DrewEckhardt

The problem here is that the government is made up of the same sorts of people who are greedy when running private business, except now they're officers in a company with 3000 billion in revenues instead of $50B for a large company like Microsoft . For things to work well, you probably need to limit government size so that people can do better in private industry.

I have an Economist subscription mostly because they're not an American magazine with American biases. While Obama might not lie about there being WMDs in Iraq, he shares other politician's propensity to stretch the truth when campaigning. In this case, he's decided that keeping a scheduled expiration is not actually a "tax increase." Obama voted "Yea" on 3-14-08 and 6-4-08 to allow expiration of the Bush 28% to 25% rate reduction. During his campaigning he's said the same thing. A single person's taxable income over $32,550K is taxed at that rate. You get $5450 as the standard deduction and $3500 for the personal exempstion, so single people making $41,500 to $87,800 who don't itemize or take above the line deductions are going to have a 12.5% increase in their marginal tax rate. Our budget is unbalanced and going increasingly towards interest on the debt. When need to cut spending and/or increase taxes. This is an increase. It's probably a good increase. As long as people are going to be supporting a government with out of control spending they should be paying a fraction of the price.

According to the Economist, Obama is going to raise taxes on people making over $42,000 a yaer. Allowing tax cuts to expire when your oponent doesn't is the same thing as raising taxes.

That's the whole point, although you might avoid light/bright colors on your seat and knees which will get dirty from crawling around in the plane and on the ground while packing. I like an extra layer of black cordura on those parts of my jumpsuits.

No, it's a flat tax. It only SEEMS regressive because there is a cap. It's actually progressive until you reach the cap, because the amount you and your spouse get out per additional dollar goes down until you hit the cap.

Right. Legalize drugs and prostitution, but keep driving under the influence and locking kids in the car while visiting brothels illegal. Much cheaper.

Social security is a bunch of programs under one heading - a retirement savings plan, life insurance for a bread-winner's dependants, and disability insurance. Mostly it's a mandatory retirement savings plan which is very progressive and a bad value at the top. A married person with a non working spouse at the bottom of the scale will have about 75% of their income replaced when they retire while a single person at the wage cap only gets 25%.

Quote I know equipment is included during training, but after one gets thier lisence, what is the average cost of equipment and plane for jumps? Under $10 to over $50 depending on where you live, what sort of planes and infrastructure the DZ owns, what profits the DZ makes from who, how high you go, whether you have to rent gear, what sort of gear you own (newish gear depreciates $2/jump total for main and container; custom gear in your color more if you want to sell it soon, and old gear bought at a good price sells for what you paid), and how many jumps you're splitting your fixed costs over (a repack every 120 days costs the same whether you do 1 jump or 500).

You'll learn more if you double your jump numbers under instruction With static line you can't graduate without having about twice the minum number it takes to get cleared for self supervision under AFF but that's not quite the same thing. Provided that you don't neglect learning how to spot, doing hop-and-ops for fun, and learning something about canopy flight after the first 7 once you reach 50 jumps there shouldn't be a difference in how you got there. In some parts of the country, getting good weather and aircraft to make it through AFF without becoming uncurrent in the off-season would be unlikely to happen and the DZs won't try. In some parts of the country they won't waste hte profit margin on static line.

No. After the advertisements on dz.com and yahoo.com took up too much screen space I downloaded an advertising blocking plugin. I haven't seen a dz.com ad on my laptop for most of a year.

I've chopped spinning malfunctions with as little as 1.5 pounds per square foot and had more airspeed than after a Cessna exit. You want to cutaway immediately if you're low, especially since you may be ending up with reserve line twists. Below 800 feet dump first and hope for the best because a cutway is going to be iffy. OTOH, with a really big canopy you can PLF with the brakes stowed and not have any issues and are better off keeping it.

Sortof as a backup. I get tickets on flights I know I can make, and am often pleasntly surprised at being able to squeeze on the one before that. That sort of thing doesn't work if you're traveling when business people do, who want to be at work on Monday and back home on Friday. So I try not to travel when business people do.

Even spending money on a war is still better than spending money on people who choose not to work, For most of us that depends on the value of a human life (I don't differentiate between brown or white and American or Other), although if that wasn't the case the dollars and cents would be the determining factor. We spend a lot more on a military capable of these sorts of misadventures than paying people not to work, with most of the social programs being a fulfillment of promises (Social Security - we'll steal 12.4% of your income which could replace 100% of what you make at retirement if invested in the stock market inspite of problems like those recently experienced in exchange for as little as 25% with nothing going to your heirs) and what are effectively wage subsidies so businesses can pay people less than what it would take to survive at a first world standard of living. Yup, that's a problem. I think people have a right to what they could acquire in nature. Before civilization, we could all make clubs, build lean-tos, kill deer, gather berries, dress in furs, and have the basics consisting of food, shelter, and clothing. Since we don't want people homesteading Central Park and eating the bunny rabbits we're better off providing an alternative. I'd say that dormitories, a healthy diet without junk food, and appropriate clothes for the local climate would suffice. I'd throw in health care from the government since in a natural state you're free to find whatever herbs cure your ailments and we don't want people picking through our gardens. If you want more you can work. If you're content you aren't any worse off than you were before civilization, and aren't costing the tax paying members of society as much as you would if you stole from them and we had to throw you in jail. Society should have laws which mean our spending on criminals and people who choose not to work are minimized, which means not working has to be sufficiently more attractive than crime which results in shelter and three meals a day (plus extreme overhead) at government expense.

Most of those choose not to buy health insurance. Medicaid, state children's health insurance programs, and other state programs are available to people who actually can't afford insurance. The rest of us who are in good health would do better buying high-deductable plans for under $50 a month and filling up a tax-free health savings account than living some place with "free" health coverage and higher tax rates. Co-pays and deductables are good because they discourage people from clogging up the system with trivial problems. They're even better when the insurance is provided by for-profit companies and the premiums are coming out of your own pocket. Pre-existing conditions are a problem for people who've had insurance through group plans. Extending COBRA beyond 18 months or requiring companies to allow conversions to individual plans would help there. As far as deductables, when you're paying for it you don't want a low one. Insurance rates are structured so that they still make a profit when they have to pay for everything. With what you'd spend on deductables and co-pays going directly to the health providers it costs you less. At my current job where we outsource our insurance to a company that lets us pick the insurance plan and company. I found that it was cheaper to put enough in a use-it-or-loose-it pre-tax flexible spending account to cover the entire $1000 family deductable and 40-co pays than it was to pay extra to have a $600 deductable and $5 lower co-pays. I've talked to people making half what I did who lived in bigger homes and drove newer cars who claimed they couldn't afford health insurance which was obviously not true. They just decided that insurance and retirement savings weren't their highest priority. Maybe we could have our government sign off on people's budgets? I'm sorry sir, but you get a Festiva instead of an Escalade since you need enough to cover insurance. Mam, you just don't earn enough to have insurance and a house with a yard. You'll have to make due with a 2-bedroom condo instead.

We're ALREADY doing that. The average income tax rate for each of the bottom two quintiles is negative due to refundable credits. And the Republicans are doing more to INCREASE the hand-outs than the Democrats. After the Bush 43 tax cut the second quintile who have an average income tax rate that's negative saw a nearly 18% drop in all taxes paid versus 12.7% for the top .1% and just 10% for the second highest quintile. People making over $200K a year were the only group of Americans that saw their share of income shrink while their tax payments grew. Relatively speaking, Clinton was a fiscal conservative and Bush 43 a liberal bed-wetter.

People spend a lot less money on health insurance, taxes, and living in America than they do in those other places. Correlation does not imply causality. Much of America has a lower population density than much of Europe and we don't have punitive taxes on gas and cars so we drive door to door instead of walking to and from public transport. Our lack of incidental exercise has at least some effect on our longevity. My grandmother who walked lots made it to 92, and grandfather who goes to the gym is still going strong at 89. We measure infant mortality differently too so it's an apples to oranges comparison.

I've ridden with two rigs on the bike. A gear bag and bungee net on the passenger seat works. A 50L Givi topcase on a luggage rack works better if a little easier for the front wheel to get off the ground.

Don't forget the insurance companies. After spending tens of thousands of dollars on a minor injury like a broken leg, their bean counters aren't content with the tens of thousands they've collected in premiums and their subrogation department wants to assign blame.

I think the paper work I signed for my last season ski pass was about as long as a DZ waiver, and the fine print on each daily lift ticket amounts to the same thing with a lot less verbage - you assume all responsibility for yourself in an environment including natural and man-made obstacles which can kill you. With less insurance and millions less in revenues I don't think we want DZs being less paranoid than the ski hills.

Ask your doctor when you can do contact sports like soccer and rugby.

It should be noted that the Postal Service has by law a monopoly that helps them. Fed-Ex, UPS, and DHL all provide door-to-door letter and package delivery. They get Netflix DVDs between my house and the shipping depot within 24 hours six days a week. That's service. Being both affordable and government subsidized they don't have enough employees for peak hours at the post office. That's expected, and I can visit the post office off-peak, pay for pickup, etc. when that's unacceptable. I'd pay a pile of money to Fed-Ex for guaranteed 10am delivery, although if I planned a day ahead I wouldn't hesitate to use next-day USPS.

That's because the United States Postal Service is an authoritarian regime. It can be argued they are a private company with limited goervernment agency powers. They're essentially (a couple billion on revenues of over 50B) a not for profit corporation owned entirely by the government which providies universal service to the population. Their operations are nearly entirely self-supporting, with a tiny fraction of a percent coming from Congress to cover things like free and reduced cost mailing for selected organizations.

How many times have you landed out in a parking lot or backyard? How many times have you landed down-wind? How many times have you made a turn at 25 or 50' to go around an obstacle you didn't see or avoid some one who "cut in front of you"? If the answers are 0, you don't have the first hand experience to determine what sort of canopy you can handle when things aren't going well. If they're more out of only tens of jumps you have bad judgement and shouldn't be jumping a smaller canopy that will amplify the effects of your mistakes. It's much better to end up with a new grass stain on your rig than in the emergency room with broken bones.

The salmon is awesome. In most of the country it's just SALMON with better restaurants differentiating between wild and farm caught. You might think that species (Sockeye, King, Koho etc.) is enough but it's not - in the Pacific Northwest they differentiate between what river the salmon spawned in, because water temperature and diet make a big difference. Shiro's sushi is pretty tasty. Izumi is surprisingly good on the east side. There's decent jazz in downtown Seattle. Tula's, The Triple Door, Jazz Alley. The Earshot festival is about to start. The skydivers are cool but the weather stinks in the fall/winter.

A 190 is the smallest size that's nearly universally accepted as prudent (Reference Brian Germain's Wingloading Never Exceed formula. Brian has 10,000 skydives, designs parachutes, teaches canopy flight, and writes books on sports psychology. He knows more than your instructors). It's still enough to add an extra joint to your leg (shin bone not connected to the ankle bone). In some countries, it's the smallest size you'd be allowed to jump. It'll feel slow in 100 jumps but that's OK. What'll be relatively safe then isn't now.