I doubt 3d printing technology will ever be able to compete with actual means of mass production.

3d printing's main (but not only) niche is in prototyping.

Besides, the Chinese are as capable of manufacturing with 3d technology as anyone else.

I should have added a link to Max's post.
http://forum.allaboutcircuits.com/threads/g-orwell-2084.125672/
I didn't think so either but have a look.
http://www.wired.com/insights/2014/09/3d-printed-shoes/

 

@ronv and @JoeJester , At the credit card companies we all are known as deadbeats because they don't make a nickel on interest and fees from us. It is all the other poor (stupid) slobs who run up big bills and pay 18% for 30 years that support us. Raising my glass to all the people who don't pay off the card every month; you're the reason I can afford to retire -- suckers!

If they didn't make a nickel on us, then they wouldn't court us so strongly.

Every time you buy something with a credit card, the merchant gets charged a fee. There are lots of different fees and it is pretty byzantine, but I think an overall expectation of something around 2.5% is in the ballpark. So when you by that $100 item and pay it off in full, the card issuer has collected about 2% (the rest going to various middlemen) that month. To get that 2% from YOU that month, they would have to be charging you 24% APR. So they LOVE people that pay off their cards reliably every month, because that gives them the liquidity to support many more transactions than they otherwise would, whether it be from people that pay off each month or people that only make minimum payments.

 

We may be the only ones.
View attachment 108531

It's a bit hard to tell. Looking at just credit card debt, if the average household carrying credit card debt has $15,762 in such debt and the total such debt is $733 billion, then there are about 46.5 million households carrying credit card debt. According to the Census Bureau, there are right about 125 million households in the U.S., so that would imply that about 63% of households do not carry credit card debt. My gut feeling is that that's too high, but some of the numbers I've seen in recent years makes me suspect that it might not be too far off the mark.

Also, I suspect that the debt numbers are biased to include quite a few households that don't carry debt because people that pay of their statement balances in full each month are pretty much indistinguishable from people that are carrying over balances, since credit bureau information only shows the statement balances. I think it would be quite useful to people evaluating credit reports if creditors reported carryover debt instead of (or at least in addition to) statement balances.

Back about fifteen years ago I started making a point of paying off by balance prior to the closing date so that my statement balance each month was $0 (or negative) and was somewhat surprised when by credit score went from about 780 to 834 in just a few months. But what is so fundamentally different between a person that charges X each month and pays it off each month versus someone else that doesn't charge anything but purchases X in cash each month? If there is no fundamental difference, then why should the latter get a substantially higher credit score than the former?

 

You might find this illuminating:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/07/the-war-on-stupid-people/485618/

I didn't read the article in depth, just skimmed it, but I think I have a few points of disagreement with it.

It mentioned the Big Bang Theory as evidence that we put intelligence on a pedestal because the show centers around a group of scientists. Now, I've only seen parts of a few episodes, but I got the impression that the show was little more than making fun of this group of scientists by ascribing to them just about every negative stereotype ascribed to smart people.

In entertainment there is no shying away from belittling, or at least having fun at the expense of, intelligence people or fat people -- they are both very much fair game.

And if we pray at the alter of academic achievement, then why are more and more schools banning honor rolls and doing away with class valedictorians on the basis that recognizing people that achieve academically injures the self-esteem of everyone else since, by definition, anyone that wasn't recognized for academic achievement is being "outed" as an academic non-achiever. Of course, these same people have no problem shouting out accolades for anyone that excels in sports, failing to see that everyone that is not recognized for athletic achievement is being "outed" as an athletic non-achiever.

 

If they didn't make a nickel on us, then they wouldn't court us so strongly.

Every time you buy something with a credit card, the merchant gets charged a fee. There are lots of different fees and it is pretty byzantine, but I think an overall expectation of something around 2.5% is in the ballpark. So when you by that $100 item and pay it off in full, the card issuer has collected about 2% (the rest going to various middlemen) that month. To get that 2% from YOU that month, they would have to be charging you 24% APR. So they LOVE people that pay off their cards reliably every month, because that gives them the liquidity to support many more transactions than they otherwise would, whether it be from people that pay off each month or people that only make minimum payments.

That's all true, but with the folks that don't pay off their bills they get a double bang. The bang they get from interest and fees from people who carry a balance and don't make payments on time dwarfs the fees charged to the merchants. They don't love us, they despise us and their own documents say so.

 

Yes, the article made some good points but I agree that our popular culture celebrates stupid. When I was a kid, I never wanted to be outed as the smart kid, but at least being smart was seen as a good thing. We were putting men on the moon, and succeeding in "smart" fields like science and engineering pretty well guaranteed a decent career. That guarantee now is gone except for the rarest among us.