Car dealers aren't going away anytime soon, they are exceedingly influential in local politics limiting auto manufacturers ability to side step them and earn fat commissions. Were it possible, no doubt around 1,000 apple store like super stores would replace most dealers for test drives/car fitting, warranty work, and help anyone who desires it with ordering.

Here is the quick summary of the historical trends by major:
From 1970 until 2010, US population grew by about a third. However, the number of bachelor's degrees granted doubled. This is reasonable - we have a more knowledge driven economy.
There were about 52 thousand engineering and computer degrees per year around 1970. By 2010, this number is about 120 thousand - so that more then doubled. Much of this is related to computer science/information degrees (not surprising). Engineering increased but failed to double.

Math/statistics degrees decreased from about 25 thousand per year to 15 thousand per year. That might be concerning.

Physical science degrees (mostly chemistry, some geology and physics) were unchanged: about 21 thousand per year up to about 23 thousand per year. That might not sound great.

Education degrees fell from 176 thousand per year to 101 thousand per year. Ya, that is probably not good.

So what boomed? Business degrees. From 115 thousand per year in 1970 up to 358 thousand per year in 2010, which is about 22% of all degrees granted. And if you look at salary and unemployment, they do not do too bad - about on par with life science majors; better than most majors.

After business degrees, social science degrees are the next largest category, but the raw number granted per year (from 1970 to 2010) did not grow very much.

Health care related degrees, performing arts and psychology also more then doubled.

You can find the breakdown of degrees by area in the US from:

http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d11/tables/dt11_286.asp

You can find estimates of initial unemployment rates after getting a college degree, and expected earnings from:

http://www9.georgetown.edu/grad/gppi/hpi/cew/pdfs/Unemployment.Final.update1.pdf

If anyone knows more links to other data sets, I would be very interested. I want to provide my students with the best data available.

If you are interested in physics, the American Institute of Physics (aip.org) under "Physics Resources", "Statistical Research" has a huge amount of data - if anyone has similar data for other STEM majors (actually, for any major) I'm interested.

Yeah that's effective, Saddam Hussein had the 7th largest army in the world prior to the Gulf War, it caused 148 deaths while suffering 30,000 over a month (100 hours on the ground). No conventional army is big enough to cause the US meaningful losses (especially as drone tech improves). It's WMD or bust.

Affluence means having more stuff, stuff requires that you have either slaves (how humanity acquired stuff from the dawn of humanity to 1800s) or energy (cheapest til we run out is fossil fuel). What stuff do you value that didn't require energy to make, store, or transport?

I would. What's the point of life if you're a slave?

True but only hoarders care about stuff, for the sake of stuff, people mostly care dearly about status (read that as people who envy/want to sleep with you) which is pretty close to zero sum.

Tshi? Was your duck overcooked?

Except they keep giving them lands back in exchange for peace.

In my opinion, Palistine lost any claim on the lands given to them by the UN/UK when they starte and lost the '48 war. International warfare should always be played for keeps. You start the war and lose and you're lucky if your women aren't simply prizes for the victorious army and your lands become little more than a reminder to future nations not to attack someone stronger than you.

Every pilot I've ever met, GA, military or commercial, to a man (and that's only because I haven't met any women pilots), fucking loves flying, in ways that most people simply don't. Most of them spend the kind of money on it that is usually reserved for things that float or fornicate, even when it's their day job.

Our oil, it never mattered where it was buried.

Also cars aren't such a good example because the US is basically an open range for people (ie no matter what they were doing it's almost always the driver's liability if they hit a person). In a closed range state/county (ie the driver has an unrestricted right of way vs animals), the owner of an animal hit by a car is absolutely liable for the damage their animal causes to the person's car (the responsibility is on the animal's owner to is maintain their fences to prevent the collision)

My concern is it sounds like your policy is basically pick on the westerners because they're either cowed or maturely shrug off insults, but don't pick on Muslems because they will react badly. To use your school yard bully example, it's still bullying to pickon the kid who knows he will be tried as an adult for assult (or who has a father with a belt if he gets suspended one more time). The threatened violent protesters are just as much bullies as the artists.

If you wish, to use a more contriversial example, how about abortion doctor shootings? They must be aware that their continued practice will deeply offend people (frequent angry protests, I'm sure they receive threats). Should the doctor be partly responsible, when they are shot? Taking offense does not give someone license to respond with violence or chaos. If we're endowed with inalienable rights (like speech or privacy). It's encumbent on the government to protect the excercise those rights, even in cases where most of the population doesn't agree with the expression.