Perhaps. It's a debatable topic considering many factors, those being (1) how many people are doing it, (2) how much pollution natgas or oil burners and electric power plants are producing, and last but hardly least, (3) what you face otherwise when "forced" to buy into the natgas/electic/oil system.
Clean air is a great idea. Everyone will have to pay for it, of course, not just the individuals who are unable to get pollution credits or tax abatements.
That is the free market without government regulation.
Soooo... I can buy drugs for low prices across the border in Canada, then re-sell them for a slightly higher price here in America, to compete with the high native prices? After all, I'm free from government regulation in such matters, right? *cough*
Firstly, stop spending. Cell phone? Ditch it. SUV? Sell it. Renting videos? Get a friggin' library card.
Secondly, spend smartly. High heating bills? Install a wood stove. Eating out at restaurants? Home cooked meals, Bub.
Thirdly, let your Congresscritters know that you are getting militant about this outsourcing/ offshoring shit.
And Fourthly, get involved in local politics. I'm sure your area is gearing up to tax the bejeezus out of you since like any government, they are unable to control spending after a period of good income.
Let us know how it pans out. I went from being so poor that my toilet froze, to having 5-digit savings. If I can do it, you can too.
Your end sentence sums it up. It wouldn't matter all that much if you could grow your own food, cut your own firewood, and raise a wind turbine for electricity... all without the taxman showing up with a bigger bucket every fucking fiscal quarter, driven by scared yuppies who vote up property taxes every time from their dingy little apartments. Too many people have been crowded into the the areas of cities and suburbs (which are just cities spread over the landscape like butter) which are dense with dependencies that are resolved with MONEY.
work can be done in lab that can be built anywhere
work results can be shipped anywhere
Every time I hear some Republican squawk about retraining and higher education, I just have to laugh. Biotech will be outsourced and offshored like everything else with such a mobile and educated workbase. We'd better fuck the "free market" before it fucks us.
I can see this wonderful "free market" in the length of the unemployment lines in Toledo, Ohio. I can equally see it from the abandoned factories that now require public funds for cleanup.
The free market is actually for the poor, while the wealthy roll in staunch socialism. The highest practice of business nowadays is to socialize their costs while privatizing their profits. Anecdotally, one maroon in Toledo lamented in the newspaper that the city council's rejection of his tax abatement (a rare event, to be sure) meant that the council was "standing in the way of the venture". Apparently, spending his own money for rent, salaries and taxes was too much for the poor dear to handle.
It was fairly amusing to watch the airlines run to the Congress with their hats in their hands (bowl up). It was also quite funny to watch the media play this down as necessary.
Which is why I said "Steal And Run" more fits what's going on than capitalism (since I'm obviously a subscriber to the Hubbard school).
If we had more citizen involvement in government, there may well be less of this crony capitalism. But since folks are working longer hours... you can see what an uphill battle it is.
Hypercapitalism. Learn it, love it. With tax abatements happening as a matter of course, and the dumping of more tax burdens upon individuals, we are going to see a lot more hypercapitalism before this is all over. America's white history started out hypercapitalistically, with landed gentry commanding land grants that the old Kings of Europe could only gawk at. We can easily return to those times. People are getting used to being deeply in debt. Like I implied, a $300K home in these times of inflated prices and deflating careers will never be paid off by the buyer. Jefferson warned us that the monied interests could drive us into slavery. We've reached that point.
There is an old style of capitalism, noted by Elbert Hubbard, which he defined as some sort of inescapable consequence of men having savings and homes. You may note that savings and homes are not the modern goals -- and don't bother arguing that a $300K pile of lumber in an outsourcing environment constitutes a "home" -- hence I call what we have "capitalism" but it's really something far different... probably something on the order of Steal And Run.
The old style capitalism said nothing about regulation. Which is why it's an evil thing. A society of fucking individuals isn't a society at all. The state has a right to regulate my property. Why? Because I could be storing explosives on it. Similarly, many things done in the name of enterprise should be regulated since they have direct social effect.
The new style of capitalism wants to be free of all regulation as well as taxation (which can be called regulation for the scope of my argument).
And the capitalism practiced by the elite is a whole other bucket of worms entirely. It wants to be free of all law. In short, it wants nothing to do with the societies it inherently affects. It wholly merits the term "hypercapitalism".
I'd be the first to jump up and call the EPA the "Employment Prevention Agency", but there must be some way to force the businessmen to stop dumping PCBs into our drinking water. Force. Direct force... like guys with guns. And history well shows the need for guys with guns since the man who dumps a toxin into a river is a just a criminal asshole who needs to eat a bullet. (BTW, I'd be happy to volunteer to do the shooting.)
If you've a better idea (and leave the free-market slogans at the door... things "getting better in the long term" are pointless since people don't eat in the long term -- they eat 3 times a day) then let's hear it. Your assertions of capitalism combined with some form of social welfare sound OK. I'd still like to bring these topics to the fore; for instance, I'd received foodstamps before, but the agency had no mechanism for returning that money once I had returned to prosperity. Literally, I offered to pay them back, but there was no account to deposit into. Some years later, the agency now does some sort of time-for-stamps program, in which you do some public service like cleaning up litter in exchange for your foodstamps.* Welfare should be involved and right-sized... much like capitalism should be, but isn't, since it's become a frenzied scrabbling for wealth which is just socked away in tax havens.
* In much the same way, any government grant or bailout of an industry should receive a return of value... stock, property deeds, etc. Like naked socialism or capitalism, the Export-Import Bank is just evil.
I'm all for letting the power of government come down on the company that dumps toxic waste, yes, you betcha. Regulating such things is for the public good over private profit.
Socialism and capitalism by themselves are quite evil. America had a very functional mixture of the two, but that was an impediment to minting more millionaires.
Nobody goes back for a second helping before everyone gets a first share. If we dare to call ourselves a civilization, we can and must take care of our people first over collections of wealth.
Hear, hear. Cities are a bad place to continue concentrating people.
People went into the cities for money, to survive in an increasingly money-based economy. And once you're in the city, try growing your own food. Try owning and practicing with weapons.
The rural model of America was not a bad one. But from the standpoint of hypercapitalism, it was just awful. People who can grow their own food and hoist their own wind turbines are not dependents. When they are spread out into communities, they can make their own property laws. And of course, piping services to them is expensive and threatens profits.
If corporations have their druthers, we'd all be hooked up together like people in the Matrix, where the costs of service are minimized and the profit-taking per person is maximized. And you'd exist in a gel-filled tank, essentially a serial-numbered piece of corporate property.
That's what a city apartment essentially is: a Matrix life-support tank.
It is possible to be be an individual and care about your fellows. But that's gone entirely out of fashion in America, and the abuse is just picking up steam.
America had a period of sociocapitalism: a libertine market with government regulation. But hypercapitalism arose and essentially bought the government, while the people are drugged with entertainments of all kinds. They ARE going to wake up slaves in the continent their fathers conquered, as Thomas Jefferson predicted. They are slaves now... commonly running 2-person incomes just to support a home.
I care about my fellows, which is why it is a daily pain to watch hypercapitalism swallow more of America. More sensible socialism is needed. Which is why I'd like to move to a country like yours. (Switzerland is my first choice.)
P.S. Free trade is a scam for moving capital around the world freely from the constraints (i.e. taxation) of governments. I'm sure both sides in each transaction DO gain... as long as each side is a multinational corporation with more ways to hide income than you've had hot meals.
Have you ever wondered why telecommuting hasn't taken hold, while outsourcing/offshoring has?
It's because the executives of companies hate their workforce. Spite and loathing are the basic forces in the laws of executive motion.
Telecommuting -- as I saw it happening in Massachusetts in the 1990s -- became a method for politicially-attuned managers and engineers to avoid work. The rest of the folks had to get into cars, trains and buses to show up to a company building.
Sure, we could be transforming millions of jobs into telecommuting jobs of many shades. But the companies have jumped from letting favorites take advantage of it, to taking the next, much higher level of advantage: outsource/offshore. Instead of letting you do the job from home, they took the job away entirely and gave it to someone who makes at most 20% of the wage.
There are several reasons why executives never wanted to bother with telecommuting.
First, it required a review and perhaps upgrade of the telecomm facilities in the workers' homes. With flaky phone lines, substandard computers, and no power backup, the home-based infrastructure is on average insufficient for business needs. Compare this to a $4 million company building; just issue the specs, pay the construction company, and it's done. Well, at least it takes up less executive time.
Second, telecommuting meant the workers will be out of contact with management. This meant several things. Literally, the executive could not walk amongst his Empire and bask in the glow of his busy little hens. Also, there was always the chance that someone at home was slacking off, and that could not be tolerated -- slacking is only for the company elite. Finally, when a manager wanted to get ahold of a worker, they had to suffer the delay of calling them into the corporate HQ, or the humiliation of going to the worker's home.
Telecommuting: It's one of America's yuppie scams. I agree with your intentions, but the hypercapitalism and cronyism of modern America makes telecommuting impossible to any meaningful degree. Gasoline could climb to $5/gal, and companies will still require workers to drive to work (while they issue the executives company cars and gas charge cards).
Loyal Dupe. Works to layoff others just to keep his own job; he'll lose it anyway but he doesn't know it yet.
Sad Sack. Works to layoff others, but knows he's losing his own job too.
Little Fucker. Works to layoff others, and knows he'll survive the cuts.
Hatchet Man. Works to layoff others, and will move on to other divisions and companies doing the same thing, catching the wind with golden parachutes so often he qualifies for skydiving hours.
I am noticing that wages are being "adjusted" through the use of the pink slip. This is likely to happen to myself very soon. In fact, it's also likely that my bank will offload all the long-time IT workers onto an outsource company, just to reduce a 25-year man's 5 weeks of vacation to 2 weeks, to remove his profit sharing, etc. That won't affect me at all since I'm relatively young, but if my wage is dropped to what the rest of the area offers (8-10 bucks per hour) then I must leave and seek something else.
This isn't the first time this kind of thing has happened. I arrived in Massachusetts in the early 1990s, and found myself taking software-testing jobs away from folks who were earning twice what what I was getting... and as a single guy with few expenses, I was getting $25-$35/hr, which was a lot. So, once kicked in the balls in Toledo, I can always leave and try to get the "impossibly low" wages offered by year 2004 companies in American regions where the economy isn't dead, which as a single guy with few expenses, should be a good amount of money.
I never expect to have a home, wife or children... if I expect to have savings. That's a terrible state to put anyone in. Which is why I feel for the 25-year guys who are losing their benefits packages and eventually their salaries.
About 2 months ago, 3 workers died on the bridge construction over the river here in Toledo. They are the invisible people who have no appearance in the public respect at all. They helped to build a bridge which will be used by thousands of people and vehicles each day for 100 years.
Every bridge that's built, every medicine that's formulated, and every plan that's drafted, make the entire civilization move onward. The TV that people can watch their beloved sports stars on is produced and powered by a good many more people having nothing to do with sports.
So... sorry to burst your bubble. I wasn't talking about PERCEPTION. I was talking about TRUTH. It doesn't matter how many millions admire J.Lo... she has little real effect upon their lives when compared to the technology and culture that supplies power, food and materials.
In short, turn off that TV and read a fucking book for a change.
Former employees say morale wasn't helped by Corrado's first presentation to the IT group, in which they say he proclaimed, "Come in every day and expect to be fired." Intended to inspire the troops to greater effort, the talk backfired, says another former employee.
Although the quote is probably out of context, telling people they should expect to be fired at any time is probably a motivational technique learned in today's MBA environment. Force and fear doesn't even work well with prisoners. So why do MBAs and other assorted managerial parasites think they work for tech?
Newsflash for Managers {tm}: People expecting to be fired, will make their own plans for their futures instead of working 100% at your projects. Like, duh, eh?
This is only the beginning. America is entering an era of overextended finances and the power of law will be brought down upon the heads of those unable to defend themselves against it. Everything in sight will be taxed; businesses will flee even more to areas (perhaps called "Free Enterprise Zones") which hold back the tide of taxes. The thing that must happen to control it all is restriction on public spending -- but that won't happen since those expenses have become the new profit centers of the businesses who have attained strong control of the legal apparatus.
My area has been ramping up taxation for the last 4 years. They are proposing double-taxing for things like garbage collection (i.e. there's already a general tax fund for it, but they want to add a household fee). There's no end in sight since they have no clue that you cannot tax yourself out of a dead economy. Add in the frankly moronic voter who understands even less, and you have a real catastrophe brewing.
Funny how we have this big bad standing army to protect us and the only thing it ever seems to be doing is policing other countries that can't solve their own problems and invading foreign nations.
Why, the next thing we know, you're going to point out that cruise missiles and carrier groups are not defensive weapons... oh, waitaminnut.
On the serious side, it's sad that the vast majority of Americans don't realize that their military is mostly a mercenary force setup for attacking other countries. It's happening literally at this very second in the Middle East. While Reagan was talking about the "Evil Empire" of the Soviet Union, America was a well established Empire... but Americans didn't want to admit it. Credit where credit's due: I'm seeing the term "empire" in more contexts now. At least honesty of a sort is emerging.
In academia, I assume that work is under a commons. But in business, work is private in order to exploit and control profits.
I can see it now: your company submits a patent, and the patent gets reviewed by "peers" (i.e. officers, scientists and engineers from other companies). These peers get a review of their competitor's work, turn down the patent, then file their own immediately by the magic of cut-n-paste.
I happen to know a company who was subject to just this kind of thing. They asked the government to evaluate their new material (which may have been part of the SBIR process), which the gov unfortunately submitted to their competitors (who were tightly connected to the government agency) for review. For those who are wondering what's so terrible with that; well, it's illegal... and from that point, immoral. If you want a review of your competitor's work, be honest and ask to see it via a lab or factory tour.
Wasn't there some article on K5 about a scam of selling speakers from a van? Buying (likely) stolen goods and getting a Radio Shack cheap speaker (or a box of bricks), is about on the same level of this. We should not expect anything but people wailing in misery when the spamlords fail to produce the payments allegedly promised.
That aside, you gotta admire the pluck of the spamlords. They're preying on the weakness of ignorant hope currently infecting the middle and lower classes. "Just leave your comptuer on! Eventually you'll get weekly checks!" Multilevel marketing schemes have planted their seeds in this fertile ground for ages, and have continued to harvest their ill-gotten fruit.
We're going to see a whole lot more of this. You just can't underestimate the stupidity and desperation of the public.
Making any test more difficult is going to fall disproportionately on those who are born into a system of disadvantage. Hence, the poor, and further hence racial minorities.
My area has inner-city grade schools with large Black populations with single- and low-double-digit percentages who pass the mandatory testing regimes. Hell, here Whites alone only graduate High School at a 46% rate. For Hispanics, that becomes about 40% and for Blacks it becomes about 30%.
Do you think that these young Blacks are going to grow up to understand traffic law and seek overall driving skill from this educational basis?
Which is why I said "in theory". Anything that casts a minority into a bad light can be construed as racially-motivated action. That's not just my opinion... that's established legal practice. The increasing of testing standards will unavoidably target the disadvantaged, and usually leads to class action lawsuits which drain away public wealth into the private legal class.
If you know a better way, then do speak up. I'm mystified myself about how to clear all this mess up.
Making driver tests more difficult always takes the risk of crossing racial lines. (At least, that's my theory.) And it would take an impossibly strong government to resist the class action lawsuit that would follow. Which is probably why many things like driving tests reach a certain, low level to be universally applicable.
Inspections that retire the old and worn-out cars is always an attack on the poor. Although it's sensible to say "they shouldn't be driving that heap", there's the problem of "they need it to get to their $6.50/hr job".
Cops are generally more expensive overall than automated systems like cameras... especially when said cameras are actually subsidized by the manufacturer when they install them for "free" and then take a % of the resulting fines. Adding cops (often unionized) is always a point of hesitation for a city.
And finally...
Changing away from oil/gasoline at this point is likely to require a comprehensive set of assassinations amongst the American Oil Barons, particularly the Bush family. In short, don't hold your breath.
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Perhaps. It's a debatable topic considering many factors, those being (1) how many people are doing it, (2) how much pollution natgas or oil burners and electric power plants are producing, and last but hardly least, (3) what you face otherwise when "forced" to buy into the natgas/electic/oil system.
Clean air is a great idea. Everyone will have to pay for it, of course, not just the individuals who are unable to get pollution credits or tax abatements.
That is the free market without government regulation.
... I can buy drugs for low prices across the border in Canada, then re-sell them for a slightly higher price here in America, to compete with the high native prices? After all, I'm free from government regulation in such matters, right? *cough*
Soooo
That's a good rant. Now do something about it.
Firstly, stop spending. Cell phone? Ditch it. SUV? Sell it. Renting videos? Get a friggin' library card.
Secondly, spend smartly. High heating bills? Install a wood stove. Eating out at restaurants? Home cooked meals, Bub.
Thirdly, let your Congresscritters know that you are getting militant about this outsourcing/ offshoring shit.
And Fourthly, get involved in local politics. I'm sure your area is gearing up to tax the bejeezus out of you since like any government, they are unable to control spending after a period of good income.
Let us know how it pans out. I went from being so poor that my toilet froze, to having 5-digit savings. If I can do it, you can too.
Your end sentence sums it up. It wouldn't matter all that much if you could grow your own food, cut your own firewood, and raise a wind turbine for electricity ... all without the taxman showing up with a bigger bucket every fucking fiscal quarter, driven by scared yuppies who vote up property taxes every time from their dingy little apartments. Too many people have been crowded into the the areas of cities and suburbs (which are just cities spread over the landscape like butter) which are dense with dependencies that are resolved with MONEY.
- work requires higher education
- work can be done in lab that can be built anywhere
- work results can be shipped anywhere
Every time I hear some Republican squawk about retraining and higher education, I just have to laugh. Biotech will be outsourced and offshored like everything else with such a mobile and educated workbase. We'd better fuck the "free market" before it fucks us.I can see this wonderful "free market" in the length of the unemployment lines in Toledo, Ohio. I can equally see it from the abandoned factories that now require public funds for cleanup.
... you can see what an uphill battle it is.
The free market is actually for the poor, while the wealthy roll in staunch socialism. The highest practice of business nowadays is to socialize their costs while privatizing their profits. Anecdotally, one maroon in Toledo lamented in the newspaper that the city council's rejection of his tax abatement (a rare event, to be sure) meant that the council was "standing in the way of the venture". Apparently, spending his own money for rent, salaries and taxes was too much for the poor dear to handle.
It was fairly amusing to watch the airlines run to the Congress with their hats in their hands (bowl up). It was also quite funny to watch the media play this down as necessary.
Which is why I said "Steal And Run" more fits what's going on than capitalism (since I'm obviously a subscriber to the Hubbard school).
If we had more citizen involvement in government, there may well be less of this crony capitalism. But since folks are working longer hours
Hypercapitalism. Learn it, love it. With tax abatements happening as a matter of course, and the dumping of more tax burdens upon individuals, we are going to see a lot more hypercapitalism before this is all over. America's white history started out hypercapitalistically, with landed gentry commanding land grants that the old Kings of Europe could only gawk at. We can easily return to those times. People are getting used to being deeply in debt. Like I implied, a $300K home in these times of inflated prices and deflating careers will never be paid off by the buyer. Jefferson warned us that the monied interests could drive us into slavery. We've reached that point.
There is an old style of capitalism, noted by Elbert Hubbard, which he defined as some sort of inescapable consequence of men having savings and homes. You may note that savings and homes are not the modern goals -- and don't bother arguing that a $300K pile of lumber in an outsourcing environment constitutes a "home" -- hence I call what we have "capitalism" but it's really something far different ... probably something on the order of Steal And Run.
... like guys with guns. And history well shows the need for guys with guns since the man who dumps a toxin into a river is a just a criminal asshole who needs to eat a bullet. (BTW, I'd be happy to volunteer to do the shooting.)
... things "getting better in the long term" are pointless since people don't eat in the long term -- they eat 3 times a day) then let's hear it. Your assertions of capitalism combined with some form of social welfare sound OK. I'd still like to bring these topics to the fore; for instance, I'd received foodstamps before, but the agency had no mechanism for returning that money once I had returned to prosperity. Literally, I offered to pay them back, but there was no account to deposit into. Some years later, the agency now does some sort of time-for-stamps program, in which you do some public service like cleaning up litter in exchange for your foodstamps.* Welfare should be involved and right-sized ... much like capitalism should be, but isn't, since it's become a frenzied scrabbling for wealth which is just socked away in tax havens.
... stock, property deeds, etc. Like naked socialism or capitalism, the Export-Import Bank is just evil.
The old style capitalism said nothing about regulation. Which is why it's an evil thing. A society of fucking individuals isn't a society at all. The state has a right to regulate my property. Why? Because I could be storing explosives on it. Similarly, many things done in the name of enterprise should be regulated since they have direct social effect.
The new style of capitalism wants to be free of all regulation as well as taxation (which can be called regulation for the scope of my argument).
And the capitalism practiced by the elite is a whole other bucket of worms entirely. It wants to be free of all law. In short, it wants nothing to do with the societies it inherently affects. It wholly merits the term "hypercapitalism".
I'd be the first to jump up and call the EPA the "Employment Prevention Agency", but there must be some way to force the businessmen to stop dumping PCBs into our drinking water. Force. Direct force
If you've a better idea (and leave the free-market slogans at the door
* In much the same way, any government grant or bailout of an industry should receive a return of value
Look, Mr. Dittohead:
I'm all for letting the power of government come down on the company that dumps toxic waste, yes, you betcha. Regulating such things is for the public good over private profit.
Socialism and capitalism by themselves are quite evil. America had a very functional mixture of the two, but that was an impediment to minting more millionaires.
Nobody goes back for a second helping before everyone gets a first share. If we dare to call ourselves a civilization, we can and must take care of our people first over collections of wealth.
Hear, hear. Cities are a bad place to continue concentrating people.
People went into the cities for money, to survive in an increasingly money-based economy. And once you're in the city, try growing your own food. Try owning and practicing with weapons.
The rural model of America was not a bad one. But from the standpoint of hypercapitalism, it was just awful. People who can grow their own food and hoist their own wind turbines are not dependents. When they are spread out into communities, they can make their own property laws. And of course, piping services to them is expensive and threatens profits.
If corporations have their druthers, we'd all be hooked up together like people in the Matrix, where the costs of service are minimized and the profit-taking per person is maximized. And you'd exist in a gel-filled tank, essentially a serial-numbered piece of corporate property.
That's what a city apartment essentially is: a Matrix life-support tank.
I'm an American. Want to trade nationalities?
... commonly running 2-person incomes just to support a home.
... as long as each side is a multinational corporation with more ways to hide income than you've had hot meals.
It is possible to be be an individual and care about your fellows. But that's gone entirely out of fashion in America, and the abuse is just picking up steam.
America had a period of sociocapitalism: a libertine market with government regulation. But hypercapitalism arose and essentially bought the government, while the people are drugged with entertainments of all kinds. They ARE going to wake up slaves in the continent their fathers conquered, as Thomas Jefferson predicted. They are slaves now
I care about my fellows, which is why it is a daily pain to watch hypercapitalism swallow more of America. More sensible socialism is needed. Which is why I'd like to move to a country like yours. (Switzerland is my first choice.)
P.S. Free trade is a scam for moving capital around the world freely from the constraints (i.e. taxation) of governments. I'm sure both sides in each transaction DO gain
Er ... got any jobs for them?
Have you ever wondered why telecommuting hasn't taken hold, while outsourcing/offshoring has?
It's because the executives of companies hate their workforce. Spite and loathing are the basic forces in the laws of executive motion.
Telecommuting -- as I saw it happening in Massachusetts in the 1990s -- became a method for politicially-attuned managers and engineers to avoid work. The rest of the folks had to get into cars, trains and buses to show up to a company building.
Sure, we could be transforming millions of jobs into telecommuting jobs of many shades. But the companies have jumped from letting favorites take advantage of it, to taking the next, much higher level of advantage: outsource/offshore. Instead of letting you do the job from home, they took the job away entirely and gave it to someone who makes at most 20% of the wage.
There are several reasons why executives never wanted to bother with telecommuting.
First, it required a review and perhaps upgrade of the telecomm facilities in the workers' homes. With flaky phone lines, substandard computers, and no power backup, the home-based infrastructure is on average insufficient for business needs. Compare this to a $4 million company building; just issue the specs, pay the construction company, and it's done. Well, at least it takes up less executive time.
Second, telecommuting meant the workers will be out of contact with management. This meant several things. Literally, the executive could not walk amongst his Empire and bask in the glow of his busy little hens. Also, there was always the chance that someone at home was slacking off, and that could not be tolerated -- slacking is only for the company elite. Finally, when a manager wanted to get ahold of a worker, they had to suffer the delay of calling them into the corporate HQ, or the humiliation of going to the worker's home.
Telecommuting: It's one of America's yuppie scams. I agree with your intentions, but the hypercapitalism and cronyism of modern America makes telecommuting impossible to any meaningful degree. Gasoline could climb to $5/gal, and companies will still require workers to drive to work (while they issue the executives company cars and gas charge cards).
I am noticing that wages are being "adjusted" through the use of the pink slip. This is likely to happen to myself very soon. In fact, it's also likely that my bank will offload all the long-time IT workers onto an outsource company, just to reduce a 25-year man's 5 weeks of vacation to 2 weeks, to remove his profit sharing, etc. That won't affect me at all since I'm relatively young, but if my wage is dropped to what the rest of the area offers (8-10 bucks per hour) then I must leave and seek something else.
... and as a single guy with few expenses, I was getting $25-$35/hr, which was a lot. So, once kicked in the balls in Toledo, I can always leave and try to get the "impossibly low" wages offered by year 2004 companies in American regions where the economy isn't dead, which as a single guy with few expenses, should be a good amount of money.
... if I expect to have savings. That's a terrible state to put anyone in. Which is why I feel for the 25-year guys who are losing their benefits packages and eventually their salaries.
This isn't the first time this kind of thing has happened. I arrived in Massachusetts in the early 1990s, and found myself taking software-testing jobs away from folks who were earning twice what what I was getting
I never expect to have a home, wife or children
About 2 months ago, 3 workers died on the bridge construction over the river here in Toledo. They are the invisible people who have no appearance in the public respect at all. They helped to build a bridge which will be used by thousands of people and vehicles each day for 100 years.
... sorry to burst your bubble. I wasn't talking about PERCEPTION. I was talking about TRUTH. It doesn't matter how many millions admire J.Lo ... she has little real effect upon their lives when compared to the technology and culture that supplies power, food and materials.
Every bridge that's built, every medicine that's formulated, and every plan that's drafted, make the entire civilization move onward. The TV that people can watch their beloved sports stars on is produced and powered by a good many more people having nothing to do with sports.
So
In short, turn off that TV and read a fucking book for a change.
Certainly. Here's a quote from the article:
Former employees say morale wasn't helped by Corrado's first presentation to the IT group, in which they say he proclaimed, "Come in every day and expect to be fired." Intended to inspire the troops to greater effort, the talk backfired, says another former employee.
Although the quote is probably out of context, telling people they should expect to be fired at any time is probably a motivational technique learned in today's MBA environment. Force and fear doesn't even work well with prisoners. So why do MBAs and other assorted managerial parasites think they work for tech?
Newsflash for Managers {tm}: People expecting to be fired, will make their own plans for their futures instead of working 100% at your projects. Like, duh, eh?
I think the topic you are dancing around is:
Stop glamorizing the politican, sports player and musician, on orders of magnitude over the scientist, engineer and general tinkerer.
This is only the beginning. America is entering an era of overextended finances and the power of law will be brought down upon the heads of those unable to defend themselves against it. Everything in sight will be taxed; businesses will flee even more to areas (perhaps called "Free Enterprise Zones") which hold back the tide of taxes. The thing that must happen to control it all is restriction on public spending -- but that won't happen since those expenses have become the new profit centers of the businesses who have attained strong control of the legal apparatus.
My area has been ramping up taxation for the last 4 years. They are proposing double-taxing for things like garbage collection (i.e. there's already a general tax fund for it, but they want to add a household fee). There's no end in sight since they have no clue that you cannot tax yourself out of a dead economy. Add in the frankly moronic voter who understands even less, and you have a real catastrophe brewing.
Funny how we have this big bad standing army to protect us and the only thing it ever seems to be doing is policing other countries that can't solve their own problems and invading foreign nations.
... oh, waitaminnut.
... but Americans didn't want to admit it. Credit where credit's due: I'm seeing the term "empire" in more contexts now. At least honesty of a sort is emerging.
Why, the next thing we know, you're going to point out that cruise missiles and carrier groups are not defensive weapons
On the serious side, it's sad that the vast majority of Americans don't realize that their military is mostly a mercenary force setup for attacking other countries. It's happening literally at this very second in the Middle East. While Reagan was talking about the "Evil Empire" of the Soviet Union, America was a well established Empire
Bad idea.
... and from that point, immoral. If you want a review of your competitor's work, be honest and ask to see it via a lab or factory tour.
In academia, I assume that work is under a commons. But in business, work is private in order to exploit and control profits.
I can see it now: your company submits a patent, and the patent gets reviewed by "peers" (i.e. officers, scientists and engineers from other companies). These peers get a review of their competitor's work, turn down the patent, then file their own immediately by the magic of cut-n-paste.
I happen to know a company who was subject to just this kind of thing. They asked the government to evaluate their new material (which may have been part of the SBIR process), which the gov unfortunately submitted to their competitors (who were tightly connected to the government agency) for review. For those who are wondering what's so terrible with that; well, it's illegal
Wasn't there some article on K5 about a scam of selling speakers from a van? Buying (likely) stolen goods and getting a Radio Shack cheap speaker (or a box of bricks), is about on the same level of this. We should not expect anything but people wailing in misery when the spamlords fail to produce the payments allegedly promised.
That aside, you gotta admire the pluck of the spamlords. They're preying on the weakness of ignorant hope currently infecting the middle and lower classes. "Just leave your comptuer on! Eventually you'll get weekly checks!" Multilevel marketing schemes have planted their seeds in this fertile ground for ages, and have continued to harvest their ill-gotten fruit.
We're going to see a whole lot more of this. You just can't underestimate the stupidity and desperation of the public.
Winspire? Sigh. Perhaps they should just change Linspire to Linfuckbillgates and be done with it.
Making any test more difficult is going to fall disproportionately on those who are born into a system of disadvantage. Hence, the poor, and further hence racial minorities.
... that's established legal practice. The increasing of testing standards will unavoidably target the disadvantaged, and usually leads to class action lawsuits which drain away public wealth into the private legal class.
My area has inner-city grade schools with large Black populations with single- and low-double-digit percentages who pass the mandatory testing regimes. Hell, here Whites alone only graduate High School at a 46% rate. For Hispanics, that becomes about 40% and for Blacks it becomes about 30%.
Do you think that these young Blacks are going to grow up to understand traffic law and seek overall driving skill from this educational basis?
Which is why I said "in theory". Anything that casts a minority into a bad light can be construed as racially-motivated action. That's not just my opinion
If you know a better way, then do speak up. I'm mystified myself about how to clear all this mess up.
Immediate Devil's advocacy:
... especially when said cameras are actually subsidized by the manufacturer when they install them for "free" and then take a % of the resulting fines. Adding cops (often unionized) is always a point of hesitation for a city.
...
Making driver tests more difficult always takes the risk of crossing racial lines. (At least, that's my theory.) And it would take an impossibly strong government to resist the class action lawsuit that would follow. Which is probably why many things like driving tests reach a certain, low level to be universally applicable.
Inspections that retire the old and worn-out cars is always an attack on the poor. Although it's sensible to say "they shouldn't be driving that heap", there's the problem of "they need it to get to their $6.50/hr job".
Cops are generally more expensive overall than automated systems like cameras
And finally
Changing away from oil/gasoline at this point is likely to require a comprehensive set of assassinations amongst the American Oil Barons, particularly the Bush family. In short, don't hold your breath.
- 99% of everyone who wanted to drive had to have current insurance.
- 99% of risky drivers had to be included in the risk pool.
You might want to think these things through a bit more before casting such judgments.