Actually, I know a lady who DOES support a family by working as a hourly worker at Walmart. She makes more than minimum wage, since she's been there probably 3-5 years. Admittedly, they don't live in a superexpensive metropolis. The family has one kid, lives in an apartment. Both she and her husband have student loans that they are paying off (he has been doing seasonal work). Yes, they have health insurance.
While removing children from the labor force will raise the wages of the parents somewhat, the raise won't be as great as the loss of income from children leaving the workforce. This is especially true since many of the jobs they would be leaving wouldn't be tied down to their geography.
Higher productivity along with competition for workers is what raises wages. But cutting off the supply of child labor isn't going to magically make the labor of the adults more valuable. In that situation, much of the rise in the adult's wage would simply be inflation.
This IS the biggest problem, all of the PPC customers from the last couple years that will suddenly not be getting those shiny new software releases.
While I understand why apple did this (basically, it was the only way to rescue their LAPTOP roadmap), it does shaft all the people using PPC, especially current moblie users.
One thing that local papers and media have that will be hard to replicate for free is the local beat reporting. Local media outlets need to give up on reporting national/international news feeds. They generally do a second rate job plus the conpetition is endless there. They'd be much better focusing on local stories of interest.
Most millionaires in the US are in fact first generation.
This certainly isn't true everywhere. And it is certainly true that it is harder to become rich than to say rich, but if the US is anything, it is highly mobile (poor to rich and rich to poor)
Actually trade does guarantee that the US WILL improve in terms of absolute wealth. You are correct that it doesn't imply that the wealth improvements in the US will be evenly distributed (or within any currency union for that matter). Trade involves both redistribution effect of existing jobs, income, and resources, as well as an income (or efficiency) effect. The redistribution effect tends to fall heavily on a smaller group of people, benefitting indian IT workers, business, and consumers at the expense of the former US employees for example (This is the zero sum game part) But the income effect is a small positive for everyone(positive sum game). Thus certain people benefit more than others from a particular trade, some even lose in particular cases. But it is positive TAKEN AS A WHOLE,
I hate to break it to you, but no one "had the answers" back during that 80s. Only through hindsight do we act like we knew what the "next big thing" was going to be. People said the same things then about future careers as they do now.
As a note, for all the talk bout how many jobs US manufacuring has lost to offshore outsourcing, its importance is highly inflated.
1) Technological change has obviated orders of magnitude more US manufacturing jobs than offshoring. Of course, this saved the remaining jobs from outsourcing, because the remaining jobs were less labor intensive, and thus less likely to be profitable to outsource.
1) Total US manufacuring jobs have actually grown over the last few decades, just not as quickly as other fields. The growth has come mainly from new companies and products, and the layoffs from primarily established. (For every 10,000 worker layoff by GM there were thousands of small companies hiring hundreds of workers. Ten Nucors for every US Steel if you will..)
The bottom line is this, the immediate results of trade are extremely painful for subset of people, but the results make each trading group better off as a whole. This effect compounds over time.
I didn't get the impression that Linus was mad at tridge, at least from what I read. I got the impression that McVoy saw that supporting a gratis version of BitKeeper (for the Kernel folks) was costing him more than whatever he felt was acceptable. Linus decided that rather than guilt him about it, he should be greatful for the couple years of use they got from the deal and move on to a differnt SCM system. I don't think Linus is "mad" at anyone.
Well not exactly, minimum wage law still applies with the exception of any of its specific exemptions. But salaried/managerial employees ARE exempt from overtime. So when calculating whether employers are paying minimum wage, they assume a 40 hour work week.
The only place this runs into trouble is when you want to have varying levels of access for the same set of files. (ex. one group read only and one group with read and write).
Oh, I see, they had an "unfair advantage". The first ammendment doesn't say anything about fairnesss in free speech. And I guranatee you that speech was plenty unfair in those days. Who do you think controlled the press in the late 1700s? It was certainly an even more elite club than today.
Uhhh, most of the ethanol subsidies that exist now are state ones, not federal. Though there are some renewable fuel tax credits. And the only roads the US government pays for are interstates and US highways, which are supposed to facilitate travel and transport across multiple states. Thus federal highway spending in other states redowns heavily to the benefit of people in other states, as opposed to local roads. You aren't paying for any of the local, county, or state highways with federal tax dollars. So farmer Joe's gravel road isn't being paid for with federal highway funds.
Wrong, better go look at the federal budget. Medicare, Medicaid Social Security and Defense Spending are a supermajority of the US Federal budget. (And they are even bigger if you exclude the interest payment part.) Certainly rural states "get more" per capita than densely populated states. OTOH, if we use land area as a measure, then it looks totally the opposite. I would expect large western states with relatively low population density to have more national parks, for example. But that doesn't mean that they are unfairly getting more money back than more urban states. The point is that simply looking at dollars paid in and out by state doesn't tell us a whole lot. It also matters what kinds of things the money is spent on.
"To this day I've yet to come across a "Christian" - ordained or otherwise - that truly understands and practises the teachings of Jesus Christ himself - and I really am looking."
Mirror, thy name is hypocracy. Your statement makes the same mistake that you are accusing the Christians of making (not having a perfect understanding of the teachings of Christ or living them). The fact is that no one is going to have a perfect understanding (and practice) of anything.
I would agree that lots of Christians don't have a very good understanding of what they claim to believe in. I also realize that I may be wrong, I don't think I am, but I am cognecent of that possibility. Thus while I might argue the correctness of how they view certain parts of the Bible, I would never claim perfect understanding, because that's just beyond what's humanly possible.
"It's not like everone just has to get used to higher prices - most of us will eventually HAVE to do without, because even if we CAN afford to buy a $20 gallon of gasoline, it's not available, "
That doesn't make any sense, absent some kind of government price rationing. If there isn't enough gas at 20/gal. then the price is going to rise until the amount of gas available is equal to the amount being demanded. I'd also dispute that it's just going to sneak up on us. Thats what speculators prevent. Why do you think oil is at $50 right now?
This may be true, but a lot of the comparison's I see are not apples to apples. Many of these municipal utilities, ARE indirectly subsidized. It IS clear that unregulated monopolies (whether government or private) will be less efficient than a competitive setting. The problem is, wireless removes the primary barrier to telecom competition (control of the last-mile loop). Why do we want to prop up a dying monopoly that is finally BECOMMING competitve due to changes in technology?
If you look at the articles you'd understand why I think that infant mortality and life expectancy are such poor measures. If you look at case outcomes for particular diseases, especially cancers, survival rates are much higher in the US. One of the articles addresses the problems specifically with ragards to using infant mortality as a measure of healthcare quality. Life expectancy also has similar problems, because it is determined by many things other than the quality of the medical care (such as genetics and lifestyles, etc.)
It's going to cost a whole lost more than a dollar per person-month to fund this thing. Especially if price isn't correlated to bandwidth usage and people get used to a fast connection. It's a classic illustration of the "split-the-check" problem. It's also part of the reason that routine healthcare is so expensive in the US.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, I know a lady who DOES support a family by working as a hourly worker at Walmart. She makes more than minimum wage, since she's been there probably 3-5 years. Admittedly, they don't live in a superexpensive metropolis. The family has one kid, lives in an apartment. Both she and her husband have student loans that they are paying off (he has been doing seasonal work). Yes, they have health insurance.
While removing children from the labor force will raise the wages of the parents somewhat, the raise won't be as great as the loss of income from children leaving the workforce. This is especially true since many of the jobs they would be leaving wouldn't be tied down to their geography. Higher productivity along with competition for workers is what raises wages. But cutting off the supply of child labor isn't going to magically make the labor of the adults more valuable. In that situation, much of the rise in the adult's wage would simply be inflation.
This IS the biggest problem, all of the PPC customers from the last couple years that will suddenly not be getting those shiny new software releases. While I understand why apple did this (basically, it was the only way to rescue their LAPTOP roadmap), it does shaft all the people using PPC, especially current moblie users.
.. just like the argument for international trade.
Isn't H.264 part of MPEG 4?
One thing that local papers and media have that will be hard to replicate for free is the local beat reporting. Local media outlets need to give up on reporting national/international news feeds. They generally do a second rate job plus the conpetition is endless there. They'd be much better focusing on local stories of interest.
Actually, its more true in the long run than in the short run (because the unemployed have more time to adjust to the change)
Most millionaires in the US are in fact first generation. This certainly isn't true everywhere. And it is certainly true that it is harder to become rich than to say rich, but if the US is anything, it is highly mobile (poor to rich and rich to poor)
Actually trade does guarantee that the US WILL improve in terms of absolute wealth. You are correct that it doesn't imply that the wealth improvements in the US will be evenly distributed (or within any currency union for that matter). Trade involves both redistribution effect of existing jobs, income, and resources, as well as an income (or efficiency) effect. The redistribution effect tends to fall heavily on a smaller group of people, benefitting indian IT workers, business, and consumers at the expense of the former US employees for example (This is the zero sum game part) But the income effect is a small positive for everyone(positive sum game). Thus certain people benefit more than others from a particular trade, some even lose in particular cases. But it is positive TAKEN AS A WHOLE,
As a note, for all the talk bout how many jobs US manufacuring has lost to offshore outsourcing, its importance is highly inflated.
1) Technological change has obviated orders of magnitude more US manufacturing jobs than offshoring. Of course, this saved the remaining jobs from outsourcing, because the remaining jobs were less labor intensive, and thus less likely to be profitable to outsource.
1) Total US manufacuring jobs have actually grown over the last few decades, just not as quickly as other fields. The growth has come mainly from new companies and products, and the layoffs from primarily established. (For every 10,000 worker layoff by GM there were thousands of small companies hiring hundreds of workers. Ten Nucors for every US Steel if you will..)
The bottom line is this, the immediate results of trade are extremely painful for subset of people, but the results make each trading group better off as a whole. This effect compounds over time.
I didn't get the impression that Linus was mad at tridge, at least from what I read. I got the impression that McVoy saw that supporting a gratis version of BitKeeper (for the Kernel folks) was costing him more than whatever he felt was acceptable. Linus decided that rather than guilt him about it, he should be greatful for the couple years of use they got from the deal and move on to a differnt SCM system. I don't think Linus is "mad" at anyone.
Think that's strange, try paying in treausry notes rather than the familiar federal reserve ones. :)
Well not exactly, minimum wage law still applies with the exception of any of its specific exemptions. But salaried/managerial employees ARE exempt from overtime. So when calculating whether employers are paying minimum wage, they assume a 40 hour work week.
The only place this runs into trouble is when you want to have varying levels of access for the same set of files. (ex. one group read only and one group with read and write).
Oh, I see, they had an "unfair advantage". The first ammendment doesn't say anything about fairnesss in free speech. And I guranatee you that speech was plenty unfair in those days. Who do you think controlled the press in the late 1700s? It was certainly an even more elite club than today.
Uhhh, most of the ethanol subsidies that exist now are state ones, not federal. Though there are some renewable fuel tax credits. And the only roads the US government pays for are interstates and US highways, which are supposed to facilitate travel and transport across multiple states. Thus federal highway spending in other states redowns heavily to the benefit of people in other states, as opposed to local roads. You aren't paying for any of the local, county, or state highways with federal tax dollars. So farmer Joe's gravel road isn't being paid for with federal highway funds.
Wrong, better go look at the federal budget. Medicare, Medicaid Social Security and Defense Spending are a supermajority of the US Federal budget. (And they are even bigger if you exclude the interest payment part.) Certainly rural states "get more" per capita than densely populated states. OTOH, if we use land area as a measure, then it looks totally the opposite. I would expect large western states with relatively low population density to have more national parks, for example. But that doesn't mean that they are unfairly getting more money back than more urban states. The point is that simply looking at dollars paid in and out by state doesn't tell us a whole lot. It also matters what kinds of things the money is spent on.
Mirror, thy name is hypocracy. Your statement makes the same mistake that you are accusing the Christians of making (not having a perfect understanding of the teachings of Christ or living them). The fact is that no one is going to have a perfect understanding (and practice) of anything.
I would agree that lots of Christians don't have a very good understanding of what they claim to believe in. I also realize that I may be wrong, I don't think I am, but I am cognecent of that possibility. Thus while I might argue the correctness of how they view certain parts of the Bible, I would never claim perfect understanding, because that's just beyond what's humanly possible.
You are confusing atheism with agnosticism.
That doesn't make any sense, absent some kind of government price rationing. If there isn't enough gas at 20/gal. then the price is going to rise until the amount of gas available is equal to the amount being demanded. I'd also dispute that it's just going to sneak up on us. Thats what speculators prevent. Why do you think oil is at $50 right now?
This may be true, but a lot of the comparison's I see are not apples to apples. Many of these municipal utilities, ARE indirectly subsidized. It IS clear that unregulated monopolies (whether government or private) will be less efficient than a competitive setting. The problem is, wireless removes the primary barrier to telecom competition (control of the last-mile loop). Why do we want to prop up a dying monopoly that is finally BECOMMING competitve due to changes in technology?
Can't WImax cell sizes be increased and decreased depending on the density of the area.Thus solving this problem.
If you look at the articles you'd understand why I think that infant mortality and life expectancy are such poor measures. If you look at case outcomes for particular diseases, especially cancers, survival rates are much higher in the US. One of the articles addresses the problems specifically with ragards to using infant mortality as a measure of healthcare quality. Life expectancy also has similar problems, because it is determined by many things other than the quality of the medical care (such as genetics and lifestyles, etc.)
You obviouly aren't a REAL Gentoo user!!
It's going to cost a whole lost more than a dollar per person-month to fund this thing. Especially if price isn't correlated to bandwidth usage and people get used to a fast connection. It's a classic illustration of the "split-the-check" problem. It's also part of the reason that routine healthcare is so expensive in the US.