Netflix doesn't want to do DVDs anyway. Unless customers leave in droves they'll just point their fingers in the direction of USPS and say write to your Congressman.
It's only our American obsession with the perception of fairness that *requires* an objective measure of merit. I don't think we've found a useful objective measure for teaching, but I think subjective measures would work just fine if we'd let them.
The proof is in the fact that he hasn't hired the worker. If he could hire the worker and make a profit he would. More money for him, job for worker, everyone wins.
Why is it so hard to see that the more expensive the labor, the less demand there will be for that labor?
It's hard to take you seriously when you conflate middle class with minimum wage earners. When you suggest our middle class will be 'reduced to third world levels' it is downright offensive. Our poor are rich compared to most of the world. Go visit Mexico, a second world country, and tell me how rough our poor have it. And don't try what the AC did above. I've been poor in America.
I think you should really take some time to study the minimum wage. You might change your mind. Consider that the minimum wage is partially responsible for 9/100 workers earning $0.00/hr while at the same time raising the prices of goods. And the middle classes are subsidizing those unemployed workers, making their lives more difficult as well. Is this okay with you just to keep the minimum wage earners slighty more comfortable?
2. Money can help innovators, but I'm not convinced the government spending tax money is the best way to go about it. For a recent debacle, see Solyndra. Private investors tend to make better decisions in this regard because it is their money and they are not eager to see it go down a hole for political brownie points or because it is going to their friends' businesses. (See other posts on this page for how government is hurting innovation with red tape.)
3. I'm obviously not talking about Brown v Board of Education. I'm talking about federal education programs which are an abysmal failure, including NCLB. It's been a decade and things are much worse, not better. Pell grants might be great for the relative few who get them, but federal student loan subsidies are terrible. We have a job market that just isn't demanding near the number of graduates that we're putting out, so people get these easy, subsidized student loans, graduate, and can't find a job that will allow them to repay the loan.
4. Manufacturing is happening overseas to meet the levels of demand we have right now. We don't have those jobs because unskilled Americans are too expensive to employ compared to the cost of employing folks overseas and shipping goods here. You're not going to see an increase in demand until people have money to spend, and that's not going to happen without jobs.
I'm not sure a 'good teacher' teaches things his employer doesn't want him teaching. I see that more as a problem of public education: you get the education the loudest want, not necessarily the education you want.
Regardless, I think merit-based compensation and firing are doable while still protecting against these types of shenanigans.
If teachers want good pay, they're going to have to be willing to be judged on merit and that includes the possibility of being fired. Job security is nice to have, but it leads to things like excellent teachers being paid the same amount as teachers who should have been fired many times over.
2. Government funding is taxes taken from the economy. What would we have without those funds being taken from the economy? Are you suggesting that private interests have no interest in funding research? The question is whether government does a better job of using those funds than the private sector would, and I think it's pretty clear given the current state of government spending how people do when spending other peoples' money.
3. Nonsense. That is a factor, certainly, but the demand for a college education has skyrocketed and that's due to 1. employers requiring degrees for jobs that don't require degrees. 2. The ease of student loans (that bury people in debt for years).
4. I worked in factories and restaurants holding three jobs at a time through my teens and early twenties. I started each job at minimum wage (which when accounting for inflation was less than 2011 $7.25/hr.). I enjoyed my work. My mother was on welfare when I was a child, so yeah, I was poor. (That taught me all I need to know about how much welfare really "helps" people.) Did you have a point you want to make about how that's impossible or something?
Most of our biggest importers all have minimum wages or an equivalent function. They're not going to drive jobs out of their economies by cranking up the wages to our level.
My solution is jobs, jobs, jobs. We can either pay people little to sit on their asses collecting unemployment or pay people little to work and get added benefits like lower prices on goods and services.
We don't have to get rid of it entirely, but as long as it's higher than a certain point, jobs are going to leave, manufacturing is going to leave.
1. Those automatic cuts are hardly automatic. They'll be repealed if legislators can't come up with a plan. These guys would rather preside over the disintegration of the union than cut their constituents' favorite federal programs.
2. Government does not create innovation. Examples like NASA are always trotted out, but I think if you total those successes with the failures, pork, and corruption, you'll find we could have gotten much more for less. Maybe not NASA and it's indirect benefits specifically, but something else.
3. What has the federal government ever done for education other than turn principals into truancy officers? Don't get me started on tuition cost increases due to the ease of getting federally backed student loans.
4. If you want to increase manufacturing: drop the minimum wage.
No, no. What this proves is that the aliens (or possibly the Illuminati - but trust me, I have proof) are so much in control of our government that they have taken all the evidence out of our government's hands. WHEN ARE YOU PEOPLE GOING TO WAKE UP AND SEE THE TRUTH?! They Live was a documentary!
I wonder if it's regional. Before I moved to CA that's how I remember compact spots too. Here I see rows and rows of them and they don't look any different than the other rows. I'm wondering if municipalities require spots of a certain size to be marked as compact. X inches = normal spot. X - 1 inches = compact?
Further, I don't see the costs for content rising given that they are a DVD rental business. There might be value in a partnership with the studios, but unlike Netflix and other streaming places, they don't need the studios to play ball so if costs rise from content issues they can tell the studios to take a hike and just keep buying and renting the DVDs.
That's not to say the GP's main point isn't correct. Don't like the price hike, spend your dollars elsewhere (or don't).
I can't remember the last time I saw a "compact" spot that could not accomodate at least a mid-sized SUV. There was a time when a compact spot actually only fit compact vehicles. It wasn't a rule. It was a helpful description so you could avoid wasting your time trying to park there.
I don't think I've ever lost any recordings, but my Comcast/Motorola DVR's sometimes lock up completely on EAS alerts and stay that way until power cycled.
On the plus side, even the boxes that are "off" display EAS in the channel/time indicator, so I could potentially be alerted whether watching TV or not.
'Google has so much contradiction in what it wants for itself and what it does with other websites [e.g., Google frames Slashdot],' quipped one poster. 'Do no evil, right?'
I don't see the contradiction. Everyone is allowed to decide whether or not they allow their content to be displayed in iframes. If Google chooses no for itself but takes advantage of the fact that others have chosen yes, that is not hypocrisy. (If Google was forcing yes on others, the poster might have a point.)
There is plenty to complain about here, I'm sure, but that's not it.
Slashdot Mirror
Netflix doesn't want to do DVDs anyway. Unless customers leave in droves they'll just point their fingers in the direction of USPS and say write to your Congressman.
Well, I'm pretty sure these idiots don't speak for all of OWS, but still:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMV0TR3pGzg
This is Oakland, not San Francisco. So I'm pretty sure she's not lying when she says she's a woman.
That's why I wear 60-grit sandpaper condoms.
.xxy, huh? That's one strange fetish you have. NTTAWTT.
It's only our American obsession with the perception of fairness that *requires* an objective measure of merit. I don't think we've found a useful objective measure for teaching, but I think subjective measures would work just fine if we'd let them.
Sorry, I meant a third world country.
The proof is in the fact that he hasn't hired the worker. If he could hire the worker and make a profit he would. More money for him, job for worker, everyone wins.
Why is it so hard to see that the more expensive the labor, the less demand there will be for that labor?
It's hard to take you seriously when you conflate middle class with minimum wage earners. When you suggest our middle class will be 'reduced to third world levels' it is downright offensive. Our poor are rich compared to most of the world. Go visit Mexico, a second world country, and tell me how rough our poor have it. And don't try what the AC did above. I've been poor in America.
I think you should really take some time to study the minimum wage. You might change your mind. Consider that the minimum wage is partially responsible for 9/100 workers earning $0.00/hr while at the same time raising the prices of goods. And the middle classes are subsidizing those unemployed workers, making their lives more difficult as well. Is this okay with you just to keep the minimum wage earners slighty more comfortable?
What's your solution, anyway?
2. Money can help innovators, but I'm not convinced the government spending tax money is the best way to go about it. For a recent debacle, see Solyndra. Private investors tend to make better decisions in this regard because it is their money and they are not eager to see it go down a hole for political brownie points or because it is going to their friends' businesses. (See other posts on this page for how government is hurting innovation with red tape.)
3. I'm obviously not talking about Brown v Board of Education. I'm talking about federal education programs which are an abysmal failure, including NCLB. It's been a decade and things are much worse, not better. Pell grants might be great for the relative few who get them, but federal student loan subsidies are terrible. We have a job market that just isn't demanding near the number of graduates that we're putting out, so people get these easy, subsidized student loans, graduate, and can't find a job that will allow them to repay the loan.
4. Manufacturing is happening overseas to meet the levels of demand we have right now. We don't have those jobs because unskilled Americans are too expensive to employ compared to the cost of employing folks overseas and shipping goods here. You're not going to see an increase in demand until people have money to spend, and that's not going to happen without jobs.
I'm not sure a 'good teacher' teaches things his employer doesn't want him teaching. I see that more as a problem of public education: you get the education the loudest want, not necessarily the education you want.
Regardless, I think merit-based compensation and firing are doable while still protecting against these types of shenanigans.
If teachers want good pay, they're going to have to be willing to be judged on merit and that includes the possibility of being fired. Job security is nice to have, but it leads to things like excellent teachers being paid the same amount as teachers who should have been fired many times over.
2. Government funding is taxes taken from the economy. What would we have without those funds being taken from the economy? Are you suggesting that private interests have no interest in funding research? The question is whether government does a better job of using those funds than the private sector would, and I think it's pretty clear given the current state of government spending how people do when spending other peoples' money.
3. Nonsense. That is a factor, certainly, but the demand for a college education has skyrocketed and that's due to 1. employers requiring degrees for jobs that don't require degrees. 2. The ease of student loans (that bury people in debt for years).
4. I worked in factories and restaurants holding three jobs at a time through my teens and early twenties. I started each job at minimum wage (which when accounting for inflation was less than 2011 $7.25/hr.). I enjoyed my work. My mother was on welfare when I was a child, so yeah, I was poor. (That taught me all I need to know about how much welfare really "helps" people.) Did you have a point you want to make about how that's impossible or something?
Most of our biggest importers all have minimum wages or an equivalent function. They're not going to drive jobs out of their economies by cranking up the wages to our level.
My solution is jobs, jobs, jobs. We can either pay people little to sit on their asses collecting unemployment or pay people little to work and get added benefits like lower prices on goods and services.
We don't have to get rid of it entirely, but as long as it's higher than a certain point, jobs are going to leave, manufacturing is going to leave.
A few points in no particular order:
1. Those automatic cuts are hardly automatic. They'll be repealed if legislators can't come up with a plan. These guys would rather preside over the disintegration of the union than cut their constituents' favorite federal programs.
2. Government does not create innovation. Examples like NASA are always trotted out, but I think if you total those successes with the failures, pork, and corruption, you'll find we could have gotten much more for less. Maybe not NASA and it's indirect benefits specifically, but something else.
3. What has the federal government ever done for education other than turn principals into truancy officers? Don't get me started on tuition cost increases due to the ease of getting federally backed student loans.
4. If you want to increase manufacturing: drop the minimum wage.
Are you offering to paint goatse on it or something?
No, no. What this proves is that the aliens (or possibly the Illuminati - but trust me, I have proof) are so much in control of our government that they have taken all the evidence out of our government's hands. WHEN ARE YOU PEOPLE GOING TO WAKE UP AND SEE THE TRUTH?! They Live was a documentary!
So instead of stealing a PS3 for heroin money they steal it for their own use? I guess that's better. :)
I wonder if it's regional. Before I moved to CA that's how I remember compact spots too. Here I see rows and rows of them and they don't look any different than the other rows. I'm wondering if municipalities require spots of a certain size to be marked as compact. X inches = normal spot. X - 1 inches = compact?
I was referring specifically to "...costs for these companies to pay for content is rising..."
Further, I don't see the costs for content rising given that they are a DVD rental business. There might be value in a partnership with the studios, but unlike Netflix and other streaming places, they don't need the studios to play ball so if costs rise from content issues they can tell the studios to take a hike and just keep buying and renting the DVDs.
That's not to say the GP's main point isn't correct. Don't like the price hike, spend your dollars elsewhere (or don't).
I can't remember the last time I saw a "compact" spot that could not accomodate at least a mid-sized SUV. There was a time when a compact spot actually only fit compact vehicles. It wasn't a rule. It was a helpful description so you could avoid wasting your time trying to park there.
America is another name for the United States.
I don't think I've ever lost any recordings, but my Comcast/Motorola DVR's sometimes lock up completely on EAS alerts and stay that way until power cycled.
On the plus side, even the boxes that are "off" display EAS in the channel/time indicator, so I could potentially be alerted whether watching TV or not.
'Google has so much contradiction in what it wants for itself and what it does with other websites [e.g., Google frames Slashdot],' quipped one poster. 'Do no evil, right?'
I don't see the contradiction. Everyone is allowed to decide whether or not they allow their content to be displayed in iframes. If Google chooses no for itself but takes advantage of the fact that others have chosen yes, that is not hypocrisy. (If Google was forcing yes on others, the poster might have a point.)
There is plenty to complain about here, I'm sure, but that's not it.