Every patriot thinks their country produces the best quality. But after Mercedes brought one model line here and could not after years of trying match the quality they were getting in Germany, they decided not to do it again. And the quality of American cars, well, speaks for itself.

So I have the option of starting anew in a country with high salaries and a spotty quality record, or I can go to the factory in China that already makes the iPhone and iPad at very high quality with workers who do not expect to spend hours on Gmail and Slashdot *ahem* everyday. Guess which I'm going to choose? The tax rate has nothing to do with it.

Ah, my nationalistic friend, it can be seen as exactly the reverse. After all, we were racing against them, too. The truth is that they were superior in many areas (airframes and engines, spacecraft--Sputnik caused us to shit our pants), and we in others. It was a two-way race.

And no, the military build-up did not cause the USSR to collapse. It was their highly-flawed economic system. No matter how little they spent on their military, it would have still failed them.

Oh, and China does not "a history of... copying technology", they have a history of inventing it. In recent history, they suffered horrible colonial wars, but they're back. Don't let your patriotism confuse you.

"...MILLIONS of dollars!"

*The Security Council bursts out laughing, and the Defense Minister of India offers to end the crisis by pulling out his personal checkbook and writing a check out for the amount*

Your post was very informative, but I couldn't help but get a Dr Evil moment from your state's supposed infrastructure expenditure. My city spends as much on a single duck pond or a bike trail. Hopefully you meant to demand/say BILLIONS! Or, given the strength of the dollar, TRILLIONS!

You must have been under a rock for the last few decades. Every electronic device is made in the "third world". They've been handing us our collective asses, if you haven't noticed.

If BSD is so great, why didn't /it/ take the market by storm?

The painful truth is that BSD can't give away for free what Apple can charge hundreds of dollars for to the lines outside their stores.

OS X >> BSD.

They also constantly invade their neighbors with other religious terrorist organizations they fund: settlers, Mossad and IDF.

Oh, wait, that's Israel, and they have a huge lobby here. Nevermind, strike that.

"Acting up"? *Sigh* Why do I respond to trolls?

Go read a bit of modern Iranian history, before you fall back on stereotypes of Islam-vs-the-rest-of-the-world. If it hadn't been for our meddling (oh, overthrowing governments, oil grabs etc--none of this is controversial), Iran would not be in confrontation with us today. Twenty years after the revolution, they tried peace overtures, but Bush decided instead to dub them an "Axis of Evil" (wow, thank god our era of world-as-cartoon presidents is over). I can't understand your claim of Iran expanding its values into Israel.

We have no right to overthrow other people's governments, and even less right to act surprised when they get pissed over it. And speaking of Israel: when they behave all might is right, others are going to try to acquire might to counter that.

Or maybe your stereotypes are wrong? What one thing is not like the others? I don't see why India can launch a satellite in 1980, but Iran cannot 30 years later.