I would guess it's for each adult, but I don't know.

That's true, there are places that one could live on for that amount.

But it's quite a bit below the average cost of living, which is about $28K/yr for a single adult.

Very few people are able to live on just their SS checks alone.

That's certainly an interesting, and possibly good argument for giving money to those at the bottom economically. It might be better for them to just get that money, and not engage in criminal activity to get it, since we pay (both financially and in other ways) for that crime. My wife and visited a...

Well, then it's clearly not as generous as I thought.

It would translate to about $1200/month here then, about $14,400/yr. Not so easy to live on that.

Interesting.

I bet it costs a lot of money to live there.

That's a pretty substantial monthly amount. The swiss franc is about equivalent to a US $, so it's about $2500/month. One could live decently on that in many places in the US, especially if you didn't have to pay taxes on it - it's about $30K/yr. Of course, the cost of living may be higher in Switze...

My name is afs, j...afs.

You guys crack me up!

Oh, you meant uncomfortable for liberals - I thought you meant you found it uncomfortable. The nature of American society/culture has always been multi-cultural, so I never understand people wanting to "preserve" American culture by making it homogeneous. There seem to be a lot of differen...

Thanks for the info. No, I meant that I don't know what they might actually be doing to cement their culture, if they're doing that. There are certainly any number of things that a government might be able to do if they wanted to do that. What does the national language thing mean exactly? And, why ...

Why is it "uncomfortable"?

I don't think Canada has a national language or religion, and I'm not sure what they might do to cement a national culture.

Where did you find percentages of ethnic groups? I looked a little bit and didn't find any of that.

Liberals like Canada for a lot of reasons: Canadians are smart and well-informed, generally. The government works well, and people see it as a positive thing and a way to solve problems. There's a large middle class, with fewer people at the extremes on both ends (like America used to have). In a lo...

Honestly all modern knives from reputable brands (Kershaw, Spyderco, etc) are inexpensive and awesome. Get what you think looks cool and has whatever features you want in a knife. If you don't know, just get whatever. It'll be awesome! I did buy a Mora based on Coffee's (?) suggestion once. They mi...

Somebody seems to have replaced PS with a sort of a version of Donald Trump.

Thanks - I did that.

We'll see if I got it right

How do you turn off the e-mails?

We have pretty high levels of usage of alcohol and cigarettes, I believe. So, we might wind up with high levels of pot use, even in the longer term. Driving under the influence of any substance that impairs driving should clearly be illegal - that's just reasonable. Even if we haven't had a lot of r...

I got some hydroponically grown tomatoes once - they looked great, but had very little taste/flavor.

Do the greens taste good?

Maybe the parents should be sued?

I completely agree about the gorilla. As I said, I'd like it if they could have saved the child without killing him. The whole thing is created by human choices, and if we made different/better choices, it wouldn't have happened. Zoos are often inhumane places for animals (I don't really understand ...

Your suggestion was to do something that might result in the kid dying, and that would be a deterrent.

If the kid didn't do anything wrong, how/why is it ok for him to die? I get that it might deter parents from being negligent, but it seems like a high price for a child to pay to me.

Thanks - I think I got it right.

Thanks to all for getting the forum back up, and we'll hope, to a more reliable host.

There's something funny about the time stamp - it shows about 2:30pm, but it's about 9:30am here.

It's not the kid's fault that he was inadequately supervised.

And, kids are naturally curious and will explore things, sometimes in ways that aren't safe. That's why they need adult supervision.

Well, the first question is how/why the child managed to get into the pen. The best thing would be for his parents to have prevented that. Once he's in there, it's a hard call. I understand why we'd want to save the child's life, but at the same time, it's not entirely clear that the gorilla was har...