There are lie detectors that DO work quite effectively (fMRIs, for example, are very effective since different areas of the brain are activated and easily detectable).
So let me get this straight - when logic and reason fail you, go straight to ad hominem responses? If expressing my opinion makes me a fascist bent on the downfall of society
"Expressing your opinion" isn't what makes you a fascist. What makes you a fascist is your belief that "the social contract" means that there is a single "society" that determines the proper way to behave and live, and that anybody who disagrees with that single way should not "live inside our borders".
No - but if you insist that it's your right to raise a bunch of disease-ridden kids,
I made no particular comment about vaccinations. In fact, I think the vaccinations required for public schools are safe, effective, and a good idea. If we liberated education from the stranglehold of the public sector, we wouldn't even be having this discussions, because pretty much every private school would require, and would be able to require, vaccinations.
My comment was about your conceptions about what the "social contract" is and your delusions that you speak for "society".
There's no place for you and your kind here in the twenty-first century.
In fact, there is no place for fascists like you in the 21st century.
About 140 workers from Eastern Europe, mostly from Croatia and Slovenia, built a new paint shop at Tesla’s Fremont plant, a project vital to the flagship Silicon Valley automaker’s plans to ramp up production of its highly anticipated Model 3 sedan.... He earned the equivalent of $5 an hour to expand the plant for one of the world’s most sophisticated companies, Tesla Motors.... While most of the imported workers interviewed for this story said they are happy with their paychecks, their American counterparts earn as much as $52 an hour for similar work.
Keep in mind, Croatia and Slovenia are both EU members, with free movement within the EU. Those are the kind of "civilized countries" that people like Sanders point to as a model for the US.
You want to live in our borders, protected by our military, using our infrastructure, functioning in our economy? You want all of the benefits society has to offer? Then you have to pay by behaving the way society says you should.
The trouble is, of course, that people like you are trying to destroy "our society".
Self-checkout for more complicated things hasn't been so successful - and not necessarily because of lack of brow-beating
Yet, self-checkout continues to be widely used, while often large parts of the formerly staffed checkout lines are closed. And self-checkout will get easier, with better readers, new packaging, cameras, RFID chips, robotic shoppers, etc. Obviously, companies are going to continue working on these technologies until they get it right and until they can eliminate checkout clerks, because they can see the writing on the wall when it comes to labor costs. But checkout is only one of many jobs where this is happening.
Actually raising gas prices does reduce consumption
As I was saying: fossil fuel has some of the lowest price elasticities, so taxing gasoline more does little to reduce gasoline consumption. That is, increased prices reduce consumption, just with low elasticity. That means that attempts to reduce fossil fuel consumption through taxation are not going to work.
fact's don't suck
They suck for you when they contradict your beliefs.
Of course not. How do you propose to deal with Global Warming, since you evidently find all forms of market intervention distasteful?
People have been looking feverishly for replacements for fossil fuels for a century and are making rapid progress. Once prices for alternatives actually fall below fossil fuels, fossil fuel usage will largely end. Until that point, government intervention is pointless; it won't even speed up the process.
Maybe you'd prefer sports without any rules?
Sports is an excellent example: whether you play football and conform to its rules is a voluntary choice; if you don't want to follow the rules, the worst that happens to you is that others won't play with it. That is how rules are supposed to work in a free society. Our federal government doesn't work that way: you have no choice other than to conform to its rules, and if you don't, you are subjected to government sanctioned violence. So, you're right: a free society should work like sports, which is not like our current government actually works.
A city could save hugely on the budget if they shut down their police departments, and expected the citizens to all buy guns and self-police. How well would that work?
That's a false dichotomy because those are not the only two alternatives. In fact, if cities eliminated their corrupt and ineffective police departments, they would get replaced by private security firms, security firms that are responsive to the people who hired them, and that (unlike police departments) are fully liable for their wrongdoings. That would indeed be a big improvement, and it is happening in some places already.
However, in the US the Overton window has shifted so far to the Right that all social democracies are considered "socialist" for purposes of political discourse.
It's quite the opposite: in many European countries, the Overton window is to the right of the US. In countries like Germany, for example, massive government debt, abortion on demand, free speech, government-run health care systems, massive welfare spending, or separation of church and state are simply beyond what people are willing to contemplate. Even gay marriage entered public discourse only after it became an issue in the US.
What confuses socialist relics like you (as well as Europeans themselves) is that in Europe, the right has appropriated the language of the left. Terms like "trade unions", "free speech", "public health care system", and "church" just don't mean the same thing as they do in US political discussions.
If you scroll down to the table where they list every increase in national minimum wage and its effect on job growth you can plainly see that minimum wage increases seem to have very little effect on overall employment in a historic context.
Past minimum wage increases have been modest and only affected a small number of people (namely those whose labor is worth less than the minimum wage), so they don't show up in such statistics. In addition, people losing their jobs doesn't necessarily mean that there are fewer jobs, they can simply be replaced by other people entering the job market. And job growth statistics are biased to begin with since the US population is growing anyway.
What you need to look at is not job losses overall, but labor force participation rates for unskilled workers, and that's a hard number to estimate.
Another "experiment" one could do would be to simply raise the national minimum wage to $100/h (with automatic adjustments for inflation) and see what happens to employment numbers. I predict we would see people dropping out of the labor force in large numbers. What do you think?
Why is the gas tax a fixed amount per gallon, rather than a percentage like every other sales tax?
Because it was supposed to pay for highway construction; it's not a tax for the general fund or a tax to discourage driving.
For one, change the incentives so other forms of energy are more attractive than oil.
Note that lectric cars don't help much with that since their energy still comes mostly from fossil fuels; they only result in a modest amount of carbon emissions.
Furthermore, demand for oil and gas is highly inelastic. You'd need to impose massive (several hundred percent) taxes to have any meaningful impact on fossil fuel powered car usage. And then you'd have to impose similar taxes on fossil fuel electric generation when people switch to electric. But at that point, you also affect industry, which becomes uncompetitive. People who propose higher taxes to discourage fossil fuel use really haven't thought this through.
You talk as if government intervention is largely the will of the people or at least of our politicians and bureaucrats.
No, I don't.
Big Oil is one of the biggest corrupters and abusers.
No, it isn't. It's small fry compared to many other industries.
That little subtlety in taxation is a huge, huge giveaway to Big Oil.
No, it isn't. It's a giveaway to taxpayers.
Your faith in markets is touching. Too bad they aren't as free and wise as we like to think.
Markets aren't wise, they are simply better than practical alternatives. And the fact that they aren't free is the fault of people like you.
For one, change the incentives so other forms of energy are more attractive than oil. For one, change the incentives so other forms of energy are more attractive than oil.
Engaging in massive crony capitalism is not going to improve things.
You're a drama queen. I was in Finland last summer, and I didn't see any "high levels of taking at the barrel of a gun". [...] without acknowledging that there are socialist countries that have better outcomes, more economic and social mobility, greater liberty and more stable economies than anything that capitalism has ever produced?
Because both your premise are wrong. Finland isn't "socialist", it's a "social democracy" currently governed by a coalition of three center-right parties. Finland's political model isn't "socialist", it is a European welfare state, a type of social order introduced by Bismarck and conservatives in order to fight socialism. And although as an American visitor, your impression of Europe is about as relevant as that of a European visitor judging the US by visits to Disneyland and Las Vegas. In reality, economically Finland is about at the level of Alabama, and the US has less absolute poverty and more absolute per capita welfare spending than Finland.
Nevertheless, I think it would be great if we adopted the European welfare state model. That would mean: increased economic liberty for businesses, cutting back benefits, strong supervision of welfare recipients, increased taxes on the middle class, cutting back Medicare, reducing university enrollment, and most importantly, balancing the budget. So, whether you call that socialism or capitalism, let's do it!
it's more the fact that we insist that people somehow "work" in exchange for goods, services and housing, but less and less of that work is needed to provide goods, services and housing, thanks to automation.
That wouldn't be a problem in principle since the higher efficiencies of producing goods would mean that people can work less to maintain their lifestyle.
The problem is that various laws and regulations don't allow this to happen. For example, many essentials (food, housing, transportation) aren't getting much cheaper over time because government keeps the prices high, either explicitly (agriculture) or through regulations (housing, transportation). So people aren't seeing the benefits of automation. And on the labor side, there is a huge difference legally between full time jobs and part time jobs, so people can't just cut back on hours when they "have earned enough".
So, the problem isn't that we "insist that people work", it's that we keep prices artificially high and insist that people keep working full time.
The only reason these corps "can't afford" a higher minimum wage is because they need to protect their obscene profits
These restaurants are franchises, so the profit margin of the corporation isn't relevant to minimum wage; what matters is the profit margin of the franchise itself. Franchise profits are often just a few percent.
Pure and simple. Wages are likely half of their expenses. This would be a 25% increase from $12/hr to $15/hr. So about a 12.5% increase. No one is walking away from that. If you are buying a $4 burger it goes up 50 cents
(Price elasticity really doesn't work in favor of progressive policies: fossil fuel has some of the lowest price elasticities, so taxing gasoline more does little to reduce gasoline consumption. Facts suck, don't they?)
Competitive advantage? Barely. The delta on that window worker will cost you $36 per day. The machine plus the loss from customer frustration and borked orders (see self checkout lessons elsewhere) better cost less than that.
The widespread use of kiosks and self-service in Europe says otherwise. Sure, consumers need to be brow-beaten into accepting this lower standard of service, but that only takes a few years until you consider it the new normal. After all, you pump your own gas now.
So because school teachers who (while I agree are under paid) get 3 months off every year might end up making the same as "burger flippers", we shouldn't boost minimum wage?
We shouldn't "boost minimum wage" because the consequence of "boosting minimum wage" is that people end up on the street. Why do you want young and vulnerable people to end up being out of work?
Touch screens for self-service have been very common in Europe for many services, including tickets, hotel check-ins, and restaurant ordering. Likewise, jobs like busboys and shopping cart retrieval have been largely eliminated. The reason is simple: high labor costs and minimum wages.
The people who ought to be taking those jobs and getting started in the labor force, namely young high school graduates, frequently end up unemployed (youth unemployment in the EU area is 20.4%, compared to a US rate of 11.6%) or railroaded into useless tertiary education for a few years. A few countries in the EU have avoided this trend, for example by exempting apprenticeships and many entry level jobs from minimum wage laws.
Progressive legislation makes the US more like Europe, just like politicians promised. Is it everything you hoped for?
If the stock gives you a positive return on investment, then it has created value; where else do you think increases in stock prices come from? Santa Claus?
This is democracy in action. It isn't perfect, but good luck trying to get a King to change like that.
"Democracy" isn't supposed to involve having to fight an overbearing and corrupt government (nor is democracy supposed to be a tyranny of the majority, another common misconception).
Furthermore, kings historically have been quite concerned with corruption in their government, because, unlike politicians, they have to think in the long term, and when they lose the confidence of their people, it often cost them their heads.
And if we don't do something different, maybe that will happen.
Of course we should and we will be doing something different. The question is how that is going to happen. And history shows it's not going to happen through government intervention, it's going to happen through free market innovation. Government intervention in such "crises" tends to be not just ineffective, but often even harmful.
These days, we get: "New York and London could be underwater within DECADES: Scientists say devastating climate change will take place sooner than thought" (Daily Mail)
Even if automation were to replace a large number of people who are currently working and those people ended up not working again, it would still be wrong to say that automation "caused" their unemployment. It is only automation combined with particular government policies (e.g., minimum wage, welfare, preference for "full time jobs") that might cause job losses, and it's the government policies, not the automation, that's are at fault.
Slashdot Mirror
fMRI has not been proven to work as a lie detector.
"Expressing your opinion" isn't what makes you a fascist. What makes you a fascist is your belief that "the social contract" means that there is a single "society" that determines the proper way to behave and live, and that anybody who disagrees with that single way should not "live inside our borders".
I made no particular comment about vaccinations. In fact, I think the vaccinations required for public schools are safe, effective, and a good idea. If we liberated education from the stranglehold of the public sector, we wouldn't even be having this discussions, because pretty much every private school would require, and would be able to require, vaccinations.
My comment was about your conceptions about what the "social contract" is and your delusions that you speak for "society".
In fact, there is no place for fascists like you in the 21st century.
Keep in mind, Croatia and Slovenia are both EU members, with free movement within the EU. Those are the kind of "civilized countries" that people like Sanders point to as a model for the US.
The trouble is, of course, that people like you are trying to destroy "our society".
Sounds good to me, provided those parents get reimbursed the average per pupil spending for their state.
... and they are going to sabotage air travel until they get it.
Yet, self-checkout continues to be widely used, while often large parts of the formerly staffed checkout lines are closed. And self-checkout will get easier, with better readers, new packaging, cameras, RFID chips, robotic shoppers, etc. Obviously, companies are going to continue working on these technologies until they get it right and until they can eliminate checkout clerks, because they can see the writing on the wall when it comes to labor costs. But checkout is only one of many jobs where this is happening.
As I was saying: fossil fuel has some of the lowest price elasticities, so taxing gasoline more does little to reduce gasoline consumption. That is, increased prices reduce consumption, just with low elasticity. That means that attempts to reduce fossil fuel consumption through taxation are not going to work.
They suck for you when they contradict your beliefs.
Texas sharpshooter. I listed economic issues as well. Go re read what I wrote.
People have been looking feverishly for replacements for fossil fuels for a century and are making rapid progress. Once prices for alternatives actually fall below fossil fuels, fossil fuel usage will largely end. Until that point, government intervention is pointless; it won't even speed up the process.
Sports is an excellent example: whether you play football and conform to its rules is a voluntary choice; if you don't want to follow the rules, the worst that happens to you is that others won't play with it. That is how rules are supposed to work in a free society. Our federal government doesn't work that way: you have no choice other than to conform to its rules, and if you don't, you are subjected to government sanctioned violence. So, you're right: a free society should work like sports, which is not like our current government actually works.
That's a false dichotomy because those are not the only two alternatives. In fact, if cities eliminated their corrupt and ineffective police departments, they would get replaced by private security firms, security firms that are responsive to the people who hired them, and that (unlike police departments) are fully liable for their wrongdoings. That would indeed be a big improvement, and it is happening in some places already.
No, that's what you're doing.
It's quite the opposite: in many European countries, the Overton window is to the right of the US. In countries like Germany, for example, massive government debt, abortion on demand, free speech, government-run health care systems, massive welfare spending, or separation of church and state are simply beyond what people are willing to contemplate. Even gay marriage entered public discourse only after it became an issue in the US.
What confuses socialist relics like you (as well as Europeans themselves) is that in Europe, the right has appropriated the language of the left. Terms like "trade unions", "free speech", "public health care system", and "church" just don't mean the same thing as they do in US political discussions.
Past minimum wage increases have been modest and only affected a small number of people (namely those whose labor is worth less than the minimum wage), so they don't show up in such statistics. In addition, people losing their jobs doesn't necessarily mean that there are fewer jobs, they can simply be replaced by other people entering the job market. And job growth statistics are biased to begin with since the US population is growing anyway.
What you need to look at is not job losses overall, but labor force participation rates for unskilled workers, and that's a hard number to estimate.
Another "experiment" one could do would be to simply raise the national minimum wage to $100/h (with automatic adjustments for inflation) and see what happens to employment numbers. I predict we would see people dropping out of the labor force in large numbers. What do you think?
Couple more points:
Because it was supposed to pay for highway construction; it's not a tax for the general fund or a tax to discourage driving.
Note that lectric cars don't help much with that since their energy still comes mostly from fossil fuels; they only result in a modest amount of carbon emissions.
Furthermore, demand for oil and gas is highly inelastic. You'd need to impose massive (several hundred percent) taxes to have any meaningful impact on fossil fuel powered car usage. And then you'd have to impose similar taxes on fossil fuel electric generation when people switch to electric. But at that point, you also affect industry, which becomes uncompetitive. People who propose higher taxes to discourage fossil fuel use really haven't thought this through.
No, I don't.
No, it isn't. It's small fry compared to many other industries.
No, it isn't. It's a giveaway to taxpayers.
Markets aren't wise, they are simply better than practical alternatives. And the fact that they aren't free is the fault of people like you.
Engaging in massive crony capitalism is not going to improve things.
Because both your premise are wrong. Finland isn't "socialist", it's a "social democracy" currently governed by a coalition of three center-right parties. Finland's political model isn't "socialist", it is a European welfare state, a type of social order introduced by Bismarck and conservatives in order to fight socialism. And although as an American visitor, your impression of Europe is about as relevant as that of a European visitor judging the US by visits to Disneyland and Las Vegas. In reality, economically Finland is about at the level of Alabama, and the US has less absolute poverty and more absolute per capita welfare spending than Finland.
Nevertheless, I think it would be great if we adopted the European welfare state model. That would mean: increased economic liberty for businesses, cutting back benefits, strong supervision of welfare recipients, increased taxes on the middle class, cutting back Medicare, reducing university enrollment, and most importantly, balancing the budget. So, whether you call that socialism or capitalism, let's do it!
That wouldn't be a problem in principle since the higher efficiencies of producing goods would mean that people can work less to maintain their lifestyle.
The problem is that various laws and regulations don't allow this to happen. For example, many essentials (food, housing, transportation) aren't getting much cheaper over time because government keeps the prices high, either explicitly (agriculture) or through regulations (housing, transportation). So people aren't seeing the benefits of automation. And on the labor side, there is a huge difference legally between full time jobs and part time jobs, so people can't just cut back on hours when they "have earned enough".
So, the problem isn't that we "insist that people work", it's that we keep prices artificially high and insist that people keep working full time.
Your facts are woefully wrong.
No, it isn't: https://research.stlouisfed.or...
These restaurants are franchises, so the profit margin of the corporation isn't relevant to minimum wage; what matters is the profit margin of the franchise itself. Franchise profits are often just a few percent.
http://www.heritage.org/multim...
http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs...
You are making a statement about the elasticity of demand for food-away-from-home. In fact, food-away-from-home some of the highest price elasticity of all common consumer goods: a 12.5% increase in prices causes a 10-11% decrease in consumption.
(Price elasticity really doesn't work in favor of progressive policies: fossil fuel has some of the lowest price elasticities, so taxing gasoline more does little to reduce gasoline consumption. Facts suck, don't they?)
The widespread use of kiosks and self-service in Europe says otherwise. Sure, consumers need to be brow-beaten into accepting this lower standard of service, but that only takes a few years until you consider it the new normal. After all, you pump your own gas now.
We shouldn't "boost minimum wage" because the consequence of "boosting minimum wage" is that people end up on the street. Why do you want young and vulnerable people to end up being out of work?
Touch screens for self-service have been very common in Europe for many services, including tickets, hotel check-ins, and restaurant ordering. Likewise, jobs like busboys and shopping cart retrieval have been largely eliminated. The reason is simple: high labor costs and minimum wages.
The people who ought to be taking those jobs and getting started in the labor force, namely young high school graduates, frequently end up unemployed (youth unemployment in the EU area is 20.4%, compared to a US rate of 11.6%) or railroaded into useless tertiary education for a few years. A few countries in the EU have avoided this trend, for example by exempting apprenticeships and many entry level jobs from minimum wage laws.
Progressive legislation makes the US more like Europe, just like politicians promised. Is it everything you hoped for?
If the stock gives you a positive return on investment, then it has created value; where else do you think increases in stock prices come from? Santa Claus?
"Democracy" isn't supposed to involve having to fight an overbearing and corrupt government (nor is democracy supposed to be a tyranny of the majority, another common misconception).
Furthermore, kings historically have been quite concerned with corruption in their government, because, unlike politicians, they have to think in the long term, and when they lose the confidence of their people, it often cost them their heads.
Of course we should and we will be doing something different. The question is how that is going to happen. And history shows it's not going to happen through government intervention, it's going to happen through free market innovation. Government intervention in such "crises" tends to be not just ineffective, but often even harmful.
In fact, the educated class was predicting: “In 50 years, every street in London will be buried under nine feet of manure.” (The Times)
http://www.historic-uk.com/His...
These days, we get: "New York and London could be underwater within DECADES: Scientists say devastating climate change will take place sooner than thought" (Daily Mail)
http://tinyurl.com/jdks4ey
Even if automation were to replace a large number of people who are currently working and those people ended up not working again, it would still be wrong to say that automation "caused" their unemployment. It is only automation combined with particular government policies (e.g., minimum wage, welfare, preference for "full time jobs") that might cause job losses, and it's the government policies, not the automation, that's are at fault.