw world _combined_, the US truely was the "arsenal of Democracy" in the sense that it could produce an endless number of tanks, fighters, bombers and ships - so long as England did not fall the US could just stack up equipment in England to use as a staging ground for the invasion of Europe - Russia was quite pissed off that the US waited so long to invade while they bore the brunt of the casualties. The US had a similar role in WWI, in that american equipment helped break the stalemate between the axis and the allies.

NIce - esp. the mom comment - stay classy, So uh how do you store value, sheep and glod? I am pretty sure that fits your investor profile, since the sheep keep you company at night - oh one more thing, fuck you asshole.

Ding Ding Ding - Currencies are most definely not stores of value, and not _designed_ to be stores of value - if you want to store value buy stock, bonds, land or something else, currencies are meant to fascilitate exchange, not store wealth, if they were designed to store wealth they would be useless for exchange since - the currency supply would be limited, there would be no inflation which people might think is great but it would encourage horading, hence making it less and less useful for exchange and cause a major depression - all currencies have to have a little inflation just to keep it circulating - currency is not an investment - it shocks me that so many people are confused but this, if you hate inflation, buy an asset, it will float with inflation - duh

I drive a lot in Germany, it is a joy to drive there because there are no speed traps, as a consequence people obey the law _more_ because the traffic signs mean something, you see a sign for 100kph then you go 100 because the road or conditions will not allow that speed (god help you if you get a ticket because you really fucked up). In the US most speed signs fall in the "overticket" category, the interstate highways were designed for 75MPH cruising not 55 or 65, an lots of little towns get a large amount to money from tickets from speed traps - the town should just tax approriately to support themselves instead of creating speed traps which, if anything, discourage safety and erode respect for the law.

We are - we are at the tipping point? how do you know? When the economy starts to recover interest rates will go up and so will tax income, the reason we are running a deficit is because people are unemployed, not paying taxes and collecting benefits, the deficit was much smaller before the recesssion even with the bush tax cuts and war spending and it went up because people stopped paying taxes because they didn't have a fucking job and the government had to pay them unemployment - when people get jobs the deficit goes down (as it has been for the past several years! but nobody mentions that) - we are running a smaller deficit now than we did two years ago, this will continue as employment improves - this is standard fucking stuff, but people keep repeating this nonsense about spending, people need to get a clue.

perfectly true - except for the fact that the "family" can borrow money at a rate below inflation and can print money at will - there is no comparison between family finances and a goverment that controls its own money - what a crock of shit

Insightful? - well fuck me, people are idiots -low interest rates mean people _want_ to loan you money, Greece has _high_ interest rates because they are tied to the euro and people are unsure whether they will have enough euros to pay their debt, wheras in the US we have low interest rates because people need a safe place to put their money where they know they will be paid back, if fact rates are so low we pay less servicing our "exploding debt" than we did 10 years ago when nobody cared about the debt - amazing how people commenting about debt and interest rates (like comparing the US goverment to dad with a credit card) are so stupid that they don't understand the basics - yes I said stupid there is no excuse after years of recession.

"Consequently, if you run into a law that infringes on your right to keep or carry arms in any way, shape or form, you've found an unconstitutional law." Are nukes OK? because it would be cool to have one, rocket launchers and grenades are cool too - you are correct about the definition of Militia, in the south every white male of fighting age was meant to be in one - to supress a slave uprising should one arise.

google "second amendment slave revolt" - in any event we had the second amendment, if it was put in place to preserve our freedom against an oppressive goverment how did that work out in the south before 1860? piss poor if you ask me, slavery is as oppressive as it gets and it was only overturned by a fucking army from the north, not a buch of freedum lovers with guns living in Alabama.

I was reading about the history of the 2nd ammendment - what was funny is that the second amendment wasn't put in to prevent a takeover by an oppressive government, it was put in to _preserve_ an oppressive goverment - the slave states wanted the gun provision put in so they could keep their state run militas, which were in place to prevent slave revolts - funny how it has been twisted around.