There seems to be a disconnect here. When the issue is one of an ability of a State government to pay its bills which it uses Federal money to do, - and the money stops - there are two choices:

1 - find the money (that means taxes)
2 - stop the program

It's all well and good to shrug and say "not my problem". When the roads are crumbling and the bridges falling down, my guess is that Americans at all local and state levels may share another view.

By the way, issuing long term debt and deficit financing are two different things. A state that does not issue a security to the public to finance a debt does not mena that they have not borrowed from finacial institutions to accumulate debt. Most do. Some do both. I doubt California, for exmaple, shares your sunny "not our problem" optomism.

First, I'm a Canadian. I live in a federal state system, same as you do, ok?

Second, I'm a lawyer. I understand how parmountcy and shared field theories of constitutional law work (probably much better than you).

Third, I don't give a rat's ass about how you go about fixing your domestic problems or how you fix your fiscal policy. That's because they are not mine to fix; they are YOURS to fix. Find your own unique American solution, by all means. Take as much American excpetionalism as you can carry; fill your boots.

Fourth, I'm not naive about sprinking rational liberal Western European pixie dust over Middle America. I don't think for **one moment** that America's political culture is going to change. America has never been terribly rational about taxes and that it not going to change.

Which is exactly my point: that's why the ultimate tax bill will get only bigger before you are left with no other choice but than to pay it. But make no mistake, Western European pixie-dust or no, the bill comes due. Whether you like it - or not. The bill doesn't care much about why you incurred it. It only wants to be paid.

And that "some day maybe far off in the future" day of bill paying? It's on the horizon and it is a lot nearer than you think.

I didn't suggest Mississippi was the Federal Government. I did suggest - and do suggest - that the overall deficit burden at all local state and Federal levels is interdependent and is certain to result in cessations of funding and transfers from one government level to the next, requiring significant increase in taxation over the next 12 years to come close to maintaining current commitments.

That means when the federal government runs a deficit, all ogvernment levels will ultimately be paying taxes to deal with the fallout of that red ink on their budgets in subsequent years. There is no free lunch.

My point: You will not have a choice. You once had that choice and you made that choice. You have been enjoying a dollar's worth of government for much less than a dollar for decades. That dollar's wortg of government was not "on sale". The bill for the difference - between what you got and what you paid for it - comes due.

In Canada, unlike virtually all of Western Europs and the United States, we have bene running significant federal budget surpluses since 1995. 2009 will be our first year in the red in over 14 years. That's the cost of bad times. We'll go back in the black in two or three years, I expect. The taxpayers in Canada would rather services were not cut and deficits are not run unless they have to be. We will keep tax levels higher in order to make that happen.

Americans? They won't. Someone says raise taxes, and middle America freaks out.

That, essentially, is the story of America since before Day One. It has its strengths - and it has its weaknesses, too. Welcome to "weaknesses".

Americans have been told that they can pay now or pay a lot more later. They have consistently chosen "a lot more later" please. Without ever really *believing* that "later" will actually come.

Fair enough. In many cases (now, say) that's probably good fiscal policy. In 2002-3, choosing to go fight TWO wars and cut taxes at the same time? All by borrowing the money from the Chinese to do it?

That's maybe not so good a fiscal policy.

Good or bad... doesnt' really matter now. That bill comes due either way.

Moral of the Story: Man up and stop whining about it.

I live in Canada. Here, all of these products are taxed like any other good or service - and there is no mail order freebie to distory the level playing field of the retail economy by not having to pay them via mial order. Up here? It's not new. It's not shocking. Believe it or not, the sun still comes up every morning - the world turns. Then it gets dark and we go to sleep. Every day. Life goes on.

Thing is, the federal debt in the USA has been spiralling so fast since 2000 that all of these "reports" and pointing to same as the portents of the Four Horsemen are going to go the way of the dodo in a dozen years or so - or less.

You simply will not have a *choice* but to increase taxes in the USA to at least Canadian and possibly Western European levels if you don't deal with it soon enough. (My bet - you won't deal with it soon enough. Americans are nutty when it comes to taxes.) You'll put it off and put it off and then put it off somemore until there is no wiggle room left at all. And then you will point fingers at your politicians - instead of you the voters - which is *precisely* where the blame will lie.

That's the price you will ultimately have to pay for spending money for decades that you simply do not have. That prediction is not a *maybe*. It is a *certainty*. The cheque is coming to your table. Deal with it (and kindly quit your whining about it too, please. It's not a big deal.)

"However, most people who are into the top tier of gaming performance also have their own preferences to any gear, and wouldn't pick a whole system from a single vendor, especially HP. I think that segment of the market likes to tweak and build their own boxes in order to get the biggest bang for the buck."

I agree totally with this statement. Spot on.

To expand further, the problem with "gaming PCs" is defining what a gaming PC is. To be sure, Quad SLI was never a viable sell even to the hardcore end of the market - and SLI itself remains a difficult sell fior full implementation (though selling SLI capable mobos and cards to gamers so they might choose to go SLI later seems to have been a reasonably successful sales strategy).

Whatever the case, I don't think SLI is the main qualifier for a "gaming PC". I have SLI on three of my machines in my home - but three others *more than qualify* as gaming machines in my home. A decent CPU and a reasonaby snappy dedicated graphics card, released within, say, the last two years ought to qalify as a gaming PC. (To be clear, my non-SLI rigs are newer and faster than my SLI rigs).

If you have an intel graphics processor, yes, a move to a 360 or PS3 is a graphics upgrade. Otherwise? I'm not buying into that generalization.