I agree that firearms tend to be too heavy for children, but heavy weaponry such as mortars are not the best use of the small size of children. During war it would be much more useful to use children to sabotage enemy installations using explosives or EMPs.
Hawaii maybe (but even then they currently benefit more than they suffer from being a state), but certainly not Alaska. They can't even sustain themselves without help from the federal government.
Yeah, wind works fine in places like Texas (where I'm from) because there are thousands of square miles full of just turbines. The land is flat and expensive, essentially the opposite of Germany. Something kind of related that I found out while googling about this is that Texas is 1.9 times as large as Germany.
The Concorde was a "luxury boondoggle for the rich" and it failed hard. Nobody wants a repeat of that which is why the new goal for supersonic travel is to become cheap and quiet.
If you can afford it you should have to pay. Simple as that