Party is over/ what makes us civil?

[nutronjon]

Excerpt from About.com

''The world's current (overall as well as natural) growth rate is about 1.14%, representing a doubling time of 61 years. We can expect the world's population of 6.5 billion to become 13 billion by 2067 if current growth continues. The world's growth rate peaked in the 1960s at 2% and a doubling time of 35 years.'' (from About.com: Geography: Population Growth)

How does this factor into the equation, and why has there been no hue and

cry lately about the population explosion? The earth cannot support an infinite number of people, and we don't know how many it can support with water becoming increasingly scarce.

 

Population growth verses water supply is a huge concern. This may be even a greater concern than many realize because of the vast amount of food that is grown using underground water, which is not replaced as fast as it we are consuming it. Mexico has dropped inches, because of the water removed from the underground water supply. In Israel, water is a very serious concern that can spark wars with neighbors who also need the river water, for generating electricity, producing food, drinking, etc., and for political reasons, Israel keeps on increasing its population by bring more and more Jews in, which increases the pressure on the Palestinians, who in some areas suffer kidney disease because of the very small amount of water available to them. Israel is for Jews, and few Palistinians are Jews. Add to this development over their aquifer that prevents the water from getting into the ground. The Israel and Palistinian situation is a real mess.

 

We should not over look China when discussing population and water supply problems. China has such a serious water supply problem it is partly why the communist enforced a one child policy, literally forcing women to have abortions after the first child was born. To both have electricity and get water to large industrial areas, China had to invest in a very expensive and risky dam project.

 

Here in relatively peaceful Oregon, we had a water war! We are having to make huge investments to protect the fish that depend on the rivers we have dammed. Oregon is a coastal state and the fishing industry is very important to Oregon. The fishing industry, tourist industry and farmers have been at war with each other, in dry years when there isn't enough water for the fish that depend on the rivers and the farmers who also depend on the rivers for irrigation. What hurts any of these people, hurts the economy of Oregon, and everyone is hurt when there is less of something and we have to pay higher prices.

[CraigD]

Excerpt from About.com

''The world's current (overall as well as natural) growth rate is about 1.14%, representing a doubling time of 61 years. We can expect the world's population of 6.5 billion to become 13 billion by 2067 if current growth continues. The world's growth rate peaked in the 1960s at 2% and a doubling time of 35 years.''

How does this factor into the equation, and why has there been no hue and

cry lately about the population explosion? The earth cannot support an infinite number of people, and we don't know how many it can support with water becoming increasingly scarce.

Population growth is, I think, difficult to predict in the long term, so unlike, oil, coal, and other fuel reserves, and impossible to factor into long-term planning with much certainty.

 

I believe questor is correct in his perception that the “hue and cry” of alarm over population growth rates has decreased since the early and mid 20th century. The reasons for this, or any other societal phenomena, are difficult to state with much certainty, but a few come to mind:

• “Malthusian doomsday” scenarios, well know from the late 19th through the last decades of the 20th centuries, which are based on either simple exponential or more catastrophic mathematical modelss, are increasingly taken less seriously. As both technically literate and people well educated in more humanities-focused disciplines come to understand that population dynamics are complicated and more self-regulating than many Malthusian models suggested, the idea of a sudden catastrophic population “runaway” became less frightening to people of all cultures and educational levels.
  
• Data showing a strong link between progressive human rights policies – especially increased political and legal rights for women, and general improvements in prosperity of once “third world” societies – and decreases in population growth have fueled optimism that, if the economic conditions of prosperous nations such as the US and EU nations can continue to be “exported” to less prosperous nations, the world population growth will continue to decrease. Note that, as the about.com article quoted above states, population growth rates among populations with high scores in human rights and personal income have low, and in some cases, even negative, growth rates. As conditions among other populations become more like these, it stands to reason that reproductive rate will become more similar, also.
  
• The World population rate is decreasing, from a peak of about 2%/year in the 1960s, to about 1.14% now.
  

It’s correct, IMHO, to continue to be concerned about the human population growth rate, but also appropriate to feel some optimism that theories and policies proposed and implemented in the past several decades have been effective in controlling it.

 

IMHO, of all the factors effectively controlling the population rate, the legal protection and empowerment of women is the greatest and most critical. Social and legal systems that permit women to be treated essentially as brood livestock can be expected to have reproductive rates similar to commercial livestock – though, compared to the simple injustice of such dehumanization of half of their people, the problem of global overpopulation pales in my eyes. All possible legal pressure should be exerted on cultures in which individual women cannot chose not to bear children without suffering ostracism, impoverishment, or worse, to change these conditions.

[nutronjon]

Actually, it's not, and I encourage you to review the thread I opened on this recently, as well as the many contributions already offered within it:

 

http://hypography.com/forums/engineering-applied-science/15556-i-think-we-must-try.html

 

Would you please define what "it" is in your statement?

 

I followed your link and found a video instead of written words. I don't have the connection needed for good reception of videos, so if you want me to know something, it is necessary to write that information. :shrug: sorry.

[InfiniteNow]

Would you please define what "it" is in your statement?

 

I followed your link and found a video instead of written words. I don't have the connection needed for good reception of videos, so if you want me to know something, it is necessary to write that information. :shrug: sorry.

 

You said:

"Right now the cost are too high to justify the shift [to renewable energy sources]."

 

They're not, especially when viewed in context of current carbon based fuel prices, the costs to our environment, and the security of our nation...

 

 

"We're borrowing money from china to pay for oil from the middle east to burn it into the atmosphere... every part of that needs to change."

 

 

 

EDIT: Also, the cost is decreasing rapidly, just as it did with computers. The technology of making solar is similar to the technology of making chips. I encourage you to look up Moore's Law.

[nutronjon]

Population growth is, I think, difficult to predict in the long term, so unlike, oil, coal, and other fuel reserves, and impossible to factor into long-term planning with much certainty.

 

I believe questor is correct in his perception that the “hue and cry” of alarm over population growth rates has decreased since the early and mid 20th century. The reasons for this, or any other societal phenomena, are difficult to state with much certainty, but a few come to mind:

• “Malthusian doomsday” scenarios, well know from the late 19th through the last decades of the 20th centuries, which are based on either simple exponential or more catastrophic mathematical modelss, are increasingly taken less seriously. As both technically literate and people well educated in more humanities-focused disciplines come to understand that population dynamics are complicated and more self-regulating than many Malthusian models suggested, the idea of a sudden catastrophic population “runaway” became less frightening to people of all cultures and educational levels.
  
• Data showing a strong link between progressive human rights policies – especially increased political and legal rights for women, and general improvements in prosperity of once “third world” societies – and decreases in population growth have fueled optimism that, if the economic conditions of prosperous nations such as the US and EU nations can continue to be “exported” to less prosperous nations, the world population growth will continue to decrease. Note that, as the about.com article quoted above states, population growth rates among populations with high scores in human rights and personal income have low, and in some cases, even negative, growth rates. As conditions among other populations become more like these, it stands to reason that reproductive rate will become more similar, also.
  
• The World population is decreasing, from a peak of about 2%/year in the 1960s, to about 1.14% now.
  

It’s correct, IMHO, to continue to be concerned about the human population growth rate, but also appropriate to feel some optimism that theories and policies proposed and implemented in the past several decades have been effective in controlling it.

 

IMHO, of all the factors effectively controlling the population rate, the legal protection and empowerment of women is the greatest and most critical. Social and legal systems that permit women to be treated essentially as brood livestock can be expected to have reproductive rates similar to commercial livestock – though, compared to the simple injustice of such dehumanization of half of their people, the problem of global overpopulation pales in my eyes. All possible legal pressure should be exerted on cultures in which individual women cannot chose not to bear children without suffering ostracism, impoverishment, or worse, to change these conditions.

 

I can hardly believe this, you said that I question is correct. Understanding exponential growth is vitally important to city planning, or national planning, or even international planning. I would not brush this aside because it may not be 100% accurate. The geologist who made me aware of this, uses the example of frogs in a pond. If a pond is only half of frogs, and each frog reproduced only two frogs, the next spring the pond would be full of frogs. The point is made better with a picture than words. It is that last doubling that makes a livable situation, unlivable. All planning must consider for how long the water supply will meet the population's needs, and the sewage system, and the school system, and the housing, etc.. If China had not taken drastic population control steps, when it did, the situation in China today would be ugly. It is coldly a matter of math.

 

This is not just about figure population growth, but also the amount of resources available. Again, this is cold math. If we know the underground water table is dropping a foot a year, and the land mass is sinking, we can figure pretty closely when the underground water supply will no longer meet demand. The smaller the under ground space for water gets, the worse the problem gets, because the under ground space for water can not be increased, after the land mass sinks.

[nutronjon]

Thanks to the water question I did some googling and the problem is worse than I realized. In fact, the problem could be contributing to global warming.:shrug:

 

Ding Darling "The Story of the Ground Water Table" - The University of Iowa Libraries

Then a group of scientists who started to study the situation and its causes, remembered the old water table which used to be near the surface of the ground, sometimes not more than 12 or 15 feet deep on the average. That same water table was now much lower, sometimes twice its original depth, and in one state in the middle west, it had fallen to 59 feet, where once it had been only 8 to 10 feet below the surface of the ground. Nearly everywhere in the United States the water table had fallen considerably since the days of the pioneers.

 

Small wonder that the farmers' wells had gone dry. And because natural springs were only places where the underground water table came so near the surface that it bubbled forth out of the ground, naturally the springs went dry too when the water table dropped. And if the springs no longer flowed into the little creeks and from the creeks into the rivers, it was easy to see why the streams dried up (or nearly so) in mid-summer. And if there was less water on the ground, naturally the air became drier from lack of evaporation.

 

 

 

The same group of scientists reasoned that if the old water table was double the distance from the surface, and roots had to be twice as long to reach the moisture, it was to be expected that the plants might get twice as thirsty in dry seasons. Of course, corn, oats, and wheat have very shallow roots and no one thought that they ever depended directly for their moisture on their roots reaching the water table; yet in the neighboring fields where the native deep-rooted vegetation had never been disturbed, the plants remained green long after the short-rooted domestic crops had perished from the drought.

 

 

 

Many theories were explored and not all of the supposed causes have yet been sufficiently proved to satisfy the scientific investigators. There are, however, some established facts which can be given that are known to have played a large part in lowering the water table. The most important ones are as follows:

[nutronjon]

You said:

"Right now the cost are too high to justify the shift [to renewable energy sources]."

 

They're not, especially when viewed in context of current carbon based fuel prices, the costs to our environment, and the security of our nation...

 

 

"We're borrowing money from china to pay for oil from the middle east to burn it into the atmosphere... every part of that needs to change."

 

 

 

EDIT: Also, the cost is decreasing rapidly, just as it did with computers. The technology of making solar is similar to the technology of making chips. I encourage you to look up Moore's Law.

 

The cost of our military presince in the mid east and barrowing money from China, should be added to the cost of oil, but unfortunately they are not. This is a problem with capitalism. Tax payers are paying the cost of our military presince in the mid east and will pay for the loans from China, and will pay to prevent the collapse of finanical instutitions, but they still worship Reagan who lead us into this mess, and slashed spending on alternative energy, and they still scream "keep the government out of it". If we could turn the clock back, and re elect Carter, we could keep our spending on alternative energy, and avoid the increase of demand that occurred after Reagan was elected. But we can not turn the clock back, and we did sink our money into another war that should not have happened, and we are barrowing money to stay afloat, so now where do we get the money for the transition?

 

The cost of the transition is higher than private companies can handle. That is the capitalist problem. Private companies do not report to their stock holders the cost of war and our loan with China, to justify the expense of developing solar energy. That is not what interest investors. When we buy gasoline we are not paying for the cost of war and the loan with China, so no, it is not cost effective to make that shift yet. Effectively we subsidize the price of oil with taxes and our national defense budget, instead of subsidizing alternative energy development. This is the Industrial/Military Complex mentality that has been ruling our country since Eisenhower, and capitalism gone sour.

 

Improved technology and increasing energy cost may eventual make the shift to solar energy practical, but that day is not here yet. Not as long as capitalism and "keep government out of it", sentiment runs the show. The energy crisis, is how fast the problem is getting out of hand, compare to how fast we can correct it. We should have stayed with the action Carter began, but the public believed Reagan when he said conservation wasn't necessary and slashed domentic budgets to establish our military presince in the mid east, without noticably increasing our taxes. Thankful we have the Internet and can get the truth out.

[InfiniteNow]

The cost of the transition is higher than private companies can handle. That is the capitalist problem.

 

Prove it.

I dare ye.

[CraigD]

I especially like your term "heat engine era". Are others using this term? I ask, because I think this termology is useful, and knowing how others use the term would be helpful. The more I ponder the term, the more I like it.

While it’s not a heavily-used term - a google search shows only a couple engineering books and papers using the phrase “heat engine era” – it’s one that most technologists would, I think, immediately recognize and find sensible. It sprang to mind when I was writing my previous post due, I think, to a book I’m currently reading, the 1921 history for young readers, “The Story of Mankind” by Hendrik Willem van Loon.

 

(Some time ago, I’ve set a goal of reading all the Newbery Medal books (knowledge of the existence of which I owe my late step grandmother, who for several years gave me each year’s book for my birthday) and was delighted recently to find that many of the old ones are available online via Project Gutenberg and other sources – van Loon’s wonderful, though somewhat dated history is the first book awarded the Newbery Medal. I recommend it highly for readers of all ages and educations.)

 

Like many writers of his day through my youth in the 1960s and 70s, van Loon anticipated a transition from a heat-engine based industrial society to an all electric one sooner than has actually occurred. Quoting from “The Story of Man”:

If I am not mistaken the electric-engine will soon entirely drive out the ``heat engine'' just as in the olden days the more highly-organised prehistoric animals drove out their less efficient neighbours.

 

Personally (but I know nothing about machinery) this will make me very happy. For the electric engine which can be run by waterpower is a clean and companionable servant of mankind but the ``heat-engine,'' the marvel of the eighteenth century, is a noisy and dirty creature for ever filling the world with ridiculous smoke-stacks and with dust and soot and asking that it be fed with coal which has to be dug out of mines at great inconvenience and risk to thousands of people.

IMHO van Loon, ”knowing nothing of machinery” as he admits, is wrong in thinking that hydroelectric power can satisfy the world’s power needs, but not too far off, as hydro power can be considered an indirect form of solar, since the hyro cycle is driven almost entirely by solar power.

 

The geologist whose books I enjoy, speaks of the oil based economy and says we could have a solar based economy. However, he also says the shift from an oil based economy to a solar based economy "would almost certainly involve some large changes in life-styles and a considerable reorganization of society". I am not sure what he had in mind, but he says some areas of the world are better for solar power than others.

Simply put, the best places in the world for solar are those with the longest and brightest sunshine. In general, this means closer to the equator, where the sun is more directly overhead, free from frequent heavy cloud cover, and not in deep valleys which spend long parts of their days in the shade.

 

A less optimal place may be preferable to a more, however, if it is closer to a center of energy consumption, such as cities and aluminum smelters, as the cost of construction, maintenance, and resistive power loss of electric transmission lines is reduced.

 

The central engineering challenge facing large-scale solar power is one that’s obvious to anyone with experience with the smallest solar toy – having power at night, when the solar input is practically zero. Completely ground based systems appear to me to address this problem via three basic approaches:

• Global-scale “grid” networking – This scheme proposed extending the current “power grid” of power generation and consumption point to a global scale, with power cables of unprecedented capacity and length literally spanning the globe, so that the sunlit half of the Earth’s surface is continuously supplying all consumers
  
• Heat storage – This scheme typically doesn’t convert sunlight directly into electricity, but into heat, which is then stored, typically either as hot water or air, and used to power heat engines (just because can Loon calls them “noisy and dirty creatures” doesn’t make it so! :shrug:).
   
  One of the most promising designs for such a system is the solar updraft tower. Small scale prototypes have been built and appear to prove the concept, however despite several serious projects to build commercial powerplants in the 50-500 MW range in Spain and Austrialia which appeared to various times since around 2000 to be proceeding well, progress currently appears uncertain and stalled.
  
• Chemical batteries – As with electric energy of any source, solar-electric energy could be stored in rechargeable batteries. Even the best currently available battery technology, however, doesn’t appear capable of being scaled up enough.
  
• Superconductor storage loops – In principle, a loop of superconducting wire can store electric energy like a chemical battery, but with nearly zero energy loss, and the capability of unlimited charge/discharge cycles. Such technology is at present, however, experimental and expensive – “not yet ready for production”.
  
• Other local mechanical storage – schemes like these include using photoelectric power to pump water from a lower to an upper reservoir during the day, then generate power hydroelectrically during the night, and using photoelectric power to compress air during the day, then generate power using air turbines during the day.
   
  The second of these approaches is the one favored by Zweibel, Mason and Fthenakis’s “Solar Grand Plan”
  

As to the complex political and economic issues, they are difficult, I think, for technologists to predict or discuss. However, I’m optimistic that, as oil demand exceeds supply in the coming years, and accordingly prices increase dramatically, these problems will be solved as easily as the 19th century shortage of whale oil was, and with little more social and economic upheaval. The key to such a transition, IMHO, is the following by nations and commercial interests of a somewhat specialized variant of the Golden Rule: “don’t screw over your fellow humans (eg: present day oil exporting nations) and they’ll not attempt to screw you in return”.

 

Overall, I see the transition from limited supply, commoditized fuel energy supplies to effectively unlimited ones such as solar as having the potential to fundamentally change human attitudes about supply, demand, scarcity and abundance, a change I feel will be socially transforming and good. The transition will not be, I’m certain, without bumps and woes, but will, I’m hopeful, occur, and once arrived at, be seen by nearly everyone as good.

[nutronjon]

Well CraigD, I don't think there is anything I can add to what you have said, except maybe some thoughts on the social, economic shift. If we move industry to the regions most capable of producing solar energy, something needs to be done about the limited water supply in these areas. And the economic/power and cultural shifts seem huge to me. Imagine everyone in the world thinking, hey, we have to work together on this, because we both have something the other needs.

 

There was a time when people went to be sleep at night. :) How about a world that lives in harmony with nature? I think that sounds like a good idea. Maybe production and energy shifts could bring us closer to nature? Maybe we could even plan our lives for human beings, instead of for industrialist and wall street?

 

I just thought of a question. In Alaska for a period of the year, they get a lot of sunshine, and then a lot of darkness. Would the extreme north and extreme south be useful when it comes to solar energy?

[questor]

With the population increasing as it is, and the continuing influx of illegal

aliens, the failure of our educational system, government growth, liberal welfare and sanctuary city problems, the USA should become largely irrelevant

as a global power in 30-50 years.

[nutronjon]

With the population increasing as it is, and the continuing influx of illegal

aliens, the failure of our educational system, government growth, liberal welfare and sanctuary city problems, the USA should become largely irrelevant

as a global power in 30-50 years.

 

Why would the influx of immigrants harm the US?

 

What is the failure of the education system as you understand it?

 

What do you mean by government growth?

 

If not welfare then what you propose? Do you believe there are good jobs for everyone who wants one? These jobs all pay enough to sustain a family at a decent standard of living? How about instead of allowing mothers a welfare check so they can stay home and raise their children, we demand they take telephone jobs telling people fortunate, and conning them out of money? Perhaps more bars and more liberal driving and drinking laws, to encourage the use of bars and provide jobs? Legalize prostitution? Stop factory jobs from leaving the US?

[questor]

The illegals are mostly untrained day workers. With our current economy, we can't support them. That is why many are returning to their original country. Also every person in this country produces 4.5 pounds of waste daily. They also use up our finite resources, infrastructure, and medical facilities. You seem to be aware of water shortages, how quickly do you think another 20 million people will use up available water?

 

Where do you think jobs come from? Do you think the government creates jobs? If everyone worked for the government, where would our money come from?

 

If in the year 2000 you have 10 million people working for the government and in year 2020 you have 15 million people working for the government, you have bigger government.

[nutronjon]

The illegals are mostly untrained day workers. With our current economy, we can't support them. That is why many are returning to their original country. Also every person in this country produces 4.5 pounds of waste daily. They also use up our finite resources, infrastructure, and medical facilities. You seem to be aware of water shortages, how quickly do you think another 20 million people will use up available water?

 

Where do you think jobs come from? Do you think the government creates jobs? If everyone worked for the government, where would our money come from?

 

If in the year 2000 you have 10 million people working for the government and in year 2020 you have 15 million people working for the government, you have bigger government.

 

Yes, let us talk about where those jobs are and where they will come from. Real income has been dropping, while the cost of real estate and the cost of living has increased. This doesn't just mean the middle class have less deposable income, but that it is increasingly difficult for low income to just survive.

 

Employment used to be tied to mineral resources and trees and we are exhausting those resources, and have spent the wealth. This do not look good.

 

Federal Jobs Net: Federal Government Jobs / Employment - All Government Jobs Including Post Office Jobs.

 

Are you considering a government job? The federal government employs more than 2,700,000 workers and hires hundreds of thousands each year to replace civil service workers that transfer to other federal government jobs, retire, or leave for other reasons. Average annual salary for full-time federal government jobs exceeds $67,000. The U.S. Government is the largest employer in the United States, hiring about 2.0 percent of the nation's work force. Federal government jobs can be found in every state and large metropolitan area, including overseas in over 200 countries. The average annual federal workers compensation, pay plus benefits, is $106,871 compared to just $53,288 for the private sector according to the United States Bureau of Economic Analysis.

 

Sluggish private job growth indicates failure of tax cuts

Changes in tax law since 2001 reduced federal government revenue by $870 billion through September 2005. Supporters of these tax cuts have touted them as great contributors to growth in jobs and pay. But, in reality, private-sector job growth since 2001 has been disappointing, and a closer look at the new jobs created shows that federal spending—not tax cuts—are responsible for the jobs created in the past five years.

 

If tax cuts have created jobs at all since 2001, it will have happened in the private sector. Assuming that job growth in 2006 matches the Bush Administration's projections, the economy will have added about 2.0 million jobs to the private sector from FY2001 through FY2006. But how many of these two million jobs actually can be attributed to tax cuts and how many to increased government spending—particularly increased defense spending—in this period?

 

 

 

Based on Defense Department estimates of the number of private-sector jobs created by its own spending, we project that additional defense spending will account for a 1.495 million gain in private sector jobs between FY2001 and FY2006. Furthermore, increases in non-defense discretionary spending since 2001 will have added yet another 1.325 million jobs in the private sector, for a total of 2.82 million jobs created by increased government spending. Increased mandatory government spending—which is not even included in these estimates or the accompanying chart—would account for even more job creation. The mere fact that the projected job growth resulting from increased defense and other government spending exceeds the actual number of jobs projected to be added to the economy through 2006 clearly indicates that the tax cuts hardly seem plausible as the engine of the modest job growth in the economy since 2001.

 

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Recent job gains lag far behind historical norms

 

President Bush has noted that 2 million jobs were created over the course of 2005 and that we have added 4.6 million jobs since the decline in jobs ended in May 2003. But does that mean the labor market is getting back to normal?

 

Unfortunately, no. Recent job gains lag far behind historical norms. Last year's 2 million new jobs represented a gain of 1.5%, a sluggish growth rate by historical standards (see chart below). In fact, it is less than half of the average growth rate of 3.5% for the same stage of previous business cycles that lasted as long. At that pace, we would have created 4.6 million jobs last year. If jobs had grown last year at the pace of even the slowest of the prior cycles—2.1% in the 1980s—we would have added 2.8 million jobs. Over the last half century, the only 12-month spans with job growth as low as 1.5% were those that actually included recession months, occurred just before a recession, or were during the "jobless recovery" of 1992 and early 1993.

 

 

 

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

For further analysis, consult the following EPI publications:

 

Why people are so dissatisfied with today's economy (Issue Brief #219)

 

The wage squeeze and higher health care costs (Issue Brief #218)

 

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

JobWatch

 

 

 

Copyright © 2006 by The Economic Policy Institute. All rights reserved.

 

[DFINITLYDISTRUBD]

$53,288 for the private sector according to the United States Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Where the !!!!F-bleeeeeeeeeeeeep!!!!! do they get that number? Me and Sweety working a combined 100+hours a week are lucky to clear the mid to high forties. Just goes to show how far removed from the working class Unca Scam really is.

[CraigD]

Federal Jobs Net: Federal Government Jobs / Employment - All Government Jobs Including Post Office Jobs.:

The average annual federal workers compensation,

pay plus benefits

, is $106,871 compared to just $53,288 for the private sector according to the United States Bureau of Economic Analysis.

$53,288 for the private sector according to the United States Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Where the !!!!F-bleeeeeeeeeeeeep!!!!! do they get that number?

Like the preceding one, this figure is based on total compensation, an imprecisely defined term of business that means, roughly, the total cost to the employer of everything of benefit to the employee. By this formulation, wages and employer-paid health insurance would be included, but rent on offices and equipment, liability insurance, etc, would not be.

 

The largest non-wage cost of a federal employee is, I believe, health insurance, followed by employer contribution to 401K and similar retirement accounts. A reasonable rule-of-thumb to convert from total compensation to before-tax wages is to subtract $14,000, so what they’re really saying is the average private sector wage earner makes about US$39,000/year.

 

Also note that this is an average, presumably a simple mean, so the statistics’s author may have included senior employees and executives with very high wages.

 

Because there are so many possible assumptions and variations in calculation, without a reference to the source of his statistics, they’re of limited value. It’s worth noting that the purpose of the referenced webpage is to encourage and assist jobseekers to take federal jobs, so it is in a sense an advertisement, and thus prone to exaggeration.

Me and Sweety working a combined 100+hours a week are lucky to clear the mid to high forties. Just goes to show how far removed from the working class Unca Scam really is.

You need to take into account location when comparing wages and total compensation. At my previous neighborhood in rural southern West Virginia, USA, a household with total wages of $50,000/year is considered moderately wealthy, whereas in my present neighborhood in suburban Maryland, a household with these wages would be considered nearly subsistence level.

 

On average, federal employees live and work in higher-cost urban areas, which contributes to the high average compensation for federal employees statistic.

 

These factors aside, that the US federal government is a huge employer (largest in the US, with 1.8 million employees, excluding the military and the Post Office – source Federal Government, Excluding the Postal Service). The wisdom of this is highly discussion-worthy, though badly off-topic for this thread, so anyone wishing to discuss it, please create a new thread.

[Donk]

The "Lord of the Flies" story to which you referred is relevant to the subject.

It is said this story is about German youth who eagerly followed Hitler and the Nazi Party. Germany had education for technology for military and industrial purpose, when the US had liberal education. The US has since replaced its liberal education with Germany's model of education for technology for military and industrial purpose and has become a militarily aggressive country, with its leadership using torture, and in other ways is developing a poor human rights record. The culture of the US being very different from what it was. Any comments?

That's not what William Golding told me and my classmates back in 1960 or thereabouts B) To paraphrase:

 

"Everybody in the staffroom knows that without a constant firm hand you would all turn into a bunch of savages. From that premise, Lord of the Flies wrote itself."

 

Though he may just have been winding us up. :eek_big: