It includes people who are tired of obtaining a "permanent" position only to have the entire department liquidated 2-3 years later. Repeatedly. As a contractor, I can have multiple clients, which makes it less likely for them to all "fire" me at the same time.

Symmetric?

Of course about half of the people in the field are going to be below average aren't they?

When the white man got to North America, they found the environment as full of resources as the Indians had found it when they got there over 10,000 years before.

Nope. Everyone gets the same coverage. Its paid by your employer, you never see that money on your payslip even. There are no tiers. Taxes are high, but we actually get good stuff for it. Despite the taxes we have the one of the highest standards of living in the world.

There is private insurance that basically lets you cut the line in certain cases, mainly ailments where an operation isnt time critical. We do have a few small private specialist hospitals that accept patients that pay their own way, but they work within the system as well. I had an operation on one of these hospitals, paid for by the standard single-payer insurance. Worked just like on any other hospital.

Saying an engineer shouldn't design a better weapon is like saying a doctor shouldn't treat a wounded soldier.

Don't fix what isn't broken is a good reason.

Baloney...well, mostly baloney. There are times when it makes sense to do things in house and there are times where it very much does not make sense. Why hire full time employees for project management, development, QA, etc for an 12 month project? Does you organization have the expertise to run such an effort? What do you do with everyone once the project is over? Yes, you will want your own technical staff to be part of the process. Yes, it may make sense to do the maintenance / support in house. Yes, you should never do time and materials but instead fixed bid with penalties (this does mean you will need to have a very good spec up front). Yes, you should get several bids and do your homework on the companies providing the bids. However, none of this precludes using an outside contractor.

Don't get it. So women don't want to program. That's fine. Why do we feel the need to inflate the numbers? Feminism is an outdated concept by this point - and frankly, it doesn't apply to software engineering.

The thing is, I can put solar on my house, and I will be to able to generate enough power, on occasion, to have some extra to put back on the grid. With the right configuration and local storage, I can even go off the grid. As a consumer, the other options you mention are things I can't do. Sure, solar is more expensive per KWH, but at least it's doable for lots of homeowners.

Separately, you may not have noticed that the Republicans have held effective veto power over new legislation in the Senate until just yesterday. Thus, making the claim the Republicans (even with a minority in the Senate) can be held somewhat responsible for lack of progress in the area seems reasonable.