The problem with looking at the economy by numbers is that so much of the numbers are set by people (Governments, ordinary citizens, bankers...)
People want to treat it like a scientific physical system, but it simply isn't.
When when interest rates go up/down? Entirely a political decision.
How much demand is there for housing? Depends largely on government policies (immigration, proprety tax rates, green belts, urban sprawl policies...)
How much are people investing? What tax shelters are there ( TFSA, RRSP by the government)... Related to the interest rate... do people feel like they have to invest because their money is always losing money...
Taxes, investments, subsidies, big infrastructure programs... all decided on a whim by governments.
The biggest problem is that people don't want to give a gradual solution. Many of these programs want to assume everyone should have every opportunity and be 'equal' NOW.
I was talking to this person once and I mentioned how rich people can afford to make mistakes more than poor people. Some rich girl can afford to screw around and get pregnant. Some rich guy can afford to screw around taking arts classes and getting drunk. Chances they will both be okay financially.
Want to know the secret to Asian success? This is it. My parents came here with little, and I know a thousand other families the same. I worked in factories, warehouses, fast food, got my degree, now I work as an engineer. Could I have ventured into the arts? Possibly. But I went for the more stable outcome.
My kids. They will have a better life. I won't spoil them, but they will certainly be allowed more leeway.
I don't get why people are upset at harvard for anything to do with opportunity. Harvard is an elite school. Chances are the Asian/blacks that get into harvard are going to be elite anyways. Funny story, I knew a bunch of egyptians who were quite well off, who would classify themselves as African-American (technically true), who would then get preferential treatment. I suspect a lot of well off blacks to the the same. It's not helping the poor/struggling people in general.
You want to deal with getting people out of poverty, you don't worry about a school for the top people. You worry about getting people into community college, trades, state schools. You worry about single mother hood, family breakdown, dependence. You worry about getting kids to read/write/show up on time/discipline.
I spent a year or so teaching and it just blows my mind how much this equality crap hurts these kids. Half these kids in crappy communities have no discipline and lack basic reading and writing. Yet, do we let the teacher deal with that? No... somehow that is 'unfair'. You wonder why African-American communities are still crappy. Because the government still lives in a fantasy land where we can have the same programs/standards for everyone.
I have a better idea. How about you work on getting a generation to get any kind of half decent job. Once that is there, their kids will have a better future.
Even in commercial software, for anything detailed, it is often better to just look a code. I don't trust the documentation to be up to date for anything detailed anyways. Enums, magic strings, detailed algorithm behavior... let me see the code (auto docs work good here as well)
But the one thing often lacking even in commercial projects is the big picture stuff. Showing all system, what is being called, big picture structure, where the important starting files are...
I'd like to know why people think there is an education system problem?
I'm in Canada, so maybe the situation in the US is vastly different, but even in Canada we always have people trumping the education crises.
Over the past 30-40 years we've tossed money after money in the education system, reforming this and that, and can anyone say we've done any better that just having a teacher in a classroom doing their thing?
Heck, does anyone find the irony that people trump up Asian/Indian education, when many of these places don't really spend a lot on education or have 'advanced pedagogy'.
For all the gripes about education system, we somehow still manage to raise some brilliant people. We somehow manage to have people keep doing their jobs and life keeps going.
I would humbly suggest that most of the problems people are trying to solve via the 'academic education' system are the wrong place.
We do have a lot of problems with behavior/family... I experienced this when I was a teacher. Really, what do you do with a kid whose parents don't even answer the phone from the school. Is it any surprise the kid doesn't really care about school?
This is much better addressed through social services and policy changes like empowering teachers run their classes with some discipline.
In all honestly, and this is purely anecdotal, the only difference from when I was a student to when I was a teacher is we lowered the class discipline and became paranoid.
The kids aren't any smarter, they don't think more critically, our lesson plans are fancier, but the output is the same, if not worse. I'm being generous here to the current system:P Sure, math is my day was mainly taught via the textbook and problems. Today, they're almost taking the math out of math. But the new way is more 'advanced' and has more 'pedagogy'
Similarly, most of the workplace/industrial issues are much better dealt with outside of k-12. Training of workers, retention of knowledgeable workers, pursuing advanced degrees... all have little to do with k-12 education and more to do with industry issues.
Why we even concerned with bringing more people into STEM, when I've seen very good STEM people leave the field. Some have become lawyers. Others into project management. Ponder that.
Just what is the education crisis? I just don't see it. As I said, I don't think we've advanced more than have a teacher in a classroom.
I really don't think it will help. I actually think it is hurting us.
As they say, putting money/effort into one thing takes money/effort from other things.
I think we put enough money into education; especially k-12. Speaking in Canada here, but I suspect the same is true in most parts of the US. The spending is there.
But is the spending there for say infrastructure/transit? Is it there to support an industrial policy? Is it there to support job sharing/reduced hours?...
I think this whole education solves all is a giant hail mary wish.
I'm in Canada and this is all we hear as the solution as well. Economy is going down, jobs leaving... invest in education.
Yet, where are the results? Nortel collapse. BB not doing too well. Skilled foreign workers programs. Can anyone tell me why we waste all this money on Western education if we're just going to import our skilled labor? If they can do the work, maybe all this spending on education is a waste. Seems they can spend much less and get good people.
You look at the US as well. Ok, some great companies in the US. No doubt about it. Here's a small hint to people. The US has over 300 000 000 people.
Heck, here's some perspective. Silicon Valley can't even provide prosperity for California. Just let that sink in. These guys talk about technology and education bringing prosperity to a whole country. Yet, it can't even bring prosperity to a single state.
Globally there's probably 6 or 7 billion people. Are we all going to be coders? Seriously...
Software and technology definitely gets people some jobs. But it pales in comparison to hundreds of millions and billions of people. But of course, rather than deal with this reality, our leaders just say... somehow if we pour enough into education, magic will come out and bring back the 1990s or whatever.
It's all they can think I guess. I don't have all the answers, but we put way too much thought into education and far too little into everything else.
Germany is a huge powerhouse. They also have a big industrial policy. Ditto for China. And China has huge state firms and state lending.
I'm personally just sick of the education solves all problems that dominates North America. Where the hell are the results of all these? Again, I'm not saying we don't need an educated populace. It's just does not solve the problem of jobs/prosperity.
I liken it to the great myth of solving healthcare costs. Only politicians and even people like to trot out that prevention will fix healthcare costs. It sounds nice, prevention is low cost and you won't need expensive surgery.
Basically, most costs are in old age anyways. In the big picture, unhealthy people are actually cheaper to treat because they die sooner.
Instead of dealing with the reality of old age costs, and the nasty debate of that (rationing, death panels...), we all just throw a hail mary at prevention.
Education sounds similar. A giant hail mary to solve a problem it can't.
I at times get amused at the ''assumptions people make'' which upon closer investigation are just not true.
This one you point out is right on the money. Rich people can stay close to the subways and near major employment locations. Then you have some subsidized housing and bad areas that might have decent transit. The old urban rich/poor... no middle class divide.
Then you have a huge swath of middle class and working poor people with crappy transit who tend to drive more.
Then again, there's also rich people who live out in the burbs in nice luxury homes...
I find this one of the great tragedies of software development. I'm not saying the alternative would be better. I don't know how it would play out. I'm just commenting here.
Any of the 'big' languages (c, c++, java, c#) have all the ability to make things really easy.
Heck, I recently started using c# as my main scripting desktop scripting language (cs-script). I end up writing slightly more convenient wrapper so you don't end up worry about exceptions as often and polluting scripts.
You could for example have a generic Object map in c# and use it for all kinds of data passing just to get things working. Heck, one of my prototype techniques is often to just pass a map as a function parameter knowing I will be adding/deleting things as needed.
Heck, with a little bit of work, I'm sure someone could write some useful utilities/objects to make c#/java meet 99% of the use cases.
Instead for too often, people run out and build a whole new language.
It is important to separate the issue of 'funding' from 'delivery'
I do agree with the idea that all children should have enough funding to get a decent education.
What the delivery model is really depends (public, private, voucher, charter...)
Sweden is going through an interesting case right now. They have a full voucher system where you can either go to a public school or take your voucher to a private school.
I think this is really fair as if the public school does not suit you, you are free to go to a private school and you get equal funding.
The same is true in Canada in places like BC, Alberta. What's interesting is how this does not 'collapse' the public system. In most of these places, it is normally around 20% of kids enroll in these alternative schools.
How this gets twisted to mean against the poor baffles me. It empowers the poor to send their kids to alternate schools.
Technology is another big thing. I am a qualified teacher and technology can be a big changer. Lesson plans for example are normally shared by teachers,but also held tightly. Really grade 9 math is going to be teaching the same thing in most areas under the same curriculum. Is there a reason for teachers to build their own lesson plans?
Theory: You build individual lesson plans for each class and tailor for different students.
Reality: most teachers don't do this. They just use general lesson plans and maybe if there is a special needs child, they will create an alternate lesson.
We could dramatically improve education by hiring more teaching assistants, using standard lesson plans, reducing teachers pay (IMHO).
For example, Instead of hiring one teacher at 90k, have one teacher at 60k, and one teaching assistant at 30k. This is just an example, the ratios can be whatever.
But of course this is the beauty of allowing alternate schools. They can experiment with these models. I really don't know if this will be better. In my opinion it would be.
Right now, it is just not tried as the public sector and teachers unions have a big say.
Even the common arguments in favor of public school tend to fall flat on their face. The main one being that it increases diversity as kids from all backgrounds go to the same school. This is ridiculous as parents now move entire neighborhoods to get their kids into a 'good school'. I think its an equally valid argument to suggest public schools INCREASE SEGREGATION. If you had school choice, maybe parents would stay in the same community knowing they could send their kids to a 'good school'.
No, if there is one thing everyone should realize by now is that all ideologies think they're doing good for everyone.
I mean, you really can't get the average person to 'believe' in your ideology without in some way making it 'good' and 'moral'.
Now, how practical and how beneficial it is is a function of how it all plays out, which is very complex.
Someone could make an equal statement on say socialism where at its core is the desire to have all the power in government and trample other people, with the focus being preventing the weaker from having any control of their own lives and having people serve the interests of the powerful in government and connected industries.
I've found that arguing on broad principles of ideologies is pretty pointless. The implementation and how it plays out is the most important.
The big problem with Republicans and you see it here with Rand Paul is the policies that could help people tend to not be doable. So the only policies that tend to pass are those that benefit the rich/corporations. Again, it is not a problem with the ideology, but how it plays out.
Consider something like legalizing drugs or school choice or low cost of living, which are all features of the freedom ideology which would benefit the poor in their ideology. A lot of these don't stand a chance of getting realistically into law. But laws like cutting taxes or deregulating business are more plausible.
Republicans have done a horrible job of picking which policies they choose to push through. Obama for example used his might to push through Obama Care. For good or bad, he used it for something that might help the people.
You see this happening now with the left parties to some extent. Their policies to benefit the poor are increasingly hamstrung. Guaranteed income, subsidized housing, subsidized food... The only laws they seem to get through benefit mainly those in government/finance. They can give raises to the public sector unions, but can't help the poor. They prop up the housing market and drive up the cost of living, but can't help the poor or young with housing.
And so we see Rand Paul blocking Net Neutrality. This is on the backdrop how these big telecoms have received subsidies, have monopoly contracts with local governments...
It's a complex answer as to why people have kids. It's different for different people.
But the idea that the only reason people don't have lots of kids in rich countries is because of career is a little far fetched.
Why not look at the reasons people have kids.
1. To take care of them when they're older This is severely reduced in rich countries and would be even less so if we had some kind of guaranteed income. At best, you're doing it for the company, in which case 1-3 kids is plenty.
2. For religious reasons. This one is valid and even in rich countries, you might still end up with a few large families. But that kind of very orthodox spread your seed kind of religiousness is on the decline.
3. For someone to love them. Most parents I know find this out after the first kid. You don't have kids to fill the void in your life, because they have a lot of needs. Again, that's most people. You'll probably find the odd person with severe issues who just keeps popping em out.
4. Because you want kids. Again, the first child is new and exciting. Then another and another. The novelty wears off for people.
This all has to be balanced with the reality that kids are a lot of work. And if you had free time, there's so much you could do from sports, to travelling, to writing, reading, hobbies, or heck just wasting time on netflix or drinking. To top it all off, we're still limited by age, and the age of good pregnancy for women is not infinite. Say they finish school and have their fun by 26. They basically have 10-15 years to have their kids at best. That doesn't leave a lot of time to pop out lots of kids assuming you want to give the ones you have proper attention.
The vast majority I have known have moved on. Some left in school because it wasn't a good fit. Some left while in the workforce to other non engineering related jobs.
But here's the thing, so have many of my male colleagues.
When I ask these people why they left, the answers are pretty much there. 1. They're bored. The work doesn't interest them anymore, but it still requires you to be interested to make a decent contribution. You can't really go on auto pilot and still do your job. 2. work-life balance, deadlines... 3. More power/respect in other areas 4. More social in other areas...
In short, general problems that I don't think are female specific at all. Maybe females are less likely to put up with it than males? But the issues are pretty much cross gender.
Let's face it, when women wanted the right to work, they wanted the right to work in nice jobs. Not the oil rigs, not the garbage man, not the grinding away lowly tech worker... Let's face it, most men would like not to work such jobs either. We do it mainly because we feel we have to.
The reason women don't go into tech is the same reason they don't go into many other fields... it's not a nice job AND for those qualified women, there are way nicer jobs available. Make it a nice job and they will come. But then again, so would many men.
I'm not saying it is a horrible job. It is a decent job for me to make some decent money. But for those women who are qualified to be in tech, being a teacher, nurse, government worker, doctor, lawyer, business person... is far more up their alley. Just as it is for many qualified men.
That's a great comment. I'm going to borrow it sometime.
I sometimes get puzzled by people who talk about jobs like this.
If anyone should be paid millions, it is doctors who save your life or teachers who raise your kids.
Counter: Healthcare/Education is so important that doctors/teachers should have their salaries controlled to keep the cost of healthcare/education affordable.
Unions have stopped working in the private sector.
If unions worked, we'd use them. Well I would at least. The problem is even greater than the H1B Visa and its the same problem manufacturing workers faced.
You're not that special in the world. Free trade killed the viability of private sector unions in this context. You ever wonder about the H1B? He comes from India/China. Oh you plan to unionize the American labor location. No problem, we can setup shop in India/China and they can do their job there. Heck, most major American tech companies have over seas locations like that.
Once a company has multiple locations, the power of the union diminishes greatly. About the only private union that even has some meager power these days is the auto union. I'm Canadian, and even that is under threat as Mexico and even other parts of the US get capacity.
This does not mean private sector unions are impossible. It's just not as simple as organizing. You need changes to corporate governance, union structure, industrial policy... all kinds of changes, like in Germany.
And then you get into the weird area where everyone wants to be Germany making 'high-value' items. Well then you start to dilute that specialty making that model less likely to work.
What is/isn't under a banner of net-neutrality will determine whether or not it is a good regulation.
I've met people who think net neutrality should mean ISPs can't throttle anything. Well jeez, have these people ever tried to manage a network?
Then there's people who think the ISPs are just making money with data caps and surcharges. Often times, these are the same group of people.
Well one way or another, you have to manage your network. Either impose extra costs on users, or you as the ISP do it for them.
Myself, I prefer the unlimited use. You might pay more for a bigger pipe (25 mbps versus say 10 mbps), but in both cases you can use it as much as you life.
As long as the ISPs are using throttling in a 'fair' way, that is good. Maybe require them to publish their throttling rules. Things that could be anti-competitive could be taken to court. Or have simple rules, like they can only throttle a users overall speed. So maybe if you use too much, you get your entire bandwidth reduced to 1 mbps or have your packet priority lowered... whatever
And you might not want to prevent big users/network from working together. Not in an anti-competitive way, but in a way that keeps the network functioning better. Again as long as these deals are public and are available for all players for a fair price. Whether that is co-locating servers, being able to label packets with certain priorities when congestion happens...
Regulating a network is complex, but it has been done before, like regulating rail network and making sure it is open and fair access for all rail companies that want to use the tracks.
I used to be really concerned about it. Heck, I still am. What do we do when computing and automation reduces mass jobs? What happens when population growth stops? What happens when the West stops getting the best people from developing countries?...
I really have no idea of the answer to any of these questions. Yet, what I do know is the powers that be will do everything to keep it going.
Communism is discredited, but I wouldn't count it out (i'm being genuinely neutral here). I've been hearing for years that interest rates will go up to 'normal'. Yet, it seems they've been able to pretty much make 0-1% the new normal. Quantitative easing or whatever financial games they do at that level seems pretty common place too. Automation and efficiency's are helping keep inflation under control.
Basically, the governments/banks are able to basically have infinite spending in this manner and thus the ability to control the economy. They can dictate how much is spent on public services, how much to give to the elderly, how much to give to companies, how much to spend on R&D/startsup, how much to invest in the military...
Things keep on chugging along. Now I'm under no illusion. It could come crashing down any second now, but at the same time, they could simply keep this system chugging along.
Most people are already convinced of the need to keep the governmnet/banking stimulus, and most people like stability, and most is so abstracted today that it doesn't really matter anymore. We could very well end up with communism or something like that. We'd just have less force and probably involve banking/consumerism at some level. But the idea of a government run economy with all parts focusing on creating jobs/getting things the leaders deem need doing done. It's like we're already there. eh?
I'm not saying if it is good or bad, but it is interesting to see it develop. Bankers are pretty much onside with progressives/socialists now in terms of free money. Bankers don't want growth to stop and progressives/socialists need free money for the public sector and other spending. About the only ones against it are libertarians/anarchists. Maybe they can be placated with some kind of guaranteed income, and they can move out of the expensive areas and have a low cost sustained living.
One of the big issues with feminism/gender wars is that it tries to view all issues as part of feminism/gender.
90% of the gender wars issues I've seen in terms of employment are just regular issues that would apply to a lot of men in the field.
The vast majority of men aren't hard driving negotiators seeking to rise to the very top to dominate the rest of men. A lot of men I work with are pretty darn cooperative, want vacation time, want time with their family...
We had a huge development in labor laws in the 1900s. But it was aptly called... a labor movement because it had to to do with labor issues. Minimum wages, overtime, safety regulations... I'm sure the arguments at that time were the time. If someone wants to work harder for the company by working more overtime, shouldn't they be allowed to? I'm not here to say whether this is right or not. It's not the point of the post. It's simply to say that back then, labor issues were called labor issues. Heck, I'm pretty sure communism had a huge male following.
But feminists today want to see everything as men as the enemy. Crap loads of men are really really really shitty negotiators. Most engineers who toil for these companies are crappy negotiators. Standing up to the domineering male/female leader and be willing to risk being a trouble maker is a hard thing when the bills need to be paid. A lot of men would love universal laws that improved their labor conditions, standard pay, more security...
For any exploiting women think 'men' are doing to them, I guarantee you, 'men' are exploited even more. Ultimately, it has more to do with those in power, than any kind of gender issue. Being raised Muslim, I often use this example. Feminists will often say Islam is horrible to women because women could be taken as war booty (concubines/sex slaves). Men are the enemy!
Here's what they often miss. When wars happened in the past, the women might have been taken as concubines... the men were simply slaughtered and butchered. The powerful oppressed the weak... and despite what you might think... a lot of men are pretty weak relative to the strong man.
It's the same with pay. For every 'man' in power who pays a woman less than she 'deserves', there's an army of men being paid less than they 'deserve'.
Ultimately, this kind feminism is really the feminism of the top 5% (not exact number). If you're good enough to be able to really substantially negotiate your salary, chances are you're probably pretty okay in life and battling for some kind of leadership position. Who should get the leadership position? I really have no idea. Sometimes in tech for example, I wish some of my leaders were more pushy alpha types who'd push back on other people. Maybe the better negotiator should win here? This is ultimately the top players playing around and some top women trying to gain power from the top men by using other tactics.
I'm not sure how much of an issue this really is today. Just a couple of years back, for sure. It was a huge issue.
Heck, right now, many workplaces are switching to web solutions. This has one big advantage in terms of standards and legacy. There is definitely some QA here. many of these were big issues just a few years back. Be it IE6 or older windows applications. I think at my current slow enterprise role, we just got rid of the last non web solution. It still ran though on Windows 7, but its out of there.
If it really becomes a big enough issue for them to lose enterprise customers, I'm pretty sure they have a virtualization solution or they will keep sandboxed versions of legacy applications. It's a very solvable problem. Heck, it would probably cost them nothing at that point to release a free Windows XP Virtual Machine for that rare legacy support.
I've been close to running out of gas a few times in my life. Most of the times involved long distance travel on highways away from cities with sparse gas stations and you just say F**K, why didn't I fill up at the last one. I had no idea it would be 200k until the next one.
There is simply a lot of anxiety in that. For whatever reason, I've never actually ran out of gas. But that fear is real and lucky for me, only happened on a few trips in rural areas when I was younger. Now I just know better.
I can only imagine driving an electric car, the kind of anxiety that would result. Heck, it might even affect regular day to day driving unless you live in an area with lots of recharge stations...
1. fewer recharge stations. With gas, you just kind of expect them everywhere. Heck, that's the attitude that got me in trouble on those rural trips when I was younger. I just magically expected gas stations.
2. Shorter range
3. longer recharge. My internal rational for now getting into low gas situations is simply that I convinced myself that the quick 5 minutes it takes to refill my gas is worth it to always keep my tank at least half full. I'm not sure how that equation changes with electric.
We have to separate 'science' from 'scientists' in a similar way you have to separate any practice from its practitioners.
Science is a really good methodology to get at the *truth* mainly by testing your hypothesis (scientific method).
In the end though, scientists are just people, as in any other group. They can and will be influenced by pride, status, money, power, politics...as any other group of people.
It's a tough line of argument where people end up talking about 'true science'
It's not just scientific journals, people will sometimes dismiss entire areas of 'science', especially in the social sciences/economics. Yet, from the outside perspective, its the same voices of experts touting studies and reports to get at the *truth*.
In the end though from a social perspective, how can we guarantee scientists adhere to the scientific method and search for truth, any more than catholic priests adhere to their creed (while raping little children).
I don't they will as scientists are just people. Put more power, money, politics, institutions under the scientific banner, and I think human behavior will take precedence over the adherence to the scientific theory.
I just don't get the big rush. I understand that green house gases are rising temperatures. I understand the possible impacts of rising water levels, more chaotic weather, changing farm lands...
But lets be clear. This polluting has been going on for the industrial revolution. Over two hundred years.
We're already getting fairly competitive hybrid and electric cars. Most car companies have decent models. Revolutionary firms like Tesla are there. Who knows what Google and Apple will do.
We already have a fair amount of renewables and it is continuing to increase. Even coal and other polluting fuels can be improved with better technology.
Much of the world is industrializing and this has lifting millions and billions of out poverty. Better still, this means stabilizing or even declining birth rates. People like to think of the world is getting overpopulated. But the pattern has been pretty consistent with much of the world getting down to a fertility rate around 2. If this is the case, that alone should massively reduce green house consumption in the next 100-200 years or so.
We have the technology and skill to avert much of the impacts of global warming. We can build levies and other flood protection measures. Maybe some regions are moved. Maybe we start different form of controlled farming. Global supply chains can move goods around the world pretty rapidly. If one region suffers a drought, things can be brought it from elsewhere.
And I am really skeptical if our leaders, even the ones championing global warming, actually see it as a great thread, instead of a means of political power.
Simple case. Obama spent his terms pushing through ObamaCare. Maybe worthy on its on right. But if we were truly facing a global disaster of global warming that threatened our existence, maybe... just maybe... he should have used his political capital and resources on that instead of healthcare.
And it's not just Obama. How many politicians or even scientists are willing to sacrifice for the anti-global warming effort?
Much like war, we get pretty cynical when they don't appear to make any sacrifices or when they don't demand sacrifices of everyone. Hey Bush, why don't you send your daughters to war in Iraq or why didn't you volunteer to go into actual war. Yet you seem pretty giddy about going to war in Iraq and other places.
The public's reaction is no different when facing politicians/scientists/academics who push for more power/taxes for 'global warming'. Are they willing to take a 30% paycut that would go to anti-global warming efforts? No... can't have that! Matter of fact, they really want to have increased funding!
Again, I'm not saying it is wrong. I am talking about perception here. Much like to win a war, maybe you need to pay your military contractors good money so they make really good weapons. But let's not pretend it doesn't create a high degree of cynicism about the true motivations.
In the end, maybe I'm just a bit positive, but I see the Earth warming a bit. We get through this. The technology is there. Our capabilities to fight the bad affects are there.
Maybe some parts of the world are hurt by it. But is global warming really the top concern for every part of the world. Turn on the news people. Thousands upon thousands are dying every day in a brutal civil war in Syria and the ME. Problems like this happen throughout the world.
People have inflated the value of healthcare and education over infrastructure.
This is not to say spending on healthcare or education is not good, just that it should come AFTER investments in infrastructure.
Roads, sewers, electricity... were the things governments were responsible before. Long before healthcare and education. Then these were added. Then people forgot about infrastructure.
You don't need large organization to get an education. All you really need is an adult and a room. Today, maybe even just a computer. For basic healthcare, all you need is a doctor to setup shop.
Heck, I grew up in an area without much healthcare aside from a doctor who practiced in his home.
But try getting by without roads, electricity, sewers...
Again, I'm not saying increasing healthcare and education is bad. Just saying it is a sad state where infrastructure if falling apart in many western nations and we spend so much on healthcare and education.
I would have much less resistance to this focus on equality of outcomes if people were not so keen to celebrate and profit from the benefits of the merit based system.
Tech is the prime example. Intense risk taking, insane work, insanely challenged environments, no security, crazy egos,... kind of field. Most progressives/leftists are willing to celebrate these companies and the 'new economy'. They celebrate in taxing these firms. They celebrate in the exports of these firms. They celebrate the greatness of their country via them.
Hey, you want to start talking about equal outcomes and leftist/progressive values, sure, I'm game. My family life is pretty important to me. Let me know when you give the 'boys club' mandatory 5 weeks vacation, fixed 40 hour weeks, job security, pensions, roles... every other bureaucratic tool.
But you know that won't happen. They profit from it too much.
It's like they want to leech of every success that is driven by the very culture they despise.
This is much more of a north american problem (canada included) as far as I can tell. In europe the private sector also has some of those benefits...
The tax issue is pretty complex and the idea that companies are 'hiding' profits or something is much more complex.
1. Most countries have a sales tax which captures the economic activity in their own country. I'm in Canada. For every IPhone sold, the government is going to get something like 10-15% of the sales price. Heck for a lot of low-margin business, the government gets more in sales tax than the company is going to make in profit for that sale
2. Most countries have taxes on wages. Apple employs thousands of people on its own dime. The government is then going to tax those people at anywhere from 20-50% depending on the country. To top it off, people employed by these companies don't get government assistance.
3. Money leaving the company to actual people in the form of capital gains, dividends... is also taxed again.
There is actually very little in the way of 'hiding' going on. At every turn, the government gets to put it's hand in the jar so to speak. I'm not saying it is a bad thing,
But why is the corporate rate attractive to tax? I'd guess it is because the corporation is this abstract entity.
But its very interesting to see how different countries approach these things. The US has a number of really high profile companies and views that as things to be taxed to enrich America. In say China, companies are backed by the state because they generate jobs and exports. In Canada, we lack many such high profile companies and want to attract these companies, so we actually start lowering tax rates, giving incentives for companies to locate here, but fall short of actually backing them.
It's just interesting to see how things are viewed as either things to be taxed or things to be encouraged. Even something as simply as airports. In Canada, the government views airports as just another thing, so they have hefty leases and other things that airports have to pay. This results in airports, like Toronto Pearson having high fees that many people even choose to drive to Buffalo, NY, to take flights from there.
In the US, airports are viewed more as infrastructure, not revenue generators or to be revenue neutral; heck they're often subsidized.
It really is a matter of perspective. But like all things, increase costs too much on anything relative to other countries, and people will find a way to avoid it. Increase sales tax too much, and people will drive to the next country over with lower sales tax. Make life hard for corporations... don't worry... you're corporations aren't that special in the world. Apple is nice, but it's not like Samsung isn't producing many phones.....
What's interesting is people have problem paying 10-15% sales tax on products. That means the government takes on more in sales tax than most companies make in profit on the actual product.
Of course this depends on where you live. In some parts sales tax might be 0% and 25% in others. It's just funny looking at it that way.
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The problem with looking at the economy by numbers is that so much of the numbers are set by people (Governments, ordinary citizens, bankers...)
People want to treat it like a scientific physical system, but it simply isn't.
When when interest rates go up/down? Entirely a political decision.
How much demand is there for housing? Depends largely on government policies (immigration, proprety tax rates, green belts, urban sprawl policies...)
How much are people investing? What tax shelters are there ( TFSA, RRSP by the government)... Related to the interest rate... do people feel like they have to invest because their money is always losing money...
Taxes, investments, subsidies, big infrastructure programs... all decided on a whim by governments.
The biggest problem is that people don't want to give a gradual solution. Many of these programs want to assume everyone should have every opportunity and be 'equal' NOW.
I was talking to this person once and I mentioned how rich people can afford to make mistakes more than poor people. Some rich girl can afford to screw around and get pregnant. Some rich guy can afford to screw around taking arts classes and getting drunk. Chances they will both be okay financially.
Want to know the secret to Asian success? This is it. My parents came here with little, and I know a thousand other families the same. I worked in factories, warehouses, fast food, got my degree, now I work as an engineer. Could I have ventured into the arts? Possibly. But I went for the more stable outcome.
My kids. They will have a better life. I won't spoil them, but they will certainly be allowed more leeway.
I don't get why people are upset at harvard for anything to do with opportunity. Harvard is an elite school. Chances are the Asian/blacks that get into harvard are going to be elite anyways. Funny story, I knew a bunch of egyptians who were quite well off, who would classify themselves as African-American (technically true), who would then get preferential treatment. I suspect a lot of well off blacks to the the same. It's not helping the poor/struggling people in general.
You want to deal with getting people out of poverty, you don't worry about a school for the top people. You worry about getting people into community college, trades, state schools. You worry about single mother hood, family breakdown, dependence. You worry about getting kids to read/write/show up on time/discipline.
I spent a year or so teaching and it just blows my mind how much this equality crap hurts these kids. Half these kids in crappy communities have no discipline and lack basic reading and writing. Yet, do we let the teacher deal with that? No... somehow that is 'unfair'. You wonder why African-American communities are still crappy. Because the government still lives in a fantasy land where we can have the same programs/standards for everyone.
I have a better idea. How about you work on getting a generation to get any kind of half decent job. Once that is there, their kids will have a better future.
This times a million.
Even in commercial software, for anything detailed, it is often better to just look a code. I don't trust the documentation to be up to date for anything detailed anyways. Enums, magic strings, detailed algorithm behavior... let me see the code (auto docs work good here as well)
But the one thing often lacking even in commercial projects is the big picture stuff. Showing all system, what is being called, big picture structure, where the important starting files are...
I'd like to know why people think there is an education system problem?
I'm in Canada, so maybe the situation in the US is vastly different, but even in Canada we always have people trumping the education crises.
Over the past 30-40 years we've tossed money after money in the education system, reforming this and that, and can anyone say we've done any better that just having a teacher in a classroom doing their thing?
Heck, does anyone find the irony that people trump up Asian/Indian education, when many of these places don't really spend a lot on education or have 'advanced pedagogy'.
For all the gripes about education system, we somehow still manage to raise some brilliant people. We somehow manage to have people keep doing their jobs and life keeps going.
I would humbly suggest that most of the problems people are trying to solve via the 'academic education' system are the wrong place.
We do have a lot of problems with behavior/family... I experienced this when I was a teacher. Really, what do you do with a kid whose parents don't even answer the phone from the school. Is it any surprise the kid doesn't really care about school?
This is much better addressed through social services and policy changes like empowering teachers run their classes with some discipline.
In all honestly, and this is purely anecdotal, the only difference from when I was a student to when I was a teacher is we lowered the class discipline and became paranoid.
The kids aren't any smarter, they don't think more critically, our lesson plans are fancier, but the output is the same, if not worse. I'm being generous here to the current system :P Sure, math is my day was mainly taught via the textbook and problems. Today, they're almost taking the math out of math. But the new way is more 'advanced' and has more 'pedagogy'
Similarly, most of the workplace/industrial issues are much better dealt with outside of k-12. Training of workers, retention of knowledgeable workers, pursuing advanced degrees... all have little to do with k-12 education and more to do with industry issues.
Why we even concerned with bringing more people into STEM, when I've seen very good STEM people leave the field. Some have become lawyers. Others into project management. Ponder that.
Just what is the education crisis? I just don't see it. As I said, I don't think we've advanced more than have a teacher in a classroom.
I really don't think it will help. I actually think it is hurting us.
As they say, putting money/effort into one thing takes money/effort from other things.
I think we put enough money into education; especially k-12. Speaking in Canada here, but I suspect the same is true in most parts of the US. The spending is there.
But is the spending there for say infrastructure/transit? Is it there to support an industrial policy? Is it there to support job sharing/reduced hours?...
I think this whole education solves all is a giant hail mary wish.
I'm in Canada and this is all we hear as the solution as well. Economy is going down, jobs leaving... invest in education.
Yet, where are the results? Nortel collapse. BB not doing too well. Skilled foreign workers programs. Can anyone tell me why we waste all this money on Western education if we're just going to import our skilled labor? If they can do the work, maybe all this spending on education is a waste. Seems they can spend much less and get good people.
You look at the US as well. Ok, some great companies in the US. No doubt about it. Here's a small hint to people. The US has over 300 000 000 people.
Heck, here's some perspective. Silicon Valley can't even provide prosperity for California. Just let that sink in. These guys talk about technology and education bringing prosperity to a whole country. Yet, it can't even bring prosperity to a single state.
Globally there's probably 6 or 7 billion people. Are we all going to be coders? Seriously...
Software and technology definitely gets people some jobs. But it pales in comparison to hundreds of millions and billions of people. But of course, rather than deal with this reality, our leaders just say... somehow if we pour enough into education, magic will come out and bring back the 1990s or whatever.
It's all they can think I guess.
I don't have all the answers, but we put way too much thought into education and far too little into everything else.
Germany is a huge powerhouse. They also have a big industrial policy. Ditto for China. And China has huge state firms and state lending.
I'm personally just sick of the education solves all problems that dominates North America. Where the hell are the results of all these?
Again, I'm not saying we don't need an educated populace. It's just does not solve the problem of jobs/prosperity.
I liken it to the great myth of solving healthcare costs. Only politicians and even people like to trot out that prevention will fix healthcare costs. It sounds nice, prevention is low cost and you won't need expensive surgery.
Of course, the data doesn't support that.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technol...
Basically, most costs are in old age anyways. In the big picture, unhealthy people are actually cheaper to treat because they die sooner.
Instead of dealing with the reality of old age costs, and the nasty debate of that (rationing, death panels...), we all just throw a hail mary at prevention.
Education sounds similar. A giant hail mary to solve a problem it can't.
I at times get amused at the ''assumptions people make'' which upon closer investigation are just not true.
This one you point out is right on the money. Rich people can stay close to the subways and near major employment locations. Then you have some subsidized housing and bad areas that might have decent transit. The old urban rich/poor... no middle class divide.
Then you have a huge swath of middle class and working poor people with crappy transit who tend to drive more.
Then again, there's also rich people who live out in the burbs in nice luxury homes...
It's all just complex.
I find this one of the great tragedies of software development. I'm not saying the alternative would be better. I don't know how it would play out. I'm just commenting here.
Any of the 'big' languages (c, c++, java, c#) have all the ability to make things really easy.
Heck, I recently started using c# as my main scripting desktop scripting language (cs-script). I end up writing slightly more convenient wrapper so you don't end up worry about exceptions as often and polluting scripts.
You could for example have a generic Object map in c# and use it for all kinds of data passing just to get things working. Heck, one of my prototype techniques is often to just pass a map as a function parameter knowing I will be adding/deleting things as needed.
Heck, with a little bit of work, I'm sure someone could write some useful utilities/objects to make c#/java meet 99% of the use cases.
Instead for too often, people run out and build a whole new language.
Education is very complex.
It is important to separate the issue of 'funding' from 'delivery'
I do agree with the idea that all children should have enough funding to get a decent education.
What the delivery model is really depends (public, private, voucher, charter...)
Sweden is going through an interesting case right now.
They have a full voucher system where you can either go to a public school or take your voucher to a private school.
I think this is really fair as if the public school does not suit you, you are free to go to a private school and you get equal funding.
The same is true in Canada in places like BC, Alberta. What's interesting is how this does not 'collapse' the public system. In most of these places, it is normally around 20% of kids enroll in these alternative schools.
How this gets twisted to mean against the poor baffles me. It empowers the poor to send their kids to alternate schools.
Technology is another big thing. I am a qualified teacher and technology can be a big changer. Lesson plans for example are normally shared by teachers ,but also held tightly. Really grade 9 math is going to be teaching the same thing in most areas under the same curriculum. Is there a reason for teachers to build their own lesson plans?
Theory: You build individual lesson plans for each class and tailor for different students.
Reality: most teachers don't do this. They just use general lesson plans and maybe if there is a special needs child, they will create an alternate lesson.
We could dramatically improve education by hiring more teaching assistants, using standard lesson plans, reducing teachers pay (IMHO).
For example, Instead of hiring one teacher at 90k, have one teacher at 60k, and one teaching assistant at 30k. This is just an example, the ratios can be whatever.
But of course this is the beauty of allowing alternate schools. They can experiment with these models. I really don't know if this will be better. In my opinion it would be.
Right now, it is just not tried as the public sector and teachers unions have a big say.
Even the common arguments in favor of public school tend to fall flat on their face. The main one being that it increases diversity as kids from all backgrounds go to the same school. This is ridiculous as parents now move entire neighborhoods to get their kids into a 'good school'. I think its an equally valid argument to suggest public schools INCREASE SEGREGATION. If you had school choice, maybe parents would stay in the same community knowing they could send their kids to a 'good school'.
No, if there is one thing everyone should realize by now is that all ideologies think they're doing good for everyone.
I mean, you really can't get the average person to 'believe' in your ideology without in some way making it 'good' and 'moral'.
Now, how practical and how beneficial it is is a function of how it all plays out, which is very complex.
Someone could make an equal statement on say socialism where at its core is the desire to have all the power in government and trample other people, with the focus being preventing the weaker from having any control of their own lives and having people serve the interests of the powerful in government and connected industries.
I've found that arguing on broad principles of ideologies is pretty pointless. The implementation and how it plays out is the most important.
The big problem with Republicans and you see it here with Rand Paul is the policies that could help people tend to not be doable. So the only policies that tend to pass are those that benefit the rich/corporations. Again, it is not a problem with the ideology, but how it plays out.
Consider something like legalizing drugs or school choice or low cost of living, which are all features of the freedom ideology which would benefit the poor in their ideology. A lot of these don't stand a chance of getting realistically into law. But laws like cutting taxes or deregulating business are more plausible.
Republicans have done a horrible job of picking which policies they choose to push through. Obama for example used his might to push through Obama Care. For good or bad, he used it for something that might help the people.
You see this happening now with the left parties to some extent. Their policies to benefit the poor are increasingly hamstrung. Guaranteed income, subsidized housing, subsidized food... The only laws they seem to get through benefit mainly those in government/finance. They can give raises to the public sector unions, but can't help the poor. They prop up the housing market and drive up the cost of living, but can't help the poor or young with housing.
And so we see Rand Paul blocking Net Neutrality. This is on the backdrop how these big telecoms have received subsidies, have monopoly contracts with local governments...
It's just silly.
It's a complex answer as to why people have kids. It's different for different people.
But the idea that the only reason people don't have lots of kids in rich countries is because of career is a little far fetched.
Why not look at the reasons people have kids.
1. To take care of them when they're older
This is severely reduced in rich countries and would be even less so if we had some kind of guaranteed income. At best, you're doing it for the company, in which case 1-3 kids is plenty.
2. For religious reasons.
This one is valid and even in rich countries, you might still end up with a few large families. But that kind of very orthodox spread your seed kind of religiousness is on the decline.
3. For someone to love them.
Most parents I know find this out after the first kid. You don't have kids to fill the void in your life, because they have a lot of needs. Again, that's most people. You'll probably find the odd person with severe issues who just keeps popping em out.
4. Because you want kids.
Again, the first child is new and exciting. Then another and another. The novelty wears off for people.
This all has to be balanced with the reality that kids are a lot of work. And if you had free time, there's so much you could do from sports, to travelling, to writing, reading, hobbies, or heck just wasting time on netflix or drinking.
To top it all off, we're still limited by age, and the age of good pregnancy for women is not infinite. Say they finish school and have their fun by 26. They basically have 10-15 years to have their kids at best. That doesn't leave a lot of time to pop out lots of kids assuming you want to give the ones you have proper attention.
Why don't they actually talk to female engineers?
The vast majority I have known have moved on. Some left in school because it wasn't a good fit. Some left while in the workforce to other non engineering related jobs.
But here's the thing, so have many of my male colleagues.
When I ask these people why they left, the answers are pretty much there. ...
1. They're bored. The work doesn't interest them anymore, but it still requires you to be interested to make a decent contribution. You can't really go on auto pilot and still do your job.
2. work-life balance, deadlines...
3. More power/respect in other areas
4. More social in other areas
In short, general problems that I don't think are female specific at all. Maybe females are less likely to put up with it than males? But the issues are pretty much cross gender.
Let's face it, when women wanted the right to work, they wanted the right to work in nice jobs. Not the oil rigs, not the garbage man, not the grinding away lowly tech worker...
Let's face it, most men would like not to work such jobs either. We do it mainly because we feel we have to.
The reason women don't go into tech is the same reason they don't go into many other fields... it's not a nice job AND for those qualified women, there are way nicer jobs available. Make it a nice job and they will come. But then again, so would many men.
I'm not saying it is a horrible job. It is a decent job for me to make some decent money.
But for those women who are qualified to be in tech, being a teacher, nurse, government worker, doctor, lawyer, business person... is far more up their alley. Just as it is for many qualified men.
That's a great comment. I'm going to borrow it sometime.
I sometimes get puzzled by people who talk about jobs like this.
If anyone should be paid millions, it is doctors who save your life or teachers who raise your kids.
Counter:
Healthcare/Education is so important that doctors/teachers should have their salaries controlled to keep the cost of healthcare/education affordable.
Unions have stopped working in the private sector.
If unions worked, we'd use them. Well I would at least.
The problem is even greater than the H1B Visa and its the same problem manufacturing workers faced.
You're not that special in the world. Free trade killed the viability of private sector unions in this context. You ever wonder about the H1B? He comes from India/China. Oh you plan to unionize the American labor location. No problem, we can setup shop in India/China and they can do their job there. Heck, most major American tech companies have over seas locations like that.
Once a company has multiple locations, the power of the union diminishes greatly. About the only private union that even has some meager power these days is the auto union. I'm Canadian, and even that is under threat as Mexico and even other parts of the US get capacity.
This does not mean private sector unions are impossible. It's just not as simple as organizing. You need changes to corporate governance, union structure, industrial policy... all kinds of changes, like in Germany.
And then you get into the weird area where everyone wants to be Germany making 'high-value' items. Well then you start to dilute that specialty making that model less likely to work.
What is/isn't under a banner of net-neutrality will determine whether or not it is a good regulation.
I've met people who think net neutrality should mean ISPs can't throttle anything. Well jeez, have these people ever tried to manage a network?
Then there's people who think the ISPs are just making money with data caps and surcharges. Often times, these are the same group of people.
Well one way or another, you have to manage your network. Either impose extra costs on users, or you as the ISP do it for them.
Myself, I prefer the unlimited use. You might pay more for a bigger pipe (25 mbps versus say 10 mbps), but in both cases you can use it as much as you life.
As long as the ISPs are using throttling in a 'fair' way, that is good. Maybe require them to publish their throttling rules. Things that could be anti-competitive could be taken to court.
Or have simple rules, like they can only throttle a users overall speed. So maybe if you use too much, you get your entire bandwidth reduced to 1 mbps or have your packet priority lowered... whatever
And you might not want to prevent big users/network from working together. Not in an anti-competitive way, but in a way that keeps the network functioning better. Again as long as these deals are public and are available for all players for a fair price. Whether that is co-locating servers, being able to label packets with certain priorities when congestion happens...
Regulating a network is complex, but it has been done before, like regulating rail network and making sure it is open and fair access for all rail companies that want to use the tracks.
I used to be really concerned about it. Heck, I still am. ...
What do we do when computing and automation reduces mass jobs?
What happens when population growth stops?
What happens when the West stops getting the best people from developing countries?
I really have no idea of the answer to any of these questions. Yet, what I do know is the powers that be will do everything to keep it going.
Communism is discredited, but I wouldn't count it out (i'm being genuinely neutral here). I've been hearing for years that interest rates will go up to 'normal'. Yet, it seems they've been able to pretty much make 0-1% the new normal. Quantitative easing or whatever financial games they do at that level seems pretty common place too. Automation and efficiency's are helping keep inflation under control.
Basically, the governments/banks are able to basically have infinite spending in this manner and thus the ability to control the economy. They can dictate how much is spent on public services, how much to give to the elderly, how much to give to companies, how much to spend on R&D/startsup, how much to invest in the military...
Things keep on chugging along. Now I'm under no illusion. It could come crashing down any second now, but at the same time, they could simply keep this system chugging along.
Most people are already convinced of the need to keep the governmnet/banking stimulus, and most people like stability, and most is so abstracted today that it doesn't really matter anymore. We could very well end up with communism or something like that. We'd just have less force and probably involve banking/consumerism at some level. But the idea of a government run economy with all parts focusing on creating jobs/getting things the leaders deem need doing done. It's like we're already there. eh?
I'm not saying if it is good or bad, but it is interesting to see it develop. Bankers are pretty much onside with progressives/socialists now in terms of free money. Bankers don't want growth to stop and progressives/socialists need free money for the public sector and other spending. About the only ones against it are libertarians/anarchists. Maybe they can be placated with some kind of guaranteed income, and they can move out of the expensive areas and have a low cost sustained living.
This is more true than you think.
One of the big issues with feminism/gender wars is that it tries to view all issues as part of feminism/gender.
90% of the gender wars issues I've seen in terms of employment are just regular issues that would apply to a lot of men in the field.
The vast majority of men aren't hard driving negotiators seeking to rise to the very top to dominate the rest of men. A lot of men I work with are pretty darn cooperative, want vacation time, want time with their family...
We had a huge development in labor laws in the 1900s. But it was aptly called... a labor movement because it had to to do with labor issues. Minimum wages, overtime, safety regulations... I'm sure the arguments at that time were the time. If someone wants to work harder for the company by working more overtime, shouldn't they be allowed to? I'm not here to say whether this is right or not. It's not the point of the post. It's simply to say that back then, labor issues were called labor issues. Heck, I'm pretty sure communism had a huge male following.
But feminists today want to see everything as men as the enemy.
Crap loads of men are really really really shitty negotiators. Most engineers who toil for these companies are crappy negotiators. Standing up to the domineering male/female leader and be willing to risk being a trouble maker is a hard thing when the bills need to be paid. A lot of men would love universal laws that improved their labor conditions, standard pay, more security...
For any exploiting women think 'men' are doing to them, I guarantee you, 'men' are exploited even more. Ultimately, it has more to do with those in power, than any kind of gender issue.
Being raised Muslim, I often use this example.
Feminists will often say Islam is horrible to women because women could be taken as war booty (concubines/sex slaves). Men are the enemy!
Here's what they often miss. When wars happened in the past, the women might have been taken as concubines... the men were simply slaughtered and butchered. The powerful oppressed the weak... and despite what you might think... a lot of men are pretty weak relative to the strong man.
It's the same with pay. For every 'man' in power who pays a woman less than she 'deserves', there's an army of men being paid less than they 'deserve'.
Ultimately, this kind feminism is really the feminism of the top 5% (not exact number). If you're good enough to be able to really substantially negotiate your salary, chances are you're probably pretty okay in life and battling for some kind of leadership position. Who should get the leadership position? I really have no idea. Sometimes in tech for example, I wish some of my leaders were more pushy alpha types who'd push back on other people. Maybe the better negotiator should win here? This is ultimately the top players playing around and some top women trying to gain power from the top men by using other tactics.
I'm not sure how much of an issue this really is today. Just a couple of years back, for sure. It was a huge issue.
Heck, right now, many workplaces are switching to web solutions. This has one big advantage in terms of standards and legacy. There is definitely some QA here. many of these were big issues just a few years back. Be it IE6 or older windows applications. I think at my current slow enterprise role, we just got rid of the last non web solution. It still ran though on Windows 7, but its out of there.
If it really becomes a big enough issue for them to lose enterprise customers, I'm pretty sure they have a virtualization solution or they will keep sandboxed versions of legacy applications. It's a very solvable problem. Heck, it would probably cost them nothing at that point to release a free Windows XP Virtual Machine for that rare legacy support.
Ummm no.
I've been close to running out of gas a few times in my life. Most of the times involved long distance travel on highways away from cities with sparse gas stations and you just say F**K, why didn't I fill up at the last one. I had no idea it would be 200k until the next one.
There is simply a lot of anxiety in that. For whatever reason, I've never actually ran out of gas. But that fear is real and lucky for me, only happened on a few trips in rural areas when I was younger. Now I just know better.
I can only imagine driving an electric car, the kind of anxiety that would result. Heck, it might even affect regular day to day driving unless you live in an area with lots of recharge stations...
1. fewer recharge stations. With gas, you just kind of expect them everywhere. Heck, that's the attitude that got me in trouble on those rural trips when I was younger. I just magically expected gas stations.
2. Shorter range
3. longer recharge. My internal rational for now getting into low gas situations is simply that I convinced myself that the quick 5 minutes it takes to refill my gas is worth it to always keep my tank at least half full. I'm not sure how that equation changes with electric.
I'll add to this.
We have to separate 'science' from 'scientists' in a similar way you have to separate any practice from its practitioners.
Science is a really good methodology to get at the *truth* mainly by testing your hypothesis (scientific method).
In the end though, scientists are just people, as in any other group. They can and will be influenced by pride, status, money, power, politics...as any other group of people.
It's a tough line of argument where people end up talking about 'true science'
It's not just scientific journals, people will sometimes dismiss entire areas of 'science', especially in the social sciences/economics. Yet, from the outside perspective, its the same voices of experts touting studies and reports to get at the *truth*.
In the end though from a social perspective, how can we guarantee scientists adhere to the scientific method and search for truth, any more than catholic priests adhere to their creed (while raping little children).
I don't they will as scientists are just people. Put more power, money, politics, institutions under the scientific banner, and I think human behavior will take precedence over the adherence to the scientific theory.
I just don't get the big rush. I understand that green house gases are rising temperatures. I understand the possible impacts of rising water levels, more chaotic weather, changing farm lands...
But lets be clear. This polluting has been going on for the industrial revolution. Over two hundred years.
We're already getting fairly competitive hybrid and electric cars. Most car companies have decent models. Revolutionary firms like Tesla are there. Who knows what Google and Apple will do.
We already have a fair amount of renewables and it is continuing to increase. Even coal and other polluting fuels can be improved with better technology.
Much of the world is industrializing and this has lifting millions and billions of out poverty. Better still, this means stabilizing or even declining birth rates. People like to think of the world is getting overpopulated. But the pattern has been pretty consistent with much of the world getting down to a fertility rate around 2. If this is the case, that alone should massively reduce green house consumption in the next 100-200 years or so.
We have the technology and skill to avert much of the impacts of global warming. We can build levies and other flood protection measures. Maybe some regions are moved. Maybe we start different form of controlled farming. Global supply chains can move goods around the world pretty rapidly. If one region suffers a drought, things can be brought it from elsewhere.
And I am really skeptical if our leaders, even the ones championing global warming, actually see it as a great thread, instead of a means of political power.
Simple case. Obama spent his terms pushing through ObamaCare. Maybe worthy on its on right. But if we were truly facing a global disaster of global warming that threatened our existence, maybe... just maybe... he should have used his political capital and resources on that instead of healthcare.
And it's not just Obama. How many politicians or even scientists are willing to sacrifice for the anti-global warming effort?
Much like war, we get pretty cynical when they don't appear to make any sacrifices or when they don't demand sacrifices of everyone. Hey Bush, why don't you send your daughters to war in Iraq or why didn't you volunteer to go into actual war. Yet you seem pretty giddy about going to war in Iraq and other places.
The public's reaction is no different when facing politicians/scientists/academics who push for more power/taxes for 'global warming'. Are they willing to take a 30% paycut that would go to anti-global warming efforts? No... can't have that! Matter of fact, they really want to have increased funding!
Again, I'm not saying it is wrong. I am talking about perception here. Much like to win a war, maybe you need to pay your military contractors good money so they make really good weapons. But let's not pretend it doesn't create a high degree of cynicism about the true motivations.
In the end, maybe I'm just a bit positive, but I see the Earth warming a bit. We get through this. The technology is there. Our capabilities to fight the bad affects are there.
Maybe some parts of the world are hurt by it. But is global warming really the top concern for every part of the world. Turn on the news people. Thousands upon thousands are dying every day in a brutal civil war in Syria and the ME. Problems like this happen throughout the world.
Yeopi, this is the strange irony of our times.
People have inflated the value of healthcare and education over infrastructure.
This is not to say spending on healthcare or education is not good, just that it should come AFTER investments in infrastructure.
Roads, sewers, electricity... were the things governments were responsible before. Long before healthcare and education. Then these were added. Then people forgot about infrastructure.
You don't need large organization to get an education. All you really need is an adult and a room. Today, maybe even just a computer. For basic healthcare, all you need is a doctor to setup shop.
Heck, I grew up in an area without much healthcare aside from a doctor who practiced in his home.
But try getting by without roads, electricity, sewers...
Again, I'm not saying increasing healthcare and education is bad. Just saying it is a sad state where infrastructure if falling apart in many western nations and we spend so much on healthcare and education.
I would have much less resistance to this focus on equality of outcomes if people were not so keen to celebrate and profit from the benefits of the merit based system.
Tech is the prime example. Intense risk taking, insane work, insanely challenged environments, no security, crazy egos, ... kind of field.
Most progressives/leftists are willing to celebrate these companies and the 'new economy'. They celebrate in taxing these firms. They celebrate in the exports of these firms. They celebrate the greatness of their country via them.
Hey, you want to start talking about equal outcomes and leftist/progressive values, sure, I'm game. My family life is pretty important to me. Let me know when you give the 'boys club' mandatory 5 weeks vacation, fixed 40 hour weeks, job security, pensions, roles... every other bureaucratic tool.
But you know that won't happen. They profit from it too much.
It's like they want to leech of every success that is driven by the very culture they despise.
This is much more of a north american problem (canada included) as far as I can tell. In europe the private sector also has some of those benefits...
The tax issue is pretty complex and the idea that companies are 'hiding' profits or something is much more complex.
1. Most countries have a sales tax which captures the economic activity in their own country. I'm in Canada. For every IPhone sold, the government is going to get something like 10-15% of the sales price. Heck for a lot of low-margin business, the government gets more in sales tax than the company is going to make in profit for that sale
2. Most countries have taxes on wages. Apple employs thousands of people on its own dime. The government is then going to tax those people at anywhere from 20-50% depending on the country. To top it off, people employed by these companies don't get government assistance.
3. Money leaving the company to actual people in the form of capital gains, dividends... is also taxed again.
There is actually very little in the way of 'hiding' going on.
At every turn, the government gets to put it's hand in the jar so to speak. I'm not saying it is a bad thing,
But why is the corporate rate attractive to tax? I'd guess it is because the corporation is this abstract entity.
But its very interesting to see how different countries approach these things. The US has a number of really high profile companies and views that as things to be taxed to enrich America.
In say China, companies are backed by the state because they generate jobs and exports.
In Canada, we lack many such high profile companies and want to attract these companies, so we actually start lowering tax rates, giving incentives for companies to locate here, but fall short of actually backing them.
It's just interesting to see how things are viewed as either things to be taxed or things to be encouraged. Even something as simply as airports. In Canada, the government views airports as just another thing, so they have hefty leases and other things that airports have to pay. This results in airports, like Toronto Pearson having high fees that many people even choose to drive to Buffalo, NY, to take flights from there.
In the US, airports are viewed more as infrastructure, not revenue generators or to be revenue neutral; heck they're often subsidized.
It really is a matter of perspective. ....
But like all things, increase costs too much on anything relative to other countries, and people will find a way to avoid it.
Increase sales tax too much, and people will drive to the next country over with lower sales tax.
Make life hard for corporations... don't worry... you're corporations aren't that special in the world. Apple is nice, but it's not like Samsung isn't producing many phones.
What's interesting is people have problem paying 10-15% sales tax on products. That means the government takes on more in sales tax than most companies make in profit on the actual product.
Of course this depends on where you live. In some parts sales tax might be 0% and 25% in others. It's just funny looking at it that way.