The real "issue" here is that upper class people want to hang onto as much of their money as they can. That's certainly understandable, but it's not a particularly compelling argument.
Some, not all. I'm pretty well off, but I also understand that we have to have buyers and sellers - and it isn't a lot more complex than that. If I don't have money, I don't spend it. And even if some low wage people try to outspend their means with credit, it catches up to them in short order. Even then once they declare bankruptcy, some businesses lose out.
This whole "people iz teh enemy" whining is to be laid at the feet of a few people with pathological levels of greed, who have only their interests in mind, and not the country's.
Guess what? Those $35K robots are also cheaper than paying people $8/hr.
Or 5 dollars an hour. Would the US even had slavery if we had automation? Of course, robots will be cheaper.
Once upon a time, we seemed to understand that a healthy economy meant companies making things, and people having the money to buy things. That wage enabled people to buy cars, homes and other stuff. This enabled the manufacturer to make money, and the people working for them to buy the things that were manufactured. It was actually an ecosystem.
Then at some point, the employee became public enemy number one, a parasite of little use, a liability to be rid of if at all possible.
It was as if somehow, suddenly, there was only a need for one side of the equation, the ecosystem could support itself indefinitely using only the supply side.
You know - that never works in nature, and only works for a short time in business.
Having most of America unemployed will not work out well.
You don't buy the argument that increasing the cost of labor incentivizes a company to look for ways to automate the process to eliminate the labor cost? I guess you also don't believe in other economic "fallacies" like supply and demand and price elasticity.
Of course it does. Do you only buy the supply side of the equation? Those people wh buy the stuff?
Because - yes - if we replace every person working today with a robot, and eliminate the jobs, as far up the laddr as we can go let us say that we put 50 percent of th eUS workforce out of work - that will indeed save the companies a lot of money. How much money will they make in massivley unemployed America?
And if you say that more jobs than are lost will be produced, tell us what the jobs will be?
This is coming, but supply side only people seem to think that companies will do just fine when a lot of them are going to be put out of business by their own hand. Corporate suicide in fact. And of course, in modern day America, no one dares plan.Invisible hand of the free market and all.
If we don't plan, we're going to find out that the invisible hand of the free market has a distinct Darwinian bitchslap.
When a burger flipper starts getting $15.00/hr, what do you think my skills are going to cost you? Right now I'm only making 3 times minimum wage, if minimum wage doubles, so will mine, sooner or later and a lot of people think that way. Oh yeah and Business owners are going to want to keep wages at 20% of revenues so you know what that's going to do to the price of a burger, that $6.75 meal deal will go up to $8.45.
Talk to me about hedge fund managers Ken Griffin and James Simon who each made 1.7 billion last year - which is the equivalent of around 300,000 minimum wage jobs. Explain how minimum wage workers are paid too much, and how it is good policy for your's and my tax dollars to subsidize them.
But when you increase the labour cost by 25-100%, all in one go, you shock the system so bad that they will naturally look to any and all means necessary to rein in their labour expenses.
Not been tracking this issue in the news have you? Nobody is proposing increasing the minimum wage to $12 (much less $15) "all in one go". The "Raise the Wage Act" being submitted to Congress raises it to $12 but does it over four years. The law recently signed in California reaches $15 an hour, but takes 6 years to do it.
As well - would the opponents approve of government subsidizing of the same workers? That's a trick question of course, because taxpayers already do just that. McDonald's already has information for it's workers to apply for Government assistance. When WalMart comes to town, social services increase. I've posted the links so many times, I'll suggest the supply side only folks do a little google-fu themselves.
they successfully mouth politicians to help them pay their employees less, Why not? Greasing a few sleazeball's palms to the tune of a few mil is less money than paying higher wages, a sound business decision when the votes are just a baksheesh away.
Supply side free marketers are the biggest socialists around - always looking out for their employees to make the most of government assistance - what humanitarians!
Yeah because Mcdonalds has never heard of using a spreadsheet.
These companies are acutely aware of the cost of labor at all times, just like they are with the cost of food... if they can cut costs, they will, it means more profit for the folks on top.
But eventually the "folks on top" will start cannibalizing each other, and it will be very few indeed, perhaps a return to feudal society.
The "New jobs will come along to replace all of the old ones lost - even more jobs will be made!" depend on a rapidly increasing population.
So at this point, some serious discussion needs made about how to deal with the future. The present paradigm is one sided, Job creators versus the enemy - anyone except them. McD's might make some extra short term profit going worker less. But what happens when all of the fast food swill joints get rid of their employees? Better have new jerbs for your customers. You can save allkinds of money, but you need to make some money as well That requires customers.
And for all of the people that say that new jerbs will come along - I've yet to hear any suggestions other than th ecple of people who will maintain th robots. Okay, there's one or two out of every thirty replaced.
This is happening, and we need discussions other than about minimum wage takers. Think of them as money dispensing units that will stop.
And in six months buying a $25,000 robot will be cheaper than paying an employee $12/hr...
And in a year buying a $15,000 robot will be cheaper than paying an employee $9/hr...
They're going to replace employees with robots anyhow, I don't buy that increasing the minimum wage to whatever has anything to do with it.
As a little bit of context to this, Hedge fund managers each made 1.7 billion dollars last year. That's 2 people making around 300,000 minimum wage workers wages. Which is why I always laugh when I get marked as troll on slashdot whne I point out it is hilarious when billionaires tell us that it costs too much to pay people minimum wage.
But back to the subject at hand, after all of the takers are gone, what is their next trick? The shareholders don't put up with stasis - you have to make more money the next quarter. But you are absolutely correct. Automation will move up the wage tables. And maybe this will be a good thing, maybe it won't.
But as the majority of humanity becomes redundant, the shareholders better hope that the hedge fund managers buy everything the takers once did.
Liability? LOLWUT? Liability is irrelevant! The execs' cut is already in an offshore bank somewhere, so who cares if some meaningless paper entity has to declare bankruptcy? Privatize the profits, socialize the liabilities!
Then there goes the humans as part of the internet of things. I'm not talking about the CEO's, I'm talking about adding something to the long list of everything we sue about. CEO perks are something different.
I strongly suspect that 'millennials' have password protected accounts at far more places online than 51+ people. At that point it doesn't matter how strong your password is, but which shitty service stores your password as unsalted MD5 and lets the intern leave the remote login session active
My experience with millennials is that they share passwords, they tend towards short easy passwords and some even open text them. People older than 51 are not all the grandma meme, why some of us are even tech and security savvy, as well has having more assets to protect, so logic might come to the conclusion we are more careful.
I have to wonder what dingdong thought that making human health part of the internet of things was a good idea. If you thought that software litigation was expensive, wait until some failure of your fitbit or other monitoring device is accused of causing the problem, and heaven help you if a female user of the devices has a baby with some defect.
Expect the prices of these things to soar as their liability insurance costs far outweigh their costs of production and advertising.
I remember a kid in second grade who was caught pastejacking in second grade. Sent him away, and never came back. The school had to buy all new paste too.
Perhaps you would like to argue the points I made rather than guess at my understanding of the laws of physics.
I think I did in other posts. To recap, assumptions have to be made in any science. And it isn't that you are wrong, it's just that we don't know about certain things.
And it's pretty difficult to decide matters like population, technical advances, and issues such as peak fossil fuel. So you make certain assumptions.
This one made some assumptions that we would continue on the same path as we are on today. If your technology increasing examples happen - what are they? So you either go out on a limb like predicting exactly what you think will happen - which opens up another round of arguments, or you guess at percentages of changes by unknown technology, or you do as tehy did, which is to assume stasis in use. That in itself makes for some argument, but if some politicians and their owners have their way stasis is exactly what they want.
Now between you, me, and the chachalacas on the back porch - status quo is very unlikely, bought off politicians or their owners regardless. If the USA tries to maintain energy production with a great emphasis on fossil fuels, we'll likely fall behind the countries that move on. We probably will as well, only with a lot of waster human energy in the process,
But there is nothing at all wrong with a study that points out what happens if we stay on the road we are on.
Coos Bay and southern coastal range- ODOT ran into a vein trying to build a bypass on 38 between Elkton and Green Acres. They were trying to take the loop out of the road by going on the other side of the mountain, but the coal turned out to be a rather unstable road bed in places; the project went way over budget and had to be abandoned.
Oh yeah, Even anthracite coal is brittle, and the Subituminous stuff brittle and soft at the same time. I appreciate the reference to coal in Oregan - being from coal country, I'm interested in mining and it's sordid history. I've always offered to take people on tours of the upper parts of our county - red rivers, abandoned high banks totally destroyed lands that won't be useable for any purpose other than 4 wheeling and bike riding - but be careful because going over a high bank is forever - for some thousands of years before a new Gossan cap is formed, and new topsoil accumulates. note: I bitch, but the reclamation has become much better. It looks kinda like a prairie on some of the mountaintop's but nothing like the previous destruction, and even some falcons have moved in - wonderful to watch them hunt.
It is generally accepted that all long term economic growth comes from technological innovation. If you want to extrapolate from current trends you have to factor in economic growth and therefore some technological progress. To assume we will be using the same energy generation methods in 200 years is ludicrous. I don't need to know what the technological progress will be to know that there will be progress.
There is a saying in the intel field "You don't know what you don't know."
It pretty much fits in with trying to figure out what energy will look like in the future. Will it be nuclear? will we be using solar, wind, coal? NatGas? Will we exhaust the fossil fuels before then? Will some of us use renewables and some not? Will it be fusion? Will someone finally figure out how to make Lepcon solar cells? Will someone figure out how to burn cannel coal with 0 pollutants?
We don't know. But that doesn't mean that we say "We don't know, so don't even speculate.
Scew that Because it's not really hard to figure out percentages of production and population growth. You or I could come up with 50 different scenarios with 50 different assumptions. and calculate the radiative forcing.
You apparently don't live in Canada. Where you have no choosing of your own, and by law in most provinces you must sell that electricity to the provincial energy board.
SRSLY? You men if you install a solar cell in Canada, you have to sell it's output? No one can just install cells enough for themselves?
You are asking someone who probably believes that the laws of physics has a liberal bias, so my guess id "Drill Baby Drill!"
Do you guys ever get tired of spouting this crap? Coming off as a child right off the bat does not help your argument.
Not until you stop spouting your own crap. If you want to bring reasoned science based arguments to the table, I'm happy do discuss like an adult.
But if yoou stick your fingers in your ears and deny basic physics, I reserve the right to make as much fun of you as the clown and denialist that you are.
I can argue th ecase with intelligence. You however, cannot.
Maybe it would smell better if you fags would actually stop fucking around with Lunix once in awhile and clean your laundry. Stop endlessly searching for unsupported codecs to your massive collection of faggot porn and do the laundry once in awhile. Put the clothes in the washer, turn it on, eat a dick, move the clothes to the dryer, turn it on, eat another dick, remove the clothes from the dryer, and fold them up. Then you can go back to your faggot porn.
We should mod this up to 5 so that people can ridicule you for the lamest troll ever.
That's what we do. Works very well and since we have one of the new low-water/low detergent washers it freshens up the washer as well. Hard to imagine such awful smelling stuff like ammonia can make things smell good, but it does.
Slashdot Mirror
The real "issue" here is that upper class people want to hang onto as much of their money as they can. That's certainly understandable, but it's not a particularly compelling argument.
Some, not all. I'm pretty well off, but I also understand that we have to have buyers and sellers - and it isn't a lot more complex than that. If I don't have money, I don't spend it. And even if some low wage people try to outspend their means with credit, it catches up to them in short order. Even then once they declare bankruptcy, some businesses lose out.
This whole "people iz teh enemy" whining is to be laid at the feet of a few people with pathological levels of greed, who have only their interests in mind, and not the country's.
Guess what? Those $35K robots are also cheaper than paying people $8/hr.
Or 5 dollars an hour. Would the US even had slavery if we had automation? Of course, robots will be cheaper.
Once upon a time, we seemed to understand that a healthy economy meant companies making things, and people having the money to buy things. That wage enabled people to buy cars, homes and other stuff. This enabled the manufacturer to make money, and the people working for them to buy the things that were manufactured. It was actually an ecosystem.
Then at some point, the employee became public enemy number one, a parasite of little use, a liability to be rid of if at all possible.
It was as if somehow, suddenly, there was only a need for one side of the equation, the ecosystem could support itself indefinitely using only the supply side.
You know - that never works in nature, and only works for a short time in business.
Having most of America unemployed will not work out well.
You don't buy the argument that increasing the cost of labor incentivizes a company to look for ways to automate the process to eliminate the labor cost? I guess you also don't believe in other economic "fallacies" like supply and demand and price elasticity.
Of course it does. Do you only buy the supply side of the equation? Those people wh buy the stuff?
Because - yes - if we replace every person working today with a robot, and eliminate the jobs, as far up the laddr as we can go let us say that we put 50 percent of th eUS workforce out of work - that will indeed save the companies a lot of money. How much money will they make in massivley unemployed America?
And if you say that more jobs than are lost will be produced, tell us what the jobs will be?
This is coming, but supply side only people seem to think that companies will do just fine when a lot of them are going to be put out of business by their own hand. Corporate suicide in fact. And of course, in modern day America, no one dares plan.Invisible hand of the free market and all.
If we don't plan, we're going to find out that the invisible hand of the free market has a distinct Darwinian bitchslap.
When a burger flipper starts getting $15.00/hr, what do you think my skills are going to cost you? Right now I'm only making 3 times minimum wage, if minimum wage doubles, so will mine, sooner or later and a lot of people think that way. Oh yeah and Business owners are going to want to keep wages at 20% of revenues so you know what that's going to do to the price of a burger, that $6.75 meal deal will go up to $8.45.
Talk to me about hedge fund managers Ken Griffin and James Simon who each made 1.7 billion last year - which is the equivalent of around 300,000 minimum wage jobs. Explain how minimum wage workers are paid too much, and how it is good policy for your's and my tax dollars to subsidize them.
But when you increase the labour cost by 25-100%, all in one go, you shock the system so bad that they will naturally look to any and all means necessary to rein in their labour expenses.
Not been tracking this issue in the news have you? Nobody is proposing increasing the minimum wage to $12 (much less $15) "all in one go". The "Raise the Wage Act" being submitted to Congress raises it to $12 but does it over four years. The law recently signed in California reaches $15 an hour, but takes 6 years to do it.
As well - would the opponents approve of government subsidizing of the same workers? That's a trick question of course, because taxpayers already do just that. McDonald's already has information for it's workers to apply for Government assistance. When WalMart comes to town, social services increase. I've posted the links so many times, I'll suggest the supply side only folks do a little google-fu themselves.
they successfully mouth politicians to help them pay their employees less, Why not? Greasing a few sleazeball's palms to the tune of a few mil is less money than paying higher wages, a sound business decision when the votes are just a baksheesh away. Supply side free marketers are the biggest socialists around - always looking out for their employees to make the most of government assistance - what humanitarians!
Yeah because Mcdonalds has never heard of using a spreadsheet.
These companies are acutely aware of the cost of labor at all times, just like they are with the cost of food... if they can cut costs, they will, it means more profit for the folks on top.
But eventually the "folks on top" will start cannibalizing each other, and it will be very few indeed, perhaps a return to feudal society.
The "New jobs will come along to replace all of the old ones lost - even more jobs will be made!" depend on a rapidly increasing population.
So at this point, some serious discussion needs made about how to deal with the future. The present paradigm is one sided, Job creators versus the enemy - anyone except them. McD's might make some extra short term profit going worker less. But what happens when all of the fast food swill joints get rid of their employees? Better have new jerbs for your customers. You can save allkinds of money, but you need to make some money as well That requires customers.
And for all of the people that say that new jerbs will come along - I've yet to hear any suggestions other than th ecple of people who will maintain th robots. Okay, there's one or two out of every thirty replaced.
This is happening, and we need discussions other than about minimum wage takers. Think of them as money dispensing units that will stop.
And in six months buying a $25,000 robot will be cheaper than paying an employee $12/hr... And in a year buying a $15,000 robot will be cheaper than paying an employee $9/hr...
They're going to replace employees with robots anyhow, I don't buy that increasing the minimum wage to whatever has anything to do with it.
As a little bit of context to this, Hedge fund managers each made 1.7 billion dollars last year. That's 2 people making around 300,000 minimum wage workers wages. Which is why I always laugh when I get marked as troll on slashdot whne I point out it is hilarious when billionaires tell us that it costs too much to pay people minimum wage.
But back to the subject at hand, after all of the takers are gone, what is their next trick? The shareholders don't put up with stasis - you have to make more money the next quarter. But you are absolutely correct. Automation will move up the wage tables. And maybe this will be a good thing, maybe it won't.
But as the majority of humanity becomes redundant, the shareholders better hope that the hedge fund managers buy everything the takers once did.
The FCC takes very seriously is jamming. I think that the 48K fine might be a record forfeiture.
Liability? LOLWUT? Liability is irrelevant! The execs' cut is already in an offshore bank somewhere, so who cares if some meaningless paper entity has to declare bankruptcy? Privatize the profits, socialize the liabilities!
Then there goes the humans as part of the internet of things. I'm not talking about the CEO's, I'm talking about adding something to the long list of everything we sue about. CEO perks are something different.
For example, I use my least secure password for slashdot. If you pwn my slashdot account, you need to move out of your mother's basement.
Captcha: Diffused.
You save the captcha? How does that work the next time you post, AC?
I strongly suspect that 'millennials' have password protected accounts at far more places online than 51+ people. At that point it doesn't matter how strong your password is, but which shitty service stores your password as unsalted MD5 and lets the intern leave the remote login session active
My experience with millennials is that they share passwords, they tend towards short easy passwords and some even open text them. People older than 51 are not all the grandma meme, why some of us are even tech and security savvy, as well has having more assets to protect, so logic might come to the conclusion we are more careful.
I'm 66, and 65 isn't elderly. It may have been elderly 50 years ago, but not now.
Reminds me of those TV commercials where a woman states how she isn't going to age with a "I don't think so!"
Good luck with never growing old.
I hope not. Almost 60 here and I hope that I am not "elderly" in 5 more years.
Based on family history, that would mean that I will have to live about 30 years as an "elderly person".
Welcome to the flip side of living longer. It's all pasted onto the elderly part.
As they had a $358 million IPO, that dingdong thought "Hey, I bet I can make a lot of money."
358 million is just a drop in the bucket when the full effects of the liability exposure kicks in.
Expect the prices of these things to soar as their liability insurance costs far outweigh their costs of production and advertising.
I remember a kid in second grade who was caught pastejacking in second grade. Sent him away, and never came back. The school had to buy all new paste too.
This is why we can't have anything nice.
Perhaps you would like to argue the points I made rather than guess at my understanding of the laws of physics.
I think I did in other posts. To recap, assumptions have to be made in any science. And it isn't that you are wrong, it's just that we don't know about certain things.
And it's pretty difficult to decide matters like population, technical advances, and issues such as peak fossil fuel. So you make certain assumptions.
This one made some assumptions that we would continue on the same path as we are on today. If your technology increasing examples happen - what are they? So you either go out on a limb like predicting exactly what you think will happen - which opens up another round of arguments, or you guess at percentages of changes by unknown technology, or you do as tehy did, which is to assume stasis in use. That in itself makes for some argument, but if some politicians and their owners have their way stasis is exactly what they want.
Now between you, me, and the chachalacas on the back porch - status quo is very unlikely, bought off politicians or their owners regardless. If the USA tries to maintain energy production with a great emphasis on fossil fuels, we'll likely fall behind the countries that move on. We probably will as well, only with a lot of waster human energy in the process,
But there is nothing at all wrong with a study that points out what happens if we stay on the road we are on.
Coos Bay and southern coastal range- ODOT ran into a vein trying to build a bypass on 38 between Elkton and Green Acres. They were trying to take the loop out of the road by going on the other side of the mountain, but the coal turned out to be a rather unstable road bed in places; the project went way over budget and had to be abandoned.
Oh yeah, Even anthracite coal is brittle, and the Subituminous stuff brittle and soft at the same time. I appreciate the reference to coal in Oregan - being from coal country, I'm interested in mining and it's sordid history. I've always offered to take people on tours of the upper parts of our county - red rivers, abandoned high banks totally destroyed lands that won't be useable for any purpose other than 4 wheeling and bike riding - but be careful because going over a high bank is forever - for some thousands of years before a new Gossan cap is formed, and new topsoil accumulates. note: I bitch, but the reclamation has become much better. It looks kinda like a prairie on some of the mountaintop's but nothing like the previous destruction, and even some falcons have moved in - wonderful to watch them hunt.
And I see I've started to prattle on.....
It is generally accepted that all long term economic growth comes from technological innovation. If you want to extrapolate from current trends you have to factor in economic growth and therefore some technological progress. To assume we will be using the same energy generation methods in 200 years is ludicrous. I don't need to know what the technological progress will be to know that there will be progress.
There is a saying in the intel field "You don't know what you don't know."
It pretty much fits in with trying to figure out what energy will look like in the future. Will it be nuclear? will we be using solar, wind, coal? NatGas? Will we exhaust the fossil fuels before then? Will some of us use renewables and some not? Will it be fusion? Will someone finally figure out how to make Lepcon solar cells? Will someone figure out how to burn cannel coal with 0 pollutants?
We don't know. But that doesn't mean that we say "We don't know, so don't even speculate.
Scew that Because it's not really hard to figure out percentages of production and population growth. You or I could come up with 50 different scenarios with 50 different assumptions. and calculate the radiative forcing.
What's to stop people from creating their own hydrogen at home? Even running the conversion on solar power.
Nothing except cost.
Beans beans the musical fruit......
You apparently don't live in Canada. Where you have no choosing of your own, and by law in most provinces you must sell that electricity to the provincial energy board.
SRSLY? You men if you install a solar cell in Canada, you have to sell it's output? No one can just install cells enough for themselves?
You are asking someone who probably believes that the laws of physics has a liberal bias, so my guess id "Drill Baby Drill!"
Do you guys ever get tired of spouting this crap? Coming off as a child right off the bat does not help your argument.
Not until you stop spouting your own crap. If you want to bring reasoned science based arguments to the table, I'm happy do discuss like an adult.
But if yoou stick your fingers in your ears and deny basic physics, I reserve the right to make as much fun of you as the clown and denialist that you are. I can argue th ecase with intelligence. You however, cannot.
Maybe it would smell better if you fags would actually stop fucking around with Lunix once in awhile and clean your laundry. Stop endlessly searching for unsupported codecs to your massive collection of faggot porn and do the laundry once in awhile. Put the clothes in the washer, turn it on, eat a dick, move the clothes to the dryer, turn it on, eat another dick, remove the clothes from the dryer, and fold them up. Then you can go back to your faggot porn.
We should mod this up to 5 so that people can ridicule you for the lamest troll ever.
Your mother was a Hamster.
What about adding some ammonia to the wash?
That's what we do. Works very well and since we have one of the new low-water/low detergent washers it freshens up the washer as well. Hard to imagine such awful smelling stuff like ammonia can make things smell good, but it does.