Exactly right. The US Military (and Israel, for that matter) get a guaranteed minimum income from the US government. Why not the average person on the street?
My ancestors for thousands of years have drank everyday, and they managed not only to survive but reproduce. I think the same goes for every person of European descent. We can drink an awful lot and be fine.
A memorial to people who exercised good judgement and common sense in stressful situations would be great. Maybe we could have a reality show about this, to prove to the rest of the world we aren't just a bunch of slobbering troglodytes.
I know several doctors who have retired rather than deal with the EMR mess, and these are work 80 hours a week doctors, vs the new, gentler work regular hours kind.
In addition, the doctors I know who continue to practice have had to reduce their patient hours due to the amount of time EMR takes up.
Google maps on the web and on mobile has become such a miserably bad experience that I hope OSM wins big. Google's data is not bad, but the apps are awful.
I and several engineers I know had recruiters from Theranos contact us. They would not tell us anything about what we'd be working on, what kind of people we'd work with or how much we'd be paid. Needless to say we were not interested.
This cannot be stressed enough. A robotic military allows the government to wage wars with impunity because the average voter just doesn't care. If you have skin in the game, it would be different.
Perhaps a remedy for this would be to force the ranking members of congress to function as consuls, and make them live in Afghanistan for the duration of the conflict?