Energy cost nothing. How about the cost in dollars. Sure any solar panel will eventually pay for itself, so why isn't every surface in the world covered in them yet?

Common sense, combined with the fact that he never in 7 minutes makes any mention of the fixed upfront cost, leads me to believe that this would be the boondoggle to end all boondoggles. Hell, even just burying our utility wires underground is too expensive for any but the richest or densest cities.

Sorry you feel sick, but tough. Get used to it.

"the only people who can get elected are over-calculating douchebags."
(for many other reasons besides public scrutiny.)

Ah, you're quite the Sherlock Holmes.
(At least we have some area of agreement here.. even if we attribute this to different causes.)

"The First Lady is subjected to this shit and she wasn't even elected."

She never asked for it! That's why she goes on national TV to lecture people, and call people knuckleheads. And yeah, she never even got elected. No one wants her on TV telling people what to do. So why does she? Or do people actually want this. Some may, I guess, like you!

"They're terrified of offending anyone and everyone."

Yeah, that's right.. The politicians are the victims. The poor politicians. Such a thankless "job".

"Shut up with this bullshit and talk about how Obamacare is stupid"

That's beating a dead horse. At this point, only the most fanatical don't accept the ACA as an abject failure. Even Democrats know it. Even Obama knows it.

(Not to mention everyone who knew it would fail from the beginning!)

"the richest fucking country in the world have a problem with free healthcare
when poor ass countries can do it better?"

Because many in "the richest fucking country in the world" would like to keep it the "richest" and not turn it into a "poor ass country" with "free" healthcare.

Your failure of imagination is not my problem, @Yogi.

That's ok. Everyone has off days and more imaginative ones. Other people can imagine why I posted it.

What's up with the Australian health care system?

Ever heard of Tough Love? Or speaking off the cuff?

I'm getting sick of people in power being subjected to scrutiny about the words they use to such an extent that the only people who can get elected are over-calculating douchebags. The First Lady is subjected to this shit and she wasn't even elected.

Stephen Fry made this point a long time ago, all politicians are bland and sad because of the way they talk. They're terrified of offending anyone and everyone.

Shut up with this bullshit and talk about how Obamacare is stupid because it's too far away from say The Australian system of Healthcare. Why do we the richest fucking country in the world have a problem with free healthcare when poor ass countries can do it better? And why is it that we use the Canadian and UK system and not the Australian?

"That's kind of rude," one stupid whiny cunt responded.

Did some more research and it looks like I'm being too kind. These stupid people must have worshiped at the alter of Breitbart because they're ridiculous. I honestly can't imagine how you thought posting this was a good idea @Trancecoach

You might be ahead of the curve on that one.

I agree that a bit (or a lot) of fear might force our representatives all over the world to realize that even the richest donor cannot provide you with a replacement for your head after it was chopped off by the mob. Hell, we might find out soon enough if the troika keeps choking the life out of Greece, Spain and Portugal.

Similarly, the damage being done by secrecy of all kinds, particularly to core elements of democracy (see: deep state), might very well outweigh potential damages caused by putting an end to it entirely.

But I'm not there yet. Iceland and, to some degree, Switzerland are showcases that shit can be turned on its head much quicker than anyone thought. Nationalising banks, jailing bankers, referendums about maximum wages and basic incomes... if the Swiss can openly discuss the "1:12" initiative, a disbandment -- or at least a complete restructuring -- of intelligence services is not as impossible as one might think.

Unbelievable. Our world is being run by imbeciles and the corrupt.

There are people out there in the world that dedicate themselves to learning information, refining methods, trying to make things better for everyone. They should be running countries. But instead, we've got men with hardly any qualifications and hardly any life experience.

Instead of gathering in a room and listening to community representatives telling them exactly how we want our money spent, the top brass are actually sat in a cushty conference room with a buffet and champagne, copping backhanders and selling us down the river.

When did the general populace suddenly fall into this groove of 'civilisation' - this unspoken belief that The Government are all-seeing, all knowing, and always out for what's best in the long run. We, collectively, have just been taken for billions and billions of dollars or pounds or whatever you use by a collection of the world's richest people. They have not been held to account, and in fact they've somehow convinced us to pay them back what they've lost. Imagine if you lived in a wild west village and you'd paid the sheriff every week to protect a safe with everyone's money in it, and he'd been out at night gambling it away. You'd be fucking furious, an angry mob would be at his door. But for some reason we're all docile about the exact parallel of that situation happening in reality.

We really need a paradigm shift in public consciousness, because the metaphor has progressed, right now that wild west village is under martial law and being run through intimidation by a gang. We don't live in some fantasy world where some unseen force is ensuring fair-play. We are the people who have to strive to ensure fair play in everything otherwise we're just letting people rob us. Literally.

We can't progress like this. In charge of the UK's education system is a guy who has never had any experience teaching whatsoever, let alone teaching under the current system, let alone qualifications in teaching. There's a petition on to have him do a week of teaching so that he can understand just how badly he's ruining everything. This is a real person like you or me and he's in charge of running the education system. We're all standing by watching someone we know is incompetent do a complicated job. Half of us wouldn't even admit to being able to do that job if we were offered it, but this fucking bumbling posh moron takes the wheels with the manic grin of an idiot that feels no fear. Dashing the wheel left and right, we idly watch on as he plays around to see what will happen, crossings our fingers nothing bad happens.

Whoa. All the times I've been to the USA, it's the tipping that does my head in. Jeez, you're the richest country in the world, would it kill you guys to have a humanitarian wage?

Reagan was just the first stooge hired by the remnants of the Nixon administration. (By Bush Snr {his head of the CIA}, Donald Rumsfeld {2nd in command of the CIA} & Dick Cheney {3rd in command of the CIA}).

Literally an actor. And a 3rd rate cowboy actor at that (only for domestic & retarded audiences).

BTW Dubya was next & a gift to these fellas, none of them dumb enough to be the man out front making excuses.

They decided that a few million dead kids was fine if it swelled the family pile by 20%. Vietnam, East Timor, Iran Chile etc etc etc etc
.....Does anyone really know how much bank Cheney made from the slaughter/'rebuilding' in Iraq? A billion? 10 billion? 100 Billion? Will any American ever ask? Guess not.

In the future analysis of this time, these men will be held up worse that than Hitler, Stalin & Genghis Khan for sure. Their crimes are comparable in every way (especially the massive piles of dead kids) but without the personal trauma to explain psychosis. The US government of the last 50 years consists of the richest, fattest, most privileged men ever to live in millions of years of humanity, and yet they've committed the worst crimes of all time. Millions dead, crippled, traumatized, orphaned.
Is it their fault or the fault of those around them who do nothing or worse; cheer?

The Medicaid program has always been socialized. Fraud isn't something unique to Socialism or Socialistic organizations ya know, you have to be vigilant and have independent reviews.

The real shame is that we're the Richest country in the world and our healthcare is fucking terrible in comparison to other poorer countries with socialized medicine.

I am so badly jaded by this point that i consider almost everything with power in the western world to be corrupt.

I used to say that those who were intelligent and caring enough to lead and forge a better world for all of us are least suited to get there, but i have since changed my opinion to a worse one; those who are most suited to getting into a position of power are those without empathy for others, who can and will abuse anyone and anything to further themselves - they are known as professional psychopaths, and i think we are led by them.

In our country right now, on average, the richest pay less tax than the poor, and the extremely rich can afford to pay no tax. Our MP's cheat expenses (which are already outrageous) and have second houses paid for them, they set up laws to help them dodge tax and make changes to our social systems so that they can sell them off to their friends. They recently even wanted a further pay hike because apparently all of those things followed by a guaranteed golden handshake/pension is not enough. Meanwhile, and this is not hyperbole, there are elderly people dying because they can't afford to heat their homes during the winter, and food banks have risen meteorically because others can't afford to feed their families.

This feels like some sort of medieval nightmare, where the kings and lords are living a life of plenty, stuffing their faces with roast pigs whilst the commoners starve and eat grass outside the castle walls.

I am genuinely concerned for the world, and i am bewildered by the fact that none of my friends seem to care as much as i do. All it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing - apathy is how this world will burn.

don't for a second believe any of these amounts or that any of these creatures are the richest.

I would agree with you, if the poor and uneducated were the ones who historically caused or permitted the genocides of the world. Mostly it was the Richest and the Highly educated that worked very hard to kill and destroy as many people as they could. It continues today, very intelligent, very privileged people constantly defend a nations right to murder whoever stands in its way.

Well Hamas wouldn't be Hamas without training up youngsters in the path now, would it??


This report is no extreme example of propagandizing or slant any more than it can be construed as objective observer-and-report journalism-I don;t know why everyone makes such a big fuss about how wonderful Al Jazeera is, breath-of-fresh-air, blah-blah-blah (folks have in the past, anyhow), it's owned by the Al Thani family's (of Qatar, an "absolute and hereditary emirate) 7th richest member.

It's a private mouthpiece for someone's unilateral masturbatory romp, and they hire some real cute anchors!

Do the math folks. Confiscate the total wealth of the 100 richest people on the planet and distribute it to every head on earth. Amounts to less than $300 US per person. It's not going to save the planet. As long as people are free, wealth inequality will exist and the freer the people are, the greater will be the disparity.

It should be pointed out that the richest in America and those who benefited hugely from the bailout can't even be found on census data. You have to do A LOT of study to actually find out they exist, it's something like 1% of the top 1%. They have serious influence, and benefit from a crooked system.

Also for the broader point of inequality. The point of the battle against it is because those on the lesser side have been being hammered for following the rules. You work and work for years with the idea that you'll get ahead, and that's taken away from you. This is how the Tea Party came about, their grievances are legitimate before they were sort of taken away from them by more powerful interests.

The point is, democracy suffers hugely when you have inequality. Ancient Greece (Aristotle) had the idea to fix this is by making the society more equal, therefore you wouldn't have the poor using their power of numbers to subvert democracy against the rich. America had a similar problem in the early days, instead of working towards equality, they worked towards stifling democracy. By putting most of the power in the hands of the wealthy Senate, it made sure that democracy wouldn't get out of hand and the rich white guys can keep what they stole.

Look this isn't something that's right or left. The right and the left are together on this, we don't like tyrannical powers trying to control us. A corporation with it's top down infrastructure is the basic definition of tyrannical. Add that to the fact that corporations dictate how our democracy is run, you have a system that isn't functioning and needs to be fixed.

Our Democracy isn't functional, it needs to be taken down and replaced.

No, corporations are not included as individual people on this graph.

The problem with this kind of wealth inequality is that it historically leads to social and economic instability. The US's economic dominance in the 20th century was built in no small part on the solid middle class, whose purchasing power drove the economy.

That is increasingly vanishing. The richest are getting much, much, much richer, while the median income, adjusted for inflation, has been dropping for the past twenty years.