You have things waaaay too oversimplified. Raising productivity makes goods cost less, which makes people buy more goods, which makes more jobs. And the new jobs are higher skilled and better paying. The losers are the ones who don't have any skills. So rah-rah public education, but we shouldn't hold up automation and subsidize the guys who - if they came to class at all - sat in the back and farted.
You can't really compare Iraq to Germany or Japan. Germany and Japan are both racially and culturally homogenous (or nearly so). Iraq is a bunch of separate clans and was artificially stuck together. Japan and Germany were never in any danger of a civil war after the war.
Tariffs do help prop up the wages of the factory workers, but they do so at the expense of literally everyone else in the country. Japanese cars were a godsend to the American consumer. Cheaper and more reliable, they certainly did NOT make corporate America very happy and they did not make our factory workers happy, either. But we got good cars for our money, and eventually the superior imports forced the US automakers to improve. This happened in other industries as well, and now we still produce a massive amount of stuff with a huge industrial base, but we do so much more efficiently. That means lower costs for all consumers.
I do worry about labor, though. The problem is that free trade requires (a) free movement of capital, (b) free movement of goods, and (c) free movement of labor. While we have 'a' and 'b', we most certainly do not have 'c'. This is a major imbalance that is not addressed sufficiently in NAFTA (and I suspect the PTT). I think that labor needs more emphasis in these trade agreements.
More like "oversimplification strikes again". You have to admit that it was a pretty unique circumstance, and one where the structural problems were laid bare in the 60s and 70s. Also, regarding regulation, you have to compare it to your competition. You only need to be as regulated or less regulated than your competition - there weren't many countries with a competitive telecommunications market in 1950. I think taxis are not quite as vital to the economy, but I see no reason that Uber's superior dispatching and fleet could not operate with worker protections in place.
Uber isn't always cheaper. Their original "black" service was more expensive, and yet still was cleaning up. They have a nice dispatch system and their cars are clean.
The problem is when you live in one suburb and work in another.
I'm in the same boat. Even if I brought my bike on the train to shorten the endpoints, only one train runs from my home to work in the morning, and it is about an hour and a half before I can get the kids to school. The single return train comes back far too early. The result is that I'd have to change trains and it would take over an hour to go 10 miles. It takes me 15-20 minutes in the car.
1) I can get anywhere I want with public transportation as it is right now. The problem is that it takes literally four to eight times more time (in my specific circumstances), and my time is far from free.
Agreed. This is one reason public transit is so popular in NYC - it might not be any faster than transit in other cities but driving is even slower.
One way to improve things is to make the bus immune to traffic. If you could sit on the beltway for 30 minutes in bumper-to-bumper or take the same trip in 20 on a bus in a dedicated lane, you might be more inclined to do he latter. They could even let cars in that lane for some kind of surcharge pricing to make better use of the capital investment.
I lived in NYC for almost 5 years and never saw a pressure washer in the MTA. Thank god for the 30lb rats - they at least keep the edible waste to a minimum.
This will get better with time. George Lucas, and the other people of his generation involved in making films, are products of their time. They made films based on films they had seen earlier. Certainly Star Wars is nowhere near as blatantly offensive as the films that influenced it, and the next generation of filmmakers will produce films even further detached from the older stereotypes.
A few years ago I saw "The Nutcracker" with my daughter. One of the main characters (the little girl, Clara or Marie) was played by a black ballerina. This is a fairly major sign of change - in the recent past, people would have been hung up on the fact that it is very unlikely that Dr. Stahlbaum would have a mixed race family in early 19th century Prussia. Naturally, it is also unlikely that an enchanted nutcracker would fight a mouse army, but I digress...
And when you "blink", you still get an interference pattern. Unless you "filter" the one that hits the first detector - then the pattern goes away. So no prize for you just yet.
OK, so you prefer superhero movies. To me, the Avengers or Guardians of the Galaxy movies were also fun - but similarly not liable to become classics. I think you'd have to give Christopher Nolan some props, too. He does both superhero and sci-fi.
It is trivial to observe that the placebo effect occurs with a sugar pill or with a homeopathic remedy. If there is "quantum mechanics" involved, it is almost certainly not the mechanism described by homeopathy.
Yes, I don't think he was being malevolent. I just think Lucas is not that good and fell on stereotypes he was familiar with, not even aware of what was wrong with them. Space villain? Ming the Merciless from Flash Gordon! Goofy comedic character? Blackface minstrels! Greedy slave-owning merchant? Shylock in Merchant of Venice!
I might have the direct influences wrong, but I'm pretty sure he just lifted ideas from past films without considering (or even being aware of) the ramifications of his choices.
Actually, my least favorite casting choice was Simon Pegg as Scotty. I love Simon Pegg, and still laughed at him in Star Trek... I just think he was misplaced. No one says Khan has to be Indian. He was Mexican the first time.
I hear you, and if it was just Jar-Jar I would probably write it off. But the Jewish/Arab caricature in Watto and the Japanese caricature in the Trade Federation just makes it hard to ignore.
No, no... he's not black. George Lucas simply cast a Caribbean-descended (Barbados and St. Thomas) voice actor to give him a Jamaican-flavored accent. To the most ridiculous character in the movie, who's behavior just happens to strongly resemble the blackface minstrel characters.
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Which is the point in the conversation where I need you to RTFA.
You have things waaaay too oversimplified. Raising productivity makes goods cost less, which makes people buy more goods, which makes more jobs. And the new jobs are higher skilled and better paying. The losers are the ones who don't have any skills. So rah-rah public education, but we shouldn't hold up automation and subsidize the guys who - if they came to class at all - sat in the back and farted.
You can't really compare Iraq to Germany or Japan. Germany and Japan are both racially and culturally homogenous (or nearly so). Iraq is a bunch of separate clans and was artificially stuck together. Japan and Germany were never in any danger of a civil war after the war.
Tariffs do help prop up the wages of the factory workers, but they do so at the expense of literally everyone else in the country. Japanese cars were a godsend to the American consumer. Cheaper and more reliable, they certainly did NOT make corporate America very happy and they did not make our factory workers happy, either. But we got good cars for our money, and eventually the superior imports forced the US automakers to improve. This happened in other industries as well, and now we still produce a massive amount of stuff with a huge industrial base, but we do so much more efficiently. That means lower costs for all consumers.
I do worry about labor, though. The problem is that free trade requires (a) free movement of capital, (b) free movement of goods, and (c) free movement of labor. While we have 'a' and 'b', we most certainly do not have 'c'. This is a major imbalance that is not addressed sufficiently in NAFTA (and I suspect the PTT). I think that labor needs more emphasis in these trade agreements.
More like "oversimplification strikes again". You have to admit that it was a pretty unique circumstance, and one where the structural problems were laid bare in the 60s and 70s. Also, regarding regulation, you have to compare it to your competition. You only need to be as regulated or less regulated than your competition - there weren't many countries with a competitive telecommunications market in 1950. I think taxis are not quite as vital to the economy, but I see no reason that Uber's superior dispatching and fleet could not operate with worker protections in place.
And this has nothing to do with the rest of the world's industrial base being completely destroyed 10 years earlier.
Uber isn't always cheaper. Their original "black" service was more expensive, and yet still was cleaning up. They have a nice dispatch system and their cars are clean.
Let's say you are right about the accent. How about Jar-Jar and Watto?
Serenity/Firefly were good, too. The TV show is even rewatch-worthy.
The problem is when you live in one suburb and work in another.
I'm in the same boat. Even if I brought my bike on the train to shorten the endpoints, only one train runs from my home to work in the morning, and it is about an hour and a half before I can get the kids to school. The single return train comes back far too early. The result is that I'd have to change trains and it would take over an hour to go 10 miles. It takes me 15-20 minutes in the car.
1) I can get anywhere I want with public transportation as it is right now. The problem is that it takes literally four to eight times more time (in my specific circumstances), and my time is far from free.
Agreed. This is one reason public transit is so popular in NYC - it might not be any faster than transit in other cities but driving is even slower.
One way to improve things is to make the bus immune to traffic. If you could sit on the beltway for 30 minutes in bumper-to-bumper or take the same trip in 20 on a bus in a dedicated lane, you might be more inclined to do he latter. They could even let cars in that lane for some kind of surcharge pricing to make better use of the capital investment.
I lived in NYC for almost 5 years and never saw a pressure washer in the MTA. Thank god for the 30lb rats - they at least keep the edible waste to a minimum.
This will get better with time. George Lucas, and the other people of his generation involved in making films, are products of their time. They made films based on films they had seen earlier. Certainly Star Wars is nowhere near as blatantly offensive as the films that influenced it, and the next generation of filmmakers will produce films even further detached from the older stereotypes.
A few years ago I saw "The Nutcracker" with my daughter. One of the main characters (the little girl, Clara or Marie) was played by a black ballerina. This is a fairly major sign of change - in the recent past, people would have been hung up on the fact that it is very unlikely that Dr. Stahlbaum would have a mixed race family in early 19th century Prussia. Naturally, it is also unlikely that an enchanted nutcracker would fight a mouse army, but I digress...
And when you "blink", you still get an interference pattern. Unless you "filter" the one that hits the first detector - then the pattern goes away. So no prize for you just yet.
No, I mean I enjoyed watching it. You didn't, and that's OK too.
OK, so you prefer superhero movies. To me, the Avengers or Guardians of the Galaxy movies were also fun - but similarly not liable to become classics. I think you'd have to give Christopher Nolan some props, too. He does both superhero and sci-fi.
Your theory does not explain why the interference pattern is destroyed when they start filtering the photons.
Describe the mechanism for "filtering of photons based on time of emission" and there is a Nobel Prize waiting for you.
It is trivial to observe that the placebo effect occurs with a sugar pill or with a homeopathic remedy. If there is "quantum mechanics" involved, it is almost certainly not the mechanism described by homeopathy.
Yes, I don't think he was being malevolent. I just think Lucas is not that good and fell on stereotypes he was familiar with, not even aware of what was wrong with them. Space villain? Ming the Merciless from Flash Gordon! Goofy comedic character? Blackface minstrels! Greedy slave-owning merchant? Shylock in Merchant of Venice!
I might have the direct influences wrong, but I'm pretty sure he just lifted ideas from past films without considering (or even being aware of) the ramifications of his choices.
Actually, my least favorite casting choice was Simon Pegg as Scotty. I love Simon Pegg, and still laughed at him in Star Trek... I just think he was misplaced. No one says Khan has to be Indian. He was Mexican the first time.
There was a second, and they are currently making a third.
I hear you, and if it was just Jar-Jar I would probably write it off. But the Jewish/Arab caricature in Watto and the Japanese caricature in the Trade Federation just makes it hard to ignore.
He did the Star Trek reboots... those are kind of fun.
No, no... he's not black. George Lucas simply cast a Caribbean-descended (Barbados and St. Thomas) voice actor to give him a Jamaican-flavored accent. To the most ridiculous character in the movie, who's behavior just happens to strongly resemble the blackface minstrel characters.
I just want to know how "ganjadude" was still available to a 30-year-old with a user id pushing 1 million.