The basic argument for zero-based budgeting is that if you start with a blank sheet of paper and add the things you really need in a school, you'll end up with a short list with a relatively small bottom line. However, if you use incremental budgeting, starting with a multi-page sheet of every current itemized cost, you end up with a much larger bottom line, even if you tweak each item's budget a little. The implication is that many items on the budget aren't crucial to education but are part of the budget because they've always been there.
It's comparable to the difference between adjusting every employee's salary, and firing everyone and hiring new people for only the positions you really need.
Actually, the Church hated Martin Luther because he advocated plebeians reading the Bible for themselves, rather than only the priests who knew Latin being able to read it for them, and telling them what it 'REALLY' means. So they don't always like literacy either. That said, Muslims are expected to be able to read the Koran for themselves (and even memorize it).
My take on it is that the budgeting at public schools is as big of a mess as budgeting at NASA. Way too much is wasted on legacy make-work boondoggle cronyist handouts. In the last slashdot discussion of this, someone linked to this image which pretty succinctly summarizes the problem. This is magnified by the problem of school administrators getting a large salary increase in the last year or two of work before retirement, because their pension is based on their salary at the point of retirement; and thus they get an inflated pension.
I was thinking that regulations could mandate a maximum portion of a school's staff that is non-teaching administrative staff, but then those staff members would teach 1 hour a year to be classified as 'teaching staff' thus gaming the system, so there'd need to be a stricter definition of 'teaching staff' as well. Aside from a nurse, janitors, principal, career counselor, and social worker, how many other administrators do you need?
A book I read years ago on how to fix America's schools advocated using zero-based budgeting and cutting non-academic 'side-shows' like sports teams, then starting school a couple hours later, once children are actually awake enough to learn. A related book ('The End of Homework') also advocated eliminating homework as a way to save time that'd be better spent on one-to-one assistance.
I don't think you should wait much longer to pull the trigger on a purchase
Actually, rumor is that Nvidia is going to release the 1100 series GPUs in June or July. They're expected to have about 40% higher performance than the 1000 series. Also, the Etherium ASICs are dropping in July; assuming there's not a hard fork that makes them useless (and even if there is), there will be a sharp price drop in Etherium at that time, leading to lower GPU demand by cryptominers.
However, you're assuming that all delta-V is equal. Delta-V (fuel) being launched from Earth costs much more delta-V to launch to space than delta-V (fuel) being launched from the moon, coming from fuel created from resources mined from the moon's poles, due to Earth's stronger gravity. Now if we had a space elevator, then this might be moot.
I recall reading about how a large portion of adoptive parents end up 'giving back' older children that they adopt, due to supposed 'behavioral problems' with the child that can't be reconciled. Turns out these problems are generally with the parents, being unable to adapt to life with that child, rather than anything inherent about the child themselves.
Dating websites revolve around the concept of 'compatibility' without daring to question the related assumptions about the mechanics of romantic relationships. It may be that some people just can't make romantic relationships work with their lives, or aren't willing to do what it takes to make them work. It doesn't help that these dating site profiles generally leave out one's expectations for gender/relationship roles. If a man strongly believes that women belong in the kitchen and should only speak when spoken to, that should probably be taken into account by other people or the matching algorithm. How dominant or submissive one is, and how dominant of a partner they want, is a good example of an important criterion that people are generally ok with sharing.
Because people with undesirable reviews would delete/abandon their account and make another. Or jump to another dating site/app, if they're unable to do that. Also, someone with many reviews would be implied to date lots of people, therefore one's chances of something long-term are lower than with someone who only has a few. Also, the reviews would be filled with endless drama/bitching/doxxing/overly personal stuff/creeper posts and it'd be impossible to moderate. At best you'd get some kind of star rating in a few categories.
In the old days that was called 'dating'. After you chose the most likely suitor and decided to be in an exclusive relationship with them, that was called 'going steady'. It's only 'two-timing' if you're supposedly going steady.
I'm thinking that time and a half isn't enough to fix overtime abuse, and that it needs to be higher to encourage usage of more workers. Otherwise, reducing the 40 hours work week won't be as effective.
The question is, will the changes in government required to accept and implement a UBI happen before or after the people start demanding one. Technology will eventually take away the choice to continue punting the issue. Wealth will be distributed somehow, and 'what job you have' will decreasingly be the determinant of that.
Indeed, it would be easier to lower the cost of living so that they wouldn't need to pay out so much to give people enough to live off of. That might require some *shudder* regulations, though. Also, the money would have to go directly to the people rather than giving it to corporations and 'hoping' it'll trickle down to people.
Redistributing wealth gained from selling nationalized natural resources, ok, but that's not sustainable everywhere to the point to fund a UBI. What happens when electric vehicles drive down demand for oil? When coal electric generation is less profitable than solar? There goes your carbon tax income, too. Even for resources that won't become obsolete, it's presumed that a country is selling its resources more than it's importing i.e. running a trade surplus, and obviously not every nation can have a trade surplus.
What's the benefit of free tuition when 70% of people go on to University and there are too few teachers and too few field-related jobs to support all of the degrees being earned? I thought AI was going to create structural unemployment anyways, even those who are University-educated. Free broadband I'm cool with, since it's basic infrastructure and ought to be nationalized like roadways and water pipes; it's easy to throttle ethically, unlike say electricity use where some will abuse it (cryptocoin mining) yet causing brownouts is troublesome (your electric heater shutting down in winter).
Localities charging businesses to use the air, water and minerals already exists. Pollution regulations, and cap-and-trade, cover the air. Mineral and water rights are sold just like land, and businesses can buy water directly from a locality as well. Businesses have to pay for a license to use electromagnetic spectrum, too. These may not technically be 'taxes' but the effect is the same.
The 'use blockchain to split public assets and then trade them like cryptocoins' idea is asinine. I give it a week before the usual suspects buy up all the cryptoassets, cornering the market, effectively privatizing public assets.
The only good idea here is taxing speculation, as e.g. a percentage of the value of every securities trade rather than the net profit on the balance sheet at the end of the year. This has been suggested many times before, though.
My personally preferred idea for a UBI: Step one: utilize eminent domain law to buy out and nationalize ALL land and residential buildings in the country. People/buildings can remain where they are. Step two: implement SANE rental prices for contractual use of land, decided by calculation of objective measures of the land's value, thus making it immune to bubbles. Step three: free housing for everyone, no more paying to live in an apartment. Obvious caveats: needs efficient enough bureaucracy (ha!) to not run into the red-tape problems Cuba did with nationalized residences. How to decide who gets to live where, if they get a house versus an apartment, how many square feet? Waiting lists; less-picky people get preference, encouraging people to only ask for the minimum they require. Councils of engineers, social planners and architects will decide when buildings need to be torn down for safety reasons, and what kind of new residences to erect and where.
IMO if people have free housing, the other details don't matter so much. Food is relatively cheap and there are plenty of food banks/food stamp programs that already help with that. Water and broadband would be free, you'd only pay for electricity and gas (although honestly, how much gas can someone use? nationalize that too, why not...)
Wait, how're we going to pay for all that nationalizing of land and residences? By nationalizing the patent and public research system. The government now owns all patents, no more worrying about first to file; on the upside, they will fight infringement in court on their own dime (and are thus motivated to spend money not to grant obvious/overbroad patents, although selective enforcement could be a problem), and let the filer keep 20% of any licensing revenues. Public research leads to public patents, the people get 100% of licensing fees. Ditch software patents while you're at it. Eventually, as new technology emerges and takes over, ~80% of all wealth will be nationalized due to patent licensing, with businesses who utilize those patents owning about 20%
The point is that these outages are rare enough in certain places that it's cheaper overall to go cashless. Sure, if you live in a country where the electric grid is down 18 hours a day, cashless might not be for you (although if it's completely cellular-based, it might yet be). Where I live, I haven't lost electricity in a few years, and it was only for a few minutes when I did. Remember also that if you have a robbery, that might interrupt service, require you to count new tills before you can take anyone's cash, etc. I've seen a till be hung up for an hour while it's counted and recounted in front of a customer who insists they were shortchanged. Cash is no magic bullet with zero viscosity.
The calculation used to officially determine the 'poverty line' in the USA is bullshit and thus it shouldn't be utilized for anything. Here's how it works: a low-cost diet is tallied to $X, it's then assumed that food will constitute 1/3 of a poor person's expenditures, so then $X is multiplied by 3 to give the 'poverty line'. Ok, food IS about 1/3 of my expenditures... but the cost of food nationwide is relatively constant, particularly in comparison to the cost of housing. Depending on where you live and your housing arrangement, one might pay between $300 and $1200 a month in rent/mortgage (assuming you're not in a place bursting with UMC residents like Manhattan or San Diego).
So, a much better poverty line calculation would be $W transportation costs + $X food + $Y average rent & utilities for 1-bedroom apartment in your ZIP code + $Z average Bronze-level health insurance plan for someone your age. However, any recalculation of the poverty line that raises the dollar amount will never be used officially since it'd make it look like more people are poor now than before during the previous administration. That's why laws say e.g. 'below 130% of the poverty line' instead of using a better calculation.
They can use something like Square as a stopgap for those situations. There are dedicated cellular modems you can plug into your network to provide redundancy, as well.
Actually, I'd like a Google Maps hack showing everyone nearby who has eaten at Chipotle in the last 3 days (ok who am I kidding, 36 hours) so I can stay way the hell away.
Many of these conservative banks don't consider tech to be a core aspect of their business, any more than office supplies are. Thus it makes sense to outsource the tech stuff as much as possible. What banking is traditionally 'about' is relationships: talking to a client in a room, and selling them a financial service that will probably be eventually profitable for the bank. If there's an existing relationship it might be done over the phone, maybe with some paperwork faxed; but it's still pretty clear there's a person on the other end.
Now, investment banking, especially the parts that deal with high-speed trading, are absolutely about tech. But traditionally (during Glass-Steagal) these two operations were separated.
we're good at judging people and detecting if someone is telling the truth.
Hahaha, no. Experienced detectives trying to tell if someone is lying in response to a yes/no question, using their gut instincts, do no better than a coin flip. Also, remember this story posted just a few days ago: multiple forged signatures, and no investigation done before $Millions were already forked over to the scammers. Think about all the stories of scammers who use social engineering to convince corporate officers to wire them $Millions. OTOH, AI (ok, algorithms) has been used in automated fraud detection systems for decades.
Besides, technology being ABLE to replace half of workers is very different from those workers actually being replaced. Many banks are led by conservatives, and won't rush out to replace half their workforce; they'll slooowwwwllllyyy roll it out in test markets for a decade first, maybe waiting for several competitors to announce plans to do so first. Remember how long it took to roll out EMV in the USA? We didn't even get 'chip & PIN', just 'chip & signature'... oh and they got rid of the signature requirement so it's just 'chip' now.
Slashdot Mirror
The basic argument for zero-based budgeting is that if you start with a blank sheet of paper and add the things you really need in a school, you'll end up with a short list with a relatively small bottom line. However, if you use incremental budgeting, starting with a multi-page sheet of every current itemized cost, you end up with a much larger bottom line, even if you tweak each item's budget a little. The implication is that many items on the budget aren't crucial to education but are part of the budget because they've always been there.
It's comparable to the difference between adjusting every employee's salary, and firing everyone and hiring new people for only the positions you really need.
Today: electricity. Tomorrow: toilets!
But wait, that's like Communism! Spreading it all out means everyone starves to death! /s
Theocrats hate any education beyond rote reading
Actually, the Church hated Martin Luther because he advocated plebeians reading the Bible for themselves, rather than only the priests who knew Latin being able to read it for them, and telling them what it 'REALLY' means. So they don't always like literacy either. That said, Muslims are expected to be able to read the Koran for themselves (and even memorize it).
My take on it is that the budgeting at public schools is as big of a mess as budgeting at NASA. Way too much is wasted on legacy make-work boondoggle cronyist handouts. In the last slashdot discussion of this, someone linked to this image which pretty succinctly summarizes the problem. This is magnified by the problem of school administrators getting a large salary increase in the last year or two of work before retirement, because their pension is based on their salary at the point of retirement; and thus they get an inflated pension.
I was thinking that regulations could mandate a maximum portion of a school's staff that is non-teaching administrative staff, but then those staff members would teach 1 hour a year to be classified as 'teaching staff' thus gaming the system, so there'd need to be a stricter definition of 'teaching staff' as well. Aside from a nurse, janitors, principal, career counselor, and social worker, how many other administrators do you need?
A book I read years ago on how to fix America's schools advocated using zero-based budgeting and cutting non-academic 'side-shows' like sports teams, then starting school a couple hours later, once children are actually awake enough to learn. A related book ('The End of Homework') also advocated eliminating homework as a way to save time that'd be better spent on one-to-one assistance.
I don't think you should wait much longer to pull the trigger on a purchase
Actually, rumor is that Nvidia is going to release the 1100 series GPUs in June or July. They're expected to have about 40% higher performance than the 1000 series. Also, the Etherium ASICs are dropping in July; assuming there's not a hard fork that makes them useless (and even if there is), there will be a sharp price drop in Etherium at that time, leading to lower GPU demand by cryptominers.
The Moon is closer than Mars, and manned Mars missions have a tendency to get delayed to somewhere inbetween commercial fusion power and Half Life 3.
lots of luck expanding humanity into the solar system.
All that the purse-string-holders want to expand is the hot air coming out of their mouths, and the kickbacks going into their bank accounts.
However, you're assuming that all delta-V is equal. Delta-V (fuel) being launched from Earth costs much more delta-V to launch to space than delta-V (fuel) being launched from the moon, coming from fuel created from resources mined from the moon's poles, due to Earth's stronger gravity. Now if we had a space elevator, then this might be moot.
I recall reading about how a large portion of adoptive parents end up 'giving back' older children that they adopt, due to supposed 'behavioral problems' with the child that can't be reconciled. Turns out these problems are generally with the parents, being unable to adapt to life with that child, rather than anything inherent about the child themselves.
Dating websites revolve around the concept of 'compatibility' without daring to question the related assumptions about the mechanics of romantic relationships. It may be that some people just can't make romantic relationships work with their lives, or aren't willing to do what it takes to make them work. It doesn't help that these dating site profiles generally leave out one's expectations for gender/relationship roles. If a man strongly believes that women belong in the kitchen and should only speak when spoken to, that should probably be taken into account by other people or the matching algorithm. How dominant or submissive one is, and how dominant of a partner they want, is a good example of an important criterion that people are generally ok with sharing.
And thus we come full circle to Blind Dating.
Because people with undesirable reviews would delete/abandon their account and make another. Or jump to another dating site/app, if they're unable to do that. Also, someone with many reviews would be implied to date lots of people, therefore one's chances of something long-term are lower than with someone who only has a few.
Also, the reviews would be filled with endless drama/bitching/doxxing/overly personal stuff/creeper posts and it'd be impossible to moderate. At best you'd get some kind of star rating in a few categories.
In the old days that was called 'dating'. After you chose the most likely suitor and decided to be in an exclusive relationship with them, that was called 'going steady'. It's only 'two-timing' if you're supposedly going steady.
I'm thinking that time and a half isn't enough to fix overtime abuse, and that it needs to be higher to encourage usage of more workers. Otherwise, reducing the 40 hours work week won't be as effective.
Clearly, the cause of the problem is that all of those countries have I and A in their names. Glad I'm safely in the U.S.A. instead of Canadia!
The question is, will the changes in government required to accept and implement a UBI happen before or after the people start demanding one. Technology will eventually take away the choice to continue punting the issue. Wealth will be distributed somehow, and 'what job you have' will decreasingly be the determinant of that.
Indeed, it would be easier to lower the cost of living so that they wouldn't need to pay out so much to give people enough to live off of. That might require some *shudder* regulations, though. Also, the money would have to go directly to the people rather than giving it to corporations and 'hoping' it'll trickle down to people.
Redistributing wealth gained from selling nationalized natural resources, ok, but that's not sustainable everywhere to the point to fund a UBI. What happens when electric vehicles drive down demand for oil? When coal electric generation is less profitable than solar? There goes your carbon tax income, too. Even for resources that won't become obsolete, it's presumed that a country is selling its resources more than it's importing i.e. running a trade surplus, and obviously not every nation can have a trade surplus.
What's the benefit of free tuition when 70% of people go on to University and there are too few teachers and too few field-related jobs to support all of the degrees being earned? I thought AI was going to create structural unemployment anyways, even those who are University-educated. Free broadband I'm cool with, since it's basic infrastructure and ought to be nationalized like roadways and water pipes; it's easy to throttle ethically, unlike say electricity use where some will abuse it (cryptocoin mining) yet causing brownouts is troublesome (your electric heater shutting down in winter).
Localities charging businesses to use the air, water and minerals already exists. Pollution regulations, and cap-and-trade, cover the air. Mineral and water rights are sold just like land, and businesses can buy water directly from a locality as well. Businesses have to pay for a license to use electromagnetic spectrum, too. These may not technically be 'taxes' but the effect is the same.
The 'use blockchain to split public assets and then trade them like cryptocoins' idea is asinine. I give it a week before the usual suspects buy up all the cryptoassets, cornering the market, effectively privatizing public assets.
The only good idea here is taxing speculation, as e.g. a percentage of the value of every securities trade rather than the net profit on the balance sheet at the end of the year. This has been suggested many times before, though.
My personally preferred idea for a UBI:
Step one: utilize eminent domain law to buy out and nationalize ALL land and residential buildings in the country. People/buildings can remain where they are. Step two: implement SANE rental prices for contractual use of land, decided by calculation of objective measures of the land's value, thus making it immune to bubbles. Step three: free housing for everyone, no more paying to live in an apartment.
Obvious caveats: needs efficient enough bureaucracy (ha!) to not run into the red-tape problems Cuba did with nationalized residences. How to decide who gets to live where, if they get a house versus an apartment, how many square feet? Waiting lists; less-picky people get preference, encouraging people to only ask for the minimum they require. Councils of engineers, social planners and architects will decide when buildings need to be torn down for safety reasons, and what kind of new residences to erect and where.
IMO if people have free housing, the other details don't matter so much. Food is relatively cheap and there are plenty of food banks/food stamp programs that already help with that. Water and broadband would be free, you'd only pay for electricity and gas (although honestly, how much gas can someone use? nationalize that too, why not...)
Wait, how're we going to pay for all that nationalizing of land and residences? By nationalizing the patent and public research system. The government now owns all patents, no more worrying about first to file; on the upside, they will fight infringement in court on their own dime (and are thus motivated to spend money not to grant obvious/overbroad patents, although selective enforcement could be a problem), and let the filer keep 20% of any licensing revenues. Public research leads to public patents, the people get 100% of licensing fees. Ditch software patents while you're at it. Eventually, as new technology emerges and takes over, ~80% of all wealth will be nationalized due to patent licensing, with businesses who utilize those patents owning about 20%
The merchant agreement actually forbids that. They can only check signatures. Oh wait, they got rid of signatures, too...
The point is that these outages are rare enough in certain places that it's cheaper overall to go cashless. Sure, if you live in a country where the electric grid is down 18 hours a day, cashless might not be for you (although if it's completely cellular-based, it might yet be). Where I live, I haven't lost electricity in a few years, and it was only for a few minutes when I did. Remember also that if you have a robbery, that might interrupt service, require you to count new tills before you can take anyone's cash, etc.
I've seen a till be hung up for an hour while it's counted and recounted in front of a customer who insists they were shortchanged. Cash is no magic bullet with zero viscosity.
The calculation used to officially determine the 'poverty line' in the USA is bullshit and thus it shouldn't be utilized for anything. Here's how it works: a low-cost diet is tallied to $X, it's then assumed that food will constitute 1/3 of a poor person's expenditures, so then $X is multiplied by 3 to give the 'poverty line'.
Ok, food IS about 1/3 of my expenditures... but the cost of food nationwide is relatively constant, particularly in comparison to the cost of housing. Depending on where you live and your housing arrangement, one might pay between $300 and $1200 a month in rent/mortgage (assuming you're not in a place bursting with UMC residents like Manhattan or San Diego).
So, a much better poverty line calculation would be $W transportation costs + $X food + $Y average rent & utilities for 1-bedroom apartment in your ZIP code + $Z average Bronze-level health insurance plan for someone your age. However, any recalculation of the poverty line that raises the dollar amount will never be used officially since it'd make it look like more people are poor now than before during the previous administration. That's why laws say e.g. 'below 130% of the poverty line' instead of using a better calculation.
They can use something like Square as a stopgap for those situations. There are dedicated cellular modems you can plug into your network to provide redundancy, as well.
Actually, I'd like a Google Maps hack showing everyone nearby who has eaten at Chipotle in the last 3 days (ok who am I kidding, 36 hours) so I can stay way the hell away.
Screw businesses that don't care about customers' privacy and anonymity.
You can use only stolen credit cards. Problem solved.
Many of these conservative banks don't consider tech to be a core aspect of their business, any more than office supplies are. Thus it makes sense to outsource the tech stuff as much as possible. What banking is traditionally 'about' is relationships: talking to a client in a room, and selling them a financial service that will probably be eventually profitable for the bank. If there's an existing relationship it might be done over the phone, maybe with some paperwork faxed; but it's still pretty clear there's a person on the other end.
Now, investment banking, especially the parts that deal with high-speed trading, are absolutely about tech. But traditionally (during Glass-Steagal) these two operations were separated.
we're good at judging people and detecting if someone is telling the truth.
Hahaha, no. Experienced detectives trying to tell if someone is lying in response to a yes/no question, using their gut instincts, do no better than a coin flip. Also, remember this story posted just a few days ago: multiple forged signatures, and no investigation done before $Millions were already forked over to the scammers. Think about all the stories of scammers who use social engineering to convince corporate officers to wire them $Millions. OTOH, AI (ok, algorithms) has been used in automated fraud detection systems for decades.
Besides, technology being ABLE to replace half of workers is very different from those workers actually being replaced. Many banks are led by conservatives, and won't rush out to replace half their workforce; they'll slooowwwwllllyyy roll it out in test markets for a decade first, maybe waiting for several competitors to announce plans to do so first. Remember how long it took to roll out EMV in the USA? We didn't even get 'chip & PIN', just 'chip & signature'... oh and they got rid of the signature requirement so it's just 'chip' now.