But here is what is gonna make capitalists shit their pants, libertarians too.....capitalism, like every other ism, is doomed and MUST be destroyed, there is no other choice.
Technology has already made most blue collar and now many white collar jobs disappear, after all nobody hires humans to calculate anything, the machines do it. Don't need humans in the factories, only a couple to push buttons as the machines work. Seen the Hondabot? Climbs stairs, can work in hazardous areas, never gets tired, never needs a break, don't need healthcare or sick leave, not ever
This straw man is being trotted out way too often these days. Automation isn't producing any less jobs. Job fields come and go all the time. Here's a whole slew of them that have been obsoleted to date: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124251060
And there's just as many new jobs that didn't exist decades ago, such as the fast growing field of cybersecurity.
Heck, the US practically eliminated all its manufacturing jobs and became a service economy. Markets ebb and flow, but work will always be there. I don't know why you can't see this, why you're focused only on the "jobs being lost to automation" side of the equation while ignoring all the variables on the other end (innovations, industry demand shifts, population decline, new markets such as outer space for future high-tech ventures). If you're really going to project decades down the road, at least be fair about it. Until the Singularity comes, there will always be jobs for humans. If anything, menial jobs will be eliminated and the intellectual barrier for entry into the work force will be elevated, requiring better education across the board (and that's a good thing).
If Bill disbursed 50 billion (leaving himself with a paltry 16 billion), he could have provided every MS employee in the US with $877K. Given that there are plenty of non-rich MS employees, an additional 877K (87K additional salary for 10 years, 43k additional salary for 20 years) would have been far more economically useful to them than it would be as an additional billion for someone that could never spend it.
You also just described insurance which many libertarians see as a panacea...do you consider insurance a Ponzi scheme as well?
No, because insurance isn't promised money -- it's money "in case of emergency". If Social Security operated like insurance, less people would call it out for the fraud that it is. Though maybe not a Ponzi scheme, it is most certainly of the same family (Pyramid scheme, Matrix scheme, what-have-you). There is a great deal of supporting evidence for this:
1) Early adopters are getting way more out of it than they put in
2) Late adopters will likely get way less out of it than they put in
3) Prolonged shrinking of the US labor force (such as from negative population growth) would make the whole house of cards fall down -- we're already seeing a great deal of blowback just from the employment contraction of the recent recession, as well as from the Baby Boomer effect
None of the above facts are true of an insurance system.
You say it like it's a free choice to claim social security. Of course it's not. You have to be poor enough.
Umm, no -- you might be thinking of Welfare. Social Security can be claimed by anyone at the proper retirement age, even Bill Gates. It's one of the things Republicans want to reform about it actually (means testing).
It's shocking to see Slashdot has learned nothing from the Digg redesign fiasco. This place has been growing less and less useful with every Web 2.0/JavaScript addition. Keep pushing me and may actually sink low enough to turn to Reddit for my daily news.
Obviously, it's not just a plan to let rich people pay less of a proportion of their earnings in tax.
Rich people would pay way more under Fair Tax. As is, they pay next to nothing -- Romney pays like 15% in taxes using income deduction loopholes and various shelters. Fair Tax is _unavoidable_. You either don't participate at all in society and starve in a cave somewhere, or you pay taxes. It would hit the black market as well -- all of a sudden all those drug dealers are paying taxes too. It's actually ingenious.
I stated two caveats to that, not mentioning them is what we call a strawman attack:
Well this wasn't mentioned in the post I responded to.
1) Coal and fossil fuels must internalize the cost of pollution - that is eradicate it entirely, imagine the cost of those air filters to burn them without any pollution
Those externalities are near impossible to equate and by definition would not be realized in a "free market". Only in a regulated market would that be a relevant cost factor.
That this will happen over the medium to long term as most renewables are more expensive ot build initially - but has ZERO running fuel cost.
Except that running fuel cost isn't the only cost. The total cost is the sum total of build cost, maintenance cost, and running cost. Back in the day (I'm not sure where they are now), photovoltaics in residential use had an investment turnaround time of 30+ years, and that was in "good solar" areas near the equator. And they only had a shelf life of about 15-20 years before repairs or replacements had to occur. They simply weren't cost feasible. Look at current home modification -- a person isn't going to invest in an energy improvement on a home unless they can get a net turnaround in 5 years, 10 years _tops_. Luckily, we've come a long way since then and solar is finally nearing the point of competition. But adopting a tech before its time is foolhardy.
Furthermore - as more and more investors are pulling out of natural gas it's become clear that it's a bubble about to burst - most geologists now sincerely doubt that any of the USA's current natural gas fracked wells will last for another 5 years even.
The markets I've been watching say the opposite. LNG is going absolutely nuts. The LNG export market will be the "next big thing" -- foreign countries are chomping at the bit to get ahold of US natural gas. Regarding the supplies, that's a harder case to make because there's way too many question marks. We've barely scratched the surface on natural gas exploration and many companies have flat out abandoned attempts to find new resources because it's so damn plentiful already. 5 years is just silly.15-20 years would be a reasonable naysayer estimate. But personally, I think we have way more available than we even know is there (when factoring in offshore supply).
A better one, ya. I appreciate the links.
Though I'd still be curious to know if CO2 is the relevant cause. These links discuss airborne pollutants, like particulates. And that's a case less people are prone to question.
What they do with the money is not really relevant to my prediction that in a truly free energy market - renewables would win, in our un-free market they need help - but the advantage may be that they will win much sooner if they get that help.
Now I know you're smoking something -- you think renewables can compete on their own merit, without subsidies? Straight up in the free market? With plentiful coal? (and now, natural gas)? Please show me the numbers.
Since when are respiratory illnesses rampant or even a major expense? Last I looked, they're not even on the top 10. Link heart disease to CO2 and maybe you'd have a case.
You act like there is a free market. The way it works is that the guy with the gold makes the rules, and they're going to ride this horse until it dies because as long as there's money to be made doing the same old shit, why take a chance on doing something new? Since they write the laws, they can prevent anyone else from doing anything new either, or slow down the rate of progress to something they can manage in every sense.
Fraking proves you wrong. You think 'Big Coal"/"Big Oil" wanted a cheaper energy competitor to emerge? Yet natural gas has _decimated_ coal's share of the the US energy market in but a few years. And the free market is exactly the cause: new tech caused natural gas supply to skyrocket, which lowered costs of said gas, which then gained a substantial cost edge, which caused rapid adoption. You'll blind if you don't think this kind of thing happens every day. Big companies may attempt to slow down the rate of progress, but they _never_ stop it. You think Microsoft is still running the show the way they were 10 years ago? Innovation happens, and giants fall.
China may be the biggest emitter of CO2, but they are also the biggest investor in green energy.
How ironic then that their per-capita-emissions have been spiking to obscene levels for the past decade. The US, on the other hand, has seen substantial cuts.
The simplest fix is to raise the retirement age so that the boomers have less time to claim it before they die.
I would argue the fix is to turn it into an actual safety net rather than a guaranteed benefit. Make some percentage of contribution to 401k savings accounts mandatory so that people save for their own retirements rather than paying for the retirements of their predecessors.
It's the boomers' fault, their collective failure; they didn't pop out enough kids or persuade their children to do that.
The fix to a pyramid/ponzi scheme is not to always ensure the next level is bigger than the previous level -- it's to not engage in such a scheme in the first place.
The debt ceiling isn't about spending more money, it's about paying the debts that we've already accepted. Not increasing the debt ceiling is like trying to get out of debt by not paying your credit card bill.
That's not true. It's like having a store ignoring the credit limit on your credit card when you're making the purchases -- and then having the credit card company refuse to just increase your limit to cover the difference when the bill comes due. Just because our ridiculous government sets a deficit budget that EXCEEDS the current debt ceiling (simply expecting it to get raised) doesn't mean that's "How things are done". The problem, as always, is that Congress has gotten use to deficit spending and not even blinking an eye at increasing the debt ceiling that they've been formulating budgets for years as if the limit was infinite.
Are you counting the wars in Afganistan and Iraq? Or is it ok to ignore these expenses because they were passed as "emergency appropriations" instead of military budget?
Those wars aren't the huge expenses they're made out to be. An honest enumeration of those costs (by honest, I mean not doing bullshit like tacking on "cost of interest") places them somewhere in the 1.5 trillion range. Over 10+ years. That's maybe 150 billion a year. Even if that _weren't_ being included in the 19% defense budget number (which is based on ~700 billion out of 3.7 trillion), you be looking at about 23% (850 billion out of 3.7 trillion), tops, in _temporary_ increases that would already phase out as the wars end. So, since those wars are largely over, today's budget for defense _is_ around 20% of the total spending.
We are not actually defending ourselves against anyone at the moment, so your statement makes no sense
We're _always_ defending ourselves, or our allies. Just because we aren't getting attacked doesn't mean people wouldn't love to attack us if they had the option. And your statement ignores the overseas allies case.
Not at all, but all of the "monthly checkbook balancing" specifically referred to a family budget. A business (family business or not) does not necessarily balance its income/expenses every month, but instead has a longer-term plan.
Businesses can't borrow debt ad infinitum. Banks will ratchet up the rates and eventually simply refuse to give out more money if a company mismanages their debt load. This is very similar to way credit card companies refuse to offer more lending opportunities to consumers, or deny consumers loans for things like houses and cars. The government is the _only_ entity that seems to think it can operate outside the realm of balanced budgeting.
Wow. No one I've ever met has said, "I would make more but I'd just get taxed more." No one.
That's because it's never verbalized like that. Instead, it's factored into calculating profit margins and then decisions are made based on that calculation (how many employees do I keep, what benefits do I offer, etc, etc).
When I was considering leaving the world of employment and picking up my own consultancy, I did calculations based on what an equivalent salary would be based on the loss of my benefits, the extra half of employer social security I'd need to pay, and the additional taxes that would come with the higher salary, and the number was far higher than you would expect if you just ignore taxes. You're nuts if you don't think the taxes factored strongly into the decision.
Actually, taxing the rich and redistribution that wealth is FAR from socialism by any definition - in fact, it actually benefits a capitalism because the poor are more likely to spend the money and the rich horde it.
That's a naive view. How do you know such a distribution doesn't lead to?
- the poor person working less (perhaps part-time, or one parent instead of two, or retiring earlier)...since his income is now supplemented by the rich, he doesn't have to do as much to get as much -- the net effect is a societal drag (not benefiting capitalism)
- the rich person reacting by cutting costs (in the form of workers, benefits, what-have-you) -- it's not at all common for business to "carry through" costs onto society/consumers/workers
You can't just move money around and assume the impact will be positive.
What you are doing is EXACTLY the same as asking "is the world becoming a less violent place (for humans)" and ignoring the span of say 0-2012 in favor of measuring only 1935-1944. It's intellectually dishonest.
Then isn't it equally intellectually dishonest to focus on only the period since the industrial revolution? What of the past billions of years when similar CO2 and temperature spikes and sinks occurred at similar rates?
Humans do not cause global warming
b) Change our energy sources and energy use, costs money to do up front, reduces pollution, extends life expectancy (due to reduced pollution), reduces dependence on foreign energy sources.
You seem to only have rosy views in mind for this stance...what of the broken window fallacy? Many governments are on the verge of bankruptcy -- austerity is the norm, they're cutting everything they can get their hands on. If you spend extra money on this, it's money you have you cut from something else -- like healthcare or pensions or any number of things that could benefit humanity. I don't believe in spending money to deploy anything before it's time. If you want to finance research towards making it economically feasible, so be it -- but deployment of tech still in its infancy is never a good idea, it's just a wasteful money sink.
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This straw man is being trotted out way too often these days. Automation isn't producing any less jobs. Job fields come and go all the time. Here's a whole slew of them that have been obsoleted to date: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124251060
And there's just as many new jobs that didn't exist decades ago, such as the fast growing field of cybersecurity.
Heck, the US practically eliminated all its manufacturing jobs and became a service economy. Markets ebb and flow, but work will always be there. I don't know why you can't see this, why you're focused only on the "jobs being lost to automation" side of the equation while ignoring all the variables on the other end (innovations, industry demand shifts, population decline, new markets such as outer space for future high-tech ventures). If you're really going to project decades down the road, at least be fair about it. Until the Singularity comes, there will always be jobs for humans. If anything, menial jobs will be eliminated and the intellectual barrier for entry into the work force will be elevated, requiring better education across the board (and that's a good thing).
That might be a valid point if Microsoft employees weren't historically and presently treated/compensated very well compared to the greater tech market: http://www.geekwire.com/2012/microsofts-starting-median-pay-beats-rivals-91500/
Though funny enough, satisfaction is low despite the relatively high pay & perks.
No, because insurance isn't promised money -- it's money "in case of emergency". If Social Security operated like insurance, less people would call it out for the fraud that it is. Though maybe not a Ponzi scheme, it is most certainly of the same family (Pyramid scheme, Matrix scheme, what-have-you). There is a great deal of supporting evidence for this:
1) Early adopters are getting way more out of it than they put in
2) Late adopters will likely get way less out of it than they put in
3) Prolonged shrinking of the US labor force (such as from negative population growth) would make the whole house of cards fall down -- we're already seeing a great deal of blowback just from the employment contraction of the recent recession, as well as from the Baby Boomer effect
None of the above facts are true of an insurance system.
Umm, no -- you might be thinking of Welfare. Social Security can be claimed by anyone at the proper retirement age, even Bill Gates. It's one of the things Republicans want to reform about it actually (means testing).
It's shocking to see Slashdot has learned nothing from the Digg redesign fiasco. This place has been growing less and less useful with every Web 2.0/JavaScript addition. Keep pushing me and may actually sink low enough to turn to Reddit for my daily news.
Somebody give that man a Nobel Peace Prize.
Rich people would pay way more under Fair Tax. As is, they pay next to nothing -- Romney pays like 15% in taxes using income deduction loopholes and various shelters. Fair Tax is _unavoidable_. You either don't participate at all in society and starve in a cave somewhere, or you pay taxes. It would hit the black market as well -- all of a sudden all those drug dealers are paying taxes too. It's actually ingenious.
But particulates are a far easier problem to solve than stemming all CO2 emission. Hell, a good HEPA filter can handle particulates.
Well this wasn't mentioned in the post I responded to.
Those externalities are near impossible to equate and by definition would not be realized in a "free market". Only in a regulated market would that be a relevant cost factor.
Except that running fuel cost isn't the only cost. The total cost is the sum total of build cost, maintenance cost, and running cost. Back in the day (I'm not sure where they are now), photovoltaics in residential use had an investment turnaround time of 30+ years, and that was in "good solar" areas near the equator. And they only had a shelf life of about 15-20 years before repairs or replacements had to occur. They simply weren't cost feasible. Look at current home modification -- a person isn't going to invest in an energy improvement on a home unless they can get a net turnaround in 5 years, 10 years _tops_. Luckily, we've come a long way since then and solar is finally nearing the point of competition. But adopting a tech before its time is foolhardy.
The markets I've been watching say the opposite. LNG is going absolutely nuts. The LNG export market will be the "next big thing" -- foreign countries are chomping at the bit to get ahold of US natural gas. Regarding the supplies, that's a harder case to make because there's way too many question marks. We've barely scratched the surface on natural gas exploration and many companies have flat out abandoned attempts to find new resources because it's so damn plentiful already. 5 years is just silly.15-20 years would be a reasonable naysayer estimate. But personally, I think we have way more available than we even know is there (when factoring in offshore supply).
A better one, ya. I appreciate the links.
Though I'd still be curious to know if CO2 is the relevant cause. These links discuss airborne pollutants, like particulates. And that's a case less people are prone to question.
Now I know you're smoking something -- you think renewables can compete on their own merit, without subsidies? Straight up in the free market? With plentiful coal? (and now, natural gas)? Please show me the numbers.
Since when are respiratory illnesses rampant or even a major expense? Last I looked, they're not even on the top 10. Link heart disease to CO2 and maybe you'd have a case.
Fraking proves you wrong. You think 'Big Coal"/"Big Oil" wanted a cheaper energy competitor to emerge? Yet natural gas has _decimated_ coal's share of the the US energy market in but a few years. And the free market is exactly the cause: new tech caused natural gas supply to skyrocket, which lowered costs of said gas, which then gained a substantial cost edge, which caused rapid adoption. You'll blind if you don't think this kind of thing happens every day. Big companies may attempt to slow down the rate of progress, but they _never_ stop it. You think Microsoft is still running the show the way they were 10 years ago? Innovation happens, and giants fall.
How ironic then that their per-capita-emissions have been spiking to obscene levels for the past decade. The US, on the other hand, has seen substantial cuts.
I would argue the fix is to turn it into an actual safety net rather than a guaranteed benefit. Make some percentage of contribution to 401k savings accounts mandatory so that people save for their own retirements rather than paying for the retirements of their predecessors.
The fix to a pyramid/ponzi scheme is not to always ensure the next level is bigger than the previous level -- it's to not engage in such a scheme in the first place.
That's not true. It's like having a store ignoring the credit limit on your credit card when you're making the purchases -- and then having the credit card company refuse to just increase your limit to cover the difference when the bill comes due. Just because our ridiculous government sets a deficit budget that EXCEEDS the current debt ceiling (simply expecting it to get raised) doesn't mean that's "How things are done". The problem, as always, is that Congress has gotten use to deficit spending and not even blinking an eye at increasing the debt ceiling that they've been formulating budgets for years as if the limit was infinite.
Those wars aren't the huge expenses they're made out to be. An honest enumeration of those costs (by honest, I mean not doing bullshit like tacking on "cost of interest") places them somewhere in the 1.5 trillion range. Over 10+ years. That's maybe 150 billion a year. Even if that _weren't_ being included in the 19% defense budget number (which is based on ~700 billion out of 3.7 trillion), you be looking at about 23% (850 billion out of 3.7 trillion), tops, in _temporary_ increases that would already phase out as the wars end. So, since those wars are largely over, today's budget for defense _is_ around 20% of the total spending.
We're _always_ defending ourselves, or our allies. Just because we aren't getting attacked doesn't mean people wouldn't love to attack us if they had the option. And your statement ignores the overseas allies case.
Businesses can't borrow debt ad infinitum. Banks will ratchet up the rates and eventually simply refuse to give out more money if a company mismanages their debt load. This is very similar to way credit card companies refuse to offer more lending opportunities to consumers, or deny consumers loans for things like houses and cars. The government is the _only_ entity that seems to think it can operate outside the realm of balanced budgeting.
That's because it's never verbalized like that. Instead, it's factored into calculating profit margins and then decisions are made based on that calculation (how many employees do I keep, what benefits do I offer, etc, etc).
When I was considering leaving the world of employment and picking up my own consultancy, I did calculations based on what an equivalent salary would be based on the loss of my benefits, the extra half of employer social security I'd need to pay, and the additional taxes that would come with the higher salary, and the number was far higher than you would expect if you just ignore taxes. You're nuts if you don't think the taxes factored strongly into the decision.
You have no idea what you're talking about. German gun laws are very strict and they've had 3 of the 5 worst K-12 shootings in the past decade.
Might have something to do with the fact that Baltimore is predominantly black, and predominantly poor.
The workers might. Isn't everyone already bitching about outsourcing?
That's a naive view. How do you know such a distribution doesn't lead to?
- the poor person working less (perhaps part-time, or one parent instead of two, or retiring earlier)...since his income is now supplemented by the rich, he doesn't have to do as much to get as much -- the net effect is a societal drag (not benefiting capitalism)
- the rich person reacting by cutting costs (in the form of workers, benefits, what-have-you) -- it's not at all common for business to "carry through" costs onto society/consumers/workers
You can't just move money around and assume the impact will be positive.
The Emperor's new clothes are clearly made of the finest silk
Then isn't it equally intellectually dishonest to focus on only the period since the industrial revolution? What of the past billions of years when similar CO2 and temperature spikes and sinks occurred at similar rates?
You seem to only have rosy views in mind for this stance...what of the broken window fallacy? Many governments are on the verge of bankruptcy -- austerity is the norm, they're cutting everything they can get their hands on. If you spend extra money on this, it's money you have you cut from something else -- like healthcare or pensions or any number of things that could benefit humanity. I don't believe in spending money to deploy anything before it's time. If you want to finance research towards making it economically feasible, so be it -- but deployment of tech still in its infancy is never a good idea, it's just a wasteful money sink.