You got nothing. You can't even cite one example where I contradicted myself. All my posts are public for everyone to see. I don't need to admit anything. Either cite where you think I have contradicted myself, or shut up.
I made *lots* of statements and I don't believe any of them are contradictory. If you want to point out which of my statements you think contradicts another I made, go ahead, otherwise I am not going to try and guess what you are referring to.
1. You had yourself simplified your own statement to "People should do C if A is true". Why are you needing to complicate it further ? Was that aforementioned simplication a mistake on your part? In that case please come clean so that a fresh argument based on your newly simplified statement can be made.
It's the same statement. People should do A if C is true. People should become employers if the market is lopsided in favor of employers. I think the fact that more people are not rushing to become employers (as in the case of a rise in new businesses during an economic boom), is good evidence that the labor market is not lopsided in favor of employers currently.
2. In this case, doctor cannot truthfully claim to not having advised the "patient" to report for a checkup. Doctor is guilty of not defining emergency with mathematical precision.
It is not a doctor's job to define an emergency with mathematical precision. IT is his job to define an emergency in terms relevant to the field of medicine. With the near infinite number of things that can happen, a doctor must rely on others to use their best judgement as to what is an emergency. There is no mathematical formula for what specific situations qualify as an emergency.
1. You have not proven with mathematical precision that the reader is incorrect.
I was not attempting to prove with mathematical precision that the reader was incorrect. I was claiming that I don;t think the reader was correct in order to clarify the fact that I am *not* personally recommending that people do C, because I don't *think* A is true.
2. Even if you had, you are incorrect in claiming "People should do C if A is true" does not mean "People should do C" for some people.
No I am not. If *some* people think swallowing a watermelon seed is an emergency, the doctor is not telling those people to come to the hospital. The doctor doesn't think swallowing a watermelon seed is an emergency for anybody. It doesn't matter what the patient thinks, he is not recommending anybody come to the hospital for this.
1. If "people" refers to a group (to which the reader belongs) AND also to the complement of that set (everyone else), only a person intending to deceive would word it in so complicated a manner.
Assuming the reader is a person (i.e. a member fo the group "people") is complicated and deceptive?
An honest person would simply call it "people", or "everyone".
I did until you asked me to clarify if I was talking to the reader or "people", and I decided to not specifically exclude the reader from "people".
2. Now, for everyone, the recommendation is "People should do C", which is now clarified to "Everyone should do C" whenever the reader is of an opinion "A is true". You are claiming otherwise.
I didn't say everyone. In fact I think I specifically said that *not* everyone should become employers. And no I am not saying "when the reader is of an opinion A", I am saying "when A is true". My recommendation doesn't depend on what the readers opinion is, like how it doesn't matter that the patient thinks swallowing a watermelon seed is an emergency. I am saying "Don't fo to the hospital because swallowing a watermelon seed is not an emergency, but if it was an emergency you should go to the hospital because you should go to the hospital for any emergency." In this way I am providing a different recommendation if it turns out swallowing a watermelon seed is indeed an emergency for some newly discovered reason.
BTW acting like a math robot doesn't do anything for your argument. It just makes you seem like some asperger's pedant. And the only thing worse than a pedant is a wrong pedant.
I am telling you exactly what I mean, and you are trying to reduce my statement's through some kind of logical analysis that isn't even methodologically correct.
I was trying to be patient with you, but you seem to just want to argue some retarded semantic point rather than understand what I am saying. I am done with this conversation
If a doctor says to a patient "come to the hospital if you are having an emergency", and the patient things swallowing a watermelon seed is an emergency, are you seriosuly suggesting that the correct inference is that the doctor instructed the patient to come to the hospital for swallowing a watermelon seed?
1. The READER is evaluating the predicate "A is true".
And I am suggesting the reader is incorrect in addition to suggesting what should happen *if* the reader were correct.
2. Recommendation is clearly for PEOPLE, not for the reader.
The recommendation *is* for "people", referring to a group to which the reader belongs (along with everyone else).
If, instead, you had said "you should do C if A is true", the "you" can conceivably considered to be addressing the reader.
If I say "You can't teach an old dog new tricks", I'm not saying that everyone can teach a dog new tricks except the reader. I'm sorry English is ambiguous like that.
Let me spell it out for you. If you live in the USA and you have not seen instances where people are being exploited by their employers because it's difficult for those people to find another job then you have either led a very sheltered life, or are lying.
Obviously there are instances of employers exploiting employees. At no point did I suggest that this wasn't happening, or that it was ok.
It's starting to look a hell of a lot like the latter.
That's because you keep inferring things that I have not said, and ignore things that I have said.
The reason I am suggesting ways that employees can improve their condition (e.g. voting), is not because I blame them for their situation, but because I genuinely want their/our situation to improve.
Despite my best efforts, you seem not to grasp this idea that me saying "Here is how I think things can become better" does not mean "This is not a real problem".
I should point out that really enjoying alcohol is different than being addicted to alcohol, although there is often overlap. A person can love alcohol and still not be an addict. Another person may want very badly to not drink alcohol, but simply can not overcome the compulsion to drink.
I am not suggesting that workers enjoy working very hard at tedious soul crushing jobs. I am not blaming them for the situation they are in, nor am I blaming alcoholics for the situation they are in.
In the same way that it would be good if alcoholics could find a way to kick their habit. It would be good if the unskilled could find a way to develop a more profitable skill. I'm not saying it's not hard. It clearly is. But it is the only good solution. And that;s not to say that we can't help them. We can provide recovery programs as well as educational programs, but we can't make them take advantage of those programs, before they are willing.
You failed to point out what clue there was to identify you as putting it forward as a serious suggestion.
You failed to issue a disclaimer indicating that you were in need of special coaching, leaving me to assume you had normal human intelligence.
Your rants about "reading comprehension" and "second language" appear to only be an attempt to blame your own stupidity for putting up such an inflammatory statement on others by pretending you never did it.
It's not stupid to make an inflammatory statement. Whether a statement is inflammatory depends on who is reading it. Furthermore whether a statement is inflammatory has nothing to do with it's merit or if it is true.
Quite disgusting and even cowardly in my opinion.
I wrote down exactly what I meant to say and I said what I meant. I'm not sure why this would be a cowardly or disgusting way to present one's ideas, but after talking with you for a while, I can't say I am surprised.
Diversity (variety of backgrounds, experiences and viewpoints) is good for business.
So all white people have the same backgrounds, experiences and viewpoints? All men have the same backgrounds, experiences and viewpoints? Forcing diversity in terms of physical appearance only gives you physical diversity. If we want diversity of thought, why not enforce that instead of diversity in skin color and genitals?
If I want a vegetable soup and I already have plenty of potatoes at home, I buy what I am lacking. Will you criticize me for discrimination against potatoes?
You can eat whatever you want. Google can hire whoever they want. If you want something other than potatoes then get something else. Maybe potatoes really are all the same. Maybe races of people are all the same too. If you think races and genders decide the substance of what people are, then by all means use that as a measure of diversity.
So you can't claim correctly that you are not advocating that people do C because it depends on the reader.
I *can* claim that I am not advocating that people do C *because* it depends on the reader.
If I tell people that they should go to the hospital *if* they are having a medical emergency, I am not telling "people in general" to go to the hospital even if some of them are having an emergency. I am advocating for some people (the people that meet the *if* condition) to go to the hospital.
If someone thinks that they are having a medical emergency, but I don't think they are, I can still say: *IF* you were having a medical emergency I would recommend you go to the hospital, but because I don't think you are having one, I don't think you should go.
I really don't see what is so hard to understand about this.
I guess I don't see what your point is. It seems like there is lots of room for improvement. We can work on technology for producing better quality food on less resources (like raw materials, energy, and human labor). We can work on producing better cars for less resources. We can work on improving medical technology to make people healthier for less resources. In short there is plenty to be done in the pursuit of making eighteen hundred dollars go further in our society. Those are all jobs that need to be done by skilled people.
Medical care for the elderly is not a drag on the economy. It is a luxury we can afford when our economy is good (e.g. like fancy cars and restaurants). The point of our economy is to produce more wealth for less energy, so that we can live as long as possible and in as much comfort as possible (including when we are elderly). The reason we make money is to spend it one things that make our lives better (like houses, medical care, cars, entertainment, etc). Even when we spend money on investments like mutual funds or an education, it is to make more money later which we will eventually spend on stuff we want.
What happens when all demand is met but 20% of the population is still unemployed?
When all the demand is met? You mean like when all our problems are solved?
Not that many skilled people are needed and now many people only have enough money for basic needs.
Sounds like there is some stuff that still needs working on
I just hope enough of you keep working so I can get my SS check.
The government can issue checks even when it has no money. It can print more. The way to prevent our society from falling apart is to make sure that people keep generating wealth, like for example creating all the things you might actually use your SS check on.
I pointed out how you clearly did not read or understand what I wrote, and now you are trying (badly) to do the same thing by suggesting I didn't read the word "reacting" from your post?
How did anything I said imply that I missed the word "reacting" in your post?
I was being serious. I said you wouldn't have said X if you had read and comprehended my post, in reference to 2 things you said:
Are you an example of a generation with a distorted view of the world and a lack of empathy for the less well off due to growing up with servants?
I don't lack empathy for the less well off. I described in detail my frustration at the fact that they do not vote in their own interest. Unlike many other nations which do not have anything close to a democracy, we are fortunate enough to have a democracy. It is not without it's problems, but just about any change could be affected simply by voting. We don't need to storm a government building under a hail of gunfire and risking losing our lives to take back our government from corporations. All we need to do is vote, and we just don't care enough. When I used the "In a democracy the people get the government we deserve", I was including myself in "the people".
If not, exactly what is your damage, and why are you passing it off as acceptable and the values that built the USA as "communism"?
You said this in response to this:
It would be easy for me to take one sentence fragment from your post, and then label it as a Stalin-style communism apology, and ridicule it as such, but this is a pretty childish debate tactic.
If you read this closely, you'll see that I was not calling anything communism. I was describing what the opposite side of the same coin of your caricature looks like. The idea that the world is only Ayn Rand anarcho-capitalists and Stalinist communists is a false dichotomy. People don't fit only in these 2 boxes. I was criticizing this debate tactic of attempting to cast someone into one of these 2 boxes and then simply attacking the strawman of extreme capitalism or extreme socialism.
I am not an ideologue. In terms of capitalism and socialism, I don't think either is evil or the complete solution. I care about what's fair and what works.
And if I say "People should do C if A is true", this is different than saying "People should do C", because "rsilvergun thinks A is true" is not the same as "A is true".
I am saying "I think that rsilvergun should think 'People should do C'" (because rsilvergun thinks A is true), but I don't necessarily think "People should do C" because I don't think "A is necessarily true".
I am not advocating that people do C. I am only advocating people do C if A is true. The fact that rsilvergun thinks A is true does not affect what I am advocating.
There is no way that enough workers could become employers to cause a shortage in workers, thereby raising demand for workers.
Not in the extreme case, but less extreme cases have happened in cycles. We have boom cycles when the economy is good, and more people feel confident that they can succeed in starting their own business, the money is flowing to people who want to invest, and employers are forced to pay people more in order to compete for workers. There is a lot of work being done, but there is a risk that some bad investments are being made that will catch up to us in the next bust cycle.
The opposite extreme is also possible. There are bust cycles when nobody wants to assume risk. Everyone just wants a steady job and guaranteed income, and are willing to trade higher profit potential for stability, and the number of available "jobs" drops as there is a larger supply of workers. I put "jobs" in quotes, because there is certainly things that still need to be done, but the economy is simply not efficiently making these opportunities for productivity easily accessible. There is very little risk of making bad investments, but growth is slow or can even be negative in more extreme cases.
The extremes don't happen because the more extreme the situation gets, the more pressure there is pushing it back to an equilibrium point. But if an extreme actually does happen, the way to fix it is usually pretty clear. If we don't see this pressure to correct the extreme, then maybe it's not really an extreme.
America has one of the most highly skilled work forces in the world, both in terms of the number of skilled workers per capita and the extent of their skills.
I will start out by saying that I think this depends on your definition of "skilled". College degrees don't necessarily imply any *useful* skills. Unfortunately we have been sold this idea that a college education is worthwhile regardless of the cost and regardless of what you actually learned. We are now just starting to realize that this is really not the case.
And so what. Get a master's degree in your field, your resumé gets discarded by HR: overqualified. Have 20 years of experience in the field, your resumé gets discarded by HR: overqualified. Fail to have 10 years of experience in 5 year old technology, your resumé gets discarded by HR: underqualified. Fail to have the right school on your resume, your resumé gets discarded by HR: underqualified: Fail to claim you can walk on water and fly solely by grabbing your bootstraps and yanking, your resumé gets discarded by HR: underqualified. Goldilocks was never so picky. Why? Because they're desperate for any criteria they can use to dig themselves out from under the absolutely monstrous deluge of resumés they received for the job posting they only posted because the law required it and they've already got the H1B lined up they're going to put in that slot.
So let me ask you this. Let's say you're a perfectly competent person in India trying to get an H1B job in the USA. You are willing to work for 2/3of whatever the "normal" salary for that job is, because it's still higher than what you would get in India. What is the rationale for hiring the American worker over you who can do the job for less money?
I am not talking about from a capitalist perspective. I am talking about from a human perspective. For the price of giving 2 American workers jobs, you can give 3 Indian workers jobs and have 50% more productivity. What good is served by denying these jobs to the most competitive applicants?
Maybe it's hard to imagine yourself as an Indian. Lets look at pilots. People love flying and because of that we have a lot of people who are pilots. We have more pilots than jobs for them. There are a few experienced pilots who score really good jobs at big airlines making good salaraies. All the other pilots are stuck earning $20K/year at regional airlines, sharing apartments with 9 other pilots. In this example the highly paid pilots have more experience. Lets say they didn't. Let's say all pilots had the exact same skills. What should we do? Should we just keep paying a few pilots $200K per year and let the rest live in poverty?
If there is a high supply and relatively low demand for pilots, the market solution is to pay pilots less. Is it fair? I don't know that there exists a universally "fair" solution to this problem. It's not fair that some pilots can't do what they love and make a decent living. It's not fair to tax payers if we subsidize pilots with tax money, to artificially keep them living comfortably (and incentivize even more people to become pilots).
Maybe the market solution is not fair. I am arguing that no solution is fair, but at least the market solution will incentivize people to make the right decisions in the future. Maybe if pilots make less money then less people will decide to become a pilot and instead learn some skill that's high in demand.
Maybe I'm not responding to the part of your post you would have liked, but you basically wrote a short story, and I don't really know where to start.
You should have made it more clear that was your opinion
Just because something is clear to *you*, doesn't make it reality. As I have stated before, I think your reading comprehensions skills and your ability to read subtext are lacking.
personally I think you should take a look at unemployment figures and consider if you want to revise your opinion if you want to provide more than attempted jokes in very poor taste, or even if you want to throw words like "reality" around.
Unemployment doesn't indicate a lopsided labor market. It indicates a recession. Furthermore, in a truly lopsided labor market (in favor of employers), everyone would be employed but at low wages, maximizing profits for employers.
Stuff happened in 2008.
Obviously
There's still people reacting to that in a way that IMHO makes the market very lopsided and I must admit I'm amazed that you do not appear to be aware of that.
The fact that we had an economic collapse in 2008 does not indicate a lop sided labor market. It indicates a recession. Lots of employers have failed businesses because of the financial collapse. They couldn't pay their workers salaries and had to shut their doors, and are now counted among the unemployed. A recession is bad for everyone, not just employees.
The idea of "not enough work for everyone" is actually a good thing, not a bad thing. It means that we have enough wealth that not everyone is required to work full time in order to provide for everyone. If people are starving, then is work that still needs to be done. Maybe in the worst case scenario, that work is subsistence agriculture or scavenging to keep from starving. The goal is to have an efficient economy that generates the most wealth for the least effort.
If you start your own company, you "create" jobs for people. Or to look at it another way, you are offering to buy someone's labor. You are also taking on the risk that you can turn that person's labor into profit and removing risk (i.e. granting stability) to your employee.
Furthermore the naive application of Kant's test fails trivially, because it is not god for everyone to be employers (with no employees) nor for everyone to be employees (with no employer), for the same reason that groups with 100% leaders or 100% followers don't work well.
Clearly there is an optimal balance between employers and employees. When there is an imbalance, the natural mechanism to fix this is to incentivize people to switch. When labor is cheap, there is an incentive to become an employer. When labor is expensive, there is an incentive to sell your company (and the associated risk) and become an employee.
Or we can use "modern" financial devices and everyone can be both employers and employees, by being employees but owning stock in their own company or in other companies.
I'm not sure if you realized, but I was in fact referring to the clear derivation of workaholism from alcoholism (and it's implication of addiction), and not of the ism suffix in general.
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You got nothing. You can't even cite one example where I contradicted myself. All my posts are public for everyone to see. I don't need to admit anything. Either cite where you think I have contradicted myself, or shut up.
I made *lots* of statements and I don't believe any of them are contradictory. If you want to point out which of my statements you think contradicts another I made, go ahead, otherwise I am not going to try and guess what you are referring to.
1. You had yourself simplified your own statement to "People should do C if A is true". Why are you needing to complicate it further ? Was that aforementioned simplication a mistake on your part? In that case please come clean so that a fresh argument based on your newly simplified statement can be made.
It's the same statement. People should do A if C is true. People should become employers if the market is lopsided in favor of employers. I think the fact that more people are not rushing to become employers (as in the case of a rise in new businesses during an economic boom), is good evidence that the labor market is not lopsided in favor of employers currently.
2. In this case, doctor cannot truthfully claim to not having advised the "patient" to report for a checkup. Doctor is guilty of not defining emergency with mathematical precision.
It is not a doctor's job to define an emergency with mathematical precision. IT is his job to define an emergency in terms relevant to the field of medicine. With the near infinite number of things that can happen, a doctor must rely on others to use their best judgement as to what is an emergency. There is no mathematical formula for what specific situations qualify as an emergency.
1. You have not proven with mathematical precision that the reader is incorrect.
I was not attempting to prove with mathematical precision that the reader was incorrect. I was claiming that I don;t think the reader was correct in order to clarify the fact that I am *not* personally recommending that people do C, because I don't *think* A is true.
2. Even if you had, you are incorrect in claiming "People should do C if A is true" does not mean "People should do C" for some people.
No I am not. If *some* people think swallowing a watermelon seed is an emergency, the doctor is not telling those people to come to the hospital. The doctor doesn't think swallowing a watermelon seed is an emergency for anybody. It doesn't matter what the patient thinks, he is not recommending anybody come to the hospital for this.
1. If "people" refers to a group (to which the reader belongs) AND also to the complement of that set (everyone else), only a person intending to deceive would word it in so complicated a manner.
Assuming the reader is a person (i.e. a member fo the group "people") is complicated and deceptive?
An honest person would simply call it "people", or "everyone".
I did until you asked me to clarify if I was talking to the reader or "people", and I decided to not specifically exclude the reader from "people".
2. Now, for everyone, the recommendation is "People should do C", which is now clarified to "Everyone should do C" whenever the reader is of an opinion "A is true". You are claiming otherwise.
I didn't say everyone. In fact I think I specifically said that *not* everyone should become employers. And no I am not saying "when the reader is of an opinion A", I am saying "when A is true". My recommendation doesn't depend on what the readers opinion is, like how it doesn't matter that the patient thinks swallowing a watermelon seed is an emergency. I am saying "Don't fo to the hospital because swallowing a watermelon seed is not an emergency, but if it was an emergency you should go to the hospital because you should go to the hospital for any emergency." In this way I am providing a different recommendation if it turns out swallowing a watermelon seed is indeed an emergency for some newly discovered reason.
BTW acting like a math robot doesn't do anything for your argument. It just makes you seem like some asperger's pedant. And the only thing worse than a pedant is a wrong pedant.
I am telling you exactly what I mean, and you are trying to reduce my statement's through some kind of logical analysis that isn't even methodologically correct.
I was trying to be patient with you, but you seem to just want to argue some retarded semantic point rather than understand what I am saying. I am done with this conversation
No, you have to be stupid to not infer it.
If a doctor says to a patient "come to the hospital if you are having an emergency", and the patient things swallowing a watermelon seed is an emergency, are you seriosuly suggesting that the correct inference is that the doctor instructed the patient to come to the hospital for swallowing a watermelon seed?
1. The READER is evaluating the predicate "A is true".
And I am suggesting the reader is incorrect in addition to suggesting what should happen *if* the reader were correct.
2. Recommendation is clearly for PEOPLE, not for the reader.
The recommendation *is* for "people", referring to a group to which the reader belongs (along with everyone else).
If, instead, you had said "you should do C if A is true", the "you" can conceivably considered to be addressing the reader.
If I say "You can't teach an old dog new tricks", I'm not saying that everyone can teach a dog new tricks except the reader. I'm sorry English is ambiguous like that.
Yes please point me back to what you *think* is a contradiction.
Let me spell it out for you. If you live in the USA and you have not seen instances where people are being exploited by their employers because it's difficult for those people to find another job then you have either led a very sheltered life, or are lying.
Obviously there are instances of employers exploiting employees. At no point did I suggest that this wasn't happening, or that it was ok.
It's starting to look a hell of a lot like the latter.
That's because you keep inferring things that I have not said, and ignore things that I have said.
The reason I am suggesting ways that employees can improve their condition (e.g. voting), is not because I blame them for their situation, but because I genuinely want their/our situation to improve.
Despite my best efforts, you seem not to grasp this idea that me saying "Here is how I think things can become better" does not mean "This is not a real problem".
I should point out that really enjoying alcohol is different than being addicted to alcohol, although there is often overlap. A person can love alcohol and still not be an addict. Another person may want very badly to not drink alcohol, but simply can not overcome the compulsion to drink.
I am not suggesting that workers enjoy working very hard at tedious soul crushing jobs. I am not blaming them for the situation they are in, nor am I blaming alcoholics for the situation they are in.
In the same way that it would be good if alcoholics could find a way to kick their habit. It would be good if the unskilled could find a way to develop a more profitable skill. I'm not saying it's not hard. It clearly is. But it is the only good solution. And that;s not to say that we can't help them. We can provide recovery programs as well as educational programs, but we can't make them take advantage of those programs, before they are willing.
You failed to point out what clue there was to identify you as putting it forward as a serious suggestion.
You failed to issue a disclaimer indicating that you were in need of special coaching, leaving me to assume you had normal human intelligence.
Your rants about "reading comprehension" and "second language" appear to only be an attempt to blame your own stupidity for putting up such an inflammatory statement on others by pretending you never did it.
It's not stupid to make an inflammatory statement. Whether a statement is inflammatory depends on who is reading it. Furthermore whether a statement is inflammatory has nothing to do with it's merit or if it is true.
Quite disgusting and even cowardly in my opinion.
I wrote down exactly what I meant to say and I said what I meant. I'm not sure why this would be a cowardly or disgusting way to present one's ideas, but after talking with you for a while, I can't say I am surprised.
I wasn't making a joke. I was being serious. This is why your language skills are the problem.
You think I am joking when I am not.
You think I am calling your position communism, when I am doing the opposite.
How cute. Getting lectured on English by an American with very little life experience after such a dramatic mistake as your one above.
You could tell me you were a 100 year old English professor at Oxford, and it would only highlight how dim you are.
Your advocacy amounts to : if YOU(the reader) are in a medical emergency, everyone should go get checked up in a hospital.
You'd have to be really fucking stupid to have inferred that from what I said.
Diversity (variety of backgrounds, experiences and viewpoints) is good for business.
So all white people have the same backgrounds, experiences and viewpoints? All men have the same backgrounds, experiences and viewpoints? Forcing diversity in terms of physical appearance only gives you physical diversity. If we want diversity of thought, why not enforce that instead of diversity in skin color and genitals?
If I want a vegetable soup and I already have plenty of potatoes at home, I buy what I am lacking. Will you criticize me for discrimination against potatoes?
You can eat whatever you want. Google can hire whoever they want. If you want something other than potatoes then get something else. Maybe potatoes really are all the same. Maybe races of people are all the same too. If you think races and genders decide the substance of what people are, then by all means use that as a measure of diversity.
So you can't claim correctly that you are not advocating that people do C because it depends on the reader.
I *can* claim that I am not advocating that people do C *because* it depends on the reader.
If I tell people that they should go to the hospital *if* they are having a medical emergency, I am not telling "people in general" to go to the hospital even if some of them are having an emergency. I am advocating for some people (the people that meet the *if* condition) to go to the hospital.
If someone thinks that they are having a medical emergency, but I don't think they are, I can still say: *IF* you were having a medical emergency I would recommend you go to the hospital, but because I don't think you are having one, I don't think you should go.
I really don't see what is so hard to understand about this.
I guess I don't see what your point is. It seems like there is lots of room for improvement. We can work on technology for producing better quality food on less resources (like raw materials, energy, and human labor). We can work on producing better cars for less resources. We can work on improving medical technology to make people healthier for less resources. In short there is plenty to be done in the pursuit of making eighteen hundred dollars go further in our society. Those are all jobs that need to be done by skilled people.
Medical care for the elderly is not a drag on the economy. It is a luxury we can afford when our economy is good (e.g. like fancy cars and restaurants). The point of our economy is to produce more wealth for less energy, so that we can live as long as possible and in as much comfort as possible (including when we are elderly). The reason we make money is to spend it one things that make our lives better (like houses, medical care, cars, entertainment, etc). Even when we spend money on investments like mutual funds or an education, it is to make more money later which we will eventually spend on stuff we want.
For rsilvergun, you are advocating "people should do C".
And this is different than me personally advocating "to people in general" that they should do C
What happens when all demand is met but 20% of the population is still unemployed?
When all the demand is met? You mean like when all our problems are solved?
Not that many skilled people are needed and now many people only have enough money for basic needs.
Sounds like there is some stuff that still needs working on
I just hope enough of you keep working so I can get my SS check.
The government can issue checks even when it has no money. It can print more. The way to prevent our society from falling apart is to make sure that people keep generating wealth, like for example creating all the things you might actually use your SS check on.
I pointed out how you clearly did not read or understand what I wrote, and now you are trying (badly) to do the same thing by suggesting I didn't read the word "reacting" from your post?
How did anything I said imply that I missed the word "reacting" in your post?
Is English your 2nd language or something?
Are you an example of a generation with a distorted view of the world and a lack of empathy for the less well off due to growing up with servants?
I don't lack empathy for the less well off. I described in detail my frustration at the fact that they do not vote in their own interest. Unlike many other nations which do not have anything close to a democracy, we are fortunate enough to have a democracy. It is not without it's problems, but just about any change could be affected simply by voting. We don't need to storm a government building under a hail of gunfire and risking losing our lives to take back our government from corporations. All we need to do is vote, and we just don't care enough. When I used the "In a democracy the people get the government we deserve", I was including myself in "the people".
If not, exactly what is your damage, and why are you passing it off as acceptable and the values that built the USA as "communism"?
You said this in response to this:
It would be easy for me to take one sentence fragment from your post, and then label it as a Stalin-style communism apology, and ridicule it as such, but this is a pretty childish debate tactic.
If you read this closely, you'll see that I was not calling anything communism. I was describing what the opposite side of the same coin of your caricature looks like. The idea that the world is only Ayn Rand anarcho-capitalists and Stalinist communists is a false dichotomy. People don't fit only in these 2 boxes. I was criticizing this debate tactic of attempting to cast someone into one of these 2 boxes and then simply attacking the strawman of extreme capitalism or extreme socialism.
I am not an ideologue. In terms of capitalism and socialism, I don't think either is evil or the complete solution. I care about what's fair and what works.
Or voting....
And if I say "People should do C if A is true", this is different than saying "People should do C", because "rsilvergun thinks A is true" is not the same as "A is true".
I am saying "I think that rsilvergun should think 'People should do C'" (because rsilvergun thinks A is true), but I don't necessarily think "People should do C" because I don't think "A is necessarily true".
I am not advocating that people do C. I am only advocating people do C if A is true. The fact that rsilvergun thinks A is true does not affect what I am advocating.
There is no way that enough workers could become employers to cause a shortage in workers, thereby raising demand for workers.
Not in the extreme case, but less extreme cases have happened in cycles. We have boom cycles when the economy is good, and more people feel confident that they can succeed in starting their own business, the money is flowing to people who want to invest, and employers are forced to pay people more in order to compete for workers. There is a lot of work being done, but there is a risk that some bad investments are being made that will catch up to us in the next bust cycle.
The opposite extreme is also possible. There are bust cycles when nobody wants to assume risk. Everyone just wants a steady job and guaranteed income, and are willing to trade higher profit potential for stability, and the number of available "jobs" drops as there is a larger supply of workers. I put "jobs" in quotes, because there is certainly things that still need to be done, but the economy is simply not efficiently making these opportunities for productivity easily accessible. There is very little risk of making bad investments, but growth is slow or can even be negative in more extreme cases.
The extremes don't happen because the more extreme the situation gets, the more pressure there is pushing it back to an equilibrium point. But if an extreme actually does happen, the way to fix it is usually pretty clear. If we don't see this pressure to correct the extreme, then maybe it's not really an extreme.
America has one of the most highly skilled work forces in the world, both in terms of the number of skilled workers per capita and the extent of their skills.
I will start out by saying that I think this depends on your definition of "skilled". College degrees don't necessarily imply any *useful* skills. Unfortunately we have been sold this idea that a college education is worthwhile regardless of the cost and regardless of what you actually learned. We are now just starting to realize that this is really not the case.
And so what. Get a master's degree in your field, your resumé gets discarded by HR: overqualified. Have 20 years of experience in the field, your resumé gets discarded by HR: overqualified. Fail to have 10 years of experience in 5 year old technology, your resumé gets discarded by HR: underqualified. Fail to have the right school on your resume, your resumé gets discarded by HR: underqualified: Fail to claim you can walk on water and fly solely by grabbing your bootstraps and yanking, your resumé gets discarded by HR: underqualified. Goldilocks was never so picky. Why? Because they're desperate for any criteria they can use to dig themselves out from under the absolutely monstrous deluge of resumés they received for the job posting they only posted because the law required it and they've already got the H1B lined up they're going to put in that slot.
So let me ask you this. Let's say you're a perfectly competent person in India trying to get an H1B job in the USA. You are willing to work for 2/3of whatever the "normal" salary for that job is, because it's still higher than what you would get in India. What is the rationale for hiring the American worker over you who can do the job for less money?
I am not talking about from a capitalist perspective. I am talking about from a human perspective. For the price of giving 2 American workers jobs, you can give 3 Indian workers jobs and have 50% more productivity. What good is served by denying these jobs to the most competitive applicants?
Maybe it's hard to imagine yourself as an Indian. Lets look at pilots. People love flying and because of that we have a lot of people who are pilots. We have more pilots than jobs for them. There are a few experienced pilots who score really good jobs at big airlines making good salaraies. All the other pilots are stuck earning $20K/year at regional airlines, sharing apartments with 9 other pilots. In this example the highly paid pilots have more experience. Lets say they didn't. Let's say all pilots had the exact same skills. What should we do? Should we just keep paying a few pilots $200K per year and let the rest live in poverty?
If there is a high supply and relatively low demand for pilots, the market solution is to pay pilots less. Is it fair? I don't know that there exists a universally "fair" solution to this problem. It's not fair that some pilots can't do what they love and make a decent living. It's not fair to tax payers if we subsidize pilots with tax money, to artificially keep them living comfortably (and incentivize even more people to become pilots).
Maybe the market solution is not fair. I am arguing that no solution is fair, but at least the market solution will incentivize people to make the right decisions in the future. Maybe if pilots make less money then less people will decide to become a pilot and instead learn some skill that's high in demand.
Maybe I'm not responding to the part of your post you would have liked, but you basically wrote a short story, and I don't really know where to start.
I don't see how you can criticize what I wrote, since you only read one sentence and made all your conclusions based off that.
You should have made it more clear that was your opinion
Just because something is clear to *you*, doesn't make it reality. As I have stated before, I think your reading comprehensions skills and your ability to read subtext are lacking.
personally I think you should take a look at unemployment figures and consider if you want to revise your opinion if you want to provide more than attempted jokes in very poor taste, or even if you want to throw words like "reality" around.
Unemployment doesn't indicate a lopsided labor market. It indicates a recession. Furthermore, in a truly lopsided labor market (in favor of employers), everyone would be employed but at low wages, maximizing profits for employers.
Stuff happened in 2008.
Obviously
There's still people reacting to that in a way that IMHO makes the market very lopsided and I must admit I'm amazed that you do not appear to be aware of that.
The fact that we had an economic collapse in 2008 does not indicate a lop sided labor market. It indicates a recession. Lots of employers have failed businesses because of the financial collapse. They couldn't pay their workers salaries and had to shut their doors, and are now counted among the unemployed. A recession is bad for everyone, not just employees.
The idea of "not enough work for everyone" is actually a good thing, not a bad thing. It means that we have enough wealth that not everyone is required to work full time in order to provide for everyone. If people are starving, then is work that still needs to be done. Maybe in the worst case scenario, that work is subsistence agriculture or scavenging to keep from starving. The goal is to have an efficient economy that generates the most wealth for the least effort.
If you start your own company, you "create" jobs for people. Or to look at it another way, you are offering to buy someone's labor. You are also taking on the risk that you can turn that person's labor into profit and removing risk (i.e. granting stability) to your employee.
Furthermore the naive application of Kant's test fails trivially, because it is not god for everyone to be employers (with no employees) nor for everyone to be employees (with no employer), for the same reason that groups with 100% leaders or 100% followers don't work well.
Clearly there is an optimal balance between employers and employees. When there is an imbalance, the natural mechanism to fix this is to incentivize people to switch. When labor is cheap, there is an incentive to become an employer. When labor is expensive, there is an incentive to sell your company (and the associated risk) and become an employee.
Or we can use "modern" financial devices and everyone can be both employers and employees, by being employees but owning stock in their own company or in other companies.
I'm not sure if you realized, but I was in fact referring to the clear derivation of workaholism from alcoholism (and it's implication of addiction), and not of the ism suffix in general.