In my metro area (Mpls-St Paul), city buses cost almost exactly the same per passenger mile to operate as roads do. And that's if you look at the bus system as a whole. When you look at the urban-local lines (as oppose to express and suburban), they cost less. And the trains cost much, much less per passenger mile - somewhere on the order of 1/4 the expense of roads and buses.
Really? Wow, there's no way they could do that here in the Twin Cities. That would be viewed as a waste of the officers' time and the public's money. Not to mention our transit system is nowhere near robust enough to give less well off suburbanites any real alternatives to get to work.
Great thought. But I do worry about unintended consequences. In this case, would we end up with a lot more vehicles pushing their luck on their tires, resulting in a more dangerous road fleet, more fuel consumption, and more pollution? That would have to be part of the calculation.
You are correct. The way to fix this is to tax investors' dividends and capital gains - ie the actual profits earned by corporations - rather than the corporate entity itself.
Switching away from a progressive income tax to regressive consumption taxes wouldn't accomplish what you say it would. Taxes on goods and services hit the middle and lower classes much harder than they hit the rich. If you're really concerned with making sure the rich pay, the first step has to be to tax dividends and capital gains at the same rates as wages.
In the US at least, the per-gallon gas tax doesn't cover the cost of the roads. Not even close. So we're already paying for them out of general revenue. I don't see why just fully paying for them out of general revenue would be any more problematic. We all benefit from roads, and they are essential to our economic strength.
Forget what the murderer deserves (and we don't know that they're all murderers) - Torture doesn't work. But it does ruin any chance we have to prosecute the person in question, and give ammunition to terrorist recruiting, and damage our standing with allies and rivals alike. You might be comfortable having no soul, but most Americans are not.
Yeah, they do that because they have land in UT, NM, and CO, all of which observe DST. That keeps all of their territory on the same time.
My favorite DST oddity is that the Hopi, whose reservation comprises a couple of enclaves within the Navajo Nation, do not observe DST. Further, the town of Jeddito is a Navajo enclave within Hopi territory. If you take Navajo Rt 3 (AZ 264) from Desert View to Gallup, you will need to change you clock seven times in the four hours it takes you to go 230 miles.
So, it seems like you disagree with his point about the value of human labor, but it seems that your reasons for disagreement support the contention that an increase in minimum wage is not causing producers to utilize automation where they otherwise would not. His argument is that machines are better for reasons other than cost, so an increase in the cost of labor doesn't change the economics of hiring vs automation, whereas your argument is that humans are capable of doing low-skill tasks that machines are unable to do, so an increase in labor costs doesn't change the mechanics of human vs machine.
That *might* apply to drugs and devices, but the vast majority of the cost of health care is doctors' & nurses' salaries, real estate, and facilities. None of those are things that are made cheaper abroad by being overpriced in the US.
1. Those who don't want the government to regulate high speed internet at all
2. Those who want the government to enforce network neutrality, but don't think that classifying it as a phone service is the right way to do it
3. Those who want to regulate network neutrality as a phone service.
I think #3 would be more accurately listed as "Those who want to government to enforce network neutrality, and think using Title II is better than doing nothing at all."
If, OTOH, we're talking about the continued gradual increase in automation
False dichotomy. We're likely looking at something in between - not human-equivalent, but good enough to do many of the things that humans now do. Not so good that it instantly puts everyone out of work, but good enough that new jobs don't come on line fast enough to replace a significant portion of those that are lost.
Every major leap in automation has been followed by several years of economic turmoil where people were displaced from their jobs but new jobs hadn't been created yet.
There's an argument to be made that it wasn't just economic turmoil that resulted from these leaps, but revolutions (1848, 1917) and wars (US Civil, WW1 and by extension WW2) as well. As you rightly say, it's easy to look at this with detached curiosity when you're not on the front lines of the upheaval. But eventually it turns bad, and when it turns bad, it turns VERY bad.
Obama was required to appoint a Republican, and in doing so followed established tradition of going with the recommendation of the opposition party's Senate leader.
Obama's FCC chairperson was for "fast lanes" before they reversed position due to public outcry.
In other words, Wheeler was responsive to the electorate whereas Trump's Chair Pai was not. This is a point where one party was CLEARLY better than the other.
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. From the conclusion of that article:
"The interference campaign could easily have had chronic, insidious effects that could be mistaken for background noise but which in the aggregate were enough to swing the election by 0.8 percentage points toward Trump — not a high hurdle to clear because 0.8 points isn’t much at all."
The Russian based internet marketing company's budget was over $1 million per month. They weren't spending that on political advertising in the U.S. That was the budget for all their operations...
Including paying trolls to flood social media with disinformation, and to amplify the advertising, and to amplify the divisions between US political factions. If you think advertising was/is the most important part of this operation, you haven't thought it through.
Slashdot Mirror
You have to violate criminal law to be considered a criminal. Being undocumented is a civil offense, not a criminal one.
More roads and cars? Probably not. More trips driven? Absolutely.
In my metro area (Mpls-St Paul), city buses cost almost exactly the same per passenger mile to operate as roads do. And that's if you look at the bus system as a whole. When you look at the urban-local lines (as oppose to express and suburban), they cost less. And the trains cost much, much less per passenger mile - somewhere on the order of 1/4 the expense of roads and buses.
Really? Wow, there's no way they could do that here in the Twin Cities. That would be viewed as a waste of the officers' time and the public's money. Not to mention our transit system is nowhere near robust enough to give less well off suburbanites any real alternatives to get to work.
Electric vehicles reduce the use of other resources in exchange for increased use of electricity. Bitcoin mining has no such positive externality.
Great thought. But I do worry about unintended consequences. In this case, would we end up with a lot more vehicles pushing their luck on their tires, resulting in a more dangerous road fleet, more fuel consumption, and more pollution? That would have to be part of the calculation.
You are correct. The way to fix this is to tax investors' dividends and capital gains - ie the actual profits earned by corporations - rather than the corporate entity itself.
Switching away from a progressive income tax to regressive consumption taxes wouldn't accomplish what you say it would. Taxes on goods and services hit the middle and lower classes much harder than they hit the rich. If you're really concerned with making sure the rich pay, the first step has to be to tax dividends and capital gains at the same rates as wages.
In the US at least, the per-gallon gas tax doesn't cover the cost of the roads. Not even close. So we're already paying for them out of general revenue. I don't see why just fully paying for them out of general revenue would be any more problematic. We all benefit from roads, and they are essential to our economic strength.
Due process is necessary to determine if they are murderers. Torture eliminates the possibility of due process.
Forget what the murderer deserves (and we don't know that they're all murderers) - Torture doesn't work. But it does ruin any chance we have to prosecute the person in question, and give ammunition to terrorist recruiting, and damage our standing with allies and rivals alike. You might be comfortable having no soul, but most Americans are not.
Yeah, they do that because they have land in UT, NM, and CO, all of which observe DST. That keeps all of their territory on the same time.
My favorite DST oddity is that the Hopi, whose reservation comprises a couple of enclaves within the Navajo Nation, do not observe DST. Further, the town of Jeddito is a Navajo enclave within Hopi territory. If you take Navajo Rt 3 (AZ 264) from Desert View to Gallup, you will need to change you clock seven times in the four hours it takes you to go 230 miles.
So, it seems like you disagree with his point about the value of human labor, but it seems that your reasons for disagreement support the contention that an increase in minimum wage is not causing producers to utilize automation where they otherwise would not. His argument is that machines are better for reasons other than cost, so an increase in the cost of labor doesn't change the economics of hiring vs automation, whereas your argument is that humans are capable of doing low-skill tasks that machines are unable to do, so an increase in labor costs doesn't change the mechanics of human vs machine.
That *might* apply to drugs and devices, but the vast majority of the cost of health care is doctors' & nurses' salaries, real estate, and facilities. None of those are things that are made cheaper abroad by being overpriced in the US.
1. Those who don't want the government to regulate high speed internet at all 2. Those who want the government to enforce network neutrality, but don't think that classifying it as a phone service is the right way to do it 3. Those who want to regulate network neutrality as a phone service.
I think #3 would be more accurately listed as "Those who want to government to enforce network neutrality, and think using Title II is better than doing nothing at all."
He's not entirely wrong - after all, you did recognize the medical condition to which he was referring ...
If we're talking about human-equivalent AI
...
If, OTOH, we're talking about the continued gradual increase in automation
False dichotomy. We're likely looking at something in between - not human-equivalent, but good enough to do many of the things that humans now do. Not so good that it instantly puts everyone out of work, but good enough that new jobs don't come on line fast enough to replace a significant portion of those that are lost.
Every major leap in automation has been followed by several years of economic turmoil where people were displaced from their jobs but new jobs hadn't been created yet.
There's an argument to be made that it wasn't just economic turmoil that resulted from these leaps, but revolutions (1848, 1917) and wars (US Civil, WW1 and by extension WW2) as well. As you rightly say, it's easy to look at this with detached curiosity when you're not on the front lines of the upheaval. But eventually it turns bad, and when it turns bad, it turns VERY bad.
Of course, the historic response to that is, "We means all of us except you, headless person!"
Don't forget: Obama appointed Pai to the FCC.
Obama was required to appoint a Republican, and in doing so followed established tradition of going with the recommendation of the opposition party's Senate leader.
Obama's FCC chairperson was for "fast lanes" before they reversed position due to public outcry.
In other words, Wheeler was responsive to the electorate whereas Trump's Chair Pai was not. This is a point where one party was CLEARLY better than the other.
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. From the conclusion of that article:
"The interference campaign could easily have had chronic, insidious effects that could be mistaken for background noise but which in the aggregate were enough to swing the election by 0.8 percentage points toward Trump — not a high hurdle to clear because 0.8 points isn’t much at all."
The Russian based internet marketing company's budget was over $1 million per month. They weren't spending that on political advertising in the U.S. That was the budget for all their operations ...
Including paying trolls to flood social media with disinformation, and to amplify the advertising, and to amplify the divisions between US political factions. If you think advertising was/is the most important part of this operation, you haven't thought it through.
Hollywood's fake reality is clearly marked as fiction. Fake news is intentionally disguised as fact.
i smell a Manchurian actor like usual.
So do I. Don't look now - he's inside your post!
A smarter world and better future sounds great and all, but you're saying it'll cost taxpayers some money? Hard pass.