I'm not sure shopping malls are much of an example, they generally just suck wealth out of an area. Locals go in, spend their money, and it's sent off to shareholders and manufacturers all over the world.
Many private sector jobs effectively pay people to dig a hole, buy some pointless electronic device, bury it in the hole and fill it in again. When technology has eliminated most necessary jobs, we can either pay people to do nothing of value, or have mass unemployment.
If we go by averages, your grandfather ate less meat, ate out less
And was much healthier as a result. Also he had a wife to cook proper meals rather than having to rely on fastfood. His smaller house would have a manageable mortgage and lower heating bills.
Capitalism is the notion that a few individuals should be allowed to accumulate large quantities of limited resources which in effect means they get to dictate to the society that needs those resources. The Golden Rule, as it were.
But no-one's cutting steel in a school maths test. Once you have the answer with letters and symbols, anything further is just pushing numbers into a calculator.
If you want to improve it, look at the various experimental schools that have higher graduation rates and where the students score higher than the average.
People being at work longer doesn't mean they'll do any more. Working cultures with long working hours tend to have low productivity because they spend a lot of that just staring at the wall. Add 15 minutes to the working day and it's just another teabreak.
In real terms we're far better off than our parents were, work shorter hours and have a higher standard of living.
I'm pretty sure that working hours are higher now than in the past. Especially household working hours when you count two people working to pay the bills that used to be paid by one person.
Competition means a race to the bottom. If after feminism, one household decides that the wife will get a job too, it inflates prices until everyone needs a two-person income just to maintain their existing living standards. If one person decides to work 80 hours a week, everyone else in the office has to to keep up. But wages don't increase as long as one person will do the extra hours for free.
What technology provides, economics takes away. What's the point in a giant TV if you don't have time to watch it? What's the point in a kitchen filled with fancy appliances if the wife is working too many hours to use them and just gets microwave meals?
This isn't true, it's always been about levelling up through quests and storylines. Most people don't do end game content, it's only really viable for hardcore players, most players will level up an alt or desubscribe once hitting 80.
In WoW I have to disable bittorrent if I actually want to download a patch. Otherwise it saturates my connection with upload data whilst only downloading at 1% of my max speed.
Blizzard use bittorrent simply because they're cheap. Instead of using their millions in profits to provide bandwidth, they make the players smash their quotas sending data to each other. I had to install a bandwidth limiter to get Wrath of the Lich King to install because otherwise the outrageous upload speeds stopped me actually downloading anything. You'd think $15 a month would be enough to pay for enough bandwidth to allow me to download the game I've just paid for, but no they have to chase every penny...
Those health insurance and retirement benefits won by the union?
Of course, get rid of unions and I'm sure corporations and governments will shower down great pay and conditions on their workers out of the goodness of their hearts. It's amazing how so many ordinary working people are actually against organisations looking out for ordinary working people.
Maybe decades of right-wing propaganda has made everyone think they're going to become a millionaire off the backs of their own hard work, sort of why poor people vote for tax cuts for the rich.
I've actually been spoken to by my union rep for working too hard and making everybody else look bad. That kind of mentality may have something to do with why unions aren't particularly popular among management types on this continent.
I thought that was the whole point. Management wants people to work harder, so they can lay some of them off and award themselves bigger bonuses and dividends. I thought the whole point of modern technology was that we could all be richer whilst working less hard. In most cases, working harder merely enriches the executive class, and leads to lower pay and unemployment for the actual worker. When the reward mechanisms for hard work have been completely reversed, you can't blame unions for taking the only logical course of action.
Considering that in America increases in worker productivity and working hours have resulted in at most stagnant pay, I think you're overrating hard work.
What exactly is an unreasonably high pension, and how does this compare to unreasonably high executive salaries or shareholder dividends?
An anti-employer power balance? Yeah right. Wages have stagnated for decades, that is for the jobs that haven't been outsourced, job security has all but disappeared, and working hours increase to ridiculous levels, whilst the rich continue to line their pockets. If anything, unions are more important than ever.
The problem most people have with unions is that they've been brainwashed by right-wing media to be opposed to their own self-interests, which is why you'll see ordinary people on internet forums attack other ordinary people for having the audacity to bargain for a decent wage, retirement, and good working conditions.
What exactly is the relevance of a 19th century economy with industrialisation and a continent of untapped natural resources with endless almost-free labour to exploit it, with today's circumstances?
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I'm not sure shopping malls are much of an example, they generally just suck wealth out of an area. Locals go in, spend their money, and it's sent off to shareholders and manufacturers all over the world.
But increasing affluence means more use of resources.
Many private sector jobs effectively pay people to dig a hole, buy some pointless electronic device, bury it in the hole and fill it in again. When technology has eliminated most necessary jobs, we can either pay people to do nothing of value, or have mass unemployment.
And was much healthier as a result. Also he had a wife to cook proper meals rather than having to rely on fastfood. His smaller house would have a manageable mortgage and lower heating bills.
What, what?
I believe it was the landlord doing this, not the tenants who probably paid the landlord for utilities. And people will always want free stuff.
No, there doesn't. Otherwise WoW wouldn't have kicked the shit out of Everquest and all its ilk. All that matters is fun.
This is an interesting discussion, I have stats and you have an anecdote.
I'd imagine it massively cut down their revenues as they were forced into much smaller markets.
Capitalism is the notion that a few individuals should be allowed to accumulate large quantities of limited resources which in effect means they get to dictate to the society that needs those resources. The Golden Rule, as it were.
But no-one's cutting steel in a school maths test. Once you have the answer with letters and symbols, anything further is just pushing numbers into a calculator.
Then lookup 'selection bias'.
People being at work longer doesn't mean they'll do any more. Working cultures with long working hours tend to have low productivity because they spend a lot of that just staring at the wall. Add 15 minutes to the working day and it's just another teabreak.
I'm pretty sure that working hours are higher now than in the past. Especially household working hours when you count two people working to pay the bills that used to be paid by one person.
Competition means a race to the bottom. If after feminism, one household decides that the wife will get a job too, it inflates prices until everyone needs a two-person income just to maintain their existing living standards. If one person decides to work 80 hours a week, everyone else in the office has to to keep up. But wages don't increase as long as one person will do the extra hours for free.
What technology provides, economics takes away. What's the point in a giant TV if you don't have time to watch it? What's the point in a kitchen filled with fancy appliances if the wife is working too many hours to use them and just gets microwave meals?
Beats working for a living. Just ask Donald Trump.
This isn't true, it's always been about levelling up through quests and storylines. Most people don't do end game content, it's only really viable for hardcore players, most players will level up an alt or desubscribe once hitting 80.
The WotLK downloader didn't have any options though. I think I'll be getting Cataclysm by DVD.
In WoW I have to disable bittorrent if I actually want to download a patch. Otherwise it saturates my connection with upload data whilst only downloading at 1% of my max speed.
Blizzard use bittorrent simply because they're cheap. Instead of using their millions in profits to provide bandwidth, they make the players smash their quotas sending data to each other. I had to install a bandwidth limiter to get Wrath of the Lich King to install because otherwise the outrageous upload speeds stopped me actually downloading anything. You'd think $15 a month would be enough to pay for enough bandwidth to allow me to download the game I've just paid for, but no they have to chase every penny...
What could possibly go wrong? I imagine this will end up as successful as Bill Gates' ventures into education.
Maybe these tech barons should stick to computers and stop trying to play god with children's futures.
It's been known for ATMs to be stolen by digging them out of the wall with a JCB.
Governments can release their gold reserves as easily as they can release fiat currency.
What do you think happens to your gold prices when they empty Fort Knox?
Those health insurance and retirement benefits won by the union?
Of course, get rid of unions and I'm sure corporations and governments will shower down great pay and conditions on their workers out of the goodness of their hearts. It's amazing how so many ordinary working people are actually against organisations looking out for ordinary working people.
Maybe decades of right-wing propaganda has made everyone think they're going to become a millionaire off the backs of their own hard work, sort of why poor people vote for tax cuts for the rich.
I thought that was the whole point. Management wants people to work harder, so they can lay some of them off and award themselves bigger bonuses and dividends. I thought the whole point of modern technology was that we could all be richer whilst working less hard. In most cases, working harder merely enriches the executive class, and leads to lower pay and unemployment for the actual worker. When the reward mechanisms for hard work have been completely reversed, you can't blame unions for taking the only logical course of action.
Considering that in America increases in worker productivity and working hours have resulted in at most stagnant pay, I think you're overrating hard work.
What exactly is an unreasonably high pension, and how does this compare to unreasonably high executive salaries or shareholder dividends?
An anti-employer power balance? Yeah right. Wages have stagnated for decades, that is for the jobs that haven't been outsourced, job security has all but disappeared, and working hours increase to ridiculous levels, whilst the rich continue to line their pockets. If anything, unions are more important than ever.
The problem most people have with unions is that they've been brainwashed by right-wing media to be opposed to their own self-interests, which is why you'll see ordinary people on internet forums attack other ordinary people for having the audacity to bargain for a decent wage, retirement, and good working conditions.
What exactly is the relevance of a 19th century economy with industrialisation and a continent of untapped natural resources with endless almost-free labour to exploit it, with today's circumstances?
Not that any of this is remotely on topic.