Most spoken languages exhibit a lot of bias. For example, Deutsch means people or folk, and that lightly implies what is not Deutsch is not people. A lot of languages have that mindset, and it's not surprising. Language evolved during times when people had values we disagree with.
It's not that he doesn't care, it's that Russian oligarchs are fungible with American oligarchs, often with fewer conflicts of interest. In what way are domestic oligarchs less horrific?
This. It's similar to the tricks Prog Rock bands would use to get fully paid for their albums. Instead of one 26-minute song called "Shine on You Crazy Diamond", there are technically nine "parts" to the song, and thus, when you add the other three tracks on the album, they get paid like they would for a normal, 12-song album.
Your comparison is deeply flawed when speaking to an American. $40k would be very nice in some areas, and it would barely even pay the rent in others.
My income tax would probably go up to about 70% under UBI, and I would simply retire early"
Aww! Poor widdle baby throwing a tantrum. Goddamn Milton Friedman supported a fucking UBI, so don't act like you're too conservative for one.
And if I work at a salary of, say, $40,000, use that money to meet the requirements for my standard of living, and I constantly do lots of unpaid work, say, 8 hours a week, to help run local events? Or does the middle class not get a say in this? Assuming my time is valued at around my professional rate, and adjusting for the exchange rate for your funny Canuck dollars, that would put my volunteer labor at around $11,000. Good enough for you?
I don't care much about my take home pay outside of keeping a roof over my head, food in my belly, and a bit of beer money. I am very passionate about the work that I do, but it's because the work is fulfilling, not because I want to make a lot of money. I want UBI because I don't want homeless people on the streets, starving children, and all that crap. Also, I care very deeply about the arts, and UBI would be about the best thing possible to happen to the arts. If I could get this country to have a UBI that I alone am not eligible for, I would still support it.
No, I have little interest in being idle. I do tons of unpaid and underpaid work myself. I just hate being wasteful, and UBI is a far less wasteful social safety net.
Then provide some evidence that is better than mine. Your personal experiences, likely delusional, do not constitute adequate data to make such a broad analysis. Either provide data or shut up.
Except we aren't making the idle rich starve. Or, realistically, we make sure middle management doesn't starve. And you aren't a monster that wants the disabled or elderly to starve, are you? So, it's not as simple as that. We work too much anyway. Medieval serfs got way more days off (since Judeochristian values actually enshrine REST as part of the Decalogue), and hunter gatherers had an effective work week around half of what we do. If we were to drop those literally Puritan values on work, we could be striving to actually get a net gain over our ancestors in work-life balance. We would be healthier, happier, and more productive with the time we do spend working.
No, you can't. The industries parents work in, the local cost of food and other expenses, available furnishings, which shift(s) were worked, and probably a dozen other factors escaping my mind right now, all figure in what kind of diet children can get.
Also, I kind of feel silly asking this, but you aren't a baby boomer or early xer (or your country's equivalent), are you? Because that could explain how you are so clueless about what's going on.
I did. I read it and many others before I started ranting about Calvinist thought, which did not start with replying to you. Only two mentions of "hard work," and neither goes into any specifics other than being "diligent'.
We have had progressive government programs trying to "help" poor people for a century, and not only have they been ineffective, they are actually the cause of these "structural and societal issues"; there is plenty of evidence for that, you simply refuse to see it.
Except the US has one of the weakest social safety nets of Western nations, and we have the lowest social mobility. I believe it is you that is refusing to look at evidence.
Both my parents were working when I was growing up and we always had fresh, healthy food. I have fresh, healthy food when I cook for myself.
And from that you can extrapolate to the lives of millions of other American parents? In the real world, not everybody has that luxury.
Research simply shows this to be the case. There seem to be many different causes.
Okay, cite the study, and ideally, provide a rationale. I can't conceive of how it possibly could help, and you've only said "because it does". Now, you might be able to find some correlations, since "having a job" and income are strongly correlated. But let's say that I'm already a billionaire, so that factor is off the table. What does spending 8 hours a day away from my child possibly accomplish?
But, for example, knowing how to put "fresh, healthy food" on the table even if you have a stressful job is something kids learn from their parents. Apparently, you missed out on that.
No, my parents did a good job of that, but I'm not so vain as to think that everyone was as fortunate as me.
Not at all. It is to supplement expensive professionals with cheap labor.
And those supplements are going to compete, at least somewhat, with those expensive professionals. That's basic economics.
Not at all. Nobody is forcing you to take UBI; you can just as well take a job in the private sector if they prefer, or live off your savings or your girlfriend or whatever.
Yeah, the "nobody is forcing part" makes it like "free range" prison labor. No cages, but the same general concept of cheap labor in exchange for basic living expenses.
How does parents working in any way contribute to the child? From the child's perspective, would anything be different if dad just spent 8 hours a day watching Netflix in an office? A big chunk of the reason we have so much childhood obesity is because parents don't have enough time to cook real food for their children, so they get cheap, quick crap instead of fresh, healthy food.
So, your UBI idea is to undercut trained professionals with cheap labor? I think what you are talking about is called PRISON. They make sure that people have the basics, food and a place to stay. But, a lot of the time, they also make them work for low additional wages. The not having them in cages part is a plus, I suppose, but that just makes it a free-range industrial prison complex.
Good grief! You don't even know what "hard work" means.
I'm sure you have some more abstract conception of hard work that you think is more profound, but in the context of automation, hard work equates to allotment of calories and manhours. We were talking about busy work, in that we want people to be busy even if they aren't useful because work in itself builds character, or some garbage like that. If robots can clean the streets for us, let people not waste their time.
Which is, of course, the exact opposite of what you were accusing Calvinists of earlier ("rich people are good, and poor people are bad"), since if it is predestined, it isn't a moral failing.
No. The actions of characters in a book are predetermined. That doesn't prevent them from having moral failings. I don't see why morality without free will is a touch concept to grasp. I understand that you may not agree with it. You may even find it illogical, but if you can't separate an ambiguous causal agent you deem "free will" from morality, you are unable to pick up notions of good and evil in fiction that isn't Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books.
It's not the fault of the people who are in poverty, the fault is entirely with the people who keep pushing these bad incentives and throwing more money at our lousy education system.
And neither party in this country believes anything like that. Perhaps your interpretation is different, but in practice, the Republicans and largely the Democrats just blame poor people for their problems, and refuse to help. Your first post implied largely similar sentiments.
I suggest you read up on the Protestant work ethic [wikipedia.org]. The protestant work ethic is about hard work, discipline and frugality. Those values are as important today as a couple of centuries ago.
I disagree completely. If I need hard work, I'll use a machine or a beast of burden. Humans are hilariously frail. What is useful is our intelligence, and our ability to collaborate. Hard work from humans is at best a necessary evil, and very often, it is far less necessary than we think.
Quite to the contrary: protestantism emphasizes charity. It is progressives that have destroyed charity and community and replaced it with corruption and coercion.
Protestantism emphasis charity. However, Calvinism is big on predestination. If you work hard and God loves you, you will be rich. And if you are a poor and not destined for God's love, you will be destitute. With such logic, the results end up being that ridiculous assumptions are made, such as "the overwhelming majority of people who are poor in the US are poor because they or their parents have made bad choices." If you have that idiotic mindset, you will ignore structural and societal issues that cause cycles of nigh-inescapable poverty.
The post-jobs economy is a mix of delusion, propaganda, and FUD perpetrated by progressives; it isn't happening.
Oh please. We have so much busy work already, and there is plenty of low hanging fruit to cut out a huge chunk out of most jobs. The biggest roadblocks are that people are hesitant to automate their own jobs, and that cheap labor is used as a crutch, undermining the value of labor saving.
They are nothing but a burden outside of perhaps an agrarian lifestyle. America won't apply obvious fixes to countless problems because we think that rich people are good, and poor people are bad. it's a very odd position, given that virtually every religion, Christianity included, strongly suggests the very opposite. It gets in the way of solving rich people being rich because they exploit or cheat, while it prevents helping the poor out because they can't accept the possibility that someone may be poor due to systematic issues instead of not being pious or hard working. Never mind that we lost all sense of work-life balance due to industrialization. The value of the sabbath and rest was one of the most important parts of Judeochristian values, and we've largely discarded that value for short term gains.
Furthermore, the post-jobs economy cannot survive under Calvinist thought. Automation is coming, and Calvinism is not equipped to deal with it.
Language evolves. There is no coherent geological, political, or cultural reason to use the terms America/American to collectively describe the two continents in the western hemisphere and/or its inhabitants. For people living both inside of the USA, "American" without any other qualifiers almost always refers to the USA.
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Most spoken languages exhibit a lot of bias. For example, Deutsch means people or folk, and that lightly implies what is not Deutsch is not people. A lot of languages have that mindset, and it's not surprising. Language evolved during times when people had values we disagree with.
It's not that he doesn't care, it's that Russian oligarchs are fungible with American oligarchs, often with fewer conflicts of interest. In what way are domestic oligarchs less horrific?
How is that scenario different from the humans? It seems that they were not programmed with negative consequences, and they are NOT learning either.
It was a scam, but it was a scam to scam the scammers (record labels). If you buy a Pink Floyd LP, you still get an LP full of music.
So, the financial industry will be controlled by heartless automatons, but now they will make intelligent, logical decisions? Seems like a net gain.
Also, MOTU is a reference to He-Man.
This. It's similar to the tricks Prog Rock bands would use to get fully paid for their albums. Instead of one 26-minute song called "Shine on You Crazy Diamond", there are technically nine "parts" to the song, and thus, when you add the other three tracks on the album, they get paid like they would for a normal, 12-song album.
Your comparison is deeply flawed when speaking to an American. $40k would be very nice in some areas, and it would barely even pay the rent in others.
My income tax would probably go up to about 70% under UBI, and I would simply retire early" Aww! Poor widdle baby throwing a tantrum. Goddamn Milton Friedman supported a fucking UBI, so don't act like you're too conservative for one.
That doesn't follow with how progressive taxation works. Under a UBI system, people making $40k would not be paying an additional $10k in taxes.
And if I work at a salary of, say, $40,000, use that money to meet the requirements for my standard of living, and I constantly do lots of unpaid work, say, 8 hours a week, to help run local events? Or does the middle class not get a say in this? Assuming my time is valued at around my professional rate, and adjusting for the exchange rate for your funny Canuck dollars, that would put my volunteer labor at around $11,000. Good enough for you?
Nothing left at all but ad hom? Goodbye.
I don't care much about my take home pay outside of keeping a roof over my head, food in my belly, and a bit of beer money. I am very passionate about the work that I do, but it's because the work is fulfilling, not because I want to make a lot of money. I want UBI because I don't want homeless people on the streets, starving children, and all that crap. Also, I care very deeply about the arts, and UBI would be about the best thing possible to happen to the arts. If I could get this country to have a UBI that I alone am not eligible for, I would still support it.
No, I have little interest in being idle. I do tons of unpaid and underpaid work myself. I just hate being wasteful, and UBI is a far less wasteful social safety net.
Then provide some evidence that is better than mine. Your personal experiences, likely delusional, do not constitute adequate data to make such a broad analysis. Either provide data or shut up.
Except we aren't making the idle rich starve. Or, realistically, we make sure middle management doesn't starve. And you aren't a monster that wants the disabled or elderly to starve, are you? So, it's not as simple as that. We work too much anyway. Medieval serfs got way more days off (since Judeochristian values actually enshrine REST as part of the Decalogue), and hunter gatherers had an effective work week around half of what we do. If we were to drop those literally Puritan values on work, we could be striving to actually get a net gain over our ancestors in work-life balance. We would be healthier, happier, and more productive with the time we do spend working.
No, you can't. The industries parents work in, the local cost of food and other expenses, available furnishings, which shift(s) were worked, and probably a dozen other factors escaping my mind right now, all figure in what kind of diet children can get.
Also, I kind of feel silly asking this, but you aren't a baby boomer or early xer (or your country's equivalent), are you? Because that could explain how you are so clueless about what's going on.
With Apple;s income stream on the line, we might actually see a revival of anti-trust law in this country.
I did. I read it and many others before I started ranting about Calvinist thought, which did not start with replying to you. Only two mentions of "hard work," and neither goes into any specifics other than being "diligent'.
Except the US has one of the weakest social safety nets of Western nations, and we have the lowest social mobility. I believe it is you that is refusing to look at evidence.
And from that you can extrapolate to the lives of millions of other American parents? In the real world, not everybody has that luxury.
Okay, cite the study, and ideally, provide a rationale. I can't conceive of how it possibly could help, and you've only said "because it does". Now, you might be able to find some correlations, since "having a job" and income are strongly correlated. But let's say that I'm already a billionaire, so that factor is off the table. What does spending 8 hours a day away from my child possibly accomplish?
No, my parents did a good job of that, but I'm not so vain as to think that everyone was as fortunate as me.
And those supplements are going to compete, at least somewhat, with those expensive professionals. That's basic economics.
Yeah, the "nobody is forcing part" makes it like "free range" prison labor. No cages, but the same general concept of cheap labor in exchange for basic living expenses.
How does parents working in any way contribute to the child? From the child's perspective, would anything be different if dad just spent 8 hours a day watching Netflix in an office? A big chunk of the reason we have so much childhood obesity is because parents don't have enough time to cook real food for their children, so they get cheap, quick crap instead of fresh, healthy food.
So, your UBI idea is to undercut trained professionals with cheap labor? I think what you are talking about is called PRISON. They make sure that people have the basics, food and a place to stay. But, a lot of the time, they also make them work for low additional wages. The not having them in cages part is a plus, I suppose, but that just makes it a free-range industrial prison complex.
I'm sure you have some more abstract conception of hard work that you think is more profound, but in the context of automation, hard work equates to allotment of calories and manhours. We were talking about busy work, in that we want people to be busy even if they aren't useful because work in itself builds character, or some garbage like that. If robots can clean the streets for us, let people not waste their time.
No. The actions of characters in a book are predetermined. That doesn't prevent them from having moral failings. I don't see why morality without free will is a touch concept to grasp. I understand that you may not agree with it. You may even find it illogical, but if you can't separate an ambiguous causal agent you deem "free will" from morality, you are unable to pick up notions of good and evil in fiction that isn't Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books.
And neither party in this country believes anything like that. Perhaps your interpretation is different, but in practice, the Republicans and largely the Democrats just blame poor people for their problems, and refuse to help. Your first post implied largely similar sentiments.
I disagree completely. If I need hard work, I'll use a machine or a beast of burden. Humans are hilariously frail. What is useful is our intelligence, and our ability to collaborate. Hard work from humans is at best a necessary evil, and very often, it is far less necessary than we think.
Protestantism emphasis charity. However, Calvinism is big on predestination. If you work hard and God loves you, you will be rich. And if you are a poor and not destined for God's love, you will be destitute. With such logic, the results end up being that ridiculous assumptions are made, such as "the overwhelming majority of people who are poor in the US are poor because they or their parents have made bad choices." If you have that idiotic mindset, you will ignore structural and societal issues that cause cycles of nigh-inescapable poverty.
Oh please. We have so much busy work already, and there is plenty of low hanging fruit to cut out a huge chunk out of most jobs. The biggest roadblocks are that people are hesitant to automate their own jobs, and that cheap labor is used as a crutch, undermining the value of labor saving.
They are nothing but a burden outside of perhaps an agrarian lifestyle. America won't apply obvious fixes to countless problems because we think that rich people are good, and poor people are bad. it's a very odd position, given that virtually every religion, Christianity included, strongly suggests the very opposite. It gets in the way of solving rich people being rich because they exploit or cheat, while it prevents helping the poor out because they can't accept the possibility that someone may be poor due to systematic issues instead of not being pious or hard working. Never mind that we lost all sense of work-life balance due to industrialization. The value of the sabbath and rest was one of the most important parts of Judeochristian values, and we've largely discarded that value for short term gains.
Furthermore, the post-jobs economy cannot survive under Calvinist thought. Automation is coming, and Calvinism is not equipped to deal with it.
Language evolves. There is no coherent geological, political, or cultural reason to use the terms America/American to collectively describe the two continents in the western hemisphere and/or its inhabitants. For people living both inside of the USA, "American" without any other qualifiers almost always refers to the USA.