The key here is that in the past getting a shitty job meant losing the benefits that kept you off the street and thus you didn't gain much in return for working.
Not all benefits work that way. For instance, with EITC, doing paid work means you get more benefit (up to a point).
Sh!7 we have a database of everybody but I don't remember anybody calling the Obama Administration "fascist."
The government does not have a database of everyone's religion. The only time the government ever asked me my religion was when I was a Marine and a PFC asked as he was using a metal punch machine to make my dogtags. I was told it was to ensure I got the right funeral. It didn't go into any database.
Eh, might work if you package it with huge cuts (or abolishments) to other federal welfare programs
That would create millions of "losers". Everyone currently getting SS or SSDI or SNAP would have their benefits reduced, while their taxes go way up. SS recipients vote in far greater numbers than the unemployed young people who would be the main beneficiaries of UBI.
If you can count cards at Blackjack you can shift the odds to between 0.5% and 1% in your favor.
Nope. Nearly all casinos use multi-deck shoes, and will reshuffle if a low betting customer suddenly makes a big bet. Card counting doesn't work anymore.
Jobs are not becoming more scarce. The American economy is generating about 180,000 additional new jobs per month, which is significantly greater than population growth.
Given the dole or turning every city into mini-Aleppos...
Perhaps those are not the only two alternatives. The violence in Aleppo was not caused by unemployment.
At least in the US, it is not totally uncommon that some folks receiving unemployment payments to work cash-jobs on the side
This is an even bigger issue with SSDI. There are a lot more people on SSDI (the number tripled during Obama's presidency), and, unlike unemployment, it is permanent. When I was looking for a contractor on Craigslist to do a kitchen remodel, many of them wanted to be paid in cash, because SSDI rules prohibit them from receiving W2 or 1099 income.
For non-Americans: SSDI is Social Security Disability Insurance. It is hard to qualify today because of a crackdown on widespread abuse, but many able bodied people that qualified for benefits in the past for "back pain" or whatever, are still recipients.
So you engage in something you consider stupid, and that makes you stupid by your own definition because of peer pressure.
Yes. As an introverted Aspie, I am not a good judge of proper social behavior, so when in doubt, I just follow the crowd. Putting $10 into the office lottery pool makes me "part of the group". But financially, it is a stupid investment.
if buying a cheap ticket, gives a small thrill to somebody that makes them happy
I know quite a few people (mostly relatives) that buy lottery tickets regularly as a solitary activity. They don't do it for the "cheap thrill". They do it because they think winning will solve their problems.
you should not qualify people as stupid like that.
Why not? Not everyone who buys a lottery ticket is stupid, but if you gave them all an IQ test, most of them would be dumber than average. Buying a lottery ticket is a poor financial decision, so it is unsurprising that winners continue to make poor decisions.
By that measure, everybody going to Vegas is stupid, and I'll be damned if you don't happen to have a good time once you go there.
I have been to Vegas, and while I enjoyed seeing Cirque du Soleil, I didn't find gambling appealing at all. Maybe it is an Aspie thing, but to me it seemed about as enjoyable as flushing $20 bills down the toilet.
In America we have something like what you describe: Section 8 Housing Vouchers. Taxpayers pick up about half the cost of rent. I own a rental property in San Jose, and I definitely prefer Sec 8 tenants, and (like you describe) I give them a bit of a discount because of the reduced risk of evictions and vacancies.
This program is good for both tenants and landlords, but from a public policy perspective, I think the program is idiotic. Using tax dollars to help poor people live in the heart of Silicon Valley makes about as much sense as car vouchers to help them buy a Lamborghini. But anyway, I enjoy getting the subsidy check directly deposited to my bank account every month. Thank you taxpayers!
Basically what you do is modify (increase) the tax so in most cases, people get net more or less what they do now.
The problem is that the people that would get less (rich people, hard-working people, old people, disabled people) would fight this, and would likely be much better organized than people that would get more (poor people, lazy people, young people). At least in America, I don't see this happening.
We have the same thing in the US - we call it the lottery. Winning still doesn't seem to correct bad choices.
You can only win the lottery if you buy a ticket. Buying lottery tickets is pretty stupid. So people that win lotteries tend to be stupid people that make poor choices. You would see much better outcomes if the lotteries winnings were assigned randomly.
Disclaimer: I only buy lottery tickets as part of the "office pool", which I view as a social activity, not an investment.
I personally have thought up half a dozen cheap ways to give drivers who are approaching traffic lights enough information that they don't have to hit it red and stop --- things that work like the countdowns provided by pedestrian walk lights.
These are common in many other countries, and they work well. I have no idea why they aren't used in America.
Another good and common idea is instead of traffic lights cycling through (green)-(yellow)-(red)-(green), have them cycle through (green)-(green+yellow)-(red)-(red+yellow)-(green). This warns people when the light is about to turn green, so they can get ready to go, and helps traffic flow more quickly. I have never seen this done in America.
My wife turns into crazy jealous irritated person for 20 days a month (pre and post PMS).
My wife had the same problem, and it was destroying our marriage. So we went to the doctor, and she was diagnosed with severe calcium deficiency. Calcium and magnesium (you need both to in balance) supplements worked wonders. Her PMS went from two weeks to three days. I can put up with anything for three days.
Paperwork you have to file, refile, pay to file, copy and send to someone else to file, etc...
Defendants don't have to pay to file, and the paperwork is not so much. I have represented myself in several cases (civil not criminal) that were too simple to waste money on a lawyer. I would never do that as a plaintiff, but as a defendant it worked out okay. All were settled out of court on reasonable terms.
The people being treated with antidepressants are mostly suffering from clinical depression, which is caused by chemical imbalances in the brain. It has little to do with external factors. Likewise with antipsychotics. Long ago it was believed that schizophrenia was caused by "bad parenting" (cold domineering mothers and psychologically detached fathers). That has been utterly debunked. The cause is mostly determined by genetics and prenatal nutrition. If one of an identical twin has schizophrenia, the other is not guaranteed to have it, but is fifty times more likely than chance. If only one suffers, or one suffers more severely, it is very likely to be the one with a lower birth weight. Whether the twins are raised together or separated at birth makes no difference at all.
Let's see how you feel about it when your job starts being done by exploited workers who are only doing it on the side to make some extra money
If they are willing to work, and need the money, it would be wrong for me to use the law to stop them from competing. I don't have a "right" to my job.
Exploitative labor practices eventually affect us all.
Over regulation and top-down control also affect us all. A government attempt to turn turkers into regular W-2 employees will likely just lead to elimination of these jobs, or offshoring. Just because you don't want this type of work, doesn't mean it isn't right for people that are stuck at home caring for an elderly parent, or have disabilities such as autism that make it hard to hold a normal job but easy to focus on detailed repetitive tasks.
The gig economy, zero-hours contracts - it's all pushing the casualisation of the workforce.
That is not necessarily a bad thing. Most gig-economy workers do it part-time to earn some extra income, not as their main job. Amazon Turk is an easy way to make some extra cash at home, in the evening, or while watching the kids, It is simple, unstructured work, that can be done by anyone, anywhere.
When my daughter was in high school, she earned spending money as a turker. She would do tasks in one window, while watching a movie or Youtube videos in another. Many of the tasks are mindless drone work, so the distraction didn't slow her down much. She stopped when she figured out she could make more money writing articles on Fivver, which was higher pay for higher skills.
Efforts to ban or over regulate the gig economy will likely have the effect of pushing even more jobs overseas.
Protectionism and mercantilism rear their ugly heads again.
The heads are not rearing because they never went away. Protectionism is a solution that is simple, obvious, and wrong. It has always been popular among people that don't think about an issue for more than 30 seconds. Another "simple, obvious, and wrong" solution is to use coercive laws to roll back social behavior to a fantasy version of the 1950s, when queers stayed in the closet, women knew their place, and every white man had a good paying job for life. The genius of Donald Trump was to realize that there are many, many people in America that believe in both of these things. By combining the Democratic Party's knee-jerk protectionism with Republican social conservatism, he has a winning formula.
I've never worked in a dev house that doesn't have some kind of music blasting.
That is odd. I have worked for half a dozen software companies, and consulted for many more, and never once seen this. If you want music, you use headphones.
Much of the problem is not because of culture, but because of... telecommuting. I have worked for several companies that had many of their employees working remotely, and they were all dysfunctional. Whether those remote employees were in India or somewhere else in America, didn't really matter. Telecommuting for just one or two days a week can work okay, be even then it depends on the employee. Many people treat their "work-from-home-day" as a day off. My neighbor works for Yahoo, and used to work from home every Friday. He would usually start mowing his lawn by 8am, so I was happy when Marissa cancelled telecommuting.
Because banning stuff is idiotic public policy. If the market decides what consumers get, you end up with America. If the government decides, you end up with North Korea. Unless a product violates specific enumerated criteria like using lead paint, the government should stay out of it. If you let the government control router specs, you are going to have the NSA in your bedroom.
Let me give you a hint; this will be a proprietary standard that will make the politically appointed rich, absolutely destroy any anonyminity of movement you might have had, and give probably cause to arrest anyone, anytime.
This is why having the DOT, or any other government agency, create the standard is a terrible idea. The standard should be created by ISO, ANSI, IEEE or SAE. The result will still be politicized of course, but less so, and it will be more flexible, and extensible. The DOT should be setting broad regulatory guidelines, not micromanaging the details.
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The key here is that in the past getting a shitty job meant losing the benefits that kept you off the street and thus you didn't gain much in return for working.
Not all benefits work that way. For instance, with EITC, doing paid work means you get more benefit (up to a point).
Sh!7 we have a database of everybody but I don't remember anybody calling the Obama Administration "fascist."
The government does not have a database of everyone's religion. The only time the government ever asked me my religion was when I was a Marine and a PFC asked as he was using a metal punch machine to make my dogtags. I was told it was to ensure I got the right funeral. It didn't go into any database.
Eh, might work if you package it with huge cuts (or abolishments) to other federal welfare programs
That would create millions of "losers". Everyone currently getting SS or SSDI or SNAP would have their benefits reduced, while their taxes go way up. SS recipients vote in far greater numbers than the unemployed young people who would be the main beneficiaries of UBI.
If you can count cards at Blackjack you can shift the odds to between 0.5% and 1% in your favor.
Nope. Nearly all casinos use multi-deck shoes, and will reshuffle if a low betting customer suddenly makes a big bet. Card counting doesn't work anymore.
With jobs becoming more scarce
Jobs are not becoming more scarce. The American economy is generating about 180,000 additional new jobs per month, which is significantly greater than population growth.
Given the dole or turning every city into mini-Aleppos...
Perhaps those are not the only two alternatives. The violence in Aleppo was not caused by unemployment.
At least in the US, it is not totally uncommon that some folks receiving unemployment payments to work cash-jobs on the side
This is an even bigger issue with SSDI. There are a lot more people on SSDI (the number tripled during Obama's presidency), and, unlike unemployment, it is permanent. When I was looking for a contractor on Craigslist to do a kitchen remodel, many of them wanted to be paid in cash, because SSDI rules prohibit them from receiving W2 or 1099 income.
For non-Americans: SSDI is Social Security Disability Insurance. It is hard to qualify today because of a crackdown on widespread abuse, but many able bodied people that qualified for benefits in the past for "back pain" or whatever, are still recipients.
However, the government doing these things is looked down upon.
Here is a clue: The government is spending someone else's money.
If you have an apple tree in your yard, and you pick the fruit and give it to the poor, people will think you are generous.
If your neighbor has an apple tree, and you pick the fruit and give it to the poor, few people will think you are generous.
So you engage in something you consider stupid, and that makes you stupid by your own definition because of peer pressure.
Yes. As an introverted Aspie, I am not a good judge of proper social behavior, so when in doubt, I just follow the crowd. Putting $10 into the office lottery pool makes me "part of the group". But financially, it is a stupid investment.
if buying a cheap ticket, gives a small thrill to somebody that makes them happy
I know quite a few people (mostly relatives) that buy lottery tickets regularly as a solitary activity. They don't do it for the "cheap thrill". They do it because they think winning will solve their problems.
you should not qualify people as stupid like that.
Why not? Not everyone who buys a lottery ticket is stupid, but if you gave them all an IQ test, most of them would be dumber than average. Buying a lottery ticket is a poor financial decision, so it is unsurprising that winners continue to make poor decisions.
By that measure, everybody going to Vegas is stupid, and I'll be damned if you don't happen to have a good time once you go there.
I have been to Vegas, and while I enjoyed seeing Cirque du Soleil, I didn't find gambling appealing at all. Maybe it is an Aspie thing, but to me it seemed about as enjoyable as flushing $20 bills down the toilet.
In America we have something like what you describe: Section 8 Housing Vouchers. Taxpayers pick up about half the cost of rent. I own a rental property in San Jose, and I definitely prefer Sec 8 tenants, and (like you describe) I give them a bit of a discount because of the reduced risk of evictions and vacancies.
This program is good for both tenants and landlords, but from a public policy perspective, I think the program is idiotic. Using tax dollars to help poor people live in the heart of Silicon Valley makes about as much sense as car vouchers to help them buy a Lamborghini. But anyway, I enjoy getting the subsidy check directly deposited to my bank account every month. Thank you taxpayers!
Basically what you do is modify (increase) the tax so in most cases, people get net more or less what they do now.
The problem is that the people that would get less (rich people, hard-working people, old people, disabled people) would fight this, and would likely be much better organized than people that would get more (poor people, lazy people, young people). At least in America, I don't see this happening.
We have the same thing in the US - we call it the lottery. Winning still doesn't seem to correct bad choices.
You can only win the lottery if you buy a ticket. Buying lottery tickets is pretty stupid. So people that win lotteries tend to be stupid people that make poor choices. You would see much better outcomes if the lotteries winnings were assigned randomly.
Disclaimer: I only buy lottery tickets as part of the "office pool", which I view as a social activity, not an investment.
I personally have thought up half a dozen cheap ways to give drivers who are approaching traffic lights enough information that they don't have to hit it red and stop --- things that work like the countdowns provided by pedestrian walk lights.
These are common in many other countries, and they work well. I have no idea why they aren't used in America.
They look like this.
Another good and common idea is instead of traffic lights cycling through (green)-(yellow)-(red)-(green), have them cycle through (green)-(green+yellow)-(red)-(red+yellow)-(green). This warns people when the light is about to turn green, so they can get ready to go, and helps traffic flow more quickly. I have never seen this done in America.
My wife turns into crazy jealous irritated person for 20 days a month (pre and post PMS).
My wife had the same problem, and it was destroying our marriage. So we went to the doctor, and she was diagnosed with severe calcium deficiency. Calcium and magnesium (you need both to in balance) supplements worked wonders. Her PMS went from two weeks to three days. I can put up with anything for three days.
someone who's stuck at home caring for a sick relative surely deserves a chance to make enough money to eat, surely?
They won't have that chance if their job is regulated out of existence.
Paperwork you have to file, refile, pay to file, copy and send to someone else to file, etc...
Defendants don't have to pay to file, and the paperwork is not so much. I have represented myself in several cases (civil not criminal) that were too simple to waste money on a lawyer. I would never do that as a plaintiff, but as a defendant it worked out okay. All were settled out of court on reasonable terms.
Why not fix what makes people unhappy instead?
The people being treated with antidepressants are mostly suffering from clinical depression, which is caused by chemical imbalances in the brain. It has little to do with external factors. Likewise with antipsychotics. Long ago it was believed that schizophrenia was caused by "bad parenting" (cold domineering mothers and psychologically detached fathers). That has been utterly debunked. The cause is mostly determined by genetics and prenatal nutrition. If one of an identical twin has schizophrenia, the other is not guaranteed to have it, but is fifty times more likely than chance. If only one suffers, or one suffers more severely, it is very likely to be the one with a lower birth weight. Whether the twins are raised together or separated at birth makes no difference at all.
Let's see how you feel about it when your job starts being done by exploited workers who are only doing it on the side to make some extra money
If they are willing to work, and need the money, it would be wrong for me to use the law to stop them from competing. I don't have a "right" to my job.
Exploitative labor practices eventually affect us all.
Over regulation and top-down control also affect us all. A government attempt to turn turkers into regular W-2 employees will likely just lead to elimination of these jobs, or offshoring. Just because you don't want this type of work, doesn't mean it isn't right for people that are stuck at home caring for an elderly parent, or have disabilities such as autism that make it hard to hold a normal job but easy to focus on detailed repetitive tasks.
The gig economy, zero-hours contracts - it's all pushing the casualisation of the workforce.
That is not necessarily a bad thing. Most gig-economy workers do it part-time to earn some extra income, not as their main job. Amazon Turk is an easy way to make some extra cash at home, in the evening, or while watching the kids, It is simple, unstructured work, that can be done by anyone, anywhere.
When my daughter was in high school, she earned spending money as a turker. She would do tasks in one window, while watching a movie or Youtube videos in another. Many of the tasks are mindless drone work, so the distraction didn't slow her down much. She stopped when she figured out she could make more money writing articles on Fivver, which was higher pay for higher skills.
Efforts to ban or over regulate the gig economy will likely have the effect of pushing even more jobs overseas.
Protectionism and mercantilism rear their ugly heads again.
The heads are not rearing because they never went away. Protectionism is a solution that is simple, obvious, and wrong. It has always been popular among people that don't think about an issue for more than 30 seconds. Another "simple, obvious, and wrong" solution is to use coercive laws to roll back social behavior to a fantasy version of the 1950s, when queers stayed in the closet, women knew their place, and every white man had a good paying job for life. The genius of Donald Trump was to realize that there are many, many people in America that believe in both of these things. By combining the Democratic Party's knee-jerk protectionism with Republican social conservatism, he has a winning formula.
Larry Ellison is the greediest man on earth and Oracle is his prophet.
Many believe that Larry is a Sith Lord. If he is indeed a Sith Master, then who is his apprentice?
After all, maiming civilians is what it's all about for these brave warrior nations.
The US uses landmines only along the Korean DMZ, where there are no civilians.
I've never worked in a dev house that doesn't have some kind of music blasting.
That is odd. I have worked for half a dozen software companies, and consulted for many more, and never once seen this. If you want music, you use headphones.
Much of the problem is not because of culture, but because of ... telecommuting. I have worked for several companies that had many of their employees working remotely, and they were all dysfunctional. Whether those remote employees were in India or somewhere else in America, didn't really matter. Telecommuting for just one or two days a week can work okay, be even then it depends on the employee. Many people treat their "work-from-home-day" as a day off. My neighbor works for Yahoo, and used to work from home every Friday. He would usually start mowing his lawn by 8am, so I was happy when Marissa cancelled telecommuting.
Why not ban crappy routers?
Because banning stuff is idiotic public policy. If the market decides what consumers get, you end up with America. If the government decides, you end up with North Korea. Unless a product violates specific enumerated criteria like using lead paint, the government should stay out of it. If you let the government control router specs, you are going to have the NSA in your bedroom.
Let me give you a hint; this will be a proprietary standard that will make the politically appointed rich, absolutely destroy any anonyminity of movement you might have had, and give probably cause to arrest anyone, anytime.
This is why having the DOT, or any other government agency, create the standard is a terrible idea. The standard should be created by ISO, ANSI, IEEE or SAE. The result will still be politicized of course, but less so, and it will be more flexible, and extensible. The DOT should be setting broad regulatory guidelines, not micromanaging the details.