If you're 45 and you have the same resumé as a 25 years old, you'll have to do a lot of explaining on what you did those other 20 years...
That right there is age discrimination, though.
Not all of us are lucky enough to know what our calling is when we're kids. Or we have other circumstances to deal with that keep us from finding it.
You just gave two explanations for what they were doing in those other 20 years. The AC didn't say a 45 year old with the same resume as a 25 year old could never get the job, only that there would need to be a satisfactory explanation for the apparent lack of experience.
While this is a gross generalization, when I am assisting in the hiring of coworkers I want to know if the role we are filling needs an ambitious person or someone who just shows up and does their work. Companies need both types of people, but almost every role needs one or the other. If I am interviewing someone who will just be a worker bee, then I wouldn't care about the lack of ambition that a 45 year old's poor resume would imply (only imply, not prove). But if I am filling a role where we need someone who will consistently go above and beyond, then a 45 year old with a weak resume will be a big red flag.
I have interviewed people older than me with weaker resumes than me, and in some cases I suggested hiring them anyway and in some cases I recommended to pass. In one case I did suggest hiring someone with a fairly weak resume for a very important role, but only because the applicant gave very good explanations for their recent career change. After he fully explained his work history, and I saw his passion during the interview, I felt his varied work history would be more of a benefit than an extra 10 years of programming experience.
But I have also passed on many older applicants whose poor resumes really did just illustrate someone who had been given 20 years to prove themselves and simply did not.
When a company lets a group's "culture" set the terms for hiring, that's when you end up with only one kind of worker (DudeBros) who cluelessly say they don't discriminate, that black/woman/asian/etc didn't fit the "culture". It's pathetic because it's so transparent. It's like churches whining that their right to discriminate is being discriminated against.
Quantaman's conjecture is not the same as saying old people don't fit the culture. He is saying something more like: "risk adverse employees don't fit the culture." Since middle age workers tend to be more risk adverse because of having families to support, it is very similar to saying old people don't fit the culture. It has a similar effect anyway. But it could very well be accurate if employees being comfortable with risk really does improve the company.
It may be that certain personality types don't fit in at Google, and as people get older their personalities tend to develop into those types.
I'm afraid that's you also being ageist. You can't generalise, any more than you can generalise by gender or race. People have all sorts of personalities, and they develop in all sorts of different directions through their lives.
While it is ageism to generalize when making a judgment about one individual, it is not ageism to generalize when making sense of statistical information about an age group. It works the same way for any kind of discrimination. One rational reason why there would always be more male firefighters than women firefighters is that males are much stronger on average. That is not a sexist statement. But denying employment to any one woman simply because her gender is physically weaker on average is sexist.
I am not saying I think quantaman's statements are accurate, but he does offer a plausible explanation for some of the discrimination.
As it turns out, almost the entirety of the reason EVs are cheaper to operate than ICE cars is not because of energy efficiency - both use almost the same amount of energy per mile traveled. The EV is cheaper because coal is so much cheaper than gasoline. Coal costs about $55 per ton, and a ton of coal produces about 21 GJ of energy, for a final cost of 0.26 cents per MJ. Gasoline at $3/gal is about 2.5 cents per MJ. An order of magnitude more expensive than coal.
I'm confused. You spend the first half of your post talking about energy efficiency, and then in the paragraph I'm quoting you explain why energy efficiency is irrelevant. Obviously electric cars are only cheaper to power because electricity is cheaper to generate than distilled petroleum. Why would efficiency need to even be discussed?
It's amazing how much staying power this myth has, even after Adam Smith tore it down in 1776.
What do you think happens to that $9 billion? Does it sit in a mattress somewhere? No, it's only uses are to buy things produced in the US or invest in the US economy.
I am not sure what you think Adam Smith tore down in 1776. Are you saying the only thing OPEC countries can spend money on are goods produced in the US or investments in the US?
Money spent buying coal from West Virginia stays in our economy, while oil bought abroad does not.
Well, sure, assuming the person you pay for the coal doesn't buy any clothing, electronics, or cars. The world economy just doesn't work this way any more.
The goal is not to halt commerce with other countries. I am of the opinion that a globalized economy is good for all nations. But countries still need to weigh the impact of how different economic activities and trade practices affect their economy differently.
Comparing buying clothing and electronics with buying gasoline at the pump is a fair comparison. The price of gasoline has many other factors like taxes, gas attendant salaries, trucking costs, real estate, etc. factored in. Just like for consumer goods. But as long as you look at the total US imports of oil, then you can see exactly what is leaving the country that wouldn't need to be if we had energy independence. I am not talking about protectionist measures such as creating tariffs or preventing companies from buying foreign oil. I am talking about simply reducing our need for the oil so that more of our oil is obtained locally.
The US imports around 500 thousand barrels of oil per day (the amount fluctuates a lot even week by week). That is $9 billion leaving our economy each year. Its not that much money when compared to our total GDP, but it isn't inconsequential either. Even if we just used it to increase NASA's budget by 50% it would be put to better use.
Its a good thing my reason for wanting hybrid and electric vehicles is purely economical. Environmental benefits are a nice side effect in many cases, but the reason I want my country less dependent on oil is almost purely to reduce foreign dependency. Money spent buying coal from West Virginia stays in our economy, while oil bought abroad does not. Also electricity produced by coal is less expensive per mile driven than gasoline, so that allows money to be spent on more productive areas than natural resources.
The environmental benefits are still important, but dealing with dirty coal is a separate issue from electric cars IMHO.
While I agree it will probably taste less like bacon than even turkey bacon, if eating it is healthier than most green leafy vegetables then I will give it a lot of latitude. I don't eat turkey bacon primarily because it still isn't that good for you, and if I am being bad I might as well eat the real thing. But since I already force myself to eat things like broccoli and cauliflower because of the health benefits, a vegetable that tastes close to bacon would be very welcomed.
I will be surprised if science doesn't create a large variety of truly healthy foods that taste almost as good as fatty/salty/sugary alternatives within the next 20 years. And no health nuts, we don't have anything like this now. I can't wait until a healthy smoothie really does taste as good or better than a milk shake. Keep it up scientists.
Just because women on average might need more social validation...
This expresses that men are superior. Men do not need as much social validation to make choices for themselves. You can derive that down to, men are more independent (a generally considered superior quality). No matter how noble the point that you expressed after that quote. To treat a specific group (like women) as innately lesser and in need of more help is sexist.
When not taken out of context, my statement was part of a larger context of women being more social on average than men (my opinion, not something I have researched extensively). This comes with pros and cons. Gaining validation internally or externally is not inherently better or worse.
My statement saying women need more social validation is not expressing men are superior. Men simply get the validation elsewhere. Again these statements are my opinion and only speak to gender averages.
Then the answer is no, and you are sexist (or insert name for other term regarding discrimination based on your "subgroups").
Acknowledging differences between genders is not all it takes to be considered sexist. A belief that one gender is superior is also required. I have displayed no such belief; the exact opposite in fact.
Further, you can not give everyone the same opportunity period. It's impossible without extreme social and biological engineering, on the level of totalitarian control of a population.
Never let perfect be the enemy of good. And sliding scale arguments are almost always silly. We can certainly improve things even if it is impossible for everyone to have perfectly equal opportunity.
I want everyone to be given the same opportunity. The manner in which this opportunity is provided will likely be different for various subgroups of our population.
Oddly enough, with both parents programmers, my daughter expressed absolutely no interest in programming. No, I don't believe her teachers had more influence than her parents....
But do you think that in a world where there were no parental biases, 100% of children would pick the same career as one or both of their parents? Because that is what you are implying with your post. Perhaps if you said your daughter has no interest in math, science, or computers your argument would be a little more on point.
Though she's starting to express an interest in doing Minecraft mods, just because the mods she likes haven't been updated as promptly as she wishes they were....
Sounds like you are just not waiting long enough for her to find her lifelong interests. Not everyone has to start programming at the age of 10. Expressing this type of interest, even if there isn't follow through yet, is often where a career in STEM starts.
How many people here were not constantly "expressed bias to" by their parents and peers telling us to get off the computer and go outside? Men and women that want to have careers in technology do so in spite of those complaints.
Some people need different levels of encouragement than others. And I wouldn't be surprised if one truly physical difference between men and women is women being more social than men, and therefore requiring more social validation on average.
My brother and I are a good example of different people needing different levels of encouragement. I was pretty self-motivated, but my brother needed more involvement from my parents. The end result was both of us becoming very educated (my brother with a doctorate and me with a masters). But knowing how my brother was in grade school and high school, I doubt he would have succeeded like he has without the extra effort of my parents. Neither would I for that matter, but to a lesser degree.
Just because women on average might need more social validation to explore STEM fields does not mean they have an innate dislike of these career paths. It simply means our society may have to treat different genders differently to obtain the same end result. And this same result is not a 50/50 split in all careers, but a society where everyone can find their passion equally even if it does not take equal effort to find their passion.
Unless this was paired with something like Watson which can determine meaning from context, I don't see this as being anything more than a paralegal replacement, but not a lawyer replacement.
What makes you think Watson-like intelligence isn't being employed by Modria? And if it isn't now, it soon will be. Watson beat those Jeopardy champions in 2011. It took about 10 years for the chess computer Deep Blue to have its achievements replicated on budget Intel Core 2 Duos. We are likely only 5 years from the capabilities of Watson to be as ubiquitous as Siri is now. By then the best language parsing software will run circles around Watson, and it will probably be for sale through a simple web service call.
In every case, there were some areas that could have been algorithmic, but in many dimensions on each one there were things that came about from advice from the attorney on how to position myself and under what laws I could make a case
It is important to realize you don't have to replace 100% of jobs in a particular industry to have a huge impact. Reducing 50% of jobs in a very short time can be almost as damaging. Although in this case we are talking about lawyers so there will be little sympathy.
For the majority of applications where SQL is used ACID isn't honestly needed for safe data. Just keep adding it to a DBM and back it up regularly.
This comment made me cringe. ACID has almost nothing to do with regular backups. Backing up a non-ACID database regular does not make it even close to ACID compliant. This is one of the reasons why ACID is unfortunately so important; because almost no software developers even know what it is.
No it's not varied, they are simply american. Guess what? Here in Europe we don't a third a guy living in Germany whose great-grandfather immigrated from France french or french-american, we call him german.
You guys are pretty much all american, accept it.
We just call everyone American here as well, except when discussing our ethnicity. Generally only people in small minorities are offended when asked where they are from, since they often feel the question insinuates they are less American than a non-minority.
Most people in the US still know their ethnicity as far out as at least their grandparents and usually their great grandparents. I have family that has been here since the 17th century (or so I was told), but they still are aware of their Spanish heritage. And the physical differences between my family with Spanish vs Nordic heritage is still quite pronounced, although you would have to be more knowledgeable to see any difference between my Norwegian, German, or Lithuanian family members.
Sorry, I was taught that terminology by a half Sami half Swedish close friend who immigrated when he was 3 in the 1970's. I had no idea it was derogatory as it was his preferred terminology to explain his own ethnicity.
I'm not saying one country is more diverse than the other (I don't even care)
I'm not sure why you are even posting then, because what you just said you don't care about is the only important factor in this discussion. I absolutely do not care if my statistics are precise, I only care if they are close enough to show that the US is far more diverse than Nordic countries. That is the only claim I was refuting.
You forget one important thing: Germany itself exists as a nation only since 1871, and, in fact, consists of several ethnicities which used to live in separate countries before that unification and even now, over a century later, may speak languages that are barely mutually intelligible. Same goes for France (Franks, Normans, breton Celts, Basques, Germans) and so on.
You really underestimate ethnical diversity in Europe.
Any of those more medieval ethnicities are also present in the US, but in even smaller numbers. So if I say 17% of the US is German, that also includes Franks, Normans, Breton Celts, Basques, etc.
I never said Europe has absolutely no diversity. It just seems that way when compared to the US.
I listed my source. After looking it does appear the stats could be as old as 2002.
But even if the site only includes citizens, those countries still don't come close to comparing to the US in terms of diversity. Even if Germany is only 70% German, that is still over four times the concentration of the US's largest ethnicity.
United States -> 75% White (So much varied ethnicity the site doesn't try to list them all), 12% Black, 10% Hispanic, 3.3% Asian, 0.7% Native American
Except you seem to be comparing apples to oranges. In Sweden for instance there are no records of ethnicity whatsoever (it is in fact illegal) and this means that everyone who is born in Sweden counts as "Swedish" regardless if both of their parents are from Indonesia or if they consider themselves to be of "Asian" ethnicity.
Well, somehow web sites have statistics of how many Finnish, Laplander, Yugoslavian, Iranian, and other nationalities are in the country. My guess is that sociologists can find a way to determine these numbers based on sample sizes smaller than a full census. Even if the numbers are off, I can't believe anyone would think Sweden is even close to as diverse as the US.
Not that this changes your point but where did you your stats?
I quoted my stats as coming from populstat.info. It was just the first link that came up when looking for the first country on my list of nordic countries: Norway. It does appear their stats may be as old as 2002, but that doesn't change anything about my point. Their numbers would have to be off by a huge margin for any Nordic country to be as diverse as the US.
No, they get paid out as management bonuses and dividends. Productivity enhancements have gone towards making the 1% richer at everyone else's expense.
I didn't mean all the money being saved by productivity enhancements went towards paying marketing and sales. Just the human workers who were displaced. Since these new workers are more skilled they generally make far more than the secretary and factory worker positions that were lost, but not four times as much. That money goes to the 1%, as you stated.
Then why do all developed economies struggle with unemployment?
Unemployment is a different problem than lowering the number of hours in a work week. Since it takes money to train workers, it will almost always be more profitable to have one employee working 40 hours than two workers working 20 hours. In manual labor jobs, it would usually be more profitable to have one worker working 80 hours, but laws prohibit that. In knowledge jobs, it is usually not more profitable for a worker to work more than about 50 hours, so the laws have negligible impact on their work week.
Unemployed workers are only a problem because of either a lack of skills or heavy regulation. The lack of skills are not always the fault of the unemployed workers; they may have just had their whole industry undergo massive changes (like the housing industry). Countries that make it very hard to have an agile workforce make it hard for companies to hire. This generally leads to happier workers, but higher unemployment.
That's not sustainable, and will end up in either social reforms or outright revolution, just like it did the last time.
It unfortunately may be sustainable, because past revolutions were caused by lack of opportunity for the poor, not specifically the gap between them and the rich. If the middle class was drastically dropping in wages and net worth, you may have the seeds of revolution. But in the western world the middle class is simply stagnating. But their lives are still very good compared to what it takes to spark revolution.
We could all be working 10 hours per week and living with a similar economic standard of living to 1950. Personally, I'd be fine with that, though I know many people wouldn't.
Or we could be less contentious and go back the productivity of 1975 or so... and basically keep our current standard of living for middle classes, but just pay rich people less. Alas, we've chosen greed over spare time.
This increased productivity is not being used to sustain our higher standard of living. Today's extra technology doesn't require our quadrupled productivity to maintain our standard of living. The extra productivity mostly goes into today's sales, marketing, and service economy.
All overall productivity increases end up being shared among an entire industry eventually, and then companies still need to find ways to differentiate themselves. If productivity enhancements means we don't need as many secretaries and factory workers, those expenditures will go towards marketing and sales.
The idea that productivity enhancements will ever reduce the need for human labor was always laughable. Only people such as an ivory tower economist like Keynes could have ever thought this.
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If you're 45 and you have the same resumé as a 25 years old, you'll have to do a lot of explaining on what you did those other 20 years...
That right there is age discrimination, though.
Not all of us are lucky enough to know what our calling is when we're kids. Or we have other circumstances to deal with that keep us from finding it.
You just gave two explanations for what they were doing in those other 20 years. The AC didn't say a 45 year old with the same resume as a 25 year old could never get the job, only that there would need to be a satisfactory explanation for the apparent lack of experience.
While this is a gross generalization, when I am assisting in the hiring of coworkers I want to know if the role we are filling needs an ambitious person or someone who just shows up and does their work. Companies need both types of people, but almost every role needs one or the other. If I am interviewing someone who will just be a worker bee, then I wouldn't care about the lack of ambition that a 45 year old's poor resume would imply (only imply, not prove). But if I am filling a role where we need someone who will consistently go above and beyond, then a 45 year old with a weak resume will be a big red flag.
I have interviewed people older than me with weaker resumes than me, and in some cases I suggested hiring them anyway and in some cases I recommended to pass. In one case I did suggest hiring someone with a fairly weak resume for a very important role, but only because the applicant gave very good explanations for their recent career change. After he fully explained his work history, and I saw his passion during the interview, I felt his varied work history would be more of a benefit than an extra 10 years of programming experience.
But I have also passed on many older applicants whose poor resumes really did just illustrate someone who had been given 20 years to prove themselves and simply did not.
When a company lets a group's "culture" set the terms for hiring, that's when you end up with only one kind of worker (DudeBros) who cluelessly say they don't discriminate, that black/woman/asian/etc didn't fit the "culture". It's pathetic because it's so transparent. It's like churches whining that their right to discriminate is being discriminated against.
Quantaman's conjecture is not the same as saying old people don't fit the culture. He is saying something more like: "risk adverse employees don't fit the culture." Since middle age workers tend to be more risk adverse because of having families to support, it is very similar to saying old people don't fit the culture. It has a similar effect anyway. But it could very well be accurate if employees being comfortable with risk really does improve the company.
It may be that certain personality types don't fit in at Google, and as people get older their personalities tend to develop into those types.
I'm afraid that's you also being ageist. You can't generalise, any more than you can generalise by gender or race. People have all sorts of personalities, and they develop in all sorts of different directions through their lives.
While it is ageism to generalize when making a judgment about one individual, it is not ageism to generalize when making sense of statistical information about an age group. It works the same way for any kind of discrimination. One rational reason why there would always be more male firefighters than women firefighters is that males are much stronger on average. That is not a sexist statement. But denying employment to any one woman simply because her gender is physically weaker on average is sexist.
I am not saying I think quantaman's statements are accurate, but he does offer a plausible explanation for some of the discrimination.
As it turns out, almost the entirety of the reason EVs are cheaper to operate than ICE cars is not because of energy efficiency - both use almost the same amount of energy per mile traveled. The EV is cheaper because coal is so much cheaper than gasoline. Coal costs about $55 per ton, and a ton of coal produces about 21 GJ of energy, for a final cost of 0.26 cents per MJ. Gasoline at $3/gal is about 2.5 cents per MJ. An order of magnitude more expensive than coal.
I'm confused. You spend the first half of your post talking about energy efficiency, and then in the paragraph I'm quoting you explain why energy efficiency is irrelevant. Obviously electric cars are only cheaper to power because electricity is cheaper to generate than distilled petroleum. Why would efficiency need to even be discussed?
That is $9 billion leaving our economy each year.
It's amazing how much staying power this myth has, even after Adam Smith tore it down in 1776.
What do you think happens to that $9 billion? Does it sit in a mattress somewhere? No, it's only uses are to buy things produced in the US or invest in the US economy.
I am not sure what you think Adam Smith tore down in 1776. Are you saying the only thing OPEC countries can spend money on are goods produced in the US or investments in the US?
Money spent buying coal from West Virginia stays in our economy, while oil bought abroad does not.
Well, sure, assuming the person you pay for the coal doesn't buy any clothing, electronics, or cars. The world economy just doesn't work this way any more.
The goal is not to halt commerce with other countries. I am of the opinion that a globalized economy is good for all nations. But countries still need to weigh the impact of how different economic activities and trade practices affect their economy differently.
Comparing buying clothing and electronics with buying gasoline at the pump is a fair comparison. The price of gasoline has many other factors like taxes, gas attendant salaries, trucking costs, real estate, etc. factored in. Just like for consumer goods. But as long as you look at the total US imports of oil, then you can see exactly what is leaving the country that wouldn't need to be if we had energy independence. I am not talking about protectionist measures such as creating tariffs or preventing companies from buying foreign oil. I am talking about simply reducing our need for the oil so that more of our oil is obtained locally.
The US imports around 500 thousand barrels of oil per day (the amount fluctuates a lot even week by week). That is $9 billion leaving our economy each year. Its not that much money when compared to our total GDP, but it isn't inconsequential either. Even if we just used it to increase NASA's budget by 50% it would be put to better use.
Its a good thing my reason for wanting hybrid and electric vehicles is purely economical. Environmental benefits are a nice side effect in many cases, but the reason I want my country less dependent on oil is almost purely to reduce foreign dependency. Money spent buying coal from West Virginia stays in our economy, while oil bought abroad does not. Also electricity produced by coal is less expensive per mile driven than gasoline, so that allows money to be spent on more productive areas than natural resources.
The environmental benefits are still important, but dealing with dirty coal is a separate issue from electric cars IMHO.
While I agree it will probably taste less like bacon than even turkey bacon, if eating it is healthier than most green leafy vegetables then I will give it a lot of latitude. I don't eat turkey bacon primarily because it still isn't that good for you, and if I am being bad I might as well eat the real thing. But since I already force myself to eat things like broccoli and cauliflower because of the health benefits, a vegetable that tastes close to bacon would be very welcomed.
I will be surprised if science doesn't create a large variety of truly healthy foods that taste almost as good as fatty/salty/sugary alternatives within the next 20 years. And no health nuts, we don't have anything like this now. I can't wait until a healthy smoothie really does taste as good or better than a milk shake. Keep it up scientists.
Just because women on average might need more social validation...
This expresses that men are superior. Men do not need as much social validation to make choices for themselves. You can derive that down to, men are more independent (a generally considered superior quality). No matter how noble the point that you expressed after that quote. To treat a specific group (like women) as innately lesser and in need of more help is sexist.
When not taken out of context, my statement was part of a larger context of women being more social on average than men (my opinion, not something I have researched extensively). This comes with pros and cons. Gaining validation internally or externally is not inherently better or worse.
My statement saying women need more social validation is not expressing men are superior. Men simply get the validation elsewhere. Again these statements are my opinion and only speak to gender averages.
Then the answer is no, and you are sexist (or insert name for other term regarding discrimination based on your "subgroups").
Acknowledging differences between genders is not all it takes to be considered sexist. A belief that one gender is superior is also required. I have displayed no such belief; the exact opposite in fact.
Further, you can not give everyone the same opportunity period. It's impossible without extreme social and biological engineering, on the level of totalitarian control of a population.
Never let perfect be the enemy of good. And sliding scale arguments are almost always silly. We can certainly improve things even if it is impossible for everyone to have perfectly equal opportunity.
So do you want women treated equally or not?
I want everyone to be given the same opportunity. The manner in which this opportunity is provided will likely be different for various subgroups of our population.
Oddly enough, with both parents programmers, my daughter expressed absolutely no interest in programming. No, I don't believe her teachers had more influence than her parents....
But do you think that in a world where there were no parental biases, 100% of children would pick the same career as one or both of their parents? Because that is what you are implying with your post. Perhaps if you said your daughter has no interest in math, science, or computers your argument would be a little more on point.
Though she's starting to express an interest in doing Minecraft mods, just because the mods she likes haven't been updated as promptly as she wishes they were....
Sounds like you are just not waiting long enough for her to find her lifelong interests. Not everyone has to start programming at the age of 10. Expressing this type of interest, even if there isn't follow through yet, is often where a career in STEM starts.
How many people here were not constantly "expressed bias to" by their parents and peers telling us to get off the computer and go outside? Men and women that want to have careers in technology do so in spite of those complaints.
Some people need different levels of encouragement than others. And I wouldn't be surprised if one truly physical difference between men and women is women being more social than men, and therefore requiring more social validation on average.
My brother and I are a good example of different people needing different levels of encouragement. I was pretty self-motivated, but my brother needed more involvement from my parents. The end result was both of us becoming very educated (my brother with a doctorate and me with a masters). But knowing how my brother was in grade school and high school, I doubt he would have succeeded like he has without the extra effort of my parents. Neither would I for that matter, but to a lesser degree.
Just because women on average might need more social validation to explore STEM fields does not mean they have an innate dislike of these career paths. It simply means our society may have to treat different genders differently to obtain the same end result. And this same result is not a 50/50 split in all careers, but a society where everyone can find their passion equally even if it does not take equal effort to find their passion.
Unless this was paired with something like Watson which can determine meaning from context, I don't see this as being anything more than a paralegal replacement, but not a lawyer replacement.
What makes you think Watson-like intelligence isn't being employed by Modria? And if it isn't now, it soon will be. Watson beat those Jeopardy champions in 2011. It took about 10 years for the chess computer Deep Blue to have its achievements replicated on budget Intel Core 2 Duos. We are likely only 5 years from the capabilities of Watson to be as ubiquitous as Siri is now. By then the best language parsing software will run circles around Watson, and it will probably be for sale through a simple web service call.
In every case, there were some areas that could have been algorithmic, but in many dimensions on each one there were things that came about from advice from the attorney on how to position myself and under what laws I could make a case
It is important to realize you don't have to replace 100% of jobs in a particular industry to have a huge impact. Reducing 50% of jobs in a very short time can be almost as damaging. Although in this case we are talking about lawyers so there will be little sympathy.
For the majority of applications where SQL is used ACID isn't honestly needed for safe data. Just keep adding it to a DBM and back it up regularly.
This comment made me cringe. ACID has almost nothing to do with regular backups. Backing up a non-ACID database regular does not make it even close to ACID compliant. This is one of the reasons why ACID is unfortunately so important; because almost no software developers even know what it is.
Thanks. Your friend was no doubt kind and disliked ruffling feathers or explaining over and over.
I never even heard of these terms until I met him. I learned them from him.
No it's not varied, they are simply american. Guess what? Here in Europe we don't a third a guy living in Germany whose great-grandfather immigrated from France french or french-american, we call him german.
You guys are pretty much all american, accept it.
We just call everyone American here as well, except when discussing our ethnicity. Generally only people in small minorities are offended when asked where they are from, since they often feel the question insinuates they are less American than a non-minority.
Most people in the US still know their ethnicity as far out as at least their grandparents and usually their great grandparents. I have family that has been here since the 17th century (or so I was told), but they still are aware of their Spanish heritage. And the physical differences between my family with Spanish vs Nordic heritage is still quite pronounced, although you would have to be more knowledgeable to see any difference between my Norwegian, German, or Lithuanian family members.
Sorry, I was taught that terminology by a half Sami half Swedish close friend who immigrated when he was 3 in the 1970's. I had no idea it was derogatory as it was his preferred terminology to explain his own ethnicity.
I'm not saying one country is more diverse than the other (I don't even care)
I'm not sure why you are even posting then, because what you just said you don't care about is the only important factor in this discussion. I absolutely do not care if my statistics are precise, I only care if they are close enough to show that the US is far more diverse than Nordic countries. That is the only claim I was refuting.
You forget one important thing: Germany itself exists as a nation only since 1871, and, in fact, consists of several ethnicities which used to live in separate countries before that unification and even now, over a century later, may speak languages that are barely mutually intelligible. Same goes for France (Franks, Normans, breton Celts, Basques, Germans) and so on.
You really underestimate ethnical diversity in Europe.
Any of those more medieval ethnicities are also present in the US, but in even smaller numbers. So if I say 17% of the US is German, that also includes Franks, Normans, Breton Celts, Basques, etc.
I never said Europe has absolutely no diversity. It just seems that way when compared to the US.
I listed my source. After looking it does appear the stats could be as old as 2002.
But even if the site only includes citizens, those countries still don't come close to comparing to the US in terms of diversity. Even if Germany is only 70% German, that is still over four times the concentration of the US's largest ethnicity.
United States -> 75% White (So much varied ethnicity the site doesn't try to list them all), 12% Black, 10% Hispanic, 3.3% Asian, 0.7% Native American
Except you seem to be comparing apples to oranges. In Sweden for instance there are no records of ethnicity whatsoever (it is in fact illegal) and this means that everyone who is born in Sweden counts as "Swedish" regardless if both of their parents are from Indonesia or if they consider themselves to be of "Asian" ethnicity.
Well, somehow web sites have statistics of how many Finnish, Laplander, Yugoslavian, Iranian, and other nationalities are in the country. My guess is that sociologists can find a way to determine these numbers based on sample sizes smaller than a full census. Even if the numbers are off, I can't believe anyone would think Sweden is even close to as diverse as the US.
Not that this changes your point but where did you your stats?
I quoted my stats as coming from populstat.info. It was just the first link that came up when looking for the first country on my list of nordic countries: Norway. It does appear their stats may be as old as 2002, but that doesn't change anything about my point. Their numbers would have to be off by a huge margin for any Nordic country to be as diverse as the US.
No, they get paid out as management bonuses and dividends. Productivity enhancements have gone towards making the 1% richer at everyone else's expense.
I didn't mean all the money being saved by productivity enhancements went towards paying marketing and sales. Just the human workers who were displaced. Since these new workers are more skilled they generally make far more than the secretary and factory worker positions that were lost, but not four times as much. That money goes to the 1%, as you stated.
Then why do all developed economies struggle with unemployment?
Unemployment is a different problem than lowering the number of hours in a work week. Since it takes money to train workers, it will almost always be more profitable to have one employee working 40 hours than two workers working 20 hours. In manual labor jobs, it would usually be more profitable to have one worker working 80 hours, but laws prohibit that. In knowledge jobs, it is usually not more profitable for a worker to work more than about 50 hours, so the laws have negligible impact on their work week.
Unemployed workers are only a problem because of either a lack of skills or heavy regulation. The lack of skills are not always the fault of the unemployed workers; they may have just had their whole industry undergo massive changes (like the housing industry). Countries that make it very hard to have an agile workforce make it hard for companies to hire. This generally leads to happier workers, but higher unemployment.
That's not sustainable, and will end up in either social reforms or outright revolution, just like it did the last time.
It unfortunately may be sustainable, because past revolutions were caused by lack of opportunity for the poor, not specifically the gap between them and the rich. If the middle class was drastically dropping in wages and net worth, you may have the seeds of revolution. But in the western world the middle class is simply stagnating. But their lives are still very good compared to what it takes to spark revolution.
We could all be working 10 hours per week and living with a similar economic standard of living to 1950. Personally, I'd be fine with that, though I know many people wouldn't.
Or we could be less contentious and go back the productivity of 1975 or so... and basically keep our current standard of living for middle classes, but just pay rich people less. Alas, we've chosen greed over spare time.
This increased productivity is not being used to sustain our higher standard of living. Today's extra technology doesn't require our quadrupled productivity to maintain our standard of living. The extra productivity mostly goes into today's sales, marketing, and service economy.
All overall productivity increases end up being shared among an entire industry eventually, and then companies still need to find ways to differentiate themselves. If productivity enhancements means we don't need as many secretaries and factory workers, those expenditures will go towards marketing and sales.
The idea that productivity enhancements will ever reduce the need for human labor was always laughable. Only people such as an ivory tower economist like Keynes could have ever thought this.