which is to let the gains in productivity put people out of work, drive down wages and then raise costs for the (very small) number of servants the rulers and the owners need. You're right, there will be work, but if there's very little of it and your entire quality of life depends on it then we'll all fight among ourselves for it.
Basically, the mistake you're making is you assume you're needed. You're not. There's a million, no billions just like you. Again, it's the whole 'American Exceptionalism' thing. Ya, you might not be American, but you're not immune from the sentiment...
is an idiot. Most factories that aren't run with slave labor are 90-99% machines. Look up how applesauce gets made, or sleeping bags, sometime. Hell, even with slaves Foxconn is switching to robots. We're running out work to do. My buddy drives truck for a living. 10, 15 years from now that job won't exist. Again, robots.
So, when there's not enough work to go around, what do we do? Do we let 98% starve (lazy bastards), 1% work as slaves and then 1% live like God-Kings? Do you know an alternative? I'm anxious to hear a solution that doesn't boil down to socialism.
don't know how else to put it. These are the rank and file IT jobs they're replacing, not the high end google coders. They guys they bring in from India can hack it just fine. And yeah, it takes a bit to get up to speed, but when the cost of failure is deportation you'll put in 80 hours/week until you do.
This argument that it costs more to bring in H1-B's is the same sort of silly 'American Emotionalism' that was used to kill our manufacturing industry without complaint. It's OK, right. We don't have to worry. The jobs'll come back as soon as the Job Creators realize how great we are. It doesn't work that way man... it just doesn't. I'm sorry...
There's nothing wrong with a progressive tax code with incentives. It does a lot of good. Nobody likes taxes because nobody likes to pay for anything, so it's always in fashion to say it's just broken. All we need to do is go back to a 90% top tax bracket (don't forget, you ONLY pay that 90 % on the amount OVER a certain threshold. So a billionaire pays the same as you do), and start raising the capital gains.
I keep hearing the job creators will stop making jobs if we do this. Well, they didn't do it in the 40s and 50s when we did. They're not going to stop making money just because you tax them. Making money is all they do. They're in investor class. The ruling class. What the hell else are they going to do?
the trouble with simple is it becomes too easy to stop all progress, because you only have one point of attack. Take California. They simplified things by putting a rule in place that any tax increase requires a 2/3rds majority. Simple, right? Well, the same wasn't true for a tax cut, and as a result the state is rapidly going broke. You've got a single point of failure. If you're rich and gunning for tax cuts at the expense of essential services (that you still get since you'll lobby to keep them in your area) then simplifying things gives you one place to sling your lobbying at.
Those "loopholes" do a lot of good. The EIC is a welfare program masquerading as tax cut, but without it we'd have millions more homeless (which, fyi, cost more to deal with unless you start rounding them up for forced work camps, which most Americans don't have the stomach to do). I guess what I'm saying is, be careful what your wish for...
EIC isn't a tax benefit. It's a welfare program for people that make so little they would be homeless otherwise. Most EIC recipients are getting more than they're paying in. It's a counterweight for massive unemployment and wage suppression brought on by huge increases in productivity and lost manufacturing jobs.
Health care deductions are similar. The insane cost of health care necessitated massive subsidies in the form of tax subsidies. Companies benefit more from those subsidies then middle income earners ever will. But again, it's a form of indirect socialism meant to prevent large social upheavals.
Now take a billionaire. He's actually the poorest man on earth. That's because he claims virtually no income. Instead, he uses his connections with banks and the US Treasury (staffed almost exclusively by former employees of Goldman Sachs, google it) to get loans at below market rates (4, 3, even 2 %). He then lives off these loans until the day he dies and wills his estate out. This is how the 1% avoid taxes by and large. Everything else is nickle and dimes.
The money is moved overseas (cayman islands) not so much to avoid taxes (they've already done that), but to make sure American don't realize why the "Greatest Nation on Earth" is suddenly broke (hint: it's not welfare, food stamps 1/1000th of our deficit, let alone our budget. Again, google it). The money can't be left sitting in American Banks because it becomes too obvious where it went. Conservative estimates put the figure at 10 Trillion, could be as high as 30 Trillion. We could pay off our national debt with that, let alone our meager deficit.
PCs need to be replaced with a new model every 3-4 years -> Gaming PC's do, but not for the sake of a new model. All that heat fries your mobo and graphics card. You're $400 gaming PC might not have this trouble though.
More home-theater-appropriate cases are available. -> You won't build a $400 gaming PC that is a) quite and b) as fast as a current gen game console. Those quite cases alone are $200.
PCs support USB gamepads -> PC's support Microsoft XBox gaming pads. It's hell to set up anything else because there's no standard for button numbering. I've pushed button 1 on my controller and had it show up as button 3 in game. Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit was particularly nightmarish to configure. XBox Controller Emulator helps this though.
Why did the Nintendo DS replace the Game Boy Advance after about 3 1/2 years -> The last GBA game was Final Fantasy IV Advanced, released 2006. So about 5 years, give or take.
because the 'cloud' let's you put all the labor where ever it's cheapest. I seem to remember a fellow named Marx talking about that, but all anyone can remember about him is two or three dictators borrowed his rhetoric for their pogroms.
since it has ethernet. I've never heard anyone say what I should use for a file server that's a)under $200 bucks, b) works and c) it's an old PC drawing 45 watts non stop.
productivity is through the roof in America. We're working our asses off. Take most Americans out of the job and they have no idea what to do with themselves. We might not work as hard as a Chinese man who is literally fighting for his life when he goes to work, but then again if you own a restaurant you do. And most of my coworkers are doing tons of side work. They rent properties (and maintain them themselves), do support work on the side, etc etc. My neighbors all have second jobs or are in school (albeit diploma mills, but what can you do?). Americans work like demons. You're just being mean-spirited....:(
our riches are built on two weak neighbors and an ocean that kept the war out in the 1930s/40s. We were the only ones that didn't get blasted into the stone age when mechanized warfare happened. The middle class (which is largely what people mean when they say 'our riches') was an accident following WWII. Pretty much everyone fought in the war and they came back war heroes entitled to a bright future. That plus fear of communists seizing your factory kept good paying jobs here. Well the baby boomers are retired and the current war vets are coming home to Walmart jobs. The US isn't vibrant, it's rapidly dying as a bunch of ppl with low self esteem and the opposite of an entitlement complex race to the bottom.
I mean that. So it doesn't matter too much what profession you're in. Doctors & Lawyers still do OK, but if you've got the resources to go into that (money, unnatural brain power and/or you get by fine on 4 hours/night sleep) then you're in the top 1% of workers. The reason you hear so much bitching from the other 99% is we're becoming superfluous, unnecessary. Robots and computers are replacing us, and there's a sizable portion that say just let us all die. Hell, a sizable portion of that 99% says let the rest die (cognitive dissonance).
and they live and die on the charisma and connections of the owner, not on the quality of the techs. Customers can't tell a good tech from a bad one, but when they're pissed off a likable owner keeps the contract.
dying business. The core of IT is viruses, failing hardware and codemonkying (e.g. simple, lego style programming as opposed to the stuff that's basically just really hard math). Assuming you're not a math guy that just happens to have a Philosophy degree, you're looking at one of those 3 core things. Now let me explain why they're dead ends.
The bot nets got too big for their britches. Microsoft started tracking them (cheap) and sending the American DOJ (expensive, but free for Microsoft) out to get them. Virus removal work has been plummeting ever since. Hardware is about 50 to 70% longer lived than 10 years ago, due mostly to cooler running chips. As for codemonkying, good luck competing with cheap offshore labor.
There are still jobs, but they're few and far between, and many go to Visa applicants. Your wages will be low, your hours long and you'll be on call for the rest of your life.
IT as a profession is dead unless the gov't steps in for some protection. I thought of running a lobbying group (god knows Unions are dead), but there's too many "independent thinkers" and they're basically divided and conquered. For your own well being get the hell out of IT.
more or less. A closet maker that used a CNC machine to do everything. They send a guy out, he measures your closet space, they put the figures in and it cuts the wood. From there it's no different than Ikea furniture. A friend did their IT, and couldn't figure out why the freaked out so much when the computers went down. Until he realized that nobody there know the first thing about woodworking. Accountants do it to now. Doctors too
When I was a kid they talked about the coming of expert systems. Databases that told you how to do anything. They're here, and they make us all pretty powerless...
What makes you think they'll be a revolution? The rich have trained armies with unlimited weapons on their side. The poor have low caliber semi-autos they can barely shoot. Also, the poor tend to just take it. I live 2 blocks from a ridiculously expensive neighborhood, I'm in low rent housing for H1-Bs, and not 2 miles away there's slums I wouldn't walk in at night. The poor keep their misery to themselves. They're convinced they deserve it. Hell, Mitt Romney came out and said it was wrong of 47% to think they're entitled to food, housing and health care and nobody even noticed. They were just made at being dismissed.
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what's to keep the world from becoming one big North Korea, where a few ultra wealthy have use the military to keep everything to themselves...
paid like shit because there's 10 million guys just like them gunning for their jobs.
No, no you don't. If there was the slightest chance you wouldn't be posting to /. :P...
which is to let the gains in productivity put people out of work, drive down wages and then raise costs for the (very small) number of servants the rulers and the owners need. You're right, there will be work, but if there's very little of it and your entire quality of life depends on it then we'll all fight among ourselves for it.
Basically, the mistake you're making is you assume you're needed. You're not. There's a million, no billions just like you. Again, it's the whole 'American Exceptionalism' thing. Ya, you might not be American, but you're not immune from the sentiment...
is an idiot. Most factories that aren't run with slave labor are 90-99% machines. Look up how applesauce gets made, or sleeping bags, sometime. Hell, even with slaves Foxconn is switching to robots. We're running out work to do. My buddy drives truck for a living. 10, 15 years from now that job won't exist. Again, robots.
So, when there's not enough work to go around, what do we do? Do we let 98% starve (lazy bastards), 1% work as slaves and then 1% live like God-Kings? Do you know an alternative? I'm anxious to hear a solution that doesn't boil down to socialism.
don't know how else to put it. These are the rank and file IT jobs they're replacing, not the high end google coders. They guys they bring in from India can hack it just fine. And yeah, it takes a bit to get up to speed, but when the cost of failure is deportation you'll put in 80 hours/week until you do.
This argument that it costs more to bring in H1-B's is the same sort of silly 'American Emotionalism' that was used to kill our manufacturing industry without complaint. It's OK, right. We don't have to worry. The jobs'll come back as soon as the Job Creators realize how great we are. It doesn't work that way man... it just doesn't. I'm sorry...
I cried at the end of Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing.
There's nothing wrong with a progressive tax code with incentives. It does a lot of good. Nobody likes taxes because nobody likes to pay for anything, so it's always in fashion to say it's just broken. All we need to do is go back to a 90% top tax bracket (don't forget, you ONLY pay that 90 % on the amount OVER a certain threshold. So a billionaire pays the same as you do), and start raising the capital gains.
I keep hearing the job creators will stop making jobs if we do this. Well, they didn't do it in the 40s and 50s when we did. They're not going to stop making money just because you tax them. Making money is all they do. They're in investor class. The ruling class. What the hell else are they going to do?
the trouble with simple is it becomes too easy to stop all progress, because you only have one point of attack. Take California. They simplified things by putting a rule in place that any tax increase requires a 2/3rds majority. Simple, right? Well, the same wasn't true for a tax cut, and as a result the state is rapidly going broke. You've got a single point of failure. If you're rich and gunning for tax cuts at the expense of essential services (that you still get since you'll lobby to keep them in your area) then simplifying things gives you one place to sling your lobbying at.
Those "loopholes" do a lot of good. The EIC is a welfare program masquerading as tax cut, but without it we'd have millions more homeless (which, fyi, cost more to deal with unless you start rounding them up for forced work camps, which most Americans don't have the stomach to do). I guess what I'm saying is, be careful what your wish for...
EIC isn't a tax benefit. It's a welfare program for people that make so little they would be homeless otherwise. Most EIC recipients are getting more than they're paying in. It's a counterweight for massive unemployment and wage suppression brought on by huge increases in productivity and lost manufacturing jobs.
Health care deductions are similar. The insane cost of health care necessitated massive subsidies in the form of tax subsidies. Companies benefit more from those subsidies then middle income earners ever will. But again, it's a form of indirect socialism meant to prevent large social upheavals.
Now take a billionaire. He's actually the poorest man on earth. That's because he claims virtually no income. Instead, he uses his connections with banks and the US Treasury (staffed almost exclusively by former employees of Goldman Sachs, google it) to get loans at below market rates (4, 3, even 2 %). He then lives off these loans until the day he dies and wills his estate out. This is how the 1% avoid taxes by and large. Everything else is nickle and dimes.
The money is moved overseas (cayman islands) not so much to avoid taxes (they've already done that), but to make sure American don't realize why the "Greatest Nation on Earth" is suddenly broke (hint: it's not welfare, food stamps 1/1000th of our deficit, let alone our budget. Again, google it). The money can't be left sitting in American Banks because it becomes too obvious where it went. Conservative estimates put the figure at 10 Trillion, could be as high as 30 Trillion. We could pay off our national debt with that, let alone our meager deficit.
PCs have noisy fans -> Yes, significantly
PCs need to be replaced with a new model every 3-4 years -> Gaming PC's do, but not for the sake of a new model. All that heat fries your mobo and graphics card. You're $400 gaming PC might not have this trouble though.
More home-theater-appropriate cases are available. -> You won't build a $400 gaming PC that is a) quite and b) as fast as a current gen game console. Those quite cases alone are $200.
PCs support USB gamepads -> PC's support Microsoft XBox gaming pads. It's hell to set up anything else because there's no standard for button numbering. I've pushed button 1 on my controller and had it show up as button 3 in game. Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit was particularly nightmarish to configure. XBox Controller Emulator helps this though.
Why did the Nintendo DS replace the Game Boy Advance after about 3 1/2 years -> The last GBA game was Final Fantasy IV Advanced, released 2006. So about 5 years, give or take.
socialism!
because the 'cloud' let's you put all the labor where ever it's cheapest. I seem to remember a fellow named Marx talking about that, but all anyone can remember about him is two or three dictators borrowed his rhetoric for their pogroms.
good luck with that. Maybe if they didn't have all those armies of well trained soldiers with machine guns...
since it has ethernet. I've never heard anyone say what I should use for a file server that's a)under $200 bucks, b) works and c) it's an old PC drawing 45 watts non stop.
productivity is through the roof in America. We're working our asses off. Take most Americans out of the job and they have no idea what to do with themselves. We might not work as hard as a Chinese man who is literally fighting for his life when he goes to work, but then again if you own a restaurant you do. And most of my coworkers are doing tons of side work. They rent properties (and maintain them themselves), do support work on the side, etc etc. My neighbors all have second jobs or are in school (albeit diploma mills, but what can you do?). Americans work like demons. You're just being mean-spirited.... :(
our riches are built on two weak neighbors and an ocean that kept the war out in the 1930s/40s. We were the only ones that didn't get blasted into the stone age when mechanized warfare happened. The middle class (which is largely what people mean when they say 'our riches') was an accident following WWII. Pretty much everyone fought in the war and they came back war heroes entitled to a bright future. That plus fear of communists seizing your factory kept good paying jobs here. Well the baby boomers are retired and the current war vets are coming home to Walmart jobs. The US isn't vibrant, it's rapidly dying as a bunch of ppl with low self esteem and the opposite of an entitlement complex race to the bottom.
I mean that. So it doesn't matter too much what profession you're in. Doctors & Lawyers still do OK, but if you've got the resources to go into that (money, unnatural brain power and/or you get by fine on 4 hours/night sleep) then you're in the top 1% of workers. The reason you hear so much bitching from the other 99% is we're becoming superfluous, unnecessary. Robots and computers are replacing us, and there's a sizable portion that say just let us all die. Hell, a sizable portion of that 99% says let the rest die (cognitive dissonance).
and they live and die on the charisma and connections of the owner, not on the quality of the techs. Customers can't tell a good tech from a bad one, but when they're pissed off a likable owner keeps the contract.
dying business. The core of IT is viruses, failing hardware and codemonkying (e.g. simple, lego style programming as opposed to the stuff that's basically just really hard math). Assuming you're not a math guy that just happens to have a Philosophy degree, you're looking at one of those 3 core things. Now let me explain why they're dead ends.
The bot nets got too big for their britches. Microsoft started tracking them (cheap) and sending the American DOJ (expensive, but free for Microsoft) out to get them. Virus removal work has been plummeting ever since. Hardware is about 50 to 70% longer lived than 10 years ago, due mostly to cooler running chips. As for codemonkying, good luck competing with cheap offshore labor.
There are still jobs, but they're few and far between, and many go to Visa applicants. Your wages will be low, your hours long and you'll be on call for the rest of your life.
IT as a profession is dead unless the gov't steps in for some protection. I thought of running a lobbying group (god knows Unions are dead), but there's too many "independent thinkers" and they're basically divided and conquered. For your own well being get the hell out of IT.
more or less. A closet maker that used a CNC machine to do everything. They send a guy out, he measures your closet space, they put the figures in and it cuts the wood. From there it's no different than Ikea furniture. A friend did their IT, and couldn't figure out why the freaked out so much when the computers went down. Until he realized that nobody there know the first thing about woodworking. Accountants do it to now. Doctors too
When I was a kid they talked about the coming of expert systems. Databases that told you how to do anything. They're here, and they make us all pretty powerless...
I don't lead $@!^. I'm barely getting by. I think the phrase you're looking for is "Digging our own graves".
What makes you think they'll be a revolution? The rich have trained armies with unlimited weapons on their side. The poor have low caliber semi-autos they can barely shoot. Also, the poor tend to just take it. I live 2 blocks from a ridiculously expensive neighborhood, I'm in low rent housing for H1-Bs, and not 2 miles away there's slums I wouldn't walk in at night. The poor keep their misery to themselves. They're convinced they deserve it. Hell, Mitt Romney came out and said it was wrong of 47% to think they're entitled to food, housing and health care and nobody even noticed. They were just made at being dismissed.
you think the moon landings were faked, too?
if nobody's poor?