Probably not, because those apps depend on a lot of Google's other products. It's not just the play store to obtain those apps, it's also Play Services, Gmail, Youtube, and Maps. If you were to remove those apps, you'd actually break a lot of apps that get distributed via the play store.
- Without Play Services you'd break a LOT of apps as it provides a lot of API extensions not found in base Android (the reason these functions are built into Play Services rather than AOSP is so that Google can continue providing OS functionality updates even when the manufacturer will not.) - Youtube provides video services to a lot of other apps. - Google Maps provides mapping services to other apps (e.g. gas buddy, fitness trackers, etc.) - Gmail provides a sync framework that some other apps use
You can disable these apps so that the icon disappears from the app drawer (it's only visible in settings > app info) which leaves the libraries behind and prevents the app from running, but if you were to remove them entirely then you'll break a lot of apps.
There's an estimated mortgage cost and an estimated rent cost. Having recently looked at getting a mortgage on another house and putting my current one up for rent, I can say that the Zillow estimate for my own house (not the one linked above, mind you) is pretty accurate. For this particular house, both figures are realistic, but it wouldn't be unreasonable to have the mortgage about 5% more or the rent 5% less.
I think that mainly comes from the fact that if you rent out the house, you as the owner are responsible for certain maintenance, whereas if you buy a house, nobody cares what you do with it except for the lender who just wants it to be insured.
I.e. if your AC unit on your house breaks, YOU have to fix it, not the person renting it.
You are VASTLY overestimating the capability of those contactless receivers.
- They don't even have the capability of picking which card to use, they just begin the transaction with the first one they see. - The range is so small that it doesn't work beyond about a half an inch away, meaning you'd have to place your wallet almost directly on the reader (this is by design.) - None of these hacks have performed an actual transaction. In order to do such a transaction, you'd have to have a merchant account first, and Visa/Mastercard would have to carry it out (which is unlikely because they have a lot of anti-fraud monitoring systems.) - The information obtained from a contactless transaction isn't useful for future transactions. So for example you can't skim the card and then use the information obtained at another merchant to buy an ipad.
However let's suppose you have a merchant account, and Visa/Mastercard approve the transaction: You as the merchant are probably going to get caught REAL fast, long before you even have the chance to withdraw the ill gotten funds as cash or even transfer to another account as there's typically a clearing period for merchants to receive credit card funds (unless you're big and well known like Best Buy or something.) You'll probably go to jail too.
But let's assume none of that happens and you cash out before somebody notices: The law still protects the card holder from fraud. Maximum liability is $50, which most banks reduce to zero. All you as an end user have to do is call your bank within 30 days, and notify them that you didn't make that transaction. Just like that, that transaction disappears.
Long story short, you don't need a snake oil sleeve for your credit cards.
Chip & PIN is a liability shift. You're expected to protect your PIN, so if your account is compromised, you're assumed to be at fault.
This is not at all the case in the US.
When TFS says liability shift, they're referring to the merchants (at least, in the context of the US anyways.) The merchants have an agreement with visa, mastercard, et al (and the banks) that determines who is liable in the event of fraud. Presently mastercard/visa/amex assume most of the liability (and they very well better for the transaction fees they charge.)
Visa and mastercard have issued an ultimatum of sorts to the merchants saying that this will only continue for magnetic stripe until the end of 2015, after which the merchant assumes liability for fraud. The merchant can avoid that by simply replacing their POS systems with a chip and pin system, in which case visa/mastercard assume most of the liability.
For you as the card holder however, nothing has changed in that regard: The law in the US still stipulates that credit card holders can only be liable for up to $50 (which most banks waive these days.)
Honestly speaking, those little sleeves are snake oil products sold by people praying on your fears of "them hacker kids." Much in the same vein as those "radiation blocking" stickers for cell phones.
Sure, it can be used to pull the card numbers on the older contactless cards, but those alone aren't sufficient for a transaction. On the newer ones it has to establish an active two-way communication with a card, and at some point a PIN has to be entered as well in order for an actual transaction to happen.
Still though, no amount of saying this from people like me will stop people from buying them in the near future, nor will it stop people from wearing those stupid QRay wellness bracelets or buying books written by Kevin Trudeau.
Well they never did steal from "minions" using this method anyways. For the last 40 years or so, the law has put a limit of $50 on credit card liability, but almost all banks these days just give you zero liability (technically as a courtesy, but if they don't, their competitors do, which is why almost all of them offer zero liability anyways. You have to have really absolutely terrible dog shit credit to not be able to find somebody that offers it.)
I've already got two, both of which I acquired this week after switching from a card that yielded a lower cash back reward percentage. Neither have a contactless component (which I assume means some kind of RFID/NFC chip.)
Haven't yet seen any vendors with an ISO7816 reader though. Last time I used one of those for a payment method was when I was in the Army, and that was over 13 years ago. Obviously the technology hasn't caught on anywhere besides AAFES stores.
Where in California are we talking? SF and some other places aren't going to be much better than NYC in that regard. A lot of California isn't that expensive either. In Arizona typical mortgage is roughly 60% of what rent costs, but Arizona isn't associated with a high cost of living like those places.
Those are the kinds of places where living there is inherently not affordable by most. It's a supply/demand issue. High demand for living in those areas, but only so much real estate to go around. There likewise has to be some kind of force or outward pressure to decide who can live there and who can't. When government is the force that decides that, it typically ends up being some kind of favoritism (In North Korea, Dear leader likes you and/or your family because they were part of the revolution, so you get to live in Pyongyang, and no amount of hard work will change that.)
In our capitalist system, it's whoever is willing to sacrifice the most for the privilege of living among the elite. However in my opinion, there are better places to live that don't require such a sacrifice, and as such that kind of sacrifice isn't necessary.
Also in my opinion, it isn't prudent to live in such an area even if you're middle class or wealthy. That eats away from other things you can dedicate your resources towards.
No. In spite of recent turmoil (including recession,) Japan remains with a low unemployment rate. That said, it continues to serve as a valid case for why the lump of labor concept is a fallacy, and why having increased working hours for everybody doesn't result in higher unemployment.
In fact, it only requires that the reduction exceed the limited elasticity of the demand for labor.
You're working on the rather bad assumption that if you reduce working hours with all other things being equal, then the demand for labor will not change. As I already mentioned, this is both mathematically false and is historically proven false. France is actually a really good example of why a 35 hour work week increases the unemployment rate.
It's been done, and in 100% of the cases where it has been done, the economic results have been rather bad. The debate on this is very much over and settled as even very liberal economists agree (including left-wing favorite Paul Krugman) that this is a bad idea in the making, that said I'm not going to mention it any further in this thread, I just responded to tell you why you're wrong.
We already have real world examples of this type of policy being applied, and in 100% of those cases, the unemployment rate increased as a result of capping working hours.
Korea and Japan are two countries with no rules about how many hours you can work in a week, and...what do you know? Both countries have unemployment rates below the natural rate of unemployment (expected unemployment from people between jobs, frictional unemployment, etc.)
I'm not sure where you got the idea that we could wipe out unemployment if we capped working hours to 35, but the real world examples say it's a big fat lie.
No I do not. But even if that were the case, renting isn't obligatory. At least, it isn't obligatory in most places in the US (New York may be a different story, but most of the US doesn't live in New York, or anywhere like it) and in fact you'll pay out less per month on a mortgage than you would on rent. Never minding entirely that you'll also build equity in the process.
and I hope our system will repair itself without need for one. I'm not sure people like you will allow it.
Why wouldn't I allow it? Pretty sure I just described the why and how it will happen.
Just because the poor have better cast offs from the rich doesn't mean their lot is really improving. Your like the guy that gives his old gucci jeans to a homeless person and pats himself on the back
It isn't cast-off's of the rich, rather it's improvements in technology that require less work to do the same thing. That's called technology. It also invariably means that it's easier to afford nicer things.
Presidents in recent history have commented at least once that they don't really do much other than make statements and decisions.
Think like always having somebody working for you 24/7 formulating your thoughts and opinions into actions, and 20 Rikers around offering you solutions and alternative solutions while you can say in a Picard voice "Make it so."
The aging probably comes from always worrying about how the public is going to react to your latest "make it so."
An example "make it so" mis-step Obama made was when a speech writer told him to say "if you want to keep your insurance plan, you can" and he did exactly that. That, and the occasional time when somebody put an errant question mark in the teleprompter.
Given the prior art, my guess is the patent is designed to prevent companies that make iphone accessories from making their own. E.g. if you want a VR headset for an iphone, you gotta pay Apple a 400% markup for a piece of plastic.
Well here's why I don't see a situation coming where suddenly there's a great divide between the haves and have-nots in a world similar to Shadowrun:
If the day came where all of life's problems were solved by your personal robot assistant (including your robot assistant being able to make another robot assistant for you and/or your friends) then there'd be no point to having any money to begin with. Why? Because if you need something you just ask for it, and there's no reason to pay anybody. So at that point, what good is money?
Personally, the gloom and doomsayers, the luddites, and the socialists don't bother me when they spout most of their nonsense. What does bother me is when they start talking about glorious revolutions where suddenly the state owns everything and supposedly distributes it fairly. The reason that bothers me is because in 100% of the cases where that has happened, ALL of the people involved all suffer for it and suddenly find that their lives are measurably much worse than before the glorious revolution, but they find that they can't gripe about it because all of the glorious revolutionaries are now the ones in power, and the glorious revolutionaries don't take kindly to people talking about how they made the world worse for them, even if those other people are other glorious revolutionaries.
Also, 100% one of those countries that have had glorious revolution are now a second world shithole.
I don't know about you, but I don't live in a second world shithole, and I don't want to either.
I'm not. I'm showing that even after you adjust for inflation, things are still getting cheaper. My example about the person's income not changing from year to year is also inaccurate as most individualls typically have a steadily rising income.
But even failing that, even assuming that individual incomes have been decreasing overall (which they have) the reality is that material goods (read: wealth) have been declining in price.
Go back to the TED link I posted for example, and specifically look at the number of people who could afford to fly to a far away location. The number of people who can afford that is now higher than ever.
Sorry disregard the editing error I made with the $17,000, should be $18,000 (I initially posted the actual numbers but later decided it would be easier on the readers if I just rounded it.)
So then because I have no debts, you'd define me as middle class? But if I borrowed (picking a random figure here) $100,000 for a house, then I'm poor?
Yes, they are poorer. everything is always increasing in price.
No, it's not. Sorry but this is another one of those socialist fabrications and it's just not true.
I already showed you that food is going down in price, furthermore material goods are also going down in price and improving in quality at the same time.
For example, in the 80s you were one rich fat cat if you had a car phone. Now basically everybody owns something much MUCH better (a smartphone.)
In the 80s, having a 50" TV meant you were rich. Now they are so inexpensive that everybody owns one, and furthermore they're of such higher quality these days (1080p vs 480i of yore) consume less power, and last longer.
In the 80's, having a personal computer was something only upper middle class people could afford. Now I've seen homeless people carry a laptop to starbucks where they get free internet access...something even most rich people didn't have in the 80s.
It's not just technology. Clothing, food, cars...everything really.
The only thing that varies in price are commodities such as gasoline and real estate. Sometimes they're more, sometimes they're less. Though it seems that both of them aren't presently at their peak. In the 70's, gas (petrol) approached $4.50 a gallon in today's money. Right now it's about $1.89 per gallon.
The house I resided in during the 90's was purchased by my dad for $105,000 during 1993. We sold it in 2007 (near the end of the housing bubble) for $244,000. It just sold to somebody else for $140,000. After you adjust for inflation, that's roughly $87,000. So that house is now cheaper than it was in the 90's by about $17,000.
You'll have to excuse me if I don't feel the need for glorious violent socialist revolution. Every place this glorious revolution has occurred has turned into a second world shit hole.
but it is very clear that a majority of people are not middle class in terms of wealth
I think this is the key point of your entire post, and being honest, it doesn't say a whole lot.
What metric are you using to define middle class, and furthermore, where exactly does the goalpost reside, and how often does that goalpost change?
Remember that in terms of income, the goalpost is always rising, even in the absence of inflation. For example in one year you could have $20,000 being defined within the scope of middle class, and then the next year it could be defined as poverty, even though the person making $20,000 a year has not become less wealthy. Sure the dollar value may have gone down, however the purchasing power may very well have stayed the same.
As an example for that last sentence: Even though, due to inflation, food prices have gone up over the last few years, however the real cost of food (that is, adjusted for inflation) is presently the lowest it's ever been.
People who claim otherwise are usually members of the Church of Organic Food, who seem to believe that organic food is the only healthy way to live, when in reality it's just a big fat waste of time and money (and also the organic food lobby, which is very wealthy, loves you to believe in that bullshit.)
Where does this leave people between the "kills old ones" phase and the "creating new industries" phase?
There's a term for this: Frictional unemployment. It also isn't a new thing.
But is this "dollar" in exchange rate terms or purchasing power terms? Without correction for purchasing power, the hump is further distorted by the Balassa-Samuelson effect: areas without a history of producing goods for export will have an artificially low cost of living.
He goes into that in further detail in some of his other TED talks, such as this one:
There's a few more as well (I'd have to go find the links.) But even in the situations you describe, so far the trend has been long term increase in both wealth AND welfare (e.g. physical health of the population)
Except there isn't anything to indicate that Google is actually spying on you when you use their internet service.
The whole point of this two tiered pricing system on AT&T's part is to make it seem as though Google is doing the same, but that doesn't appear to be the case. The reality is quite simple: AT&T wants to charge you $100 for the service, and if they can't, then they are hell bent and determined on claiming their pound of flesh in some other way.
It isn't exactly a secret that AT&T (and Verizon) has been running a campaign to try to get consumers to value bandwidth at a higher price than they presently pay, because in their mind that is the future cash cow (since they've discovered that text messages, voice minutes, and cable TV aren't "cool" any more, and thus triple play is dying.) Haven't you ever wondered why them (and Verizon) got rid of their unlimited mobile data plans? Hint: It has nothing to do with a lack of spectrum (they have plenty in their possession.) Meanwhile T-Mobile and Sprint (with much lower spectrum holdings) have not.
If we truly ran into an era where there was no need for jobs, then I think we'd reach a currency-free society similar to what Star Trek has. I don't think that will be the case though. Technology always has a funny way of creating new industries after it kills old ones.
Remember that 200 years ago, some 90% of the US population were all farmers. That wasn't exactly flowers and roses either.
Also we need to get out of this stupid mindset where everybody defines wealth by income.
Slashdot Mirror
Probably not, because those apps depend on a lot of Google's other products. It's not just the play store to obtain those apps, it's also Play Services, Gmail, Youtube, and Maps. If you were to remove those apps, you'd actually break a lot of apps that get distributed via the play store.
- Without Play Services you'd break a LOT of apps as it provides a lot of API extensions not found in base Android (the reason these functions are built into Play Services rather than AOSP is so that Google can continue providing OS functionality updates even when the manufacturer will not.)
- Youtube provides video services to a lot of other apps.
- Google Maps provides mapping services to other apps (e.g. gas buddy, fitness trackers, etc.)
- Gmail provides a sync framework that some other apps use
You can disable these apps so that the icon disappears from the app drawer (it's only visible in settings > app info) which leaves the libraries behind and prevents the app from running, but if you were to remove them entirely then you'll break a lot of apps.
Sure. Zillow places estimates for cost of rent and cost of mortgage for different properties on the market. Here's an example:
http://www.zillow.com/homedeta...
There's an estimated mortgage cost and an estimated rent cost. Having recently looked at getting a mortgage on another house and putting my current one up for rent, I can say that the Zillow estimate for my own house (not the one linked above, mind you) is pretty accurate. For this particular house, both figures are realistic, but it wouldn't be unreasonable to have the mortgage about 5% more or the rent 5% less.
I think that mainly comes from the fact that if you rent out the house, you as the owner are responsible for certain maintenance, whereas if you buy a house, nobody cares what you do with it except for the lender who just wants it to be insured.
I.e. if your AC unit on your house breaks, YOU have to fix it, not the person renting it.
You are VASTLY overestimating the capability of those contactless receivers.
- They don't even have the capability of picking which card to use, they just begin the transaction with the first one they see.
- The range is so small that it doesn't work beyond about a half an inch away, meaning you'd have to place your wallet almost directly on the reader (this is by design.)
- None of these hacks have performed an actual transaction. In order to do such a transaction, you'd have to have a merchant account first, and Visa/Mastercard would have to carry it out (which is unlikely because they have a lot of anti-fraud monitoring systems.)
- The information obtained from a contactless transaction isn't useful for future transactions. So for example you can't skim the card and then use the information obtained at another merchant to buy an ipad.
However let's suppose you have a merchant account, and Visa/Mastercard approve the transaction: You as the merchant are probably going to get caught REAL fast, long before you even have the chance to withdraw the ill gotten funds as cash or even transfer to another account as there's typically a clearing period for merchants to receive credit card funds (unless you're big and well known like Best Buy or something.) You'll probably go to jail too.
But let's assume none of that happens and you cash out before somebody notices: The law still protects the card holder from fraud. Maximum liability is $50, which most banks reduce to zero. All you as an end user have to do is call your bank within 30 days, and notify them that you didn't make that transaction. Just like that, that transaction disappears.
Long story short, you don't need a snake oil sleeve for your credit cards.
Chip & PIN is a liability shift. You're expected to protect your PIN, so if your account is compromised, you're assumed to be at fault.
This is not at all the case in the US.
When TFS says liability shift, they're referring to the merchants (at least, in the context of the US anyways.) The merchants have an agreement with visa, mastercard, et al (and the banks) that determines who is liable in the event of fraud. Presently mastercard/visa/amex assume most of the liability (and they very well better for the transaction fees they charge.)
Visa and mastercard have issued an ultimatum of sorts to the merchants saying that this will only continue for magnetic stripe until the end of 2015, after which the merchant assumes liability for fraud. The merchant can avoid that by simply replacing their POS systems with a chip and pin system, in which case visa/mastercard assume most of the liability.
For you as the card holder however, nothing has changed in that regard: The law in the US still stipulates that credit card holders can only be liable for up to $50 (which most banks waive these days.)
Honestly speaking, those little sleeves are snake oil products sold by people praying on your fears of "them hacker kids." Much in the same vein as those "radiation blocking" stickers for cell phones.
Sure, it can be used to pull the card numbers on the older contactless cards, but those alone aren't sufficient for a transaction. On the newer ones it has to establish an active two-way communication with a card, and at some point a PIN has to be entered as well in order for an actual transaction to happen.
Still though, no amount of saying this from people like me will stop people from buying them in the near future, nor will it stop people from wearing those stupid QRay wellness bracelets or buying books written by Kevin Trudeau.
Well they never did steal from "minions" using this method anyways. For the last 40 years or so, the law has put a limit of $50 on credit card liability, but almost all banks these days just give you zero liability (technically as a courtesy, but if they don't, their competitors do, which is why almost all of them offer zero liability anyways. You have to have really absolutely terrible dog shit credit to not be able to find somebody that offers it.)
I've already got two, both of which I acquired this week after switching from a card that yielded a lower cash back reward percentage. Neither have a contactless component (which I assume means some kind of RFID/NFC chip.)
Haven't yet seen any vendors with an ISO7816 reader though. Last time I used one of those for a payment method was when I was in the Army, and that was over 13 years ago. Obviously the technology hasn't caught on anywhere besides AAFES stores.
Where in California are we talking? SF and some other places aren't going to be much better than NYC in that regard. A lot of California isn't that expensive either. In Arizona typical mortgage is roughly 60% of what rent costs, but Arizona isn't associated with a high cost of living like those places.
Those are the kinds of places where living there is inherently not affordable by most. It's a supply/demand issue. High demand for living in those areas, but only so much real estate to go around. There likewise has to be some kind of force or outward pressure to decide who can live there and who can't. When government is the force that decides that, it typically ends up being some kind of favoritism (In North Korea, Dear leader likes you and/or your family because they were part of the revolution, so you get to live in Pyongyang, and no amount of hard work will change that.)
In our capitalist system, it's whoever is willing to sacrifice the most for the privilege of living among the elite. However in my opinion, there are better places to live that don't require such a sacrifice, and as such that kind of sacrifice isn't necessary.
Also in my opinion, it isn't prudent to live in such an area even if you're middle class or wealthy. That eats away from other things you can dedicate your resources towards.
Perhaps that was a bad example.
No. In spite of recent turmoil (including recession,) Japan remains with a low unemployment rate. That said, it continues to serve as a valid case for why the lump of labor concept is a fallacy, and why having increased working hours for everybody doesn't result in higher unemployment.
In fact, it only requires that the reduction exceed the limited elasticity of the demand for labor.
You're working on the rather bad assumption that if you reduce working hours with all other things being equal, then the demand for labor will not change. As I already mentioned, this is both mathematically false and is historically proven false. France is actually a really good example of why a 35 hour work week increases the unemployment rate.
It's been done, and in 100% of the cases where it has been done, the economic results have been rather bad. The debate on this is very much over and settled as even very liberal economists agree (including left-wing favorite Paul Krugman) that this is a bad idea in the making, that said I'm not going to mention it any further in this thread, I just responded to tell you why you're wrong.
And here I thought AIDS was too retro for contemporary artists.
Consider, we could wipe out our unemployment problem RIGHT NOW if the average work week was cut to 35 hours a week.
Actually that's very much false. You're subscribing to the lump of labor fallacy:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
We already have real world examples of this type of policy being applied, and in 100% of those cases, the unemployment rate increased as a result of capping working hours.
Korea and Japan are two countries with no rules about how many hours you can work in a week, and...what do you know? Both countries have unemployment rates below the natural rate of unemployment (expected unemployment from people between jobs, frictional unemployment, etc.)
I'm not sure where you got the idea that we could wipe out unemployment if we capped working hours to 35, but the real world examples say it's a big fat lie.
Do you rent? That is a debt
No I do not. But even if that were the case, renting isn't obligatory. At least, it isn't obligatory in most places in the US (New York may be a different story, but most of the US doesn't live in New York, or anywhere like it) and in fact you'll pay out less per month on a mortgage than you would on rent. Never minding entirely that you'll also build equity in the process.
and I hope our system will repair itself without need for one. I'm not sure people like you will allow it.
Why wouldn't I allow it? Pretty sure I just described the why and how it will happen.
Just because the poor have better cast offs from the rich doesn't mean their lot is really improving. Your like the guy that gives his old gucci jeans to a homeless person and pats himself on the back
It isn't cast-off's of the rich, rather it's improvements in technology that require less work to do the same thing. That's called technology. It also invariably means that it's easier to afford nicer things.
Presidents in recent history have commented at least once that they don't really do much other than make statements and decisions.
Think like always having somebody working for you 24/7 formulating your thoughts and opinions into actions, and 20 Rikers around offering you solutions and alternative solutions while you can say in a Picard voice "Make it so."
The aging probably comes from always worrying about how the public is going to react to your latest "make it so."
An example "make it so" mis-step Obama made was when a speech writer told him to say "if you want to keep your insurance plan, you can" and he did exactly that. That, and the occasional time when somebody put an errant question mark in the teleprompter.
Plus it has beats audio.
Given the prior art, my guess is the patent is designed to prevent companies that make iphone accessories from making their own. E.g. if you want a VR headset for an iphone, you gotta pay Apple a 400% markup for a piece of plastic.
Well here's why I don't see a situation coming where suddenly there's a great divide between the haves and have-nots in a world similar to Shadowrun:
If the day came where all of life's problems were solved by your personal robot assistant (including your robot assistant being able to make another robot assistant for you and/or your friends) then there'd be no point to having any money to begin with. Why? Because if you need something you just ask for it, and there's no reason to pay anybody. So at that point, what good is money?
Personally, the gloom and doomsayers, the luddites, and the socialists don't bother me when they spout most of their nonsense. What does bother me is when they start talking about glorious revolutions where suddenly the state owns everything and supposedly distributes it fairly. The reason that bothers me is because in 100% of the cases where that has happened, ALL of the people involved all suffer for it and suddenly find that their lives are measurably much worse than before the glorious revolution, but they find that they can't gripe about it because all of the glorious revolutionaries are now the ones in power, and the glorious revolutionaries don't take kindly to people talking about how they made the world worse for them, even if those other people are other glorious revolutionaries.
Also, 100% one of those countries that have had glorious revolution are now a second world shithole.
I don't know about you, but I don't live in a second world shithole, and I don't want to either.
You can't just wave away inflation
I'm not. I'm showing that even after you adjust for inflation, things are still getting cheaper. My example about the person's income not changing from year to year is also inaccurate as most individualls typically have a steadily rising income.
But even failing that, even assuming that individual incomes have been decreasing overall (which they have) the reality is that material goods (read: wealth) have been declining in price.
Go back to the TED link I posted for example, and specifically look at the number of people who could afford to fly to a far away location. The number of people who can afford that is now higher than ever.
Sorry disregard the editing error I made with the $17,000, should be $18,000 (I initially posted the actual numbers but later decided it would be easier on the readers if I just rounded it.)
So then because I have no debts, you'd define me as middle class? But if I borrowed (picking a random figure here) $100,000 for a house, then I'm poor?
Yes, they are poorer. everything is always increasing in price.
No, it's not. Sorry but this is another one of those socialist fabrications and it's just not true.
I already showed you that food is going down in price, furthermore material goods are also going down in price and improving in quality at the same time.
For example, in the 80s you were one rich fat cat if you had a car phone. Now basically everybody owns something much MUCH better (a smartphone.)
In the 80s, having a 50" TV meant you were rich. Now they are so inexpensive that everybody owns one, and furthermore they're of such higher quality these days (1080p vs 480i of yore) consume less power, and last longer.
In the 80's, having a personal computer was something only upper middle class people could afford. Now I've seen homeless people carry a laptop to starbucks where they get free internet access...something even most rich people didn't have in the 80s.
It's not just technology. Clothing, food, cars...everything really.
The only thing that varies in price are commodities such as gasoline and real estate. Sometimes they're more, sometimes they're less. Though it seems that both of them aren't presently at their peak. In the 70's, gas (petrol) approached $4.50 a gallon in today's money. Right now it's about $1.89 per gallon.
The house I resided in during the 90's was purchased by my dad for $105,000 during 1993. We sold it in 2007 (near the end of the housing bubble) for $244,000. It just sold to somebody else for $140,000. After you adjust for inflation, that's roughly $87,000. So that house is now cheaper than it was in the 90's by about $17,000.
You'll have to excuse me if I don't feel the need for glorious violent socialist revolution. Every place this glorious revolution has occurred has turned into a second world shit hole.
but it is very clear that a majority of people are not middle class in terms of wealth
I think this is the key point of your entire post, and being honest, it doesn't say a whole lot.
What metric are you using to define middle class, and furthermore, where exactly does the goalpost reside, and how often does that goalpost change?
Remember that in terms of income, the goalpost is always rising, even in the absence of inflation. For example in one year you could have $20,000 being defined within the scope of middle class, and then the next year it could be defined as poverty, even though the person making $20,000 a year has not become less wealthy. Sure the dollar value may have gone down, however the purchasing power may very well have stayed the same.
As an example for that last sentence: Even though, due to inflation, food prices have gone up over the last few years, however the real cost of food (that is, adjusted for inflation) is presently the lowest it's ever been.
http://www.aei.org/publication...
And before you say that it's because food is less healthy or because everybody buys junk food, that is also wrong:
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com...
People who claim otherwise are usually members of the Church of Organic Food, who seem to believe that organic food is the only healthy way to live, when in reality it's just a big fat waste of time and money (and also the organic food lobby, which is very wealthy, loves you to believe in that bullshit.)
Where does this leave people between the "kills old ones" phase and the "creating new industries" phase?
There's a term for this: Frictional unemployment. It also isn't a new thing.
But is this "dollar" in exchange rate terms or purchasing power terms? Without correction for purchasing power, the hump is further distorted by the Balassa-Samuelson effect: areas without a history of producing goods for export will have an artificially low cost of living.
He goes into that in further detail in some of his other TED talks, such as this one:
https://www.ted.com/talks/hans...
There's a few more as well (I'd have to go find the links.) But even in the situations you describe, so far the trend has been long term increase in both wealth AND welfare (e.g. physical health of the population)
Except there isn't anything to indicate that Google is actually spying on you when you use their internet service.
The whole point of this two tiered pricing system on AT&T's part is to make it seem as though Google is doing the same, but that doesn't appear to be the case. The reality is quite simple: AT&T wants to charge you $100 for the service, and if they can't, then they are hell bent and determined on claiming their pound of flesh in some other way.
It isn't exactly a secret that AT&T (and Verizon) has been running a campaign to try to get consumers to value bandwidth at a higher price than they presently pay, because in their mind that is the future cash cow (since they've discovered that text messages, voice minutes, and cable TV aren't "cool" any more, and thus triple play is dying.) Haven't you ever wondered why them (and Verizon) got rid of their unlimited mobile data plans? Hint: It has nothing to do with a lack of spectrum (they have plenty in their possession.) Meanwhile T-Mobile and Sprint (with much lower spectrum holdings) have not.
If we truly ran into an era where there was no need for jobs, then I think we'd reach a currency-free society similar to what Star Trek has. I don't think that will be the case though. Technology always has a funny way of creating new industries after it kills old ones.
Remember that 200 years ago, some 90% of the US population were all farmers. That wasn't exactly flowers and roses either.
Also we need to get out of this stupid mindset where everybody defines wealth by income.
See this, starting at 4:30 and at least to 7:00.
https://www.ted.com/talks/hans...