When they lobby for them and buy off the politicians with campaign donations. This isn't just a case of town making a bad deal. It's widespread political corruption that's been legalized by multiple supreme & lower court rulings.
in most jurisdictions. California has some limited protections. But there's another different. Jones didn't get banned because twitter doesn't agree with him. They got banned because he was inciting violence, repeatably and to an audience that is known to act on that incitement from time to time (e.g. Abortion clinics). He violated a completely reasonable set of terms and conditions.
The equivalent would be if those guys went to the baker and asked for a cake with "Kill Bob Mueller" written on it and also the baker knew the cake was going to be the center piece to a convention of gun enthusiasts who routinely discussed assassinations...
and Alex Jones. Most of the Blood libel stuff is down now. It's preserved on Secular Talk's channel though. For the "hate in" stuff just about anything Steve Colbert made fun of will do since it tends to be the sillier stuff Jones did, but I don't really find it silly given the context (2.5 million really angry white with guns who've been crapped on economically for 20+ years watching his show every week...).
the left wing is about policy and outcomes, not ideals. The goal of the actual left, e.g. the Bernie Sanders left and the Justice Democrats (google it) is to get away from pointless identity politics used by _both_ sides to distract from the very real issues faced by the working class. Right wing economics have failed the working class time and again, and the sooner we can put this nonsense aside and focus on things like universal healthcare and college, ending the 8 wars (and counting) we're in, rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure and getting a decent life for everyone then better.
That said, our country has centuries of racial oppression and that shouldn't be ignored. But we also shouldn't ignore the reason for that oppression: money. Specifically racism in America was used to create an underclass that not only could be exploited for cheap labor but would stratify the working class into easily managed groups that the ruling class can control. Universal healthcare has gone up for a vote 3 times in American history (not counting Hilary's non-starter in the 90s and the nationalized version of "Rhomneycare" that is the ACA) and all 3 times it was shot down because the racists wouldn't let it cover races they didn't like and the progressives insisted we cover everyone.
antifa is the American equivalent of soccer hooligans. Just a bunch of Angry men. I haven't seen a lot of Black Lives Matters violence since, well, the entire point of the movement is to _stop_ violence, but I suppose it's possible. Again, if any such exists they should be prosecuted as normal.
I really, really wish those antifa schmucks would stop already, btw. The Left is way, way worse at violence than the right. They're not as well organized (what with being an anti fascism movement and all) and they're mostly just being baited by the right wing so they can be used as an excuse to crack down. Meanwhile we spent $100k a piece protecting the right wing protesters...
And Jones was fine for years until he started doing borderline incitement to violence. It doesn't help that he caters to an extreme right wing base that's been shown to act on the kind of crazy conspiracy theories he specializes in.
BTW, does anyone else think in the "two minutes of hate" from 1984 when watching Jones rant? Serious, that creeped me out more than anything he's done (yes, more than the references to blood libel whenever he criticized someone Jewish).
yes, there is a social security fund that's about to go bankrupt. It's supposed to go bankrupt. It's the fund needed to pay for the aging baby boomers who, despite all their efforts, are eventually going to die. There are fewer Gen Xers and fewer still millennials.
Yes, Social Security has some problems. That's because inflation keeps devaluing the dollar and we don't raise the hard cap on SS taxes. All we have to do to 'fix' SS is to raise the cap on what can be taxed.
But that's not the point. This is what's called "Starve the Beast". The goal here is to make SS collapse so the ruling class can pocket the money. They'll do it in stages so you don't notice. Paul Ryan's already floated the idea of ending SS for anyone under 55. He and his ilk will keep pushing that narrative. It's the same line of thinking that got us "We had to bomb the village to save it". You were never there to save the village, where you?
maybe another 2 to learn how to shoot if you need snipers. Then he's off to the trenches. Hey, it worked the last time. After all, if we blow it all up we're be back to full employment in no time rebuilding it.
I've got youtuber and twitch streamer. I'll add Crypto currency miner (I don't include the traders, they had those when I was a kid; we called them "stockbrokers"). I'm 40 and there were programmers when I was a kid, so you don't get that.
Those jobs employ very, very few full time. Meanwhile automation eliminated millions of factory jobs and is about to do away with drivers, warehouse workers and cashiers. And that's just the ones I can rattle off. Hell, I used to do IT for a cabinet maker that couldn't make cabinets. They measured your kitchen and/or closet and the CNC cut everything for them. After that it was Ikea furniture with nicer wood.
We can't all be doctors. And even if we could whose going to pay us when the jobs base collapses and with it wages? This is the same sort of nonsense I heard when the manufacturing jobs went overseas and again when the tech jobs fooled them. It was biotech last time, but this time they're not even saying what I'm supposed to retrain for...
USDA daily recommended levels are so high I couldn't possibly hit them even if I ate a perfect diet. Yet I've had blood work done and never once been low on any vitamins. And the only doctor who's ever suggested I take one is my heart doc said I should take a magnesium supplement (but I get the idea that was just to give me something to do rather than an actual doctor's order).
So it would make sense that the high levels of recommended daily allotments were coming from regulatory capture.
we've known the solutions since the American Great depression: Keep risky investment banks from mixing with safe stuff like home & car loans (e.g. "Main Street vs Wall Street"), make sure banks aren't under capitalized and require them to prove it, run demand side economics and subsidize during cyclic economic down turns, Don't fight wars except for defense because they guzzle money. There's a bit more too it, but it's nothing we haven't already figured out or that you wouldn't learn in a 4 year college economics degree.
Rent for essentials _is_ a problem. Not sure if you want to call it market distortion or not, but you won't find a lot of legitimate economists who don't think rent-seeking isn't a problem that needs solving. It's also a problem that's been solved: Government subsidized housing as needed and occasional rent controls. Develop new land as population grows, and educate your population because a well educated population doesn't grow uncontrollably (indeed, it often falls below replacement birth rates as Japan and even large parts of Europe are finding out).
We have solutions to these problems and none of them are Adam Smith's invisible hand. The only trouble is folks stopped believing in those solutions (even though they were working quite well) and the result was the 2008 crash (caused by deregulation started by Clinton & Continued by Bush Jr).
you think China isn't? This is less than a non-story. What's annoying about it is that crap like this is why we've got a perpetual arms race. It's why we've got our president talking about a space force for Pete's sake. After all, we've always been at war with Eurasia...
Middle class folks who own house and decent cars and have nice furniture in their homes probably can't relate to this, but a few books, records and some cheap Jewelry is pretty much the extent of the property most poor folks can accumulate. Having a large chunk of that become ephemeral may very well have consequences. Imagine having 20-30% of your populace feeling like they don't own anything. Conservative ideology generally comes from having something to lose. Lower income people are often very conservative as a result. Taking that away could change that political dynamic...
those kids aren't starting families (they can't afford to). That means fewer kids and more need for immigrants to keep the economy going. And don't think they haven't noticed. They're angry. Real angry. A few are demanding a new social contract with guarantees for food, shelter, healthcare, etc. But the bulk aren't. There's centuries of puritanical culture that make that a bitter pill for Americans to swallow (e.g. "If you don't work you don't eat").
If this keeps up they're going to find themselves a dictator and start wars. That's what happens when you've got a ton of angry men with no wives and no future. It's going to get real ugly...
they won't be happy until they're the middlemen making 90% on all our transactions coming and going.
FYFY.
Seriously, this is why it drives me nuts to see so many anti-Union and anti-government folks. The mega corps & investor class have built large institutions to advance their interests. Meanwhile we hear in the working class are actively trying to tear down the ones that advanced ours.
so they can negotiate better deals. Otherwise the companies with the patents will shut Uber out of the market by making direct deals with the manufacturers ala Foxconn + Apple's relationship.
and the amount of money to be had by automating away 2 million driving jobs with an average pay of $50k/year (+ taxes, benefits, training, etc) is staggering.
Self driving cars are this generation's moon landing. Ok, not quite ( it takes a government with the full support of the populace to put that much towards a goal) but it's the one thing every single nation is working towards. It will happen.
because long term somebody is going to crack down on their flagrant abuse of the term 'contractor' and eventually make them treat their employees as such. Their plan is to replace the employees before it becomes an issue. But even if they never build a self driving car they're going to need patents to defend themselves and eke out favorable license deals with..
was that we could do without cars if we had things like buses that take 2 hours to go 20 miles on a Sunday.
Cars are what I'd call an irrational rational choice. We fight approximately 8 wars, breath toxic fumes and spend a large chunk of our GDP for the sake of those cars. Plus we devote a huge mount of prime real estate to parking them (there's a researcher who calls them the deserts of the city). There is literally not enough metal on the plant to give one to everybody, almost guaranteeing some form of conflict over basic transportation. And that's before we talk about the time spent in traffic jams or the loss of life and injury from a transportation system built around amateur drivers responsible for maintaining their own vehicles.
From a purely objective standpoint they make life worse than the alternatives. But there are no alternatives (2 hour short bus rides and all). The rational thing is to build those alternatives but nobody wants to spend the money and even if they did the car companies would fight tooth and nail. Given the disadvantages it's irrational but if you can't change the system then operating within it becomes rational. It's a classic catch 22: You'd have to be crazy to do it but once you're doing it you'd have to be crazy not to.
but most of what I see are code monkeys. Those are trainable skills. There was a time when a 3-6 month stint in a community college could net you a decent salary writing code. There was a time when a company would give you on the job training to do the same. The guys I know who remember that time are in their 50s and 60s. Now you need a college degree to reboot windows PCs and occasionally troubleshoot a TCP/IP issue.
As a worker I don't really care if my country falls behind because my country's success doesn't belong to me. The companies use offshore tax havens to hide any of the benefits and monopolize the profits. We gave up on any sort of social contact here in America went all in on "supply side" economics, aka trickle down.
Again, the issue here is that the interests of the American ruling and working classes are no completely at odds with each other. This is less true in Europe & Canada where the ruling class is still held to some standard of a social contract. Here it's every man for himself. Your presence in my economy benefits the upper class, but it actively hurts the working class. Baring a huge shift in my countries politics that's not going to change. I'm well aware that's a completely messed up situation, but I have no idea how to change it. At least not on a time scale that matters to me and my family.
I got a 1060 for $270 with a 20% off coupon on top of that about 2 years ago. Nowadays I'm lucky if I can find one for $300 (assuming it's not a refurb or one of the b grade ones like PNY or eVGA). I have seen a few RX580s for 8gb though. I'm looking forward to seeing what Intel does in a few years, but they're a long way off...
but you're still lowering market rates. Supply and demand dictate that. Your presence in the market increases supply, lowering demand. It also discourages training and investment in local talent.
In more left leaning states like Canada and Germany that's not so bad. Your contributions to the economy are spread around in the form of public infrastructure, education and single payer healthcare.
The trouble with us here in America is that very, very little of our tax dollars make it back to us. More than half of them is just wars and servicing the debt from those wars. We aren't gaurnteed health care or an education for ourselves or our children. What's more since employers can access well trained people like yourself without paying the taxes to maintain higher education systems we've been cutting public college funding for 2 decades now, resulting in massive debt burdens. But you don't have a choice but to take on that burden because if you don't have an advanced degree the companies can and will hire an H1-B instead so they don't have to train...
The problem with America is that every single aspect of our lives is predicated on the quality of our jobs. Anything that gets in the way of that is a disaster for us. No, it shouldn't be that way, but it is. So that for the average American bringing in foreign labor hurts us because none of what you bring make it down to us here in the trenches. There's folks who want to change that, but so far they're in the minority.
It's an irrational system, but if you're forced to live in an irrational system then you do what can only be called rational irrational things.
their stock in trade is eyeballs. They need to ban phony eye balls or they'll get sued by their shareholders for inflating user numbers. That's literally all this is.
they're a political threat. That's the problem with the world, it's complicated. You can't just say "Russia is not a threat". That's not the entire story. But folks want a one word answer for everything. They want to go back to simpler times the never really existed...
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When they lobby for them and buy off the politicians with campaign donations. This isn't just a case of town making a bad deal. It's widespread political corruption that's been legalized by multiple supreme & lower court rulings.
in most jurisdictions. California has some limited protections. But there's another different. Jones didn't get banned because twitter doesn't agree with him. They got banned because he was inciting violence, repeatably and to an audience that is known to act on that incitement from time to time (e.g. Abortion clinics). He violated a completely reasonable set of terms and conditions.
The equivalent would be if those guys went to the baker and asked for a cake with "Kill Bob Mueller" written on it and also the baker knew the cake was going to be the center piece to a convention of gun enthusiasts who routinely discussed assassinations...
and Alex Jones. Most of the Blood libel stuff is down now. It's preserved on Secular Talk's channel though. For the "hate in" stuff just about anything Steve Colbert made fun of will do since it tends to be the sillier stuff Jones did, but I don't really find it silly given the context (2.5 million really angry white with guns who've been crapped on economically for 20+ years watching his show every week...).
the left wing is about policy and outcomes, not ideals. The goal of the actual left, e.g. the Bernie Sanders left and the Justice Democrats (google it) is to get away from pointless identity politics used by _both_ sides to distract from the very real issues faced by the working class. Right wing economics have failed the working class time and again, and the sooner we can put this nonsense aside and focus on things like universal healthcare and college, ending the 8 wars (and counting) we're in, rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure and getting a decent life for everyone then better.
That said, our country has centuries of racial oppression and that shouldn't be ignored. But we also shouldn't ignore the reason for that oppression: money. Specifically racism in America was used to create an underclass that not only could be exploited for cheap labor but would stratify the working class into easily managed groups that the ruling class can control. Universal healthcare has gone up for a vote 3 times in American history (not counting Hilary's non-starter in the 90s and the nationalized version of "Rhomneycare" that is the ACA) and all 3 times it was shot down because the racists wouldn't let it cover races they didn't like and the progressives insisted we cover everyone.
antifa is the American equivalent of soccer hooligans. Just a bunch of Angry men. I haven't seen a lot of Black Lives Matters violence since, well, the entire point of the movement is to _stop_ violence, but I suppose it's possible. Again, if any such exists they should be prosecuted as normal.
I really, really wish those antifa schmucks would stop already, btw. The Left is way, way worse at violence than the right. They're not as well organized (what with being an anti fascism movement and all) and they're mostly just being baited by the right wing so they can be used as an excuse to crack down. Meanwhile we spent $100k a piece protecting the right wing protesters...
And Jones was fine for years until he started doing borderline incitement to violence. It doesn't help that he caters to an extreme right wing base that's been shown to act on the kind of crazy conspiracy theories he specializes in.
BTW, does anyone else think in the "two minutes of hate" from 1984 when watching Jones rant? Serious, that creeped me out more than anything he's done (yes, more than the references to blood libel whenever he criticized someone Jewish).
yes, there is a social security fund that's about to go bankrupt. It's supposed to go bankrupt. It's the fund needed to pay for the aging baby boomers who, despite all their efforts, are eventually going to die. There are fewer Gen Xers and fewer still millennials.
Yes, Social Security has some problems. That's because inflation keeps devaluing the dollar and we don't raise the hard cap on SS taxes. All we have to do to 'fix' SS is to raise the cap on what can be taxed.
But that's not the point. This is what's called "Starve the Beast". The goal here is to make SS collapse so the ruling class can pocket the money. They'll do it in stages so you don't notice. Paul Ryan's already floated the idea of ending SS for anyone under 55. He and his ilk will keep pushing that narrative. It's the same line of thinking that got us "We had to bomb the village to save it". You were never there to save the village, where you?
maybe another 2 to learn how to shoot if you need snipers. Then he's off to the trenches. Hey, it worked the last time. After all, if we blow it all up we're be back to full employment in no time rebuilding it.
I've got youtuber and twitch streamer. I'll add Crypto currency miner (I don't include the traders, they had those when I was a kid; we called them "stockbrokers"). I'm 40 and there were programmers when I was a kid, so you don't get that.
Those jobs employ very, very few full time. Meanwhile automation eliminated millions of factory jobs and is about to do away with drivers, warehouse workers and cashiers. And that's just the ones I can rattle off. Hell, I used to do IT for a cabinet maker that couldn't make cabinets. They measured your kitchen and/or closet and the CNC cut everything for them. After that it was Ikea furniture with nicer wood.
We can't all be doctors. And even if we could whose going to pay us when the jobs base collapses and with it wages? This is the same sort of nonsense I heard when the manufacturing jobs went overseas and again when the tech jobs fooled them. It was biotech last time, but this time they're not even saying what I'm supposed to retrain for...
USDA daily recommended levels are so high I couldn't possibly hit them even if I ate a perfect diet. Yet I've had blood work done and never once been low on any vitamins. And the only doctor who's ever suggested I take one is my heart doc said I should take a magnesium supplement (but I get the idea that was just to give me something to do rather than an actual doctor's order).
So it would make sense that the high levels of recommended daily allotments were coming from regulatory capture.
we've known the solutions since the American Great depression: Keep risky investment banks from mixing with safe stuff like home & car loans (e.g. "Main Street vs Wall Street"), make sure banks aren't under capitalized and require them to prove it, run demand side economics and subsidize during cyclic economic down turns, Don't fight wars except for defense because they guzzle money. There's a bit more too it, but it's nothing we haven't already figured out or that you wouldn't learn in a 4 year college economics degree.
Rent for essentials _is_ a problem. Not sure if you want to call it market distortion or not, but you won't find a lot of legitimate economists who don't think rent-seeking isn't a problem that needs solving. It's also a problem that's been solved: Government subsidized housing as needed and occasional rent controls. Develop new land as population grows, and educate your population because a well educated population doesn't grow uncontrollably (indeed, it often falls below replacement birth rates as Japan and even large parts of Europe are finding out).
We have solutions to these problems and none of them are Adam Smith's invisible hand. The only trouble is folks stopped believing in those solutions (even though they were working quite well) and the result was the 2008 crash (caused by deregulation started by Clinton & Continued by Bush Jr).
you think China isn't? This is less than a non-story. What's annoying about it is that crap like this is why we've got a perpetual arms race. It's why we've got our president talking about a space force for Pete's sake. After all, we've always been at war with Eurasia...
Middle class folks who own house and decent cars and have nice furniture in their homes probably can't relate to this, but a few books, records and some cheap Jewelry is pretty much the extent of the property most poor folks can accumulate. Having a large chunk of that become ephemeral may very well have consequences. Imagine having 20-30% of your populace feeling like they don't own anything. Conservative ideology generally comes from having something to lose. Lower income people are often very conservative as a result. Taking that away could change that political dynamic...
those kids aren't starting families (they can't afford to). That means fewer kids and more need for immigrants to keep the economy going. And don't think they haven't noticed. They're angry. Real angry. A few are demanding a new social contract with guarantees for food, shelter, healthcare, etc. But the bulk aren't. There's centuries of puritanical culture that make that a bitter pill for Americans to swallow (e.g. "If you don't work you don't eat").
If this keeps up they're going to find themselves a dictator and start wars. That's what happens when you've got a ton of angry men with no wives and no future. It's going to get real ugly...
FYFY.
Seriously, this is why it drives me nuts to see so many anti-Union and anti-government folks. The mega corps & investor class have built large institutions to advance their interests. Meanwhile we hear in the working class are actively trying to tear down the ones that advanced ours.
so they can negotiate better deals. Otherwise the companies with the patents will shut Uber out of the market by making direct deals with the manufacturers ala Foxconn + Apple's relationship.
and the amount of money to be had by automating away 2 million driving jobs with an average pay of $50k/year (+ taxes, benefits, training, etc) is staggering.
Self driving cars are this generation's moon landing. Ok, not quite ( it takes a government with the full support of the populace to put that much towards a goal) but it's the one thing every single nation is working towards. It will happen.
because long term somebody is going to crack down on their flagrant abuse of the term 'contractor' and eventually make them treat their employees as such. Their plan is to replace the employees before it becomes an issue. But even if they never build a self driving car they're going to need patents to defend themselves and eke out favorable license deals with..
was that we could do without cars if we had things like buses that take 2 hours to go 20 miles on a Sunday.
Cars are what I'd call an irrational rational choice. We fight approximately 8 wars, breath toxic fumes and spend a large chunk of our GDP for the sake of those cars. Plus we devote a huge mount of prime real estate to parking them (there's a researcher who calls them the deserts of the city). There is literally not enough metal on the plant to give one to everybody, almost guaranteeing some form of conflict over basic transportation. And that's before we talk about the time spent in traffic jams or the loss of life and injury from a transportation system built around amateur drivers responsible for maintaining their own vehicles.
From a purely objective standpoint they make life worse than the alternatives. But there are no alternatives (2 hour short bus rides and all). The rational thing is to build those alternatives but nobody wants to spend the money and even if they did the car companies would fight tooth and nail. Given the disadvantages it's irrational but if you can't change the system then operating within it becomes rational. It's a classic catch 22: You'd have to be crazy to do it but once you're doing it you'd have to be crazy not to.
but most of what I see are code monkeys. Those are trainable skills. There was a time when a 3-6 month stint in a community college could net you a decent salary writing code. There was a time when a company would give you on the job training to do the same. The guys I know who remember that time are in their 50s and 60s. Now you need a college degree to reboot windows PCs and occasionally troubleshoot a TCP/IP issue.
As a worker I don't really care if my country falls behind because my country's success doesn't belong to me. The companies use offshore tax havens to hide any of the benefits and monopolize the profits. We gave up on any sort of social contact here in America went all in on "supply side" economics, aka trickle down.
Again, the issue here is that the interests of the American ruling and working classes are no completely at odds with each other. This is less true in Europe & Canada where the ruling class is still held to some standard of a social contract. Here it's every man for himself. Your presence in my economy benefits the upper class, but it actively hurts the working class. Baring a huge shift in my countries politics that's not going to change. I'm well aware that's a completely messed up situation, but I have no idea how to change it. At least not on a time scale that matters to me and my family.
I got a 1060 for $270 with a 20% off coupon on top of that about 2 years ago. Nowadays I'm lucky if I can find one for $300 (assuming it's not a refurb or one of the b grade ones like PNY or eVGA). I have seen a few RX580s for 8gb though. I'm looking forward to seeing what Intel does in a few years, but they're a long way off...
but you're still lowering market rates. Supply and demand dictate that. Your presence in the market increases supply, lowering demand. It also discourages training and investment in local talent.
In more left leaning states like Canada and Germany that's not so bad. Your contributions to the economy are spread around in the form of public infrastructure, education and single payer healthcare.
The trouble with us here in America is that very, very little of our tax dollars make it back to us. More than half of them is just wars and servicing the debt from those wars. We aren't gaurnteed health care or an education for ourselves or our children. What's more since employers can access well trained people like yourself without paying the taxes to maintain higher education systems we've been cutting public college funding for 2 decades now, resulting in massive debt burdens. But you don't have a choice but to take on that burden because if you don't have an advanced degree the companies can and will hire an H1-B instead so they don't have to train...
The problem with America is that every single aspect of our lives is predicated on the quality of our jobs. Anything that gets in the way of that is a disaster for us. No, it shouldn't be that way, but it is. So that for the average American bringing in foreign labor hurts us because none of what you bring make it down to us here in the trenches. There's folks who want to change that, but so far they're in the minority.
It's an irrational system, but if you're forced to live in an irrational system then you do what can only be called rational irrational things.
their stock in trade is eyeballs. They need to ban phony eye balls or they'll get sued by their shareholders for inflating user numbers. That's literally all this is.
they're a political threat. That's the problem with the world, it's complicated. You can't just say "Russia is not a threat". That's not the entire story. But folks want a one word answer for everything. They want to go back to simpler times the never really existed...