Isn't a screenshot ofa 20 million pixel screen kind'a useless without 20M of your own? [Like the "demonstration pictures" on television ads . . . ]
:)
hawk
Re:"Impossible to drive" says the article
on
BYO Battlebot
·
· Score: 2
>I'm sure a heavy bot isn't as easy to drive as an R/C race car, but c'mon, most
>of these guys could do a lot better, and I think better controls would
>help.
the lack of tactile feedback would be a problem . . .
(I saw one guy using a freaking joystick... I think he got his
>clock cleaned, too. Use the right tool for the job, Chester!)
Hey, yeah! one of those microsoft joysticks with feedback:)
hmm, *are* the cars allowed to transmit information back?
>A parking lot is a lot bigger than the
>arena, and poor control won't be punished as much.
OK, so add weird women in peculiar black outfits and whips at the parking lot .
. .
hawk, recovering once more from an anonymous post . . .
oooh, star wars technology!
on
BYO Battlebot
·
· Score: 2
Never mind controls, you need only one: direction. Then hit him with a nuclear pumped X-ray laser. OK, so by it's nature, it destroys itself, but that's what MAD was all about:)
:)
hawk
but if it were barney . . .
on
BYO Battlebot
·
· Score: 2
You'd get people to pay again and again to see it *lose* . . .
hawk
But that's going too far . . .
on
BYO Battlebot
·
· Score: 2
>They allow autonomous bots, just none of the autonomous robots choose
>to compete against the human controlled robots.
building the autonomous bot is one thing. Letting it choose who it competes with is another:)
They weren't content to introduce either the technology for viruses in our word processors, or even a prototype virus. Now they're moving into *real* disease. They'l start with mono, then move into chickenpox. Neither of these will be so bad, being the 1.0 and 2.0 releases. But with v3.0 being code-named "cancer" . . .
And just think of your trips to the pharmacist. "I'm sorry, but you need to upgrade yourself to Microsoft Pancrease 2.7 and Microsoft Liver 3.3 before this antibiotic will work . . .
>>I said nothing of the sort. I said that increasing the minimum wage
>>increases unemployment, which has been born out by every study ever
>>conducted other than a couple of discredited cranks.
>Cite a single study that is not from a right wing propaganda outfit.
I did. If you think the AER is a right wing propoganda outfit, you seem to have defined right wing as, "anyone not advocagting all my views."
>You have a lot of opinions about what economics professors think. It
>is a pity you don't appear to ever have listened to one.
Gee, you're right. Penn State appointed me as an economics professor due to my complete ignorance of the field . . .
>Clearly there is a level at which a higher minimum wage will create
>unemployment, just as there is a level at which higher taxes will
>reduce the total tax revenues. The evidence suggests that none of the
>Western economies are currently anywhere near either situation, with
>the possible exception of some of the Nordic countries.
And the British economy before Thatcher. And possibly the American economy before the Carter tax cut.
>Nonsense. A person's politics and normative economics have absolutely
>nothing to do with the validity of their positive economics,
>A pretty naive view. Economics is not value blind as some proponents
>claim.
When it is not, it fails. Economics can suggest what the choices are, not the correct choice.
Before you can evaluate economic outcomes you have to define
>what your economic goals are.
Absolute nonsense. This is no more true than to say that to evaluate aerodynamic outcomes one must choose whetehr he wants to build a helicopter or an airplane. While the researcher's interest certainly affects *what* he studies, he is a poor scientist if it affects his results.
>That is an intrinsically political
>process and anyone who claims otherwise is either a fool or a liar.
Wow, the pre-emptive ad hominem. That aside, it is only intrinsically political in marxist analysis.
There's really no point continuing this. You seem to have decided that anyone who has views contrary to yours is a right wing hack, fool, or liar . . .
> Actually it was you who asserted that raising the minimum wage would
> inevitably lead to unemployment. I was merely pointing out that the
^^^^^^^^^^
> facts disprove your assertion, a causal connection was superfluous.
I said nothing of the sort. I said that increasing the minimum wage increases unemployment, which has been born out by every study ever conducted other than a couple of discredited cranks.
The "facts" that you point out are analogous to claiming that the ascent of an airplan disproves an assertion of gravity. There's something else happening at the same time that has a stronger effect.
> As for what the right wing argument is, I have not heard the
> 'investment' theory of trickle down hald as often as the consumption theory.
There is no consumption theory. When you here it as a consumption issue, it's either coming from someone who didn't understand the issue but latched onto the predicted result, or a journalist misstating something that he didn't understand.
>But in any case the investment theory is pretty hard to
>sustain. Capital is not a scarce resource. Up until 6 months ago it
>was possible to get pretty much unlimited funds for any Internet
>related project.
whoops. I was taking you seriously until this point; I guess you were just trolling. Just in case you took anyone in, the money that recklessly went into internet startups would have been invested in something else. That there were more dollars foolishly trying to buy *anything* related to the internet than there were available feasible projects in no way suggests that capital is not scarce.
> The availability of investment funds is set by the relative level of
> interest rates, that is why no serious economist would endorse the
> trickle down 'investment' theory.
You *really* need to learn some economics before making claims about what reasonable economists endorse. You seem to be hand-picking bits and pieces of various notions to come up with a package you like. For example, you took the poor spending money as driving the economy straight out of old keynsianism--which holds the savings/investment rate constant, and has the interest rate determined by this amount. Investment returns driving investment is a classical notion (and much more reasonable; there really aren't many kenesians left, but there are plenty of new keynesians and neo keynsians).
Noone who doesn't understand the mechanism by which lower tax rates lead to greater investment and employment will pass his qualifying exams in graduate school. Anyone *rejecting* the notion, other than because the *amount* of benefit to the poor is lest than the foregone revenues, is a crank, not a serious economist. Similarly, anyone *endorsing* it as a policy measure, other than on the grounds that the measured benefit is less than the cost, is similarly a crank.
>If the folk claiming that raising the minimum wage hurts the poor were
>notable champions of the poor on other issues their argument might be
>more credible.
Nonsense. A person's politics and normative economics have absolutely nothing to do with the validity of their positive economics, any more than Schockleys wierd views on race have anything to do with whether the transistor works. All economicists, save a couple of cranks, acknowledge that (outside some theorized pathological cases that have never been demonstrated) an increased minimum wage decreases employment. Furthermore, when the elasticity has been measured, it has been found that generally the *total* wage paid drops slightly. On the other hand, those receving the higher wage are indeed better off. The size of the tradeoff is a postive issue, beyond politics and values. Whether or not this makes the higher wage a better idea is a normative economic issue, for which economists have no claim to better answers than anyone else.
[argh, it took it anonymously, and won't let me post a variation . ..]
>Actually the experience of the UK and France when minimum wage laws
>were introduced was that unemployment fell.
THere were a *lot* of other things going on a that time. Attributing a
causal relation with a one-time change at that point in history is
just plain reckless . . .
>The mechanism is direct and acknowledged by the right when the
subject
>of the argument are the super-rich. The super rich (aka the 'wealth
>creators') the argument goes will respond to tax cuts by working
>harder, earning more money. The increasingly enriched pleutocracy
will
>then spend more money creating demand for 'stuff'. It is called the
>trickle down theory, to improve the lot of those at the bootm of
>society you have to give more gravy to those at the top and let it
>trickle down to the poor.
That's not how trickle down is supposed to help. The theory is that
instead of consuming, folks at this level invest, creating greater
demand for labor and higher wages.
This certainly happens, but there is an empirical question as to
whether the net gain for the lower end is more or less than the amount
given to hte upper. Also, this generally isn't in the context of
"giving" money to the rich, but in that of not taking enough. There is
certainly a tax rate that is counter productive (would *you* work with
a 100% income tax? How about 99%?), but I've ne er seen a serious
attempt at locating that rate. Democrats always insist we're below
that rate, Republicans insist we're above it, and a few of us get
ignored while hollering from the sidelines that it should be measured
. . . However, I'm certainly more receptive to the notion that
lowering tax rates that were high enough to choke off economic
activity will help the poor than the notion that in an efficient
economy lowering tax rates on the rich will help the poor (although
it's indisputable that there is *some* gain to the poor, I doubt that
it's as much help as sending them a government check in the same
amoutn as the
tax cut). Still, I'd be willing to look at hard numbers in either
direction.
>The flaw in the trickle down theory is that for folk in my income
>bracket expenditure is a very weak function of after their after tax
>income. If I make double what I made the year before I do not double
>my expenditure, or anything like it. I spend less than 10% of my
>income.
And what do you do with the rest? Eat it?:) The *point* of the
trickel-down argument is that the money is invested, causing a net
investment in new capital, increasing the demand for labor. Increased
current consumption is *not* what drives it. And again, it's an
empirical qquestion; there is certainly some gain for the poor, but
the question is whetehr they'd be better off with the untrickled
money.
>Poor folk save very little, if they get more money they spend it. And
>that expands the economy.
yes, they save little, spending all. Which is why trickle down
suggests that they're the wrong ones to give the money:)
hawk, again poinging out that he is not arguing for trickle down, but
explaining it [but will still doubtless get flamed and misunderstood
:) ]
>I've seen this asserted many times. I don't think I've ever seen any
>proof.
Read almost any labor economics journal, almost any issue:)
The wage elasticity of labordemand is well known. If memory serves, it's about -.15 in the U.S.
Specifically, see the debunking in the last issue of American Economic Review of last year, which manages to remain polite while pointing out the flaws/sloppieness/incompetence in the kruger/card study claiming that increasing the minimum wage in New Jersy increased fastfood employment. It's just not an issue that's in dispute among serious economists.
>OTOH, I have seen school teachers living on welfare, because their
>wage puts them so far below the poverty level. (And no, they didn't
>have cadillacs... well, one had a 15-20 year old cad that I think she
>inherited [but I'm not sure].)
Underpaid or not, teachers are *nowhere* near the minimum wage . ..whether they shoul be paid more is an entirely different level (and I think that they should be--but that's really "we"--I'm a professor making someithing like 1/4 his value on the private market, so I'm probably biased:)
>So the evidence that I've seen indicates the a wage level that is too
>low increases the need for welfare.
The problem here is the assum[ption that the job will still exist with a higher minimum wage (or that other jobs would still increase if the wage were forced upwards). In the long term, the answer is "no, the employment level drops," which puts more people on welfare.
>But the real point is, if the minimum wage is so low that one can't
>live on it, even when being frugal, then it is unjust.
The problem is that an employer just plain can't pay $10/hr for a job that only produces $5/hr.
Just/unjust doesn't change the productivity of the position. A solution that *doesn't* wipe out the jobs would be for someone other than the employer (probably the government) to supplement the wage--but this gets ugly, fast.
Also, in general, people don't stay at the minimum wage very long. It'sgenerally a first/reentry/teenager job, though there are exceptions. However, the pool of people who make the minimum wage in the long term is very, very, small compared to the labor force.
>The real impact would come from future companies choosing not to move
>into LA because of the taxes
Give the man a cigar. He just figured out the economics of a minimum wage increase, which works precisely this way.
Every time Congress increases the minimum wavge, one side of the aisle gets up and shouts that massive job loss will occur, while the other shouts that nothing will happen. Immediately after the increase, someone from the second side (Usually Ted Kennedy) loudly pronounces that there has been no job loss. Six months to a year later, though, the employment level has indead dropped. *exisiting* minimum wage employees are rarely fired after an increase, as their training costs hyave already been born. On the ohter hand, some of the jobs go unfilled when emptied, and others are never created.
THis is the aexact same thing. Once a firm has incurred sunk costs, you can tax it up to about that amount, and it stays put. But if you do this, no firm in its right mind will open a plant in your area.
>If I am looking for a unix development position,
>why is it necessary that I pad my resume with
>crap like "knows how to work Microsoft Office"?
>Or list every single operating system I have
>ever used? (I suppose then I'm being misleading
>when I leave out cpm, z, tandy-dos or my
>extensive experience with Pet Basic?)
It felt odd the first time I started deleting things from my resume. But once I reached around 7 languages there, a) it was overkill, and b) I was forgetting to include some of them:)
on top of that, these days, the details of my technical backround just aren't important to those likely to hire me. Noone even *cares* which languages a computational economist knows if he can read c and fortran, and is proficiet in Unix. For that matter, very few on the committee would understand the details . . .
> And Lawyers don't usually get PHD's. They get JD's.
hey, some of us do:) After five years of practicing law with my J.D., I went and got a Ph.D. . . .:)
The J.D. and M.D. are professional degrees and not "real" doctoral degrees.
The J.D. is the same degree as the L.L.B. (Bachelor of Law), but in the U.S., requires a regular bachelor's degree for entry. There is also an L.L.M., most typically in a tax area, that can come after the J.D./L.L.B.. Finally there is the "real" doctor of laws, the L.L.D. (or J.S.D. [doctor of jursiprudence]), which *very* few people have.
The modern M.D. (As opposed to the classical M.D. of the doctors of the university, which matched the Ph.D., L.L.D., and Doctor of Divinity) was largely concoted in the nineteenth century for the specific purpose of borrowing the respect of the doctors of the university. At the time, getting medical treatment was *much* more likely to harm than help the patient. The A.M.A. deserves a *lot* of credit for this fundamental change in the quality of medical care, but for an M.D. to attepmpt to disparage the Ph.D. with the "I'm a *real* doctor" bit is the height of chutzpah--not only is the Ph.D. the eductation to which the M.D. pretends, but the typical M.D. has never done a scrap of researh to contribute to the knowledge base.
>Really? You may be right, I have no numbers, but the places in US I
>have been most of the Ph.D. students have been Asian or European.
Yep, and they come *here* to get the degrees, while relatively few americans leave to get one . . . hmm, there might be a reason for that . . .
The better graduate programs are primarily (but not entirely) here. On average, the foreign students *are* better than the american students--but this is comparing the graduate student base from the entire US population to the cream of the crop from abroad.
Also, look at the ratios. The U.S. has what, 5% of the world's population? Yet we have far more than 1 in 20 of the graduate students in top programs. At 10%, we're *over*-represented, not under represented
>I
>sometimes think that the only reason USA hasn't become a third world
>country is the amazing number of bright minds they import from the
>rest of the world.
a) It would be impossible for the U.S. to become third world--it's not a wealth/development issue. U.S./Europe/US-sphere is 1st world. Soviet Union and it's sphere is second world. Then there's the third world, not drawn in by either.
b) we're running a hell of a racket, here:) We take the best minds in the world, and only send half of them back . . . but what do you expect? Our ancestors were thrown out of the best countries in europe!
>They don't seem to produce many of their own.
>Of course, this is in science and technology only. Maybe USA produce
>the worlds finest doctors and lawyers.
Yes, and the finest physcians, too (who tend to style themselve "Doctor" for having an M.D., a degree which lacks the most fundamental element of a doctoral degree, the contribution to knowledge . ..)
>The idea of using computers to write should be introduced, but this
>can be done just as easily with Emacs as with Word (and Emacs ha been
>in use much longer than Word has).
Wait a minute, aren't those two names for the same executable? You know, that bloated editor that tries to do absolutely everything and requires 115% of the resources of any shipping computer?
More seriously, the major advantage that Word has over Word Star is footnotes. The tables are usefull, too, in some applications, and the spell checker is better at suggesting alternatives (now; it used to be worse). The rest is pretty myuch eye-candy.
>Where was MS Office at 5 years ago? I don't recall the version number
>for Windows, but I believe the Mac versions of Word and Excel were at 3.
way, way, off.
Word 3 is somewhere around '86; I had it on an office machine in '87. Word 5.1 is late '92 or '93, and excel 4 along with it. These were also the last good products to come out of MS; I bought both of them.
Word for Windows 2.0 was a half- baked port of 5.1.
Then along came Word 6.0, so bad that they had to put 5.1 back on the product list. I kept using old macs to continue using 5.1 until I found lyx . . .
. . . we have the Nevada Gaming Commission. Every single gaming design approved for use in Nevada has been massively tested to make sure that it does indeed do what' it claims.
(Although about 10 years ago, there was a scandal where someone had a special key sequence that would cause the game to leave the "fair" power up mode and go to a mode that prevented a couple of the big payoffs--tough to find, as when you seize the game, it cuts power) . . .
> Hell, before July 4, a bunch of high school age
> kids were asked what the Fourth of July was celebrating, and they
> either didn't know, or thought that it was our independence from
> France...
Slashdot Mirror
:)
hawk
>of these guys could do a lot better, and I think better controls would
>help.
the lack of tactile feedback would be a problem . . .
(I saw one guy using a freaking joystick... I think he got his
>clock cleaned, too. Use the right tool for the job, Chester!)
Hey, yeah! one of those microsoft joysticks with feedback
hmm, *are* the cars allowed to transmit information back?
>A parking lot is a lot bigger than the
>arena, and poor control won't be punished as much.
OK, so add weird women in peculiar black outfits and whips at the parking lot .
. .
hawk, recovering once more from an anonymous post . . .
:)
hawk
hawk
>to compete against the human controlled robots.
building the autonomous bot is one thing. Letting it choose who it competes with is another
hawk
:)
hawk, wondering where he'll sleep (oh, wait--his wife won't use a computer, so she'll never see this
Expanding into new markets, of course.
They weren't content to introduce either the technology for viruses in our word processors, or even a prototype virus. Now they're moving into *real* disease. They'l start with mono, then move into chickenpox. Neither of these will be so bad, being the 1.0 and 2.0 releases. But with v3.0 being code-named "cancer" . . .
And just think of your trips to the pharmacist. "I'm sorry, but you need to upgrade yourself to Microsoft Pancrease 2.7 and Microsoft Liver 3.3 before this antibiotic will work . . .
:)
hawk
>>increases unemployment, which has been born out by every study ever
>>conducted other than a couple of discredited cranks.
>Cite a single study that is not from a right wing propaganda outfit.
I did. If you think the AER is a right wing propoganda outfit, you seem to have defined right wing as, "anyone not advocagting all my views."
>You have a lot of opinions about what economics professors think. It
>is a pity you don't appear to ever have listened to one.
Gee, you're right. Penn State appointed me as an economics professor due to my complete ignorance of the field . . .
>Clearly there is a level at which a higher minimum wage will create
>unemployment, just as there is a level at which higher taxes will
>reduce the total tax revenues. The evidence suggests that none of the
>Western economies are currently anywhere near either situation, with
>the possible exception of some of the Nordic countries.
And the British economy before Thatcher. And possibly the American economy before the Carter tax cut.
>Nonsense. A person's politics and normative economics have absolutely
>nothing to do with the validity of their positive economics,
>A pretty naive view. Economics is not value blind as some proponents
>claim.
When it is not, it fails. Economics can suggest what the choices are, not the correct choice.
Before you can evaluate economic outcomes you have to define
>what your economic goals are.
Absolute nonsense. This is no more true than to say that to evaluate aerodynamic outcomes one must choose whetehr he wants to build a helicopter or an airplane. While the researcher's interest certainly affects *what* he studies, he is a poor scientist if it affects his results.
>That is an intrinsically political
>process and anyone who claims otherwise is either a fool or a liar.
Wow, the pre-emptive ad hominem. That aside, it is only intrinsically political in marxist analysis.
There's really no point continuing this. You seem to have decided that anyone who has views contrary to yours is a right wing hack, fool, or liar . . .
hawk
> inevitably lead to unemployment. I was merely pointing out that the
^^^^^^^^^^
> facts disprove your assertion, a causal connection was superfluous.
I said nothing of the sort. I said that increasing the minimum wage increases unemployment, which has been born out by every study ever conducted other than a couple of discredited cranks.
The "facts" that you point out are analogous to claiming that the ascent of an airplan disproves an assertion of gravity. There's something else happening at the same time that has a stronger effect.
> As for what the right wing argument is, I have not heard the
> 'investment' theory of trickle down hald as often as the consumption theory.
There is no consumption theory. When you here it as a consumption issue, it's either coming from someone who didn't understand the issue but latched onto the predicted result, or a journalist misstating something that he didn't understand.
>But in any case the investment theory is pretty hard to
>sustain. Capital is not a scarce resource. Up until 6 months ago it
>was possible to get pretty much unlimited funds for any Internet
>related project.
whoops. I was taking you seriously until this point; I guess you were just trolling. Just in case you took anyone in, the money that recklessly went into internet startups would have been invested in something else. That there were more dollars foolishly trying to buy *anything* related to the internet than there were available feasible projects in no way suggests that capital is not scarce.
> The availability of investment funds is set by the relative level of
> interest rates, that is why no serious economist would endorse the
> trickle down 'investment' theory.
You *really* need to learn some economics before making claims about what reasonable economists endorse. You seem to be hand-picking bits and pieces of various notions to come up with a package you like. For example, you took the poor spending money as driving the economy straight out of old keynsianism--which holds the savings/investment rate constant, and has the interest rate determined by this amount. Investment returns driving investment is a classical notion (and much more reasonable; there really aren't many kenesians left, but there are plenty of new keynesians and neo keynsians).
Noone who doesn't understand the mechanism by which lower tax rates lead to greater investment and employment will pass his qualifying exams in graduate school. Anyone *rejecting* the notion, other than because the *amount* of benefit to the poor is lest than the foregone revenues, is a crank, not a serious economist. Similarly, anyone *endorsing* it as a policy measure, other than on the grounds that the measured benefit is less than the cost, is similarly a crank.
>If the folk claiming that raising the minimum wage hurts the poor were
>notable champions of the poor on other issues their argument might be
>more credible.
Nonsense. A person's politics and normative economics have absolutely nothing to do with the validity of their positive economics, any more than Schockleys wierd views on race have anything to do with whether the transistor works. All economicists, save a couple of cranks, acknowledge that (outside some theorized pathological cases that have never been demonstrated) an increased minimum wage decreases employment. Furthermore, when the elasticity has been measured, it has been found that generally the *total* wage paid drops slightly. On the other hand, those receving the higher wage are indeed better off. The size of the tradeoff is a postive issue, beyond politics and values. Whether or not this makes the higher wage a better idea is a normative economic issue, for which economists have no claim to better answers than anyone else.
>Actually the experience of the UK and France when minimum wage laws
>were introduced was that unemployment fell.
THere were a *lot* of other things going on a that time. Attributing a
causal relation with a one-time change at that point in history is
just plain reckless . . .
>The mechanism is direct and acknowledged by the right when the
subject
>of the argument are the super-rich. The super rich (aka the 'wealth
>creators') the argument goes will respond to tax cuts by working
>harder, earning more money. The increasingly enriched pleutocracy
will
>then spend more money creating demand for 'stuff'. It is called the
>trickle down theory, to improve the lot of those at the bootm of
>society you have to give more gravy to those at the top and let it
>trickle down to the poor.
That's not how trickle down is supposed to help. The theory is that
instead of consuming, folks at this level invest, creating greater
demand for labor and higher wages.
This certainly happens, but there is an empirical question as to
whether the net gain for the lower end is more or less than the amount
given to hte upper. Also, this generally isn't in the context of
"giving" money to the rich, but in that of not taking enough. There is
certainly a tax rate that is counter productive (would *you* work with
a 100% income tax? How about 99%?), but I've ne er seen a serious
attempt at locating that rate. Democrats always insist we're below
that rate, Republicans insist we're above it, and a few of us get
ignored while hollering from the sidelines that it should be measured
. . . However, I'm certainly more receptive to the notion that
lowering tax rates that were high enough to choke off economic
activity will help the poor than the notion that in an efficient
economy lowering tax rates on the rich will help the poor (although
it's indisputable that there is *some* gain to the poor, I doubt that
it's as much help as sending them a government check in the same
amoutn as the
tax cut). Still, I'd be willing to look at hard numbers in either
direction.
>The flaw in the trickle down theory is that for folk in my income
>bracket expenditure is a very weak function of after their after tax
>income. If I make double what I made the year before I do not double
>my expenditure, or anything like it. I spend less than 10% of my
>income.
And what do you do with the rest? Eat it?
trickel-down argument is that the money is invested, causing a net
investment in new capital, increasing the demand for labor. Increased
current consumption is *not* what drives it. And again, it's an
empirical qquestion; there is certainly some gain for the poor, but
the question is whetehr they'd be better off with the untrickled
money.
>Poor folk save very little, if they get more money they spend it. And
>that expands the economy.
yes, they save little, spending all. Which is why trickle down
suggests that they're the wrong ones to give the money
hawk, again poinging out that he is not arguing for trickle down, but
explaining it [but will still doubtless get flamed and misunderstood
:) ]
>proof.
Read almost any labor economics journal, almost any issue
The wage elasticity of labordemand is well known. If memory serves, it's about -.15 in the U.S.
Specifically, see the debunking in the last issue of American Economic Review of last year, which manages to remain polite while pointing out the flaws/sloppieness/incompetence in the kruger/card study claiming that increasing the minimum wage in New Jersy increased fastfood employment. It's just not an issue that's in dispute among serious economists.
>OTOH, I have seen school teachers living on welfare, because their
>wage puts them so far below the poverty level. (And no, they didn't
>have cadillacs
>inherited [but I'm not sure].)
Underpaid or not, teachers are *nowhere* near the minimum wage . .
>So the evidence that I've seen indicates the a wage level that is too
>low increases the need for welfare.
The problem here is the assum[ption that the job will still exist with a higher minimum wage (or that other jobs would still increase if the wage were forced upwards). In the long term, the answer is "no, the employment level drops," which puts more people on welfare.
>But the real point is, if the minimum wage is so low that one can't
>live on it, even when being frugal, then it is unjust.
The problem is that an employer just plain can't pay $10/hr for a job that only produces $5/hr.
Just/unjust doesn't change the productivity of the position. A solution that *doesn't* wipe out the jobs would be for someone other than the employer (probably the government) to supplement the wage--but this gets ugly, fast.
Also, in general, people don't stay at the minimum wage very long. It'sgenerally a first/reentry/teenager job, though there are exceptions. However, the pool of people who make the minimum wage in the long term is very, very, small compared to the labor force.
hawk
:)
hawk
>into LA because of the taxes
Give the man a cigar. He just figured out the economics of a minimum wage increase, which works precisely this way.
Every time Congress increases the minimum wavge, one side of the aisle gets up and shouts that massive job loss will occur, while the other shouts that nothing will happen. Immediately after the increase, someone from the second side (Usually Ted Kennedy) loudly pronounces that there has been no job loss. Six months to a year later, though, the employment level has indead dropped. *exisiting* minimum wage employees are rarely fired after an increase, as their training costs hyave already been born. On the ohter hand, some of the jobs go unfilled when emptied, and others are never created.
THis is the aexact same thing. Once a firm has incurred sunk costs, you can tax it up to about that amount, and it stays put. But if you do this, no firm in its right mind will open a plant in your area.
hawk, wearing his econ professor hat
hawk
>why is it necessary that I pad my resume with
>crap like "knows how to work Microsoft Office"?
>Or list every single operating system I have
>ever used? (I suppose then I'm being misleading
>when I leave out cpm, z, tandy-dos or my
>extensive experience with Pet Basic?)
It felt odd the first time I started deleting things from my resume. But once I reached around 7 languages there, a) it was overkill, and b) I was forgetting to include some of them
on top of that, these days, the details of my technical backround just aren't important to those likely to hire me. Noone even *cares* which languages a computational economist knows if he can read c and fortran, and is proficiet in Unix. For that matter, very few on the committee would understand the details . . .
hawk
thanks. But sorry, I haven't a clue where to find such a breakdown (other than, "check google")
hawk
> for it, I doubt it will happen.
I took a 90% pay cut from what I would have made the next year as a lawyer, and it was woth evgery penny . . .
hawk, who's still down 50% as a professor
hey, some of us do
The J.D. and M.D. are professional degrees and not "real" doctoral degrees.
The J.D. is the same degree as the L.L.B. (Bachelor of Law), but in the U.S., requires a regular bachelor's degree for entry. There is also an L.L.M., most typically in a tax area, that can come after the J.D./L.L.B.. Finally there is the "real" doctor of laws, the L.L.D. (or J.S.D. [doctor of jursiprudence]), which *very* few people have.
The modern M.D. (As opposed to the classical M.D. of the doctors of the university, which matched the Ph.D., L.L.D., and Doctor of Divinity) was largely concoted in the nineteenth century for the specific purpose of borrowing the respect of the doctors of the university. At the time, getting medical treatment was *much* more likely to harm than help the patient. The A.M.A. deserves a *lot* of credit for this fundamental change in the quality of medical care, but for an M.D. to attepmpt to disparage the Ph.D. with the "I'm a *real* doctor" bit is the height of chutzpah--not only is the Ph.D. the eductation to which the M.D. pretends, but the typical M.D. has never done a scrap of researh to contribute to the knowledge base.
hawk, j.d., ph.d., a real doctor
>have been most of the Ph.D. students have been Asian or European.
Yep, and they come *here* to get the degrees, while relatively few americans leave to get one . . . hmm, there might be a reason for that . . .
The better graduate programs are primarily (but not entirely) here. On average, the foreign students *are* better than the american students--but this is comparing the graduate student base from the entire US population to the cream of the crop from abroad.
Also, look at the ratios. The U.S. has what, 5% of the world's population? Yet we have far more than 1 in 20 of the graduate students in top programs. At 10%, we're *over*-represented, not under represented
>I
>sometimes think that the only reason USA hasn't become a third world
>country is the amazing number of bright minds they import from the
>rest of the world.
a) It would be impossible for the U.S. to become third world--it's not a wealth/development issue. U.S./Europe/US-sphere is 1st world. Soviet Union and it's sphere is second world. Then there's the third world, not drawn in by either.
b) we're running a hell of a racket, here
>They don't seem to produce many of their own.
>Of course, this is in science and technology only. Maybe USA produce
>the worlds finest doctors and lawyers.
Yes, and the finest physcians, too (who tend to style themselve "Doctor" for having an M.D., a degree which lacks the most fundamental element of a doctoral degree, the contribution to knowledge . .
hawk, a real doctor, not an M.D.
>can be done just as easily with Emacs as with Word (and Emacs ha been
>in use much longer than Word has).
Wait a minute, aren't those two names for the same executable? You know, that bloated editor that tries to do absolutely everything and requires 115% of the resources of any shipping computer?
More seriously, the major advantage that Word has over Word Star is footnotes. The tables are usefull, too, in some applications, and the spell checker is better at suggesting alternatives (now; it used to be worse). The rest is pretty myuch eye-candy.
hawk
> a piece of MS software that is still in wide use after 15 years?
uhh, word, maybe? Perhaps excel? Flight simulator? BASIC? (OK, that's stretching it
Other than Bob, can you name a microsoft product that's gone *out* of use?
Besides, real men use vi.
hawk
>for Windows, but I believe the Mac versions of Word and Excel were at 3.
way, way, off.
Word 3 is somewhere around '86; I had it on an office machine in '87. Word 5.1 is late '92 or '93, and excel 4 along with it. These were also the last good products to come out of MS; I bought both of them.
Word for Windows 2.0 was a half- baked port of 5.1.
Then along came Word 6.0, so bad that they had to put 5.1 back on the product list. I kept using old macs to continue using 5.1 until I found lyx . . .
hawk, who owned several macs
And I have yet to see one that was any better for it.
> But yer probably browsing on lynx anyways
What's the smiley for? Of course I"m using lynx.
hawk, who also uses vi and fortran
(Although about 10 years ago, there was a scandal where someone had a special key sequence that would cause the game to leave the "fair" power up mode and go to a mode that prevented a couple of the big payoffs--tough to find, as when you seize the game, it cuts power) . . .
hawk
> kids were asked what the Fourth of July was celebrating, and they
> either didn't know, or thought that it was our independence from
> France...
Cool. The Battle of Hastings was July 4, 1066?
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