Anyone who aspires to a middle-class lifestyle would at least get a part-time job to supplement basic income (maybe regular freelance work, a half-time office job, gig-economy stuff as needed, a creative project that they never had time for, that business they were otherwise afraid to take a risk on, etc) or a full-time job that they might not otherwise be able to afford to take (e.g. teaching, social work, performing arts).
That seems like a good deal until you realize that a "basic income" doesn't just mean that people get $2500 in "income" per month, they also get the value of the labor they would have expended to earn that income. That is, someone who earns $2500 has made a fair trade of 170h of labor for $2500 of money. Someone who gets a "basic income" gets both $2500 in money and gets to keep another $2500 in labor that they would have given to someone else if they had been employed. Calling it a "basic income" is really a misnomer; it should be called a "monthly gift".
Your reasoning also assumes that someone at $2500/month has such a low marginal utility of money that they are willing to donate a large portion of their earnings to a pet cause like teaching or social work. But, in fact, people are only willing to donate about 4% of their income, so someone who ordinarily would make $2500/month would likely desire to make nearly $5000/month with a basic income, rather than settle for $3500/month in some low-paying profession (and with minimum wage at $15/h, they wouldn't even have that choice).
(Incidentally, $2500/month works out to about $15/h.)
This would basically affect only those under the poverty line
No, it affects everybody because it changes the incentive structure and the marginal value of working an extra hour. How it changes that depends on how you set up the rest of the tax code, minimum wage, etc. But generally, a basic income discourages people from working, even those making more than the poverty line. And this builds on itself: as more people decide not to work, the tax base shrinks and the median income increases, pushing yet more people into basic income.
You're reasoning as if voters vote simply to maximize personal income. That's not how voters vote in real life, and even if they did, democracy isn't supposed to work that way.
Sales are down, income is down, employment is down - so who gives a shit about your false metric? It's entirely useless if it tells you nothing about reality and is downright harmful when decisions are based on it without context.
Reality is that, unlike what you claim, except for recessions, manufacturing in the US has not declined and that wages in manufacturing have not declined in absolute terms. I corrected your false statements, that's all. If you don't care about these statistics, don't make falls statements about them.
Tell me then, in that example above how do you think it would be possible for there to be so many layoffs if there was a union involved with the site at all?
I have no idea. For all I know, you just made your entire story up out of thin air. All I was pointing out that replacing permanent staff with contractors and outsourcing is one way in which companies increase both "output per worker" and productivity. In addition to automation, that's probably one reason why employment in the manufacturing sector doesn't appear to be growing much.
I'm seeing you as a nineteen year old intern in the office of a politician who used to be a used car salesman. How close did I hit the mark? Or maybe more than that and parked in a "think-tank" due to not having the ability to get a position on university staff, and just waiting for a sinecure to turn up.
You couldn't be further off the mark. I'm an immigrant who worked his way through college, then spent decades in industry and IT both in the US and abroad, lived frugally, saved money, and is close to retirement. I only got interested in politics over the last few years, after having voted for Obama and being thoroughly disappointed with the lack of success of his policies. How about you? You've already told us that you're a disgruntled steel worker.
Bill Nye is a buffoonish talking head who has never done any science and has even been out of the engineering field for decades. Why should anybody give a damn wha the believes? Why is this on Slashdot?
a massive drop in expenditure on wages due to job losses.
Manufacturing job losses occurred during the recessions in the early and late 2000s, with output and unit costs remaining about the same or growing, when the labor force decreases, productivity goes up.
Also no innovation means no paying people to improve stuff so another false spike on "productivity" numbers.
The innovatino was happening outside manufacturing, in robotics, automation, logistics, management, and outsourcing. Taking advantage of that innovation often requires almost no investment. And, yes, bringing the option of cost-efficient outsourcing to an industry is also innovation.
It turns out the hours of contractors were not counted in the "productivity" numbers and there was a process of shedding skilled staff to drive those numbers.
FRED productivity measure "multifactor productivity" and hence count the cost of all inputs. That has also increased, though less than real output per hour of all persons. As you observe, part of that difference is probably indeed due to outsourcing, which results in expensive, underutilized union employees being replaced by on-demand contractors.
Sorry to hear that. If you actually and clearly violated drone regulations, it's probably hard to get out of.
What I was suggesting was creative ways of protesting such laws and demonstrates how arbitrary they are without actually breaking them. Generally, I wouldn't advise breaking laws, even the obviously bad ones.
I'll point out to readers that the above poster is the imbecile that suggested that manufacturing is in great shape because despite a massive drop in both production and wages the wages dropped more
A massive drop in wages?
On further inspection of these data back through 1947, we notice a similar pattern of earnings for both production and nonproduction workers in manufacturing. Much like the BLS data on hourly wages, the Census Bureau data on annual earnings of production workers climbed until the late 1970s before flattening out or rising mildly.
and
Since the 1980s, health care insurance costs have been generally rising as a share of compensation for the overall U.S. work force—and within the manufacturing industry as well.[1] And so, wage trends alone may understate the changes in overall compensation.
Solar doesn't pay for itself economically. It only paid for itself through subsidies via net metering.
Of course San Francisco might come out ahead for a little while, until rate payers in California finally rebel against net metering. Then, SF builders will be left holding the bag.
First of all, the US already taxes corporate profits more than that. Second, corporate profits right now pay for three major things: retirement benefits, investment in new businesses, and R&D. In what way is the federal government making better use of these profits than that?
Solar panels more than pay for themselves during their lifetimes, usually several times over with today's technology.
As a homeowner you may come out OK if you take into account all the subsidies. Economically, solar cells are still not competitive (they will be competitive in about 10 years if current trends continue).
If you're a poor family and you can barely pay rent, then you're not building a new house.
You're paying for this no matter what. If you're a renter in a new building, it goes into the rent. If you're a renter in an old building, the higher costs for new buildings drives up your rent too because people who can't afford the higher rents for the new buildings are now competing for your old building.
Revenue to provide services needs to come from somewhere. Our current system appears to be built on the assumption that tax revenue should all come from personal income and value added (sales) tax, since actually taxing multinational corporations just makes them declare all their profits in another country with a lower tax rate.
Well, that's what countries like Canada and EU members do: they have lower corporate taxes, much higher VAT taxes (=highly regressive), and comparable income taxes on the rich. For some reason, progressives in the US don't like to talk about that and instead present a fiction of Europe that has nothing to do with reality.
Who should be taxed and at what rate is a debate we need to have, but solutions should be based on evidence, not ideology or (as in the case of many candidates) bribery.
The evidence is quite clear: taxing high income earners or corporations doesn't work well because they don't actually have that much money in aggregate, and they just move elsewhere or retire. If you want high taxes to pay for an extensive welfare state, you have to tax the lower and middle classes. Europe figured that out. US politicians seem a little slow.
And on a semi-related note, presidential candidate Donald Trump said in January he'd like to make Apple "start building their damn computers and things in this country instead of other countries."
At least we can all sigh in relief that the people assembling these devices will have free college education. Thank you, Trump/Sanders! You only want the best for America!
I agree, but other than to continue my personal rebellion of only yielding when I must, I can't see much of a way to fight. I'm open to suggestions, though.
Be creative. Make stuff that pushes boundaries while not violating the letter of the law. Demonstrate the absurdity of the regulations through culture jamming.
The regulations will be very effective in what they are intended to accomplish: expand the power of regulators and police to arrest, charge, and fine you at their whim; create a government monopoly on information; require government approval and fees for starting new businesses They won't increase public safety or reduce terrorism, but that was never the point.
Ban private drones anyway! They take the jobs of good, hard working delivery drivers! They might be used to spy on children! They are technology and Google and Amazon like them, so they must be evil! Get out the pitchforks!
European privacy regulations are strong! They protect you from evil US corporations that will show you ads for Angry Birds and lingerie! In Europe, only the government and corporations in cahoots with the government can listen to you, and they have your best interests at heart, as history shows!
(Incidentally, the same shit has been going on in France and Germany.)
The FBI has a $8.1b budget and they are going to spend it. Apparently, that's far more than they need, which is why they engage in lots of sting operations and want to criminalize more and more of our daily lives. If they waste $1m on a computer consultant to do anything, that's $1m they can't waste on operations that actually do harm.
If you don't want this kind of waste, you need to vote for people who will cut the FBI's budget; complaining about how they end up spending the money that was budgeted for them is silly.
And paranoid schizos like you fail to provide a single plausible reason why exempting a foreign commercial interest in a law designed to protect private individuals, which would not benefit anyone but said foreign commercial interests AT THE EXPENSE of said private individual - why would THAT be a good thing.
Nowhere did I say that foreign commercial interests should be exempted. What I'm saying is that you are a patsy for nationalistic corporatism and the European police state.
Well, since "protecting private individuals" from "foreign commercial interests" has been the rallying cry of fascists for a century, I actually wouldn't be surprised if that's what you are going to believe in next.
Slashdot Mirror
$2500/month is about $14-15/h, the target for the minimum wage in California and New York.
That seems like a good deal until you realize that a "basic income" doesn't just mean that people get $2500 in "income" per month, they also get the value of the labor they would have expended to earn that income. That is, someone who earns $2500 has made a fair trade of 170h of labor for $2500 of money. Someone who gets a "basic income" gets both $2500 in money and gets to keep another $2500 in labor that they would have given to someone else if they had been employed. Calling it a "basic income" is really a misnomer; it should be called a "monthly gift".
Your reasoning also assumes that someone at $2500/month has such a low marginal utility of money that they are willing to donate a large portion of their earnings to a pet cause like teaching or social work. But, in fact, people are only willing to donate about 4% of their income, so someone who ordinarily would make $2500/month would likely desire to make nearly $5000/month with a basic income, rather than settle for $3500/month in some low-paying profession (and with minimum wage at $15/h, they wouldn't even have that choice).
(Incidentally, $2500/month works out to about $15/h.)
No, it affects everybody because it changes the incentive structure and the marginal value of working an extra hour. How it changes that depends on how you set up the rest of the tax code, minimum wage, etc. But generally, a basic income discourages people from working, even those making more than the poverty line. And this builds on itself: as more people decide not to work, the tax base shrinks and the median income increases, pushing yet more people into basic income.
You're reasoning as if voters vote simply to maximize personal income. That's not how voters vote in real life, and even if they did, democracy isn't supposed to work that way.
Reality is that, unlike what you claim, except for recessions, manufacturing in the US has not declined and that wages in manufacturing have not declined in absolute terms. I corrected your false statements, that's all. If you don't care about these statistics, don't make falls statements about them.
I have no idea. For all I know, you just made your entire story up out of thin air. All I was pointing out that replacing permanent staff with contractors and outsourcing is one way in which companies increase both "output per worker" and productivity. In addition to automation, that's probably one reason why employment in the manufacturing sector doesn't appear to be growing much.
You couldn't be further off the mark. I'm an immigrant who worked his way through college, then spent decades in industry and IT both in the US and abroad, lived frugally, saved money, and is close to retirement. I only got interested in politics over the last few years, after having voted for Obama and being thoroughly disappointed with the lack of success of his policies. How about you? You've already told us that you're a disgruntled steel worker.
I live a life of pleasure and luxury courtesy of the Koch brothers, of course! I'm just waiting for their first check to arrive! Why do you ask?
The question you should be asking, however, is why you are confusing a guy who plays a scientist on TV with a real scientist?
And by "specifically designed" you mean that it actually, for once, was a secure communications platform?
Bill Nye is a buffoonish talking head who has never done any science and has even been out of the engineering field for decades. Why should anybody give a damn wha the believes? Why is this on Slashdot?
He wants to do for the rest of Europe what he has done for Greece! Rejoice!
If it makes you happy; I won't lose any sleep over it. I just find it sad how Europeans never seem to learn from their history.
Manufacturing job losses occurred during the recessions in the early and late 2000s, with output and unit costs remaining about the same or growing, when the labor force decreases, productivity goes up.
The innovatino was happening outside manufacturing, in robotics, automation, logistics, management, and outsourcing. Taking advantage of that innovation often requires almost no investment. And, yes, bringing the option of cost-efficient outsourcing to an industry is also innovation.
FRED productivity measure "multifactor productivity" and hence count the cost of all inputs. That has also increased, though less than real output per hour of all persons. As you observe, part of that difference is probably indeed due to outsourcing, which results in expensive, underutilized union employees being replaced by on-demand contractors.
You're welcome.
Sorry to hear that. If you actually and clearly violated drone regulations, it's probably hard to get out of.
What I was suggesting was creative ways of protesting such laws and demonstrates how arbitrary they are without actually breaking them. Generally, I wouldn't advise breaking laws, even the obviously bad ones.
A massive drop in wages?
and
http://midwest.chicagofedblogs...
Solar doesn't pay for itself economically. It only paid for itself through subsidies via net metering.
Of course San Francisco might come out ahead for a little while, until rate payers in California finally rebel against net metering. Then, SF builders will be left holding the bag.
First of all, the US already taxes corporate profits more than that. Second, corporate profits right now pay for three major things: retirement benefits, investment in new businesses, and R&D. In what way is the federal government making better use of these profits than that?
As a homeowner you may come out OK if you take into account all the subsidies. Economically, solar cells are still not competitive (they will be competitive in about 10 years if current trends continue).
You're paying for this no matter what. If you're a renter in a new building, it goes into the rent. If you're a renter in an old building, the higher costs for new buildings drives up your rent too because people who can't afford the higher rents for the new buildings are now competing for your old building.
Well, that's what countries like Canada and EU members do: they have lower corporate taxes, much higher VAT taxes (=highly regressive), and comparable income taxes on the rich. For some reason, progressives in the US don't like to talk about that and instead present a fiction of Europe that has nothing to do with reality.
The evidence is quite clear: taxing high income earners or corporations doesn't work well because they don't actually have that much money in aggregate, and they just move elsewhere or retire. If you want high taxes to pay for an extensive welfare state, you have to tax the lower and middle classes. Europe figured that out. US politicians seem a little slow.
Because these are the kinds of working conditions people like Trump and Sanders want for Americans. Will the suicide nets be tax deductible for American factories?
At least we can all sigh in relief that the people assembling these devices will have free college education. Thank you, Trump/Sanders! You only want the best for America!
Be creative. Make stuff that pushes boundaries while not violating the letter of the law. Demonstrate the absurdity of the regulations through culture jamming.
The regulations will be very effective in what they are intended to accomplish: expand the power of regulators and police to arrest, charge, and fine you at their whim; create a government monopoly on information; require government approval and fees for starting new businesses They won't increase public safety or reduce terrorism, but that was never the point.
Ban private drones anyway! They take the jobs of good, hard working delivery drivers! They might be used to spy on children! They are technology and Google and Amazon like them, so they must be evil! Get out the pitchforks!
European privacy regulations are strong! They protect you from evil US corporations that will show you ads for Angry Birds and lingerie! In Europe, only the government and corporations in cahoots with the government can listen to you, and they have your best interests at heart, as history shows!
(Incidentally, the same shit has been going on in France and Germany.)
The FBI has a $8.1b budget and they are going to spend it. Apparently, that's far more than they need, which is why they engage in lots of sting operations and want to criminalize more and more of our daily lives. If they waste $1m on a computer consultant to do anything, that's $1m they can't waste on operations that actually do harm.
If you don't want this kind of waste, you need to vote for people who will cut the FBI's budget; complaining about how they end up spending the money that was budgeted for them is silly.
Nowhere did I say that foreign commercial interests should be exempted. What I'm saying is that you are a patsy for nationalistic corporatism and the European police state.
In case you missed it: UK Intel Agencies Have Been Spying on Millions of People 'Of No Security Interest' Since 1990s, and France and Germany have been at least as bad.
Well, since "protecting private individuals" from "foreign commercial interests" has been the rallying cry of fascists for a century, I actually wouldn't be surprised if that's what you are going to believe in next.