Try this instead: http://www.reuters.com/search?blob=barnaby+jack

1) Charge a payroll tax on non-permanent-resident foreign workers based on the HIGHER of actual salary or market salary. The tax should be high enough to deter hiring foreigners unless there is a specific person you want to hire or there is a genuine labor shortage, but not so high as to make it impossible to deal with labor shortages or hire a specifically recruited individual. Say, 20-40% unless there are good reasons why it should be higher or lower.

2) Apply this to all wage levels, from minimum wage jobs on up. Cap the tax at some level, say, the level paid on a $100,000 salary (in today's dollars). This would make the tax pretty meaningless for highly-paid executives, entertainers, professional athletes, etc. but frankly, Americans with those kinds of skills don't need much protection from foreign competition.

3) Grant liberal employment visas to anyone who has a sponsoring employer who will post a bond guaranteeing 30 days of living expenses beyond the termination of the job, a salary that is at least the local "living wage" for one person, and guaranteeing a return plane or bus ticket home. Family-in-tow visas would be granted only if the living and return-ticket expenses for the family members were covered in some way, with the "last" 30 days of living expenses and the return ticket being covered by a bond or other guarantee. Once here, allow the person to change jobs providing the new employer will assume sponsorship obligations. Yes, this means no more "HB-1 captivity" in the job market.

What this would mean:

On the low end, minimum wage jobs would cost employers another $1.45-$2.90/hour for everyone they hired on a temporary work permit.

On the medium end, a job with a market salary of $60K would cost employers at least another $12K-$24K/year for every temporary-worker they hired. The worker COULD agree to work for that much less, but wages wouldn't be driven down due to foreign workers being willing to take less unless they were willing to take a LOT less, and on a large scale.

On the higher end, for jobs over $100K, employers would face a $20K-$40K tax on temporary workers.

Political bonus points if the taxes were directed towards post-secondary education rather than general revenue, but ONLY if the weren't offset by reductions elsewhere (no political points for shell games!).

Why? Love.

A vast majority of parents in Western cultures (and possibly world-wide) would gladly give their life to save the life of their child.

That may not be the best example: Some of the horrors of Nazi Germany were so bad that killing someone before they were old enough to form lasting memories might have been the most merciful thing a conscripted prison guard could do.

The question becomes:
Did the guard kill the baby out of mercy for the baby? That's mercy-based action.
Did the guard do it out of fear of his own life, wishing to God he could think of another way out? That's fear-based action.
Did the guard do it "because it was his job." That might be Stockholm Syndrome, resignation to one's fate, escaping into an emotional shell, or something else that doesn't indicate that the person is evil as much as just being unable to handle the circumstance he was in.
Did the guard do it because he enjoyed it, a la Joseph Mengele? That's either a severe mental illness, evil, or some combination of both.

True, but for some it's emotionally easier to de-humanize or otherwise stop empathizing whoever you are hurting.

The witness testifying against an alleged murderer may think "I'm sorry I have to testify against you, but telling the truth and ensuring justice is done is for the greater good even if it means you will get life in prison" or he may think "you worthless scum, I hope you never see daylight again." In the short term at least, the second reaction probably takes less mental effort.

BAD IDEA - DO NOT WANT.

If there is a test for psychopathy with an acceptably low false-positive rate and it's used for such high-stakes as you propose, sooner or later someone will figure out a way to train people to test "negative."

It's already possible for many if not most people to learn to "defeat" a polygraph. It's just not worth most people's effort because outside of careers needing security clearances and some other highly-sensitive jobs, most people don't find themselves in a situation where not taking one or failing one would cost them anything.

That's just about any job. Even if my job is to clean up trash in the park, my boss doesn't expect me to be perfect. I have the power to do things like spending more effort in low-traffic areas than high-traffic areas, thereby making tomorrow's visitors' experience less enjoyable, or to focus on high-traffic areas to make their experience more enjoyable. If you say that's not having power over someone, you are mistaken. It's petty power, but it is power.

20 year old woman gets knifed on the street - we all feel bad for her.

20 year old woman convicted of torturing her kids gets knifed a few weeks into her lifetime prison sentence - many of us think "good, she got what she deserved."

The take-away is that some, perhaps most, psychopaths can be rehabilitated AND some, perhaps most, non-psychopaths can, through brainwashing, Stockholm syndrome, or just being in the wrong environment (e.g. being a prison guard or soldier in a despotic regime) see their empathy for others in certain situations erode to the point that they will do unspeakable things without feeling guilty about it.

Microsoft would be put in a very strange position of NOT wanting to sell Surfaces. The more they sell, the more money they lose.

I think this happened with the Nokia N8x0 series. I tried buying one, and the guy tried so hard not to sell it to me that I literally had to tell him to shut up and take my money.

The difference between an "average" of 8.6 and 10.9 isn't that big of a deal.

The "bigger deal" are the very high speed countries like Japan and South Korea and the underlying reasons for the gap in the United States.

Some things we can't control or wouldn't want to if we could: Less-dense populations, the fact that many customers are satisfied with the speeds they got during the "digital cable rollouts" and "DSL rollouts" of the early 2000s and don't want to pay more, the fact that many voters don't want to heavily subsidize communication beyond "the basics" with tax money, etc.

The take-aways from charts like this are:

* What are other countries doing that we COULD do?
* SHOULD we do those things?
* Does the voting/taxpaying public WANT to do those things and if not, SHOULD we honor that or should proponents of higher speed access try to change their hearts and minds?

I for one don't want to live in a city as dense as Tokyo or Seoul or force my 300M fellow Americans to do the same just so we can have 50+% faster possibly-cheaper Internet.

--

I bet if The Vatican wanted to, it could get uber-fast Internet to all the residents and offices and jump to the top of the list very quickly assuming there was a high-speed provider in the area. But I for one don't want to live in a teeny-tiny country.

In Hollywood, "massive flop" means "made only imperial fucktons of money, not metric fucktons". Superman Returns set box-office records for Warner Bros., but it did not produce the turnout that the studio had hoped -- and budgeted -- for for a high-profile Superman release, so the general consensus is that it was a flop.

Also, all movies are flops for compensation purposes.

Exactly. If app x has the option to let me send something to users in my address book (and which app hasn't), I understand that it will need access to the address book. That still does not tell me whether it will use that access to send all my contacts to its server.

Please explain how the above lines up with your idea that corporate entities cannot exercise rights? You've now agreed that some, in fact, can, but only certain ones. Who decides what constitutes "legitimate" press? And if we do something like that, does that mean that, say, a BP can go out and buy an outfit like the NYT and spout all the pro-BP propaganda they want to, since they're "the press" now, too? Can the Republican party buy Fox News and run thinly veiled political advertisements disguised as news? (I really, really want to make a joke here, but, sadly, the right one just isn't springing to mind).

Lastly, does that mean if I can't afford to buy the NYT, or Fox News, I simply don't have access to the press?

FWIW, I think smoking is a horrible habit and a downright idiotic thing to do, but personally, I do NOT support the ban on advertising that is becoming more and more pervasive as time goes by (it started with TV, it's spread to other media). I think that neo-nazis, KKK, and their ilk of other races who preach the same kind of hate are the scum of the earth, but I don't support muzzling them, either--hate speech is still speech. IOW, I disagree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

You're reaching on this one. Please note, I am NOT advocating the "corporations are people" line. I am advocating that people acting in groups have the same rights as the individuals that compose them. You don't get an extra vote because you incorporated, you have as many votes as you have members. I'm not going to dignify the "food stamps" thing with a response.

In the above scenario, the writers can say whatever the want, but the Times can be constrained from publishing it. So we're basically back to posting handbills, because every corporate owned press is off limits to whatever the powers that be find to be objectionable content.

You quite nicely dodged the question by going off on a tangent. I'll ask it again: "Is the New York Times protected by the freedom of the press?"

If your answer to that is "no" (I won't assume this, even though your position outlined above suggests that it must be) then Congress could, tomorrow, pass a law that says, "no corporate owned media may discuss any unapproved topics. Officially approved topics will be provided by the White House press secretary on a quarterly basis" and that would pass constitutional muster.

You can't have it both ways. Either "congress shall make no law" has teeth, or it doesn't.

I agree corporations need to be subject to limits--I, too, am tired of situations where a corporate entity commits what is basically a felony, and magically, this is settled by a token fine. But limiting constitutionally protected rights is NOT how we need to go about fixing the problem.

Some states in the USA are already doing this.

Most states have "Romeo and Juliet" laws and most are extending this to "child porn" so a person who offers a photo of himself to his close-in-age girlfriend or who asks her for a photo of herself doesn't wind up with both of them spending years in prison with sex-offense felony records. Some states are also looking at "graduated penalties" based on ages and age differences even if the individuals are charged as adults. Others require charges to be made in juvenile court if the acts were consensual and the defendant is under 18.

Personally, I would love to see the laws changed so arguably-consensual sex involving people who are not in a "power relationship" other than the one inherent in an age difference face consequences that are limited based on the age and age difference of the people involved:

• If the younger party is under 18 and the older party is only a few years older (where "a few" is, say, 3 for a preteen or younger victim and ramping up to 6 if the younger party is 17) or if the older person is too young to be tried in juvenile court, the only remedies would be 1) if any parent complained, a court order for them to keep apart except as needed for school, and to be supervised when together at school, and 2) if either the police or any parent insisted, court-ordered counseling for both parties.
• If the parties were more than a few years apart but less than about twice that much apart (i.e. 3 to 6 years age difference if the younger person was a preteen or younger, ramping up to 6 to 12 years if the younger person was 17) and the older person is old enough to be tried in juvenile court, the older person could be charged with a misdemeanor, be ordered into a psych evaluation and if deemed dangerous to others besides the existing "victim," possible non-public/sealed-record sex-offender registration or special probation/parole/supervision requirements for no more than a few years. The younger person would be offered counseling as would his or her parents. If the older person was a minor or living at home, his parents would be offered counseling as well. If the crime occurred in a state where misdemeanors committed by young adults or by minors convicted in adult court were routinely pardoned or the record sealed after a period of time of good behavior, the person would be treated the same as other young misdemeanor offenders when he asked for a pardon or asked for his record to be sealed. In other words, if you are 15 messing around with a 12 year old or are 23 messing around with a 17 year old, expect to spend a few months in juvenile detention or jail for it and if you are deemed to be a danger to others, expect to have to register with the police for the next few years, but you will not be on any public sex-offender registry.
• If the parties were between twice and three times "a few years" (6 to 9 year age difference with a preteen or younger victim, ramping up to a 12 to 18 year age difference with a 17 year old victim) OR if the older person was still a minor and old enough to be tried in juvenile court, then the maximum penalty would be a low-level felony with only at most few years on a private (or, if he was 18 or older when the crime was committed, public) sex offender registry. If the crime occurred in a state where low-level felonies committed by young adults or by minors convicted in adult court were routinely pardoned or the record sealed after a period of time of good behavior, the person would be treated the same as other young low-level felons when he asked for a pardon or asked for his record to be sealed. In other words, if you are 18 messing around with a 12 year old or 29 messing around with a 17 year old, expect a felony sex offender conviction but expect to be out of prison in 2-3 years and expect to be off the sex offender registry a few years after that.
• For all other adults who molest children - the 18 year old messing around with an 8 year old or the 36 year old messing around with a 17 year old - expect the serious consequences that are on the books today.

The recommendations above are for people with no sex-related criminal records or "keep away from my daughter" court orders prior to the act in question, i.e. for "first time offenders" but ignoring all non-sex crimes. People who repeatedly commit "sex crimes" but are too young to face juvenile court (typically below 7-12 depending on the state) would be handled by existing laws designed to deal with dangerous children.

I used "17" as an example assuming the age of consent is 18. I have no problem with lowering it to 17 or 16, and I recommend treating younger people who are under 18 but legally emancipated as if they were 18.