It's not a sustainable profession though; taxi drivers traditionally were career jobs for many in past decades.
"Slave owner" used to be a sustainable profession and now it's not.
"Cooper" used to be a sustainable profession and now most folks haven't even seen an actual wooden barrel.
And the same for "fletcher", "skinner", "tanner", "pyramid builder", "okra picker", "computer" (yes, by hand), "telegraph operator" etc.
Most of these are still being done, but in a different way. You can still get your okra picked-- but it's no longer a share cropper that does it. You can still buy arrows, but it's not a guy in a hut twiddling bird feathers and animal sinew that makes those arrows. Computing is no longer done by hand these days...
And all those people moved and found new jobs when things changed.
But one thing hasn't changed: anyone willing to work will always have a job.
Nobody ever guaranteed that you'd be able to retire at forty or get a month of paid vacation or that you'd always have something to do that you loved. You have to go get that for yourself just like everyone else has to. Why? Because everyone wants something different and wants to live in a different way-- only you can decide what job you'll love, what amount of wealth is sufficient for you, how much vacation you want.
Uber is already moving to driverless cars, and that was always the plan. Not only is that the plan, the long term prognosis for Taxi and Uber like drivers is dim. Eventually, driverless cars will be the norm and we'll see drivers go the way of the buggy whip.
Who was seriously expecting Uber or Lyft to be their life's career?
It really is true that the local government affects your life the most but gets the least attention.
All eyes are on Trump, every news station waits with baited breath for goose stepping storm troopers to start rounding up the poor little illegals, every safe space is filled with sobbing snowflakes who can't stand the thought of not getting their way, hippies are out in force destroying property trying to stop pipelines that they otherwise would never have known existed, the blogosphere is on fire about non-stories like pizzagate, certain ethnic groups are rioting and burning down private property on the false premise that they're being targeted for persecution by law enforcement...
Meanwhile your HOA dictates what you can and can't do with your property that you paid a metric shit ton of money for. Can't install solar panels without asking permission, no pool in your own backyard, no sheds larger than X by Y feet, all modifications to exterior decor must be approved by committee, better keep those shrubs trimmed and grass mowed citizen!
Oh, you own a bit of property and paid for it yourself? We'll just have to "tax" that and use your money to pay for other people's children's education. Don't you want to think of the children's education?
Sorry, can't let you build that business 'round here my boy. This zone is reserved for different kinds of business (i.e. the kind that paid us to let them build apartments or restaurants etc.).
Sure is a nice little piece of property you have there, citizen, it would be a shame if we had to imminent domain it and take it away from you for some reason...
I'm afraid you'll need city approval in order to operate your mutually beneficial and contractually agreed upon services here (uber and lyft). Yes, that's right, y'see the city owns a business that competes with yours... I'm sure you understand. Yes, you understand, don't you, that the city can't allow you to provide a better or alternative service...
It's very telling of the American popular mindset that not a single mainstream movie out of Hollywood has ever shown a non-American space program accomplishing anything of any importance in their science fiction (or even their documentaries, for that matter)
Why should American movie companies give a crap about non-American space programs? You folks in the rest of the world sure do like to deride the US but then mooch off our tech and entertainment and then complain that it's not all about you... and then you call Americans arrogant and lazy and stupid.
So yes, we should find out whether personalised medicine works and if so, how much more effective it is. Then, as a society, we should choose whether it is worthwhile or not. As it stands, this process happens all the time in medicine at the moment with all kinds of treatments being unavailable due to economic justification.
If nobody is buying a thing then isn't that the very definition of society not finding it to be worthwhile?
Nothing like holding your cure over your head for the right price, which of course will be dictated by millionaires demanding to become billionaires.
1. Assuming that such cures come to be then you wouldn't even have them without the folks that bring them about. How about being grateful instead? New tech isn't cheap when it's bleeding edge, but it gets cheaper over time as it become better understood and the kinks get worked out.
2. If you're so altruistic why don't you get crackin' on developing those cures and giving them to the rest of us for free? What's that? You don't want to change careers and spend your whole life developing stuff and get little or nothing in return? Well no shit?! Neither do they.
3. Look, buddy, nobody's twisting your arm. You don't have to buy the cure if you don't want to. You can just go live and die the "natural" way if you want-- and considering your entitled attitude it seems fair to me if they decide not to sell any to you at all.
4. At least fat people can just eat right and go to the gym and see some kind of results. As someone who has a lifelong illness I'd be damned glad to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for a cure-- I'd sell my house or take out another mortgage or get a crazy loan or something, yes I would.
The only thing that "makes an awful lot of sense" here is understanding that medicine creates massive profits and isn't getting any cheaper for anyone, no matter who propagates bullshit to the masses to claim otherwise.
It might have something to do with government subsidized insurance and regulations... Especially considering that we have an awful lot of both and it somehow seems to correlate with price...
1. Your link to the rebuttal is behind a paywall.
2. Are you saying that a scientist was disciplined for rebutting another scientist?!
3. If the reef can't adapt then literally it deserves to die-- it's called evolution.
We need to stop watching Fern Gully and end this "pristine nature" worship. It's not productive, it solves no problems, it's really nothing but facile virtue signalling based on the false premise that pristine nature is valuable and that the earth is somehow damaged just by the presence of humans. We don't have to wantonly destroy everything we see (and we're not wantonly destroying the reef), but we can and should make use of the earth for our benefit. Any other course of action is either irrational or outright self-hatred, right?
Speaking as someone who bought a house next to the city dump (and who lived under the flight path of an airport for several years) I can say that some folks don't actually mind making rational decisions and accepting the trade offs.
Careful, you're revealing your ulterior motives (envy and greed).
... at a 50% tax rate
Golden rule: how would you like to be taxed at 50%?
... which would benefit everyone.
The fact that you are included in the "everyone" group did not escape my notice.
That money could be used to feed the hungry, rebuild roads and bridges...
You're so altruistic when planning how to spend other people's money.
... pay for basic research that corporations no longer do...
Because IBM (just to name a single example) isn't filing huge numbers of patents and innovations every year, right?
Also, I like how vague and condescending your term "basic research" is.
... and help us pay off the crushing debt we are already under.
Or we could stop giving money to foreign governments, stop handing out "free" stuff to our own citizens, stop spending fortunes on cruise missiles and drones, etc....
The Forbes 400 for America says that they own about $2.4 trillion. So you would have to go after a much larger number of people than that if you want to really punish those evil greedy rich people whose money we wish we had. The federal budget is about $3.95 trillion with a deficit of $616 billion and a total debt of just short of $20 trillion. This article gives the net worth required to be in a percentile of wealth.
Please check my math:
0.01 * 338 million = 338,000 people => 338,000 * $30,644,280 gives us a guess of their net worth being about $97,448,810,400,000 (ninety seven trillion dollars assuming that they all have about a thirty million dollar net worth).
If confiscated then that would be sufficient to pay the national debt... You were saying merely that we should tax them at higher rates (50%). It really just means taking their money over time rather than all at once.
The end effect is the same. In the long term, it would produce the following problems:
1. The rich will just leave. Nobody will sit around while most or all of their wealth is confiscated. It doesn't matter how justified you think it is, they won't just sit there and be shafted. Next year you won't have anyone to confiscate the wealth from.
2. All businesses who can possibly manage to do so will flee the country. What do you think that would do to the GDP? Do you think tax revenues would go up or down?
3. You will have set the precedent that in this country we'll just take your stuff if you have it and we want it. Talk about the destruction of Western civilization. Everything is predicated upon the notion of "ownership" in our culture, society, and civilization. If you can just take someone else's stuff because you want it (individually or collectively) then what incentive is there to work, to earn and save, to do anything other than the absolute bare minimum to get through today? Would you work for free? Would you work for subsistence wages? Would you think it was fair if most of your income were taken away from you and given to others? Why do you think anyone else would or should?
4. With the evacuation of businesses (and jobs) and the ultra-rich a power vacuum and societal upheaval will leave the country vulnerable. Probably you would get a dictator in a couple years promising to make things better and to punish those responsible... read a history book or recall your history lessons in school and you'll see how such
You're saying that because he was a fringe actor we shouldn't equate his actions with the right as a whole? That's fine and all, but it does go both ways.
If people have to start going back to their home countries, they're going to have to vivisect the average American and mail off about a dozen parcels. Most of us are so mixed up we have no idea where our ancestry comes from, and even those who think they do are frequently wrong.
Straw man combined with argumentum ad absurdum.
Nobody is saying that everyone must return to the country of their ethnic origin. We're saying that illegal immigrants must return to their countries and obey the law before they come into this one. It's extremely rude (illegal even) to just walk into someone else's house and start living there without their consent. Immigration is no different.
These racist idiots aren't giving me a lot of reasons to be proud.
What racist idiots are you talking about?
Although if the black community has to answer for black on black crime
Straw man. Nobody is saying individual black persons must take responsibility for what other black people do. We're saying that you can't criticize police as being racist for using force on non-cooperating suspects while ignoring that the vast majority of black murders are perpetrated by other blacks (i.e. gang violence).
...then the White crime
Use complete sentences. It'll help you communicate and you won't sound like an imbecile.
That's how I feel.
I don't care and neither does anyone else. Come back when you get some facts or some evidence or some kind of rational argument.
So yes, I am ashamed that idiots that I knew growing up continue to be race hating morons.
1. Sounds like you made some poor choices who you made friends with. Either that or you straw man their positions and don't try to understand what they're saying.
2. Considering your previous statement that you're ashamed to be white it sounds like there's one more race-hater in the world than you think there is.
3. Virtue signal received. We're reading you loud and clear.
It's hard to tell my girlfriend that the idiot who told her to go back to her country, is an isolated incident.
1. That's not how commas are used. Did you graduate high school?
2. Saying that someone told your girl friend to go back to her country and then not providing at least a synopsis of the conversation or argument is really just fishing for sympathy. Stop it.
3. Considering how most of these arguments go I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that she's an immigrant who started criticizing the country she moved to... then what else could be said other than "You don't like it? Then leave!".
4. Come to think of it, the same could be said to you. If you think you're too righteous to live among all the racist Americans then you can go ahead and emigrate to Africa or India or China or Mexico or anywhere else besides here.
Odd how this never seems to factor in unless we are dealing with climate science.
Wrong. I, for one, have pointed this out numerous times regarding matters besides climate science.
However, I'll note that doing so tends to just get everyone who might say something like "science is settled" all huffy and angry at you and they'll then shut down the conversation rather than deal with you rationally.
I sincerely want to know how they verified that their proxies give them accurate measurements of the temps. Could anyone cite some sources on this matter please?
The other factor I have in mind is rather the general rise of technology in the West. In other words: the tide was already rising so all boats were being lifted anyway.
The reason I consider this more likely is that I can see and have seen direct evidence that things like washing machines freed up large amounts of man/woman hours. Air conditioners became common. Microwave ovens take less time to heat food than traditional ovens (also freeing up man/woman hours to cook). Televisions and computers got cheaper and more plentiful; so more people can afford them for less. Et cetera.
What I don't and can't see direct evidence of is how those people on minimum wage are each spending their money before and after the raise. Therefore also I doubt that any economist can accurately quantify this. And so I doubt that any economist can truly link a rise in minimum wage to a rise in standard of living.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not a sustainable profession though; taxi drivers traditionally were career jobs for many in past decades.
"Slave owner" used to be a sustainable profession and now it's not.
"Cooper" used to be a sustainable profession and now most folks haven't even seen an actual wooden barrel.
And the same for "fletcher", "skinner", "tanner", "pyramid builder", "okra picker", "computer" (yes, by hand), "telegraph operator" etc.
Most of these are still being done, but in a different way. You can still get your okra picked-- but it's no longer a share cropper that does it. You can still buy arrows, but it's not a guy in a hut twiddling bird feathers and animal sinew that makes those arrows. Computing is no longer done by hand these days...
And all those people moved and found new jobs when things changed.
But one thing hasn't changed: anyone willing to work will always have a job.
Nobody ever guaranteed that you'd be able to retire at forty or get a month of paid vacation or that you'd always have something to do that you loved. You have to go get that for yourself just like everyone else has to. Why? Because everyone wants something different and wants to live in a different way-- only you can decide what job you'll love, what amount of wealth is sufficient for you, how much vacation you want.
Uber is already moving to driverless cars, and that was always the plan. Not only is that the plan, the long term prognosis for Taxi and Uber like drivers is dim. Eventually, driverless cars will be the norm and we'll see drivers go the way of the buggy whip.
Who was seriously expecting Uber or Lyft to be their life's career?
Look up "faketaxi" on pr0nhub...
It really is true that the local government affects your life the most but gets the least attention.
/rant
All eyes are on Trump, every news station waits with baited breath for goose stepping storm troopers to start rounding up the poor little illegals, every safe space is filled with sobbing snowflakes who can't stand the thought of not getting their way, hippies are out in force destroying property trying to stop pipelines that they otherwise would never have known existed, the blogosphere is on fire about non-stories like pizzagate, certain ethnic groups are rioting and burning down private property on the false premise that they're being targeted for persecution by law enforcement...
Meanwhile your HOA dictates what you can and can't do with your property that you paid a metric shit ton of money for. Can't install solar panels without asking permission, no pool in your own backyard, no sheds larger than X by Y feet, all modifications to exterior decor must be approved by committee, better keep those shrubs trimmed and grass mowed citizen!
Oh, you own a bit of property and paid for it yourself? We'll just have to "tax" that and use your money to pay for other people's children's education. Don't you want to think of the children's education?
Sorry, can't let you build that business 'round here my boy. This zone is reserved for different kinds of business (i.e. the kind that paid us to let them build apartments or restaurants etc.).
Sure is a nice little piece of property you have there, citizen, it would be a shame if we had to imminent domain it and take it away from you for some reason...
I'm afraid you'll need city approval in order to operate your mutually beneficial and contractually agreed upon services here (uber and lyft). Yes, that's right, y'see the city owns a business that competes with yours... I'm sure you understand. Yes, you understand, don't you, that the city can't allow you to provide a better or alternative service...
The rest of the world has supported Russia's space program as it delivers good value.
From TFS:
To make matters worse, Russian rockets are becoming uncharacteristically undependable.
Also, SpaceX is absolutely destroying the usual suspects on launch costs despite their recent "setbacks".
It's very telling of the American popular mindset that not a single mainstream movie out of Hollywood has ever shown a non-American space program accomplishing anything of any importance in their science fiction (or even their documentaries, for that matter)
Why should American movie companies give a crap about non-American space programs? You folks in the rest of the world sure do like to deride the US but then mooch off our tech and entertainment and then complain that it's not all about you... and then you call Americans arrogant and lazy and stupid.
So yes, we should find out whether personalised medicine works and if so, how much more effective it is. Then, as a society, we should choose whether it is worthwhile or not. As it stands, this process happens all the time in medicine at the moment with all kinds of treatments being unavailable due to economic justification.
If nobody is buying a thing then isn't that the very definition of society not finding it to be worthwhile?
Y'know, dental work doesn't seem to be in the same category as brain surgery, heart bypasses, or cancer treatment to me...
Nothing like holding your cure over your head for the right price, which of course will be dictated by millionaires demanding to become billionaires.
1. Assuming that such cures come to be then you wouldn't even have them without the folks that bring them about. How about being grateful instead? New tech isn't cheap when it's bleeding edge, but it gets cheaper over time as it become better understood and the kinks get worked out.
2. If you're so altruistic why don't you get crackin' on developing those cures and giving them to the rest of us for free? What's that? You don't want to change careers and spend your whole life developing stuff and get little or nothing in return? Well no shit?! Neither do they.
3. Look, buddy, nobody's twisting your arm. You don't have to buy the cure if you don't want to. You can just go live and die the "natural" way if you want-- and considering your entitled attitude it seems fair to me if they decide not to sell any to you at all.
4. At least fat people can just eat right and go to the gym and see some kind of results. As someone who has a lifelong illness I'd be damned glad to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for a cure-- I'd sell my house or take out another mortgage or get a crazy loan or something, yes I would.
The only thing that "makes an awful lot of sense" here is understanding that medicine creates massive profits and isn't getting any cheaper for anyone, no matter who propagates bullshit to the masses to claim otherwise.
It might have something to do with government subsidized insurance and regulations... Especially considering that we have an awful lot of both and it somehow seems to correlate with price...
1. Your link to the rebuttal is behind a paywall.
2. Are you saying that a scientist was disciplined for rebutting another scientist?!
3. If the reef can't adapt then literally it deserves to die-- it's called evolution.
We need to stop watching Fern Gully and end this "pristine nature" worship. It's not productive, it solves no problems, it's really nothing but facile virtue signalling based on the false premise that pristine nature is valuable and that the earth is somehow damaged just by the presence of humans. We don't have to wantonly destroy everything we see (and we're not wantonly destroying the reef), but we can and should make use of the earth for our benefit. Any other course of action is either irrational or outright self-hatred, right?
Speaking as someone who bought a house next to the city dump (and who lived under the flight path of an airport for several years) I can say that some folks don't actually mind making rational decisions and accepting the trade offs.
Show us your math, please.
Please define "optimal".
... tax the rich bastards
Careful, you're revealing your ulterior motives (envy and greed).
... at a 50% tax rate
Golden rule: how would you like to be taxed at 50%?
... which would benefit everyone.
The fact that you are included in the "everyone" group did not escape my notice.
That money could be used to feed the hungry, rebuild roads and bridges ...
You're so altruistic when planning how to spend other people's money.
... pay for basic research that corporations no longer do...
Because IBM (just to name a single example) isn't filing huge numbers of patents and innovations every year, right?
Also, I like how vague and condescending your term "basic research" is.
... and help us pay off the crushing debt we are already under.
Or we could stop giving money to foreign governments, stop handing out "free" stuff to our own citizens, stop spending fortunes on cruise missiles and drones, etc. ...
The Forbes 400 for America says that they own about $2.4 trillion. So you would have to go after a much larger number of people than that if you want to really punish those evil greedy rich people whose money we wish we had.
The federal budget is about $3.95 trillion with a deficit of $616 billion and a total debt of just short of $20 trillion.
This article gives the net worth required to be in a percentile of wealth.
Please check my math: 0.01 * 338 million = 338,000 people => 338,000 * $30,644,280 gives us a guess of their net worth being about $97,448,810,400,000 (ninety seven trillion dollars assuming that they all have about a thirty million dollar net worth).
If confiscated then that would be sufficient to pay the national debt... You were saying merely that we should tax them at higher rates (50%). It really just means taking their money over time rather than all at once.
The end effect is the same. In the long term, it would produce the following problems:
1. The rich will just leave. Nobody will sit around while most or all of their wealth is confiscated. It doesn't matter how justified you think it is, they won't just sit there and be shafted. Next year you won't have anyone to confiscate the wealth from.
2. All businesses who can possibly manage to do so will flee the country. What do you think that would do to the GDP? Do you think tax revenues would go up or down?
3. You will have set the precedent that in this country we'll just take your stuff if you have it and we want it. Talk about the destruction of Western civilization. Everything is predicated upon the notion of "ownership" in our culture, society, and civilization. If you can just take someone else's stuff because you want it (individually or collectively) then what incentive is there to work, to earn and save, to do anything other than the absolute bare minimum to get through today? Would you work for free? Would you work for subsistence wages? Would you think it was fair if most of your income were taken away from you and given to others? Why do you think anyone else would or should?
4. With the evacuation of businesses (and jobs) and the ultra-rich a power vacuum and societal upheaval will leave the country vulnerable. Probably you would get a dictator in a couple years promising to make things better and to punish those responsible... read a history book or recall your history lessons in school and you'll see how such
Because most people consider it wise to gradually shift from old to new tech especially when it's such a foundational part of the OS.
You're saying that because he was a fringe actor we shouldn't equate his actions with the right as a whole? That's fine and all, but it does go both ways.
read this and this.
But this attack doesn't work over the network in the first place....
Link appears to be broken
If people have to start going back to their home countries, they're going to have to vivisect the average American and mail off about a dozen parcels. Most of us are so mixed up we have no idea where our ancestry comes from, and even those who think they do are frequently wrong.
Straw man combined with argumentum ad absurdum.
Nobody is saying that everyone must return to the country of their ethnic origin. We're saying that illegal immigrants must return to their countries and obey the law before they come into this one. It's extremely rude (illegal even) to just walk into someone else's house and start living there without their consent. Immigration is no different.
These racist idiots aren't giving me a lot of reasons to be proud.
What racist idiots are you talking about?
Although if the black community has to answer for black on black crime
Straw man. Nobody is saying individual black persons must take responsibility for what other black people do. We're saying that you can't criticize police as being racist for using force on non-cooperating suspects while ignoring that the vast majority of black murders are perpetrated by other blacks (i.e. gang violence).
...then the White crime
Use complete sentences. It'll help you communicate and you won't sound like an imbecile.
That's how I feel.
I don't care and neither does anyone else. Come back when you get some facts or some evidence or some kind of rational argument.
So yes, I am ashamed that idiots that I knew growing up continue to be race hating morons.
1. Sounds like you made some poor choices who you made friends with. Either that or you straw man their positions and don't try to understand what they're saying.
2. Considering your previous statement that you're ashamed to be white it sounds like there's one more race-hater in the world than you think there is.
3. Virtue signal received. We're reading you loud and clear.
It's hard to tell my girlfriend that the idiot who told her to go back to her country, is an isolated incident.
1. That's not how commas are used. Did you graduate high school?
2. Saying that someone told your girl friend to go back to her country and then not providing at least a synopsis of the conversation or argument is really just fishing for sympathy. Stop it.
3. Considering how most of these arguments go I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that she's an immigrant who started criticizing the country she moved to... then what else could be said other than "You don't like it? Then leave!".
4. Come to think of it, the same could be said to you. If you think you're too righteous to live among all the racist Americans then you can go ahead and emigrate to Africa or India or China or Mexico or anywhere else besides here.
...Facebook-owned instant app WhatsApp today announced...
An instant app, eh? So they love agile over at Facebook I take it.
Odd how this never seems to factor in unless we are dealing with climate science.
Wrong. I, for one, have pointed this out numerous times regarding matters besides climate science.
However, I'll note that doing so tends to just get everyone who might say something like "science is settled" all huffy and angry at you and they'll then shut down the conversation rather than deal with you rationally.
I sincerely want to know how they verified that their proxies give them accurate measurements of the temps. Could anyone cite some sources on this matter please?
I can't wait to see the A10-powered Mac mini Air!
I don't think a GAU-8/A will fit on my lap... But it might fit on your mother's.
The other factor I have in mind is rather the general rise of technology in the West. In other words: the tide was already rising so all boats were being lifted anyway.
The reason I consider this more likely is that I can see and have seen direct evidence that things like washing machines freed up large amounts of man/woman hours. Air conditioners became common. Microwave ovens take less time to heat food than traditional ovens (also freeing up man/woman hours to cook). Televisions and computers got cheaper and more plentiful; so more people can afford them for less. Et cetera.
What I don't and can't see direct evidence of is how those people on minimum wage are each spending their money before and after the raise. Therefore also I doubt that any economist can accurately quantify this. And so I doubt that any economist can truly link a rise in minimum wage to a rise in standard of living.