"More women with more buying power means more demand and more work to fill that demand. Adding more workers should make everyone wealthier. If it doesn't that means there is something terribly wrong with the economy."

Ding ding ding --- we have a winner! I continually hear people claiming that if everyone made a living wage --- so not even if we raised minimum wage by government, but if every worker got together and said, 'hey, let's all refuse to work for wages we can't live on so they have to pay us enough to live on' --- that the economy would break down completely. Whether or not that's true, if a significant proportion of economic participants believe that the economy would literally break down if everyone received a fair exchange for the valuable work they do, whether that's programming software or emptying garbage cans or cleaning hotel rooms, that says to me that there is something terribly wrong with the economy. And the number of people who vote Republican suggests to me that this is not just anecdotal among the people I know, but that a significant proportion of regular joes have been tricked into believing this.

But just in case you happen to be a Ron Paul supporter, I should needle you by mentioning that, according to his website, Ron Paul will be proud to be the president who finally turns out the lights on the irs for good. (and I don't think he means that he will have roboticized the entire facility so lights are no longer needed for business as usual).

Okay, I concede that it could be a mistake to run on the "get rid of the irs platform." But I submit that the reason for it is that simplifying taxes --- not necessarily lowering them, but simplifying them to at least the point of non-absurdity so we can actually talk reasonably about how much we are paying --- would render the irs only necessary in greatly reduced form, if at all. And then we can talk reasonably about how much we are/should be paying.

But jobs are continually being dumbed down to that level. In my town, driving a bus is a student-level job. I don't want some student who only got his license two years ago and is thinking about his chem exam driving a BUS. I want a freaking career driver.

And plenty of places will happily schedule you to juuuuust under the limit of hours where they'd have to start paying benefits, too. So you get no overtime and no benefits, yet you end up working more than a full-time job.

I think you have to actually read his tax reform plan for that to make sense.

(And to be clear, I'm not arguing that there is no cause-and-effect between overeating and obesity, but my anec-data tells me that at least some people that are clinically obese don't eat or worse than more than usual, they just have a completely different body type. So I'm just arguing against applying your assertion to *all* obese people. And your methodology.)

So that's two anecdotes from a pair of the closest relatives you can get...Ima need a few before I find your study to be statistically significant.

Okay, point taken. You're right about the autonomous navigation one, I forgot about DART. And yeah, true, it's a matter of perspective, but I'll concede that one as robot error. Basically, they get to a certain age, and you have to let take responsibility for their own actions... And okay, yeah, Clementine, while not a failure, probably would have observed Geographos had there been a human aboard. So I'll concede that my statement was a bit of a sweeping generalization and scale it back.

*But* a lot of the failures in unmanned flights were simple mechanical failures. And a number of them were definitely human error, like a failure to convert units or a part incorrectly installed.

But, okay, I'll concede your point about AI --- so let's put that budget into AI! :D

Yeah, I completely agree. This guy is talking about letting astronauts be "explorers" --- I strongly believe that's going to happen much more effectively with privately-funded astronauts from companies that have only share-holders to answer to, rather than the government that has an entire --- highly excitable, if the past is any indication --- country.

That's a good idea, and then maybe we'd end up using these Ro Bots of which you speak so often that first it would become a commonly-used colocation, and then finally fuse into a single unit...."Robots." What a beautiful new word that will be! :D

"we're still a very, very long way from being able to replace astronauts with robots"

Since you make that assertion, I'm interested in hearing what astronauts have done that robots couldn't have done better.

"you might be able to cut down on safety measures, but you wouldn't really be saving that much anyways"

Everything I've read suggests the opposite: that manned spaceflight is hugely more expensive that unmanned, and I've never seen any evidence that suggests that any space flights had to be redone to correct robot error. (Human error, OTOH... *cough* Hubble *cough*) I'd like to see anything you have that suggests differently. (j/k about the Hubble telescope, btw, since they waited until the first regularly scheduled servicing mission to fix it, rather than making a special trip)

Hey, I got a physics degree because I wanted to be an astronaut, so I understand completely. And that's fine, if it's privatized. Otherwise, we have to ask, how much are your dreams worth to the entire United States?

Agreed; why's he so gung-ho when the main thing manned spaceflight does is get the public excited about funding...manned spaceflight. Unmanned spaceflight --- particularly as automation is just starting to get really exciting --- can deliver results at a significantly reduced cost.

Some people don't read messages, as every current and former tech support person can no doubt attest.