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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: SilentZ who wrote (434246)	11/10/2008 5:54:39 PM
From: steve harris	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1574108

Just as with the automakers, the govt pensions would collapse under shear numbers. People are living longer, and the workers could not support the increasing number of pension recipients. Look at SS today, it started out with 15-1 ratio, now it is down to less than 3-1. Sounds great Z, but it doesn't work in its application. Do you have any examples it does?

To: SilentZ who wrote (434246)	11/10/2008 7:32:53 PM
From: tejek	Respond to of 1574108

This weekend I was talking to one of my German friends about their trains and I learned some things I didn't know. First of all, Deustche Bahn which operates all the trains in Germany is a separate company and not apart of the gov't. While the company has issued shares, currently all the shares are owned by the gov't. As of 2005, it was profitable. The current company is considered an interim step to complete privatisation of the company. Again, it runs all the trains in Germany including the fast trains. Now catch this.....the fast trains are so fast they are faster than a plane when you factor in driving from the airport to the city. In fact, they are so much faster a train ticket on a fast train tends to be more expensive that a plane ticket for the same trip. Plus, the fast trains run more frequently. For an example, the fast train from Frankfurt to Essen goes every hour on the hour during the day. The distance is 160 kilo. or roughly 163 miles....its takes only an hour to make the trip.....faster than by plane or by car. As a consequence, more and more Germans travel by train than by plane when traveling within Germany. Info on Deutsche Bahn: en.wikipedia.org Here are photos of the new main train station in Berlin: