These people are living the brainless life of primates; they operate at a sub-human level. There are billions of people in the world operating at this level, mindlessly procreating even though they can barely feed themselves. I do feel sorry for the children born into such an environment. On the other hand, perhaps such a life is still better than no life at all - that is for philosophers to decide. What do I owe them? Because of their ignorance, they do need help. I would much rather some of my tax money was spent on birth control, universal health care and other social welfare measures than on weapons to enrich the elite class. So the answer would be:

1. Spend resources to inform people like these about birth control

2. Increase the minimum wage and job security so they have a chance at making a living

3. Have universal health care, like any civilized country

4. Spend resources to educate these unintelligent people about how to shop, how to use money, how to cook, how to take care of kids, etc.

It is a social problem and I have no objection to using tax money to help. There is plenty of money to be had from corportions and the wealthy.

To paraphrase a brilliant writer, "The only thing worse than having your writing talked about is not having it talked about". The writer is to be congratulated on provoking such a strong response.

It is interesting how we admire successful parasites (corporate executives, the oligarchs who own most of the country's wealth) while condeming the minimally successful parasites (welfare bums, scrounging relatives). The lesson seems to be that if you are going to go in for parasitism, do so in a big way. We could call it capitalism.

Isn't it obvious that generational labels (Gen X, Boomer, etc) are simply clever marketing techniques. People are fascinated by categories. It is not much different from pretending that scorpios have something in common with other scorpios or that people born in the year of the dragon have similar personalities. Of course, there is a grain of truth in it, as there is in all of these categories, but the differences between people are far greater than any similarities. Anyway, no harm done; it sells articles.

A LW writes: "On the most basic level, Brazilians are treated like lower-class citizens by the USA. Most Brazilians will have a difficult time getting tourist visas to the US."

Not just Brazilians. My wife's father, a Chinese citizen, was just refused a visa for the second time to visit the US. He travelled for 24 hours by train to get to the US embassy in Beijing, only to be told he can't visit his daughter and grandson. Shabby, shabby treatment.

I hate to disagree with you Patrick, but:

The plane would fly and there would be no "skidding" or smell of burned tires. The premise of the question states that "The conveyer belt is designed to exactly match the speed of the wheels, moving in the opposite direction". This necessarily implies that the tire speed must match the treadmill speed, or to be more precise, the treadmill speed will always match the tire speed. The plane's engines will accelerate the plane down the treadmill-runway completely independently of tires, treadmills and questions of friction. As the plane accelerates, due to the engines pushing on air, the tires speed will increase but this will be matched by a corresponding increase in the speed of the treadmill - there will be no "skidding" and no extra power required. The plane will take off under normal power and at normal speed as soon as it reaches the required airspeed. The plane will proceed as normal down the runway. The tires and treadmill are simply irrelevant as they cancel each other out.

"The speed of the treadmill will always be less than the speed of the wheels. It cannot catch up. Every time it spins faster to match the speed of the wheels, it spins the wheels faster. The wheels will always be spinning at the speed of the treadmill plus the speed of the plane."

Why? The question specifically states that the treadmill is designed to always match the speed of the wheels. If the plane accelerates down the treadmill runway due to engine thrust, the treadmill will speed up to match the speed of the wheels.

I believe the whole point of this question is simply to demonstrate that planes get no thrust from the wheels and all the thurst comes from the engines. You could get rid of the cumbersome treadmill and imagine the plance on a runway coated with perfectly smooth ice. Could it take off? Yes it could (if we ignore the problem of steering straight down the runway with no traction)All the tires do is support the plane until lift exceeds the force of gravity and the planes becomes airborne. How did it get so complicated?