There are hacks that allow speakers to be used as microphones.

In our increasingly Orwellian society, I would be quite happy to have facial recognition technology be less effective on my skin tone (fair).

Then they can bomb them out of existence.

I expect people in poverty to get a job, go to work, get skills, get better jobs rinse repeat. I don't have a college degree, I am not poor. I do not expect a minimum wage job to support a family. I expect a minimum wage job to be an entry level position whereby a young person can get a job without having to have any formal education and use it as a platform to better themselves. People do it all the time EVERY DAY. The thing is that they have to want to better themselves and in order for that they have to know that something better is out there. I think that by the time of college, its too late. That desire has to be instilled in someone at home, it isn't going to happen in public school.

SO in your ignorant little world what happens when there are more people eligible for work then there is work?

So, what would you do when there are more workers than jobs? Take money from the productive elements to give to the unproductive elements? This can create a negative feedback cycle whereby taking from the productive elements causes some of the productive elements to turn into unproductive elements which means you have to take more from the remaining productive elements to support the existing and new unproductive elements which.....

Societies are built on their population being productive. The more productive that population, the more prosperous the society. Any resources that you take away from the population that is productive, decreases their productivity.

I don't want people to starve, but where do you draw the line? Food? Housing? Healthcare? Cell Phones? Utilities? Big screen tv? Cable television? Education? There was an article in our local newspaper about a year ago about a woman in her early fifties that had a vehicle, a 50 inch television, a house, food, electricity and a cell phone. You know what she didn't have? A job. Was she capable of having a job...YES. Why does this person get to live BETTER THAN I DO with out any of the stress and actual work that I have to deal with? And guess what, in addition to having to pay for my own house and car and electricity, I also get to pay for HERS!

I hesitate to respond to you, seeing as how you are so congenial and all, but what the hell.

I don't know if you do your own grocery shopping, but I do. I notice the price increases in food goods and in the last several years, they have gone up a lot! In the last year, food prices are up 4.7%. In the last decade, public college tuition is up 104% (private is up 60% by comparison but that is not my point). The rate of health care cost increases from 2001-2011 was over 51%.

In order to understand this, you have to understand that money is also bound by the laws of supply and demand, just like anything else. When the gov't prints money all of the existing money in circulation loses value. When the gov't makes money readily available for education, it causes education to go up in cost. There was once a time when someone (perhaps your parents?) were actually able to hold down a part time job to work through college...why can't we do that anymore? There was once a time when you could walk into your doctor's office, pay for the service out of your pocket without breaking the bank without an insurance company involved. Why is it now that all of the services are priced out of reach for someone without insurance when in the past that wasn't so? Go check out this link about when the cost of medical care started to increase faster than the posted rate of inflation.

I am not asking you to believe that I am right, go look at the data yourself. Hell I could be wrong, but it sounds to me like you are talking out your butt, perhaps just trolling. Maybe you could try to argue your case instead of calling me a "fucking moron" which certainly doesn't make your fantastical assertions any more credible, but hey civility and logic just aren't for everyone.

Understood. But the free market solution to healthcare, education, and food fundamentally includes depriving some people who lack enough capital access to them. If that's the policy cost we have to pay to reduce the economic cost of those things, it's not worthwhile.

But the forces that supposedly make these things accessible to the poor actually cause the prices to escalate which harms not only the poor, but everyone else. I don't want people to starve! We should all be asking what we as individuals can do instead of asking the government to take money out of Peter's pocket to feed/clothe/succor Paul, even if it is something that Peter would be inclined to do himself. Let him do it himself!

I fully concur on your decision about how you will aid your children with college. It is arguable that carrying $100,000 in student debt (in many professions) that the education they acquired by way of such debt won't pay for the debt in increased wages over their lifetimes.

Yep, big screen TVs have become a lot more affordable. In the meantime, medical care, college costs, and food prices have sky rocketed. And in the meantime, our standard of living has DECREASED. I lived a HELL of a lot better in the 90s than I do now!

Ever consider why some things come down in price and why some things only escalate? It has to do with the free market vs. gov't regulation/subsidy. Look at medical procedures that are not overly regulated like Lasik and cosmetic surgery which continues to decrease in price over time. Computers and electronics are likewise not regulated into oblivion and likewise over time decrease in price. This decrease is not magical, it is the result of technology and productivity increases that allow the prices of comparable goods to decrease. It is fallacious to compare the costs of big screen tv's (unregulated) to healthcare (regulated) or education (thank student loans for runaway costs here) or even food (you can thank loose monetary policy for increases here and healthcare AND education!)

Why is inflation good? Why is price stability bad? Why can't the market control the money supply? The government doesn't (constitutionally speaking) even have the authority to control the money supply.

If currency is a reflection of the economy behind it, then by simply printing money, the government makes the economy better, right? Well where does the money come from, where does the value of that money come from? There's no such thing as a free lunch dude. There WAS a fixed value, when we were on the gold standard, $20 to an ounce of gold. Since we left the gold standard, the dollar has LOST VALUE, the more money that they print, the more that gets chipped away. There are charts all of the place that show this.

And yes, there are stats that track the amount of outstanding currency and YES there are economists that talk about China/Japan dumping their debt and how it would be devastating to the economy.

No conspiracies here, just news reports about illicit behavior....or are all corporations above breaking the law to make a buck? Just do a google search for silver market manipulation.

I will keep my gold and I invite you to just consider for a moment that maybe you don't know everything. I once thought as you do because that's what they teach people and then I started to question the foundations of what I was taught and it all came tumbling down. Hey, maybe I am wrong and you have it all wrapped up, but what if I'm not...

There is nothing special about gold. It is not the end-all be-all indicator of inflation. Inflation is measured as the overall increase in the prices of commodities and goods. All of them, not just gold.

That is a popular misconception. Inflation is a monetary phenomenon that is tied to the amount of currency in circulation (a la supply and demand). More currency in circulation means that each unit of currency is worth less. An ounce of gold hasn't changed in the last 90 years, it is still an ounce of gold. What has changed is the number of dollars required to purchase said ounce of gold from $20 to today's $1343.20. Its not the gold that appreciated, but the dollar that depreciated.

Gold is driven by supply and demand (but hey, what isn't) but the difference with gold is that there has been a tremendous amount of market interference by some of the large banks and governments to keep the price of gold down which has interfered with the normal mechanics of supply and demand (giving the impression that there is no demand to drive down prices). Also, inflation has been low in large part because much of the currency that has been printed in the US was send abroad to serve as foreign currency reserves and thus has not entered circulation in the US economy. If countries like China and Japan were to offload their debt onto the open markets you would see the inflation that you say doesn't exist as the currency floods the market.

In essence, printing money is theft (or at best, a hidden tax), as it shaves value off of everyone's currency so that the printers can spend it. The printers get to spend it before it enters the economy and thus loses its value.

It seems that if he knows about the crime before it happens then he is an accessory to the crime and perhaps co-conspirator.

The drilling rigs are not cheap. Having them sit idle will cost millions and millions of dollars. There is demand for them elsewhere in the world. They will contract out to other companies operating in other countries. When the moratorium is lifted in 6 months, there won't be any available rigs to be had which means no jobs either.

I dunno, its kinda in a high crime neighborhood, considering that most of the laws that come out of Washington these days aren't authorized under the Constitution.

A Stephen King book, pretty well written.

Why would they?

I contend that a bank that rakes its customers over the coals in the manner in which you described would quickly have no customers. Word would spread incredibly quickly in today's information age that bank x royally screwed person y and customers would remove their money in droves.

Since the amount of money that a bank can loan is tied to the amount of "reserves" they have on hand, a bank that had any significant number of withdrawals (say 5-10%) would very quickly have its balance sheets become negative rendering the bank insolvent as currently outstanding loans exceed the bank's capital requirements which justify those loans.

Banks compete fiercly for customers with the cost to attract a new customer being quite high. While on the surface it might seem that having more revenue from service charges and fees would be in the best interest of bank x, it clearly would not be worth the tarnished reputation of allowing its customers to be wiped out by some nefarious prankster sending micro-payments.

My point is that sure, banks like to charge fees and penalties, but I think I given compelling reasons why they would be interested in limiting/eliminating the ability of the above mentioned nefarious prankster from wiping someone out.

Every time a law is passed people lose freedom. While each individual law may seem to be reasonable and well-intentioned, the cumulative effect of law upon law upon law is quite restrictive. Additionally, laws are frequently perverted to mean things and to enforce things that they were never intentioned to. Look at abuses of the DMCA, the Patriot act and I am sure countless others that don't come to mind just this moment.