A consumer NAS that can handle 9 TB of storage costs $1,400.

Yes we are, but we also have systems like you describe.

You don't get to redefine the word "ambition" to match your own pet peeves. Someone who is ambitious strives to improve themselves. Hard work is great, but you shouldn't expect to receive merit increases for doing the same job every day. Once you've reached the pinnacle of competence at your job, you should either expect no more or move on.

I don't recognize this generation that believes cowering in a hovel, unable to express one's own thoughts for fear of reprisal, constitutes "freedom".

I think the majority of people would find mutilating one's sexual organs and appearance to be out of the mainstream. They have trouble distinguishing transgenders and people like Heidi Montag-- they both seem to have shocking abnormalities with their body image because we're not all shrinks. You act like the guy called for mass executions.

Biblically, all sins are mortal crimes to God but indeed, humans are not supposed to treat them as such.

Also perhaps the Church needs to allow its priests some kind of legitimate sexual outlet (e.g. marriage).

Nearly all of these pedophiles abused boys. Since the Catholic Church is never going to accept homosexuality, accepting marriage is not going to provide a "legitimate sexual outlet". While boys are more accessible due to the traditional value of priests as role models, they could almost as easily take off their clerical collars and hit a few bars or dating websites. If the scandal were one where priests were spending the parish accounts on hookers and blow, I'd agree with you. I think it's a bit more complex.

You want Americans to live in poverty. You want America to be a country of inequality and poverty. That's the conservative vision of America.

Nice straw man, ignoramus. We want people to be ambitious, not to remain burger-flippers forever and feel they get to complain that they don't have what people who carry risk and responsibility have. Some folks are physically or mentally disabled, so they need help. But "average" folks don't get to slack and then tell US what to pay them. If their labor is valuable, they'll find someone eager to employ them.

It would be pretty ironic if they were.

Sounds kind of like the broken-window fallacy. Paying more for the same work doesn't magically create money.

We make lots of jokes about "first world problems", but those are really what we have. We're too full of ourselves in the USA to take on a roommate or live in an efficiency, live without cable TV, live without a cell phone (or even a smart phone), shop at a thrift store, cook our own food, etc. This is not a permanent state of existence, but just what we have to put up with until we prove ourselves.

No, what minimum wage says is that it's illegal to compete with the guy down the street by cutting your worker's wages below a certain point.

I didn't realize that low-income workers were serfs who couldn't look for a new job.

If we let the USPS operate as they should (a taxpayer-funded government agency) then they wouldn't have to worry about financial solvency, and we could get mail every day of the week.

Thoughts like these could explain why we have trillion-dollar deficits each year. We let SS, Medicare, Medicaid, and most any other program operate "as they should" without worrying about costs... because the credit card has no limit and we can always soak the rich.

That's your opinion, Captain Vegemite.

You're part of the problem.