I find it interesting that you are making up your firearms figures, and include no links to back up anything you say.
Here is a comparison of total firearm deaths, firearm suicide deaths, and firearm homicide deaths published October 21, 2015. Firearms deaths by suicide have been trending up since 2006, homicide declining steadily over the same period (and, again, showing that 2/3 of firearm deaths are suicide). Please provide your link showing that "last year was a record year for gun homicides", the FBI and CDC have not yet released final figures for 2015 as far as I can tell.
[An] economy built on pipe dreams such as this is in deep, deep trouble.
Once people stop dreaming our economy will stall to a level not seen in hundreds of years. Most of human history has shown a 1-2% rate of economic advancement until the industrial age.
Not hardly. Before the Industrial Revolution the economic growth rate was 0.1-0.2%, one tenth of what you suggest (actually over the very long term it was just 0.01%). After the IR growth rates shot up to almost 1% initially, eventually reaching 2-3% annually in some decades of the 19th Century (see The Handbook of Economic Growthby Steven Durlauf, Philippe Aghion, 2013, chapter 5).
This is normal practice. Common shares get to vote, preferred do not. The CEO needs/expects to have voting power in her/his own company. The issuance of preferred shares is how venture capital is attracted. Venture capitalists don't really care a fig about the future of the company, its technology, or anything -- they just want to get paid and won't invest unless they are first in line for payment.
Forbes is relying on the written law to figure that out. But this is the age of Obama. As we saw with the GM bankruptcy proceedings during the auto bailout, the government can order the bankruptcy judge to ignore the law and pay whomever the government wants paid. This allowed the union to get paid before shareholders despite the law saying the shareholders had priority.
There is no liar like a right-wing AC liar. In the GM bankruptcy proceeding debts were paid in strict accordance with the law. The bondholders (not shareholders) that were upset about not getting preferential treatment were unsecured creditors, unlike the banks that did get paid off first, and had no seniority in settling GM's obligations. They were in the same asset category as the union to whom GM owed a lot of money, and it is up the administrator of the filing to determine how the parties in the same category get treated.
We seem to be averaging one of these "fast food robots will kill jobs if workers are paid more than a pittance" stories every fewweeks.
I predict we are going to continue to get these stories trying to drum up fear of a living wage for workers, until the "Raise the Wage Act" finally passes.
Perhaps if the fast food executives were to tell us the magic wage that would guarantee that robots will never take jobs slinging burgers we can have an honest conversation about this.
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.
He has a phd in math&physics from Princeton and did a postdoc under Stephen Hawking. People have probably been telling him he was smart long before he got rich.
True, but they also probably were still willing to tell him he was wrong, being a jerk, or acting like an idiot.
Now as a billionaire, making his new career as a patent troll, I suspect no one is telling him these things any longer. And even if they did, he does not have to listen.
When you have billions of dollars, and can hire lots of people to do stuff for you, and have no need to do anything other than what you like to do, it becomes possible to do lots of stuff. But not necessarily lots of stuff well.
What would have been worthy of respect is if Myhrvold had prepared an analysis and submitted it through normal peer review, with access to his code like normal researchers, to see if it is publishable. That would give the scientists who have devoted years of effort studying this area - and are every bit as smart as he is - a chance to find the inevitable errors in Myhrvold's work, allow them to be corrected, and give Myhrvold - eventually - a legitimate publication and addition to the field of science if his work stands up to scrutiny.
What we have instead is Myrhvold ignoring advice that he have the paper submitted to peer review, or open up his own analysis to review, and "self publishing" his "research" as a form of self-promotion.
They are using pellets containing different elements to produce different colors as the pellets vaporize and ionize on re-entry. They do refer to the pellets "burning up" (just as we do for meteors), but never combustion.
But this isn't the first industrial revolution. Everything you're saying, could have been said a hundred years ago, or even two hundred years ago. What if we had gone to UBI then?
Millions of people in Great Britain would not have had to endure six or seven decades of abject misery.
The First Industrial Revolution (FIR) destroyed the livelihoods for a couple of million people in the course of a couple of decades, by the 1790s 20% of the entire population of Great Britain were paupers - homeless, with no way to support themselves.
This led to a huge surge in petty crime as destitute, desperate people stole small amounts of goods and money. A prison building boom resulted, but the prisons were heavily over crowded anyway, so the overflow were sent to the "hulks", old ships destined for the scrapyard, but these quickly filled well past capacity also, and the overflow from the hulks were sentenced to "transportation" (exile to prison colonies, principally in Australia).
Debtors prisons were created and also filled past capacity. And the destitute who were neither convicted of any crime, nor a debtor, were sent to work-houses, essentially prisons for the innocent, where grueling work was extracted. At the height of the Dickensian misery several hundred thousand people (out of population of 10 million or so) were confined to work-houses.
British lifespans shortened, as did the population itself (average height decreased) and BMIs (already low) dropped further as malnutrition became widespread amid the opulent wealth of the early FIR.
So a couple of million people would have been far better off if they had simply been given money to buy the necessities of life.
The notion that a basic income, sufficient for a decent healthy life, would mean that no one would want to work is ridiculous. Most people would like more the basic, and be happy to work to get it. And for that portion who are content not to work? Well, we are discussing a future where, due to the high productivity of automated systems, there is not enough work to go arounds so that is fine also.
But this isn't the first industrial revolution. Everything you're saying, could have been said a hundred years ago, or even two hundred years ago. What if we had gone to UBI then? Your argument would have been just as appropriate.
...
What would have happened is that there would not have been seven or eight decades of severe suffering for millions in Britain.
The First Industrial Revolution wiped out the employment of a large section of the English population in the space of a couple of decades, by 1800 20% of the population were paupers. After 1770 there was an enormous increase in petty crime, people stealing small amounts, as over a million people found themselves destitute without any way to support themselves. This led to a prison building boom, overcrowding in prisons despite the building boom, the use of "hulks" (old ships destined to be scrapped) to deal the overflow from the prisons, and "transportation" - the exile of petty criminals overseas - to deal with the overflow from the hulks.
The height and BMIs of the English population fell, and lifespans shortened, during this period as malnutrition became common amid the new wealth of the FIR. Debtors prisons filled up, and at any given time several hundred thousand of people (out of a population of ~10 million) were confined to "work houses" - essentially prisons for the innocent poor (neither criminal nor debtor) where grueling labor was extracted from the inmates.
The assumption that if you provide a basic income, sufficient for a decent healthy standard of living, then no one will want to work is nonsense. Plenty of people will want more than the basic income, and be happy to work to get it. If a portion of the population chooses not too, that is fine, since we are discussing the unfolding scenario where there are not enough of jobs to employ everyone due to the high productivity of automation.
...Just like jewelry manufacturers have zero responsibility to avoid blood diamonds...
Jewelry manufacturers almost everywhere have legal obligations to avoid blood diamonds. The Kimberly Process Certification Scheme, which was established by United Nations General Assembly Resolution 55/56 is binding on all UN member states and requires all diamonds being imported or exported to be traceable through certification to be non-conflict diamonds. Member states in turn have laws and regulations enforcing these requirements. Further jewelry manufacturers and vendors are representing their products to the public as being conflict diamond free. So aside from legal, moral, and ethical (e.g. lying to your customers) responsibilities, they have zero responsibilities?
Any "tool" of surveillance or coercion provided to a law enforcement agency, on the pretext that it is necessary in extraordinary circumstances, will be soon employed in routine circumstances.
That prosperity was in part due to the rest of the world having been mostly bombed to rubble. The resources were mostly controlled by the Americans. Tax rates weren't that big a factor.
Nonsense (though nonsense that is commonly repeated).
The U.S. economy of the late 1940s through 1970 was not built on selling goods to the rest of the world. As a share of its GDP U.S. exports were pretty stable at around 5% GDP, the same fraction as it had been since the late 19th century. There is no unusual surge in U.S. "supplying the world". Further by 1960 the incomes of West Germany, and other major industrial nations, exceeded pre-war levels - the era of being "bombed to rubble" was over - and yet the U.S. economic surge continued until the early 1970s. U.S. growth during this era was driven by internal growth, and yes, high taxes on high incomes (encouraging investment), but high wages for everyone, was a key driver.
I'm libertarian, and I strongly advocate for basic income.
Good to hear it. But we should also advocate expanding the capitalistic component of income - wages. We need policies that require (minimum wage) or encourage companies to distribute more money to their employees. This is good for the overall economy, creating more demand, and making it profitable to invest in expansion (not currently the case, corporations are sitting on cash). Call it "capitalist redistribution" - distribute a larger share of revenue to the actual employees that make the company run. What a concept!
Slashdot Mirror
CDC 2013 stats: total number of firearm deaths: 33,636; number of suicides with firearms: 21,175. Now 21175/33363 = 63.5%, or two thirds of all gun deaths.
I find it interesting that you are making up your firearms figures, and include no links to back up anything you say.
Here is a comparison of total firearm deaths, firearm suicide deaths, and firearm homicide deaths published October 21, 2015. Firearms deaths by suicide have been trending up since 2006, homicide declining steadily over the same period (and, again, showing that 2/3 of firearm deaths are suicide). Please provide your link showing that "last year was a record year for gun homicides", the FBI and CDC have not yet released final figures for 2015 as far as I can tell.
Because it was always going down until Obama care was passed. And it's being going up starting a few years after its passage.
Just makin' stuff up are we? 2015 is the first and only year with an increase in the adjusted death rate since the 1990 recession.
[An] economy built on pipe dreams such as this is in deep, deep trouble.
Once people stop dreaming our economy will stall to a level not seen in hundreds of years. Most of human history has shown a 1-2% rate of economic advancement until the industrial age.
Not hardly. Before the Industrial Revolution the economic growth rate was 0.1-0.2%, one tenth of what you suggest (actually over the very long term it was just 0.01%). After the IR growth rates shot up to almost 1% initially, eventually reaching 2-3% annually in some decades of the 19th Century (see The Handbook of Economic Growthby Steven Durlauf, Philippe Aghion, 2013, chapter 5).
This is normal practice. Common shares get to vote, preferred do not. The CEO needs/expects to have voting power in her/his own company. The issuance of preferred shares is how venture capital is attracted. Venture capitalists don't really care a fig about the future of the company, its technology, or anything -- they just want to get paid and won't invest unless they are first in line for payment.
Forbes is relying on the written law to figure that out. But this is the age of Obama. As we saw with the GM bankruptcy proceedings during the auto bailout, the government can order the bankruptcy judge to ignore the law and pay whomever the government wants paid. This allowed the union to get paid before shareholders despite the law saying the shareholders had priority.
There is no liar like a right-wing AC liar. In the GM bankruptcy proceeding debts were paid in strict accordance with the law. The bondholders (not shareholders) that were upset about not getting preferential treatment were unsecured creditors, unlike the banks that did get paid off first, and had no seniority in settling GM's obligations. They were in the same asset category as the union to whom GM owed a lot of money, and it is up the administrator of the filing to determine how the parties in the same category get treated.
The Gotthard Railway Tunnel was built between 1871 and 1882, and was the world's longest rail tunnel at the time.
This is the Gotthard Base Tunnel (and there is a third tunnel, the Gotthard Road Tunnel).
We seem to be averaging one of these "fast food robots will kill jobs if workers are paid more than a pittance" stories every few weeks.
I predict we are going to continue to get these stories trying to drum up fear of a living wage for workers, until the "Raise the Wage Act" finally passes.
Perhaps if the fast food executives were to tell us the magic wage that would guarantee that robots will never take jobs slinging burgers we can have an honest conversation about this.
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.
He has a phd in math&physics from Princeton and did a postdoc under Stephen Hawking. People have probably been telling him he was smart long before he got rich.
True, but they also probably were still willing to tell him he was wrong, being a jerk, or acting like an idiot.
Now as a billionaire, making his new career as a patent troll, I suspect no one is telling him these things any longer. And even if they did, he does not have to listen.
When you have billions of dollars, and can hire lots of people to do stuff for you, and have no need to do anything other than what you like to do, it becomes possible to do lots of stuff. But not necessarily lots of stuff well.
What would have been worthy of respect is if Myhrvold had prepared an analysis and submitted it through normal peer review, with access to his code like normal researchers, to see if it is publishable. That would give the scientists who have devoted years of effort studying this area - and are every bit as smart as he is - a chance to find the inevitable errors in Myhrvold's work, allow them to be corrected, and give Myhrvold - eventually - a legitimate publication and addition to the field of science if his work stands up to scrutiny.
What we have instead is Myrhvold ignoring advice that he have the paper submitted to peer review, or open up his own analysis to review, and "self publishing" his "research" as a form of self-promotion.
...The purpose of the government is to provide equal application of laws...
The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.
Anatole France
It is easy enough to Google-up the actual website of the company doing this, rather than rely on third-hand journalist summaries. They describe in reasonable detail how their scheme works.
They are using pellets containing different elements to produce different colors as the pellets vaporize and ionize on re-entry. They do refer to the pellets "burning up" (just as we do for meteors), but never combustion.
I miss the cow spam.
Right - not ideal. You are doing it only because you don't have what you really want: a regular white board or wall.
Thing is, that transparent monitor costs lots extra. Would you pay a huge premium for your sub-optimal solution?
In addition, phase change memory is not "optical". Cr@ppy summary, even for /.
Does this mean Google is committed to killing Flash on YouTube this next year?
You might be right.
But this isn't the first industrial revolution. Everything you're saying, could have been said a hundred years ago, or even two hundred years ago. What if we had gone to UBI then?
Millions of people in Great Britain would not have had to endure six or seven decades of abject misery.
The First Industrial Revolution (FIR) destroyed the livelihoods for a couple of million people in the course of a couple of decades, by the 1790s 20% of the entire population of Great Britain were paupers - homeless, with no way to support themselves.
This led to a huge surge in petty crime as destitute, desperate people stole small amounts of goods and money. A prison building boom resulted, but the prisons were heavily over crowded anyway, so the overflow were sent to the "hulks", old ships destined for the scrapyard, but these quickly filled well past capacity also, and the overflow from the hulks were sentenced to "transportation" (exile to prison colonies, principally in Australia).
Debtors prisons were created and also filled past capacity. And the destitute who were neither convicted of any crime, nor a debtor, were sent to work-houses, essentially prisons for the innocent, where grueling work was extracted. At the height of the Dickensian misery several hundred thousand people (out of population of 10 million or so) were confined to work-houses.
British lifespans shortened, as did the population itself (average height decreased) and BMIs (already low) dropped further as malnutrition became widespread amid the opulent wealth of the early FIR.
So a couple of million people would have been far better off if they had simply been given money to buy the necessities of life.
The notion that a basic income, sufficient for a decent healthy life, would mean that no one would want to work is ridiculous. Most people would like more the basic, and be happy to work to get it. And for that portion who are content not to work? Well, we are discussing a future where, due to the high productivity of automated systems, there is not enough work to go arounds so that is fine also.
You might be right.
But this isn't the first industrial revolution. Everything you're saying, could have been said a hundred years ago, or even two hundred years ago. What if we had gone to UBI then? Your argument would have been just as appropriate.
...
What would have happened is that there would not have been seven or eight decades of severe suffering for millions in Britain.
The First Industrial Revolution wiped out the employment of a large section of the English population in the space of a couple of decades, by 1800 20% of the population were paupers. After 1770 there was an enormous increase in petty crime, people stealing small amounts, as over a million people found themselves destitute without any way to support themselves. This led to a prison building boom, overcrowding in prisons despite the building boom, the use of "hulks" (old ships destined to be scrapped) to deal the overflow from the prisons, and "transportation" - the exile of petty criminals overseas - to deal with the overflow from the hulks.
The height and BMIs of the English population fell, and lifespans shortened, during this period as malnutrition became common amid the new wealth of the FIR. Debtors prisons filled up, and at any given time several hundred thousand of people (out of a population of ~10 million) were confined to "work houses" - essentially prisons for the innocent poor (neither criminal nor debtor) where grueling labor was extracted from the inmates.
The assumption that if you provide a basic income, sufficient for a decent healthy standard of living, then no one will want to work is nonsense. Plenty of people will want more than the basic income, and be happy to work to get it. If a portion of the population chooses not too, that is fine, since we are discussing the unfolding scenario where there are not enough of jobs to employ everyone due to the high productivity of automation.
Wendy's net income for 2015: $161 million. The CEO is eating up fully 13% of the total profit of the Wendy's chain.
Well we learned from the Battlestar Galactica reboot and Caprica that the Cyclons that annihilated BG-humanity were actually uploaded teenage girls.
...Just like jewelry manufacturers have zero responsibility to avoid blood diamonds...
Jewelry manufacturers almost everywhere have legal obligations to avoid blood diamonds. The Kimberly Process Certification Scheme, which was established by United Nations General Assembly Resolution 55/56 is binding on all UN member states and requires all diamonds being imported or exported to be traceable through certification to be non-conflict diamonds. Member states in turn have laws and regulations enforcing these requirements. Further jewelry manufacturers and vendors are representing their products to the public as being conflict diamond free. So aside from legal, moral, and ethical (e.g. lying to your customers) responsibilities, they have zero responsibilities?
Any "tool" of surveillance or coercion provided to a law enforcement agency, on the pretext that it is necessary in extraordinary circumstances, will be soon employed in routine circumstances.
This should be modded up. It is so true.
That prosperity was in part due to the rest of the world having been mostly bombed to rubble. The resources were mostly controlled by the Americans. Tax rates weren't that big a factor.
Nonsense (though nonsense that is commonly repeated).
The U.S. economy of the late 1940s through 1970 was not built on selling goods to the rest of the world. As a share of its GDP U.S. exports were pretty stable at around 5% GDP, the same fraction as it had been since the late 19th century. There is no unusual surge in U.S. "supplying the world". Further by 1960 the incomes of West Germany, and other major industrial nations, exceeded pre-war levels - the era of being "bombed to rubble" was over - and yet the U.S. economic surge continued until the early 1970s. U.S. growth during this era was driven by internal growth, and yes, high taxes on high incomes (encouraging investment), but high wages for everyone, was a key driver.
I'm libertarian, and I strongly advocate for basic income.
Good to hear it. But we should also advocate expanding the capitalistic component of income - wages. We need policies that require (minimum wage) or encourage companies to distribute more money to their employees. This is good for the overall economy, creating more demand, and making it profitable to invest in expansion (not currently the case, corporations are sitting on cash). Call it "capitalist redistribution" - distribute a larger share of revenue to the actual employees that make the company run. What a concept!