The problem is an income isn't something you can just assign willy nilly. Incomes, currency value, and productivity are all interconnected.
You can assign a basic income, not willy-nilly, but based on actual costs of a decent prevailing standard of living. This is not at all hard to do.
Incomes naturally try to align with each worker's productivity (or what he can claim to be his productivity in the case of managers and scam artists). So if someone decides to quit working and live off a basic income, that will cause a shift in the value of currency to make his basic income try to match his productivity (zero).
Not so, and I thank you for your simple story explaining your position, because it shows clearly why this idea is false under the circumstances being discussed. The problem is increasing numbers of people who are not holding well paying jobs "making milk" but are poor and buy little now. Basic wages increases their income and creates economic activity.
Anyone who needs it drops by the local food distribution center and picks up a week's worth of standard grocery rations, thus bypassing currency as an intermediary in your basic income.
And how does that work for housing, electricity, water, Internet, medical care, or means of transportation? Even the "rationing card" is fiat currency.
The analogy is the agricultural revolution of the last several centuries where greater amounts of food are being produced by fewer and fewer farmers, displacing many of them.
The article does cite the dramatic reduction in agricultural labor in the U.S. in the Twentieth Century and links to a USDA report that discusses this. But neither the article nor the USDA report make this false assertion of cause and effect.
People were not "displaced from farms" by improving agriculture.
Rather the Second Industrial Revolution economy of diverse industries of assembly line manufacturing, and the accompanying demand for clerical workers, in cities at higher pay with less arduous work brought the kids off of the farms in droves, emptying the countryside of ready workers. "Can't keep them down on the farm" became a cultural catch phrase. Often family farms came to an end when the next generation decided to work in the cities instead, and the farms ended up being sold and consolidated. The process of consolidation led to bigger and bigger farms that could underwrite new capital equipment for automated farming of large areas leading directly to the industrial scale farming we have now.
The "displaced from farms" notion would have us believe that family farms (which is where all those farmers were employed) started investing with spare money they did not have in expensive farming equipment they could not use efficiently, sending their kids jobless off to wander the cities where they found empty factories and offices looking for workers. This is comically absurd.
Correction - there was a "Spacelab" that was carried up in the Shuttle and back down to Earth in the Shuttle. It had no independent orbit, and did not decay.
I read that decades ago, but can't for the life of me remember any of it. But it was a Heinlein story and he was pretty right wing...
It is a bit misleading to simply label Heinlein as "right wing".
He started out championing liberal causes and was quite active politically then. He was a Democrat until he was 47 years old. He completely rejected conservative ideas about race, gender, sexuality, and religion throughout his entire life.
He adopted Libertarian ideas in his 40s, (the 1950s) and became increasingly involved with right-wing anti-communist activism during the McCarthy Era. During the Cold War being opposed to the Soviet Union, it allies, and the Communist political front organizations found in democratic countries did not make you right-wing, "Cold War Liberals" felt exactly the same way. But the right-wing focused on florid anti-communism to an extreme degree, and that seemed to attract Heinlein into their orbit, so that he became a supporter of Goldwater in 1964.
Despite his devotion to individualism he seemed to be attracted to heroic imagery, and so to the politics of the "strong leader" that everyone falls in line behind that drives the right-wing. He became an ardent supporter of Ronald Reagan and the (genuinely) science fictional "SDI" program.
Certainly his shift to the right occurred at the height of his career, but in his later years he got ever more deeply embedded in increasingly fringey right-wing political and social causes during a clear decline in his mental faculties.
A 1 MWh battery however costs around 1 million dollars, and not 10000. Whole two orders of magnitude more than the figure you claimed
Please link to an analysis that shows a 1 MWh battery per household would be needed in any kind of rational power system. This is a full months worth of electricity for an (extremely wasteful) American household, and almost 3 months of electricity for a more efficient OECD economy.
...The problem with coal is not the strip mining, but what happens thereafter.....
As if those were separate, unrelated things. It is precisely the mess left over that is the problem with "strip mining" (now typically "mountain top removal" which also completely buries watersheds). Mining operations are typically conducted by specially formed companies owned by shell companies that are the real mining operator. When the project is done, the company declares bankrupcy, disappears, and leaves an awful mess behind with no one to hold accountable or pay the bills for remediation.
Get ready for things to get more expensive. You didn't actually think companies were going to give that money away freely, did you? People will lose jobs, too, because businesses won't be able to afford this.
Because, you know, without any sort of employment regulation we always get the best of all possible worlds with absolutely the best economy and wages that there is possible to be. Because right wing ideology says so!
It's the same reasons economists agree that minimum wage hurts the economy.
So if the boiler breaks now you flood your house with CO2 and kill everyone in it? Doesn't sound like a good idea to me.
Flooding your house with any inert gas - like the fluorocarbons typically used in AC units and refrigerators - will only kill by displacing oxygen. It takes a lot to do that in a whole building, though if it were releases into an enclosed basement a hazard is far more likely. How often have you heard about deaths from this cause?
Still, lots better than flooding your house with compressed ammonia, sulfur dioxide, or methyl chloride which were used in refrigerators in the early 20th century, and did kill people with some regularity.
"First, on the need for a UBI: "For the first time in the history of technology more jobs are destroyed than created."
This isn't true - the original Industrial Revolution did the same thing. Most everyone employed in the textile trade in Britain around 1770 had their livelihoods destroyed permanently. The various phases of textile manufacture was by far the largest industry in Britain, and in two decades the entire craft-based spinning, weaving and sewing industry was wiped out. Even producers of traditional textile raw materials, like linen and wool, took a major hit as the new mechanized industry was based on imported cotton at first. By 1800 20% of the population of Britain were paupers. A balance between labor and employment was not reached until 1840 at the earliest, giving 60-70 years (two working lifetimes, four generations) of economic misery to the lower classes. Demographic data show heights and weights of British citizens falling, and lifespans shortening, through the first half of 18th century.
Know this: If you make me a fair offer that matches the position and I do take it, I won't gripe about the wages I agree to and I will work hard so you will want to promote me to a position where you can take advantage of what I have to bring to the table.
That was my strategy too for the first half of my career, and it worked out well. I often got promotions and pay raises fairly quickly.
My experience in the last 15 years has turned that view around. In the positions I have held since then, "promotions" come without significant salary increase (inflation is low, but your "merit" increases barely keep up with it, if you are lucky). I have found that it is virtually impossible to get a real pay increase on the job now. The last time I got one from an employer I literally had to take another job, then get hired back - which is when my pay went up.
I am 58, but look 15 years younger (partly genetics I guess, but I also lift weights and so am pretty buff - I can beat anyone in my company in push-ups and arm-wrestling). In my most recent job hunt (last year), I experienced what I think is age discrimination for the first time - having an interview with a start-up that went really well I thought, but then got an rejection with the explanation that I would not "fit into a start-up environment" (I had worked start-ups in the earlier tech boom though). But then I got an offer from a start-up a few weeks later, where I am currently working.
I dropped my first decade of experience off my resume years ago, as I thought it was not obviously relevant to the modern tech industry, and harmful in dating me, and so I also do not list my Bachelors graduation dates. I was fortunate to earn my Masters, and do PhD work, mid-career, so that I do list those dates on my resume, making me look more than a decade younger on paper (which is not then exposed upon meeting me since I look like my implied age).
I am concerned though, because I need to work until I am 70 to collect my full SS income, and build up a decent retirement account. The drain of a child with cancer for many years, before she died, and a wife that had serious health issues and an emotional breakdown during that same period set me well behind financially. (A lot of obviously young, and so far lucky, posters here make it sound like saving for retirement is always a piece of cake, and anyone who has trouble preparing is just stupid and lazy; but bad things can happen in life through no fault of yours that can really hurt your savings - there is no safety net to help you out). I am not sure how long my apparent youthfulness will hold out, and whether the industry will become even more intolerant of age. I just need 12 more years though.
Which makes me wonder... think we could get a Kickstarter campaign rolling? Maybe we can buy us our very own senator if we all pitch in?
Buying Congressfolk is old hat. Today they are leased.
(Yes, it works pretty much like that. You contribute regularly to their "leadership PAC" which is a slush fund from which they will eventually pocket all of the money. And you tell them from time to time how you would like them to vote. They know that if they ignore these "suggestions" the money will get cut off. No illegal pay for a vote at all, no sirree!)
I am pretty sure it is limited to different methods of ingesting ethanol, which we all know is God's Drug, and perfectly wholesome and sinless to imbide. And if someone throws a few punches at someone else after a few, whose counting, (or even remembers the next day)?
Who is this "we" oh AC? I think you are alone, AC, but off your meds and starting to hallucinate. There is no one there but you. The voices are not your friends.
Because there is nothing at all to worry or complain about unless we break new records of inequality? The graph ends about 16 months ago, and looking at the post crash trend-line it looks like it will set new records by the end of 2017. Can we start worrying then?
The 1920s level of inequality was no golden age for most Americans, and it ended very badly, for most everyone (some super-rich did very well though, buying up distressed assets for pennies on the dollar).
Standard right-wing argument, unless it is uniformly worse in every way than it has ever been before, no one has anything to complain about (except the rich, which are enjoying historically low taxes, but are fully justified for complaining that their burden is not lower still).
From the FRED graph we can see that the rate of manufacturing growth since the pre-crash (2009) peak, until the beginning of this year has been almost 1.5% annually. That is something, in an economy that has had depressed growth from under-investment (excess savings). But it gives a doubling time of 45 years, which is disappointing. It was higher before the 2009 Crash, taking the growth back to the previous pre-recession peak (2000 to 2009) gives 4.9% growth, a mere 15 year doubling time.
Robert Gordon points out a couple of factors contributing to out current slow-down that are entirely due to deliberate institutional (largely political) decisions:
1. The first of those is inequality. Over the last 35 years, an amazingly high fraction of our economic progress has been siphoned in to the incomes of the top one percent of the income distribution. That’s a tremendously important feature that causes the slowdown. It’s not just the lack of innovation. We’re seeing plenty of innovation. But it’s the fact that not everybody is sharing in the fruits of that innovation.
2. A slowing in the pace of improvement of educational attainment.
This should be modded up "funny"! You had me going, but saying "long term winning strategy" was just too much! Zuckerberg will diversify long before the fortunes of Facebook affect his vast wealth, just as Bill Gates did.
Right you are. Both those men aggressively manipulated the political environment (Murdoch still does) without any fear of sanction. Not even the Fairness Doctrine on public airwaves still exists. Of course Facebook can influence the election, if it wants. It is the American Way.
Handing out bribes to voters is not the only way to influence elections. Every election billions are spent to influence the election without significant number of bribes being handed out, I am sure Facebook - or their employees - can manage to figure this one out.
This is a political "just so" story, describing a possible line of argument about how "a legal responsibility to protect and maximize the value of their shareholders" might be interpreted. It is not a necessary, or even likely, conclusion.
There is abundant data showing that political spending has, on average, an extremely large ROI, exceeding 100-1. Regulatory rulings can cause tens of billions of dollars to change hands. It is an easy case to make that efforts to influence political races is not just wise, but incumbent on a corporation explicitly to protect shareholder value.
And in an age where unlimited corporate political spending on its own influence operations is legal, and where the content delivered by a news channel is legally regarded as "entertainment", with no sanction for out-right fabrications being passed off as fact, it is hard to know what sort of activity by a corporation would be impermissible.
Pretty much the only think illegal these days is paying Congressfolk a sum of money for a specific vote. It is fine though to keep them on retainer, paying regularly to their "leadership PAC" (from which the can keep all of the proceeds), and telling them periodically how they should vote, with the politician knowing that the sugar stops if the lobbyist is not obeyed. Not for sale, but all them are being rented.
Tom Lehrer's "New Math" gets quoted semi-regularly: "But in the new approach, as you know, the important thing is to understand what you're doing, rather than to get the right answer." This is played as a laugh line, but... really? To me the joke is on everyone in the audience who laughed. If all you want is the right answer, use a fucking calculator.
Pedantic note: when "New Math" was written (pocket) calculators did not exist. They would come out about 5 years later, and become affordable a couple years after that.
Side note: the "New Math" worked very well for me. I liked learning the underlying principles. Another side note: it appears the methods being taught with Common Core are how I have always done mental math.
My operating theory is that the guy is constructing an alibi. Perhaps he has gotten wind of an investigation and wants to look like a hapless idiot and not someone engaged in destroying evidence.
The median # of sexual partners a woman accumulates between 18 & marriage: 7
Median # of sexual partners for men: 2
A small % of the men are banging most of the women.
Citation needed. According to this CDC study the "Median number of opposite-sex partners in lifetime among men and women aged 25-44 years of age" was 6.6 for men and 4.3 for women in 2011-2013. This implies that a modest proportion of women are having sex with a lot of men, an entirely believable proposition.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem is an income isn't something you can just assign willy nilly. Incomes, currency value, and productivity are all interconnected.
You can assign a basic income, not willy-nilly, but based on actual costs of a decent prevailing standard of living. This is not at all hard to do.
Incomes naturally try to align with each worker's productivity (or what he can claim to be his productivity in the case of managers and scam artists). So if someone decides to quit working and live off a basic income, that will cause a shift in the value of currency to make his basic income try to match his productivity (zero).
Not so, and I thank you for your simple story explaining your position, because it shows clearly why this idea is false under the circumstances being discussed. The problem is increasing numbers of people who are not holding well paying jobs "making milk" but are poor and buy little now. Basic wages increases their income and creates economic activity.
Anyone who needs it drops by the local food distribution center and picks up a week's worth of standard grocery rations, thus bypassing currency as an intermediary in your basic income.
And how does that work for housing, electricity, water, Internet, medical care, or means of transportation? Even the "rationing card" is fiat currency.
I know, what else is new here?
The analogy is the agricultural revolution of the last several centuries where greater amounts of food are being produced by fewer and fewer farmers, displacing many of them.
The article does cite the dramatic reduction in agricultural labor in the U.S. in the Twentieth Century and links to a USDA report that discusses this. But neither the article nor the USDA report make this false assertion of cause and effect.
People were not "displaced from farms" by improving agriculture.
Rather the Second Industrial Revolution economy of diverse industries of assembly line manufacturing, and the accompanying demand for clerical workers, in cities at higher pay with less arduous work brought the kids off of the farms in droves, emptying the countryside of ready workers. "Can't keep them down on the farm" became a cultural catch phrase. Often family farms came to an end when the next generation decided to work in the cities instead, and the farms ended up being sold and consolidated. The process of consolidation led to bigger and bigger farms that could underwrite new capital equipment for automated farming of large areas leading directly to the industrial scale farming we have now.
The "displaced from farms" notion would have us believe that family farms (which is where all those farmers were employed) started investing with spare money they did not have in expensive farming equipment they could not use efficiently, sending their kids jobless off to wander the cities where they found empty factories and offices looking for workers. This is comically absurd.
Correction - there was a "Spacelab" that was carried up in the Shuttle and back down to Earth in the Shuttle. It had no independent orbit, and did not decay.
So can you explain why Spacelab's orbit decayed?
I mean, since thin air has no effect, right?
Difficult to explain since "Spacelab" never existed.
I read that decades ago, but can't for the life of me remember any of it. But it was a Heinlein story and he was pretty right wing...
It is a bit misleading to simply label Heinlein as "right wing".
He started out championing liberal causes and was quite active politically then. He was a Democrat until he was 47 years old. He completely rejected conservative ideas about race, gender, sexuality, and religion throughout his entire life.
He adopted Libertarian ideas in his 40s, (the 1950s) and became increasingly involved with right-wing anti-communist activism during the McCarthy Era. During the Cold War being opposed to the Soviet Union, it allies, and the Communist political front organizations found in democratic countries did not make you right-wing, "Cold War Liberals" felt exactly the same way. But the right-wing focused on florid anti-communism to an extreme degree, and that seemed to attract Heinlein into their orbit, so that he became a supporter of Goldwater in 1964.
Despite his devotion to individualism he seemed to be attracted to heroic imagery, and so to the politics of the "strong leader" that everyone falls in line behind that drives the right-wing. He became an ardent supporter of Ronald Reagan and the (genuinely) science fictional "SDI" program.
Certainly his shift to the right occurred at the height of his career, but in his later years he got ever more deeply embedded in increasingly fringey right-wing political and social causes during a clear decline in his mental faculties.
A 1 MWh battery however costs around 1 million dollars, and not 10000. Whole two orders of magnitude more than the figure you claimed
Please link to an analysis that shows a 1 MWh battery per household would be needed in any kind of rational power system. This is a full months worth of electricity for an (extremely wasteful) American household, and almost 3 months of electricity for a more efficient OECD economy.
This is a preposterous made-up "requirement".
...The problem with coal is not the strip mining, but what happens thereafter.....
As if those were separate, unrelated things. It is precisely the mess left over that is the problem with "strip mining" (now typically "mountain top removal" which also completely buries watersheds). Mining operations are typically conducted by specially formed companies owned by shell companies that are the real mining operator. When the project is done, the company declares bankrupcy, disappears, and leaves an awful mess behind with no one to hold accountable or pay the bills for remediation.
Get ready for things to get more expensive. You didn't actually think companies were going to give that money away freely, did you? People will lose jobs, too, because businesses won't be able to afford this.
Because, you know, without any sort of employment regulation we always get the best of all possible worlds with absolutely the best economy and wages that there is possible to be. Because right wing ideology says so!
It's the same reasons economists agree that minimum wage hurts the economy.
Economists "agree" on no such thing.
So if the boiler breaks now you flood your house with CO2 and kill everyone in it? Doesn't sound like a good idea to me.
Flooding your house with any inert gas - like the fluorocarbons typically used in AC units and refrigerators - will only kill by displacing oxygen. It takes a lot to do that in a whole building, though if it were releases into an enclosed basement a hazard is far more likely. How often have you heard about deaths from this cause?
Still, lots better than flooding your house with compressed ammonia, sulfur dioxide, or methyl chloride which were used in refrigerators in the early 20th century, and did kill people with some regularity.
"First, on the need for a UBI: "For the first time in the history of technology more jobs are destroyed than created."
This isn't true - the original Industrial Revolution did the same thing. Most everyone employed in the textile trade in Britain around 1770 had their livelihoods destroyed permanently. The various phases of textile manufacture was by far the largest industry in Britain, and in two decades the entire craft-based spinning, weaving and sewing industry was wiped out. Even producers of traditional textile raw materials, like linen and wool, took a major hit as the new mechanized industry was based on imported cotton at first. By 1800 20% of the population of Britain were paupers. A balance between labor and employment was not reached until 1840 at the earliest, giving 60-70 years (two working lifetimes, four generations) of economic misery to the lower classes. Demographic data show heights and weights of British citizens falling, and lifespans shortening, through the first half of 18th century.
Know this: If you make me a fair offer that matches the position and I do take it, I won't gripe about the wages I agree to and I will work hard so you will want to promote me to a position where you can take advantage of what I have to bring to the table.
That was my strategy too for the first half of my career, and it worked out well. I often got promotions and pay raises fairly quickly.
My experience in the last 15 years has turned that view around. In the positions I have held since then, "promotions" come without significant salary increase (inflation is low, but your "merit" increases barely keep up with it, if you are lucky). I have found that it is virtually impossible to get a real pay increase on the job now. The last time I got one from an employer I literally had to take another job, then get hired back - which is when my pay went up.
I am 58, but look 15 years younger (partly genetics I guess, but I also lift weights and so am pretty buff - I can beat anyone in my company in push-ups and arm-wrestling). In my most recent job hunt (last year), I experienced what I think is age discrimination for the first time - having an interview with a start-up that went really well I thought, but then got an rejection with the explanation that I would not "fit into a start-up environment" (I had worked start-ups in the earlier tech boom though). But then I got an offer from a start-up a few weeks later, where I am currently working.
I dropped my first decade of experience off my resume years ago, as I thought it was not obviously relevant to the modern tech industry, and harmful in dating me, and so I also do not list my Bachelors graduation dates. I was fortunate to earn my Masters, and do PhD work, mid-career, so that I do list those dates on my resume, making me look more than a decade younger on paper (which is not then exposed upon meeting me since I look like my implied age).
I am concerned though, because I need to work until I am 70 to collect my full SS income, and build up a decent retirement account. The drain of a child with cancer for many years, before she died, and a wife that had serious health issues and an emotional breakdown during that same period set me well behind financially. (A lot of obviously young, and so far lucky, posters here make it sound like saving for retirement is always a piece of cake, and anyone who has trouble preparing is just stupid and lazy; but bad things can happen in life through no fault of yours that can really hurt your savings - there is no safety net to help you out). I am not sure how long my apparent youthfulness will hold out, and whether the industry will become even more intolerant of age. I just need 12 more years though.
Which makes me wonder... think we could get a Kickstarter campaign rolling? Maybe we can buy us our very own senator if we all pitch in?
Buying Congressfolk is old hat. Today they are leased.
(Yes, it works pretty much like that. You contribute regularly to their "leadership PAC" which is a slush fund from which they will eventually pocket all of the money. And you tell them from time to time how you would like them to vote. They know that if they ignore these "suggestions" the money will get cut off. No illegal pay for a vote at all, no sirree!)
she clearly has been experimenting with something
I am pretty sure it is limited to different methods of ingesting ethanol, which we all know is God's Drug, and perfectly wholesome and sinless to imbide. And if someone throws a few punches at someone else after a few, whose counting, (or even remembers the next day)?
Who is this "we" oh AC? I think you are alone, AC, but off your meds and starting to hallucinate. There is no one there but you. The voices are not your friends.
Because there is nothing at all to worry or complain about unless we break new records of inequality? The graph ends about 16 months ago, and looking at the post crash trend-line it looks like it will set new records by the end of 2017. Can we start worrying then?
The 1920s level of inequality was no golden age for most Americans, and it ended very badly, for most everyone (some super-rich did very well though, buying up distressed assets for pennies on the dollar).
Standard right-wing argument, unless it is uniformly worse in every way than it has ever been before, no one has anything to complain about (except the rich, which are enjoying historically low taxes, but are fully justified for complaining that their burden is not lower still).
I hope that Gordon's prediction is incorrect, but being in the manufacturing industry and seeing the new hires come and go makes me worry.
Yet Manufacturing Sector: Real Output Per Hour is at all time highs.
From the FRED graph we can see that the rate of manufacturing growth since the pre-crash (2009) peak, until the beginning of this year has been almost 1.5% annually. That is something, in an economy that has had depressed growth from under-investment (excess savings). But it gives a doubling time of 45 years, which is disappointing. It was higher before the 2009 Crash, taking the growth back to the previous pre-recession peak (2000 to 2009) gives 4.9% growth, a mere 15 year doubling time.
Robert Gordon points out a couple of factors contributing to out current slow-down that are entirely due to deliberate institutional (largely political) decisions:
1. The first of those is inequality. Over the last 35 years, an amazingly high fraction of our economic progress has been siphoned in to the incomes of the top one percent of the income distribution. That’s a tremendously important feature that causes the slowdown. It’s not just the lack of innovation. We’re seeing plenty of innovation. But it’s the fact that not everybody is sharing in the fruits of that innovation.
2. A slowing in the pace of improvement of educational attainment.
This should be modded up "funny"! You had me going, but saying "long term winning strategy" was just too much! Zuckerberg will diversify long before the fortunes of Facebook affect his vast wealth, just as Bill Gates did.
Right you are. Both those men aggressively manipulated the political environment (Murdoch still does) without any fear of sanction. Not even the Fairness Doctrine on public airwaves still exists. Of course Facebook can influence the election, if it wants. It is the American Way.
Handing out bribes to voters is not the only way to influence elections. Every election billions are spent to influence the election without significant number of bribes being handed out, I am sure Facebook - or their employees - can manage to figure this one out.
This is a political "just so" story, describing a possible line of argument about how "a legal responsibility to protect and maximize the value of their shareholders" might be interpreted. It is not a necessary, or even likely, conclusion.
There is abundant data showing that political spending has, on average, an extremely large ROI, exceeding 100-1. Regulatory rulings can cause tens of billions of dollars to change hands. It is an easy case to make that efforts to influence political races is not just wise, but incumbent on a corporation explicitly to protect shareholder value.
And in an age where unlimited corporate political spending on its own influence operations is legal, and where the content delivered by a news channel is legally regarded as "entertainment", with no sanction for out-right fabrications being passed off as fact, it is hard to know what sort of activity by a corporation would be impermissible.
Pretty much the only think illegal these days is paying Congressfolk a sum of money for a specific vote. It is fine though to keep them on retainer, paying regularly to their "leadership PAC" (from which the can keep all of the proceeds), and telling them periodically how they should vote, with the politician knowing that the sugar stops if the lobbyist is not obeyed. Not for sale, but all them are being rented.
Tom Lehrer's "New Math" gets quoted semi-regularly: "But in the new approach, as you know, the important thing is to understand what you're doing, rather than to get the right answer." This is played as a laugh line, but ... really? To me the joke is on everyone in the audience who laughed. If all you want is the right answer, use a fucking calculator.
Pedantic note: when "New Math" was written (pocket) calculators did not exist. They would come out about 5 years later, and become affordable a couple years after that.
Side note: the "New Math" worked very well for me. I liked learning the underlying principles. Another side note: it appears the methods being taught with Common Core are how I have always done mental math.
My operating theory is that the guy is constructing an alibi. Perhaps he has gotten wind of an investigation and wants to look like a hapless idiot and not someone engaged in destroying evidence.
If you had changing requirements, you weren't doing waterfall. Sorry.
The corollary to this is that nobody ever did waterfall, really - and that is pretty much the truth.
They just pretended they were doing it. Agile methods admit the truth.
Average sure. Median.... not even close.
The median # of sexual partners a woman accumulates between 18 & marriage: 7
Median # of sexual partners for men: 2
A small % of the men are banging most of the women.
Citation needed. According to this CDC study the "Median number of opposite-sex partners in lifetime among men and women aged 25-44 years of age" was 6.6 for men and 4.3 for women in 2011-2013. This implies that a modest proportion of women are having sex with a lot of men, an entirely believable proposition.