If no one needed a job to live, how much do you think you'd have to pay people to clean toilets?
$10k per year is either just barely enough to survive or not quite enough. There are plenty of people making $15k in their primary job and then working a second job at night (I worked with them in my youth at fast food restaurants).
I'm on a list of people who would rather have UBI be $20k per person, but doubt that would work because then you really could have most people stop working. I do think $10k is an amount where you would still see low income people working to make $20-25k instead.
If wages drop for low skill work then the cost of the UBI would have to increase to make up the difference if you expect to see it lead to things like less poverty driven crime; your analysis that implies you'd come out roughly even should in itself have been a warning that something was amiss with your numbers. If someone paying $35k in tax isn't going to pay more tax then where would the UBI money come from?
The figure of $10k is meant to be high enough that someone could barely skate by even while unemployed, but it isn't intended to add $10k in total income to all low wage workers. A more likely scenario would be for someone making $15k per year to make $21k after factoring in slightly lower wages. The exact figures are highly dependent on how UBI is implemented, but it is highly unlikely UBI would be economically viable if it literally added $10k in net income to fifty million people or so. It is more of a very strong safety net than it is a significant salary boost.
As for myself breaking even, that is mostly because I am still on the low end of the upper middle class. Most federal taxes in this country are paid by people making far more money than myself, and they would certainly not break even. Although if the last few decades are any indication they would do far better than break even as the wealthy controls an ever increasing percentage of total wealth, but their income taxes would increase a bit.
You are certainly correct this is a straw man argument, but not really in the way you describe. The US government (federal, state, local) spends just over $400 billion on welfare per year, and $1.2 trillion on pensions and social security (94% of that on SS). That only comes to half the $3 trillion figure, and certainly not all of this would go away. I'd say its reasonable 2/3 of it would go away, leaving $2 trillion of the author's figures left over. Take away another $500 billion by removing children from the calculations, and you still have $1.5 trillion of increased government payments.
Then comes the real problem with the author's argument. No one claims everyone's net income would increase by $10k per year, just that they would all get a $10k check. We already have a progressive federal income tax, so it would be easy to adjust the brackets to ensure only the needy would receive an increased net income from UBI.
To simplify math, lets say 1/3 get $10k extra income, 1/3 pay the same in extra taxes that they get in UBI payments, and 1/3 pay for the lower third. Considering the top 40% of earners already pay 97% of federal income taxes, this wouldn't be much of a change in the status quo.
So now we are down to $500 billion in extra costs, which is a much more realistic figure. The federal government collects $2.4 trillion in income taxes, so the 50% of households and companies which pay any incomes taxes today would need to pay 20% more. I pay a little over $30k per year in federal income taxes, so this would mean almost $6500 in extra taxes for me personally.
But I would get something for this money. Reduced crime is hard to quantitatively measure, but removing the minimum wage would significantly impact the costs of basic services. If my food, daycare, house/lawn care, haircuts, etc. dropped by just 10% that would save me $6000 per year so this would be a wash for me.
These figures are all obviously very rough, but they at least show UBI is not as drastically unrealistic as this article suggests. It may still not work, but it is a very reasonable alternative to a future where technological disruptions make the status quo impossible to maintain.
So you get to move the goalposts wherever you want then. That makes you a hypocrite, especially when it comes to Chrome.
The difference is Chrome follows web standards and only adds its own functionality when there are no HTML / CSS / ECMA / etc standards to use. They may not be perfect at this, but they are better than any other browser. Microsoft on the other hand often ignores standards to do things its own way. I am pretty close to a Microsoft fanboy for many of its products, but Microsoft browsers have been a plague on the industry for two decades.
Microsoft Edge a big step in the right direction for Microsoft though, and probably would have been a big PR boost in the eyes of techies if Microsoft hadn't rammed Windows 10 down users' throats so forcefully.
You are wrong. I don't really care if you like copyright or not, but they are responsible for serving copyrighted content. "Centuries of jurisprudence" is a joke.
Do you happen to have an example of case law which disputes his claims? The Viacom case in the US, GEMA case in Germany, and TF1 case in France all have held up that Youtube is not responsible for policing copyrighted content other than providing a reasonably expedited take down process.
The only caveat I know of is Youtube may be responsible if it willfully ignored its own knowledge that content was copyrighted. As machine learning becomes more capable of identifying video content, Youtube may become required to preemptively take down content. But even that isn't settled law, and the law could end up varying by country.
I already have a total compensation package over $100k in the Midwest. If you want to snipe me, you have to pay more than that, especially if you want to double my commute. Do you understand "more"? It means "not the same". I've already declined to pursue a $150k salary, nevermind the total package, just because it's not enough of a bump to make me lengthen my commute. Your package is "hovering". That's your problem right there. Push harder. We are worth literally millions to your company, and we know it.
I am completely with you on all points. I didn't mean to imply $150k in compensation was a ridiculously high amount, just that it is a very respectively high amount which is rarely high enough to poach top talent. It can be hard to convince management to pay higher than this for individual contributors.
I am not in a position (yet) where I get to set salaries for my coworkers, I only get to interview them and give recommendations. Like you I declined a just under $150k offer recently, but with it in hand started negotiations with my current company and got just under $160k (no threats, just used the extra security of the offer to push harder than normal).
Salaries are high enough now that career enhancement or just plain interesting projects tend to be a better draw than salary. I can honestly say there isn't much difference between $140k and $160k for me considering the diminishing returns of a higher salary. The 25 year old version of myself would be pissed at anyone who thought of a $20k raise as "meh", but here I am. I am now at a point of my career when I need to either move towards a VP level role, start consulting, or start my own company to see a much higher salary, although I've been wrong about that before.
Actually, there's a surplus because nobody wants to hire/pay for quality.
I doubt you do much hiring for skilled IT talent, because if you did you wouldn't think there is a surplus. Even with total compensation packages hovering around $100k-$150k in the Midwest it can be hard to snipe top talent from other companies. The best luck comes from finding young people who were grossly underpaid by their first job out of college. With unemployment at near zero for qualified applicants that is almost the only way to find the best people.
You can certainly get hundreds of resumes from people who will do more harm than good to your code base, but that isn't a surplus of workers many are willing to tap into.
Seriously. I'm as capitalistic as anyone; but there is NOTHING that should command making[$200k per year] for a sustained period, unless you are saving the planet from an asteroid impact or a global pandemic.
This is one significant aspect of our society which contributes to a lack of opportunity for those who are never exposed to success earlier in life. In my late 20's I still thought a $65k salary was high because of my small farm town background which never introduced me to many successful people. At the time I didn't realize what it took to gain a high level of value since I didn't really know anyone who had.
I think this is a big reason why you have so many people working so hard in their jobs without ever becoming very valuable to their employer. They never had the right role models. I work harder than most people, but there are plenty of people working much harder than me making a fifth of my salary. The only difference is they haven't found a way to get a decent ROI on their effort, primarily because they didn't know they needed to focus on that.
The job I referenced earlier was for a company with a few billion dollars of revenue each year, and my work would have had a direct impact on the efficiency of their sales and service teams. The company already had plenty of H1B contractors working for them state side, IT offices in developing countries, and plenty of local IT staff making $80k a year or so. These types of teams are fine for most software implementations, but for the projects which will actually move the needle at these companies it takes employees with more significant value.
One of the best career advice I ever got was to spend my effort making someone else a lot of money, and make sure the reason I am valuable to that person is easily transferable to other people with money. As long as I make my employer much more money than his other employees, and they know I could easily transfer my skills to another employer, I will be taken care of. That advice has proven to be very accurate.
Everyone but a few IT workers are replaceable. If you're not in AI, machine learning, data storage/delivery, virtual reality/gaming, or robotics, you're screwed. This is coming from a high-level (C suite) Microsoft guy I spoke to at a conference.
Its very suspect that this opinion came from someone competent, because none of those skills are among those that are hard to outsource. They are purely technical skills which are just as easy to train as any other IT skill. Right now many of them require greater mathematical skills than your average Javascript programmer, but already we are seeing APIs and frameworks which bundle up the hard stuff so anyone in the field can use them. In 10 years using machine learning libraries will be just as easy to use as jQuery is today.
The skills which bring serious salaries today are the same which will command them in 10 years. Soft skills. Requirements elicitation, high level architectural design, explaining that design to C-suite executives, and managing large teams (among others).
You are probably correct that most of the actual coding will become a profession not much higher paid than CAD operators today. The software engineering profession will continue to mature, however, and it will probably be even higher paid than it is today. The need for innovative software solutions is not going to diminish any time soon. But writing Javascript code may become as important to software engineers and using a wrench is to mechanical engineers. Still a part of the job but not why they are paid well.
The myth is that quality coders are actually in demand now. How hard is it to find a good job even if you know your stuff? If you want to get ahead today, become a doctor or nurse or something. I'm only in tech because I like video games.
You just gave me an idea for an interview question. Just ask if the candidate feels there is a shortage for quality software engineers. If they say it is a myth, they certainly aren't a quality candidate. Rates for quality engineers keep going up because they have ample proof their skills are in demand.
I'd agree most companies don't pay their IT teams very well, but that is why they are stuck with crap teams. This perpetuates their belief that programmers don't deserve higher wages, and their teams remain below par. Well, maybe at par since so many companies are like this. None of this means quality coders aren't in demand, but it is a reason there is such a wide gap in salaries between average programmers and elite ones.
There is no need to hire some expensive troubleshooter for insane rates if, and only if, you don't try to cut corners by hiring crappy coders in the first place.
One problem I have found in some companies I have interviewed for is salary scales that simply cannot accommodate real talent. I almost joined a company recently for a technical architect position to help fix a very problematic software implementation. They understood they did not have the talent and were looking for help, but their pay scales couldn't fit in someone qualified for the job. The director I would have worked for fought for the highest bonus percentage possible, and was even granted an exception to provide me director level stock options, but still couldn't get total compensation over $150k. I was told even most directors made under $200k in total comp, so it simply wasn't possible for someone with only a few direct reports to make close to that amount.
The only option was consulting at a rate far beyond what they would have paid me as a full time employee, even after including almost $40k in benefits. They were willing to pay close to $300k in yearly consulting for a position they needed for at least a few years instead of letting an individual contributor (with a few direct reports) make a director level salary (costing them around $80k extra per year).
I ended up staying with my current company once I had a heart to heart about my career progression and ended up with a big promotion (easier to do when you have another offer in hand), so it turns out they wouldn't have gotten me anyway. But from contacts I have at that company they are still struggling with a tangled web of consultants without anyone there to manage the technical side competently.
2/3rds? Fuck off, that's not even remotely believable without some twisted definition of "moved up".
You're right. After I fact checked the numbers I was recalling from memory, I found it was closer to 80% of middle income workers whose household changed in fact moved up into a higher income class.
Not only do they sell pre-built gaming PCs, but why even mention Apple products when talking about high end PC gaming. Apple don't even sell high end gaming PCs, they sell high end business and casual use PCs. They don't even offer advanced GPUs in their systems. I think Apple makes great products for their chosen niche, but that niche does not include gaming.
Plenty of people use Apple products for gaming, just like plenty of people use consoles and phones/tablets for gaming. But neither are the type of high-end gaming that your average Walmart computer would have trouble handling.
Yes I understand the theme of the book in the context of its day.
But you used the book outside of its theme and context when you said it applies to any "discussion of a technophillic, purely-rational society." It clearly does not, as it doesn't represent a rational prediction of technocracy. It portrays rational thought as a process of ignoring emotions, instead of as the attempt to not let your own emotions cloud your decisions. Considering the emotions of others, and understanding your own emotions so their effect can be mitigated, is absolutely necessary in any rational decision making process.
The Brave New World represents a straw man version of a technocracy to create an enjoyable plot, and also to make a ham-handed criticism of scientific progress. It is an example of a scare tactic, not an insightful exposition. I thoroughly enjoy these types of books and movies, but avoid mistaking them for a rational discussion on their themes.
Most fights are over details used to illustrate meaning, without these details being intrinsic to the actual, abstracted meaning.
Most fights are over details because the inaccuracy of statements are almost always in the details. Many inaccurate statements can sound insightful if you ignore the details. You used a dystopian literary example of a technocracy and forced readers to imply what the dangers of Tyson's argument are based on the book's contents. No wonder anyone replying to you is going to point out the details of why this is a poor argument or why the book is a poor critique on technology. The fact that the Brave New World does not offer much insight past the author's warped view of science (or perhaps just his desire to write an enjoyable book) only further damages your argument.
We have already fixed all of those limitations with our live sports broadcasts. There is no technical limitation to doing the same with live theater. Everyone could be given the best seat in the house, with the best possible sound if they are willing to pay a few hundred for their headphones.
The real reason theater will be okay is because they don't sell video rights of popular productions. This is because they feel it would cannibalize sales of life performances, which I completely agree with. I saw 3-4 live Broadway performances per year before the kids came (and will probably do the same when neither are breastfeeding), but I doubt I would ever see one again if I could get 95% of the real thing in an IMAX theater or from my own living room.
Broadway will be fine as long as they produce good content and keep full control of how that content is displayed. It will almost certainly always be a small niche entertainment offering, but an enduring one.
Ammo would have almost no value to me since throwing bullets at things seems quite boring.
I can get far more live entertainment value for $300 at the local strip club vs broadway shows. To be fair; I should compare costs of Manhattan nudie bars, which are insane.
I never got the appeal of strip clubs since frat parties were quite similar but with the option of sex most nights. And much cheaper. A few years after college, $300-$500, a Match.com profile, and a car / clothes which show off your income also has a much better outcome than a strip club. Although the one night I went to strip clubs in San Diego I realized I would probably like them far more in California than in the Chicago suburbs.
Sadly now that I have two daughters the appeal of strip clubs has been diminished even further.
$300 per ticket would have been lunacy in my 20's, now it is just a few hours of work.
Wait until these productions go on tour out in the boonies. I don't think I've paid more than $65 per ticket to see a production that was insanely popular a few years earlier.
Most things wealthier people can enjoy today can be enjoyed by those with lower incomes in a few years. That holds true for entertainment options, electronics, car features, etc. But in many cases it will never truly be the same. For instance my wife has seen Wicked played by Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth, and by a new cast about eight years later (with me). She said that while it was still very enjoyable, seeing it with the original cast at the Gershwin Theater was the better experience. I'll obviously never know but I still greatly enjoyed the musical.
Middle class is generally defined as between two-thirds and double the local median wage. Depending on the context that local wage may be within your city, county, state, region, or country. In 2014, that put the middle class at about $42k-$125k nation wide.
According to Pew Research the percentage of people in the middle class has dropped by 11.3% from 1971-2014. 2.3% (20% of the total) went to a lower income level, and 9% (80% of the total) moved into a higher income level.
So I actually remembered the numbers incorrectly just not in the direction you thought. Four fifths of those moving out of the middle class were moving upwards, not two thirds.
I think you are confusing 2/3 of your friends and acquaintances with 2/3 of the actual middle class.
I grew up in a small farm town (12k population), so far less than 2/3 of my friends moved up into the upper classes. Probably closer to 10% of my former and current friends have moved into the upper middle class or higher, because those on the lower end of the opportunity spectrum tend to do worse in their careers. Things didn't turn around for me until I got at least 70 miles from my former home, where you basically had to be a local business owner to have a nice income.
You can't find anything better to spend $300 on? Really? You could get 1000 rounds of ammo for that kind of money.
There are diminishing returns for any purchase or activity. My cable bill for instance is far more economical than theater tickets, but I can't get much more value out of buying two cable packages. I also get a lot of value from a McDonald's meal, but arguably negative value from eating there too much.
Live theater is similar to taking a vacation. The expense of these entertainment options are grossly higher than almost all other options, but they cannot be replicated in any cheaper form.
His mistake is believing something that cannot completely take over cannot disrupt an industry. Virtual sex will never replace sex, but it will impact our sex lives. Just as porn has. If you think the sexual exploration of today's 15 year old is no different than it was in the 1950's, or even the 1990's, then you are in denial.
And VR will also affect live theater to a greater extent than movies and TV does now. It won't destroy the industry, but it will have a large impact. Lucky for them the growth of the upper middle class will possibly offset this disruption.
This hints at the real reason why Broadway has seen growth in the past couple decades. The growth of the wealthy and upper middle class. Two thirds of the shrinking middle class is moving upwards, and these people are the ones who can afford Hamilton tickets.
My guess is a smaller percentage of the population wants to see musicals today than in 1996. But a much larger percentage of those who want to go can afford it now. This is driving up prices. I am certainly among those who have always liked musicals but wouldn't spend my money on it until I hit the upper middle class. $300 per ticket would have been lunacy in my 20's, now it is just a few hours of work.
The object is not to view a hypothetical future society. It is how to understand the nature of our own beings, within the regimentation of our own. It is a critique of the technocrat, who worships Henry Ford, to the exclusion the capacity for John Milton.
Yes I agree it is a critique of technocracy, just not a very good one. The book creates its own straw man argument and then shows why this false argument is a bad one. Attributing Eugenics to a technocracy, instead of to technology used by run of the mill fanatic governments (like the Nazi party), is the straw man created in the book.
A perfect technocracy (ignoring that no perfect form of any government would ever exist) would understand the limits of genetics in the outcome of any person's life. Futures such as Brave New World and Gattaca are creations of authors who take the fear of technology and then ignore the actual science when postulating the future of technological advancements. It often makes for good storytelling, but those stories should never be used to make a point in a rational discussion.
This game only has potential if Nintendo makes an actual game out of it. As it stands this is the worst Pokemon game I have seen, but with a great gimmick which helped make it go viral (along with brand recognition). I downloaded it and played for a couple days, until I found out what the game play was actually like after level 5 (which only takes an hour or so to get to). The novelty wore off right about then.
This is an amazing example of how Augmented Reality will create a whole new segment of gaming. But as an actual game Pokemon Go is horrible. It does make me hopeful for the games we will start seeing in the very near future, and Nintendo will likely be at the forefront of those games. But I doubt this game will have much staying power once Augmented Reality games with actual game play come out. If that doesn't happen for a year or more then Pokemon Go will probably stay strong until then.
Slashdot Mirror
If no one needed a job to live, how much do you think you'd have to pay people to clean toilets?
$10k per year is either just barely enough to survive or not quite enough. There are plenty of people making $15k in their primary job and then working a second job at night (I worked with them in my youth at fast food restaurants).
I'm on a list of people who would rather have UBI be $20k per person, but doubt that would work because then you really could have most people stop working. I do think $10k is an amount where you would still see low income people working to make $20-25k instead.
If wages drop for low skill work then the cost of the UBI would have to increase to make up the difference if you expect to see it lead to things like less poverty driven crime; your analysis that implies you'd come out roughly even should in itself have been a warning that something was amiss with your numbers. If someone paying $35k in tax isn't going to pay more tax then where would the UBI money come from?
The figure of $10k is meant to be high enough that someone could barely skate by even while unemployed, but it isn't intended to add $10k in total income to all low wage workers. A more likely scenario would be for someone making $15k per year to make $21k after factoring in slightly lower wages. The exact figures are highly dependent on how UBI is implemented, but it is highly unlikely UBI would be economically viable if it literally added $10k in net income to fifty million people or so. It is more of a very strong safety net than it is a significant salary boost.
As for myself breaking even, that is mostly because I am still on the low end of the upper middle class. Most federal taxes in this country are paid by people making far more money than myself, and they would certainly not break even. Although if the last few decades are any indication they would do far better than break even as the wealthy controls an ever increasing percentage of total wealth, but their income taxes would increase a bit.
You are certainly correct this is a straw man argument, but not really in the way you describe. The US government (federal, state, local) spends just over $400 billion on welfare per year, and $1.2 trillion on pensions and social security (94% of that on SS). That only comes to half the $3 trillion figure, and certainly not all of this would go away. I'd say its reasonable 2/3 of it would go away, leaving $2 trillion of the author's figures left over. Take away another $500 billion by removing children from the calculations, and you still have $1.5 trillion of increased government payments.
Then comes the real problem with the author's argument. No one claims everyone's net income would increase by $10k per year, just that they would all get a $10k check. We already have a progressive federal income tax, so it would be easy to adjust the brackets to ensure only the needy would receive an increased net income from UBI.
To simplify math, lets say 1/3 get $10k extra income, 1/3 pay the same in extra taxes that they get in UBI payments, and 1/3 pay for the lower third. Considering the top 40% of earners already pay 97% of federal income taxes, this wouldn't be much of a change in the status quo.
So now we are down to $500 billion in extra costs, which is a much more realistic figure. The federal government collects $2.4 trillion in income taxes, so the 50% of households and companies which pay any incomes taxes today would need to pay 20% more. I pay a little over $30k per year in federal income taxes, so this would mean almost $6500 in extra taxes for me personally.
But I would get something for this money. Reduced crime is hard to quantitatively measure, but removing the minimum wage would significantly impact the costs of basic services. If my food, daycare, house/lawn care, haircuts, etc. dropped by just 10% that would save me $6000 per year so this would be a wash for me.
These figures are all obviously very rough, but they at least show UBI is not as drastically unrealistic as this article suggests. It may still not work, but it is a very reasonable alternative to a future where technological disruptions make the status quo impossible to maintain.
So you get to move the goalposts wherever you want then. That makes you a hypocrite, especially when it comes to Chrome.
The difference is Chrome follows web standards and only adds its own functionality when there are no HTML / CSS / ECMA / etc standards to use. They may not be perfect at this, but they are better than any other browser. Microsoft on the other hand often ignores standards to do things its own way. I am pretty close to a Microsoft fanboy for many of its products, but Microsoft browsers have been a plague on the industry for two decades.
Microsoft Edge a big step in the right direction for Microsoft though, and probably would have been a big PR boost in the eyes of techies if Microsoft hadn't rammed Windows 10 down users' throats so forcefully.
The same way I can point out to people that the music the DJ is playing is a low quality MP3 because I hear audio artifacting.
You must certainly be a lot of fun at parties.
I am more shocked that 10% of all developers in the US work in the Silicon Valley area. I would have guessed a sub-5% figure.
You are wrong. I don't really care if you like copyright or not, but they are responsible for serving copyrighted content. "Centuries of jurisprudence" is a joke.
Do you happen to have an example of case law which disputes his claims? The Viacom case in the US, GEMA case in Germany, and TF1 case in France all have held up that Youtube is not responsible for policing copyrighted content other than providing a reasonably expedited take down process.
The only caveat I know of is Youtube may be responsible if it willfully ignored its own knowledge that content was copyrighted. As machine learning becomes more capable of identifying video content, Youtube may become required to preemptively take down content. But even that isn't settled law, and the law could end up varying by country.
I already have a total compensation package over $100k in the Midwest. If you want to snipe me, you have to pay more than that, especially if you want to double my commute. Do you understand "more"? It means "not the same". I've already declined to pursue a $150k salary, nevermind the total package, just because it's not enough of a bump to make me lengthen my commute. Your package is "hovering". That's your problem right there. Push harder. We are worth literally millions to your company, and we know it.
I am completely with you on all points. I didn't mean to imply $150k in compensation was a ridiculously high amount, just that it is a very respectively high amount which is rarely high enough to poach top talent. It can be hard to convince management to pay higher than this for individual contributors.
I am not in a position (yet) where I get to set salaries for my coworkers, I only get to interview them and give recommendations. Like you I declined a just under $150k offer recently, but with it in hand started negotiations with my current company and got just under $160k (no threats, just used the extra security of the offer to push harder than normal).
Salaries are high enough now that career enhancement or just plain interesting projects tend to be a better draw than salary. I can honestly say there isn't much difference between $140k and $160k for me considering the diminishing returns of a higher salary. The 25 year old version of myself would be pissed at anyone who thought of a $20k raise as "meh", but here I am. I am now at a point of my career when I need to either move towards a VP level role, start consulting, or start my own company to see a much higher salary, although I've been wrong about that before.
Actually, there's a surplus because nobody wants to hire/pay for quality.
I doubt you do much hiring for skilled IT talent, because if you did you wouldn't think there is a surplus. Even with total compensation packages hovering around $100k-$150k in the Midwest it can be hard to snipe top talent from other companies. The best luck comes from finding young people who were grossly underpaid by their first job out of college. With unemployment at near zero for qualified applicants that is almost the only way to find the best people.
You can certainly get hundreds of resumes from people who will do more harm than good to your code base, but that isn't a surplus of workers many are willing to tap into.
Seriously. I'm as capitalistic as anyone; but there is NOTHING that should command making[$200k per year] for a sustained period, unless you are saving the planet from an asteroid impact or a global pandemic.
This is one significant aspect of our society which contributes to a lack of opportunity for those who are never exposed to success earlier in life. In my late 20's I still thought a $65k salary was high because of my small farm town background which never introduced me to many successful people. At the time I didn't realize what it took to gain a high level of value since I didn't really know anyone who had.
I think this is a big reason why you have so many people working so hard in their jobs without ever becoming very valuable to their employer. They never had the right role models. I work harder than most people, but there are plenty of people working much harder than me making a fifth of my salary. The only difference is they haven't found a way to get a decent ROI on their effort, primarily because they didn't know they needed to focus on that.
The job I referenced earlier was for a company with a few billion dollars of revenue each year, and my work would have had a direct impact on the efficiency of their sales and service teams. The company already had plenty of H1B contractors working for them state side, IT offices in developing countries, and plenty of local IT staff making $80k a year or so. These types of teams are fine for most software implementations, but for the projects which will actually move the needle at these companies it takes employees with more significant value.
One of the best career advice I ever got was to spend my effort making someone else a lot of money, and make sure the reason I am valuable to that person is easily transferable to other people with money. As long as I make my employer much more money than his other employees, and they know I could easily transfer my skills to another employer, I will be taken care of. That advice has proven to be very accurate.
Everyone but a few IT workers are replaceable. If you're not in AI, machine learning, data storage/delivery, virtual reality/gaming, or robotics, you're screwed. This is coming from a high-level (C suite) Microsoft guy I spoke to at a conference.
Its very suspect that this opinion came from someone competent, because none of those skills are among those that are hard to outsource. They are purely technical skills which are just as easy to train as any other IT skill. Right now many of them require greater mathematical skills than your average Javascript programmer, but already we are seeing APIs and frameworks which bundle up the hard stuff so anyone in the field can use them. In 10 years using machine learning libraries will be just as easy to use as jQuery is today.
The skills which bring serious salaries today are the same which will command them in 10 years. Soft skills. Requirements elicitation, high level architectural design, explaining that design to C-suite executives, and managing large teams (among others).
You are probably correct that most of the actual coding will become a profession not much higher paid than CAD operators today. The software engineering profession will continue to mature, however, and it will probably be even higher paid than it is today. The need for innovative software solutions is not going to diminish any time soon. But writing Javascript code may become as important to software engineers and using a wrench is to mechanical engineers. Still a part of the job but not why they are paid well.
The myth is that quality coders are actually in demand now. How hard is it to find a good job even if you know your stuff? If you want to get ahead today, become a doctor or nurse or something. I'm only in tech because I like video games.
You just gave me an idea for an interview question. Just ask if the candidate feels there is a shortage for quality software engineers. If they say it is a myth, they certainly aren't a quality candidate. Rates for quality engineers keep going up because they have ample proof their skills are in demand.
I'd agree most companies don't pay their IT teams very well, but that is why they are stuck with crap teams. This perpetuates their belief that programmers don't deserve higher wages, and their teams remain below par. Well, maybe at par since so many companies are like this. None of this means quality coders aren't in demand, but it is a reason there is such a wide gap in salaries between average programmers and elite ones.
There is no need to hire some expensive troubleshooter for insane rates if, and only if, you don't try to cut corners by hiring crappy coders in the first place.
One problem I have found in some companies I have interviewed for is salary scales that simply cannot accommodate real talent. I almost joined a company recently for a technical architect position to help fix a very problematic software implementation. They understood they did not have the talent and were looking for help, but their pay scales couldn't fit in someone qualified for the job. The director I would have worked for fought for the highest bonus percentage possible, and was even granted an exception to provide me director level stock options, but still couldn't get total compensation over $150k. I was told even most directors made under $200k in total comp, so it simply wasn't possible for someone with only a few direct reports to make close to that amount.
The only option was consulting at a rate far beyond what they would have paid me as a full time employee, even after including almost $40k in benefits. They were willing to pay close to $300k in yearly consulting for a position they needed for at least a few years instead of letting an individual contributor (with a few direct reports) make a director level salary (costing them around $80k extra per year).
I ended up staying with my current company once I had a heart to heart about my career progression and ended up with a big promotion (easier to do when you have another offer in hand), so it turns out they wouldn't have gotten me anyway. But from contacts I have at that company they are still struggling with a tangled web of consultants without anyone there to manage the technical side competently.
2/3rds? Fuck off, that's not even remotely believable without some twisted definition of "moved up".
You're right. After I fact checked the numbers I was recalling from memory, I found it was closer to 80% of middle income workers whose household changed in fact moved up into a higher income class.
Not only do they sell pre-built gaming PCs, but why even mention Apple products when talking about high end PC gaming. Apple don't even sell high end gaming PCs, they sell high end business and casual use PCs. They don't even offer advanced GPUs in their systems. I think Apple makes great products for their chosen niche, but that niche does not include gaming.
Plenty of people use Apple products for gaming, just like plenty of people use consoles and phones/tablets for gaming. But neither are the type of high-end gaming that your average Walmart computer would have trouble handling.
Yes I understand the theme of the book in the context of its day.
But you used the book outside of its theme and context when you said it applies to any "discussion of a technophillic, purely-rational society." It clearly does not, as it doesn't represent a rational prediction of technocracy. It portrays rational thought as a process of ignoring emotions, instead of as the attempt to not let your own emotions cloud your decisions. Considering the emotions of others, and understanding your own emotions so their effect can be mitigated, is absolutely necessary in any rational decision making process.
The Brave New World represents a straw man version of a technocracy to create an enjoyable plot, and also to make a ham-handed criticism of scientific progress. It is an example of a scare tactic, not an insightful exposition. I thoroughly enjoy these types of books and movies, but avoid mistaking them for a rational discussion on their themes.
Most fights are over details used to illustrate meaning, without these details being intrinsic to the actual, abstracted meaning.
Most fights are over details because the inaccuracy of statements are almost always in the details. Many inaccurate statements can sound insightful if you ignore the details. You used a dystopian literary example of a technocracy and forced readers to imply what the dangers of Tyson's argument are based on the book's contents. No wonder anyone replying to you is going to point out the details of why this is a poor argument or why the book is a poor critique on technology. The fact that the Brave New World does not offer much insight past the author's warped view of science (or perhaps just his desire to write an enjoyable book) only further damages your argument.
We have already fixed all of those limitations with our live sports broadcasts. There is no technical limitation to doing the same with live theater. Everyone could be given the best seat in the house, with the best possible sound if they are willing to pay a few hundred for their headphones.
The real reason theater will be okay is because they don't sell video rights of popular productions. This is because they feel it would cannibalize sales of life performances, which I completely agree with. I saw 3-4 live Broadway performances per year before the kids came (and will probably do the same when neither are breastfeeding), but I doubt I would ever see one again if I could get 95% of the real thing in an IMAX theater or from my own living room.
Broadway will be fine as long as they produce good content and keep full control of how that content is displayed. It will almost certainly always be a small niche entertainment offering, but an enduring one.
You're saying you already have enough ammo?
Ammo would have almost no value to me since throwing bullets at things seems quite boring.
I can get far more live entertainment value for $300 at the local strip club vs broadway shows. To be fair; I should compare costs of Manhattan nudie bars, which are insane.
I never got the appeal of strip clubs since frat parties were quite similar but with the option of sex most nights. And much cheaper. A few years after college, $300-$500, a Match.com profile, and a car / clothes which show off your income also has a much better outcome than a strip club. Although the one night I went to strip clubs in San Diego I realized I would probably like them far more in California than in the Chicago suburbs.
Sadly now that I have two daughters the appeal of strip clubs has been diminished even further.
$300 per ticket would have been lunacy in my 20's, now it is just a few hours of work.
Wait until these productions go on tour out in the boonies. I don't think I've paid more than $65 per ticket to see a production that was insanely popular a few years earlier.
Most things wealthier people can enjoy today can be enjoyed by those with lower incomes in a few years. That holds true for entertainment options, electronics, car features, etc. But in many cases it will never truly be the same. For instance my wife has seen Wicked played by Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth, and by a new cast about eight years later (with me). She said that while it was still very enjoyable, seeing it with the original cast at the Gershwin Theater was the better experience. I'll obviously never know but I still greatly enjoyed the musical.
Middle class is generally defined as between two-thirds and double the local median wage. Depending on the context that local wage may be within your city, county, state, region, or country. In 2014, that put the middle class at about $42k-$125k nation wide.
According to Pew Research the percentage of people in the middle class has dropped by 11.3% from 1971-2014. 2.3% (20% of the total) went to a lower income level, and 9% (80% of the total) moved into a higher income level.
So I actually remembered the numbers incorrectly just not in the direction you thought. Four fifths of those moving out of the middle class were moving upwards, not two thirds.
I think you are confusing 2/3 of your friends and acquaintances with 2/3 of the actual middle class.
I grew up in a small farm town (12k population), so far less than 2/3 of my friends moved up into the upper classes. Probably closer to 10% of my former and current friends have moved into the upper middle class or higher, because those on the lower end of the opportunity spectrum tend to do worse in their careers. Things didn't turn around for me until I got at least 70 miles from my former home, where you basically had to be a local business owner to have a nice income.
All costs are opportunity costs.
You can't find anything better to spend $300 on? Really? You could get 1000 rounds of ammo for that kind of money.
There are diminishing returns for any purchase or activity. My cable bill for instance is far more economical than theater tickets, but I can't get much more value out of buying two cable packages. I also get a lot of value from a McDonald's meal, but arguably negative value from eating there too much.
Live theater is similar to taking a vacation. The expense of these entertainment options are grossly higher than almost all other options, but they cannot be replicated in any cheaper form.
His mistake is believing something that cannot completely take over cannot disrupt an industry. Virtual sex will never replace sex, but it will impact our sex lives. Just as porn has. If you think the sexual exploration of today's 15 year old is no different than it was in the 1950's, or even the 1990's, then you are in denial.
And VR will also affect live theater to a greater extent than movies and TV does now. It won't destroy the industry, but it will have a large impact. Lucky for them the growth of the upper middle class will possibly offset this disruption.
This hints at the real reason why Broadway has seen growth in the past couple decades. The growth of the wealthy and upper middle class. Two thirds of the shrinking middle class is moving upwards, and these people are the ones who can afford Hamilton tickets.
My guess is a smaller percentage of the population wants to see musicals today than in 1996. But a much larger percentage of those who want to go can afford it now. This is driving up prices. I am certainly among those who have always liked musicals but wouldn't spend my money on it until I hit the upper middle class. $300 per ticket would have been lunacy in my 20's, now it is just a few hours of work.
The object is not to view a hypothetical future society. It is how to understand the nature of our own beings, within the regimentation of our own. It is a critique of the technocrat, who worships Henry Ford, to the exclusion the capacity for John Milton.
Yes I agree it is a critique of technocracy, just not a very good one. The book creates its own straw man argument and then shows why this false argument is a bad one. Attributing Eugenics to a technocracy, instead of to technology used by run of the mill fanatic governments (like the Nazi party), is the straw man created in the book.
A perfect technocracy (ignoring that no perfect form of any government would ever exist) would understand the limits of genetics in the outcome of any person's life. Futures such as Brave New World and Gattaca are creations of authors who take the fear of technology and then ignore the actual science when postulating the future of technological advancements. It often makes for good storytelling, but those stories should never be used to make a point in a rational discussion.
This game only has potential if Nintendo makes an actual game out of it. As it stands this is the worst Pokemon game I have seen, but with a great gimmick which helped make it go viral (along with brand recognition). I downloaded it and played for a couple days, until I found out what the game play was actually like after level 5 (which only takes an hour or so to get to). The novelty wore off right about then.
This is an amazing example of how Augmented Reality will create a whole new segment of gaming. But as an actual game Pokemon Go is horrible. It does make me hopeful for the games we will start seeing in the very near future, and Nintendo will likely be at the forefront of those games. But I doubt this game will have much staying power once Augmented Reality games with actual game play come out. If that doesn't happen for a year or more then Pokemon Go will probably stay strong until then.