Oh, OK, buddy. You're the big bad business man so you must know more than I do. Except that you don't. Drug tests are a meaningless invasion of privacy, especially if you've never actually had someone fail one.
Or... how about the idea that drug testing is really just another form of theater? Do all airline pilots blow in a breathalyzer before getting behind the wheel of a jet? Do bus drivers? It's not like they are expensive devices compared to the cost of an accident.
The background check could take a while, meanwhile the work is piling up. And since falsifying your application is grounds for dismissal, only an idiot would put down anything other than the truth. Unless you are hoping to make a living out of working at jobs just long enough for your background check to finish up, that is.
They may not work down from what you currently make. More likely they will tack on 10% to your current and work down from that. But if you could have put a higher number in their heads first and prevent them from learning your current salary, then they will a lot more likely to give you a bigger bump.
Most importantly, them asking you to tell you a specific figure creates an information imbalance. Sure, they might tell you a salary range that they offer, but that's actually deceptive as well. It preys on your desire not to start too close to the top of the range and fools you into believing that they actually have anyone being paid the bottom of the range in that position. Even if they quote a range, your exact salary is still better information for them. The equivalent from the employer's side would be the salary of the person you are replacing, or the salaries of everyone else in that job title at the company (or at least on the immediate team where you'll be working).
What if I have a bad immune system and get sick more often than others? What if I have had cancer and might relapse? What if I have high cholesterol and might have a heart attack as I age? What if I have a history of depression? What if I have a long commute to work (and am more likely to be in a car crash)? What if I have a history of drug use or alcoholism but am currently sober? What if I might get pregnant? What if I take legal opiates for back pain? Or a variety of Valium to help me sleep or deal with anxiety? What if I've gotten a ticket for texting while driving? What if I belong to a non-standard religion and might celebrate holidays that aren't normally days off? Why single out the few things that can be discovered with a drug screen for discrimination? Not to mention that drug screens do not remotely prove that a person is going to actually come to work while on drugs.
Somebody has to work to produce all those things people on UBI are going to consume. Why should I have to work and pay for other people's good time?
Because not working and just consuming drugs or drinking a lot really isn't a "good time"? And the people likely to be willing to just live at the lowest level available to be able to indulge their drug addictions are probably already doing that... only instead of providing them with the basic comforts via UBI, you are quite possibly funding their stay in the local prison instead. And prison for offenses like becoming homeless or low-level stealing or prostitution or whatever happens to drug addicts is expensive and highly dehumanizing to the people involved (both guards and prisoners). Wouldn't it be better to just give these folks a place to live, enough food to live on, and then let them decide when they are ready to seek help without destroying their lives?
Most people are going to want more than subsistence level living just so they can drink cheap liquor or take drugs. UBI affords all of us some luxury to invest sweat equity in starting a business (especially businesses where the majority of the investment needed is labor). This is good for young adults, adults who need a career change, or people who have had some unfortunate circumstance decimate their savings and/or income stream.
Except that social security is not funded by per capita wealth. It's funded by a tax on income, which is measured in dollars. And while there is a trust fund in place it is not secured by any actual wealth, it is a debt owed by the Treasury to the SSA. The money "invested" in SSA has been spent and the only source of being able to make up for any shortfall in the future is to print more money, borrow the money, or reduce payments. The program fits the definition of Ponzi scheme perfectly. The ability of the system to pay out to previous investors is 100% dependent on getting new investors to pay in or asking existing investors to pay more. Now, obviously, the term "Ponzi scheme" is loaded, but highlights the trouble with the way the social security system works. Unlike a Ponzi scheme, participation is not voluntary, but then Social Security is not intentionally deceiving anyone either and we have an incredible amount of data available as to how the system is doing. And it may turn out just fine, because (as you point out) as people have more wealth they can easily afford more taxes or lowered benefits, but "per capita" is the troubling word there. That's an arithmetic mean, which does not guarantee that the impacts of new taxes or lowered benefits will affect all wealth holders in equal relative measure.
Well, it would help if I had read your post correctly. Although I'm not sure the last two decades have been free of problems, it's nothing like the industrialized wars of the first half of the 20th century, that's for sure.
Frankly, no. With the people who currently hold a majority of the seats in Congress, the Supreme Court, and the White House, the last thing I want is the federal government controlling a damn thing that matters to me. I mean, the President is a pathological lying narcissistic freak! The dysfunction among all these so-called conservatives is Off The Charts(tm) bad. They can't even repeal a health care law some of them say is the worst thing since slavery. The President actually goes on Twitter to bad mouth his own cabinet appointees. And I'm no fan of the Democrats either. Most of them are just as puke-worthy.
The real question is why should the elite own the factories and machines that do all this production? It rests on centuries of labor, thought, and infrastructure that all of us (or our ancestors) contributed to (and that's not to mention that some of us have ancestors who productive capacities were literally stolen from them).
At least the companies that are largely automated that have public stock available, those shares should be paying heavy dividends, executives can be paid in stock options almost purely while the public are encouraged (or subsidized) to buy shares in mutual funds or ETFs and the like. And perhaps there could be tax consequences for extremely large companies that don't have public stock offerings and pay dividends. And limits as to how much stock in any given company the executives and board members thereof can own (as this gives them an outsized voting bloc).
Public ownership of company stocks normally leads to public having a say in how the company is run, but mutual funds and the like do tend to strip this right away. I mean, how do you vote your fractional share of the 1000 companies in your fund? That's worse than having a full time job. But perhaps having more democratic systems for mutual fund governance would suffice? After all, most index funds are largely automated already. So the real purpose of a fund manager would be to manage voting on behalf of investors. So, perhaps fund managers should be required to undergo a more democratic selection process?
I'm not merely trying to promote a "privatize social security" situation here, I'm looking for a radical shift in how we think about financial equity in society and how to best share it with the least amount of change to our current system. How about stop letting companies buy back their shares (to drive up the price by reducing supply)? How about getting rid of 401(k)s and letting employees choose their own investment situations, how about requiring employers to match 100% employee contributions to their own retirement accounts, up to some reasonable level (and not just with company stock)? How about removing the income caps on social security contributions (biggest scam ever)? How about taxing capital gains the same as regular income (encourage people to buy and hold outside of retirement accounts)? There are so many fixes for our current income inequality problems available that are perfectly sane that the only possible reason they haven't been enacted is that the government of the USA is totally corrupted by wealth. I mean, do the rich actually "work"? Hell, no. They own stuff and they run around telling other people to work. Most of them inherited so much stuff that they don't even have to be good managers of that wealth to stay rich, the system advantages them in so many ways it's not even funny. That's not a level playing field, it's a scam.
Nobody is having children to game the tax system. Once they have the children, perhaps, they are happy to use them as tools to "game" the tax system. However, the tax system was set up to be gamed by people having children. One reason we need all these children is that Social Security is basically a Ponzi scheme. It requires a growing pool of people paying in to cover those being paid out, at least until an equilibrium is reached. Inflation can help offset the number of payers needed a bit, except that then people want cost-of-living adjustments to their payments so the value of their payments doesn't decrease as they age. Of course, there are probably other, better ways to increase the pool of potential payers-in than having children... like letting people immigrate and become citizens. This routinely avoids the need to subsidize those people's first two decades in life with schooling and the like. But this probably won't stop most people from having children, too. It's like it's some sort of basic human drive.
Alexa would probably do a lot better if she used Google Search instead of Bing. I went with Alexa because I already have a tendency towards Amazon with their digital music, Kindle books, Prime video, etc... is there something a Google Home Mini could do that Echo Dot doesn't?
Unless the devices all do exactly the same things, none of the data is even that relevant from one service to the next. Even recognizing the speech itself is a statistical inference process that relies heavily on what words might actually be uttered in the context. This is highly dependent on what the device can do, and what words are used for that activity on that device. And on some level, the results of a service's speech recognition engine are something of a trade secret that I'm not sure they should be required to share.
Even something as mundane as "Play my classic rock playlist on shuffle" is only going to be transferable if the backend music services are ALSO made to follow the same rules for open standards and transferability. Because if I have a "classic rock" playlist set up in Amazon Music, but not iTunes, Siri is not going to be able to a damn thing with that command except get it wrong.
While it would be nice if Alexa allowed me to download a tarball of all my interactions (including the sound source files), my history is not hidden from me. It's available through a clunky online interface already. Can't imagine that a quick script couldn't help scrape all that data down into some usable form. But usable for what really is the question. I suppose it might be fun to load the data into a DB and run an analysis of how often Alexa can't figure out which lights I wanted to turn on/off... might help me tune up my light names to assist speech recognition process... but loading that information into another assistant? Not something I'm concerned about.
None of this should be construed as opposition to regulatory mandates that would require any and all services that collect input and data from us from providing us a way to retrieve that data in a reasonable package form. Especially as the inputs become more and transient in nature, as with spoken commands to a digital assistant, our own ability to keep track of what we "shared" with the service diminishes. Of course, easily available to me is also more easily available to others and it's one more access point that has to be secured and monitored.
So the company can't figure out how to trim its workforce of the 2-3% dead weight except once a year through some sort of rank and yank? Shit, that's terrible. No wonder they're floundering. Perhaps they ought to try getting employees the help they need to become great workers or find them roles where they can actually contribute appropriately, instead of pulling this "the beatings will continue until morale improves" bullshit.
Why would we need driverless trains? Driverless buses, on the other hand would be very appropriate. It would be especially nice if there was some sort of scheduling and routing flexibility to reduce dependence on static routes and times. In fact, we could start building scheduling and routing apps right now, then they can meet in a convergence with the driverless tech some years down the road.
Yes. It was as if I had accidentally dragged a bunch of porn to a local folder that is synced to a Google Drive folder I share with my extended family, instead of dragging it to the Recycle Bin where I'd intended. Or if I'd attempted to upload multiple files that were in my Downloads folder, and ctrl-clicked on one too many files in the file chooser dialog.
Practically speaking this is years away from happening even if everyone stopped working on every line of legacy code in non-Rust projects. Meanwhile, no computer language can prevent programmers from misunderstanding requirements or goofing up an implementation, so there are bound to be bugs in all new software in Rust that might not be obvious security issues, but could cause more subtle issues, both in usability and security. Does Rust, by default, somehow prevent a programmer from making a web browser vulnerable to XSS? Does it prevent web developers from building flawed APIs that spill data all over the place? Does it force anyone implementing a database to NOT store actual passwords, but to properly salt and hash them before storing?
I'm sure I've imported my contacts from various email services over the years and so has everyone else. And that stuff gets on your phone. And spreads to the next email service... and so on. Data leakage is almost inevitable -- even people who want to be careful often make mistakes. Seriously: just a couple weeks ago I found a journalist's full 1040 form on a doc sharing site. This was someone with an advanced degree from a prestigious institution who makes a living writing about things like doxing and they somehow managed to put one of their most private documents on a file sharing site.
At least Facebook isn't as creepy as LinkedIn, what with all those notices about how many people are looking at my profile, but then NOT telling me who they are (or worse sometimes, telling me who they are). They seem to think I would actually pay money to reverse stalk people. If I didn't owe my current job to popping up on an old coworker's LinkedIn feed, I'd probably have deleted my account there. Again. Because back a few years ago, when it was revealed that they couldn't figure out how to store passwords safely and got cracked, I deleted my account immediately. Not to protect my data (too late!), but to simply not use the services of such an inept provider.
It's not about lacking confidence in one's abilities and skills. It's about negotiating leverage and wasting time. If I am expecting a big bump from what looks like a promotion to me, giving the potential employer the information about my current salary is just giving them a reason to low-ball me and now I have to go through this whole ordeal of negotiating and convincing them that I deserve more. That is a waste of time.
Not that they ever will, but if the employer simply disclosed the range up front, they could save all of us a lot of time-- a lot more time than if I tell all my potential employers what I make now or have made in the past. This is because I have a minimum I require to even consider a job change lateral, let alone a promotion worth taking the risk and effort of applying. If I know up-front that they can't afford me, then I can just skip them, rather than going through a whole song and dance just to find out they are offering short money. And if I know that the job pays a good deal more than I currently make, then I have the incentive I need to understand what they are looking for, make sure I am a fit, and spend the time necessary to convince them of it.
My current salary is totally irrelevant except as a minimum and me giving it out first is backwards. This is like playing poker against a table of people who hold their cards close, but my cards are face-up on the table. Not good odds. Furthermore, if everyone applying for the job is disclosing salary to the employer, they can use that to help them pick the lower paid of two seemingly equal candidates, rather than taking the time to discern which person might truly be the best fit on other measures.
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Comment: spot on. How the hell do you live paycheck to paycheck on $250K except in the most insane markets?
Sig: no. When fascism comes to America (learn to spell it maybe?), it will be waving a flag and talking about how it is here to protect your freedoms.
Oh, OK, buddy. You're the big bad business man so you must know more than I do. Except that you don't. Drug tests are a meaningless invasion of privacy, especially if you've never actually had someone fail one.
Or... how about the idea that drug testing is really just another form of theater? Do all airline pilots blow in a breathalyzer before getting behind the wheel of a jet? Do bus drivers? It's not like they are expensive devices compared to the cost of an accident.
The background check could take a while, meanwhile the work is piling up. And since falsifying your application is grounds for dismissal, only an idiot would put down anything other than the truth. Unless you are hoping to make a living out of working at jobs just long enough for your background check to finish up, that is.
They may not work down from what you currently make. More likely they will tack on 10% to your current and work down from that. But if you could have put a higher number in their heads first and prevent them from learning your current salary, then they will a lot more likely to give you a bigger bump.
Most importantly, them asking you to tell you a specific figure creates an information imbalance. Sure, they might tell you a salary range that they offer, but that's actually deceptive as well. It preys on your desire not to start too close to the top of the range and fools you into believing that they actually have anyone being paid the bottom of the range in that position. Even if they quote a range, your exact salary is still better information for them. The equivalent from the employer's side would be the salary of the person you are replacing, or the salaries of everyone else in that job title at the company (or at least on the immediate team where you'll be working).
What if I have a bad immune system and get sick more often than others? What if I have had cancer and might relapse? What if I have high cholesterol and might have a heart attack as I age? What if I have a history of depression? What if I have a long commute to work (and am more likely to be in a car crash)? What if I have a history of drug use or alcoholism but am currently sober? What if I might get pregnant? What if I take legal opiates for back pain? Or a variety of Valium to help me sleep or deal with anxiety? What if I've gotten a ticket for texting while driving? What if I belong to a non-standard religion and might celebrate holidays that aren't normally days off? Why single out the few things that can be discovered with a drug screen for discrimination? Not to mention that drug screens do not remotely prove that a person is going to actually come to work while on drugs.
Somebody has to work to produce all those things people on UBI are going to consume. Why should I have to work and pay for other people's good time?
Because not working and just consuming drugs or drinking a lot really isn't a "good time"? And the people likely to be willing to just live at the lowest level available to be able to indulge their drug addictions are probably already doing that... only instead of providing them with the basic comforts via UBI, you are quite possibly funding their stay in the local prison instead. And prison for offenses like becoming homeless or low-level stealing or prostitution or whatever happens to drug addicts is expensive and highly dehumanizing to the people involved (both guards and prisoners). Wouldn't it be better to just give these folks a place to live, enough food to live on, and then let them decide when they are ready to seek help without destroying their lives?
Most people are going to want more than subsistence level living just so they can drink cheap liquor or take drugs. UBI affords all of us some luxury to invest sweat equity in starting a business (especially businesses where the majority of the investment needed is labor). This is good for young adults, adults who need a career change, or people who have had some unfortunate circumstance decimate their savings and/or income stream.
Except that social security is not funded by per capita wealth. It's funded by a tax on income, which is measured in dollars. And while there is a trust fund in place it is not secured by any actual wealth, it is a debt owed by the Treasury to the SSA. The money "invested" in SSA has been spent and the only source of being able to make up for any shortfall in the future is to print more money, borrow the money, or reduce payments. The program fits the definition of Ponzi scheme perfectly. The ability of the system to pay out to previous investors is 100% dependent on getting new investors to pay in or asking existing investors to pay more. Now, obviously, the term "Ponzi scheme" is loaded, but highlights the trouble with the way the social security system works. Unlike a Ponzi scheme, participation is not voluntary, but then Social Security is not intentionally deceiving anyone either and we have an incredible amount of data available as to how the system is doing. And it may turn out just fine, because (as you point out) as people have more wealth they can easily afford more taxes or lowered benefits, but "per capita" is the troubling word there. That's an arithmetic mean, which does not guarantee that the impacts of new taxes or lowered benefits will affect all wealth holders in equal relative measure.
In a world where everything is made by machine, you will need money to pay people for jobs that can only done by hand.
Well, it would help if I had read your post correctly. Although I'm not sure the last two decades have been free of problems, it's nothing like the industrialized wars of the first half of the 20th century, that's for sure.
Frankly, no. With the people who currently hold a majority of the seats in Congress, the Supreme Court, and the White House, the last thing I want is the federal government controlling a damn thing that matters to me. I mean, the President is a pathological lying narcissistic freak! The dysfunction among all these so-called conservatives is Off The Charts(tm) bad. They can't even repeal a health care law some of them say is the worst thing since slavery. The President actually goes on Twitter to bad mouth his own cabinet appointees. And I'm no fan of the Democrats either. Most of them are just as puke-worthy.
The real question is why should the elite own the factories and machines that do all this production? It rests on centuries of labor, thought, and infrastructure that all of us (or our ancestors) contributed to (and that's not to mention that some of us have ancestors who productive capacities were literally stolen from them).
At least the companies that are largely automated that have public stock available, those shares should be paying heavy dividends, executives can be paid in stock options almost purely while the public are encouraged (or subsidized) to buy shares in mutual funds or ETFs and the like. And perhaps there could be tax consequences for extremely large companies that don't have public stock offerings and pay dividends. And limits as to how much stock in any given company the executives and board members thereof can own (as this gives them an outsized voting bloc).
Public ownership of company stocks normally leads to public having a say in how the company is run, but mutual funds and the like do tend to strip this right away. I mean, how do you vote your fractional share of the 1000 companies in your fund? That's worse than having a full time job. But perhaps having more democratic systems for mutual fund governance would suffice? After all, most index funds are largely automated already. So the real purpose of a fund manager would be to manage voting on behalf of investors. So, perhaps fund managers should be required to undergo a more democratic selection process?
I'm not merely trying to promote a "privatize social security" situation here, I'm looking for a radical shift in how we think about financial equity in society and how to best share it with the least amount of change to our current system. How about stop letting companies buy back their shares (to drive up the price by reducing supply)? How about getting rid of 401(k)s and letting employees choose their own investment situations, how about requiring employers to match 100% employee contributions to their own retirement accounts, up to some reasonable level (and not just with company stock)? How about removing the income caps on social security contributions (biggest scam ever)? How about taxing capital gains the same as regular income (encourage people to buy and hold outside of retirement accounts)? There are so many fixes for our current income inequality problems available that are perfectly sane that the only possible reason they haven't been enacted is that the government of the USA is totally corrupted by wealth. I mean, do the rich actually "work"? Hell, no. They own stuff and they run around telling other people to work. Most of them inherited so much stuff that they don't even have to be good managers of that wealth to stay rich, the system advantages them in so many ways it's not even funny. That's not a level playing field, it's a scam.
Nobody is having children to game the tax system. Once they have the children, perhaps, they are happy to use them as tools to "game" the tax system. However, the tax system was set up to be gamed by people having children. One reason we need all these children is that Social Security is basically a Ponzi scheme. It requires a growing pool of people paying in to cover those being paid out, at least until an equilibrium is reached. Inflation can help offset the number of payers needed a bit, except that then people want cost-of-living adjustments to their payments so the value of their payments doesn't decrease as they age. Of course, there are probably other, better ways to increase the pool of potential payers-in than having children... like letting people immigrate and become citizens. This routinely avoids the need to subsidize those people's first two decades in life with schooling and the like. But this probably won't stop most people from having children, too. It's like it's some sort of basic human drive.
Can't tell if sarcasm, cluelessness, or troll.
Good analogy. At a poker table, it's all against all and in order for anyone to win, someone has to lose.
As far as I'm concerned "underperform" is just another Ayn Rand buzzword for "I got mine, fuck you."
Alexa would probably do a lot better if she used Google Search instead of Bing. I went with Alexa because I already have a tendency towards Amazon with their digital music, Kindle books, Prime video, etc... is there something a Google Home Mini could do that Echo Dot doesn't?
This is all a non-issue.
Unless the devices all do exactly the same things, none of the data is even that relevant from one service to the next. Even recognizing the speech itself is a statistical inference process that relies heavily on what words might actually be uttered in the context. This is highly dependent on what the device can do, and what words are used for that activity on that device. And on some level, the results of a service's speech recognition engine are something of a trade secret that I'm not sure they should be required to share.
Even something as mundane as "Play my classic rock playlist on shuffle" is only going to be transferable if the backend music services are ALSO made to follow the same rules for open standards and transferability. Because if I have a "classic rock" playlist set up in Amazon Music, but not iTunes, Siri is not going to be able to a damn thing with that command except get it wrong.
While it would be nice if Alexa allowed me to download a tarball of all my interactions (including the sound source files), my history is not hidden from me. It's available through a clunky online interface already. Can't imagine that a quick script couldn't help scrape all that data down into some usable form. But usable for what really is the question. I suppose it might be fun to load the data into a DB and run an analysis of how often Alexa can't figure out which lights I wanted to turn on/off... might help me tune up my light names to assist speech recognition process... but loading that information into another assistant? Not something I'm concerned about.
None of this should be construed as opposition to regulatory mandates that would require any and all services that collect input and data from us from providing us a way to retrieve that data in a reasonable package form. Especially as the inputs become more and transient in nature, as with spoken commands to a digital assistant, our own ability to keep track of what we "shared" with the service diminishes. Of course, easily available to me is also more easily available to others and it's one more access point that has to be secured and monitored.
So the company can't figure out how to trim its workforce of the 2-3% dead weight except once a year through some sort of rank and yank? Shit, that's terrible. No wonder they're floundering. Perhaps they ought to try getting employees the help they need to become great workers or find them roles where they can actually contribute appropriately, instead of pulling this "the beatings will continue until morale improves" bullshit.
Why would we need driverless trains? Driverless buses, on the other hand would be very appropriate. It would be especially nice if there was some sort of scheduling and routing flexibility to reduce dependence on static routes and times. In fact, we could start building scheduling and routing apps right now, then they can meet in a convergence with the driverless tech some years down the road.
Yes. It was as if I had accidentally dragged a bunch of porn to a local folder that is synced to a Google Drive folder I share with my extended family, instead of dragging it to the Recycle Bin where I'd intended. Or if I'd attempted to upload multiple files that were in my Downloads folder, and ctrl-clicked on one too many files in the file chooser dialog.
Practically speaking this is years away from happening even if everyone stopped working on every line of legacy code in non-Rust projects. Meanwhile, no computer language can prevent programmers from misunderstanding requirements or goofing up an implementation, so there are bound to be bugs in all new software in Rust that might not be obvious security issues, but could cause more subtle issues, both in usability and security. Does Rust, by default, somehow prevent a programmer from making a web browser vulnerable to XSS? Does it prevent web developers from building flawed APIs that spill data all over the place? Does it force anyone implementing a database to NOT store actual passwords, but to properly salt and hash them before storing?
I'm sure I've imported my contacts from various email services over the years and so has everyone else. And that stuff gets on your phone. And spreads to the next email service... and so on. Data leakage is almost inevitable -- even people who want to be careful often make mistakes. Seriously: just a couple weeks ago I found a journalist's full 1040 form on a doc sharing site. This was someone with an advanced degree from a prestigious institution who makes a living writing about things like doxing and they somehow managed to put one of their most private documents on a file sharing site.
At least Facebook isn't as creepy as LinkedIn, what with all those notices about how many people are looking at my profile, but then NOT telling me who they are (or worse sometimes, telling me who they are). They seem to think I would actually pay money to reverse stalk people. If I didn't owe my current job to popping up on an old coworker's LinkedIn feed, I'd probably have deleted my account there. Again. Because back a few years ago, when it was revealed that they couldn't figure out how to store passwords safely and got cracked, I deleted my account immediately. Not to protect my data (too late!), but to simply not use the services of such an inept provider.
OK. Let's assume they want to pay me fairly. How does knowing my salary history help them do that?
It's not about lacking confidence in one's abilities and skills. It's about negotiating leverage and wasting time. If I am expecting a big bump from what looks like a promotion to me, giving the potential employer the information about my current salary is just giving them a reason to low-ball me and now I have to go through this whole ordeal of negotiating and convincing them that I deserve more. That is a waste of time.
Not that they ever will, but if the employer simply disclosed the range up front, they could save all of us a lot of time-- a lot more time than if I tell all my potential employers what I make now or have made in the past. This is because I have a minimum I require to even consider a job change lateral, let alone a promotion worth taking the risk and effort of applying. If I know up-front that they can't afford me, then I can just skip them, rather than going through a whole song and dance just to find out they are offering short money. And if I know that the job pays a good deal more than I currently make, then I have the incentive I need to understand what they are looking for, make sure I am a fit, and spend the time necessary to convince them of it.
My current salary is totally irrelevant except as a minimum and me giving it out first is backwards. This is like playing poker against a table of people who hold their cards close, but my cards are face-up on the table. Not good odds. Furthermore, if everyone applying for the job is disclosing salary to the employer, they can use that to help them pick the lower paid of two seemingly equal candidates, rather than taking the time to discern which person might truly be the best fit on other measures.