That's not entirely a bad idea, but let's be fair -- extend it to everyone. This shouldn't be any hardship if you're already in the wage class where you spend most of what you make just to live.

The upside is that there'd probably be a lot more discretionary spending, which in turn would boost a lot of industries. Particularly if you get a consideration for buying domestic products, where they exist.

The downside is that it might negatively impact investment, but I'm not entirely sure that'd be a bad thing, as methinks some of the boom-and-bust of recent years stemmed from too much venture capital burning a hole in some accountant's pocket.

What we now call "poor" is what was called "middle class" or even "well off" a couple generations ago.

See http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2011/09/understanding-poverty-in-the-united-states-surprising-facts-about-americas-poor

I did wonder, but at the time didn't see anything about it. However, I haven't found anything else that can replace it for certain applications.

Those look like the tasty kind, too :D

Where I lived in the desert, those woulda been runts. The harvester ants run 1/3' to 1/2". No good to eat, tho... all crunch and no taste.

They did keep the yard weeded, tho.

Actually, it woulda been my homework in the '60s, sonny.

http://www.threefeloniesaday.com/Youtoo/tabid/86/Default.aspx

Conversely I've found the best bait to attract ants is -- dead ants. Squish a few and pretty soon you've got lots of ants. (I use this trick when I find some of the tasty kind and feel a yen for fried ants. Our cold-climate American ants are too puny to be worth the bother unless you've got a whole lot of 'em.)

My method of killing fire ants:

Put two tablespoons of diazinon granules on top of the hill.

Next day the entire colony is dead.

I was astonished.

[And people wonder why I went around buying up all the diazinon I could find when it was taken off the market.]

So is the right to own and drive a car worth some 35,000 lives every year?

How about the right to see a doctor, which results in, by some estimates, over 100,000 deaths a year from doctors' mistakes?

Good points. Might be boiled down to "Laws exist to punish everyone for the sins of a few."

Change, or just that our sample size (er, length) is too small to know what the variances normally are?

http://blog.aacriminallaw.com/dwi/breathalyzer-101-fail-test-sober/

Not to mention
http://www.ladanlaw.com/how-accurate-are-breathalyzers-anyway.html
http://www2.potsdam.edu/hansondj/DrivingIssues/1055505643.html

How much redistribution is this, compared to say, the mass of ocean being moved by various forces, and the natural flex in the earth's crust? I suspect the mass of ice falls under "grain of sand at the beach".

I'm waiting for Firefox Down, myself.

I recall a study that concerned the accuracy of the BAC meters -- turns out it's not very good, with about 0.05% variance. Which may explain the variability of what's considered "drunk" as much as do individual tolerances.

0.05% testing variance and 0.05% as the threshold for DUI -- you can see the problem: someone who has drunk nothing at all could test "legally drunk".