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Fast-Food CEO Invests In Machines Because Regulation Makes Them Cheaper Than Employees (yahoo.com)
An anonymous reader writes: The CEO of Carl's Jr., Andy Puzder, has been inspired by the 100-percent automated restaurant, Eatsa, as he looks for ways to deal with rising minimum wages. "With government driving up the cost of labor, it's driving down the number of jobs," he says. "You're going to see automation not just in airports and grocery stores, but in restaurants." Puzder doesn't believe in [the progressive idea of] raising the minimum wage. "Does it really help if Sally makes $3 more an hour if Suzie has no job? If you're making labor more expensive, and automation less expensive -- this is not rocket science," says Puzder. What comes as a challenge is automating employee tasks. This is where he draws the line and doesn't think that it's likely any machine could perform such work. But for more rote tasks like grilling a burger or taking an order, technology may be even more precise than human employees. "They're always polite, they always upsell, they never take a vacation, they never show up late, there's never a slip-and-fall, or an age, sex, or race discrimination case," says Puzder in regard to replacing employees with machines.
Hope those machines buy his crappy food...
Remember how they told us that there would be no IT jobs left in the US because everything can be done so much cheaper in India?
Now it's that there will be no burger flipping jobs left because machines can do it cheaper. Let's wait and see how these burgers taste and whether I don't like them over there at [other burger joint] better even if they cost 30 cents more but taste like a burger and not like the bag it came in.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Why pay money if they work for a bowl of rice?
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
With government driving up the cost of labor, it's driving down the number of jobs
That's what he wants to make this about, but in reality his actual reasons for using robotics are
They're always polite, they always upsell, they never take a vacation, they never show up late, there's never a slip-and-fall, or an age, sex, or race discrimination case
Which has nothing to do with the cost of the labor and everything to do with the repeatability and efficiency of the employee. I'm betting that, for the right money, you could get an employee to fit almost every one of those. But on the whole, it's not that employees are getting more expensive, in real dollars, but rather than AI and robotics which can do these jobs better than people - per his own words - is getting cheaper than the cost of an employee. It's not if people get replaced but when. The only thing that changes is the exact spot in time where the curves cross.
This happened in the industrial revolution when mechanical devices took over automatable tasks. It's just that it's coming for a different class of worker this time.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
There's no point in Sally working three jobs and still not being able to live either.
It's inevitable less qualified humans will be replaced by machines. It's inevitable over time more qualified humans will be replaced. It's extremely short-sighted (or disingenuous) to blame government regulations for doing something that is inevitably going to happen just a few years down the line anyway. As machines catch up to and surpass humans in more areas the percentage of humans who cannot be profitably employedwill approach unity. In my opinion the reasons to reject these changes tend to be bad ones.
You have the traditionalists, who just don't want anything to change. You have the sour grape connoisseurs, who believe positive change is undesirable because they see it as unlikely. Then there's the worst of them, the people who believe experiencing unpleasantness like working is intrinsically valuable. It's happening. The list of things humans can do that robots and computers cannot do is shrinking... and that list never grows longer. It's time to look to a future free of involuntary employment. It's time to make it happen as soon as possible.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
. . . .Extra big-ass fries from their machines ? And, will they also identify unfit mothers ? Not Sure wants to know. . . . (grin)
Support for minimum wage laws illustrates the economic and historical illiteracy that is so widespread in this country: not only are minimum wage laws ineffective and economically harmful, historically, they were motivated by a desire to hurt racial minorities. Minimum wage laws actually hurt low income and low skill workers twice: not only does it price many of them out of the labor pool, it also increases the cost of goods and services, which hurts low income groups the most. After a couple of centuries of enlightenment, history, and basic economics, you'd think that people would be smart enough to catch on to this, but I guess some superstitions just take a long time to die out.
Fuck you, I'm eating.
Puzder doesn't believe in [the progressive idea of] raising the minimum wage.
Square brackets are used to modify the original statement only when it would provide contextual accuracy, not when you want to add bias to a statement. If you add bias this way, I instantly think you're a moron, regardless of your views.
I work in automation. It isn't so much that minimum wage matters... sure if you have really, really low minimum wage and people willing to work for it then you might just throw labor at a problem, but typically we automate for a variety of reasons: improved accuracy/quality, better throughput (a robot loading a machine can often keep up better than a human, which means I get more throughput out of my expensive machine), more consistent process. We *want* to automate everything, and when we look at what we *can* automate, it's always the boring repetitive jobs anyway. So it doesn't matter that much whether someone's making $6 or $8 or $10 an hour, if we can automate it we will. Certainly we are growing more concerned with the fact that a growing percentage of the population isn't going to be able to find the easy put-nut-A-on-bolt-B type of work anymore, and there's definitely a portion of those people who may not be able to be retrained to do something that a robot can't do. That's a societal problem, not an engineering problem. First is understanding that this isn't the same thing we saw in the industrial revolution. If I gave a laborer a steam shovel I made them a lot more productive. If I just say "stand aside while this robot does the job" that's different. And no, you're not going to take someone who works on an assembly line and retrain them to be a robot programmer. That's absurd. They won't get a job assembling robots either, as Fanuc apparently has a "lights out" manufacturing facility for their robots - it's a completely automated line. Minimum wage is doing a good thing: encouraging factories to automate by making the payback look better. Automated factories are better. Automated restaurants are probably better too. The fact that we have a very low skilled portion of the populace is a separate issue that needs addressing... maybe a guaranteed minimum income, I don't know. But coming up with make-work jobs for them is no better than putting them in prison and having them dig holes and fill them in. Also relevant to this discussion - has everyone seen the short story, "Manna"?
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
Those automated restaurants don't run for free without trouble. They need highly skilled ($40 to $50 an hour skilled) employees to maintain and repair them plus you need skilled workers to clean them and stock them. So he is simply moving labor to high skilled tier where it will end up costing him more because he will have to pay 1/4 the employees 5 times more. AND now he has maintenance costs that are significantly higher.
Stupid CEO is letting his hatred for poor people color his business decisions.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Just quick note. Rats in the feed become competitive advantage, they are ground up, grilled and served up as rat-patty. Nice!
On y va, qui mal y pense!
Minimum wage increase fuels automation technology, relieves humans from drudgery. Everyone benefits from the increased efficiency, unemployment remains low, miserable fast food workers end up in slightly less miserable job just like the factory workers before them.
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If Puzder is going to fire Suzie rather than give her a $3 raise, then his taxes are going to go up to pay for her social safety net costs. It's impossible to have a society where a large fraction of people can't find work that pays a living wage. Those people will vote (or act in other ways) to overturn the system that is making their lives impossible.
I'm always amazed that the rich think they can hide in their gated communities and enjoy the fruits of other people's labor.
"He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
Robots don't earn money.
Robots don't vote.
So, if a new development makes machines cost 1/10 or their current cost, salaries should be cut in ten? The reasoning falls flat under the smallest analysis.
Workers' rights are independent to the advance of automatisation. And if automatisation becomes move profitable, it's time to automatize and, as a society, find occupation for those who've lost their job because of it. Just as for everyone else, incidentally.
The technological progress has been leaving humans without a job since the first "fire-keeper" was replaced by fire making technology. Almost no living humans has a job that has existed since the times of the cavemen. It mystifies me that we've decided to be worried by this now; after a few millenia.
At $100k, if it replaces two minimum wage workers, it will pay for itself within three years. Even quicker in places that have hosed the working class by adopting $15/hr minimum wages.
I'm always amazed that the rich think they can hide in their gated communities and enjoy the fruits of other people's labor.
That shouldn't be amazing. No matter what happens in other businesses, or society as a whole, Puzder is still making the optimal choice for himself.
Except for fast food isn't for people who want to eat out, it is for people who don't have time to cook. If you are going to "eat out" then you are going somewhere with a waiter.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Isnt $ 6.95 expensive for that bowl ?
At least as long as you somehow keep your "customers" from finding a way to game your machines.
It would be the first vending machine in history to be tamper proof.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Tax Andi's ass off
I'd favor a two-tiered minimum wage, one which is the status quo, and one which is for larger businesses, which may or may not affect the individual businesses... especially if we make it three-tiered with factoring in franchises.
However, I will say this. Copied from another one of my posts...
I would propose, in the U.S. at least, the following...
$500/month/adult (22+ years old)
$250/month/child (21- years old)
Not an additional to Social Security. It's be an expanded version of it though.
If we scrap S.N.A.P., increase the above figures by $200/month.
Adjust the above figures for inflation on an annual basis.
It may be not seem like much, but for the working and non-working poor, it could go a long way. And while it won't benefit financially-well off people who suddenly lose their jobs, it's a partial fall-back.
Paid for by higher taxes. Also paid for in part by a 10% tax on income (federal AGI) earmarked for this program. Someone who makes $60k per year by themselves will break even regarding this special tax.
Two adults, two children would get four checks, but would net: $1500/month or $18k/year with this program. But of course, if the parents and children work, they'll lose 10% of whatever they earn plus any higher taxes they may be subject to-to help fund this program.
Restaurant. You are fucing yourselves.
Lawyers doctors and corporate accountants are not the ones keeping Calrls Jrs, McDonalds and the Walmarts of the world profitable. If none of these people have jobs or are paid near slave wages who the fuck is going to buy their garbage?
This is why basic income is inevitable. Paid for by the corporations through taxes because they put all of the people out of work. There will be no personal income to tax if people don't have jobs. The only thing left to tax will be the corporations.
And the corporations, while they might not paying taxes to give people a basic income will need to. For without the people getting that basic income there are no consumers to consume what the corporations are producing and so they will go out of business.
The corporations will leave and go somewhere else, like China and India you say? Of course they will and they will just do to China and India what they did wherever they moved from, putting everyone out of work and forcing the government to make them pay for a basic income.
What of the country that all the corporations left that now has an unemployed work force but no corporations to pay for their basic income? Probably there will be a new tax to "sellers" of goods and services, so the corporations will pay the tax to keep people in a basic income one way or another. But more likely, a new economy will rise up.
So yeah, keep up the good work you corporate bastards. Looking forward to sitting on my ass while you support me. Well, in fact, I won't be sitting on my ass, but I will be spending my days doing something *I* want to do instead of wasting away 1/3 of my life in your factories.
And unless you continue to support me in that endeavour, you will be unemployed (out of business) too.
Greed is awesome.
Oh no wait, *those* guys protect themselves every way they can, but regulation is bad, hmm.
Just quick note. Rats in the feed become competitive advantage, they are ground up, grilled and served up as rat-patty. Nice!
Pass the ketchup!
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
"The CEO of Carl's Jr., Andy Puzder, has been inspired by the 100-percent automated restaurant, Eatsa, as he looks for ways to deal with rising minimum wages." We know where he really got his inspiration from.
Where's the +0 flamebait, but still funny mod?
The problem is not fast food labor. The problem is that a large percentage of jobs are in China. There are fewer hi-tech manufacturing jobs in the United States. Life in the U.S. is rapidly degrading.
It's good that low-level jobs are taken by machines. It's bad if the hi-level jobs of designing, manufacturing, and maintaining those machines are all taken by Chinese.
In Hong Kong, a long time ago, I met a man who was having golf clubs made in China. He said he taught a Chinese man to design the factory. He found later that the Chinese man's brother was building an identical factory to make golf clubs that would compete with his business.
This is an excellent book that tells one part of the story of degradation: Poorly Made in China: An Insider's Account of the Tactics Behind China's Production Game. There are many other, related issues.
They're always polite, they always upsell, they never take a vacation, they never show up late, there's never a slip-and-fall, or an age, sex, or race discrimination case," says Puzder in regard to replacing employees with machines.
People are latching onto minimum wage, but the rest is also something to think about. "Age, sex, and race discrimmination" are usually the big three that companies have to deal with. The rest is just examples of how fickle humanity really is. Shouldn't all employees be polite? Being on time is very important especially when others depend upon you.
Assuming for the sake of argument that we ALL have a stake in, and ALL have contributed to, the progress that our civilization has enjoyed - why is society becoming so extremely polarized at the very rich and very poor ends of the economic spectrum? In other words, why is the middle class disappearing?
Don't get me wrong - I understand that hard work, intelligence, and creativity, (along with a HUGE amount of sheer luck that is usually unnoticed, much less acknowledged), engender differential material gain and economic stratification, to some extent. We will always have inequality - it seems to be the law of the universe. But I don't believe that we must have the extreme inequality that has taken hold over the last three decades or so. Victor Yakovenko has some interesting things to say about the matter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
We use artificial mechanisms to protect ourselves from extreme weather, disease, natural disasters, etc. Now, how can we all pull together to protect ourselves from extreme economic conditions? For this kind of polarization is unstable - like a lightning storm, major discharges will occur. Many of these 'discharges' will be very destructive - global war, famine, climate change, bloody revolution... Andy Puzder sounds both self-righteous and somewhat panicked at the prospect of having to defend his masters' hoard against those who insist on a decent living wage for Carl's Jr. employees - he really sounds like he's talking about war tactics and strategies. Why can't we arrange it that 'more than enough' is considered the end of this fight for wealth concentration? How can we tame the collective gluttony which both feeds on the misery of our fellow man and steals a staggering amount of opportunity from our children's children's children?
I ask these questions and make these observations in the context of TFA and TFS because with all of the automation and efficiencies of production our civilization has gained over the past several decades, we ALL should be working fewer hours while having both a better standard of living and a better quality of life.
Apologies for seeming a bit rambling and unfocused. This is a very complex, very broad issue, and it's hard to formulate thoughts and questions at all, much less do it in the space of a Slashdot comment.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
Your premise is that a social safety net must exist.
I'm always amazed by the consumer who thinks that he can demand production and enjoy the benefits of other people's capital.
82 posts in and no Idiocracy reference?!
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt03...
It's impossible to have a society where a large fraction of people can't find work that pays a living wage. Those people will vote (or act in other ways) to overturn the system that is making their lives impossible.
With real wages having gone nowhere for decades, we're arguably well into that scenario now. How much longer do you think we've got ?
When the wealthy have a police state with killbots on their side, what chance do you think the people have ?
Why do people not see the inherent political nature of articles like this - pushing the usual "gubberment/regulation bad!" bullshit - and think that this article is anything more than just soundbite-based agenda-pushing garbage? (designed to trigger peoples tribal biases, so that discussion is instantly polarized)
You almost never see discussion of actual economics, in economic discussion online - you only ever see people jockeying their favoured political views, without any real discussion of the economic merits/demerits behind their position (only a wilfully blind attention, exclusively to economic sources that agree with their politics).
Real economics isn't discussed in terms of government vs markets - and the people who drag it to that level (who reflexively shit all over Internet debates the second there is a mention of *shock* government making policy affecting businesses), those people are a cancer on public discussion, and are the biggest problem holding back political reform - because if people can't successfully discuss economic problems, without these fuckwits dragging it to the lowest level of quality, then there will be no real change.
I can't say it any better than this...
Carl's Jr. Computer: Enjoy your EXTRA BIG ASS FRIES!
Woman at Carl's Jr.: You didn't give me no fries, I got an empty box.
Carl's Jr. Computer: Would you like another EXTRA BIG ASS FRIES?
Woman at Carl's Jr.: I said I didn't get any!
Carl's Jr. Computer: Thank you! Your account has been charged. Your balance is zero. Please come back when you can afford to make a purchase.
Woman at Carl's Jr.: What? Oh no, NO!
[She hits the machine. An alarm goes off, and a sign appears on the computer saying "WARNING! Carl's Jr. Frowns Upon Vandalism"]
Carl's Jr. Computer: I'm sorry you're having trouble. I'm sorry you're having trouble.
Woman at Carl's Jr.: Come on! My kids are starvin'!
Carl's Jr. Computer: [the woman kicks the computer, and it sprays a fast-acting tranquilizer in her face] This should help you calm down. Please come back when you can afford to make a purchase. Your kids are starving. Carl's Jr. believes no child should go hungry. You are an unfit mother. Your children will be placed in the custody of Carl's Jr. Carl's Jr... "F*ck You, I'm Eating."
[Joe approaches the computer]
Carl's Jr. Computer: Welcome to Carl's Jr. Would you like to try our EXTRA BIG ASS TACO? Now with more MOLECULES!
SD
âoeWho knew something as harmless as willful ignorance could end up having real consequences?â
Not come across Eatsa before - interesting idea. I am amused by the "Now Hiring" section of their website. 22 vacancies, it seems, across two restaurants.
Owl tried to think of something wise to say, but couldn't.
The machines would be cheaper still, since there'd be no need for quality control on them or guarantee of operability.
The CEO should be replaced by a machine. It would be VASTLY cheaper. There are robot putting machines that play excellent golf.
This "story" is pure propaganda: "Remove regulation against me, because it is costing you your jobs!!!" Only because you're a greedy asshole, CEO shithead. Only because you're a greedy asshole.
And you know why those regulations are there? Because without them, you will expend the lives of your workers if it's cheaper to get new ones than protect their safety. You will ignore all common decency and professionalism to cut corners to make more profit and hang the customers, the product or your workforce. EVERY regulation was brought in because one of you fuckwits couldn't stop doing dangerous (for others) and stupid shit without the law being made to force you to stop.
I would find it MUCH cheaper just to break the contract with my landlord and not pay rent. UNFORTUNATELY, laws mean I have to pay rent or I get imprisoned or kicked out of my home. For some reason, the fact I would find life easier and cheaper if these laws weren't in place isn't newsworthy enough to get me noted, and definitely not going to get me any sympathy or traction with the lawmakers.
Unlike this privileged shithead's whining.
If you hadn't been dangerously psychopathic, you blundering moron, there wouldn't have had to be regulation.
But, no, you can't fucking be trusted. So we have to force you to be sane and caring of others and professional in your practices by force of law. And how you whine...
the people who believe experiencing unpleasantness like working is intrinsically valuable.
Mihaly Csiksgentmihalyi has found that people need to work. The ideal case is we have work that is meaningful to us. Now, meaningful doesn't necessarily mean you have do something to save the world. It means something that puts you into a state he coined as "flow" - it's where you get lost in what you're doing to the point where you lose all track of time and what have you.
But when work because this endless dehumanizing drag, then that's where we get into problems.
I am all for machines replacing us because if a machine can do it with current technology, then that work is robot work and beneath a human. Where the true problem lies in our society is our economic system. THAT is what has to change - NOT the elimination of automation.
Unfortunately in our society, we have been brainwashed and worship capitalism like it's some sort of natural law or god, for that matter (How many times have you heard, "I'm a Christian and a Capitalist."), and we have forgotten that economic systems are the creation of people. It's an abstract construct. We are beholden to the "rules" of capitalism as much as we are beholden to the rules of Monopoly. Economies are supposed to serve people; not the other way around.
And where Capitalism fails is that individuals have to shoe-horn themselves into something or work way below their potential because they have to do something that the "economy" values. The fact that someone who codes Javascript to put flashy advertising on webpages get paid so much more than a teacher is an illustration of the warped value system that Capitalism rewards; it rewards the lowest common denominator.
Is Socialism better? In some respects yes and in others no. But in the 21st Century we are still beholden to a primitive economic system that sprang up in the Middle Ages just seems ludicrous.
Machines are a better choice than human employees in some situations. I can see why a manager or CEO would prefer machines over the crackers who typically work in fast food joints. There are several reasons:
1) The machines smell better
2) The machines won't spend all their time making unwelcome sexist, racist remarks toward black women
3) The machines won't call the other machines niggers
4) The machines can be trusted to not steal from the business then blame the African-Americans for problems that arise
5) The machines speak much better English
6) The machines don't have HIV
7) The machines will show up for work on time
8) The machines won't shoot other machines
Wanted: Kill-bots that only target CEOs.
If Puzder is going to fire Suzie rather than give her a $3 raise, then his taxes are going to go up to pay for her social safety net costs.
He has bought the politicians. So he thinks he is covered there on the tax issue. But the damn fool does not realize, his machines won't need food, would not buy entertainment, would not buy a home or pay for college. As more and more employers automate more and more functions and lay off more and more people, he will end up with lots of shiny new machines willing sell food at great profit.... if only there are people with money to buy them.
It is really very short sighted of a food industry CEO to go this way. No matter how much money you have, the top 1% can not eat 99 times more to make up for the loss of income at the lower scales. The industries that serve the poorer people, fast food, low end restaurants, low end retail, low end consumables, low end groceries, should be at the forefront of supporting government assistance to the poor.
Every dollar spent, or wasted, if you want to call it that, by the government is a dollar of income to someone. The captains of these industries should be lobbying for increased government spending on welfare, if they have any sense.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
...that's what technology is supposed to do, yes. The rising tide, and all that. Why do you subscribe to a Bronze Age mentality in 2016?
I'm always amazed by the consumer who thinks that he can demand production and enjoy the benefits of other people's capital.
I'm always amazed that people think their "capital" has any sort of meaning unless the mass of society can benefit from it. Guess what, the only thing preventing the masses from stringing you up and taking your capital is the basic social contract that allows you to get rich as long as standards for the masses don't fall too far. You violate that social contract no amount of funny money or gold bars or factories is going to save your head from getting blown off as the police officers and military you depend on to live find it expedient to slay you.
Monstar L
I'm always amazed that the rich think they can hide in their gated communities and enjoy the fruits of other people's labor.
I'm always amazed that people don't get this simple truth:People tend to avoid whatever the government makes more expensive and gravitate toward whatever the government makes cheaper
This can be accomplished by active tax policy (e.g., raising taxes on luxury items or "sin taxes," enacting tax credits like for having children or performing energy saving upgrades to your primary residence), or by passive tax policy (e.g., allowing nearby jurisdictions to be more competitive from a taxation stand point).
For example, this is precisely why people constantly travel from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and even further away to buy stuff in Delaware. NJ, PA, & MD all have relatively high sales taxes, while DE has none. This is also why lots of big US companies (Microsoft is the only one that springs to mind recently, but there are others) funnel lots of their revenue and profits through affiliates in Ireland (which has a much lower corporate tax rate than most other industrialized nations). This isn't rocket science, it is simply understanding fundamental human behavior.
The biggest flaw in your assumption, however, is that we can keep widening the social safety net indefinitely. Eventually, people will need to become responsible for themselves again and own their own fate.
""They're always polite, they always upsell, they never take a vacation, they never show up late, there's never a slip-and-fall, or an age, sex, or race discrimination case," says Puzder in regard to replacing employees with machines." Spoken like a true greedy piece of shit. Corporations have RESPONSIBILITIES, not just rights... Hope no one buys a thing at these automated "restaurants"...
Start a franchise, pretty much any big name brand restaurant. Your contract has set costs, your contract for the building set in stone, your overhead minus labor, non-negotiable... that leaves labor.
So you want more money in your pocket, the only place to grab it is from your workers somehow. I knew a woman that was an "assistant manager" at a Culver's. They cut the health care coverage to the bare bones & made the employees (managers & assistant managers) pay 100% for it. The owners (they had 3 Culver's) saved 10K. Just enough take their families to Hawaii for 2 weeks over Christmas.
SLOWER TRAFFIC KEEP RIGHT
Actually you've got that backwards, fighting against minimum wage laws illistrates economic and historical ignorance at the highest level.
Historically they were associated in a huge increase in the middle class. What you're arguing for is the creation and maintenance of an underclass to keep the wealth centralised in the current upper classes.
But you said it best
Your superstitions need to die out, sadly this is taking a long time.
Your assumptions are based on conditions that dont exist in the real world because of a little economic principle called "externalities". Keynesian and Libertarian economists love to ignore externalities because they 1) Aren't immediately apparent on a balance sheet and 2) completely screw up their chosen economic dogma. OK, so lets allow businesses to decide what is the minimum wage, the first thing they're going to find out is that fewer people can afford to buy they're product. This alone will reduce the available workforce because unlike companies, workers can pick up and leave when they cant make a liveable wage. As a result, anyone with any skill, talent or worth will move to a place with wage laws so all that CEO Stingy-pants will be left with are the most uneducated employees, literally the people who cant get. a job anywhere else.
A good historical example was Henry Ford. Instead of paying the lowest wages possible, he paid the highest and what he saw was a huge uptick in sales because his own workers could now afford to buy his cars. It wasn't just Ford that benefited from this, his workers could now afford other luxuries like a refrigerator.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Um... Puzder has enough clout that even though Suzie gets fired, he won't be paying taxes to keep the social safety net going.
The rich can... if things get bad, the gated communities get armed guards, and they will continue to enjoy the fruits of other people's labor. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Mexico, and many other countries show this happening. Voting is nice, but few people bother to do that. At an extreme, revolution is talked about, but realistically, it is impossible. Look at Syria as an example.
I'm always amazed at the corporate shill who doesn't understand that without customers you have no business, and with no business, you're unemployed and penniless.
Without workers, you either have to do the work all yourself (in which case you need to get some thousands of hours per day work done, good luck with that) or you have no goods to sell. And if you have no goods to sell, your customers won't be buying anythin from you and you will go out of business and be unemployed and penniless.
Without you in charge, the business with customers to buy and workers to make the stuff to buy, the business will work absolutely fine and make money. They will be employed and you will be unemployed and penniless.
As long as you rely on the majority, you owe them for your existence and wealth. They owe you shit all. If you weren't getting more from their work than they did, you wouldn't get paid. You sure as shit don't do the work yourself.
It would be better if they guy wasn't 1. paid so much money himself ; and 2) a total dick about paying his employees living wages in general. See: http://www.epi.org/blog/romney...
Yes, you can make the arguments about robots replacing people, and yes, it's going to happen, but this guy is one of the worst salespeople for it and a magnificent representative of the upper management asshole
The more people I meet, the better I like my dog.
s/regulation/the basic human right to a decent living wage/
I've seen all those movies. In the short term, it's bad for humans, both the innocent as well as the idiots that made the killbots. But usually humans prevail in the end. So I'm putting my money on the humans.
When the wealthy have a police state with killbots on their side, what chance do you think the people have ?
Just the killbots. Otherwise they'd need to pay and equip the police, who being human would probably keep demanding more money until the point that they would also need to become killbot fodder.
Historically, how well has that worked for the working poor?
It sure seems like the only time the typical worker gets ahead is when major historical changes occur that alter the playing field in ways that economic power and the force of establishment violence can't change -- the mass deaths during the plague, the combination of economic depression and World War II, or outright political revolution, which seems to have enough negative outcomes that it can't really be endorsed.
Other than that, political and economic systems seem to be capable of withstanding and even thriving with a narrow economic and political elite and the masses held in working poverty or outright slavery. Rome built one of the greatest empires known on a slave economy. European feudalism lasted for centuries, a grip only loosened by the labor imbalance of the plague and took centuries and the influence of Marxism to truly wane.
While the economies of scale and mass production seem capable of altering the equation through broader material prosperity, the trends don't exactly appear encouraging. Wage stagnation, wealth concentration, race-to-the-bottom labor practices, and financial corruption of the political process don't seem to be stacking the odds in favor of the typical worker.
The current political process seems to indicate a disaffection for the status quo, but would even an election of Sanders be enough to actually rebalance the equation? We're due again for our usual post-administration review of the accomplishments or lack thereof of Presidential power as a reminder of how voting for "change" seldom results in lasting positive change for the masses.
With fast-food chains going after anything human with their human employees, it is no wonder they found that machines are more effective.
When the person taking orders has to follow a precise script and take order within a certain time, that the kitchen is all about timers and calibrated doses, what's the advantage of having humans in the first place?
In a real restaurant, you can ask for advise, make special demands (within limits), the chef can compose with unusual ingredients. Commercially, they know the little attentions that can make you a returning customer. This is what humans are for. And this is part of the reason people are ready to pay more in a good restaurant, because you have real, competent humans rather than robots in human bodies.
Realize it folks, they did not get where they are by being kind and nice. They bargain hard and bluff their way to power and money. It is time to call their bluff. Tell them exactly what they are telling their employees. "You don't like this pay, get out, we have more people waiting in line for this job!" That is what they are saying.
We should tell them, "if you are not willing to run the company by these rules and laws, get out. Take your money and run. We have more people willing to play by our rules. World is sloshing with investment dollars with nowhere to go. Jobs are not created by you. Jobs and your profit is created by the people consuming what you are selling. They are there, whether you are there or not. The demand exists, the profit potentials exist. These are the rules. Don't like it, stuff your money in some bond fund and take a hike. There are others who will play by our laws, our rules, to tap this profit potential".
Stop coddling these jerk capitalists. The goal of Capitalism is not to enrich the rich. The goal of capitalism is to harness the profit motive of people to create a prosperous society. People with profit motives are not altruists. They have to be harnessed for the larger goal of prosperous society.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Even if I think they're a complete shit and warrant spitting in their food, I wouldn't do it. Because I LIKE TO EAT OUT SOMETIMES. And if I work in catering and do or see others do that, how the hell do I know what they did to my food?
Sometimes I go out to eat because I'm in a bad mood or upset or stressed or need to get out. And so I won't be able to be charming and nice. And so I won't know I can expect to get piss-free soup, and I won't know it is piss free anyway, because how the hell do I know that someone just had a bad day or is getting fired on Friday or whatever. So I can't enjoy the meal.
So I started off not well and now I can't trust the food, which is going to make things worse.
So why the fuck would anyone else do it?
If you get bad tips, you get bad tips. Pissing in their porridge doesn't make your tips appear, it merely makes people, when they hear about it, decide they don't want to eat out. Which means fewer customers, which means your employer makes less and fires someone, there are fewer customers to tip you, and every one of them doesn't know if you've got shit under your fingernails because the previous customer of theirs was a jerk. So they'll tip, but feel like it's being robbed (taxed, really, pay up or we'll punish you, secretly), and not feel like eating out as much, even if they could afford to.
Don't
Fucking
Do
It
Suck it up.
Unionise.
Insist on an actual living wage not reliant on tips. Because if you have to blackmail people into tipping you, you aren't worth the tips you get, because at least some of that is fear only.
Just leave the food in a manner you would eat it yourself.
Because Slashdot is full of republicans. I don't see how one can be staunchly republican or democrat and simultaneously thoughtful enough to engage in meaningful discussion of any kind.
Puzder asks:
> "Does it really help if Sally makes $3 more an hour if Suzie has no job?"
It certainly helps more than if neither of them have a job, which seems to by Puzder's solution to not wanting to give either of them a raise.
But even if we take his arguments at face value, actually, yes, it does help, because the minimum wage is intended to reflect the cost of living. If you split that wage across two people, it won't make them both grateful to have a job; it'll make them both unable to afford their rent or travel to work, and probably have to quit anyway.
/thread
That was my thinking too. The combination of machines making food and people not being needed to do mind-numbing tedious tasks brings us one step closer to the Star Trek utopia.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
Pretty sure in the bronze age a horde of barbarians would kill him and take his "capital", possibly also raping him and his family. Beginning mostly with feudalism a group of very low wage earners protects him militarily while a group of other low wage earners and machinery designed by other low wage earners takes his capital and gives it back to him with interest. Those people, while unquestionably delivering more to his (and each others) bottom line than he is compensating them for, refrain from barbaric behavior because their pathetic wages are still better than raping and pillaging. In the modern age there has been a push to realize that simply possessing money is probably not a contribution to society and such people are effectively the same useless parasites their poor non-job seeking equivalents are, unless they are also capable of using that money effectively. Due to the need to maintain the semblance of a meritocracy and stability in society, we do not simply take their money away and redistribute it, this might undermine the productivity of capable and motivated low wage earners ambitions. Regardless, devoid of income and hope the low wage earners that do produce a better world are likely to return to the bronze age or earlier when it becomes the lesser of evils. The latest fashion out of paris suggests a return to togas and horned helmets.
But it will help tremendously reseting society bloodily if a lot of sally don't find a job and a lot of sally and joe decide armed revolution is better than starving. You can't have inflation continuously like we have the system can only work with regular "bust" reseting the clock and a reseting of wealth or partial forced redistribution of it.
$3 salary raise, $3 in taxes and fees, plus the additional costs for other people because Suzie can't work 24/7, sometimes gets sick or goes on vacation, or gets a better job and quits.
Or, he pays less for a more reliable machine plus a small portion of the social safety net costs for Suzie, which are spread out over the entire working population.
If you can't afford minimum wage, that shows your business should not be done at all and you should be unemployed and not trying to run that business.
Because a worker who can't get minimum can't live and if they can't live, they can't continue to work, death being a big hit to worker productivity.
If you can't run your business with the costs you incur, then you're an incompetent business owner.
And that's true even if those costs are the costs of your wokers.
After all, if you don't want to pay that wage, do the fucking work yourself, see how "easy" it is.
When it comes to menial or shitty jobs, instead of looking at how much the CEO wants to pay to get someone to do it, ask how much they would demand before doing it. And THAT is what the job is worth, since if people can afford to say no (and if they can't, in what way is this a contractual agreement of freely negotiating parties, and if it isn't, then you're not running free market capitalism, you're running slave rings), and nobody wants to do the job for the asking price, YOU, the CEO, will have to do it. For free.
Or increase the wage until SOMEONE wants to do it.
And THAT is the value of the job. What you need to pay to get someone to freely decide to do it.
machines don't forget to wash their hands after pooping in order to spread their intestinal viruses.
Unfortunately people's buying behaviour is not in general altruistic, it's based upon self interest.
Greed is the root of all evil.
https://youtu.be/7Pq-S557XQU
What about the worker on site who has to maintain it? Machines and moving parts wear out, sanitation laws must be met, inspections must be done, and so on. There is no way a fast food business can run completely unmanned.
Even if the machines worked perfectly, there will be people trying their best to screw around with them in hopes of getting them to fuck up, then suing the fast food joint for millions because the automated coffee maker didn't realize the cup was yanked out of the slot, or the sliding door was jammed with a stick.
I'm amazed people think the masses of people can manage to do anything without "capital".
There is a reason that millennia passed with most of the world's population at subsidence level agriculture, a state that ended in the West only in the 20th century.
They need highly skilled ($40 to $50 an hour skilled) employees to maintain and repair them plus you need skilled workers to clean them and stock them.
No you don't. You don't need to keep someone on the payroll to do that. Stocking them? You mean load them? Minimum wage people for that.
IF something goes wrong, the robot company sends a guy out. Those things aren't some consumer device that's gonna be thrown out in a couple of years. Those things are designed to last because business people have to worry about ROI, reliability, and other factors that consumers don't think about.
And some of these robots work for the equivalent of $4/hour, never get tired or call in sick, never late, work 24 hours a day, etc ....
There are some pretty interesting economic arguments on either side. Unfortunately, trade and economics topics have degenerated to a shouting match. Many of the arguments for government regulation of trade would be right at home in the "great debate" over merging white and negro sports in the 1950s. The best argument in favor of government intervention in trade and labor were Teddy Roosevelt's, who effectively argued that industry had monopolized and price-fixed to the point where laborers could not compete.
Slashdot used to have some pretty intersting and relevant discussions on things like where the unemployment rate is so low that automation is rational, or when jobs are so unpleasant that the rational thing is to let the industry migrate to a country with much higher unemployment and lower wages. Unfortunately, when I've tried to have those discussions here of late I get 20 "pithy epithets" and anonymous coward attacks and cuss words. The shouting protectionists and the liberal politically correction makers have somehow merged to upvote rudeness.
"Paid for by the corporations through taxes because they put all of the people out of work."
Corporations simple pass any added taxes and costs on to the customer. Thus if you add taxes to a corporation they simple raise the price and pass that added expense on to the customer.
A CEO I worked for once said "People are idiots, they think they can raise minimum wadge or add taxes to a company to pay for some social benefit. Corporations pass the added expense on to the customer. Thus they never realize they are the ones paying the taxes not the company.
A corporations job is to make money, that means that we take what ever expenses we have including taxes, add them up, attach a profit margin to it, and sell it. Otherwise we would not be making money."
Shouldn't that be catchup?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Luddites out in force today, I see. All of the anti-machine arguments I see people making here are the exact same arguments that the Luddites made against manufacturing technology back in the 1800s.
Of course, due to the fact that the Luddites were ignored (or violently put down), you now have computers, smart phones, and other goods at prices so cheap the average "poor" American lives better than a King did in 1800.
The biggest flaw in your assumption, however, is that we can keep widening the social safety net indefinitely. Eventually, people will need to become responsible for themselves again and own their own fate.
What you don't realize is that the only way for these people to take responsibility for their own fate, in this context, is through violence. Your idea of Social Darwinism is not only naive but threatens the very stability of our civilization.
I am all for automation: start with the CEO and the owners, replace them with voting systems.
If fewer people can afford to buy your products, what good will that capital do you or anyone else? Pay everyone who's capable of working a wage that's kept up with inflation and we'd only need that safety net for the people who aren't capable, but you'd have a much broader tax base covering fewer un/under-employed people. Improve health care and you'll get fewer people incapable of working too.
That's what the social safety net is there for, but lately businesses have gotten away with underpaying their employees who are instead getting the difference from the net.
Ratburgers ? Ask Sylvester Stallone. He traded a fine watch for one, and was quite satisfied. . . (grin)
Carl's Junior
Fuck you I'm eating!
"Fuck you, I'm eating". . . . (bigger grin)
Sooner or later the capitalists of our world that look to maximize profits will realise a person without an income makes for a horrible consumer.
What an idiotic fantasy you have.
What really happens is -
Money goes out of the country, usually to another country where costs are lower. In the 19th and 20th centuries, money went from the UK to the US. Now it has gone from the US to China.
Businesses relocate to where the money is, or they fail and close.
The now impoverished country becomes a shithole (repressive government, tax avoidance, etc.)
"Corporations simple pass any added taxes and costs on to the customer. Thus if you add taxes to a corporation they simple raise the price and pass that added expense on to the customer."
No, they don't. Or, at least, they don't do it *automatically*. That's what competition is about.
Currently we all see how high officials' overall wages and shares' profits are increasing well over average/median salaries. This means that given strong competition they can absorb increased costs by reducing their profit margins and still stay in business (of course, this doesn't mean they would accept it out of their free will, but that they'll do if there's no other way).
"A corporations job is to make money, that means that we take what ever expenses we have including taxes, add them up, attach a profit margin to it, and sell it."
Exactly this. Which in turn means that, as long as the profit margin is higher than "the fair profit for money" (in Adam Smith's words), they can possibly reduce their margin and still stay in business (because it's still better to accept the reduced profits than putting their money anywhere else with even lower margins). As an extreme example, you can see how as of now "the money" is accepting even negative returns on long term bonds from healthy economies.
If Puzder is going to fire Suzie rather than give her a $3 raise, then his taxes are going to go up to pay for her social safety net costs. It's impossible to have a society where a large fraction of people can't find work that pays a living wage. Those people will vote (or act in other ways) to overturn the system that is making their lives impossible.
I'm always amazed that the rich think they can hide in their gated communities and enjoy the fruits of other people's labor.
Why would you be amazed by the fact that they think that when it worked out so well for the King of France and Czar of Russia?
"They're always polite, they always upsell, they never take a vacation, they never show up late, there's never a slip-and-fall, or an age, sex, or race discrimination case"
He complains about wages, and then lists the reasons he'll automate no matter what the minimum wage is, no matter what the regulations are. Sounds about right.
And after the masses string up the producers for their wealth. Then there are no more producers and then what? Nobody making money and more importantly nobody producing products for the masses to buy. How long will most of modern society last if the farmers stop producing more than they need to survive? How many people even have enough land to be self sustaining food wise let alone clothing and other items?
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
Consider this alternative future:
1) Wealth and control of resources concentrates in the hands of a few.
2) These people stop considering the rest of humanity "humans", or just believe that what is theirs is theirs and no one else has a right to anything. They also don't need labor very much at all because it is automated. So people who have only their labor to offer are frozen out economically.
3) The owners use automated weaponry to enforce their rights of ownership
4) The power of the few snowballs and they eventually own the entire planet and all means of production, and the rest live in misery on whatever pittiance is allowed them or is outright exterminated via automated weaponry.
To see this in its infancy, look at Detroit. People there can't sell their labor, don't have means to leave, and have resorted to subsistence farming. However, if a "landowner" comes along with the means of ejecting the "squatters", they won't even be able to subsistence farm.
Societies that *do* what you say is inevitable (basic income) will avoid this. Societies which allow ever increasing concentration of wealth into the hands of a few might not. The USA's trend on this is pretty scary, witness the almost complete capture of the political system by money.
-PM
Since he's so enamored with reducing head count because of labor costs, get rid of him and replace him with a computer.
Faster, more nimble, doesn't require any sleep (though needs 24/7 electricity), no healthcare costs, certainly far less expensive to keep around than someone making millions who does so little.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
I'm always amazed that the rich think they can hide in their gated communities and enjoy the fruits of other people's labor.
But they're not even benefiting from Suzie's labor because she doesn't have a job. The rich are being as fooled by capitalism as the poor are. Free market capitalism is essentially a mindless productivity optimizer. Its goal is to squeeze all human labor out of the system by rewarding productivity improvements (which result in more profit) and innovation (which disrupts entrenched interests), all powered along by competition. All of that is fine until the increases in productivity start to out-pace the un-met demand for human labor from the displaced workforce. At that point the best course of action for the invisible hand is to start ejecting the people who consume more resources than robots. This might be good for GDP per worker, but is neither humane nor sustainable in a democracy. Trying to fix this with things like minimum wages is only going to delay things for a short while.
Many people seem to have turned our current version of capitalism into some kind of religion and that is where I think many of our problems come from. Capitalism is just a program that is running and has arguably worked better than any other program for the last few decades. But that program is not sentient. It just blindly pursues a set of objectives. It is now destroying human society in pursuit of those objectives, and the humans need to put their thinking caps back on, tweek the system (as has been done numerous times in capitalism's history) and then set it loose again. My main concern is that if we don't realise this and make adjustments now, people will start to believe some guy (e.g Trump) can do things better by taking control himself. He probably can, until the power goes to his head and the circle begins again.
Yeah about that... Applebees has new touchscreen things that they put at our table. You can order from it, pay your bill from it, and request server assistance. Except the server assistance request never worked. Worst service I've ever gotten... If the digital screen is doing 80% of the serving, is it acceptable to reduce the tip by 80%?
The digital screens also show you ads for their stupid games during your meal as well. Luckily the screen is portable so you can just turn it around. What marketing idiot decided that people would pay $3 to play a cell phone game during a meal? If I wanted to pay $3 for a cell phone game, I'd do it on my cell phone where I would be able to play it later as well...
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
If the humanity as a whole can produce the same amount of goods/services with less human effort, this seems to be a positive thing. The only thing to fix is the way to make all humans to have access to this goods/services, but that's not something to fix on the production part, it's somewhere else in the system.
Interesting, isn't it, that this mythical "social contract" depends on the assumption that violence will exist without it, yet this "social contract" requires violence to enforce. It's almost as if it's a violent measure in and of itself, isn't it?
This is why we should not be giving general amnesty to all illegals. Otherwise, there will be lots of unemployment to pay.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
"He has bought the politicians. So he thinks he is covered there on the tax issue. But the damn fool does not realize, his machines won't need food, would not buy entertainment, would not buy a home or pay for college."
How's this any different to how it has been for ages? And the one-percenters haven't suffered too much for that being the case, right?
"It is really very short sighted of a food industry CEO"
It is really very short sighted to think about this man as a "food industry CEO" when he's just "a CEO that happens to be in the food industry right now". On one hand, he'll still be a one-percenter even if his current company folds; on the other, he still can move to a different sector as CEO if the food business fails.
"The captains of these industries should be lobbying for increased government spending on welfare, if they have any sense."
The one advantage about money is that it is not tied to any specific good: money is agnostic, as it is usually said. So these people can either stick to their current industry or take their money anywhere else, at their choice.
Despite what Fox News says, the vast majority of the poor are working poor, and most of them grab every job they can to make ends meet. Many of the ones Fox News points at are poor people with illnesses and mental illness, who are hard put to hold a job. The viewpoint you wink at is a wildly inaccurate stereotype.
NEWS FLASH: People have never stopped being responsible for their own fate.
Don't step on the baby.
Someone else will take his place.
Isn't that the argument that you libertarian fucks always like to use when arguing against minimum wage and the like?
Eat the rich.
Now we just need to dress the worthless people in red shirts and organize some landing parties.
Humans only prevail in the end because it's a movie, and many/most movie writers feel an obligation for a feel-good ending.
In all likelihood, should an overlord with killbots scenario arise, the overlord and his/her cronies will have a lavish life supported by automation as the rest of humanity is wiped out. This will continue for a few generations until the lack of genetic diversity eventually wipes out the species. That's assuming the remaining few can go without wiping themselves out fighting for control over the rest.
Such is the inevitable result of lionizing sociopaths.
Hopefully they will, which means abolishing laws that make it illegal for them to work. You know, like minimum wage laws.
I don't know why more people don't own stock. I have accumulated enough over the years where I cheer this kind of cost cutting. Indeed, I insist upon it! It provides me, as you say, a basic income.
They can still sit on their porches pounding on drums and smoking dope. A rice and beans diet will work out okay.
You're talking as if this is all theoretical. But you do well to remember a few things:
1) Masses don't string up producers, they string up the wealthy. In a typical society the people getting rich are not the producers but middle men. Suzie can still flip burgers just as well as she used to, and best of all she and the other employees no longer need to share their wealth with a fat CEO.
2) Farmers are not the ones getting strung up, they will be lining up with strings in their hands right along side the rest of the lower class.
3) Society doesn't break down when the top are axed.
4) This isn't theoretical. This has happened many times in many governments in history. Google Peasant's Revolt for an example. Society will live on because the people who society are built upon ARE the middle-lower class.
He doesn't care about saving money, he cares about having more in his pocket that is not going to employees.
You guys are missing the point here. There is nothing on Eatsa's menu worth eating.
If we want to fix it, we need to change the parameters of the political/economical system. We need to tax capital gains more, and working wages less. We also need to find a way to enable people to make valuable contributions to society - by using some of the capital to educate the population, and to provide better chances for economically and socially disadvantaged people. A basic income would be one way to provide people with the time to get educated, but in itself, it does little to provide the motivation. Better schools and free university education would help. Intelligent programming on TV and the net would also be a boon. But it's probably not going to pay the same dividends as "Real Housewifes of the WWF", so we might need some good public programming.
On a societal level, this would probably even be economically advantageous. I'd rather pay for a poor kid to go to university than for a cop to keep me safe from it - maybe that kid will invent a cancer cure, or a new video game, instead of going to prison. However, it's far from trivial to align the interest of the major economic and political players with the interests of society as a whole. Even if any program creates a net benefit, as long as some players lose out (or only fear to lose out), they will stonewall any changes. In the long run, things will probably even out - but we do want to avoid cataclysmic events like the French or Russian revolutions.
Stephan
But the damn fool does not realize, his machines won't need food, would not buy entertainment, would not buy a home or pay for college. As more and more employers automate more and more functions and lay off more and more people, he will end up with lots of shiny new machines willing sell food at great profit.... if only there are people with money to buy them.
And this is the point at which he instead tasks his machines with making more and better machines (instead of now-worthless food).
And that's how the singularity happens.
Puzder. We are coming for you. You are top of the list.
What makes you think that those who 'string up' the producers won't claim and redistribute the wealth that allowed the production? Someone will certainly keep producing. It just won't be the one it was before. Heck it could become the dreaded 'communism' where the laborers take the means of production and use it to make goods and services without an 'overlord' who thinks they are entitled to all the profits form their efforts.
we are all invisible unless we choose otherwise
Have you seen the recent reports about Disney IT workers, IBM, Hertz... Thousands of jobs lost to cheaper labor costs(H1-B) in the past couple of months alone. Have you heard of the cloud? Hundreds of thousands of jobs lost due to lower IT costs in consolidated hosting and automation.
Have you seen McDonald's proof of concept testing of automation(order kiosks)? Did you look at the eatsa site? Have you seen the national fast casual chains implementing at table ordering and payment tablet devices that even print the receipts? Now this statement from the CEO of another national chain.
Your post seems to suggest that technology and automation has not replaced IT jobs and will not replace restaurant jobs. I fucking guarantee you that it is happening right this minute. The automation may have happened anyway, even without recent labor demands. But, the continued labor demands for massively increased minimum wages have lit a fire under these companies and they are working as hard as they can to eliminate labor and soon as possible and maintain or increase their profits.
Cue the fucking morons that will try to say that I am an idiot and that doubling the minimum wage will have no impact on their profits and will have no economic knock on effect.
I think the UBI sounds good in practice, but I am concerned that it will be too open to political abuse. In the end I think it is important to not conflate the issues of an economy that is deflating due to inequality, and a socially acceptable amount of inequality. I think you could get general consensus for some kind of UBI to ensure that the economy doesn't fall into a depression, but people will always fight about what level of inequality is acceptable.
For this reason I actually think a helicopter dividend would be better. Central banks should just be given the power to dump money into every citizen's bank account (probably each month) from created funds to ensure they meet their inflation targets. If the predictions that automation will destroy many jobs come to pass, then the amount they will have to pay out to maintain demand and hence inflation will eventually come to equal a UBI. On the other hand, if the economy recovers and full employment magically returns, the dividend will be cut to zero and the bank can use interest rate policy to control inflation as per usual. The other big benefit of this is that they could then return interest rates to a market level, let all the bubbles deflate, and feed helicopter money in until the economy recovers. This would remove the need for them to have to artificially suppress interest rates to stimulate the economy (which has caused much of the mess we are in), and would give them the ability to let big bubbles collapse without risking a deflationary spiral.
Until automation grows to a point where the dividend was sufficient to live off, you would still need government transfer payments to poor people, but this is just such a political issue that I think trying to remove it from the political process by rolling it into a UBI will just undermine the ability to get consensus on the need for change.
This is a guy focused on the short term costs and not the customer. Paying for labor does two things - it allows for a better grade of employee and potentially more customers. This mentality is not new to business, but companies that focus on costs are often the ones that go out of business because all that time and energy spent on cost control is not spent on customer service and product quality. Every company that I can recall that has gone down this road has usually ended up with a bad reputation for service and quality and is ripe for losing their position in the market by someone who does focus on the customer and product quality.
Creative Spelling Copyright (2002). May use without Persimmons
Corporations that pass through 100% of the cost increases are either in the commodity business, or aren't in a competitive arena. There is always an attempt to trim some in order to offset the new costs, simply because you know that your competitors are looking at this as an opportunity to steal some of your customers if they happen to raise their price less.
Is government regulation such as the minimum wage.
Not only the inequality from Sally making $3 more an hour and Suzie having no job and making zero, but consider the stunting effect on the middle class. Before the regulation you could be competitive with simple stoves and shelling out a variable, but relatively small amount every week for labor. If business was slow, you had the option of cutting back labor. If business was good, you could increase labor. But now with automation replacing labor, the cost of entry into the market has become much higher. Instead of only investing, say, $250k now with automation it will take, say, $500k. So, Mr. MiddleClass who could possibly afford the $250 is locked out of another path to upward mobility..
I'm always amazed by people who breed when they can't afford to take care of themselves and then expect others to take care of them. One of the many solutions in a post job, post scarcity world is less breeding.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
Walk into a McDonald's at lunch hour. There are five or more people standing at terminals taking orders. Replace the terminals with order kiosks and you just eliminated five expenses(jobs). The cleaning guy is still in the back.
Automate the cooking and you just eliminated five more expenses(jobs). The cleaning guy is still in the back. There's probably other automation methods as well. But the point is that with two simple and very feasible automation systems, you just eliminated 10 expenses(jobs) in a single franchise. Now multiply that the 36,000 franchises and you just eliminated 360,000 jobs! (And that's just one brand!) The cleaning guy still has his job and they may even hire another cleaning guy and double their pay, but that doesn't help the other 324,000 unemployed people or the government welfare systems(your's and my pockets) that they will draw from.
How fucking stupid are you.
This has ahll been tried, repeatedly. You say "they can possibly", let's look at what people ACTUALLY DO.
> as the profit margin is higher than "the fair profit for money" (in Adam Smith's words), they can possibly reduce their margin and still stay in business
They "possibly could", I suppose. Here's what is in fact happening. Each paycheck, I have a certain amount set aside for retirement, and to buy a house again, because I'm trying to be a responsible adult. That money that is set aside is of course "capital". (it's worth recognizing that in the US, with our system of public companies, the word "capital" mostly means "retirement savings").
So anyway I have this retirement money, or capital, and I need to do something with it. I -could- put my money in a Detroit car company, who pays relatively high wages but makes no money. If I choose to do that, I can retire when I'm 85. Or I can put my savings into another car company which makes cars in Texas, Mexico, and other places with lower regulatory costs, and therefore makes money. If I do that, I can retire when I'm 65.
So retire at 85 via a Detroit company with Detroit costs, or retire at 65 via a multinational with Texas and Mexico costs. Which would YOU choose. Virtually nobody is choosing to put their savings (capital) into companies with high costs and low profits. A few choose their investments based on being a fan of this or that, but most people want to retire sooner rather than later, so their money goes to places that have lower costs.
China and India have had much lower costs than the east coast of the US does, so businesses operating in China and India (and creating jobs there) are the ones doing well. The jobs in Detroit are gone. They HAD very high benefits and wages due to unions and regulation there, and that's why they are gone.
Of course, that fact that legislating higher pay doesn't work is unacceptable to some people; their first instinct is to deny it, though of course it's fairly obvious. What about those poor assembly line workers, warehouse workers, etc.? We have to do something! I'd agree, somewhat. I'd say "we have to do something THAT WILL BE EFFECTIVE." All too often we think "we have to do something" and then politician X suggests plan Z. Well plan Z is something, and we have to do something, so we have to plan Z. Well, no, plan Z has been tried many times and it doesn't work. We need to do something that actually works.
The main thing that actually works is vocational training / education. I started to just write "education", but getting a bunch of people degrees in Russian Literature isn't all that effective; we can get better results from our limited resources with training in welding, IT fields, etc. If someone is 36 years old and they're worth the same wage as a 16 year old, if they haven't managed to improve their skills and knowledge in 20 years, that's something we need to look at.
We also have to recognize a very uncomfortable fact. Gas stations and fast food places around Texas are offering $10-12/hour to start, which, with the low cost of living in Texas, is a decent wage. That's just the starting wage, for teenagers with no experience, show up on time for a year and you start getting raises. Yet there are a bunch of people not working! There are even people getting fired from Taco Bell because they won't show up on time and when they do show up they're stoned. It's a lot harder to help those people. I'm not sure how to help people who won't show up, except I've done one thing that has helped in some cases. I've given them two choices - show up, sober, and get paid well, or don't get paid at all. They'd like to show up drunk or stoned, figuring they are then worth about $6/hour, but I don't give them that option. About half of them then decide they'd rather have a job where they show up on time, sober, for $10, then have no job and no money for beer. The other half - I don't know how to help them.
A CEO I worked for once said "People are idiots, they think they can raise minimum wadge or add taxes to a company to pay for some social benefit. Corporations pass the added expense on to the customer. Thus they never realize they are the ones paying the taxes not the company.
What your CEO missed in his rationalization is that society has little to no use for his corporation. In other words, he is running a failed business model which should be taxed out of existence because it adds no value to society.
/snark
In a just world, this asshole would then be forced on the dole and enjoy how wonderful a life he leads being pampered by the government.
I refuse to use self-service lines. Why the fuck am I going to work as a cashier and not get paid for it, and not even get a discount on the items? No, I want a human who is trying to make a living to ring up my items for me. If you try to "force" people to use self-checkout by having only one register + 6 self-checkout lanes open I'll leave the cart full of groceries and walk out and buy from your competitor instead.
If you're going to have robots running the fast food joint, I'll give it a miss and go to the salad bar at Whole Foods instead and I'll be better off with that healthier food choice anyhow. :)
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
I'm fine with this future, that's what is supposed to happen. Robots were always supposed to give us more leisure time.
Eventually, people will need to become responsible for themselves again and own their own fate.
The thing you don't get is that those big companies will be responsible for their own fate too.
We can't all live in Delaware or Ireland, and it turns out people DO like to live under certain conditions.
No way you would ever replace an even an only moderately reliable machine with a human employee. Pointless to use this as an argument against raising the minimum wage. If a human had to replace a machine at the same cost he/she would starve to death.
Raising the minimum wage might speed up the adoption of automation, but not by much.
I'm not sure if we're going to have to wait 500 years for Idiocracy. Carl's Jr. Fuck you, I'm eating
They will always be able to do that. Voting doesn't work that way. Western nations have too many safety checks to prevent anything like this to happen. Free move of capital is still part of our societies.
The only thing that might disturb the rich for a while is a big world war. But the biggest victims would still be the small people with the gated communities the biggest winners.
Another possibility is a communist revolution. But then everyone is a victim.
I've been investing for over 30 years! LOL! Held some stocks for that long. Doing very well, thank you very much. No matter how much stock you own you cheer when you get an unexpected bounce. One looks for management that isn't complacent about cost. There is no such thing as enough.
http://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/cps/characteristics-of-minimum-wage-workers-2014.pdf
4%, but pretty close.
and what happens when Suzie beats the shit out of the robo restaurant as she wants to sleep in side tonight at the jail?
Perhaps Grandma, who 'hems and haws' for 5 minutes at the ordering kiosk is not a desirable customer compared to the hipsters in line behind her who pre-ordered on their smartphone?
"With government driving up the cost of labor, it's driving down the number of jobs," he says"
Yeah, and to back that up we link to an article he wrote.
Does anyone here believe for even a second he wouldn't replace these same jobs even if they got cheaper?
You can babble on about living wages, greed, and similar crap, but that rhetoric doesn't get Suzie that job or feed her. $0 per hour is much further from a living wage than whatever Suzie was making before.
I'm always amazed that the rich think they can hide in their gated communities and enjoy the fruits of other people's labor.
What's amazing about it? It's true. And if it comes to societal breakdown so that the gated communities no longer offer sufficient protection, they can hop on a plane and be somewhere else in the world in hours. Your threats are empty.
I get tired of people using the excuse of poverty or worse, some vapid notion of "inequality" to make things worse for everyone.
No, they don't. Or, at least, they don't do it *automatically*. That's what competition is about.
Competition doesn't help, if all companies are taxed equally.
If current prices of goods and services are priced to cover labor etc, then if he now invests less in labor the cost of goods and services should be less. I got a feeling they'll continue to charge the same price though. A sign of TRUE greed. I don't mind him saving money on labor but justification for price is no longer supported.
In other words, he is running a failed business model which should be taxed out of existence because it adds no value to society.
Whether his business ads value to society depends on what product/service they provide for a certain price, not how much taxes they pay. In fact, if we get rid of company taxes, society would save a lot of money on useless company tax advisors, and experts trying to close loopholes in tax laws.
If Puzder is going to fire Suzie rather than give her a $3 raise, then his taxes are going to go up to pay for her social safety net costs. It's impossible to have a society where a large fraction of people can't find work that pays a living wage.
So you're saying Suzie's only skill is flipping burgers at Carl Jr's? That's ridiculous. She will just need to find a job elsewhere or multiple jobs elsewhere, especially considering what Obamacare has done to the amount of unskilled full time jobs. You're safety nets are working out great, aren't they? Unfortunately, when they fail, liberals like you blame capitalism and the productive people in society rather than the stifling regulations these failures clearly trace back to, and you demand yet more of the failed policies that got us here. You never learn. When you have unlimited amounts of other people's money, I guess you don't have to.
Those people will vote (or act in other ways) to overturn the system that is making their lives impossible.
Yes, I think this explains the phenomena known as Trump. I don't agree with everything he says, but he's definitely hit a nerve that many Americans can identify with.
Our government was never meant to be this big -- it was never meant to be all things to all people. The system is broken. It didn't start broken, but instead, was broken by our government through it's endless taxes and regulations. Hopefully, this recent turn toward Trump and Republicans signals that most Americans know what the problem is and intend on fixing it.
I'm always amazed that the rich think they can hide in their gated communities and enjoy the fruits of other people's labor.
What are you talking about? Owning and managing a business takes skill, labor, and resources -- resources earned through previous labor. If you ever ran a business, you would know that. Who do you think pays the bills, manages the money, adheres to government regulations, manages employees, manages the property, does advertising, purchases raw materials, and develops new products and services? And, in the case of a larger business, the business owner does the same through surrogates (aka executive management).
The only people enjoying the fruits of other people's labor are able-bodied people who take government subsidies. Socialist thieves!
Yeah about that... Applebees has new touchscreen things that they put at our table. You can order from it, pay your bill from it, and request server assistance.
I hate those things. The one time I had to use them, because Red Robbin supposedly won't let you order a malt unless it is through that fucking machine, it didn't work and even the server couldn't get it to work. Now I am a dick and if the server isn't around and no one else is I shuffle them around the dining room so they don't match up with the tables.
Time to offend someone
So it's better to pay their salaries with welfare rather than increased wages? The way I look at it, Joe Taxpayer is stuck with the bill no matter how you cut it.
As someone who has automated my own job out of existence before, all I can say is there are other jobs. I moved laterally within my company when my job went away, but two of the guys got laid off. That project had the misfortune of ending in late August of 2001 and we had 40% layoffs October 1 with 30% more on top of that November 15 (so about 48% of employees got laid off in those two months). I happened to move to QA lead on a project that wasn't expendable and had all of its engineers outsourced already, but they needed a US lead (specifically, it was test automation). I didn't want to stay in that position, but it was a good place to be to survive layoffs.
Funny: he is a CEO of a profitable company whose goods and services are in demand. The unemployed are not in demand. Which does society think makes the greater contribution?
Fine, no higher minimum wage, but at least let the customer be allowed to leave tips which gets split between all the workers and none of it goes to the restaurant or the boss. But as usual, people are greedy and so the owners would want the tips as well. In the U.S, everybody wants free stuff including corporations(biggest welfare queens) nobody wants to pay a fare wage or even pay their fare share of taxes(loopholes). If you don't like it just leave the country and go to some other place where there is slave wages, like China. If companies like Apple leaves the U.S, well, don't give them access to the U.S market anymore. The reason why the internet has always sucked it's because of government welfare to corporations making them instantly into monopolies. We don't need large corporations but small mom and pop shops that don't dance around law and pay their freaking taxes. Right now, Corporations with all the loop holes either pay 0 - 2% in taxes while small businesses pay well over 40% and it's this 40%+ of taxation that's keeping this country running not the corporate world.
It is the ideal feeding ground to get someone into power that promises to solve it all by blaming one group.
It has happened before. It could happen again. Due to Godwins law, I am not allowed to reveal who it was.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
On a positive note, if Fast Food switches over to a non-human workforce, the possibility of getting a burger that looks like the one they advertise gets better :)
In the rare event I have to eat at one of these places, it seems the ability to assemble the "food" into something that remotely resembles their advertised product isn't a requirement to work there.
Minimum Wage laws also represent a societal decision as to how low we will allow productivity to be. There are many bad things that happen when peoples work is allowed to be under compensated. Employers benefit from subsides given to under paid employees work through government programs like heating assistance, Medicaid, low cost phone service and many more. I support these programs but it is foolish to have government acting in ways that make labor so cheap that it has to act to subsidize mass poverty. So higher wages and redeployment of work activity by automation are good things not bad things. Our economy stagnated when we went on the low cost labor path.
That shouldn't be amazing. No matter what happens in other businesses, or society as a whole, Puzder is still making the optimal choice for himself.
For this moment, maybe.
So now that the optimum situation is to have no employees, we need a plan of what to do with the number one enemy of the corporate state, the human taker.
Do we line 'em up and shoot them?
Do we pay higher taxes to support them?
Then who on earth do we sell our stuff to?
Taxes are almost as unacceptable as employees, so I guess we start lining people up. Investor tip! Fertilizers will be a growth industry. There is an old adage about people eating their seed corn.
Modern corporate "no employees" outlook is like that, only they are purposely getting rid of customers.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
When the "overlord" guarding this section made me feel like a criminal during the process, that was my last time using it. Never again.
I wish I had mod points, you put this so well.
I've often joked that if you're 30yrs old and you still wear a name tag that says "Hi my name is...", you've made some serious vocational errors in your life.
And the thing is, we can't legislate away lazy, stupid and bad decision making.
I do believe in a safety net for the elderly and the truly infimed. But anyone who is able bodied, should pursue work. And right now, with current social welfare system....you have a lot of folks that are happy living at that level and will not do anything to try to better their life or contribute more to society.
One thing that does work is...having benefits run OUT. If people get desperate, they will act.
Maybe that will light a fire under their asses, to get out, and get jobs or pursue more education to get a better job. We also need to promote more...especially in the poorer areas of towns, that EDUCATION is important.....moreso than emulating the latest professional athlete, or rap "hero".
Unfortunately, I think we're now being stuck with the "everyone gets a trophy for just showing up" millennial kids, and they DO act like you described. That they can just show up whenever, or come to work high. I dunno personally, how we can combat this attitude that has been fostered in them since youth by their overbearing helicopter parents.
But perhaps....greater doses of reality are needed.
They then have two choices. Get busy trying to make something of their lives and have work ethics and responsibility for themselves, or crime.
If they choose crime, then fsck'em, jail them.
We could legalize things like pot, and free up prison space (stupid to use up resources like this for non-violent crime). We could open up that industry and create jobs.
I have no problem with folks partying on their own time.....just be in good shape for work hours.
I think the time for coddling is over....and at some point, we have to get back to what made for great working and living in the US...personal responsibility.
And we reintroduce the REAL risk that if you don't do some work and struggle to make yourself competitive i the real world....there are REAL consequences....you go hungry.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Who you calling a libertarian? I'm a conservative. The minimum wage is not supposed to be a living wage. It's an entry level wage to prevent labor abuses, not a wage meant to be used to live off of. You jack up the minimum wage you only price entry level workers (high school kids trying to gain experience) out of the work force. Their unskilled labor is not worth the price. They don't need it to be worth the cost, they just need some spending cash. It's the idiots trying to raise a family while working jobs not designed or intended for such and then complaining that they don't make enough that even make this an issue.
I have expenses, When looking for a job I know that I can't make it on less than $12 an hour. So I don't even apply for such jobs. I don't get a $7.25 an hour job and then complain that I need a raise. I spent nearly a year unemployed because of this pickiness. But then I had the savings to do so. Because I'm not an idiot. But I'm also not a libertarian who thinks no government is better.
The fact is you string up the producers because they are wealthy. Their heirs get their wealth and go live in the Caribbean on their inheritance and the workers who strung up the producer suddenly have neither money to buy anything nor anything to buy. We need some regulation. But too many are pushing for too much, to the point that those that have will simply take their ball and leave, leaving the rest of us with nothing.
And living in the urban world that we do, very few of us will be able to survive. During the great Depression at least the majority of Americans (for example) had some property to grow food on to feed their families. Today that is not the case. You kill the producers you destroy the economy and cause mass starvation and death.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
cut full time down to 32-35 hours and later 25-20
When everybody always chooses the optimal choice for themselves, not having babies, not feeding other people, not keeping infrastructure, society will just simply... cease.
Captcha: copied
This is a simple problem really.
You work at Mcburgerbelldees and you want 15 dollars/hour cause minimum wage just isn't cutting it.
You're right, but the thing is, you should be working towards a better job, flipping burgers or dropping fries in hot oil isn't and shouldn't be a career goal, nor does it merit 15 dollars/hour.
Minimum wage jobs are there for supplemental income and those who are just starting work for the first time.
I understand, shit's expensive, I've been there and done that. Used to work in convenience for 6 years before I started work with a Fortune 500 company making great money for the area I live in, 7 years later and I've moved into the office as part of the management staff. It's not a hard concept to grasp, but if you're not willing to work hard, towards a goal that doesn't involve doing as little work as possible, you'll never get anywhere.
As an aside, if you go into any Wawa or Royal Farms in this area, they have already done away with the waiters, they have been replaced by an automated kiosk. And guess what, they're always to work on time, always do their job and never get the order wrong unless you entered it that way.
So what makes more sense to you? Paying a snotty over-privileged 20 something 15/hour, or buying a 500~ dollar kiosk that never complains? The decision seems cut and dry to me.
Have you ever fallen asleep at the keybhanusdiog?
"No, they don't. Or, at least, they don't do it *automatically*. That's what competition is about.
Competition doesn't help, if all companies are taxed equally."
Since not all companies are equal they are not going to be taxed equally either.
Here I was not talking about "niche competition" i.e. this fast food company against that other fast food company, but about "competition for money", i.e. where will you invest you capital.
Say you have a business sector where you can get a 20% profit margin and then another sector where profit is just 10%. Of course you would put your money in the 20% sector. But then, say you increase costs in the 20% sector (i.e. by increasing taxes, wages, costs of raw materials... whatever). Of course the natural tendency of the agents on that market will be to load the increased costs into the price tag to retain their 20% cut on profits. Here is were competition comes: say one company absorbs the increased costs and goes with just a 15% profit margin. Within its sector it will outprice its competition out, but it still will get investing money since the alternative is moving it to the other sector where profit is even lower at a 10%.
On a side note, that's why traditionally increasing the minimum wages work *provided there's no market substitution*, instead of being the apocalypse some armchair economists tend to say: increasing minimum wages impacts the profit for the capitalist but, since it's something that goes through all industries (at least those strongly dependant on lowly qualified labour as it was the case along most of the industrial revolution), the capitalist has no better place to move his money to and just accepts the reduced profits and overall society takes the benefit in the long run (even the capitalist, since the more evenly spreaded wealth returns in more and better investment opportunities).
The problem here, of course, is that markets are like "traditional industrial revolution" no more: on one hand, the pool of "new customers" is depleting (capital is working on that by pushing for outsourcing and globalization -and it's working for them... for a while); on the other, technology has came to a point where new technology doesn't mean new classes of low qualified labour-intensive niches appearing as it used to be the case, so all minimum wages laws can achieve is a higher rate of automation adoption (the market substitution I talked above).
It is obvious -at least it is obvious to me, that the only rational output is for a society organization where subsistence and work are not tied (be it by means of basic income, moving "standard of living" producings from private to public hands, or whatever), but it is also obvious that society is still not ready (and, maybe, never will be) to plan and act in the "as-is -> to-be" project for that.
You sure seem to be in a hurry to point out that you favor forcing other people to do things you wouldn't be willing to do yourself.
Look to Greece what austerity brings people.
It's simple: When corporations and institutions always demand lower and lower salaries, while relocating to "tax-heavens" and abusing tax altogether through "loophokes", the medium of value of work, money, will be drained away forever.
There should simply be no expectation that anybody will take care of you, especially in "the States". Live accordingly.
Captcha: grassier
So now that the optimum situation is to have no employees
It's the optimum for the business that Puzder is responsible for. Your questions are good questions, but they are questions for society as a whole, not questions for Mr. Puzder to answer. If society allows people to run businesses with no employees, and it makes sense from a business perspective to do so, you can't blame individual business owners for making that choice.
No, you've got it all wrong. The fertilizer business is going to tank, because we'll suddenly have a huge supply of it for free. You want to be in a business that buys and uses fertilizer instead!
"I'm always amazed by the consumer who thinks that he can demand production and enjoy the benefits of other people's capital."
Given that as of now, and since quite long time, "capital" is nothing but a fiat convention, I'm always amazed by the capitalist who thinks he in fact owns anything unless a majority of people abides by it.
This does not include medicare. That's a lot of money unless you start making exceptions or give a lot of people a large pay cut.
Soylent green, yo...
If revenue from taxes gets disbursed to the public, but also costs to companies get passed on to the public
-- then that's not an argument either way! It says things balance out so there's no net advantage or disadvantage. Therefore your CEO, if honest, would have had no beef with higher taxes.
Of course this analysis and your CEOs characterization omit the redistributive effect, which is kind of the central point of taxes, which make it a dumb characterization.
Companies hate their employees. Labor costs are a barrier to higher profits. Employees are treated as liabilities.
increasing minimum wages impacts the profit for the capitalist but, since it's something that goes through all industries
Except the ones abroad. That's why China has such a big manufacturing industry compared to other countries.
If those machines now do the job of employees for less than $15 an hour then the nation has just gotten more productive. It has freed up labor that can be used elsewhere. With increased productivity there will be new jobs elsewhere. In the end everyone is better off on average. I suppose it's possible that there are people whose maximum capability after a lifetime to training is burger assembly at carls junior but I doubt there are many such people. Unless you consider this make-work in a climate where there are no jobs this is not a bad thing. If it is make-work then the GOvt should be taxing people who have jobs to pay for the make-work. I don't think were in a period of time where make-work is needed.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
You can't just "pass the added expense on to the customer" because that implies you could already be charging more for the product. If you're not already charging what the customer is willing to pay then you're just incompetent at business.
"A corporations job is to make money, that means that we take what ever expenses we have including taxes, add them up, attach a profit margin to it, and sell it"
Well, gee whiz, why don't you just charge infinity dollars then and make all the money.
This entire thread is based on a false idea that if people are thrown out of minimum wage jobs that they'll be unemployed forever.
This has been proven countless times since the 1700's to be absolutely false.
Once a technological innovation disrupts employment - the loom, the cotton gin, the computer, the combine planter/harvester, the robot - those who were displaced from employment find new jobs in higher paying sectors, at least in the aggregate. How many file clerks do you know? Know anybody picking corn, wheat, or soybeans by hand? Yet unemployment is around 5%.
The people slinging burgers will find new work. They'll have to. New employment opportunities will open up; they always have.
If Puzder is going to fire Suzie rather than give her a $3 raise, then his taxes are going to go up to pay for her social safety net costs. It's impossible to have a society where a large fraction of people can't find work that pays a living wage. Those people will vote (or act in other ways) to overturn the system that is making their lives impossible.
I'm always amazed that the rich think they can hide in their gated communities and enjoy the fruits of other people's labor.
The poor don't vote on social safety nets. They simply elect representatives. Those representatives listen to the poor when it's campaign season, but when in office they listen to those who hold power. It is the nature of our system.
I can't wait for the throngs of homeless in your scenario!
But fuck 'em right? Lazy bums.
... that hasn't figured out that people without a job don't buy things beyond the essentials. Nor do people who are paid so little that they have to sign up for food stamps and other welfare programs. Neither group has much in the way disposable income to be buying fast food. Not even the stuff Puzder dreams of selling from automated kiosks.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
In my state, business contribute to a fund that pays these costs -- unemployment insurance.
It has a limit and is, in "Susie's case a finite, fixed expense.
Businesses recognize this when they fire or layoff workers or workers quit.
If you raise the cost of doing business, the cost of the product will rise OR business will find a way to save money.
People do the same in their own, personal, households and never wonder that when they decline to buy something, they risk putting someone out of work.
It's not going to be such a optimal choice if it gets to the point where there are large masses of people who are hungry and desperate, and you're the guy living in the mansion with tons of food. Better hire a merc army for security (and hope they don't turn on you and take everything for themselves).
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Just looking at some numbers for viability...
Wikipedia says the average US household income is $50,756 at an average size of 2.54 people, and about 20% are under 21yo. I suspect capital gains are not included in that, and would make the picture far rosier.
So 1*share*0.8 + 0.5*share*0.2 = $50,756/2.54
-> share = $22,202
So, if 100% of all income were spread equally among the population (with children counting for 50%), every adult would get $22,202/year, or $1,850/month. Your $500/month would amount to 27% of that.
So, very roughly, if it were implemented as a flat tax you would be talking about taking 27% of the average income and redistributing it equally, with everybody with a below-average income (probably about 65% of the population) coming out ahead, and everybody making more than that shouldering the burden.
Honestly I kind of like it - essentially you'd be saying ~1/4 of everyone's income is shared equally. Is 1/4 a good reflection of the amount of your earnings that are thanks to society's current status quo rather than your personal efforts? I have no idea, but it's a nice round number for a starting point.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
The only problem with this idea that the unemployed will find work is that the number of people required to design/operate/maintain technology is much smaller than the number of people required to do the work the technology replaces. Three people can each work a full time job at the same task in a 24 hour a day. One machine can work 24 hours straight, displacing three jobs. Even if we assume it takes one person a full time job to maintain that one machine, that is still a net negative two jobs.
I can order a burger meal with coke at the local mcdonalds with the counter chick faster than I can touch the screen 3 or 4 times so I never use the touch screen.
Touch screens are useful when mcdonalds is full because then the people that want to um and ah over which burger and fries to get can do it in front of one of ten screens (really just greater parallelism) rather than one of the four counters.
Parent absolutely deserves to be modded up. Xerox machines were banned in communist countries when they came out for the same reason people think these robots are a bad idea. The only danger we haven't already faced is a rate of automation that exceeds the speed at which people can train for new jobs.
Outlaw profit margins more than 20%, easy
I'm always amazed that the rich think they can hide in their gated communities and enjoy the fruits of other people's labor.
That's because you're willfully ignorant. There's nothing wrong with corporations and I prefer that they are driven by profit. With a single point of motivation they are easy to manipulate.
The problem is the government is not manipulating them the right way, they are pandering to a voter class with a higher minimum wage. In so doing, they make the "rich evil corporations" the bad guy and they're standing up to the bad guys for the little poor people, ensuring those politicians continue to get voted into office. Pure economics means a higher minimum wage means more people can buy goods which means demand goes up which means prices go up. Alternatively, every business must look to it's bottom line. As the cost of labor increases, the cost of automation decreases by comparison. This is basic economics and happens every time.
As the CEO of a corporation, he is legally required (via the Articles of Incorporation and the Bylaws) to do what's best for his shareholders which is maximize profits. He is not required to keep people employed and is in fact required to find the optimal mix of labor and automation that maximizes profits. So as the government increases the cost of minimum wage, he is required by his shareholders to do what's best for the bottom line. That is his job.
The problem with increasing minimum wage is that it's a shell game by the government to win the massive votes of the poor. What poorer folk don't understand, and the politicians do but don't care, is that it doesn't matter how much the poor make in wages, what matters is the purchasing power of a single dollar. The government could also help the poor and business by manipulating the economy to increase the purchasing power of the dollar by trying to drive prices down, but that is a complex process for most voters to grasp and while that's better for all parties it doesn't win votes for the politicians. So they don't do that, they raise the minimum wage which does win votes even though in doing so that will decrease the overall purchasing power of the poor, leaving them in the same place, earning more dollars but each dollar can buy less.
If the government was good, they'd figure out how to increase the ability of poor people to buy things without increasing inflation, but there is simply no incentive for the government to do that.
This is a hiccup.
There are many more people outside the US than in. Once those people laid off can be retrained to build machines and code software for the machines, they will move the problem to other countries.
The real benefit of machines doing things like fast food, etc. is what was said (inability to commit crimes--or even cause interpersonal drama against each other or the corporation at large). This will help business expand into less secure markets like sub-Saharan Africa, ISIL controlled areas, Uyghur China, SW Colombia. etc. You won't have to worry about employees being kidnapped for ransom or political beheaded on live TV--you will only be out materials and equipment costs, and it would be easier to secure a maintenance / logistics team than a permanent staff.
Service by humans won't go away. Eating out is often about the social experience. That aside, if it's about the quick chow and I bring my buddies along I don't really care to much if it's made by a robot - if it is good enough.
Then again, I doubt a robot or any fast-food chain can beat the turkish family-run falafel and kebab shop around the corner when it comes to speed, tastyness, nourishment and food-for-euro.
Do they expect me to type in my special whishes with that food-bot?
With the kebab guy I just yell it over the counter and the 20 other people standing in line.
And I can watch him preparing it right in front of me on a bright lit counter.
Don't see a robot beating that. Not any time soon that's for sure.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
no age discrimination? - tell it to my old toaster!!!
Here's how it went. Really.
Starting with the Viking invasions, a village-full of struggling subsistence farmers agreed to equip one large ferocious man with a sword, armor, and horse, so that he could protect them from longboats. Other villages saw that, and did it to. So there arose a gang of men all with similar interests based on their relationship to the means of production. (This is what Karl Marx called a "class.") And that class found that its monopoly on armed force could serve not only against Vikings, but also to punish or kill any villager who got out of hand.
Now you have the feudal system!
That worked well for the ruling class until the invention of disciplined, well-armed infantry, at which point the struggling little people broke the knights' monopoly on effective armed force. As a result, the "people" eventually gained political power themselves, which, as always, went to those who shared the obligation and right to exert armed force. As more people fought, more people needed to be called up to fight, until there is total war, followed by total suffrage. Hello modernity: we have arrived back at the political economy of the Roman Republic.
In the post-modern age, we again have mercenary armies and heavily armed gendarmes (police) who control the peasants, because the weapons that the little people can carry are no longer "effective armed force." Voila! Back to the feudal system! Only now, the knights are the ultra-rich, and, above all, the enormous corporations, who control the funds that hire the people who form "an effective monopoly on armed force" and keep the little people in line.
It is the same story wherever you look. Start reading with Otto Hintze, or Hans Delbrueck, and see how the modern western state, which is the most powerful force ever, even more powerful than Javascript, came into being again, after the fall of the Roman empire. Or if you are Chinese, you can do exactly the same with Chinese history. Or Japanese. Or anywhere.
Then it will become crystal clear why the second amendment was second--second only to freedom of speech--in its importance to the Founders: because they knew, from reading about the past, that only people who bear arms and fight for the political order have any real political influence over that order. Read Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment, to understand the influence of Florentine urban militias on the Founders' constitutional thinking.
Anyway, even if you don't want to learn something, please stop just making stuff up about political economy from the Bronze Age.
That's only partially true. During the times of the Luddites, it took 3 generations (70 odd years) for employment to increase to close to full, after a significant proportion of the population was shipped of to the new world.
Around the turn of the 20th century a move was made to reduce the number of people in the workforce due to automation. Woman were turned into homemakers and children were taken out of the workforce, as well as limits being put on the hours worked by everyone else.
The trend of taking children out of the workforce continues with the length of time that people stay in school continuing to increase. My parents get by fine with about a 8th grade education. My brother graduated out of grade 10 to go to technical school and become a well paid glazier. Now kids are expected to spend at least 4 years in collage/university.
Things were also pretty horrible for the poor in 18th century England and only the large amount of land available in the New World etc made things bearable in the colonies and the new nation of the USA.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
What your CEO missed in his rationalization is that society has little to no use for his corporation. In other words, he is running a failed business model which should be taxed out of existence because it adds no value to society.
Ok let's step back a moment and use a simple scenario so that your irrational hatred of "teh Korporashun" is no longer a factor.
Bob is a farmer. Fred make farm equipment. Bob fires his workers because the rising cost of labor makes them more expensive than Fred's machines.
Now, your logic is saying that Bob is not adding any value to society, despite the fact that he's producing food for people to eat. And it also says that Fred is adding no value to society, despite the fact that his machines allow Bob to produce more food with less effort.
This is because you fail to understand that what is REALLY happening, is that Fred's technology is making the workers obsolete.
You also seem to not understand that it is, in fact, the Workers who are adding nothing to society, and in fact leeching from society by going on Welfare instead of learning a new trade where THEY can produce something of value.
tl;dr- If you think that a cashier at the local burger chain adds any value to society, you're an idiot.
In one of these stories "James Bolivar DiGriz" goes on the lam, holes up in a fully automated fast food restaurant, and only steals enough food to survive. He is never noticed by the automatons.
Tracy Johnson
Old fashioned text games hosted below:
http://empire.openmpe.com/
BT
"sanitation laws must be met, inspections must be done"
Why do you think they're spending so much to gut regulations? They don't want to meet sanitation standards or inspect to ensure that they're met.
And when they've automated away most of the jobs and most of the customers with them, I'm 100% sure that these worthless assholes will expect government to subsidize their businesses too. Sociopathy as exhibited by their kind ought to be classified as a mental illness that requires treatment or imprisonment in mental health facility.
If you look at how successful a bunch of uneducated bearded guys with AKs and some explosive training were against US military in the Middle East, why do you think motivated and technically-inclined Western population won't be even more successful? The technology gap between these kilbot overlords and angry masses must be much bigger than between AK (1940s technology) and Drones and Satellites (2010s technology) for this to work. It won't happen.
It's as if what constitutes a living wage keeps increasing making that term more and more and more and more expensive. This is what inflation looks like.
"Don't teach a man to fish, feed yourself. He's a grown man. Fishing's not that hard." - Ron Swanson
Another reminder that the true minimum wage is $0 an hour.
And no other jobs come to fill their places?
By your logic, we'd be at 75% unemployment (figure pulled out of my ass, admittedly, but just making a point here...) right now with all the technological advances since the 1970s. What do you think happened to our economy to achieve our current 5% unemployment rate? Are all those file clerks and bookkeepers still out of work or did they find something else to do?
People made the same arguments you're making for every technological leap forward. The net result has always been people thrown out of low wage, miserable jobs have found higher wage, less miserable jobs, given enough time.
It's called Structural Unemployment. It is a problem for workers who are too old to retrain - think people in their upper 50's trying to sprint to retirement - but for the vast majority of the workforce, it's a net benefit in the long run at the cost of a little short term pain.
Look, obsoleting certain monotonous, low-skill jobs isn't a problem. When cashiers, burger-flippers, and other basic/front-line customer-facing jobs can be eliminated and replaced with automation all that's really happened is the available jobs in a society have shifted to OTHER industries.
No more cashiers because of self-checkout lanes at the grocery store? Fine, now there's a whole sector of NEW jobs for building, installing, and maintaining those self-checkout machines.
Can Suzie, who lost her cashier job, now take one of those new jobs to maintain the auto-cashier? Of course she can. Can she do it without additional training? It depends, but most likely not. All that tells me is that if people really want a higher wage, then they need higher-paying skills. They better hurry, too, because their current job is about to go the way of the dodo.
Now, is this a very black and white viewpoint of this situation? Probably.
Is it as easy as just showing up at classes at the local community college for Suzie to get the skills needed? Not really.
However, that IS the solution. Education. It's almost ALWAYS the solution for most problems in society. Instead of artificially propping up low-skill jobs with arbitrary increases to the minimum wage*, we should really be investing in getting additional training for those with low-skill/low-paying jobs. These jobs were meant for teenagers (in high school) and college-age people anyways, people that by the nature of their age group should be in an educational institute as it is.
The entire problem came about when adults simply stayed in their high school jobs and had little to no ambition to do more. Or maybe it truly was the only job they could find. The solution is to get MORE SKILLS, not demand more money. More skills means you've earned that extra money. Demanding an increase to wages for a job that ANY jackass can do simply passes the cost on to the consumer, including the employee that got the raise...making the raise worthless.
* I do recognize that the minimum raise has not kept up with inflation. I would be comfortable tying the minimum wage to changes in the value of the dollar (due to inflation or whatever). That's different than an arbitrary $15...even if the changes in inflation would necessitate a higher value than $15. At least it would be a rational reason rather than just, "I feel like I'm worth $15 an hour", when they are obviously not.
You're right, he's bluffing, and bowlshyting. Mr. Puzder is trying to divert attention by blaming the Federal government for his problems, when what's really going on is the labor market: it's lost a lot of the slack Puzder and his ilk have been coasting on for six years, and thus he's looking at having to raise wages to get and retain staff.
If wage pressures become high enough, CKE Restaurants will invest in technologies to improve productivity members. This is a good thing, since if people were always cheaper than capital equipment, we'd still be using manual typewriters... if we had any time to spare after working the fields with a scathe. Taken at face value, that's the model Puzder apparently prefers.
Luke, help me take this mask off
"increasing minimum wages impacts the profit for the capitalist but, since it's something that goes through all industries [...] Except the ones abroad."
Yes, increasing minimum wages only impacts costs for industries increasing minimum wages.
Thank you, Rear Admiral Obvious.
Even if he does remove all of his employees, robotics will require regular maintenance . Especially in a place where grease is floating in the air jamming up systems and making things dirty.
He's going to spend the same, if not more to maintain those machines. He will lose business when a hamburger flipping machines goes down and an entire store will be "out of order". (extreme, I know, but it's possible).
He will create jobs for IT people to program, maintain, build, and install such machines. Those people will be paid a higher wage.
He won't gain any money. I'm thinking he will be spending more.
He will need so many machines, from transactions, to cooking (both flame broilers, to deep fryer, to food preparations). A machine to clean all of the other machines from burned on fat, to changing the oil for fryers. Being in tech, I'd love to see this, but I can't imagine the costs of maintenance. Food preparation is one messy job and cleaning is something that is non stop to make everything look, taste right, not to mention, sanitized.
Hey, remind me: Which political party has ruled Detroit as a essentially a one party state the last 50 years?
Oh yeah, that one.
The one pushing the minimum wage hike.
The one pushing for higher welfare payments and eliminating work requirements.
If the policies of the Democratic Party worked, Detroit should already be one of the best places to live in America.
How did that work out?
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
That's called productivity growth. More output from the same input. Increased productivity can be realized through increased wealth or more leisure. Basically, productivity growth is the vehicle of rising living standards. Nothing to fear.
Wow, all I can say is that the first half of your response is a very big pile of stinky judgmental vitriol. It's really easy to sit on a high horse and judge others, especially those who are poor, as it deflects any judgment of your own poor decisions over your life. And I'd put a lot of money on there being at least a decent number of mistakes in your own past. I guess you've never been poor because if you were, you'd understand just HOW rigged the system is against you. Let me ask you this: In this day an age, WHY must people work? How is it somehow morally required to work and toil when technology has obsoleted us in so many ways already, and will only continue to do so?
Capital is money invested in producing something of value. If you steal it, it's no longer capital and the production it was enabling ends.
Stealing capital is like a farmer eating his seeds instead of planting them. Next year he will starve.
That's fine. We'll just increase the fuck out of Capital Gains taxes. Easy!
You can't vote against math. Nobody is going to pay for something than it is worth - if a task is worth $7/hr to you but costs $15/hr, you find an alternative that isn't overvalued by 214%. I'm happy to pay $20 to have my lawn mowed, but if it costs $50, I'll do it my damn self. If I can by a robotic lawnmower for less than what it would cost to pay someone to do it for two years (a Yarba? Lawnba? Waiting on you iRobot), I'm doing it.
http://deadstate.org/youll-never-see-privilege-the-same-way-again-after-looking-at-this-comic/
Yes, workers are displaced, and in the short term unemployment can rise. Automation doesn't eliminate all workers, however, it makes the workers that remain more productive. Let's say that instead of 20 employees a Carl's Jr location can get by with only three. The productivity of those three employees becomes the same as that of 20. By making labor more productive it makes labor more valuable as long as you can figure out useful work to be done. That creates an incentive to hire workers over the long run. Eventually unemployment goes down again and wages rise up to the new higher value of labor. This makes employing people in low productive jobs too expensive and creates an incentive to automate those jobs. What you are arguing against is what used to be called Progress.
And no other jobs come to fill their places?
That is correct - no other jobs to fill their places.
We are about to enter an era where a few engineers or creative people can create an entire manufacturing line and product with no external workforce, for just about anything you care to name. Agriculture, manufacturing, delivery, stocking, the only thing not subject to automation is consumption of the final product, the raison d'etre for the entire process in the first place. Automation will kill millions of jobs in the near future as robots will be able to build other robots to create whatever is needed.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
The only problem with this idea that the unemployed will find work is that the number of people required to design/operate/maintain technology is much smaller than the number of people required to do the work the technology replaces.
We've gone from 95% of people doing agricultural work to less than 5%. Yet people found new jobs: almost everyone did. Same thing with manufacturing. But somehow not with burger flipping jobs? Those are magic? Seems unlikely.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
If you think that a cashier at the local burger chain adds any value to society, you're an idiot
Depends on how you define "society". Until cashiers are replaced by a robot, they are most certainly adding economic activity to the local economy.
the Automat was done 60 years ago. it went under 40 years ago. and there is still the little issue of somebody has to prepare the "food" that goes into machines.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
I'm not saying that there's nothing to worry about, but it isn't nearly as severe as you suggest.
I'm always amazed that people think their "capital" has any sort of meaning unless the mass of society can benefit from it.
Unfortunately, I'm not amazed you didn't realize the only way they obtained such capital was by benefiting society. Otherwise, no one would have exchanged their capital for the goods and services being sold. Liberals just don't get basic economics.
Not to mention, only one other person need benefit from the capital for it to have meaning, not the "mass of society". That's how free market capitalism works, when it's allowed to -- a mutually beneficial exchange between freely cooperating individuals or groups of individuals.
. . . the basic social contract that allows you to get rich as long as standards for the masses don't fall too far.
There is no such thing as a "social contract". I never read one or signed one and neither did anyone else. Maybe what you're thinking of is legal tender (aka capital), an actual legally binding piece of paper that allows people to efficiently exchange their labor for someone else's labor even when one party has no need for the other's labor. In other words, if my business is selling apples and yours is selling oranges, and I want oranges, but you don't want my apples, we can still do business and benefit from each other through the use of money or capital.
Guess what, the only thing preventing the masses from stringing you up and taking your capital is . . .
. . . your capital.
You violate that social contract no amount of funny money or gold bars or factories is going to save your head from getting blown off as the police officers and military you depend on to live find it expedient to slay you.
Spoken like a true thieving tyrant -- you don't give me what I want, I'll take it from you. Unless the police officers and military cease to get paid, they will continue to do their job, as will everyone else. The real social contract is getting paid for services rendered at market prices, not making sure every skill-less loser has a well paying job.
When you try to implement communism, all you end up with is a different set of middle men. You trade one kind of Czar for another. People all over tend to devalue specialized skills. This includes the ability to manage and run things. If you kill the managing class, you don't get rid off the problem. You just cripple your society or a new management class arises.
The problem with Communism is that proles for the most part just aren't up to running anything. Otherwise they would already. They don't have what it takes to be equal participants in the end state Communist Utopia.
People that come up with these ideas (and support them) tend to be sheltered nitwits that know nothing about the proles and would probably active avoid being around them.
Of course as a bunch of geeks we do the same thing in terms of devaluing other skill sets (including management).
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
to answer your questions
how much longer? im going to say when the next president is elected, in the first year... that seems to be when the market gets all screwy as the wall street bankers try to see what strings they can pull in the political class.
what chance do the people have? none of us have a good chance, even the rich and the elite. every one wraps them selves up in the blankets of "well ive got an arsenal at home" or "i have an army of kill bots and a self sustaining property" but the plain truth is that when society falls, it will be utter chaos and not much of that will make a difference in the long run. the first few months sure, maybe.... but given the state of the IOT, and generally how reliant we are on random people halfway around the world most of the things that the elite are doing to prepare are rather useless (kill bots, armed guards, etc etc) When people have nothing to lose, they dont mind death and i dont think anyone from the elite has bought that much ammunition!
Those people will vote (or act in other ways) to overturn the system that is making their lives impossible.
Most people are missing the fundamental problem, which is that we have too many unskilled workers. Or workers whose skills have been rendered obsolete.
This in turn is made worse by the fact that many of these people have little or no access to education or training which will teach them a more marketable skill.
When all you do is raise the Minimum Wage, and pay people who are out of work, you aren't solving the real issues.
If you replace people slowly enough, the unemployment gain comes more slowly than the replacement jobs created by the increased consumer buying power. Unemployment remains stable, goods become cheaper, people find new jobs, and everyone becomes wealthier. You can improve this by keeping labor cheap, notably by using alternate strategies to minimum wage (e.g. a non-wage Citizen's Dividend), replacing payroll taxes with income taxes, eliminating sales and VAT taxes, and reducing working-class income taxes (by using a progressive tax system and leaving the high-income tax brackets static while lowering the low-income marginal taxes as the income gap widens).
If you do it quickly enough, you create massive unemployment and get the Industrial Revolution.
We have the Luddites, who believe these changes eliminate jobs *forever*; and the Technocrats, who believe new technology creates new jobs immediately. A lot of the Basic Income dialogue isn't about slowing and steadying the movement onto new technology and keeping people employable so we can create new jobs faster; it's about saving us when we make employment an obsolete concept. A lot of people also think we should raise minimum wage to *encourage* businesses to move onto machines, since that will somehow bring us prosperity by making things cheaper; they ignore that they're trying to make people to move onto machines that are more expensive than modern methods, thus making things more expensive.
Lots of people with no concept of economics. Even economists have no concept of economics. I have made a *lot* of economic discourse to explain why supply-and-demand works or how technology affects employment to people who have degrees in economics because modern theory can spot things like this as effects, but can't identify the mechanism. We have people with Ph.D.s in economics arguing over whether automation is going to cause one thing or the other, and I'm over here like, "You're both right, and you're both wrong; your models track the effect, but not the cause."
Imagine what it's like dealing with armchair economists who read something about supply-and-demand on Wikipedia, but have never taken the time to study economic history and work out any behavioral models. Every other word is "competition", and they keep babbling about an economy getting wealthier by the same dollar being spent over and over again rapidly.
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This is the result of the globalization put and free trade zones. Free trade (without tarriff) only work when both sides have the same to gain or lose. Did Steve Jobs care that he moved 1 million i-device making jobs to China? No, he was able to side step labor, environment, intellectual property laws and buy is 100Million yacht. Who cares of a million US citizens lose the ability to pay rent, buy food, have health care when there's a 1.5 Bl Chinese and another billion Indians clamoring for your shiny toys? Absence of conscious and social responsibility while employing Federal Law enforcement to ensure to profitably via some artificial intellectual property ruse has undermined the "Land of Opportunity, Home of the Free and the Brave". America isn't first in anything anymore. Quite honestly, the only way to get it back is campaign finance reform.
What do you think happened to our economy to achieve our current 5% unemployment rate?
What happened is that the powers-that-be pulled a fast one on you and you're too foolish to see it. You've been hand fed a statistic that is false on its face but you didn't care to look into the truth...
Check out the population-employment ratio numbers and they speak a much different story. You see, the unemployment rate that is mainly touted is the U3 rate. The U3 rate is made up of people with no job who've actively tried to find one in the last month. Today we have a good number of discouraged workers* and a vast number of people who have no intentions of ever being employed again. And these numbers are likely to continue to grow. And this doesn't even take into account the underemployed either.
That 5% number you're kicking around means nothing in the real world but keeps the sheep voting under the illusion of what is good/bad in the economy.
*Discouraged workers are people who want to be employed and have looked for work in the last year but have stopped looking due to poor prospects.
The peasant revolts are a bad example unless you're trying to show that revolting against a well armed ruthless nobility is useless as not one of the peasant revolts succeeded.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
It's a little different now and we're in a global market. Also the scale-ability of new tech is different than before. Eventually all jobs from fast food to construction to uber will all be automated, with a few people looking after things.
People predicted a 20hr work week, but that's never happened. High taxes and a lot of unemployed people with free food and housing will eventually have to happen.
Eliminating workers in FF has been an idea for a long time. Example from 2003: https://www.techdirt.com/artic... when it is economically viable, it will happen. However, unlikely that we will see these totally unsupervised for a long time.
Corporations simple pass any added taxes and costs on to the customer. Thus if you add taxes to a corporation they simple raise the price and pass that added expense on to the customer.
If the corporation could raise the price without losing sales, wouldn't they do so regardless of any increase in costs? Isn't that one of the fundamental rules of a free, supply-and-demand market?
So now that the optimum situation is to have no employees, we need a plan of what to do with the number one enemy of the corporate state, the human taker.
Ultimately there are only three choices
1) Keep spreading the limited resources thinner and thinner across a growing population,
2) Limit population growth
3) Increase productivity
Humans have been mostly depending on #1 and 3 until the resources run out, at which point genocide, famine, and war drop them into #2.
At some point a controlled application of #2 will be required, maybe better than China's attempt.
Very true, and I agree with everything you said. That works very well in a free(ish) market. But when government thinks it can centrally command the economy and set artificially high wages, then that breaks down. People won't be rehired until employers see it as sensible, and artificially high wages raise the bar as to what is still sensible.
You're an idiot. You're probably some suburbanite born with a silver spoon in his mouth just spouting liberal propaganda from NPR and other highly liberal sources.
I have actually "been there" and "done that".
Now I have an approach similar to the OP. I have tried to take advantage of what opportunities good timing has exposed me to. I have avoided the folly of buying into American consumerism too much.
People do have real choices and they do have self-determination despite what communist wannabes might want to tell you.
It's easier to tell yourself you aren't in control of your own destiny. It conveniently avoids facing up to your own failure and laziness.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
People have been saying we are about to enter that era for 150 years.
We didn't have cell phones in the 1700s.
There's population versus technology, there's people spending less on food and clothes while buying bigger houses, the increase in non-necessity expenditures as a percentage of income, and all kinds of other data showing we actually do increase the number of people in the economy.
You're right, though: The number of people needed to do a job doesn't increase. That's the point: technology *decreases* the number of people required to do a job, freeing their labor time up for other tasks. That's why we've moved people out of agriculture and manufacture and into construction, medicine, retail, and business services. Somebody has to sell those products from China; somebody has to handle the logistics, the distribution, the shipping; somebody has to drive the trucks; somebody has to run the involved IT systems.
Even after we've reduced the share of labor per product in *all* of these types of jobs, we create more jobs by buying more products. You buy 3 times as much shit, you need 3 times as much logistics. Maybe it takes 1/5 as much labor to provide those logistics, so you have 60% as many people doing that; the other 40% are running Spotify and Netflix.
We don't create higher-class jobs; we reduce costs and improve the standard-of-living of the lowest income earners. We may create more or fewer poor people; those poor people will be objectively wealthier than last generation's poor people, but they're still poor because literally everyone else has more than they do. Some of the replacement jobs are higher-income-class, some are lower-income-class, and we wind up with more things produced per wage-labor hour, more stuff per-capita, and more luxuries in the hands of everyone as their basic needs become cheaper.
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Silly business people think that people with no money for food will somehow buy their products or that other businesses with no customers will buy their products. Silly rich people think they can live in luxury while most of the population starve and they somehow won't lose their heads this time.
Keep in mind, if you can replace all your employees with machines, that means the "unwashed masses" can replace your whole corporation with machines. You can only hide out in your panic room for so long before you get dragged out in your boxers like Saddam.
It can go easy or hard and bloody, but one way or another the masses will not just obediently curl up and die for the benefit of the few. Ignore that at your peril.
That's where republican jeezus comes in.
We all know that. But if the idiotic left is going to continue to use that number, we are going to throw it back in their faces during arguments. Use it when it is advantageous, use the other numbers when it is advantageous.
As well as making labor more productive, you get the double whammy of lower prices. As long as regulators stay out of it, that is.
And after the masses string up the producers for their wealth.
Nobody's talking about stringing up the producers for their wealth. They're talking about stringing up the parasites for their wealth. Let's face it, nobody is productive enough to become wealthy from their own productivity - even the best brain surgeons and rocket scientists are barely rich. Those that have become truly wealthy have done so through business - by exploiting the labor of others - or by exploiting markets - simply taking the wealth of others. These people don't make a net positive contribution to society, and yet they're the ones that amass all the wealth. It's the producers that are losing wealth, as the middle class is eroded, and wealth stratification continues to worsen.
If you disagree, can you explain to me how stringing up, say, the Walton family would meaningfully impact society? Would we be lost in a world incapable of conducting retail sales operations without the Waltons? Would the lack of their high-volume low-margin retail empire really result in a world where nobody produces anything, farmers stop farming, cats and dogs start living together? By what mechanism?
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
You're wrong; we'd be at -27,000% employment. What defect of thinking would lead you to believe we've only eliminated 3/4 of the jobs that ever existed since the 70s? We eliminated half of them, and then created new jobs; and we then eliminated half of those and created new ones; and eliminated half of those. Over a decade, we eliminate more jobs than the entire workforce population.
People don't find higher-wage employment by magic; we create new lower-wage jobs to replace lost jobs first. We can only buy new employment using the consumer dollars saved by eliminating existing jobs. The fact that those wages now can buy more stuff causes population to expand (until scarcity starts setting in again), and also allows us to pay wages representing an even lower share of the total income and still give people the same buying power.
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I nobody can buy how are you going to get rich and live in mansion by selling food to poor people?
Well the other option is to accept that there may be mass starvation, social unrest and possibly a civil war. Frankly a social safety net sounds cheaper.
Well, there are two sides to this.
There's the fascist side and the communist side. So there is also a Lenin to consider and we have one of those this election cycle.
It makes perfect sense actually. We had a recession that probably qualifies as a full blown depression in 19th century terms. The end result of that is pretty obvious once you think it through. You end up with the same kinds of wingnuts suddenly gaining traction.
The wingnut who should not be named was considered a kook until the economy seriously tanked.
THIS is why the 1% should pay more attention and be somewhat less greedy. They should stop trying to undermine the measures that were put in place the last time things got ugly. Of course human nature prevents that.
People are both arrogant and greedy.
So the cycle of history repeats...
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
It all depends on how good the killbots are and of course whether or not they have a pre-set kill limit.
This only gets us so far. Eventually you reach a point where technology is capable of replacing almost everyone except those employed to maintain the technology.
Capitalism is a finite system.
Most definitions of a living wage I've seen look pretty reasonable. Food, housing, clothing, utilities, basic transportation, health care, a minimal amount of recreation. That's about as low as you can go without just being human cattle.
That's if you think every job is a "living wage" job. These jobs are not meant to support a family. They are either for younger people or supplemental income. They are not meant to be life long jobs. People said this would happen if the push for ridiculous wages for these jobs kept up. It is and now you are mad? And btw, how do you think this guy got "rich"? It's that scary words all the liberal douche bags hate so much HARD WORK!!
If those killbots are made by Microsoft, there's an excellent chance they'll get re-targeted.
In the likely scenario where the wealthy are technologically incompetent and pay others (poorly as usual) to take care of the killbots for them, there is also a very high probability that the killbots get re-targeted. Then the rest of the robots get busy providing for the masses.
It's not guaranteed to keep producing. Redistributing the wealth tends to destroy and use up the wealth. Communism destroys most wealth and prosperity but for the ruling few. People are always destroying wealth (eating, driving, heat, etc). Communism gives no one the incentive or ability to create wealth.
The person without a job can get unemployment benefits while searching for a job. That means instead of having a stressful crappy job at a restaurant that poisons people... she can do something more useful. A win-win situation.
Chili's has had those things for years. I've managed to pay the bill with them twice out of dozens of visits. I never got a chance to use them for ordering meals since the waiter was always stopping by faster than I could navigate the menus on the device. I did order dessert once, but the waiter stopped by and asked if I wanted to order any dessert and I had to tell him I had submitted an order 5 minutes ago on the device, he seemed shocked and didn't know what to do so he ran off to find his manager for help. The one thing I liked about the devices was being able to read the news headlines and weather forecast. With smartphones these days those devices are completely obsolete.
Spoons had the devices in their bar area and you could use them to participate in a trivia contest that was shown on the TV's when there was no sports game on, but that was about all they were good for.
-==- Buy a Mac and leave me alone!
Fuck you and your 'basic income', you lazy piece of shit. Know who ends up paying your 'basic income'? The non-lazy people like ME, for whom my taxes pay for your lazy ass to not bother having a job, so you can party all day long, play games, and generally fuck off and do nothing of value? Go fuck yourself. Get a job you skeezy NEET.
Look, it get it. Paying people wages and benefits sucks. And your customers are getting poorer and poorer by the generation and you can't sawdust the food anymore. I get that. But please, do not pretend to me that all these fancy gadgets are somehow saving you time or money or resulting in in any way better value for your customers money. You are commiditising your niche of the market and it is the sword you will fall on.
I don't think he's pretending, buttercup. It's interesting how people still push these myths despite half a century in the US that reality doesn't work that way.
This allows further specialization, and thus more things to buy.
There is a "common sense" screed about too many things to buy, conspicuous consumption, and consumption of non-necessities just for the purpose of consumption. Yet this is what progress enables us to do, when basic needs are satisfied, for very cheap.
The cheaper it is to make things, the more things a minimum wage can buy. This is the direction of the future, same as the past 150 years. Not just cheaper necessities, but more varied things to buy.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
The answer is to make this happen more slowly by controlling employment costs.
A Dividend instead of a minimum wage eliminates the cost consequence of employment attached to a minimum-standard-of-living policy. Rather than passing a policy (minimum wage raise) forcing employers to pay more per unit wage-labor time, you pass a policy moving money to the working class (in the case of a Dividend or other UBI scheme, to a universal class e.g. all Adults) from a general funding source (an earmarked flat income tax is the most stable). Employers retaining employees face no disadvantage resulting from the policy change, whereas a minimum wage increase creates an added cost per wage-hour for employees previously below the new minimum.
Moving payroll taxes to general income taxes also reduces the cost per wage-hour. The argument is similar to the minimum wage argument.
A progressive general fund tax system allows the high-income-earner marginal tax brackets to remain static while the income gap increases (by way of high-income earners and businesses keeping a greater portion of any increasing wealth--the poor get richer, the rich get richer *faster*), allowing a reduction of taxes on the working class. This allows for a reduction of wages without a reduction of take-home wages, an increase in take-home wages without an increase in wages, or a middle-ground.
All of these efforts reduce the wage-labor cost basis of products, allowing prices to fall lower than otherwise possible while retaining profit margins. This increases the buying power of the consumer, as the proportion of the consumer's income which actually survives to expenditure (i.e. the part left after taxes) is increased. That creates more jobs.
Such efforts allow lower wage-labor costs, providing an advantage over newer low-labor techniques. This encourages businesses to wait for a strategic entry point: they may pay a worker $8/hr rather than replace him with a machine for $7.50/hr if they think the machine will be a 30-year, multi-million-dollar investment that pays off on the TCO of $5.50/hr *next* year. Each businesses has a different risk appetite (the amount of cost they *want* to put on the table for a possible benefit) and risk threshold (the point at which they no longer accept a risk), and so extending these strategic periods causes a spreading of labor replacement: instead of everyone buying machines one year, they start replacing workers over a span of ten years.
At the same time, the lower wage-labor cost means consumer buying power has a lower threshold before it can create new jobs; and the higher efficiency of wage-to-buying-power (how much of your paycheck you actually keep) increases the rate at which consumer buying power reaches that threshold. Paying employees lower wages and allowing them to take a bigger portion of that wage home leaves them more capable of affording new goods, which means you can more quickly replace lost jobs, keeping up with the above technological obsolescence.
Turn your study of technological history into plans and strategies. We need them. Our economists are so backwards they actually believe a sales tax is a good idea.
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Hell, when farming became more and more automated, and with better fertilizers, politicians stomped and slammed around screaming where the hell would all these former farm hands find jobs?
Oh. My. God.
Suggest to someone back then we'd have less than 2% of the population working farms, and they'd scream for laws outlawing farm automation.
Thank god that stupidity was largely ignored, as should this.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
It may be obvious, but you missed it in your analysis where the investor's funds go. They'll go overseas too.
It's just one case of many but it proves a nice point none the less. How long do you think the rich will stay rich if they start slaying their slaves?
"I'm always amazed that the rich think they can hide in their gated communities and enjoy the fruits of other people's labor."
Do they not do this quite successfully? Not hatin, just sayin.
1) Suzie can't flip burgers if no one provides the equipment that basically does it for her. I've worked fast food production line. The equipment does most of it, "stack in this order, wrap, and label it right" is not a specialized skill.
2) But the people that produce their equipment will. Which will lead to farmers growing only what they need because they don't have the force multipliers to feed teh nation.
3) Don't be so sure about that. When the movers and organizers are axed/move/otherwise leave things get pretty bad for everyone. Venezuela is a perfect example.
4) Revolts just change who's the top, they don't change the distribution for very long. There's always organizers who profit, and workers who don't think beyond their shift.
So, if 100% of all income were spread equally among the population
As soon as you do that, the income will drop, as people will lose motivation to work their asses off.
Part of that just could be that the Chinese govt. has been doing everything they can to get other countiries to move all their jobs into China. Their monetary manipulation makes China's economy look like an desirable place to invest. Don't like those pesky environmental regulations? Hey we've got none of those. They've been allowing their manufacturing sector to pollute the country to the point that some areas should be considered toxic waste disposal sites. But it's all good: Chinese workers are employed. They're not paid enough to really make a decent living so they're often forced to live in company-owned dormitories and the factories have to have nets installed to prevent workers from hurling themselves from the roofs but, hey, they're employed and that's all that counts. Corporations aren't allowed to get away with that in most other countries -- not for long, anyway.
Corporations used to have to serve the public good as part of their having been granted their charter -- it wasn't just about shareholder profits ($DIETY, even Chainsaw Al eventually came around to view that idea as crazy and if you've lost Al...). Maybe it's time that requirement was brought back. Nowadays, whenever the goin' gets tough for a corporation, they just pull up stakes, and move to someplace that'll promise them the moon -- or at least no taxes for N years. Then when the goin' gets tough again -- usually in N-1 years -- they start complaining about the hostile business environment and threaten to shut down and move (to take advantage of the next bunch of suckers). Modern international corporations do this on a country level.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Oh, he can't afford to pay Sally *and* Suzie a living wage? What's the CEO's salary?
Pardon me, I'm having trouble finding the world's smallest violin that I dropped.
mark "and double his taxes, while we're at it"
"t no amount of funny money or gold bars or factories is going to save your head from getting blown off as the police officers and military you depend on to live find it expedient to slay you."
lol, the police and military will get paid. that's kind of how totalitarian dictatorships work.
Within 20 to 30 years, unless civilization collapses first, people will not be able to compete with automated processes in any but a very few fields. All means of production will become automated.
So, how does the economy work then? With no one able to be gainfully employed how does the oligarchy continue to make money and stay in power?
We need a new economic theory, and I have seen none that involve zero value. So, the obvious solution? The oligarchy takes the products to improve their lives, and the rest of humanity is left to die trying to scratch out a living on the burned out husk of our planet. The oligarchy will be much happier with us gone so they can turn their robots lose to turn the world into one large park for them to play in.
Just because this has been true in the past doesn't mean it will continue to be true in the future. Things change.
Liberals just don't get basic economics.
.. sir, you do realize that the study of economics - the intellectual pursuit - was conceived of and advanced by academics.. right? ... and that academia and liberalism historically have been strongly intertwined?
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
I agree with your assessment about what's happened in the past. But I'm much less convinced about the validity of simply projecting that the future will be just the same. Are you really convinced there can't *ever* be some "tipping point" where technological advances outstrip our ability to innovate new forms of gainful employment? If so, do you have any argument beyond "we haven't reached such a point so far"?
Maybe you're just arguing that it's still a long way to such a point if one does exist, but I'm betting it's closer than many people think. One indication of this is the continued downward trend in the other 'unemployment' statistic, not U3 (currently just under 5%) but rather the labor force participation rate, (http://www.bls.gov/data/ and search for the four previous words) which is now around 63%, down about 5% from the peak in the mid-nineties.
The good news is that we're moving toward being able to provide pretty much all of our necessities and wants without using much of our time to do it - just think how happy you'd be if, individually, you could live the same life you do now and work half as much. The bad news is that we may have to figure out some new system for distributing all the goods produced to the people that consume them, because selling your labor for currency which you then use to purchase goods produced by others may not work indefinitely.
This entire thread is based on a false idea that if people are thrown out of minimum wage jobs that they'll be unemployed forever.
This has been proven countless times since the 1700's to be absolutely false.
Once a technological innovation disrupts employment - the loom, the cotton gin, the computer, the combine planter/harvester, the robot - those who were displaced from employment find new jobs in higher paying sectors, at least in the aggregate...
Real history shows that it is THIS claim that is absolutely false. The people displaced in the original Industrial Revolution did not ever find new employment, in high paying jobs or elsewhere. They became destitute. Eventually the productivity increase of the IR created a wealthy enough society that decent employment was restored for the full population, but it took 70 years to do this. Most of the people whose livelihoods that were destroyed in 1770 did not ever get decent jobs again. Their children did not. Their grandchildren did not. Their great-grandchildren did however, around 1840.
The beggars, squalid poverty, workhouses, debtors prisons of Dickens time were all very real.
Interestingly, that little clause you stuck in there "at least in the aggregate" indicates you realize to some degree the falseness of your claim. It is exactly the problem that people exist as people, not as aggregates, that makes the average increase in wealth from automation completely useless to the people put out of work.
If robotics puts people out of work in large numbers today, we need a solution that helps the people put out of work as soon as it happens - not in 2086 after they are long dead.
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
do i need to say it? how did that work out?
not necessarily the profit that is the key part, just the competition driven by profit.
Jobs have always been lost due to better machines doing a specific job. But what happens when they make a machine that can do anything a human physically can (i.e. a humanoid robot)? All jobs that don't require critical thinking or creativity are obsolete, and the average person isn't very bright or artistic.
I did the exact same thing as Puzder when I went home for lunch yesterday instead of eating fast food, but nobody flamed me for doing that. Why?
I did the same thing as him, when I bought a 3-year-old used car (and shopped around while doing it) instead of a new car. Nobody suggested I was out-of-touch bourgeoisie.
I did the same thing when I last compared two vendor's prices and then chose the lower one. Where were your cautionary words then?
You and I cut unnecessary expenses every chance that we get, and it's seen as prudent and efficient. And I don't know if your personality is anything like mine, but I actually look down a little bit on wasteful people. When someone burns money, I think less of them.
But the expense of hiring people is somehow a religious exception?
Nobody is advocating that people shouldn't have a living wage (indeed, they might even advocate that everyone figure out a way to make a lot more money than that); they just don't want to be the one who pays it. They're just saying "This expense shouldn't be this high, because I think I see how to get it done for less." If that means it's less than a living wage, then perhaps humans shouldn't be doing that particular job anymore (or perhaps different employees have a different idea about how much a living wage really is).
I don't get why employers are called bad guys for issuing low offers. When someone makes me an offer that I reject, I don't get offended. The rejection is enough, and then it's their problem, not mine.
Except it's not the rich, it's every single one of us. Everyone is "the rich" whenever they're spending their own money. When your ISP asks you for a raise, I bet you'll say, "No. Get the fuck out of my office, and if you bring this up again, I'm firing your ass."
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
"They're always polite, they always upsell, they never take a vacation, they never show up late, there's never a slip-and-fall, or an age, sex, or race discrimination case,"
What's more important, they don't go to the bathroom without washing their hands afterwards.
But nonetheless, that CEO is an asshole, no had washing will ever cure that.
If all the corporations are getting taxed, there is no competition. You would end up with more companies leaving the country, or going out of business. People don't seem to realize that people are taxed on net income, while corporations are taxed on profit, all they have to do is spend all the profit and you get $0 taxes. If you want to raise tax money, you need to tax people. The problem is, taxes are unpopular, so instead they try to tax companies as that is a hidden tax on everyone.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
In fact, if we get rid of company taxes, society would save a lot of money on useless company tax advisors, and experts trying to close loopholes in tax laws.
Right - now there's a well thought-out concept.
Let's ensure that the people pay to keep the infrastructure that businesses use in good repair - even though the value that each citizen gets from that infrastructure varies across different earnings demographics. But no matter, those good-for-nothing poor people should pay to keep our corporate infrastructure in place, otherwise the rich will have to shoulder the burden - and that would be unfair to those who reap the greatest rewards from this system. Is that the point you were trying to make?
After all, think of the poor multinationals who pay little to no tax to the US government already. Why should those poor overvalued businesses have to contribute to our society in any meaningful manner? Look at the incredible myriads f benefit that the Trump corporate structure delivers to Americans. How could we live without the crap he foists on us and then brags about this garbage as if we couldn't live without him.
The only problem with this idea that the unemployed will find work is that the number of people required to design/operate/maintain technology is much smaller than the number of people required to do the work the technology replaces.
We've gone from 95% of people doing agricultural work to less than 5%. Yet people found new jobs: almost everyone did. Same thing with manufacturing. But somehow not with burger flipping jobs? Those are magic? Seems unlikely.
This gets the story of the switch from agriculture to manufacturing and white collar work completely backwards.
It was not a process of automation on the farm putting farmers out of work who then migrated to other jobs.
It was a process of new high labor-demand industries (the original factory system), and clerical work of new complex economy, that paid higher wages pulling people away from farms that caused this switch. It was a labor-demand driven process.
As people left farming for better jobs, farms got sold and assembled into ever larger farms which could then support the high capital requirement for automation to replace the now non-existent plow boys and girls.
See for example which depicts the ag side of this transformation.
A process that eliminates jobs, and reduce labor demand, which we are now facing, is completely different
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
"It may be obvious, but you missed it in your analysis where the investor's funds go."
Except, of course, I didn't.: "capital is working on that by pushing for outsourcing and globalization -and it's working for them... for a while"
Is there any internal coherence in your message or is it merely a rant?
You talk about monetary policy, and then exemplify it by their environmental regulations. You mention the labour conditions on a paragraph that looks like word by word taken out from a Dickens novel and then contrast it saying that corporations used to have to serve the public good.
Not saying what China is doing is OK nor that occidental governments aren't bought by big corps to allow it but then, do you think China is doing anything even remotely original? They have bought the occidental industrial revolution book and put it in practice to the comma, so it's difficult to blame them for that.
Fuck em? Jail em? Put them in jail? In jails you will pay to build, where you will then pay to feed and clothe them, and then pay other people to guard them... You think that's cheaper in the end than just paying them?
I think you would, because you think being poor, and having to take public assistance isn't sucky enough, you feel that you have to punish them by making sure that there aren't enough resources to go around, (while some people hog tremendous quantities of said resources because they've figured out how to cheat and game the system,) so that some are pushed to lives of crime, so you can jail them.
The reason one is considered a criminal for stealing a loaf of bread, but not for stealing billions of dollars, is purely a function of whom it is we suffer to write the rules.
This inverted pyramid arrangement somehow people like you are blinded to the fact of its untenability. The masses will rise, when there's nothing else to eat, and eat YOU. If you have any questions, consult Marie Antoinette about what happens when you let the situation get too out of hand, which is how it's already getting.
Contrast that with Henry Ford's "crazy" approach of actually paying his employees enough money to be able to afford the products he was paying them to build.
Anyway, as re Carl's Junior, if I ate such garbage as they call "food" there, I'd initiate a boycott of their "restaurants," but as I was already boycotting them over the fact that the "food" they serve is overpriced, overrated shit, that would be redundant.
You don't think the hot model in their ads actually eats that kind of dogshit, do you?!?
Hahahhahahahaha idiots.
By this argument, the entire economy should have collapsed when the combustion engine was invented, and we'd all be back to living in caves and throwing stones at each other.
Since that hasn't happened, perhaps you're missing something in your analysis?
Yes, yes, they can.
And that machine then goes on to create jobs as "machine operator," "machine repair person," "machine designer," "machine programmer," "machine part manufacturer," etc. The machine isn't a magic perpetual motion machine - it has to be built, repaired, operated, programmed, and kept in service. Think you might be able to pay a few people to do those jobs? I do.
You're overlooking the entire constellation of jobs that will be created by that new machine. Stable boys had a fucking tough time when automobiles replaced the horse drawn buggy. The smart ones didn't sit there arguing that cars should be outlawed - they learned how to be mechanics, or automobile designers, or engineers, or paint techs, or gas station attendants, or any of the literally dozens of jobs large-scale adoption of the automobile created.
You are suffering from a failure of imagination.
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"If all the corporations are getting taxed, there is no competition."
How is it? Corporations *are* already taxed and they still compete.
"You would end up with more companies leaving the country, or going out of business."
I carefully talked about conditions for them not to go out of business (which, on the other hand, is pretty obvious, since they already are taxed and still there are companies around). With regards to off-shoring, governments have more than one tool for their policies. In this case, i.e. sane import tariffs could be part of a solution.
I'm with you in that taxes should be strongly biased towards direct and personal and less towards indirect taxes, but I don't think it's a black-or-white situation: all available tools at hand should have to be properly used.
2) Farmers are not the ones getting strung up
Following the Russian Revolution, millions of Ukrainian farmers were intentionally starved to death in the Holodomor. About 98% of the 30 million people that died during the Great Leap Forward were farmers.
they will be lining up with strings in their hands right along side the rest of the lower class.
Farmers in America have an average income more than twice the median. They are not "lower class", and they are the most reliable Republican voters.
Google Peasant's Revolt for an example.
The Peasant's Revolt in 1381 was primarily a revolt against high taxes. So that is a poor example to use when advocating for higher taxes to fund redistribution.
I realize that. I didn't mean more expensive as in "they keep adding more stuff". I meant more expensive as in, our money is constantly worth less due to inflation therefore the cost of a living wage continually goes up.
That's why the minimum wage has to keep increasing.
"Don't teach a man to fish, feed yourself. He's a grown man. Fishing's not that hard." - Ron Swanson
"Paid for by the corporations through taxes because they put all of the people out of work."
Corporations simple pass any added taxes and costs on to the customer. Thus if you add taxes to a corporation they simple raise the price and pass that added expense on to the customer.
Except that it isn't true. Look, for example, at this discussion by conservative economist, and former Reagan adviser Bruce Bartlett.
Some key excerpts:
All economists reject that idea. They point out that prices are set by market forces and the suppliers of goods and services aren’t only C-corporations, which pay taxes on the corporate tax schedule, but also sole proprietorships, partnerships and S-corporations that are taxed under the individual income tax. Other suppliers include foreign corporations and nonprofits.
Therefore, corporations cannot raise prices to compensate for the corporate income tax because they will be undercut by businesses to which the tax does not apply. It should also be noted that the states have substantially different corporate tax regimes, including some that do not tax corporations at all, and we do not observe that prices for goods and services vary from state to state depending on its taxation of corporations.
In 1962, the University of Chicago economist Arnold C. Harberger, published an important article arguing that the corporate tax was borne entirely by shareholders. This was unquestionably true in the first instance; that is, when the corporate income tax was first imposed. The tax simply reduced corporate profits and had to come out of the pockets of shareholders, given that it could not be shifted onto consumers.
But as time went by, some economists argued that a substantial portion of the corporate income tax was ultimately paid by workers in the form of lower wages...
...The Treasury economists conclude that 82 percent of the corporate tax falls on capital and 18 percent on labor. This is very close to the methodology of the private Tax Policy Center, whose analyses are frequently cited in policy debates. It assumes that 80 percent of the corporate tax is borne by capital and 20 percent by labor.
So no, consumers do not pay that tax. Those with capital, the shareholders do, and to a small extent, eventually, workers. 70% of all shares are held by the top 5% of the population (by wealth) by the way, 42% by just the top 1%. But if productivity gains from automation are being passed on to workers (unlike what has happened since 1972) then their real wages will be rising anyway.
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
> This has been proven countless times since the 1700's to be absolutely false.
Yes because new jobs come along all the time that people gradually shift to that are too complex to be automated. People stopped making cloth by hand when looms and later power looms came in, people stopped farming when tractors became a thing, assembly line workers were somewhat phased out when specialized robots came to the line, etc. The difference this time is we are finally on the cusp of general machine learning.
In the not too distant future robots and computers are going to be in a position to replace not only easily-repeatable low skill labor, but almost ANY job not requiring super specialized knowledge or skills. Those in high paying "intellectual" jobs are also going to be on the receiving end of a pink slip. It's already starting to happen. Lawyer firms used to employ armies of articlers and clerks to do discovery and research on case law, and are already being replaced by automated systems that do the same work in less time. RBS just the other day cut 400+ investment adviser positions to be replaced with their digital robo-adviser system that recently rolled out.
When a machine can learn to do anything you can do, and do it consistently without error, even if it only works at 1//4 your speed you're gone. The machine won't take coffee breaks, surf /. or get sick while it works at its task 24/7/365. And it will get faster over time as the hardware and software inevitably improves.
"Large masses of people who are hungry and desperate" are caused, now as always, by government preventing people from performing the harmless actions they want to.
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People that spend most of the day worrying about how to pay for food, transportation and rent have little mental energy left over to make other decisions. Multiple studies have shown that people subjected to mentally stressful situations tend to make decisions that satisfy their current desires rather than their long term goals. Buying a $shiny you can't really afford, or not worrying about using protection falls right into that current desire scenario.
The average profit margin for the S&P 500 is below 8%. What do you think is going to happen if a 20% surtax is added onto sales? How long is a manufacturer going to stay in business losing 12% on every sale - until it realizes it's losing money, until it can't pay its bills, or until its creditors sue it into bankruptcy and out of existence?
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Yes. I've seen a few of those studies as well.
I've been in that situation. I must still be "haunted" by the experience as I always have way too much rice and dried beans at home. Nonetheless I didn't breed when I was in the position.
Still, I suppose the point is, as scarcity drops perhaps there will be less breeding. I hope so. I also hope we start actively pushing the idea hat breeding while in abject poverty only perpetuates the cycle. Breeding is a luxury.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
If the information you referenced is true, then 50.4% of minimum wage workers are age 24 or younger. So not false. That means the the other 49.6% of workers are not advancing or making good career choices
Also, what does supplemental mean? I guess you've never had a second job that paid less than your primary one eh?
I said it in the parent already, minimum wage jobs are not career paths.
Have you ever fallen asleep at the keybhanusdiog?
Why must I give up my property at gunpoint to someone claiming to act for those who refuse to work?
In the final analysis, those are the only two choices.
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So he wants to recreate an automat? or maybe this: http://www.petnet.io/
I'd also like to point out that the 99 weeks compensation they were giving to the unemployed helped artificially bring down the numbers of unemployed according to the U3 rating. People were less likely to seek employment shortly after being unemployed because of a larger safety net so it made them lax in finding new employment. After that first month was up, if they didn't seek a new job, they fell out of the U3 pool even though they were still unemployed.
And here I thought it was because they didn't have food or the money to buy it. Turns out it was just Uncle Sam getting in the way of them having all the food they want.
Back into your hole, John Galt!
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Because it's fucking true and has been demonstrated repeatedly throughout history. Want to help save the world? Kill your family then yourself so your ingrained idiocy can't spread.
No, they don't. Or, at least, they don't do it *automatically*. That's what competition is about.
If a government entity raises the minimum wage you can bet every employer with a minimum wage employee will raise prices accordingly automatically, and as a group. There is no competition when everybody's input cost is the same.
To retain the same profit percentage, companies do, and must, pass along more that 100% of cost increases.
Consider a company making widgets that sell for $100 each, that have a total cost (labor, materials, overhead, whatever) of $90. Their profit margin is 10%, not healthy, but adequate for a stable company in a stable industry.
Now consider that same company, heavily taxed and working under regulations that drastically impair efficiency, all of whose suppliers are heavily taxed and regulated, and all of the supplier's suppliers are heavily taxed and regulated, and so on ad infinitum. Assume the total cost to build a widget is now $990, and if the increase of $900 is passed along the widget's selling price will be $1000. The profit margin is now 1%, which indicates a company in trouble, unworthy of investment and a likely candidate for a hostile takeover.
To return the profit margin to 10%, the new price must be $1100, an increase of $1000 when expenses "only" went up by $900.
Ignoring facts of this sort is part of the reason that politicians and faux economists think that their destructive policies do no harm.
In the early 20th century, populists and faux economists were telling people that the national debt was no problem because "we owe it to ourselves" (a multiple lie). Don't accept such foolishness.
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Liberals just don't get basic economics. .. sir, you do realize that the study of economics - the intellectual pursuit - was conceived of and advanced by academics.. right? ... and that academia and liberalism historically have been strongly intertwined?
The study of anything can be intertwined with academia, and modern academia is quite liberal. That doesn't mean anyone who ever studied anything is liberal or of academia, including the study of economics. I study economics, but I'm not liberal. According to you, that's impossible.
Liberals love to conflate and confuse even the simplest issues. Such great thinkers.
I say we just institute a robot tax and use that to support a Citizen Dividend.
My rate proposal is 25% of the pay of the displaced humans.
If they won't pay, just confiscate their robots and give them a 10 year ban on using automation technologies.
"The average profit margin for the S&P 500 is below 8%. What do you think is going to happen if a 20% surtax is added onto sales?"
You put the numbers, not me, but then, now that you ask, that would mean (provided there's no other "financial engineering" in place) that the average profit margin for the S&P 500 would go from below 8% to around 6%. Given that as of today the 10 year USA bond is sold at a 2.43% discount, do you think capital would flee? where to?
"How long is a manufacturer going to stay in business losing 12% on every sale"
You don't know how to operate on percentages nor how taxation on profits work, do you?
You're talking as if this is all theoretical. But you do well to remember a few things:
1) Masses don't string up producers, they string up the wealthy. In a typical society the people getting rich are not the producers but middle men. Suzie can still flip burgers just as well as she used to, and best of all she and the other employees no longer need to share their wealth with a fat CEO.
2) Farmers are not the ones getting strung up, they will be lining up with strings in their hands right along side the rest of the lower class.
3) Society doesn't break down when the top are axed.
4) This isn't theoretical. This has happened many times in many governments in history. Google Peasant's Revolt for an example. Society will live on because the people who society are built upon ARE the middle-lower class.
Name one time in history where the poor strung up the rich. That is a socialist fantasy.
The poor oppressed masses revolted against their Roman masters in the servile war. They were butchered by their rich roman masters.
The French Revolution was a bunch of wealthy merchants and artisans overthrowing the super rich monarchy, then conscripting large numbers of poor to fight and die against the other monarchies of the world. Eventually those rich merchants were overthrown by a short dude who made himself a monarch again.
The Russian Revolution was the elite of the educated working class fooling and conscripting the poor and huddled masses to overthrow the monarchy, and then install themselves as virtual monarchs over a supposed "nationalist state".
The Communist takeover of China was the educated elite of the working class conscripting large numbers of dirt poor people to overthrow everyone around them; said elite then proceeded to make everyone in China dirt poor, and they only made China great again when the elite selected a few people to be the rich upper strata and left everyone else dirt poor.
It's a fantasy to assume that the poor, oppressed, huddled masses eventually string up their "rich masters".
Unemployment numbers only count those that are still looking for work, but can't find it. Once you stop looking for work and go on welfare you are no longer counted as unemployed.
"There is no competition when everybody's input cost is the same."
There is no competition *on costs* and *on equilibrium* and *on a perfectly optimized market* when everybody's input costs are the same.
The three highlights are of some interest here.
Subtract 100 years and talk about horse carriages and it is an excellent argument that the horse-drawn carriage is not going anywhere. This has been proven countless times since the 1600s (or possibly earlier!).
If you take automation to the extreme, to Star Trek "replicator," then it may be that those jobs would not come back. And if you consider the part-way-there, which is where we are now, where there are robots that can do some of the jobs, there is not any obvious reason why the robots would then lose the job back to the humans. That actually seems a bit silly and hand-wavy.
Jobs lost to business cycles will likely come back the next cycle. Jobs lost to automation likely will not come back during the current civilization era.
The rich will still need 2 or 3 human workers per restaurant, for the pleasure of being served by those below their station. But that doesn't help the minimum wage workers; it just means a couple percent of the employees at fancy restaurants won't lose their jobs.
People have been saying we are about to enter that era for 150 years.
And we've been moving in that direction that whole time.
What somebody predicted the timing wrong?! Say it isn't so! LMFAO
That isn't even an argument against it, did you realize that?
"With government driving up the cost of labor"
should be
"With government driving up the cost of labor of my empire which does nothing but SERVE ONE TYPE OF FOOD in a 2FT SPACE (burgers already cook themselves)."
Given a person a stone... is not a growth business.
What do you think happened to our economy to achieve our current 5% unemployment rate?
Workers gave up looking for work and are thus no longer considered unemployed. They still don't have a job, they just don't count anymore.
You have no clue what communism is. Commuinism doesn't say 'Russia' or even 'China' neither is actually a communist state. Both were autocratic (with the Chinese version still being a single party democracy that is effectively autocractic). Communism can never be a form of government (it literally has nothing to do with governing). Large scale communism fails because it's never actually been used as intended. It is however a contemporary of Capitalism as both are a system of economics. Communism doesn't remove managers, it changes how they relate to the company as a whole.
Communism is simply the means of production in the hands of the workers. A very successful Spanish company is a modern communist one with each worker having a say in the whole. Because the 'shares' are all owned by the workers, they all have a vested interest in the company and in turn the company has a vested interest in them. While the Spanish economy has suffered lately that company has done fairly well and did well without having to fire thousands of people to make stockholders happy like a traditional american company. That doesn't mean hard choices aren't made, but it does change how those choices are made. Ironically this makes communist companies more democractic than capitalist ones.
There are still managers in such a company, however those people can't fuck the employees because the employees in turn collectively have authority. If everyone hates a upper management decision, that decision will be undone and the one who forced it on everyone may suffer as a consequence. Management is held responsible for their actions. Which by the way is the failing of management in a Capitalist company. Shareholders have no real interest in keeping bad decisions form hurting anyone except themselves and they don't work for the company the have shares in. So no one is there to keep management in line.
Co-ops are another modern take on 'communist' companies. Where a group of people get together to collectively accomplish a goal and then share the decision making and rewards between all parties involved. ISPs, small power companies, and other ventures have had very good success as cooperative ventures.
we are all invisible unless we choose otherwise
we need a solution that helps the people put out of work as soon as it happens - not in 2086 after they are long dead.
Solution = Robot Tax + Citizens Dividend
In the near future, we may have 0.000000001% working farms, janitor jobs, cooking, services, etc.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
You have failed to understand the entire argument as presented. Running a business with no employees inevitably results in a business with no customers (because people without incomes won't be customers). There may be a businesses where this is the optimal choice, but restaurant isn't one of them.
Ideology: A tool used primarily to avoid the bother of thinking.
Having been wrong 99 times in the past in exactly similar situations is not an argument against something? 97% of the population used to farm, now it's 2%. Do we have 95% unemployment?
Before that about 50% used to hunt and 50% gather. Now it's 0% (with some rounding).
If you think 'this one is different', it's up to you to show why.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
It is easy to be observant of what is going on out there today in the workplace and society.
First, YES, I've been poor.....its a pretty natural thing (or it used to be) when I got out of school and on my own, I supported myself working retail...restaurants (waiting and bartending)....I didn't make much money at all.
But I worked, and kept trying. Got in with the right people...and took a path on life that I'd not previously really thought about (IT work)....so far, that is been good to me.
Poor judgement? YEP...I've been the king of it, and I've also still made bad judgements. However, I've lived with what I've done, and tried to learn lessons and move on. I don't use it as a crutch.
For most the "system" is not rigged against them...IF, they are willing to value and seek an education, to put in EFFORT and work from the bottom up.
It isn't rigged if you work, and don't depend on someone else to do this, or do that...or take care of you. That's not society's job...it is YOUR job. It is up to you to be a responsible adult...grow up and act like one.
What gets me...you seriously (I think) are asking in this day in age "why must people work"...if you are not kidding, then I posit to you...
WHO is going to provide the services?
Who is going to make the products?
Who or how is money and resources going to be earned and used to pay for everyone to not fucking work?!?!
Why should anyone have to work so that someone else (able bodied of course) doesn't have to?
Who decides who has to work and turn over their hard worked earnings to someone so they don't have to?
Technology rarely takes away work...it just moves it to different forms. A machine replaces a formerly human job? Well, someone has to take care of that machine, improve it....replace it when it gets old and need of repair.
As someone who has lived a decent bit of life so far, who has made mistakes, who has depend upon himself for sustainment, growth and success....I certainly feel well placed to have an opinion, and I've no problem voicing it.
IN the end...no one gets a free ride. For all the technology in the world and "progress" we've made as a society, there's no getting away from what we are...
We are animals, in competition for life's resources. We eat, we reproduce and we compete for things in life.
The only difference between us and the rest of the animal inhabitants of this planet is that we are currently at the top of the food chain.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
You don't get unemployment unless you, at least, say you are looking.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
You are suffering from a failure of imagination.
AC explained it. It is quite likely that you are failing in imagination or perhaps are merely overly optimistic about the average person. Idiocracy is a scary concept, if you look at it in this light.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
What's preventing anyone from breaking in to my house and stealing my property, that I have spent my whole life earning, is that I'll kill the person who tries.
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And, in the past there were long, long lists of things people would do if they had the time.
Automation eventually gets us to where people individually don't have anything on that list that is really important to them. It was a long list, starting from humans plowing the fields with stone hoes. A better plow, another better plow, another better plow, a better grinder, the work horse, etc., etc., etc., etc., etc., etc.. Eventually, air travel, air mail, international air travel. There is still room for improvement in air travel; people desire to visit distant relatives on a day trip. But if it took 30 minutes to fly around the world, would faster air travel still matter to people? No. There is a point where all the creature comforts are available all day; all the places are reachable quickly; all of the technical questions programmed into the expert systems (such as automated banking advice, siri, etc); all of the factories able to output whatever products are ordered without human intervention.
This can be utopia or dystopia depending on the availability and participation systems that we choose to use for a post-scarcity economy. The problem is, are we going to make compatible changes while scarcity still exists, but is simply going down, or are we going to repeat the history of the Industrial Revolution and let the workers starve to death before reorganizing society?
I'm glad you had the guts to not post as AC, for that I actually have respect. But your argument is very weak if all you can do is call me an idiot. And sorry, not everybody can be as Superman as you are. All you've done is knock the empathy out of your body with every self-pat-on-the-back you give yourself. And I have news for you: your fate is only partially in your hands. Or you're going to tell me that a guy like Bill Gates got where he is completely and totally on his own?
Your argument is that there's always another sucker, and you think that's a good thing. That's not a standpoint of high moral character.
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Having been wrong 99 times in the past in exactly similar situations is not an argument against something?
Correct.
It was not a process of automation on the farm putting farmers out of work who then migrated to other jobs.
It was a big factor. The steam tractor made a huge difference in the amount of labor required for farming, first in threshing rigs and then in ploughing, and innovation was quite rapid during the industrial revolution. It's tied quite closely to the rise in the size of farms, and the economies of scale that make small farms impractical.
We're arguing correlation vs causation, which can be hard to sort out historically. Certainly automation on the farm happened at the same time farm jobs vanished, and of the new manufacturing jobs very few were making farm equipment.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Zimbabwe. Q.E.D.
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If you're in the USA, you're already giving a LOT more money to corporations in the form of corporate welfare, tax breaks, and other sweetheart deals while the big boys pay their heads exorbitant incomes. For example, why was it that we bailed out those banks again? Please remind me... I'd rather at least give food to people to eat or a roof over their head. And yes, you do already pay for that at gunpoint, or at least under threat of jail time.
Take a look at the Russia under Bolshevism, where people were murdered to keep them from escaping. Production, goods, and services collapsed.
Without willing minds, civilization crumbles. Unless, of course, you consider starving in mud and thatch huts civilization.
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Automation actually helps poor people. It doesn't help them to become rich, but it means that it is cheaper to live, and consequently it is cheaper to provide a better social safety net. Taken to the extreme, it will eventually take no human effort to provide human beings with food, shelter, healthcare, entertainment, etc, and therefore the cost will become zero (ignoring opportunity cost, etc).
Will there be a huge wealth disparity in a world with unskilled labor provided only by machines? Probably, but if wealth inequality is the only downside of providing adequate living conditions to the poor, I think I am OK with that.
Not everyone will agree with me, but I wouldn't take any solace in the fact that there was low wealth inequality if there are still lots of people struggling just to survive.
I appreciate that you at least took the time to put thought into your response. I see at least two problems in your responses: they are still framed in the way things were, not in the way they are changing to, and they neglect the opportunity costs involved in getting that education when you can barely afford to pay the rent right now (not everybody has what you perceive to be your abilities, but should they be left to rot as the income disparity continues to grow? Should they be treated as subhuman because they are "lazy slobs" ?). Beyond our basic needs, the vast majority of folks do not need to be employed full time anymore. A lot of our jobs are just useless jobs we have to keep people busy. Maybe our future is maybe still having similar employment rates as now but at 10-15 hours a week instead of 40+ hours a week? Morally there is no reason to have to work for the sake of work. It is not an end unto itself.
Soylent green, yo...
And after that, we'll all eat cake.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Price is not cost + profit margin.
Micro not marco economics are in play. With globalization virtually all companies are price takers. Wait for it...so are taxing authorities.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
You just sent all the capital overseas dimwit.
There is a reason that (1 - corporate tax rate) * (1 - capital gains rate) * (Average national ROI) is, more or less, the same in all 1st world nations. They are competing for capital.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I'm always amazed that the rich think they can hide in their gated communities and enjoy the fruits of other people's labor.
You should be amazed that they consider their wealth the result of their own labor. Their employees don't seem to be more than tools they use.
People "abide by it" because at some level they realize that they benefit from it. They know, or should know, these two things: 1. Capital in capable hands enables the production that improves the life of others. 2. Once the principle of private ownership of capital is lost, everybody's ownership of property is vulnerable.
Capital is the basis of advanced civilization, and to maintain that civilization the right to own capital must be maintained. Lose either one and the other follows.
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We already have large masses of people who are hungry and desperate, just not as many in the United States. Working toward a future with lower cost required to produce food is a step in the right direction.
Regardless of whether you are a capitalist or a socialist, wasting human effort on tasks that require no skill that can be done more efficiently by a machine makes no sense.
A capitalist will say, producing food more efficiently will allow the poor to buy food more easily. A socialist will say, that producing food more efficiently will allow us to provide more food to the poor given our limited resources.
Even if you felt that work was a virtue in itself, and forcing people to work was a good thing, we still should force people to do only the work that machines can't.
The only wrong answer is "Let's have people wasting their lives doing work that could simply be done by machines."
Yes, but there's a better argument to make. Let's assume that indeed it all gets 'passed on to the consumer.' The fact is, this is still a value-neutral statement. You can't say, without having some idea of the shape of the supply and demand curves, whether that's good or bad. It's elementary to postulate some market where 'passing cost increase x on to the consumer' doesn't decrease overall utility- think insulin maybe. Presumably the demand curve is fairly flat because nobody starts taking insulin just because it's cheap, and those that need it don't drop out of the market just because it's more expensive. Similarly, you can assume that there are markets where there are terrible consequences to a price increase of this sort- and the parent poster is making such an assumption and taking it economy-wide- but it's still just an assumption unless you can point to something specific.
We all know that. But if the idiotic left is going to continue to use that number, we are going to throw it back in their faces during arguments. Use it when it is advantageous, use the other numbers when it is advantageous.
Those are the words of a dishonest jackass who only cares about winning arguments. Is that really the person you want to be?
Fanatically anti-fanatical
The food is shipped in from automated factories. The manual labor required is unloading boxes and shoveling the mess into hoppers. Also cleaning and maintenance.
Automats were Kabuki Theatre, the illusion of automation much like Maelzel's Chess Player. It wasn't a particularly efficient setup; it was something of a fad. What it isn't, is a valid analogy.
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This entire thread is based on a false idea that if people are thrown out of minimum wage jobs that they'll be unemployed forever.
This has been proven countless times since the 1700's to be absolutely false.
And because Malthus has been wrong a few times, that means that the earth can support an infinite number of people forever.
The problem is that there are already people who will never work again. Laid off from small town mills and manufacturing as their jobs. No where to go to get another job. Packing up and moving? Where? To get what job? These are 50 something year olds, who even if they get some sort of job training, who is going to hire an entry level worker who is near retirement age.
So what do they do? Untill we decide to go Logan's Run on people, or maybe Hunger games or simple target practice, we've allowed them on Social Security Disability. Which by the way, conveniently removes them from the unemployment picture. http://www.thisamericanlife.or... http://www.npr.org/sections/mo...
Once a technological innovation disrupts employment - the loom, the cotton gin, the computer, the combine planter/harvester, the robot - those who were displaced from employment find new jobs in higher paying sectors, at least in the aggregate.
Okay, what are the new jobs going to be. You've set up an inviolable truth, that all innivation will create new work. Elucidate. Teach those who are wrong, wrong because being wrong in the past means (according to you) the premise will always be wrong. You can try to diminish the argument all day long that way, but do what I did, Present some evidence of what ex fast food workers will do when there are no fast food work jobs any more.
Which by the way, sounds an awful lot like saying tht since man wasn't created to fly, he never will fly.
This is going to happen, but there needs to be something for the new leisure class to do. You need to tell us what that is.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Or maybe they'll just shoot you and take your wallet. Desparate people are dangerous and social security nets keep the crime rate low.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Wrong about many details. But right about the importance of being armed.
Any one man was dead against the Vikings. What eventually stopped them were coastal fortifications. Hold out for long enough to mass you defenders against the raiders. Happened in the context of feudalism, but did not create it.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Look, if the left is going to constantly use argument like 97% percent of scientists agree, and the economy is great because 5%, or women only make 5% of what men make doing the same job, or 1 out of 5 dogs will be raped in doggy daycare, or machine guns kill millions of children in the US every day, the time for letting them get away with those methods is over.
Restaurants automated and employees controlled by computer, employment and jobs to follow, then socialized prisons for the unemployable... Then the birth of the australia project and post-scarcity economics.
http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
Marshall Brain has predicted this, and we are making it happen.
> are we going to repeat the history of the Industrial Revolution and let the workers starve to death before reorganizing society?
Well, one big difference there is the job/scarcity revolution will be taking place in first world countries first, because in developing countries the labor is still cheaper than automation. And one first world country in particular has hundreds of millions of guns in the hands of those who will be on the starving end of the equation. I have a feeling if there isn't a good effort put forth like universal basic income or similar that the revolution will look less like the starving masses of the Industrial Revolution and a lot more like the terror purges of the elites during the French Revolution. And UBI or similar is going to be necessary as these businesses shift to automated labor because if half the consumers are out of a job, who is going to buy their shit? Which will cause a downward spiral as even more companies go out of business due to shrinking demand, which means more people out of work, which means even further shrinking of demand.....
Current day 'liberals' aren't. It is that simple. They have redefined a term to mean it's opposite.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Nothing worse than walking in to a fast food place and knowing that the line you got in to is the wrong one because it's the moron cashier. Except when they're all moron cashiers. "You said you didn't want no onion." "No, I said i want nothing but onion." "That's what I just said!" Ugh.
What do you think happened to our economy to achieve our current 5% unemployment rate?
We reach that by ignoring people who are unemployable. U-6 is more like 10% and still leaves out a large number of people who used to be able to find work. But let's not just look at the negative. Over 1% of US adults are in prison. They used to be "employed". We no longer use child or prisoner labor, because of automation those jobs are gone. I think that's a good thing, but it isn't accounted for in your claim that unemployment has stayed at 5%.
You misunderstand the point. Mr Puzder's choices only affect the dozen or so people that would work in his restaurant, not "large masses of people". If he decides to hire minimum wage workers instead of robots, he'll still end up facing the "large masses of people minus a dozen or so", but he wouldn't be able to hire a merc army to protect himself.
Maybe he plans to become Burger-G?
Also, Pudzer's being more than a little dishonest. If $3 an hour is the difference between human or robot service now and he's willing to swich and the cost of automation is decreasing, then one of two things must be true either he's lying about these facts, or "Suzie" is going to end up without of a job regardless of whether we raise the minimum wage. So increasing the minimum wage will have pretty much no effect (the research indicates that raising the minimum wage tends to have a mildly positive effect on employment), or not increasing the minimum wage would, at best, keep Suzie working in a terrible job for a couple of additional years until she's replace by a slightly cheaper robot.
Frankly, I would place my bet on Pudzer being entirely full of shit. This isn't about jobs at all, it's about Pudzer's company not having to pay it's employees more money. It seems to me, that this putz would say anything at all to try and make it so they don't have to pay them a single penny more and he can collect a multi-million dollar bonus for keeping costs down.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
They have redefined a term to mean it's opposite.
Yes, I'm aware. Liberal derives from the word liberty, which is the opposite of the tyrannical, over-taxing, over-regulating, big-government, socialist left of today.
I think we are heading into new territory now. Up until now, automating simple, repetitive tasks has improved the human condition. Thus far, demand for other services has always pulled these people back into the labor force. Just because it has been that way for 30, 300, or even 3,000 years does not mean it will always continue that way.
I think we are on the verge of creating a new category of structural unemployment. No longer will it just be a problem for the 50+, and medically disabled crowed. I think we will be adding people who's only marketable ability is their visual and auditory recognition systems.
Certainly the majority of the work force will be able to adapt. But I'd guess we'll shift at least 5% of the work force into this structurally unemployed group. I doubt we'd see more than 30% of the workforce shift into this group, at least I really hope not. Either way I think it will be large enough to cause major economic shifts, which will in turn lead to political shifts.
Those holding on to the reigns of power who choose to ignore that, will discover they have a spooked team of horses pulling their carriage towards a cliff. They best figure out a system that accommodates this new reality in a palatable way.
I've seen several sales tax increases, and usually vendors see it as an opportunity to jack the prices up by more than needed. Because all the prices are changing, it makes it hard for customers to see exactly how much the price went up, so they might as well round it up a bit. On the other hand, when prices of raw materials go up, they are far more likely to absorb the price themselves, because they don't want to be caught increasing the prices. But of course, when we're talking about corporate taxes that stay the same for a long time, and that are the same for competing companies, then it doesn't really matter. Everybody adds the taxes to the end product, and they'll compete on what's left.
Interesting discussion, and it's one I was planning on staying out of because there's two sides, and nothing anybody says will convince the others.... kind of like politics, with two "sides" and very few in-betweens.
Anyway, I read your response, and a vision of my brother (died of a heart attack - and the accident it caused - before the age of 50, due to smoking, drug, and alcohol abuse). He spent most of his life making excuses instead of looking for a job, and he was one of those people who'd quit rather than show up on time and sober. When he was sober, he'd give up on looking for work because of his record and "no one will hire me anyway" mentality.
Something I tell my kids - and something I was lucky to learn early on - you can't possibly succeed if you don't try. Most people seem to have given up, blaming "the man" or the economy or anybody but themselves.
Bottom line is to stop making excuses and keep trying.
Now, at the same time, despite my ideological belief in libertarianism, my pragmatic (and human) belief is you can't "just" abandon the ones that don't try. Like it or not, they often breed; they turn to crime, they become burdensome in other ways. With as hard as I've worked my entire life - from school to paper routes and cutting people's lawns, a lot of manual labor before settling in my career, and without ever getting any benefits - no welfare, no food stamps, no "Obama" (really Bush) phone, the idea of handing it out to people who often won't even try and have simply made piss poor decisions their entire lives is really repulsive. At the same time, you can't just abandon people... It's a kind of extortion - pay or, or we'll make your lives difficult in other ways; but what are you going to do? And then there's the fact that some people have just gotten bad deals, and they are often the people who, given a chance, will eventually get back on their feet and be positive contributors to society. What about them? And without spending billions in bureaucracy, how to tell the difference?
Still, the bottom line is that people who won't try (or only try half ass because they don't believe in themselves) are doomed to fail from the start.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Hmm, you might want to google historical starvation in newly minted communist regimes where they wiped out the original owners. Literally millions of people have starved to death under communist regimes because the communists murdered all the owners and then couldn't even get enough production to feed the people. Idiots like you think because your college professor told you that CEOs/owners do nothing it must be so. And yet every company has one, and they are busy as fuck. If you spent a day with a good one (not saying they all are) you would see that they spend 12 plus hours per day doing their best to optimize production to meet consumer demand, anticipate the future needs and desires of the consumer, make sure that they are not wasting money on products that are not popular, ensuring that they have good profit margins so that the company remains profitable, they can pay their workforce, their debts, and keep their investors happy etc... The reality is that the CEO/owners that I have known feel and treat their workers like family, and it kills them to have to lay people off, but the business reality is that they must keep the company profitable, or everyone will be out of a job and the product that they are making would no longer be available to the consumer. Even if a fast food company went full automation, I am willing to bet that there would still be a manager in every restaurant and a few workers, the situation would be similar to an ATM and banks, because when things go wrong, you still want a person there to be able to make it right.
As far as the dystopian future where the ultra rich control the planet and have automated weapons to kill the rest of us.. you have been reading too much bad scifi. The military grade weapons are in the hands of 500,000 low/middle class citizens in the military. Unless there is some massive breakthrough in technology by a tycoon (think Ironman) it will never happen. And for the record, for the Ironman suit to perform like in the movies, Tony Stark single-handedly invented:
- Unobtanium (an ultra strong metal ~100x stronger than Titanium, as it can take F35 AA cannon rounds, a tank round etc. with only dents and scuffs even though it looks to be only about 1/4" thick or less, and is not excessively heavy)
- The Arc reactor (an unlimited power source the size of a cereal bowl, technology that has been pursued by thousands of PhDs for years)
- Inertial dampeners (allows Tony not to get turned into goo inside the suit during his maneuvers/when he gets shot with a 1lb tungsten tank round traveling at 2800fps)
- Compact servo motors that are about 100x the torque density of the best we have today
- Energy based fuel-less thrusters that have enough thrust for the suit to fly or blast things at close range.
I could go on and that's just the first movie, but in short, it is a Hollywood fantasy, and so is your fear of the ultra-rich.
It says things balance out so there's no net advantage or disadvantage. Therefore your CEO, if honest, would have had no beef with higher taxes.
Except that in the case of corporate taxes, you need a bunch of people making tax laws, lawyers to find loopholes, other experts to close loopholes, and accountants and tax inspectors to make sure everybody is following the rules. It would a lot more efficient to get rid of corporate taxes, and only tax people. The redistributive effect is a valid argument, but I don't think the impact is big for regular corporate taxes that are pretty much equal for all companies. The poor pay for these taxes through products they buy just as much as the rich, so they could be replaced by sales taxes without much bad side effects.
Why is it more likely that we will have a new world with 1 machine, 1 employed person, and 2 unemployed people making the same amount of stuff as before, rather than 3 machines and 3 employed people making 3 times the stuff they were making before? Or 2 people working on 2 machines making twice as much as before, with one person employed building the 2 machines in such a way that the 2 other people can use them effectively?
New employment opportunities will open up; they always have.
This is the first time the new opportunities are roles that some people simply lack the brains for doing. What are you suggesting? We let those people starve?
On the other hand, I wouldn't mind branding anybody with an IQ under 130 or so mentally disabled so we can put them on disability. Please, I'm begging, I really am getting sick and tired of people who don't have any business doing anything more complicated than pulling a lever all day long showing up in jobs that require thinking.
The current problem is that jobs that just need a body are going to decrease in number. We need more and more educated people but less and less people with a minimal education. Gone are the days where you can get out of high school and go work in a factory and make a good wage.
We really need to bring back vocational education. It was seen as shameful to not have every child aim for a college education. Truth is that that a plumber or electrician can make a good living today.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Here's a pro tip: Read the whole comment before you click on the "Reply to This" link and prove you're an idiot.
In case you still don't get it: He's not suggestion we do that, he 's calculating the percentage of total income a $500 basic income would represent.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Having been wrong 99 times in the past in exactly similar situations is not an argument against something?
Correct.
In a formal, logical sense you are right. But as the philosopher David Hume said (I am paraphrasing just a bit): "The fact that the sun has come up yesterday, and the day before, and so on every day we remember is not proof that the sun will come up tomorrow. But it is a very persuasive indicator."
"95% of all Slashdot
steam shovels replaced men with picks and shovels? How many secretaries in typing pools were displaced by desktop computers and xerox machines and laser printers?
Any number of jobs have been lost over the years to automation large and small, but do you really think we'd be better off returning to the pre-automation way of doing those jobs?
Well put. The skilled trades are really better jobs than most people realize - the first 5 or so years suck, but that's true with most jobs anyway. I think we're also all underestimating the changes that "micro-manufacturing" will bring (3D printers, CnC mills, lost-wax casting equipment and so on). From a new class of jobs operating those machines (much like jobs at Kinkos or a print shop 20 years ago) to a whole new category of jobs "customizing things for other people". Plus a whole new arena of person-to-person service jobs, as the cost of manufactured goods declines.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
"Enjoy your EXTRA BIG ASS FRIES..."
"You didn't give me any fries.. I got an empty box."
"Please come back when you can afford to make a purchase. Your kids are starving. Carl's Jr. believes no child should go hungry. You are an unfit mother. Your children will be placed in the custody of Carl's Jr.
"Carls' Jr. Fuck You! I'm eating!"
No sig for you! Come back one year!
Even the CBO understands that...
[CBO report "THE INCIDENCE OF THE CORPORATE INCOME TAX"]
"A corporation may write its check to the Internal Revenue Service for payment of the corporate income tax, but that money must come from somewhere: from reduced returns to investors in the company, lower wages to its workers, or higher prices that consumers pay for the products the company produces."
Although economists are far from a consensus about exactly who bears how much of the burden of the corporate income tax, the existing studies highlight the significant types of economic mechanisms as well as the empirical estimates necessary for further quantifying the burdens. CBO's review of the studies yields the following conclusions:
o The short-term burden of the corporate tax probably falls on
stockholders or investors in general, but may fall on some more than
on others, because not all investments are taxed at the same rate.
o In the context of international capital mobility, the burden of the
corporate tax may be shifted onto immobile factors (such as labor or
land), but only to the degree that the capital and outputs of different
countries can be substituted.
o In the very long term, the burden is likely to be shifted in part to
labor, if the corporate tax dampens capital accumulation.
You have failed to understand the entire argument as presented. Running a business with no employees inevitably results in a business with no customers (because people without incomes won't be customers)
No, it is you that have failed to understand my argument. The guy can run a business just fine serving food to people who work at other businesses. Now, you'll probably start yelling that "but, but, but, if every other business did the same thing, then there would be no customers left", to which I will respond that Mr Puzder has no responsibility for those other businesses, and his choices don't affect them. We can be sure that somebody will move to robots, and they'll gain a competitive advantage, either driving Mr Puzder to quit or to do the same thing.
Competition doesn't help here, because all of the competitors will face exactly the same unavoidable government-imposed increased costs and will increase their prices by the same amount. Unless they can figure some way around those costs, like moving production or headquarters off-shore. Then you get even less taxes from them.
You're using the wrong average. You used median income, which means the household which half of all other households make more than, but half make less than. What you want is the actual average.
Wikipedia also says that the 2007 total US household income was 7.723 trillion, and the population was 301.2 million. That works out to over $250k per person, because the average person is 10 times wealthier than the median person. If you split everyone's income equally, the average family in the US makes over half a million a year.
Only 1% of households make > $500k a year in the US. Just by splitting the pie equally, every individual would. We'd all be the 1%.
captcha: anarchy
You might want to ask Marie Antoinette.
Oh, wait ...
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
You are talking in absolutes: black and white. The real world is shades of gray. What about a business with FEWER employees? Guess what? This happens!
Imagine making a car these days without ANY robots. Or, can you imagine making a cell phone with using just hand-soldering? Me neither.
It is all about making things more affordable. When is the last time that you purchased an American-made DVD player? They don't exist, and if one did exist, it would be more expensive. So, in order to save money, manufacturing is moved away from American employees to something else (automation and/or foreign workers).
You can't blame a guy who runs a business for trying to keep his costs down.
And for those who complain about "living wages," well, that comes with having SKILL. If you artificially raise the minimum wage, then people with MORE skilled jobs will want a raise too -- should an ambulance driver make the same as a burger flipper? This will then cause a ripple effect up the entire wage line, and result in EVERYTHING being more expensive. Suddenly a "living wage" is not a living wage any more, and you have to raise everything again.
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
Still, the numbers work out in his favor, and that's assuming she's going to be provided with a social safety net.
Monetary compensation is flat, but people are receiving more in total compensation. The extra money has gone to health care.
What marketing idiot decided that people would pay $3 to play a cell phone game during a meal?
That would be the marketing idiot who has watched spoiled kids' behaviour when parents arrive without a full charge on their fondleslabs.
Oh, I'm sorry sir, I thought you were referring to me, Mr. Wensleydale.
This is why basic income is inevitable.
Basic income is not inevitable. If the teabaggers get their way, the unemployed poverty stricken people will be ignored and thus "reduce the surplus population".
At the very least, the well-being of those file clerks and their families were disrupted. I remember seeing a statistic that pas industrial revolutions took two generations to recover.
The question is whether this one will be different. With the speed of technological advance it is arriving much faster do will likely be more severe - workers can't change careers as quickly as automation is changing. One side is arguing that more jobs will appear, since they have in past such disruptions but we're not exactly repeating the past so this is no proof. The other side is pointing to the reality that so far this time is reducing the number of jobs plus the new ones are specialists that few people can do. You also have the speculation that this time automation is taking jobs requiring dexterity and intelligence, so what is left that only people can do
I mean, how many people has a web site replaced? Or Apache? I mean a 25% tax on Apache is going to pay for homes for a whole lot of the homeless! Or maybe IIS deserves to go to jail for tax delinquency?
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
Another wrong answer is say "so what?" If this pushes a significant portion of the population into poverty. Let's not step back a few centuries. There is a strong risk of disrupting millions of lives, let's be prudent and do what we can to prepare
Those doing the protecting were usually highly paid and trained. Knights got the best meat steaks, training, the best armor, and they were given some land as well. Archers got similar perks with food. They needed the strength to be able to fire six arrows a minute using a 2 meter long English longbow with a range of 25 meters.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
I might add, production might be restarted in a much more efficient and fair way than it was before. More cooperatives where the producers have a part of the take and less private organizations sending money to people who have nothing to do with production.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
> It's impossible to have a society where a large fraction of people can't find work that pays a living wage.
Imagine that food, clothing, shelter, water, health care, and all other essential needs for humans are like air: they exist, freely and in whatever abundance a person can use. We've automated the processes such that we don't "need" humans for any job except figuring out how to automate things further. Imagine that society can easily tolerate a 90%+ unemployment rate.
Do we force people to work? If so, why? Do we plan for such a future? If not, why not?
I want to continue to build such a world, but the way our society is structured today, unemployment is considered a drain on society's resources. What if, instead, unemployment were considered an indicator of our automation success rates?
Matthew P. Barnson
I learn what I think when I read what I write
And there's a minor variance there - the sun and the earth obey a certain set of well defined laws, so we can say with some certainty that it will come up tomorrow. We can also state with lesser certainty the time when it no longer will. For jobs, the argument is similarly persuasive that if automation can handle all manufacturing and services, then the amount of jobs available will significantly shrink because even new jobs that might be created will be automated.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Not quite. CEOs think people are idiots, who will take what CEOs as truth.
Corporate income taxes are paid on profit, which means that the exact same actions that make the profit highest a a low corporate tax rate are the same that make the profit highest at a high corporate tax rate. Corporate income taxes are borne by the business, or arguably the stockholders.
Raising the minimum wage is more complex, but most corporations don't have that many minimum wage workers, and the one who do practice enough wage theft to make up for such a raise.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
A person in police or military with good political, intelligence, and popularity skills could lead to a coup while average people will go like nothing happen...
The vast majority do. Pursuing is not the same as finding. Of the ones who don't, it's because they can't get a job that will allow them to live. For some odd reason, welfare recipients don't tend to step into jobs with medical coverage, or necessarily enough money to allow even minimum child care. Provide a first-world health care system and many welfare recipients will be able to get off welfare. Provide some help towards actually keeping a job, and more will. Before the ACA, kicking a mother with a child with a serious medical problem off Medicaid was effectively homicide. In general, mothers will do whatever it takes to protect their children.
Did you know it's a lot cheaper to pay someone enough to live in reasonable dignity than to keep them imprisoned? Did you know that having a criminal record makes it even harder to get a decent job? That, after they get desperate once, and get convicted, work ethics and responsibility aren't going to help them turn straight all that much?
If you think "coddling" is applicable to the current situation with the poor in any way, you have no idea of the real world, but simply make crap up so you can stay smug. Instead of listening to right-wing propaganda, do a little research into what actually happens on welfare.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
I know, I know! It's Trump, and you need to realign your time machine because you came in a few years early.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Greed is awesome lol. Yeah, it has nothing to do with people not being good at managing their life. The "everyone deserves something because they exist" mentality is exactly the reason workers are in this situation. You aren't entitled to anything at all... including a job... in this world. You can write laws to tell everyone in your society that you will confiscate their wealth and give it to others. But, that doesn't actually mean much.
Either A) those people people that are contributing to society are going to stop contributing and become part of the leeching class or B) those that are productive will still leverage their productivity. A) is an example of where we are right now in the US: the middle class continues to shrink. People are dropping out of the work force (we've been near all-time lows in labor participation for years now). And, the rich are leaving at the highest level in decades. B) is an example of what happens in places like the USSR and Venezuela: the elites continue to live the good life while the rest of society goes to hell. Free rainbows and unicorns is the solution, its the problem.
The problem is that both sides are right:
The employee needs enough money to live on.
The employer still needs to make a profit, and some jobs do not generate a lot of that.
There are two solutions: increase productivity (which might hurt employment), or provide in work benefits.
"If they choose crime, then fsck'em, jail them."
Yeah. I think some Jean Valjean wrote a book about it, or something like that.
no need for high taxes, we can even reduce them a lot to almost zero, you can provide housing and food for 1 person for less than $100/month (trust me during war-time i saw it personally) especially if houses and food are produced cheaply by robots, medical care (basic medical care) can also be provided by robots, and that way you can stop paying unemployment/social security/pension ...
people that do work, or own robots will have very luxurious life in comparison, but nobody will die, if you don't work you get less nice life :)
as for security (against people trying to repeat "Marie Antoinette scenario" with heads rolling, easily solved by few drones with heavy machine guns, you can use robots to produce machine guns and drones
At some point all that employment is going to plateau for the people creating all the shit for people (arguably now, or in the next 20 years). To use the GP's point, if a machine replaces 3 workers (that only requires 1 worker for machine maintenance), then that leaves 2 people unemployed. And your point is spot on here too; those 2 displaced workers will generally have to find work in another industry (services), as all the ex-farmers and ex-factory workers have had to do in the last 100 years or so.
But at some point, what we refer to as "jobs" now are diminishing. The numbers of human laborers needed for general manufacturing or farming is at an all time low and generally sufficient for the population in developed countries. Look at how much stuff we have already; the demand for more luxuries isn't going to increase (at least, not as much as it will displace workers. We'll probably see some increase in services, but this will eventually plateau too.
I guess the point I was trying to get at, was what's considered a "job" (at least the GPs definition) will be scarcer at some point in history, and there aren't going to be replacement jobs. There's only so many doctors, nurses, dentists, assistants, other service jobs necessary to keep the population comfortable and happy, while the lion's share of production and transportation will be done by robots. Maybe we'll see people keeping themselves busy with more volunteering, creating art or music, playing sports, or just playing video games & socializing. But those aren't "jobs" by today's definition (maybe for the 0.1% of artists and athletes that can actually make a living at it). So yeah, maybe if we have a basic income and everyone can live somewhat comfortably on that, then we can redefine what those "jobs" are (I'd love to do this and just play / create music, personally). But there won't be enough of those jobs out there by today's definition.
Global warming and other natural disasters are a direct effect of the shrinking number of pirates - Gospel of the FSM
Seriously? This tired old argument again?
Apple didn't move a million jobs to China, or anywhere else. Those jobs DID NOT EXIST when Apple was doing their manufacturing in-house. When Steve Jobs returned in 1997, Apple had 8,437 employees worldwide plus 1,739 temporary employees and contractors. Those numbers include Apple's in-house manufacturing employees in the three factories they operated at the time. Yes, when the iPod was released, Apple began to shift manufacturing to China. But that did not mean a net loss of jobs in the US, because they were expanding the rest of their business simultaneously. In 2015, Apple had approximately 110,000 full-time employees worldwide, NOT including the outsourced manufacturing in China.
The new headquarters building alone (And they're not shutting down the rest of their Cupertino facilities.) will have more workers than their entire global workforce before the manufacturing was outsourced. Cuperting in general will probably have twice as many employees as Apple had worldwide in 1997. So no, buying an iPhone made under contract by Foxxcon did not deprive a single American of his or her job.
Source of my numbers? Apple's 10-K Annual Report SEC filings.
Imagine all the people...
sales tax (and only sales tax with all other taxes=0%) is great idea, cheap to implement= no more need for IRS, people that cant afford stuff dont get taxed since they cant buy anything, rich people pay huge taxes for their yachts and planes ...
"Competition doesn't help here, because all of the competitors will face exactly the same unavoidable government-imposed increased costs and will increase their prices by the same amount"
Competition is a complex thing. Yes, there is what we usually think of competition (in this case a fast food chain against other fast food chains), but then, there is "competition", i.e. fast food chains against vendor machines and even "competition", i.e. fast food chains against movie theaters (read about, say, Porter's five forces, mainly competition, rivalry and substitution).
In this regard, since different competition will have different cost sheets they'll suffer different taxations (i.e.: if you somehow tax on labour costs, those more labour-intensive business will suffer more; if you increase the minimum wages, those with the more minimally waged employees per invested dollar).
But I wasn't focusing on that but just on the fact that shaking an otherwise mature market (i.e. by changing its tax envelope) may end up with a different, maybe more adjusted one (at a lower profit margin without it being translated to customers). Prime example is low-cost airlines: traditional airlines were accomodated to a given service level and a given profit margin till, due to changing circumstances some players decide to change both the service perception *and* the accepted profit margin. In this case you got both new players (i.e. Virgin or Ryanair) and old ones adapting to the new times (and also old players unable to adapt and thus folding down). And you will be with me that a lot of things can be said about low-cost airlines but uneedingly pushing increased costs to their customers is not one of them.
"Unless they can figure some way around those costs, like moving production or headquarters off-shore."
Exactly what I said: you can find the ways to vary the cost of any entry item, or you can work on shuffling around the relative weight of your cost entries. In this article, the Fast Food CEO is trying both at a time since he's trying to reduce their labour costs under the menace of substituting them with CAPEX. In any way, provided healthy competition, cost increases are *not* pushed down to the customer till the profit margin is the barely acceptable (while, at the same time, all companies will be pressing to increase their profit margins, sometimes by reducing costs, sometimes by increasing prices, as much as they can go away with).
"People "abide by it" because at some level they realize that they benefit from it."
You are absolutely right... while it works.
A bit over the board, but Marie Antoinette was also absolutely right about thinking peasants would understand that despite the inequalities of the ancien regime, they were safer under it than under the upcoming anarchy of a revolution... till she wasn't.
They can die in the streets; they are objectively worthless.
More on this...
"They know, or should know, these two things:
1. Capital in capable hands enables the production that improves the life of others."
People is starting to openly question the ability of the hands that hold the (most of) capital.
"2. Once the principle of private ownership of capital is lost, everybody's ownership of property is vulnerable."
Not yet so far than regarding point one and not still anywhere near to the point of no return but people too is feeling that their ownership is not secured anyway against the privileges of a short bunch that are seemingly not only above law but even capable of rewriting the laws to their advantage.
In the end it is old Hobbes' and Rosseau's Social Contract: to the advantage of those in power, it's usually invisible and accepted by fiat by the masses (not even "accepted by fiat" but being more like a jail of invisible bars), but currently there's more and more people questioning it at all levels -not a significant portion of the population yet, but quite a vocal one in proportion. It doesn't even need to be expressed in explicit terms to induce a change: last time social contract was (implicitly) challenged in first world we ended up with a World War so, even if chances are low, it is something requesting careful analysis.
How do you expect people to learn the lesson of that adage when they re-buy their seed corn from Monsanto every year?
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
"It happened repeatedly in the past, therefore it will happen again" is not a reasoned statement.
Maybe there are external factors at play which make this the last time lost jobs are fully replaced by new ones. I would not be surprised to learn that we've hit a productivity peak of some kind, and that when this wave of jobs is lost, there won't ever be another wave to replace it.
Things end. Sometimes, there really is a 'final collapse'.
"Why must I give up my property at gunpoint to someone claiming to act for those who refuse to work?"
If I take your sentence at face value, no, you don't forcibly have to give up your property at gunpoint, you just need to if you want to stay alive after the encounter.
But I suppose you are not talking about any real gang of armed robbers but that you are allegorically talking about taxes and the government power to collect them.
On one hand, what in hell makes you think that even a minimally significant part of your taxes are collected "for those who refuse to work"? Not facts, for sure.
On the other hand, about the wider issue about taxes, no, you are not giving up your property *at all*. Government only collect taxes in the form of money. Now, take a bill from your wallet and look carefully at it: you see? it is *not* your property; it is just a government issued certificate for all debts, public or private so whatever portion the government reclaims of it, it's still nothing of yours but something you shouldn't have in your control to start with. You can barter your cows for grain instead, if so you like.
And, of course, in the wider issue of social contract, what are you really claiming to be "yours"? You are able to make a living because of a society you didn't built up, going to work over roads you didn't built up, with a level of security you didn't built up, trading things over both national and international channels you didn't built up, tradings that are secured because of a legal system you didn't built up, using a legal tender whose confidence you didn't built up... need I to follow? And still you whine about "giving up your property at gunpoint"? What property at all would you own without all that coverage you didn't built up and that you wouldn't possibly build up even if you lived one thousand lives exclusively devoted to that task?
It is of course legit to ask for always greater levels of scrutiny and efficiency about our taxes, but taxes themselves? I won't tell here what I think of that kind of people... Anyway, there must be some place, somewhere, where you can be left alone. Just don't bother calling 911 to the rescue if you ever happen to break a leg, you never payed for it, you know.
"They can die in the streets; they are objectively worthless."
Of course yes. But even then, they are going to cost you money: you don't want their corpses rotting in the streets, do you? It becomes quite unhealthy after a while, you know.
And once you start considering those worthless meatbags in terms of the money they are going to cost you anyway, why don't you start thinking how you can maximize your investment while, at the same time, minimizing your risk and exposition to that scum? Hungry meatbags with forks and torches are no good prospective for your lucrative business' continuity, after all.
to which I will respond that Mr Puzder has no responsibility for those other businesses, and his choices don't affect them. We can be sure that somebody will move to robots, and they'll gain a competitive advantage, either driving Mr Puzder to quit or to do the same thing.
No, we do actually get it. Mr Puzler is not responsible. You are 100 percent correct.
ther really cool thing is, if in a hypothetical situation, everyone gets rid of all their employees, and the whole industry collapses, no one at all is responsible, Innocent as teh day they were born.
A good gig if you can get it.
Seriously, we understand 100 percent that you don't hold him responsible for shortsighted and unltimately self destructive actions.
There is a really beg problem though.
We do. You might not like that, but we do. It's an ultimately self destructive decision, and if it was a company that I held shares in, I'd be howling.
Old Heny Ford had a lot of strange ideas, but the idea of having employees who could buy stuff wasn't one of them.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
An arsehole like this is inevitably going to replace all his workers when machines become cheaper than humans anyway, regardless of whether the minimum wage is increased or not.
he's just:
a) propagandising an excuse for doing so
and
b) pushing propaganda against raising the minimum wage in order to minimise his wage expenses until machines are cheaper than humans.
You are talking in absolutes: black and white. The real world is shades of gray. What about a business with FEWER employees? Guess what? This happens!
Imagine making a car these days without ANY robots.
You kinda went off the shades of gray path yourself. There may be some folks arguing for a return to the woods subsistance living where you produced or were set out to freeze in the winter.
It's the one sidedness of it all. A fast food place with no employees. Imagine that. If successful, there might be many more.
And I believe this is going to happen, unless we get some oddball form of governance that makes up jobs. My argument isn't that it shouldn't be done, because we live in a world where business does not have a moral compass. If people die in the pursuit of profit, then they will die. Whatever, its just how things work.
The prospect of almost everyone out of work with no social plan at all is frightening, and if you don't think it's frightening, you aren't paying attention.
We are already in the stage where the youngest and oldest are having issues. If you are terminated past 50, and don't have an excellent skill set, you are most likely never working again. Or if you do, you're now a greeter or stockperson at Walmart, removing an entry level job from a young person.
And really, we do not want a large number of unemployed young males with a lot of time on their hands? No - we don't.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
If robotics puts people out of work in large numbers today, we need a solution that helps the people put out of work as soon as it happens - not in 2086 after they are long dead.
Or basic income / citizen's dividend. Why, in the most wealthy country in the history of the world, do we have people who are so destitute?
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
Corporations simple pass any added taxes and costs on to the customer
This is provably false. There is a demand/price curve inclusive of taxes where adding to the price lowers the overall margins.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
And after the masses string up the producers for their wealth.
Nobody's talking about stringing up the producers for their wealth. They're talking about stringing up the parasites for their wealth. Let's face it, nobody is productive enough to become wealthy from their own productivity - even the best brain surgeons and rocket scientists are barely rich. Those that have become truly wealthy have done so through business - by exploiting the labor of others - or by exploiting markets - simply taking the wealth of others. These people don't make a net positive contribution to society, and yet they're the ones that amass all the wealth. It's the producers that are losing wealth, as the middle class is eroded, and wealth stratification continues to worsen.
So Kleptocracy?
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
Having been wrong 99 times in the past in exactly similar situations is not an argument against something?
I have a coin I've been flipping. 99 times in a row, it came up heads.
What are the odds it will come up heads on the 100th flip? Its like saying Malthus was wrong a few times, so he will always be wrong. Which menas the earth can support infinite numbers of people forever.
I'm jut hoping that cool heads will prevail with this change. Because if the 75 percent of jobs lost to automation comes true, http://issues.org/30-3/stuart/ the impact will make those other 99 times (if I told you once, I've told you a million times not to exaggerate) look like a walk in the park. That's a whole lot of the new replacement jobs to make.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Having been wrong 99 times in the past in exactly similar situations is not an argument against something?
Correct.
In a formal, logical sense you are right. But as the philosopher David Hume said (I am paraphrasing just a bit): "The fact that the sun has come up yesterday, and the day before, and so on every day we remember is not proof that the sun will come up tomorrow. But it is a very persuasive indicator."
So Malthus will always be wrong? The world can sustain an infinite number of people forever?
And when all jobs are taken by automation, everyone will be employed.
That's ridiculous. So let's not argue ridiculous things
For my own thoughts, we probably will end up as societies with a lot more lesiure time. And eventually it will be a good thing for humanity.
But y'all are glossing over the different disruptions that have happend as if they never happened. Unless we do some amazing prep, this one will be more bloody than the others. After all those 99 other times hat you folks have been very accurately cited, dismissing did have some serious upheaval with people dying,
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Look, if the left is going to constantly use argument like 97% percent of scientists agree, and the economy is great because 5%, or women only make 5% of what men make doing the same job, or 1 out of 5 dogs will be raped in doggy daycare, or machine guns kill millions of children in the US every day, the time for letting them get away with those methods is over.
Oh seriously left or right, you're a fucking liar.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
History has many cases of the rich killing off their slaves, it's very common as the rich are usually very paranoid about the slaves revolting. The worst that usually happens is that the rich have some lean times, where lean means having to cut back on their yacht purchases and such.
Occasionally the not quite as rich team up with the poor and do kill off the rich, which usually leads to the "meet the new boss, same as the old boss" situation. And of course it is the poor that are volunteered to be cannon fodder
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
I'm pretty sure I got the mean. Perhaps as I feared that was only wages and not all capital gains and other income. ...or perhaps you added a zero. (7.723*10^12)/(301.2*10^6) = 25,640, about the same as my numbers.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Except that in all experiments where basic incomes have been offered, only very slight reductions have been seen, and those are due primarily to a very short list of causes:
- New parents taking a bit longer off to be with their infants.
- More people investing in higher education at the expense of immediate income
- More people starting their own businesses, with the initial loss of income that normally entails
- Unemployed people spending a bit longer looking for a new job rather than settling for the first one they find.
And in the long term, all of those are to be encouraged.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Before the industrial revolution, employment was close to a 100%, now it is probably less then 50%. We have whole classes of people who have left the workforce. The 5-25 year olds by themselves make up a good chunk of the population. The stay at home Moms who look after the unemployed young. The old who used to decently drop dead when they seized to be productive. The disabled population has grown a lot as well. The people the government counts as unemployed.
Then there are all the slackers who don't even put in 66 hours a week.
We're a long ways from full employment.
Of course we're also rich enough that we can afford to remove many groups from the employable and could remove even more, but to pretend that we haven't removed close to a majority of people from the employable list is dishonest.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Welcome our new robotic food overlords!
I think most people prefer the accuracy of dealing with a well designed machine rather than try and translate your food order to Spanglish. "Welcome to Yack in the box"?!?!
How many here would wait in line for an ATM transaction rather than go to a live teller at your local bank?
"The Most Fun Possible on 4 wheels" is at SunBuggy in Las Vegas
Or maybe they'll just shoot you and take your wallet. Desparate people are dangerous and social security nets keep the crime rate low.
- that's why it makes total sense to arm yourself with something heavier than what a 'desperate person' has. There is 0 reason to have a problem with protecting yourself against somebody who is coming to steal and murder you, 0 reason to not shoot back or even shoot first.
You can't handle the truth.
You are able to make a living because of a society you didn't built up, going to work over roads you...
- this drivel is based on the assumptions that those things require any form of government theft and gun point robber to exist, they do not. All of those things can be and generally are built by individuals who act for their self interest. Free individuals acting out of sheer self interest build, make and trade things with each other without any 'help' from any form of government.
Government only collect taxes in the form of money. Now, take a bill from your wallet and look carefully at it: you see? it is *not* your property; it is jus...
- this drivel is supposed to make somebody think that representation of value in any currency does not equal the actual productive output of work of an individual. Government doesn't care actually how you trade, it wants a cut. Just because the cut can be measure din those pieces of paper doesn't mean actual productive output is not stolen from an individual, who is forced to forgo more investment or consumption and instead give to the government part of the person's life's output, which is time, which is again - part of life.
No government theft is worth any amount of life from any individual. Of-course government does come with guns, so that's a conundrum that we are going to see resolve one way or another.
Just don't bother calling 911 to the rescue if you ever happen to break a leg, you never payed for it, you know.
- government ran 911 shouldn't even exist, nor should any type of business or operation or agency.
You can't handle the truth.
Lawyer firms used to employ armies of articlers and clerks to do discovery and research on case law, and are already being replaced by automated systems that do the same work in less time.
Every heard of the buzzword "e-discovery"? A lot of people have been hired to develop, use, and maintain the software systems that are involved in legal cases in the 21st century.
The idea of a machine taking your job becomes meaningless when your job is defined as automating or doing manually what hasn't been automated yet. Obviously not everything has been automated at once, or ever will be finished. So there is always somewhere for new graduates to start.
Virtually nobody is choosing to put their savings (capital) into companies with high costs and low profits.
Have you looked at the stock market recently? Take Amazon for example - they're the poster child for success via low profits.
And after the masses string up the producers for their wealth.
Nobody's talking about stringing up the producers for their wealth. They're talking about stringing up the parasites for their wealth. Let's face it, nobody is productive enough to become wealthy from their own productivity - even the best brain surgeons and rocket scientists are barely rich. Those that have become truly wealthy have done so through business - by exploiting the labor of others - or by exploiting markets - simply taking the wealth of others. These people don't make a net positive contribution to society, and yet they're the ones that amass all the wealth. It's the producers that are losing wealth, as the middle class is eroded, and wealth stratification continues to worsen.
If you disagree, can you explain to me how stringing up, say, the Walton family would meaningfully impact society? Would we be lost in a world incapable of conducting retail sales operations without the Waltons? Would the lack of their high-volume low-margin retail empire really result in a world where nobody produces anything, farmers stop farming, cats and dogs start living together? By what mechanism?
I feel like you're the one saying it would impact society. Once the people you hate are gone, what does change? The signs on the stores that now say "Wal-Mart" say something else? How does entering someone else's name in the global financial system somewhere as the owner of X million shares of stock meaningfully impact society?
England and many European countries. Q.E. right back at you.
"I'm always amazed by the consumer who thinks that he can demand production and enjoy the benefits of other people's capital."
Given that as of now, and since quite long time, "capital" is nothing but a fiat convention, I'm always amazed by the capitalist who thinks he in fact owns anything unless a majority of people abides by it.
All capital represents someone's labor - but that doesn't mean the person using the capital performed the labor to create it. Like Obama said "you didn't build that".
But the damn fool does not realize, his machines won't need food, would not buy entertainment, would not buy a home or pay for college. As more and more employers automate more and more functions and lay off more and more people, he will end up with lots of shiny new machines willing sell food at great profit.... if only there are people with money to buy them.
And this is the point at which he instead tasks his machines with making more and better machines (instead of now-worthless food).
And that's how the singularity happens.
A Japanese robot company called FANUC (Factory Automatic NUmerical Control) has been operating a "lights-out" automated factory employing robots that make other robots for years. They are said to run for 30 days unsupervised at a time, making 50 robots a day. And I'm getting this from articles from 6 years ago.
If you look at how successful a bunch of uneducated bearded guys with AKs and some explosive training were against US military in the Middle East, why do you think motivated and technically-inclined Western population won't be even more successful?
They're only "successful" (WTF is "successful" in your book - those countries and their people have been devastated) because the US military isn't playing to win.
If they were they would have just glassed the whole place and walked away.
"All capital represents someone's labor"
So, where's the labor that vanished away in 2008 crysis?
"You are able to make a living because of a society you didn't built up, going to work over roads you...
- this drivel is based on the assumptions that those things require any form of government theft and gun point robber to exist, they do not."
And your answer is based on your opinions about how things shouldn't be the way they are, but still, they are. Money very well "shouldn't" be a government monopoly but it still *is* a government monopoly and, then again, on a democratic society government is nothing but the construct of a set of free individuals acting out of sheer self interest, just like you'd expect from your anarcho-libertarian Arcadia. I see you now for what you are, and I know it's simply wasted time talking to somebody that just reject thinking in a coherent manner: anarcho-libertarianism, despite it's obvious attractive, only can work on minds lacking internal coherence; a conundrum of "patches" with some internal coherence but contradicting one another.
But then, just a last question: Within your world without government and just agreements among free individuals acting together, what's the problem on a group of free individuals acting out of sheer self interest to build... an standing army to steal your productive output at the point of their guns? Or is it that, despite your egalitarian claims, you erect yourself as the unquestionable guru that says what other groupings of free individuals acting together can or can't do?
In the most recent quarter, Amazon posted record profits, but they weren't high enough, so the value of their shares (what people are willing to pay to invest their money in Amazon) plunged 13%. So I guess you're right, that IS a perfect example of low profits = investors flee.
http://www.reuters.com/article...
Amazon is still in, though preparing to graduate from, the early phase of the cloud business in which the goal is to gain and hold market share in order to reap high profits later, after the cloud industry stabilizes. People were buying Amazon based on the high profits expected in 2018, 1019, 2020, etc, not for last years low profits. As they've recently failed to make the turn, investors are leaving.
Money is not a government monopoly of-course, basically all governments gave up on actual money and are printing funny pieces of paper that may look to you like money but they are not.
Money is store of value, medium of exchange and unit of account. Sure, you can exchange with government money, you can account with it but you cannot store value in it, not in any meaningful way with the government expanding the supply of money (inflating), so what you are referring to as money is just a medium of exchange. I do not store money in dollars, maybe you do.
I see you now for what you are, and I know it's simply wasted time talking to somebody that just reject thinking in a coherent manner: anarcho-libertarianism
- actually anarcho capitalism, that should be obvious to anybody who spent any considerable amount of time on this site since I stated it only a few hundreds times here.
You 'see me for what I am'? I don't think so, I am a person who sees the world for what it is and plans accordingly, do you ever plan anything?
an standing army to steal your productive output at the point of their guns
- I know that people are thieves, which is why I am perfectly willing to pay for private security, which is the way security should be handled.
You can't handle the truth.
So, what is the secret to making sure that automation does not take over every conceivable job? Maybe not force the cost of labor so high, as a first thought.
Minimum wage jobs are not MEANT to provide a "living wage." Those jobs are for part-time jobs for kids in high school. A true living wage comes from having skills.
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
If you don't like automation or even outsourcing our jobs over seas then I say fight back. Don't purchase stuff made in China, don't do business with companies that have all of this automation. Do business with local people you know and trust. Go to old fashioned diners. The sort of fast food restaurants like McDonald's is not the place that any human should be purchasing food from anyways. If you must go out and eat go to your local diner or bistro. If you want code written do it yourself or work with your buddies on it. Don't purchase a web site from Pakistan or someplace over seas. If you want a motorcycle part make it your self or go to your local machine shop and give them your specs and blue prints. My point is if we all bit the bullet and did business this way then large corporations would amend their business practices to accommodate they way we want business done. Pissing and moaning about it will never get it done. Take action with your checking account.
Paul E. Bahre
The range of longbows was an order of magnitude higher, with competent archers being able to shoot 200 to 300 meters.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
Robots also don't spit in your food (or worse) because you have the wrong skin color.
Just remember 18th century France. The top 1% (or is that the top 0.1%) will feel the blade.
Live in a world where he has no employees. So does every other CEO.
Guess what happens when nobody has any employees.
Nobody has any customers, either.
"Money is not a government monopoly of-course"
Only, of course, it is. And it is willing to stand for it with the power of its guns.
"basically all governments gave up on actual money and are printing funny pieces of paper"
Only, of course, those funny pieces of paper are, in fact, actual money.
"Money is store of value, medium of exchange and unit of account."
I know English has that problem Roman languages don't have in that the verb 'to be' stands for both existence and quality but, sorry, you are wrong: money is not a store of value, medium of exchange and unit of account but those are *money's properties* in that something that has those properties *and* is called money *is* money.
"Sure, you can exchange with government money, you can account with it but you cannot store value in it"
Funny then, that this very morning I went to the supermarket and depleted part of the value storaged in my pocket in exchange for some supplies. Good the shop attendant didn't know I can't store value in bank notes because otherwise he probably wouldn't find funny to exchange supplies for nothing.
" - I know that people are thieves, which is why I am perfectly willing to pay for private security, which is the way security should be handled."
I know a lot of things. That you didn't answer my question, for instance.
I missed a zero there. 300 meters isn't a bad range. That's the length of Ryde pier on the Isle of Wight.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
No matter the minimum wage, it will always make business investors more money to automate tasks with machines rather than hire employees or purchase animals to do them. That is since the dawn of the industrial revolution.
You're working under the assumption that it's moral and ethical to steal from someone who earns and gives to someone who didn't do anything to earn.
So Malthus will always be wrong? The world can sustain an infinite number of people forever?
Malthus will always be wrong because his base assumptions were wrong(That there will be no increase in food production per acre and that the rate of population increase will increase exponentially - both of which we know are wrong). That does not mean Earth can support an infinite number of people, but it can support more people than are going to live on earth in any rational future projection, since population increase slows down as technology improves. Replacement birthrate in a modern society is ~2.1 U.S, Germany, France and many other countries have a birth rate well BELOW replacement rates. http://data.worldbank.org/indi...
Kind of like Trump® right now?
So, what is the secret to making sure that automation does not take over every conceivable job? Maybe not force the cost of labor so high, as a first thought.
This is going to happen no what the minimum wage is. It's up to us to keep it from disrupting society as it happens.
Minimum wage jobs are not MEANT to provide a "living wage." Those jobs are for part-time jobs for kids in high school. A true living wage comes from having skills.
Sorry, that is a bogus argument that I hear all of the time. You can make the same argument the whole way up the food chain. I don't know what you do for a living, but If I did, I could mke a fine argument that you are being paid too much.
That's why the job creators have figured out that they can bring people form other countries ove to replace you. Its a weird form of the employee as the enemy, the cancer upon the system that must be eliminated at all costs. Amazingly a lot of employees buy into it. Some of us buy into it until we're replaced by that guy from India who we have to train. Just be happy that your replacement will be helping the economy making American corporations more profitable. the perfect system.And once you are replaced, that minimum wage job at a fast food joint might just be your next job. Agitate for how bad it is then.
And it will work for awhile, until one day the job creators wake up and no overpaid Americans can afford their shit any more. Because they aren't working any more, or are now at McDonald's and on Guvmint assistance and food stamps.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
So Malthus will always be wrong? The world can sustain an infinite number of people forever?
Malthus will always be wrong /a>
Um huh. Seems like the famines in China around 1960 were an example of running past sustainability.
And while it's fun to point out the below replacement birth rates in some countries, I hope you aren't arguing that there isn't any population increase.
Oh - wait, I know - the famines like in China were a natural adjustment that proves Malthus wrong. After all, people dying of starvation is a completely natural thing.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
You say his choices don't effect others, then in the very next sentence say if others did it first, it would drive him to quit or emulate them. Sounds a lot like their choices effect others... so which is it?
If you follow news about uprisings around the world, it doesn't look like small arms are a significant threat to government. Are the police and military willing to shoot into crowds, or not? That is a much bigger determining factor in uprisings than small arms.
And in this sort of scenario, the rich might not need to protect "public order" for confidence in government, as is normally an issue in uprisings; it might be enough simply to define protected zones and protect those, even with private security and gun towers. Americans have lots of small arms, but they don't have easy access to mortars or artillery. Even RPGs are very rare here. It isn't reasonable to attack a machine gun nest with rifles, even military rifles.
A "downward spiral" is still profitable for those already in power, at least for most of the way down. And they can outlast the resulting depression easily. It isn't obvious at all that that is any sort of brake on the problem. In business cycles, they proved themselves to prefer boom/bust to steady growth, which is why we have a central bank managing lending rates to try to keep it near the middle.
So Malthus will always be wrong? The world can sustain an infinite number of people forever?
Malthus will always be wrong /a>
Um huh. Seems like the famines in China around 1960 were an example of running past sustainability.
And while it's fun to point out the below replacement birth rates in some countries, I hope you aren't arguing that there isn't any population increase.
Oh - wait, I know - the famines like in China were a natural adjustment that proves Malthus wrong. After all, people dying of starvation is a completely natural thing.
China's population recovered and grew, and since population has continued to increase since then, yeah, the idea that the Chinese famines were from reaching some sort of carrying limit is both silly and absurd.
Especially when you understand that there is a food surplus today, and there was a food surplus during the famines.
Why would automation not increase the available amount of food? I can build a greenhouse next to a equal-sized outdoor garden plot and prove that one pretty easy. ;)
Why can't food be grown in space on artificial stations? Why can't those ag stations be built from raw materials elsewhere in the solar system? Seems hard to find a physical limit. The more pedestrian thing of just using the ocean surface to float farm boats could double, triple, or more the arable "land" just here on Earth.
As to the general question of Malthus being wrong, lets consider some of his words:
We know in modern times that it is not that simple; educated people have less offspring, for example. And yet, they do not have less sexual passion. So we have learned that while passion may be fixed for these purposes, reproductive behavior is not. There are a lot of things about Malthus' ideas that ensure he will always be wrong, not least of which is that his ideas were mostly conjecture and hundreds of years of data have come between then and now. Disease is less limiting on population now than it was in 1798, and it gets less limiting all the time. Maybe that will reverse, but there is no pattern of reversal to point to, no limit that can be identified. Nor is there a strong basis for a theoretical limit on the future capabilities of medical technology.
Automation technology that replaces humans.
Your complaint seems a bit hand-wavy. What is your point regarding apache? You seem to have some idea about it, but you didn't actually say it. Why would "IIS", a product, be on the hook for tax delinquency? You seem to have left out the hypothetical scenario that you wish to discuss.
I dunno...Humans have been survivors since their beginnings on this earth.....
I somehow doubt that the masses will either give up and die on the streets or become criminals.
My thoughts are that if you force most people to get off the dole...they will do something to get work and survive.
I can't believe the majority will resort to crime or just give up...that's now how humans work.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I'm always amazed that worthless greedy fucks think they're entitled to a share of my hard work.
That's why I give that money to my accountant instead.
'living wage' = buying votes
either
job loss = national economic downturn overall
or
inflation = no real difference
the reality is that min wage jobs are not worth what is considered a' living wage' in real terms - someone stacking shelves shouldn't be able to afford a family, holidays, a car, entertainment, their own place - they do not provide enough real value to justify their life expectations...
So this asshole says that he has to replace humans with robots in order to pass on as much profit to the wealthy share holders, and the reason he gives is because the government has mandated a minimum wage that keeps people from starving because assholes like him refuse to share profits with those workers.
Andy Puzder is the problem. When the revolution comes I hope his head goes first.
So much irony - you say they "enjoy the fruits of other people's labor" as you talk about living by taxing them.
Here's how it works for the economically illiterate - taxes are a percentage of profits, if he increases his profit by $4 by firing Suzie, and you tax him at a rate of 50%, then he is still up $2 for firing Suzie... win!
In the face of any level of taxation it is still to his advantage to fire Suzie.
People make decisions at the margin, business people are not a 'hive mind' as you seem to imagine, if it is profitable for him he will do it even if many other businesses doing it will cause him trouble. Because one business doing it profits and goes unpunished, eventually most businesses will end up doing it.
You think taxes go to Suzie? No, they go to Billy to beat/shoot Suzie if she threatens Puzder's 'gated community'.
Unemployment has nothing to do with automation...
Why is South Korea's and Japan's unemployment rate 3.5%? Why is Singapore's unemployment rate 1.9%?
Unemployment is political corruption and incompetence where people are either voting to remove other workers and businesses from competition (essentially all regulation is regulatory capture), or mandating things business and workers can't afford.
And I'll give you an example of why South Korea even has a higher unemployment rate than Singapore... South Korea has unemployed and homeless people that sleep in subway stations, it also has salt farms that have offered to pay people $90/month with free housing (and require no skills) - yet these employers/employees aren't matched up because South Korea has followed the US and created a minimum wage that forbids such low wages.
The Western countries are utterly packed with 'economic friction' like this, which is why they generally have around 10% unemployment and low or negative growth.
Employment has nothing to do with the wealth of a society... by your reasoning the poorest countries in the world should have the highest unemployment rates, but they don't. Instead it is the most regulated countries that have the highest unemployment rates.
I looked for unemployment statistics for the 1800's ... but found out that unemployment statistics only began to be collected since 1870. So where are you getting your statistics? Or more likely you have no statistics, only anecdotes that you have interpreted to suit your preconceptions.
btw, the 1800's corresponds to people moving to the new world. People couldn't be that destitute if Britain couldn't get people to willingly move to colonies and had to use force and deception to get people go.
You look in the face of vast richest and are terrified... the Luddites fought against the world we are in now.
He's not the only one who's going to be taxed for that.
See Father Guido Sarducci's analysis of the bill for the Last Supper for an explanation. That analysis also applies here.
Hope this helps.
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.
hahaha... you want me to THANK the government for 'letting' me use their depreciating paper money that stores value like a sieve stores water! bwhahahaha
government is a racket identical to organized crime, except organized crime is more honest and less corrupt (because organized crime does what it says it does and doesn't need to pretend)... and when government functioned exactly like organized crime taxes were, ironically, much lower (e.g. Opium War era Britain), because the ruling class is much smaller (and smarter) than this 'rule by majority'
Countries have strung up the capitalists... and you know what happens? The people get _VASTLY_ poorer, so they've learned not to do it anymore.
The 'social contract' in entirely in your head, but a 'natural contract' exists and it is "don't bite the hand that feeds you".
http://www.theautomat.net/
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
Just quick note. Rats in the feed become competitive advantage, they are ground up, grilled and served up as rat-patty. Nice!
well, I'll have a slice without so much rat in it.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
If Puzder is going to fire Suzie rather than give her a $3 raise, then his taxes are going to go up to pay for her social safety net costs. It's impossible to have a society where a large fraction of people can't find work that pays a living wage. Those people will vote (or act in other ways) to overturn the system that is making their lives impossible.
I'm always amazed that the rich think they can hide in their gated communities and enjoy the fruits of other people's labor.
hey, remember when papa john's was going to face disaster because they were being forced to get obamacare for their employees, or else pay into the subsidy fund to cover those who went onto the exchanges? and it turned out that it would cost 14 cents per pizza?
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
That shouldn't be amazing. No matter what happens in other businesses, or society as a whole, Puzder is still making the optimal choice for himself.
For this moment, maybe.
So now that the optimum situation is to have no employees, we need a plan of what to do with the number one enemy of the corporate state, the human taker.
Do we line 'em up and shoot them?
Do we pay higher taxes to support them?
Then who on earth do we sell our stuff to?
Taxes are almost as unacceptable as employees, so I guess we start lining people up. Investor tip! Fertilizers will be a growth industry. There is an old adage about people eating their seed corn.
Modern corporate "no employees" outlook is like that, only they are purposely getting rid of customers.
trump will fix it. if he can have all the clothing in his clothing lines manufactured overseas without taking jobs away from america, this ought to be simple.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
This entire thread is based on a false idea that if people are thrown out of minimum wage jobs that they'll be unemployed forever.
This has been proven countless times since the 1700's to be absolutely false.
Once a technological innovation disrupts employment - the loom, the cotton gin, the computer, the combine planter/harvester, the robot - those who were displaced from employment find new jobs in higher paying sectors, at least in the aggregate. How many file clerks do you know? Know anybody picking corn, wheat, or soybeans by hand? Yet unemployment is around 5%.
The people slinging burgers will find new work. They'll have to. New employment opportunities will open up; they always have.
while in the long run, the industrial revolution certainly raised the living standard of the industrialized nations, it is also certain that those displaced represented a wave of poverty, hunger, disease etc that served as the inspiration for a lot of literature.
the problem with these disruptive but beneficial events is to cushion the lot of the disrupted. on the one hand, there is the modern british solution; put them all on the dole. failure. or the conservative solution: let them starve, it will motivate them to find something new. probably worse failure.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
What do you think happened to our economy to achieve our current 5% unemployment rate? What happened is that the powers-that-be pulled a fast one on you and you're too foolish to see it. You've been hand fed a statistic that is false on its face but you didn't care to look into the truth... Check out the population-employment ratio numbers and they speak a much different story. You see, the unemployment rate that is mainly touted is the U3 rate. The U3 rate is made up of people with no job who've actively tried to find one in the last month. Today we have a good number of discouraged workers* and a vast number of people who have no intentions of ever being employed again. And these numbers are likely to continue to grow. And this doesn't even take into account the underemployed either. That 5% number you're kicking around means nothing in the real world but keeps the sheep voting under the illusion of what is good/bad in the economy.
*Discouraged workers are people who want to be employed and have looked for work in the last year but have stopped looking due to poor prospects.
sure, donald trump says "I actually saw a number of 42 percent unemployment. Forty-two percent." he'd know, he's a business genius and all
The bureau of labor statistics also calculates the U-6 rate, which includes the U-3 unemployed plus those working part time who would rather work full time plus those discouraged workers who want to work but have not officially looked for work recently. Currently the U-6 rate is 10%
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
The only problem with this idea that the unemployed will find work is that the number of people required to design/operate/maintain technology is much smaller than the number of people required to do the work the technology replaces.
We've gone from 95% of people doing agricultural work to less than 5%. Yet people found new jobs: almost everyone did. Same thing with manufacturing. But somehow not with burger flipping jobs? Those are magic? Seems unlikely.
of course we had dickensian london and poorhouses for decades, but they're dead now so screw em. we could eat the surplus population.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
As well as making labor more productive, you get the double whammy of lower prices. As long as regulators stay out of it, that is.
https://www.google.com/search?...
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
> This has been proven countless times since the 1700's to be absolutely false.
Yes because new jobs come along all the time that people gradually shift to that are too complex to be automated. People stopped making cloth by hand when looms and later power looms came in, people stopped farming when tractors became a thing, assembly line workers were somewhat phased out when specialized robots came to the line, etc. The difference this time is we are finally on the cusp of general machine learning.
In the not too distant future robots and computers are going to be in a position to replace not only easily-repeatable low skill labor, but almost ANY job not requiring super specialized knowledge or skills. Those in high paying "intellectual" jobs are also going to be on the receiving end of a pink slip. It's already starting to happen. Lawyer firms used to employ armies of articlers and clerks to do discovery and research on case law, and are already being replaced by automated systems that do the same work in less time. RBS just the other day cut 400+ investment adviser positions to be replaced with their digital robo-adviser system that recently rolled out.
When a machine can learn to do anything you can do, and do it consistently without error, even if it only works at 1//4 your speed you're gone. The machine won't take coffee breaks, surf /. or get sick while it works at its task 24/7/365. And it will get faster over time as the hardware and software inevitably improves.
of course, the next step after that is to eliminate the machine, and just make a profit on financial systems. the mortgage works 24/7/365 and never needs repair or maintenance.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
"Paid for by the corporations through taxes because they put all of the people out of work."
Corporations simple pass any added taxes and costs on to the customer. Thus if you add taxes to a corporation they simple raise the price and pass that added expense on to the customer.
A CEO I worked for once said "People are idiots, they think they can raise minimum wadge or add taxes to a company to pay for some social benefit. Corporations pass the added expense on to the customer. Thus they never realize they are the ones paying the taxes not the company.
A corporations job is to make money, that means that we take what ever expenses we have including taxes, add them up, attach a profit margin to it, and sell it. Otherwise we would not be making money."
except that the corporation doesn't pay taxes on wages. and at minimum wages, neither do the recipients, by and large, unless they also happen to have extensive investment portfolios raising their tax bracket.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
I'm singing in the rain as The Butlerian Jihad comes marching down the road.
Fuck off. A full-time job should pay a living wage. End of story.
Eat the rich.
Yes, there is always another sucker.
But there is also a replacement who will resist exploiting his workers, and actually have a responsible social profile. We'll just keep killing the leeches from the bourgeoise until we weed out the bad ones. It's time to sharpen the guillotine.
Eat the rich.
Not a new concept at all. 20 or 30 years ago when auto makers were implementing robots, taxing them the same as hourly workers was discussed. Not sure if it went anywhere but this guy needs a wake-up call from reality. In a world of robots, someone or something has to pay the politicians.
And no other jobs come to fill their places?
By your logic, we'd be at 75% unemployment (figure pulled out of my ass, admittedly, but just making a point here...) right now with all the technological advances since the 1970s. What do you think happened to our economy to achieve our current 5% unemployment rate? Are all those file clerks and bookkeepers still out of work or did they find something else to do?
People made the same arguments you're making for every technological leap forward. The net result has always been people thrown out of low wage, miserable jobs have found higher wage, less miserable jobs, given enough time.
It's called Structural Unemployment. It is a problem for workers who are too old to retrain - think people in their upper 50's trying to sprint to retirement - but for the vast majority of the workforce, it's a net benefit in the long run at the cost of a little short term pain.
This, people keep talking about 5% unemployment like it's an achievement, like one in every 20 people unable to find work is somehow the mark of a successfully functioning society.
"If people get desperate, they will act."
Yes, it's called crime, and desperate people will do whatever it takes.
Rethink your entire approach to welfare from the perspective of "we are paying these people not to commit crimes" and I believe you will draw some different conclusions.
Hence the value of stringent regulation. And if he doesn't like it, he can go galt. Good luck to him, sitting in Bohemian Grove, stewing over the unfairness of it all. Society doesn't owe him a return on his investment.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say you've never seen a slum before. Take a look at India or Central America sometime. If you're okay with that, then I guess we just can't see eye to eye on this.
That's not the type of thing we'd ever have risk seeing in the US.
We don't have the caste system here, so that type of desolation ain't gonna happen here.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
The other alternative is to give her the $3 raise for a while, then join her in the unemployment line when nobody buys his food because it is too expensive since he had to pass along the extra expense in his food costs.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say you've never seen a ghetto before in the US. Take a look at Detroit or Mississippi sometime. If you're okay with that, then I guess we just can't see eye to eye on this. ;-)
At some point all that employment is going to plateau for the people creating all the shit for people
It has and it does. That's what scarcity is, or at least one of the major effects.
Think about growing enough food to feed 12 people in 1 hectare of land (this is about 6 tonnes of rice per hectare, which is what India grew in 2000; in 1970, India could grow 2 tonnes per hectare). You need about 10 people full-time to work 4 hectares of land, and food costs roughly 2% of income as a result (add shipping and marketing and processing and such and you get the 13% of income).
So your population expands. 120 new people, 10 more hectares of land in use, 25 new people working that land, great. No change: more people working, more people buying, it's in the same proportion as current population, so population can grow like this FOREVER and will keep creating the same jobs in the same proportion.
Then you run out of arable land.
You have this dry, cracked land to work with. It's a bit harder. It's less fertile. You have to employ 10 people to work 4 hectares of land, plus 2 more people to make and supply fertilizer, plus 1 more person to supply irrigation. Even then, you get 50% as much yield from this land, so you can feed 6 people per hectare. You need about 13 people full-time to work 4 hectares of land, but that land feeds half as many people: to feed the original 48 people (previously from 4 hectares of land), you work 8 hectares with 26 people.
Food now costs more than twice as much to produce. For 120 new people, you put 20 more hectare of land in use, 65 people working full time. Notice this is 40 more people: where before you had 95 people to do other jobs, you only have 55 people to do other jobs. Even if we assume the consumer can buy all the same luxuries, nobody could make them to supply the consumer; and the idea that the consumer can buy them is ludicrous because the consumer must pay those 40 salaries to the food-makers. That makes consumers more poor.
This scarcity tends to raise the general cost of the scarce good, which can decrease the consumer market's broad buying power (everyone's food costs a little more, instead of the new kid's food costing a lot more), which can ultimately create a net-decrease in percentage employment. Other economic factors (notably, taxation of the middle class, and taxation on employment or sales) directly remove wage-labor income from consumers, thus factoring part of the cost of goods out of the buying power of consumers; those policy defects are much more powerful job-destroying factors, since scarcity of goods tends to move jobs and so doesn't have 100% destructive impact.
To use the GP's point, if a machine replaces 3 workers (that only requires 1 worker for machine maintenance), then that leaves 2 people unemployed. And your point is spot on here too; those 2 displaced workers will generally have to find work in another industry (services), as all the ex-farmers and ex-factory workers have had to do in the last 100 years or so.
Yes, and this becomes a problem if you lose workers too fast. If you pull an Industrial Revolution and unemploy 80% of your labor force in 5 years, you probably won't see new jobs.
The Information Age was interesting. We had a lot of information-heavy bottlenecks, like managing growing collections of legal contracts or accounting ledgers, and freeing that up actually uncorked the consumer machine. This contrasts strongly with the Industrial Revolution, which simply cut jobs without relieving scarcity.
Let's take American Express for example.
American Express originally checked *every* transaction through an Authorizer. The Authorizer would run a few quick checks and identify fraudulent transactions. If the transaction looked good, he'd allow it through, and everything was fabulous.
American Express could originally hire one (1) authorizer per 10,000 accounts. As American Express
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I feel like you're the one saying it would impact society.
I meant to imply 'negatively'. If this wasn't apparent from context, I apologize.
Once the people you hate are gone, what does change?
To clarify, at no point in time did I indicate my own personal preferences for individuals based on their wealth, nor did I imply that I hate anyone in particular. In the interest of moving the conversation along, I'll assume that here you refer to wealthy people. The premises of this conversation did not entail wealthy people being gone, merely that their wealth be redistributed. Anyway, to answer your question, it would change the velocity of money, as wealth would be transferred from those who don't spend (the wealthy) to those who do (the poor).
The signs on the stores that now say "Wal-Mart" say something else?
Likely, but not really meaningful in this context.
How does entering someone else's name in the global financial system somewhere as the owner of X million shares of stock meaningfully impact society?
I don't understand the question. Are you asking how transferring a large number of equity shares from one wealthy person to someone else would meaningfully impact society? I'm not sure how to answer that, but I'm also not sure how that's relevant to the discussion.
I was talking about distributing wealth from a relatively small number of wealthy people to a relatively large number of poor people, which implies that wealth is transferred from the few to the many, not from one individual to another one. This is qualitatively different because in the former case (but not the latter), the median wealth per capita increases, necessarily.
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
That's just a programming problem.
Malthus will always be wrong, because he neglected many important factors.
He might someday 'be right', but only in the 'broken clock' way.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I own a SKS made by the Chinese while they had bad famines.
In a classic guns/butter trade-off, that rifle likely represents a dead Chink or two, I paid $200.
I had this conversation with a former coworker, he's under 5 foot, his growth was stunted by Mao's famines. Liked shooting the SKS though. Was a little disturbed to learn it was basically a disposable POS.
Those famines are owned lock stock and stinking piles of corpses, by the worlds leftists. Nothing natural about it, except the nature of power corrupting.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Malthus will always be wrong, because he neglected many important factors.
He might someday 'be right', but only in the 'broken clock' way.
The issue with Malthus is that like so many people have done for just about ever, he didn't take into consideration the fact that technology moves on.
As a cleric living at the beginning of the industrial revolution, he did not correctly predict just how much that revolution would allow more people to be supported.
Then the so called green revolution came along. Another technology improvement that allows more people to be fed for less.
Want to know another failure? People who seem to think that we are running below replacment rates.
http://www.worldometers.info/w...
We're still adding, and as long as there is the celebration of Duggarism, we still will.
Now, if I were to look into my scrying mirror to predict how we can support even more people, how about this.....
In the world of the future, assuming that we don't accidentally kill ourselves off, we will be able to support many more people even than now, futrher proving Malthus wrong.
Humans have long since obliterated most other living creatures, and spread out to most livable space on the earth, and found moving underground as a cost effective place to creat more living room. To feed this number of people, millions of acres of surfce area are filled with vats of algae, with water and nutrients that bubble through the vats. Solar mirrors or nuclear powerd light generation allow great efficiencies of scale, and hundreds of thousands can be fed with the output of each vat. The resultant algae is dried and processed into different food shapes, flavors and textures.
Proteins as well, will be grown in vats.
Fresh water will be needed, so nuclear powered desalination plants will be needed. Most of the surface will be used to provide food and water to the now subterranean human race. Limitations to population growth will be amount of space that people can occupy. As we build down, efficient air conditioning will be needed to keep temperature and humidity at life sustining levels.
I'm making a wild-ass guess of a few trillion people.
As well, instead of the present day size of humans, we can be genetically engineerd to be much smaller. This would have the added advantage of humans using less food per capita, as well as allowing each level of the earth to be at a smaller heights, important as we bore down to create new areas , as each lower level in a sphere has less available area.
Perhaps we can double the number after the big people die off (another interesting issue, with some people believing humans may soon become immortal.
It will be like turning the earth into a sort of reverse Dyson sphere, the energy still coming from the outside, but with many internal shell levels.
And that is within the llimitations of anything I can imagine, humanity could become cave dwellers in the future, and extrapolation of present day technology. Of course, things come along that no one can imagine - all of my ideas are technically feasible using improvements in what we know now.
That would prove Malthus wrong for a long, long time.
Doesn't sound like my idea of fun, but hey, it's almost like a lot of us living in Mom's basement, surviving on Cheetos and Red Bull. Ahead of the curve.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
NEWS FLASH: People know how to milk the government safety net systems. AND THEY DO. AND IT'S ALLOWED, AND IN FACT, ENCOURAGED.
When I see an unemployed female, with 4 kids and another on the way, with no job but still able to drive an Escalade and purchase designer jeans and jewelry, there's obviously something wrong with the social safety net. Because, to this demographic (and there are lots and lots of these out there), the social safety net is the employer, and the job is simply having more and more kids. This kind of unchecked abuse is exactly what is destroying the programs that are supposed to help the sick, and those who have fallen on unfortunate times to bouy them until they can again support themselves.
When the program has "evolved" (or been bastardized enough by political correctness) to where a normal, healthy person can make a living sitting at home on the program having kids, rather than going out and getting a job to support themselves and their family and contribute to the workforce and the country, and that program allows the behavior, there's a problem with the program. It's no longer a safety net, it's now a drain on society and unfair to those who do indeed work and produce and support those sitting on their collective asses. And they absolutely hate it when that is pointed out.
Let the flaming begin.
Once a technological innovation disrupts employment - the loom, the cotton gin, the computer, the combine planter/harvester, the robot - those who were displaced from employment find new jobs in higher paying sectors
People in minimum wage jobs in the 1700s were average intelligence. People in minimum wage jobs now are dumb. Dumb people take forever to retrain for new jobs, and they for sure can't get jobs in higher paying sectors.
Yet unemployment is around 5%.
The "Unemployment Rate" isn't the "Unemployment Percentage". It's not the percentage of able-bodied people who are unemployed. It's the percentage of people seeking work who can't find a job. A lot of people gave up trying to find work in 2008-2009.
I live in New Orleans...I've seen the numerous projects here...thankfully we're getting rid (finally) of most of the post Katrina, but there are some still here and yes, I know what they are like.
Agreeing to disagree is cool...that's part of rational discourse, something that is unfortunately fading in the US these days. But I'm good with it.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
And she has a boyfriend who finances her idiocy. Nobody gets escalades from gubmint handouts except defense contractors, and even they have to do a little work. You're just spouting stereotypes. That story can't stand up to a moment's scrutiny.
Don't step on the baby.
> If Puzder is going to fire Suzie rather than give her a $3 raise, then his taxes are going to go up to pay for her social safety net costs.
Sure, but you and me get to pay for Suzie as well. Its totally rational for Puzder here, because we have to pay for his decision, not just him- obviously forcing others to chip in along with himself is in his own self interest.
I wish business folks and conservative pundits would stop pretending that the minimum wage going up/down is somehow motivating owners to automate. Every single business with any labor costs is going to be 100% automated regardless of the minimum wage if there exists a robot/machine that can do the job cheaply (which, for most types of service/labor work, will happen in every single industry eventually).
And at that point in time, when even something like a programming job can be fully automated, it will be time to vote for a different society. A post scarcity society, with a guaranteed minimum income for just being alive.
There are a ton of sci-fi books that describe a post scarcity society, and they are all share one thing in common: it will not be the status quo anymore. The major motivators and power structures of society will shift. And it isn't something that a 'bad' congress can even prevent, no matter how many bribes they take to maintain the status quo.
The day that technology can fully replace most skilled labor, is the day that technology will likely be cheap enough for most people to own it. And once most people can own most, if not all, of the means of production to live, the concept of "for profit" is going to disappear. At least from the raw resource / manufacturing standpoint. I'm sure we will invent new luxuries that people 'must have'. But all the old ones will be gone. If I can throw a shovel of dirt into my 'nano forge' and out pops a diamond, it will be a new world. 3d printers are a baby first step.
Anon coward, repeating conservative talking points. Must be an election year.
Corporations simple pass any added taxes and costs on to the customer.
Bullshit. Corporations charge the highest possible price the market will pay, always. Lowering their taxes isn't going to lower their prices, as if they have some responsibility to pass the savings along... They will keep the price as high as people are willing to pay. Taxes are irrelevant to that equation.
No, we do actually get it. Mr Puzler is not responsible. You are 100 percent correct.
You were so on track here, then it went off the rails...
ther really cool thing is, if in a hypothetical situation, everyone gets rid of all their employees, and the whole industry collapses, no one at all is responsible, Innocent as teh day they were born.
A good gig if you can get it.
That is indeed a possible problem, but it is one for society to solve, not Mr. Puzder.
Seriously, we understand 100 percent that you don't hold him responsible for shortsighted and unltimately self destructive actions.
They are not short-sighted for HIM or his COMPANY... Perhaps society, but that is not his problem to fix, nor is he in any position to do anything about it.
Old Heny Ford had a lot of strange ideas, but the idea of having employees who could buy stuff wasn't one of them.
Henry Ford lived in another time, a lot of what he wanted to do wouldn't work today.
I wish business folks and conservative pundits would stop pretending that the minimum wage going up/down is somehow motivating owners to automate.
It pushes them to do it sooner.
If Bernie was elected and got a $15/min wage put into place overnight, you'd see a mad scramble to push automation forward more quickly.
Yes, it will happen everywhere, our current economic system won't survive that, but that's ok, maybe it shouldn't. The transition won't be pleasant however as the existing people in power hold very tightly to that power and won't let go easily.
Which is why I laugh when liberals want to give up their guns. You'll need them to change the economic system, I don't think it'll happen without a civil war. I would be pleased to be proven wrong, but I think it'll come to that before it changes.
And really, we do not want a large number of unemployed young males with a lot of time on their hands? No - we don't.
A basic income would go a long way towards addressing that concern...
They can work 10-15 hours a week serving the state, cleaning roads, learning a trade, whatever... The rest of the time, they can play video games...
That is clearly where it is going in the long run, as robots end up being able to make everything we all need. The trade off will be government controls on who can breed, which will not make everyone happy, but we'll have to have that to go along with a basic income.
> You can't blame a guy who runs a business for trying to keep his costs down
I sure as hell can. When Vmware fires their ENTIRE US-based Workstation team and outsources it to freaking China to quote-unquote "save money", I get mortally offended at a really deep level. This was a passionate team that helped build the company from the ground up, and they absolutely did not deserve what they got. (I realize this is slightly off the current topic, but still related.)
That brain-dead action by Vmware's so-called "management" means they will *never* get another dollar of my business. I've been using Vmware Workstation since early 2000's, when it was possible to do virtualization on non-CPU-assisted COTS 32-bit hardware. I've been a Vmware advocate to my friends for the past ~14 years, and was (up until recently) planning to do a little spending and build an ESXi machine. Fahgeddabouddit.
There are ways to keep costs down without screwing over your valuable employees, who BTW also help support your company and keep your end-users happy. Carls Jr wants to go full automation? They never see another dime from me, and I encourage everyone I know to avoid them like the plague, because they don't care about their employees OR their customers.
WRV6, posting anon for reasons
I think we also have the gain of having fewer people spending a majority of their time performing activities that increase their ongoing chances of survival. This leaves more people free to pursue the larger problems of society through education and research.
They are not short-sighted for HIM or his COMPANY... Perhaps society, but that is not his problem to fix, nor is he in any position to do anything about it.
As Carly Fiorina is my witness, many CEO's make bad decisions, short-sighted decisions. Happens every day. And your comments indicate you have already declared Puzler's idea a winner before it is even implemented.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
This is only inevitable if ALL businesses act like this (or if all customers are customers of your business, and of no other business). That, or the word "inevitable" doesn't mean what you seem to think it means.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
That is clearly where it is going in the long run, as robots end up being able to make everything we all need. The trade off will be government controls on who can breed, which will not make everyone happy, but we'll have to have that to go along with a basic income.
Nope, don't need controls, just information and tools to prevent it. If you wish, incentives can also be applied. A lot of guys would gladly turn off their fertility for a gaming console.
The real stickler would be dealing with the Quiverfull-types. Their psychosis is troublesome.
If Bernie was elected and got a $15/min wage put into place overnight, you'd see a mad scramble to push automation forward more quickly.
Evidence for that? Because cities that have that already implemented 15/hr wages have not seen a rush to automate. At least, I've never heard of San Fran or Seattle having all their McDonalds automated overnight or anything like that.
But look at it another way: If you make 7 bucks an hour, you are very likely to need government assistance to make ends meet.
Would you rather have a large segment of adults (more adults make min. wage than 18-20 year olds by far) earning 7 dollars an hour, supplemented by food stamps and other government handouts, or would you rather have the 'bottom' wage be liveable, and people able to support themselves without government assistance?
I'm kinda sick of my tax dollars subsidizing Walmart's workforce. And I'd rather reward people who are working with the dignity to be able to afford their own food.
And the real nail in the coffin, so to speak, is that goods and services do become that much more expensive even when doubling wages. Last time I saw the numbers run, a Big Mac would cost 50 cents more. That is way worth it to me if 90% of people could live without government handouts.
Evidence for that? Because cities that have that already implemented 15/hr wages have not seen a rush to automate.
I don't mean to be rude, but please, put on the critical thinking hat.
When one or two cities raise the min wage, there isn't enough of a reason to invest the billions of dollars required to replace half the workers in McDonalds with robots.
When it happens NATIONALLY, then there is now reason to do it.
It is far easier to just raise prices a bit in those areas where the wages went up, than to spend billions to replace a few thousand people. Make min wage $15/hr nationally, and that changes. This is why it hasn't happened in Australia, where min wage is already over $15/hr, because with only 22 million people, the market isn't big enough. But it is starting down that road.
http://fortune.com/2016/03/23/...
Dominos in Australia is testing robot delivery today with the goal of rolling it out nationally in 2-3 years. It is getting too expensive to hire people to do this.
Would you rather have a large segment of adults (more adults make min. wage than 18-20 year olds by far) earning 7 dollars an hour, supplemented by food stamps and other government handouts, or would you rather have the 'bottom' wage be liveable, and people able to support themselves without government assistance?
You left out option 3: Would you rather have large segment of adults out of work completely and needing all $15/hr in the form of government assistance?
You don't think that can happen, but it can.
I'm kinda sick of my tax dollars subsidizing Walmart's workforce.
Would you prefer they lay off half the workforce and replace them with robots?
https://youtu.be/rVlhMGQgDkY
Seriously, it isn't THAT far off... Atlas now works without a tether and on rough ground... Another few years and that robot may well stock shelves in a Walmart better than humans do.
And the real nail in the coffin, so to speak, is that goods and services do become that much more expensive even when doubling wages. Last time I saw the numbers run, a Big Mac would cost 50 cents more. That is way worth it to me if 90% of people could live without government handouts.
I don't disagree, you're right, it won't double prices to do it...
But consider that if Atlas up there can make your Big Mac and the price went DOWN 50 cents rather than UP 50 cents, you might like that even more.
BTW, why do you want people making burgers anyway? It is a stupid job, let robots do it.
If I could teleport to the year 2150, I'd be shocked if we didn't have a basic income at that point with robots making everything anyway. I just don't think it will be pretty getting there, the current people in power will fight tooth and nail along the way.
Maybe some of these people will go out and acquire a skill, you know, like most of the rest of us do/did.
Workers displaced by cotton gins could get jobs at the cotton gin factory. The factory that builds robots will be already staffed by robots.
This is fundamentally diffrent.
That was added to Tay yesterday. AIs can learn!
(Not that Tay isn't anything more than a rehashed 30 year old Eliza program. M$ sucks.)
This entire thread is based on a false idea that if people are thrown out of minimum wage jobs that they'll be unemployed forever.
This has been proven countless times since the 1700's to be absolutely false.
Once a technological innovation disrupts employment - the loom, the cotton gin, the computer, the combine planter/harvester, the robot - those who were displaced from employment find new jobs in higher paying sectors, at least in the aggregate. How many file clerks do you know? Know anybody picking corn, wheat, or soybeans by hand? Yet unemployment is around 5%.
The people slinging burgers will find new work. They'll have to. New employment opportunities will open up; they always have.
But these are the hamburger slingers that are being put out to the street by automation. Are you saying that its only one automation site and only those workers will be on the street.
What about your own job. When AI automates it out of existence, do you have skills to adapt, or will you look to maintaining the automation, the hamburger flipping machines.
The bottom line is "Businesses are for profit and for society", A business that produces reasonable profit (define reasonable), owes society and their employees some kind of security. When society puts them out to the street, you also put out customers. Yes, profits today, but no customers tomorrow.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
And no other jobs come to fill their places?
By your logic, we'd be at 75% unemployment (figure pulled out of my ass, admittedly, but just making a point here...) right now with all the technological advances since the 1970s. What do you think happened to our economy to achieve our current 5% unemployment rate? Are all those file clerks and bookkeepers still out of work or did they find something else to do?
People made the same arguments you're making for every technological leap forward. The net result has always been people thrown out of low wage, miserable jobs have found higher wage, less miserable jobs, given enough time.
It's called Structural Unemployment. It is a problem for workers who are too old to retrain - think people in their upper 50's trying to sprint to retirement - but for the vast majority of the workforce, it's a net benefit in the long run at the cost of a little short term pain.
The unemployment rate is based on people drawing unemployment insurance. When that runs out, they are no longer part of the statistics. I agree if a person has skills and can move onto something better, that this action (automation) is an incentive to do better. Just look at small towns where Walmart arrived. What happened there. Look at the infrastructure of these towns. Is the infrastructure being sustained?
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
"Old Heny Ford had a lot of strange ideas, but the idea of having employees who could buy stuff wasn't one of them."
That was actually secondary.
His primary motivation for increasing wages was to reduce staffing turnover and therefore the highs costs of training new hires or repairing their botchups.
This is the same problem that chinese manufacturers are facing and why some are heavily investing in robots (Foxconn) along the coastal provinces whilst others are taking advange of improved transport links and relocating their factories inland where the employees actually live.
The added cost of the latter course of action is offset by being able to pay lower wages, not having to deal with 25% turnover each year and not having to provide accomodation or evening meals.
"How many file clerks do you know?"
The secondary effects of the loss of such jobs is often missed.
For some reason the largest market for 45rpm single records was 16-18yo female filing clerks. The decline in singles sales since the 1960s _directly_ matches the loss of such jobs with increasing automation.
Making sales 1% of the industry's peak is now a big deal in the top40, when that chart is irrelevant - even lumping streaming sales into the mix makes no dent in the loss of absolute numbers since the end of the 1960s.
The reason the recording industry is getting so nasty about copyrights is because it's increasingly desperate for income. It's acting like a cornered wild animal.
"One machine can work 24 hours straight, displacing three jobs"
More than that. One machine works 24*7 with the lights out, faster than the humans, with no breaks and doesn't require as much supervision, so it's it's more like 3.5 to 4 jobs once you factor in the knock-on effects.
On the other hand, most machines are replacing humans for dirty/inconvenient jobs that noone really wants to do. Fast food is no different in this respect to working in the pickling tanks of an automobile factory (and where the easiest way to replace humans once the really nasty jobs were eliminated was simply to let the existing ones retire, not training replacements).
Additionally, if a machine is reprogrammed to cut corners on cooking time and that results in food poisoning incidents (this is what drove a number of severe outbreaks in London MacDonalds branches in the 1980s-90s and has been fingered in tens of thousands of USA outbreaks) then the blame can be firmly placed on the head of whoever made that change, rather than blaming minimum wage employees who were simply doing what they were told lest they be fired.
"People have been saying we are about to enter that era for 150 years."
It's actually the core of the communist manifesto - what happens in a post-capitalist economy.
The Bolshevecks attempted to leapfrog the capitalist part and it didn't work out so well (what we call "communism" bears little relationship to what Marx originally proposed)
Yeah, economic systems that have to be imposed on a people, will never work as the system put in place by nature.
Well as, damn phone.
"Replacement birthrate in a modern society is ~2.1 U.S, Germany, France and many other countries have a birth rate well BELOW replacement rates."
Closer study of those stats and the underlaying economies leads one to the conclusion that the best way to deal with the population crisis is to actively bring the poor and poor countries out of that privation.
Cheap energy is the key - over the last few hundred years that's been carbon driven, but it's clear we can't continue down that path without poisoning the ecosphere (Anoxic oceanic events are a bigger risk factor than sea level rises) and wind/solarPV are boondoggles. The way forward is nuclear molten salt - and it's increasingly likely that the country selling these will be china. (Fuson won't be viable until it's viable and that is unlikely in the lifetime of even my great grandchildren.)
One of the things to bear in mind is that the big driver of _new_ employment as technologies have obsoleted old ones has seldom been seen coming until it was actually fairly well established. Fast food has existed for centuries but it was the development of automobile strip-malls and production line techniques which allowed it to become a major industry.
At the same time that robotisation allows the turning out of myriad identical meals (or a small set of the same), consumer demand is driving greater individual variation. This is an opposing force which will require more robotic complexity (and hence greater expense) or will result in the spectre of automated fast food joints being a decade-long fad before becoming yet abandoned storefronts along the roadside.
"Most of the surface will be used to provide food and water to the now subterranean human race"
Where the surface is rooftops and subterranean is the lower floors.
It's already starting to happen.
I live in England at the moment. The entire countryside is artificial(*). Farmers are fully aware of that, yet they're facing restrictions on using greenhouses (which are startlingly more efficient than open land and usually result in almost zero application of pesticides) on the basis that they "disrupt the natural character of the countryside"
(*) There is nothing natural whatsoever about green fields or stone walls and even England's woods or forests are almost entirely plantations (the amount of acres of actual 2000+ year old natural wild forest is a number closely approximating zero)
There's also the shell game played in the rates of employment.
1 worker working 1 40-hour/week job is one job.
1 worker working 4 4 hour/week jobs is four jobs.
1 worker on a zero hours contract - and working zero hours - is one job.
Never mind that the latter two cases won't pay the bills for the worker and in the latter case those contracts usually include clauses preventing working for anyone else.
If you want to see _real_ employment stats then always insist on seeing full time equivalent figures
"The steam tractor made a huge difference in the amount of labor required for farming, first in threshing rigs and then in ploughing, and innovation was quite rapid during the industrial revolution. "
Correct. The rapid growth of european cities during the industrial revolution was a direct result of people having the choice of staying put in the countryside and starving to death or moving to cities, taking shitty pay and not starving to death.
"A lot of people have been hired to develop, use, and maintain the software systems that are involved in legal cases in the 21st century."
But not as many as the clerks that were replaced. That's why e-discovery continues expanding.
I now believe in reincarnation.
Welcome back, Ned Ludd!
P.S. There have been some remarkable theoretical and empirical developments in economics while you were away. You may want to look into them.
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.
So now that the optimum situation is to have no employees
It's the optimum for the business that Puzder is responsible for. Your questions are good questions, but they are questions for society as a whole, not questions for Mr. Puzder to answer. If society allows people to run businesses with no employees, and it makes sense from a business perspective to do so, you can't blame individual business owners for making that choice.
How often does anyone commenting here eat at Carl's Jr.?
But, seriously, folks, I really, really, really wish that there be nothing but Carl's Jr. Eatsas in the future. Maybe the idea will even catch on with McDonald's or with some other fast-food chain that people have actually heard of. Clearly, the concept is win-win. If it succeeds, it means higher profit. It it fails, it's Oh!Bummer's fault.
"government driving up the cost of labor"
How is "the government" doing this? Did Obama raise the minimum wage and I slept right through it? Or is the threat of the deportation of illegal aliens the factor driving up the cost of labor?
"They're always polite, they always upsell, they never take a vacation, they never show up late, there's never a slip-and-fall, or an age, sex, or race discrimination case," says Puzder in regard to replacing employees with machines." And, even more importantly, they never fail to understand an order, regardless of the speaker's accent, special orders don't upset them, they need no maintenance, need no repair, never crash, and, if they don't work out, they can easily be fired and replaced with a walk-in, simply by placing a "HELP WANTED" sign in the window.
Lol......the good ol american gun nut argument. Lets swap a society with a functioning social safety net for a dystopian developing country violent shithole.
And you wonder why advanced nations pity you.
Require a certain amount of on-site human attendance across various skill levels.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Remember how they told us that there would be no IT jobs left in the US because everything can be done so much cheaper in India?
Yet the entry to that line of work has been negatively impacted by (fraud-based) offshoring. They're right, you're wrong.
For the case of burger flipping, that means the entry to *any* kind of work is negatively impacted by HR-demanded robotics.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Really? I personally witness this DAILY. They CAN and DO get enough to live a lifestyle that's above and beyond what a normal, middle-class double-income family does. This is NOT a stereotype, this is observation.
Is there a boyfriend? Possibly. Live in? Probably. Unclaimed for "gubmint handouts" as you so redneck-edly put it? Definitely. But typically, they don't hold down jobs either. They bounce around between jobs, never keeping one for very long.
I really don't care if you believe me or not. I am not here to convince you or anyone else. But this is happening, every day, and those who really really need the help are not getting it because of this kind of abuse.