In any event, the future is not what it was cracked up to be, and it's certainly not whatever Michael Lind fantasizes it will be -- a nirvana of high paying medical jobs, surrounded by "vocational types" (err, but not Lind nor any of his children) happy to work at low-paying service jobs that don't require college. That's the fantasy of an ivory tower intellectual, who assumes that it is his birthright to never, ever have to pay the piper -- and I think we all know how that usually plays out. -- Laurel962

Lind is really riffing (cribbing?) Robert Reich's The Work of Nations, and Lind is old enough to have read this book.

It's a seductive argument but, again as I contend, it only plays out with a limited population, which is why China and India's economic progress will stall. They can both turn out all the engineers they like, except that the world actually needs fewer engineers than they do landscapers/yard maintenance people or garbage men. And even the demand for the latter job has, due to improved automation, declined by about 50% in just the last twenty years or less.

Africans have been howling about this for years with infrastructure projects the Chinese are building in exchange for exclusive mineral rights - all the plum, and crucial, jobs are being performed by Chinese labor.

Long gone are the days when you just throw a few thousand pick-ax and wheel barrow wielding coolies at a project when a couple hundred semi-skilled people who can handle heavy machinery can get the job done in a much shorter time, and they are still paid shitty wages (by Western standards).

. . . Freakonomics (just like Zorkan) is a poorly reasoned and predictable right wing piece of crap.

Try reading something basic, like Freakonomics, where they do actual direct research instead of regurgitating right wing blog made-up statistics and you'll see that income of the lower echelon criminal (drug runners and sellers) is actually far lower than minimum wage. -- What the???

Neither. He's betting a on a sharp increase in rail traffic in the next 6 to 18 months.

. . . the kind of rail bed used in Europe and Japan is unnecessary for relatively slow moving freight lines.

The only way we could make use of existing railroad right of ways for high speed trains would be to get rid of freight service. They can't share tracks.

Will this acquisition mean... ...that BNSF will be able to upgrade its rickety nineteenth-century track? Could we get slab track, the laid-directly-on-concrete technology that enables European trains to run 200 mph without spilling your coffee?-- agore

Let me guess...I suppose this is Bush's fault too, right?-- BobTheCarpenter

Bush came into office with a budget surplus and a declining national debt and managed to turn it into record deficits and a ballooning national debt. And, no, none of it had to do with 9/11. It all had to do with cutting taxes for the wealthiest Americans and then starting a war.

The housing bubble would have been something of a sideshow if we hadn't been spending hundreds of millions every month on an unnecessary war for the previously three years.

. . . the official unemployment rate has always under reported by anywhere from 1/2% to 2-1/2%. This is true in most economies.

The effective unemployment rate, including people who are working only part time but who used to work full time and including people who have fallen off the unemployment roles, is probably around 15%. And, thanks to the collapse of the U.S. auto industry (GM and Chrysler aren't going to make it), there are probably a million or so reasonably paid manufacturing jobs that are never coming back.

First, nobody says everyone should be armed. The argument is that when some people who are trained are armed, they are in a position to stop or deter these types of attacks. . . .-- Xanthro

There are dozens of groups and countless nutbag gun owners in this country that advocate arming everyone all the time, not just some people.

http://crooksandliars.com/david-neiwert/matthews-gets-gun-owners-america-hea

http://www.jlgrubb.com/2009/05/why-everyone-should-be-armed.html

http://www.outdoors.net/site/features/feature.aspx?Forum=Firearms&ArticleCode=1698&V=False&SearchTerm=&curpage=1698

http://www.shvoong.com/books/1633708-everybody-allowed-carry-gun/

http://www.saf.org/

http://www.snowflakesinhell.com/

http://www.oregonlive.com/education/index.ssf/2009/08/gun_rights_advocates_sue_over.html

http://washingtonindependent.com/37360/scenes-from-the-real-america

http://gunnuts.net/2009/10/08/meleanie-hain-murdered/

http://tpmlivewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/08/twelve-carry-guns----including-assault-rifle----outside-obama-event.php

. . . the local police had to get involved. Don't they use military police any more? Fort Hood is "home" to some 50,000 military personnel. Surely they have just a bit of base security.

It is what it is Screaming about who you'd like to burn in effigy for it is meaningless. -- Zorkna

"Burn in effigy"? No, I want to waterboard most of the Bush administration, at least the cabinet, before throwing the motherfuckers into the general population at a federal penitentiary for the rest of their lives.

NPR Ombudsman Also Dreams of Widening Diversity -- Mytwords

What I'd like to see them pursue is intelligence. Then they might also like to explain why Juan Williams and Mara Liarson are allowed to collect paychecks from FOX as well as NPR.

I was living in Seattle during the whole Battle of Seattle in 1999, when the anarchists came into the city and disrupted the peaceful protestors of the WTO. The military shut the city down, fired plastic bullets at people, used tear gas in neighborhoods, arrested people, and imposed a curfew. -- NYCGrrr

The military was in no way involved with the "Battle In Seattle." That was strictly the Seattle Police Department and the King County Sheriff's Department. Don't let your fantasies run too far.