I'm sorry, but I don't take enough drugs for this conversation.
In the (consensus reality) world, corporations pay taxes and exist. You can argue whatever that they are imaginary constructs, and maybe in a strictly dialectic sense they are. If physical reality is what your core argument is, then this conversation has exactly the same reality value as a corporation - it exists in our minds and in some data.
So, since this website, and this discussion, don't exist, it's probably time to just walk away.
In addition, from everything you hear about the US prison system, having access to a shitload of money is probably a very good idea and could come in helpful for the purpose of securing a somewhat comfortable stay.
You know, without new sexual experiences and all your bones remaining in one piece, etc.
I want glasses with facial recognition. In fact, if it worked the way I want it to, I'd buy them tomorrow.
I don't want this 1984 "we'll stalk everyone on the Internet for you" bullshit. I couldn't care less what the guy opposite me on the bus posted on Twitter this morning. I really, really don't give a fuck.
All I want is my own personal database of the people I know. They come in three categories:
People I know really well - don't need a database on them, already have it in my head
People I know well - I know their names and basic details, but a database that reminds me they had a birthday this week or other additional details I may or may not remember would be cool
People I barely know - this is what I want it for. I have a horrible memory for names even though I almost always remember a face. Show me their name and when and where we last met and my social life would be a lot easier.
The value of money is not constant. People are making more money, and buying more expensive things. That it all "evens out" in the end just speaks to the monetary policies of the US and the EU, it does not disprove my point.
We're not talking about absolute monetary values and never have. Share of income is a good measure precisely because it remains constant with inflation, etc.
No, I am not, but no, you did not. If what you meant is that "tax cuts for the rich cause burdens for the poor", then you are saying that not taking is giving, and not giving is taking. That is at best substituting accounting for economics, and at worst it is religious-level worship of the government. You're going to have to explain your argument.
Energy tax to finance the move to renewable energy. I went on about that for a bit. The important part is that the major industrial users of energy have a special legal exception from the tax. Since the amount that needs to be paid remains constant, energy has become more expensive in Germany for several years now, even though the actual exchange price of electricity has consistently dropped for the same time frame.
If that's not "shifting a burden", I don't know what is. To me, that's a textbook definition. Everyone pays more because some people get an exception.
I will admit that, according to the CIA World Factbook
This article, for example, contains plenty of numbers for an extrapolation for the next 5 years, where we might see solar+wind cover 30% of our energy needs.
A friend of mine works in the wind energy field and their order books are full. Meanwhile, no new nuclear reactor has gone online since 1989. So a shift is inevitable.
People are real things, companies are not.
I agree with you on that. However, taxes are abstract legal concepts, too. So in that particular context, the argument that companies are abstract entities doesn't make a difference. If they are real to the law and the tax office, then in the context of taxes they are real.
At no point did a non-corporeal entity pay taxes.
You are making a philosophical argument, while I am making a real-world argument. In the real world, companies pay taxes. In a philosophical abstraction you can say that the company is just a concept and in reality all money somewhere flows from and to human beings. Both can be true at the same time.
The Wealth of Nations is in many ways similar to On the Origin of Species, insofar as both are observant reflections on nature.
Yes, but - what you are basically saying is that economy is just applied psychology. ob xkcd. Again, philosophically that is correct. Realistically, however, I prefer an accountant doing my balance sheet over a psychologist.
Yes, economic behaviour is largely guided by psychology. At the same time, it turns out many early assumptions are simplistic and false. For example, the next time someone says "rational market participant", give them a laugh because no such thing exists.
Still, capitalism is not nature. It's one set of explanations and guidelines. Other sets are possible. All of them can be evaluated for their effectiveness and side-effects, a process we as a species are still pretty horrible about as we apparently prefer full-scale experiments without control groups.
That's not entirely true. People pay roughly the same share of their income for essentials (food and shelter) than they did 40, 60 or 80 years ago. Even though houses are larger and more comfortable and have more features, the share of income it takes to pay for one has remained largely the same.
The modern trend of having two wage earners is not so different from the age-old practice of farmers having many children (and farmwives were hardly idle).
The modern trend is, in fact, a reversal of a long-term trend. The further back in history you go, the more people in a family unit work. Ancient times - everyone worked. Middle ages suddenly invented retirement, where the old parents would leave the farm to their kids and, while still contributing some work, cut back quite a lot on their personal workload. Industrialisation also abolished child labor after a while, and then we turned retirement into what it means today, and then family units became small since old people had their pensions and didn't need to be with their family anymore, and then one bread earner was enough.
The change towards two working family members as the norm reverses this long-term trend.
You mean the Marxist one.
I have no idea where you take that from. The definition of "middle class" being the one between the upper and the working class is even on Wikipedia.
What does this even mean? What "burdens" do the poor have besides being poor, and how were these burdens placed upon their shoulders?
Are you trying to just win an argument with cheap tricks? I gave a very specific example just following that.
No, you are
I'm sorry, I live here and you don't. I kind of think I'm slightly more of an authority on the subject. The coal vs. nuclear is also a topic, and it's related, but it's not the same.
Solar and wind are not economical as a primary source for the energy demands that people actually have.
Yeah, that strawman argument has been made for at least a decade now. Truth is, solar and wind are covering more and more of the energy demands in the real world. It is happening right before our eyes, despite the argument that it's impossible. Primary source or not, these two in particular are so successful that nuclear and coal power station owners have lobbied our government so dramatically that even the mainstream press has picked it up. They want to reduce government subsidies for regenerative energies, of course conveniently ignoring that their plants, too, are heavily dependent on government benefits.
"Common people" always pay the bill. People pay taxes, not companies. To a gross simplification, all a company does is take money from some people and give it to others. If the company is taxed, then its name appears on the checks, but the employees and customers actually pay the tax. The company exists only on paper.
That's total hogwash.
First, according to legal doctrine, companies are people. Second, you can make the same argument in reverse, which is a solid proof that it's a null-argument (people don't exist, they only take income from one company and spend it buying stuff at other companies). Third, of course companies pay taxes. How can you base an argument on a trivially obvious falsehood? Heck, I own a small company and darn does it pay taxes.
The difference between today's rich and today's poor pales in comparison to the difference between today's poor and yesterday's poor.
I agree on that, and yet as above, the trend is currently reversing. For maybe two hundred years, everyone has been growing substantially richer and most poor today have things that kings of ancient times didn't, such as medical care and hygiene and electricity and running water.
How come we can use "someone else is worse" to make the rich pay more taxes?
You mean you are seriously questioning an argument that points out how A is not a reason to not act on B with the counter-argument that we do use A as an argument to do act on B?
Taxing the rich is the price they pay for society protecting them from the poor who'd otherwise go and take their wealth (and possibly their lives) away. It's a pretty good solution. The poor like it because they get at least some money without having to kill someone for it. The middle class likes it because it keeps society peaceful, and the rich like it because it's cheaper than everyone paying for their own castle and army to protect themselves.
But, if the State Legislators are also corrupt, why are they helping us? Well, maybe they aren't as corrupt as you think. But even if they are, the important thing is that they seem usually to be just as fed up with the Federal government as we are -- so much so that they are quite often happy to help out with this effort. After all, it's a pretty simple proposal that speaks to Democrats and Republicans alike.
The thing with modern politics is that everyone hates it, and yet it is exactly as it is.
It is the lowest common denominator. While everyone hates it, the solutions proposed by the respective opposite side are hated even more.
We're all stuck in a treadmill we dislike, but don't get out. Fortunately, Discordians have already forseen this issue decades ago, and our beloved prophet (or whatever) Malaclypse held a conference call with the Goddess, and since we're not for profit (or are we? I'm not sure) you'll get it for free right here:
Eris: But what does it matter if it is what you all want? Mal: But nobody wants it! Everybody hates it! Eris: Oh good, then just stop.
It's not unthinkable. The NSA has two missions. One is breaking everyone elses security and the other is to ensure the security of US government and military computing.
With ~two billion people living of off 2 dollars a day or less, with no chance of any meaningful education or healthcare, I believe it to be a rather strong argument.
No, it isn't.
I'm sure a hundred million kids get beaten daily. Doesn't make it right to beat yours.
Some evil somewhere else does not justify an evil here and now.
You probably only need DNA, or be alive, or have a carbon atom inside your body to be in the solar or galactic elite.
Local comparisons are usually more meaningful than global ones. Yes, it helps to remind ourselves that we're not living in a slum with no electricity and water, but "someone else is worse" is a really horrible argument against social inequality.
In 1976, houses were smaller, fewer had AC, far fewer had color TVs, many still had "party line" phones [...] If people were willing to accept 1976 standards of living today, they would not need two income earners.
That's a dishonest comparison. If you think that standard of living is what causes that change, then by the same standard, the move up from a medieval family, or in fact a stone-age tribe and the associated changes in standard of living would mean family requires how many working members to sustain? A hundred? A thousand?
The cost of living, adjusted for inflation, has not actually changed all that much. We have more today not because we work more or we earn more, but because progress gives us more for the same.
Median = 50th percentile.
I'm sorry, but your understanding of the term "middle class" is out-of-line with the generally accepted one. "Middle" is not a mathematical, but a social term, the middle class is the class between the working and the upper class. The relation to income is not strictly and purely mathematical.
If Germany, for example, is doing well, then it is perhaps a model to emulate.
I live in Germany, so here's a free look inside: We are doing extremely well by all outside standards. We are doing piss-poor by standards such as social equality or poverty or unemployment. For 20 years now, several successive government have intentionally and openly demolished workers rights, cut taxes for the rich, and shifted the burdens towards the poor. Just one of many examples: We are doing great with what's called the "Energiewende" - the move towards green, sustainable energy like solar and wind. Over 2000 (!) of the largest industrial users of electric power are exempt from the tax that finances this move. Common people and small business pays the bill, the companies that use the most electricity don't.
So is that a model to emulate? If you're in the upper class, it certainly is - like in the USA, the difference between the poor and the rich has been steadily increasing.
Attempting to isolate just one of them, such as unionization, and saying it is a magic bullet solution is folly.
Of course it is. It's not one factor, it is a different basic concept of society. In oversimplified terms, the USA is competitive, and other countries are cooperative. Both approaches have their pros and cons. Neither of them is probably correct at the extremes.
I don't want to live in socialism - heck, I own a small business. But there's a difference between capitalism and cut-throat neo-liberal capitalist exploitation.
The primary issue will be the same as for PGP (anyone use that? wait, let me rephrase that: anyone know of any non-geek people who use it?): User acceptance.
Unless it's as easy not only to use but also to add contacts as FB chat, AIM, ICQ, Skype, Google+, etc. etc. it won't get the critical mass it needs.
What good is a secure chat if you don't have anyone you can chat to?
It's obviously always a matter of amount of work vs. amount of fun gained, but I regularily spice up my pen&paper RPG sessions with gimmicks. Once made a section of a dwarven mine in Unity 3D and put it up on the video beamer as the group entered and then let them move around in it.
There's only so much you can do with words when you describe a dark place lit only by the torches the group carries, and the impact to actually have it in front of them - to move forward cautiously as more of the cavern or tunnel slowly enters light range - is so much more powerful.
Its already possible to do, but the Phone companies do NOT want to do this.
Which is why you need a law. You don't need one for things everyone involved wants to do, you only need laws to force people to do the right thing even though they don't like it.
I was asking you to define the premises under which you are arguing, not to defer to some abstract third party.
As the argument becomes deeper, at some point you either need to write a book, or point to someone else who already did that.
Nobody here is flirting with the past, I wouldn't want to switch with my grandfather. However, if you want simple facts then yes, nobody owned a cell phone in 1976 mostly because the first commercially available cell phone hit the market in 1983. But in 1976 the father could sustain his family and his house and his car, while today father and mother working is the most common family.
If you look at food and rent, the total amount of income that gets put towards it has remained largely stable, or dropped slightly. So that is true. We also have fewer actually really poor people in the west, few people here die of starvation and live in slums.
However, we also have a much smaller middle class than we used to, and a much larger low-income sector where both parents work and/or people work two or even three jobs. And we know that the creation of the low-income sector was not an accident, because our politicians have actively and openly moved on this, and are on record saying so much. And that is the race to the bottom - intentionally lowering incomes in an attempt to remain competitive internationally, while ignoring that you don't really want to have the same living conditions as those countries you're trying to compete with on income do.
That is what I define as insanity. Trying to beat China without realizing that none of us actually want to live there.
This is not about staying in the past - it is about making a different choice for the future. Some countries did and do, and they are doing quite well. In Europe, Scandinavia is a lot better off than central and southern Europe, for example. Education, average income, living quality - whatever your measure, Sweden or Norway beat Italy or Spain in each and every one, and France and Germany in most.
This. When the first announcement about Occulus Rift was made, I went through the usual Oh-wow-cool-I-want-to-have-one-oh-wait-crappy-resolution-shit-forget-it cycle that I've been through two dozen times over the past 15 years. But then they upgraded the resolution and it's actually starting to be a really interesting option.
I'm actually a member of the Pirate Party, though I'm not sure I'll be much longer. What parent wrote is 100% spot-on. The party has been taken by feminists, weed-growsers and other left-wingers. Unfortunately, not the moderate, normal kind but the extremist fanatic idiots who run workshops about the patriarchalic oppression embodied in the use of male pronouns.
The Pirate Party would need a reboot, throw out 99% of its agenda, kick out the half of the membership that's got nothing to do with Pirate Party ideas and was simply looking for a political platform to run their ideas on (and who, in many cases, have been driven out of all the other parties they tried before).
But it's not going to happen. There's only so much a captain can allow on his vessel before he loses control of it. The Pirate Party is done for in Germany. We have, in my eyes, two exceptional opposing parties left. One is sitting in parliament right now, Die Linke (literally "the left"). Not sure I'd want them in government, but as an opposition they are doing great work, and their speeches in parliament are actually worth listening to. The other hasn't made it into parliament, nor does it have a good chance to - Die Partei (yes, that means "they party"). They're a satirical political party, actually running for elections and doing the best real-life satire of the whole political dog and pony show you can imagine. Their top candidate is giving interviews where he demands the Berlin wall to be rebuilt or answers questions for programmatic content with the slogan that "content needs to be overcome". With the same straight face that all politicians blast their bullshit into the camera.
That's the best we have in Germany right now. Everyone else is corrupt, ignorant or complete morons - and in most cases, all three.
Our current (new) government wants to re-introduce the so-called "Vorratsdatenspeicherung" - the storage of all phone, SMS and Internet meta-data of everyone for no reason at all, just so they have that data (going back half a year!) in case they ever think it might help them catch a criminal.
You speak only for the stereotypical overweight gamer. Some of us keep fit and look for opportunities to be active while gaming.
Or, you know, just want to have fun.
I still play tennis on my Wii with full-motion swings, because it's a lot more fun that way. And I play for fun, not to win (winning is fun, so it's a secondary path, but not the primary goal).
I would absolutely love to run through Skyrim. Maybe not every morning, but just for the cool factor. Also, I do own a Unity 3D engine. Being able to build your own environment to run around in and stuff? Wow.
And then... when I go really crazy, I'm imagining playing pen & paper roleplaying games and having something prepared for this for the hacker who goes into the matrix, or the shaman who goes on a dream journey or whatever...
I'm sorry, I'm not here to teach basic economic theory.
Sources are plentiful and Google is your friend, if you really are interested, it is very easy to find material in abundance.
The ultra-short version for the interested reader is that disposable income is what drives progress - economic, technical, social. If everyone is barely scraping by and needs all his money for essentials, there's nothing left to pay artists, inventors, etc.
The ultra-wealthy do drive some of this and for most of history, they did. But a middle class, where lots of people have disposable income, drives so much more and desires so much more diversity that more paths are explored in parallel.
The mechanism, just so nobody can complain about me not answering the question, is called "investment". And while, again, the ultra-rich do that as well, there is more diversity and dynamics in the system the more people are involved.
Go through the list of Fortune 500 companies and remove every company that would not survive if the options were reduced to selling to the super-rich only, or selling life-essentials only (food - essential food, not sweets or luxury wines; clothes - but not fashion, just basic clothes; etc.).
You'll end up with a very, very short list. I'd be surprised if you had a Fortune 50 after this.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sorry, but I don't take enough drugs for this conversation.
In the (consensus reality) world, corporations pay taxes and exist. You can argue whatever that they are imaginary constructs, and maybe in a strictly dialectic sense they are. If physical reality is what your core argument is, then this conversation has exactly the same reality value as a corporation - it exists in our minds and in some data.
So, since this website, and this discussion, don't exist, it's probably time to just walk away.
Again, your are constructing a philosophical argument.
In that context, it is valid.
But I am arguing from a realistic position.
You've earned that +5.
In addition, from everything you hear about the US prison system, having access to a shitload of money is probably a very good idea and could come in helpful for the purpose of securing a somewhat comfortable stay.
You know, without new sexual experiences and all your bones remaining in one piece, etc.
Evil and normal are not opposites, so they can co-exist.
I want glasses with facial recognition. In fact, if it worked the way I want it to, I'd buy them tomorrow.
I don't want this 1984 "we'll stalk everyone on the Internet for you" bullshit. I couldn't care less what the guy opposite me on the bus posted on Twitter this morning. I really, really don't give a fuck.
All I want is my own personal database of the people I know. They come in three categories:
And /. doesn't do ordered lists. wtf?
This argument is growing tedious.
True
The value of money is not constant. People are making more money, and buying more expensive things. That it all "evens out" in the end just speaks to the monetary policies of the US and the EU, it does not disprove my point.
We're not talking about absolute monetary values and never have. Share of income is a good measure precisely because it remains constant with inflation, etc.
No, I am not, but no, you did not. If what you meant is that "tax cuts for the rich cause burdens for the poor", then you are saying that not taking is giving, and not giving is taking. That is at best substituting accounting for economics, and at worst it is religious-level worship of the government. You're going to have to explain your argument.
Energy tax to finance the move to renewable energy. I went on about that for a bit. The important part is that the major industrial users of energy have a special legal exception from the tax. Since the amount that needs to be paid remains constant, energy has become more expensive in Germany for several years now, even though the actual exchange price of electricity has consistently dropped for the same time frame.
If that's not "shifting a burden", I don't know what is. To me, that's a textbook definition. Everyone pays more because some people get an exception.
I will admit that, according to the CIA World Factbook
If you can read german, there are many numbers and current statistics in this online magazine:
http://www.heise.de/tp/inhalt/energie/default.html
This article, for example, contains plenty of numbers for an extrapolation for the next 5 years, where we might see solar+wind cover 30% of our energy needs.
A friend of mine works in the wind energy field and their order books are full. Meanwhile, no new nuclear reactor has gone online since 1989. So a shift is inevitable.
People are real things, companies are not.
I agree with you on that. However, taxes are abstract legal concepts, too. So in that particular context, the argument that companies are abstract entities doesn't make a difference. If they are real to the law and the tax office, then in the context of taxes they are real.
At no point did a non-corporeal entity pay taxes.
You are making a philosophical argument, while I am making a real-world argument. In the real world, companies pay taxes. In a philosophical abstraction you can say that the company is just a concept and in reality all money somewhere flows from and to human beings. Both can be true at the same time.
The Wealth of Nations is in many ways similar to On the Origin of Species, insofar as both are observant reflections on nature.
Yes, but - what you are basically saying is that economy is just applied psychology. ob xkcd. Again, philosophically that is correct. Realistically, however, I prefer an accountant doing my balance sheet over a psychologist.
Yes, economic behaviour is largely guided by psychology. At the same time, it turns out many early assumptions are simplistic and false. For example, the next time someone says "rational market participant", give them a laugh because no such thing exists.
Still, capitalism is not nature. It's one set of explanations and guidelines. Other sets are possible. All of them can be evaluated for their effectiveness and side-effects, a process we as a species are still pretty horrible about as we apparently prefer full-scale experiments without control groups.
Well, where is it? Post a torrent link or I don't believe you.
These things all cost more than the alternatives.
That's not entirely true. People pay roughly the same share of their income for essentials (food and shelter) than they did 40, 60 or 80 years ago. Even though houses are larger and more comfortable and have more features, the share of income it takes to pay for one has remained largely the same.
The modern trend of having two wage earners is not so different from the age-old practice of farmers having many children (and farmwives were hardly idle).
The modern trend is, in fact, a reversal of a long-term trend. The further back in history you go, the more people in a family unit work. Ancient times - everyone worked. Middle ages suddenly invented retirement, where the old parents would leave the farm to their kids and, while still contributing some work, cut back quite a lot on their personal workload. Industrialisation also abolished child labor after a while, and then we turned retirement into what it means today, and then family units became small since old people had their pensions and didn't need to be with their family anymore, and then one bread earner was enough.
The change towards two working family members as the norm reverses this long-term trend.
You mean the Marxist one.
I have no idea where you take that from. The definition of "middle class" being the one between the upper and the working class is even on Wikipedia.
What does this even mean? What "burdens" do the poor have besides being poor, and how were these burdens placed upon their shoulders?
Are you trying to just win an argument with cheap tricks? I gave a very specific example just following that.
No, you are
I'm sorry, I live here and you don't. I kind of think I'm slightly more of an authority on the subject. The coal vs. nuclear is also a topic, and it's related, but it's not the same.
Solar and wind are not economical as a primary source for the energy demands that people actually have.
Yeah, that strawman argument has been made for at least a decade now. Truth is, solar and wind are covering more and more of the energy demands in the real world. It is happening right before our eyes, despite the argument that it's impossible. Primary source or not, these two in particular are so successful that nuclear and coal power station owners have lobbied our government so dramatically that even the mainstream press has picked it up. They want to reduce government subsidies for regenerative energies, of course conveniently ignoring that their plants, too, are heavily dependent on government benefits.
"Common people" always pay the bill. People pay taxes, not companies. To a gross simplification, all a company does is take money from some people and give it to others. If the company is taxed, then its name appears on the checks, but the employees and customers actually pay the tax. The company exists only on paper.
That's total hogwash.
First, according to legal doctrine, companies are people. Second, you can make the same argument in reverse, which is a solid proof that it's a null-argument (people don't exist, they only take income from one company and spend it buying stuff at other companies). Third, of course companies pay taxes. How can you base an argument on a trivially obvious falsehood? Heck, I own a small company and darn does it pay taxes.
The difference between today's rich and today's poor pales in comparison to the difference between today's poor and yesterday's poor.
I agree on that, and yet as above, the trend is currently reversing. For maybe two hundred years, everyone has been growing substantially richer and most poor today have things that kings of ancient times didn't, such as medical care and hygiene and electricity and running water.
Bu
How come we can use "someone else is worse" to make the rich pay more taxes?
You mean you are seriously questioning an argument that points out how A is not a reason to not act on B with the counter-argument that we do use A as an argument to do act on B?
Taxing the rich is the price they pay for society protecting them from the poor who'd otherwise go and take their wealth (and possibly their lives) away. It's a pretty good solution. The poor like it because they get at least some money without having to kill someone for it. The middle class likes it because it keeps society peaceful, and the rich like it because it's cheaper than everyone paying for their own castle and army to protect themselves.
But, if the State Legislators are also corrupt, why are they helping us? Well, maybe they aren't as corrupt as you think. But even if they are, the important thing is that they seem usually to be just as fed up with the Federal government as we are -- so much so that they are quite often happy to help out with this effort. After all, it's a pretty simple proposal that speaks to Democrats and Republicans alike.
The thing with modern politics is that everyone hates it, and yet it is exactly as it is.
It is the lowest common denominator. While everyone hates it, the solutions proposed by the respective opposite side are hated even more.
We're all stuck in a treadmill we dislike, but don't get out. Fortunately, Discordians have already forseen this issue decades ago, and our beloved prophet (or whatever) Malaclypse held a conference call with the Goddess, and since we're not for profit (or are we? I'm not sure) you'll get it for free right here:
Eris: But what does it matter if it is what you all want?
Mal: But nobody wants it! Everybody hates it!
Eris: Oh good, then just stop.
Exceptionally well said.
Too bad that the real world won't follow that advise. It should.
It's not unthinkable. The NSA has two missions. One is breaking everyone elses security and the other is to ensure the security of US government and military computing.
With ~two billion people living of off 2 dollars a day or less, with no chance of any meaningful education or healthcare, I believe it to be a rather strong argument.
No, it isn't.
I'm sure a hundred million kids get beaten daily. Doesn't make it right to beat yours.
Some evil somewhere else does not justify an evil here and now.
You probably only need DNA, or be alive, or have a carbon atom inside your body to be in the solar or galactic elite.
Local comparisons are usually more meaningful than global ones. Yes, it helps to remind ourselves that we're not living in a slum with no electricity and water, but "someone else is worse" is a really horrible argument against social inequality.
In 1976, houses were smaller, fewer had AC, far fewer had color TVs, many still had "party line" phones [...] If people were willing to accept 1976 standards of living today, they would not need two income earners.
That's a dishonest comparison. If you think that standard of living is what causes that change, then by the same standard, the move up from a medieval family, or in fact a stone-age tribe and the associated changes in standard of living would mean family requires how many working members to sustain? A hundred? A thousand?
The cost of living, adjusted for inflation, has not actually changed all that much. We have more today not because we work more or we earn more, but because progress gives us more for the same.
Median = 50th percentile.
I'm sorry, but your understanding of the term "middle class" is out-of-line with the generally accepted one. "Middle" is not a mathematical, but a social term, the middle class is the class between the working and the upper class. The relation to income is not strictly and purely mathematical.
If Germany, for example, is doing well, then it is perhaps a model to emulate.
I live in Germany, so here's a free look inside: We are doing extremely well by all outside standards. We are doing piss-poor by standards such as social equality or poverty or unemployment. For 20 years now, several successive government have intentionally and openly demolished workers rights, cut taxes for the rich, and shifted the burdens towards the poor. Just one of many examples: We are doing great with what's called the "Energiewende" - the move towards green, sustainable energy like solar and wind. Over 2000 (!) of the largest industrial users of electric power are exempt from the tax that finances this move. Common people and small business pays the bill, the companies that use the most electricity don't.
So is that a model to emulate? If you're in the upper class, it certainly is - like in the USA, the difference between the poor and the rich has been steadily increasing.
Attempting to isolate just one of them, such as unionization, and saying it is a magic bullet solution is folly.
Of course it is. It's not one factor, it is a different basic concept of society. In oversimplified terms, the USA is competitive, and other countries are cooperative. Both approaches have their pros and cons. Neither of them is probably correct at the extremes.
I don't want to live in socialism - heck, I own a small business. But there's a difference between capitalism and cut-throat neo-liberal capitalist exploitation.
The primary issue will be the same as for PGP (anyone use that? wait, let me rephrase that: anyone know of any non-geek people who use it?): User acceptance.
Unless it's as easy not only to use but also to add contacts as FB chat, AIM, ICQ, Skype, Google+, etc. etc. it won't get the critical mass it needs.
What good is a secure chat if you don't have anyone you can chat to?
It's obviously always a matter of amount of work vs. amount of fun gained, but I regularily spice up my pen&paper RPG sessions with gimmicks. Once made a section of a dwarven mine in Unity 3D and put it up on the video beamer as the group entered and then let them move around in it.
There's only so much you can do with words when you describe a dark place lit only by the torches the group carries, and the impact to actually have it in front of them - to move forward cautiously as more of the cavern or tunnel slowly enters light range - is so much more powerful.
Its already possible to do, but the Phone companies do NOT want to do this.
Which is why you need a law. You don't need one for things everyone involved wants to do, you only need laws to force people to do the right thing even though they don't like it.
I was asking you to define the premises under which you are arguing, not to defer to some abstract third party.
As the argument becomes deeper, at some point you either need to write a book, or point to someone else who already did that.
Nobody here is flirting with the past, I wouldn't want to switch with my grandfather. However, if you want simple facts then yes, nobody owned a cell phone in 1976 mostly because the first commercially available cell phone hit the market in 1983. But in 1976 the father could sustain his family and his house and his car, while today father and mother working is the most common family.
If you look at food and rent, the total amount of income that gets put towards it has remained largely stable, or dropped slightly. So that is true. We also have fewer actually really poor people in the west, few people here die of starvation and live in slums.
However, we also have a much smaller middle class than we used to, and a much larger low-income sector where both parents work and/or people work two or even three jobs. And we know that the creation of the low-income sector was not an accident, because our politicians have actively and openly moved on this, and are on record saying so much. And that is the race to the bottom - intentionally lowering incomes in an attempt to remain competitive internationally, while ignoring that you don't really want to have the same living conditions as those countries you're trying to compete with on income do.
That is what I define as insanity. Trying to beat China without realizing that none of us actually want to live there.
This is not about staying in the past - it is about making a different choice for the future. Some countries did and do, and they are doing quite well. In Europe, Scandinavia is a lot better off than central and southern Europe, for example. Education, average income, living quality - whatever your measure, Sweden or Norway beat Italy or Spain in each and every one, and France and Germany in most.
This. When the first announcement about Occulus Rift was made, I went through the usual Oh-wow-cool-I-want-to-have-one-oh-wait-crappy-resolution-shit-forget-it cycle that I've been through two dozen times over the past 15 years. But then they upgraded the resolution and it's actually starting to be a really interesting option.
it's late, I'm tired.
spelling errors:
weed-growers
"the party". they probably party, too, but it's not in the name :)
Parent deserves a +5
I'm actually a member of the Pirate Party, though I'm not sure I'll be much longer. What parent wrote is 100% spot-on. The party has been taken by feminists, weed-growsers and other left-wingers. Unfortunately, not the moderate, normal kind but the extremist fanatic idiots who run workshops about the patriarchalic oppression embodied in the use of male pronouns.
The Pirate Party would need a reboot, throw out 99% of its agenda, kick out the half of the membership that's got nothing to do with Pirate Party ideas and was simply looking for a political platform to run their ideas on (and who, in many cases, have been driven out of all the other parties they tried before).
But it's not going to happen. There's only so much a captain can allow on his vessel before he loses control of it. The Pirate Party is done for in Germany. We have, in my eyes, two exceptional opposing parties left.
One is sitting in parliament right now, Die Linke (literally "the left"). Not sure I'd want them in government, but as an opposition they are doing great work, and their speeches in parliament are actually worth listening to.
The other hasn't made it into parliament, nor does it have a good chance to - Die Partei (yes, that means "they party"). They're a satirical political party, actually running for elections and doing the best real-life satire of the whole political dog and pony show you can imagine. Their top candidate is giving interviews where he demands the Berlin wall to be rebuilt or answers questions for programmatic content with the slogan that "content needs to be overcome". With the same straight face that all politicians blast their bullshit into the camera.
That's the best we have in Germany right now. Everyone else is corrupt, ignorant or complete morons - and in most cases, all three.
What a laugh.
Our current (new) government wants to re-introduce the so-called "Vorratsdatenspeicherung" - the storage of all phone, SMS and Internet meta-data of everyone for no reason at all, just so they have that data (going back half a year!) in case they ever think it might help them catch a criminal.
You're guilty until proven innocent.
You speak only for the stereotypical overweight gamer. Some of us keep fit and look for opportunities to be active while gaming.
Or, you know, just want to have fun.
I still play tennis on my Wii with full-motion swings, because it's a lot more fun that way. And I play for fun, not to win (winning is fun, so it's a secondary path, but not the primary goal).
I would absolutely love to run through Skyrim. Maybe not every morning, but just for the cool factor. Also, I do own a Unity 3D engine. Being able to build your own environment to run around in and stuff? Wow.
And then... when I go really crazy, I'm imagining playing pen & paper roleplaying games and having something prepared for this for the hacker who goes into the matrix, or the shaman who goes on a dream journey or whatever...
I'm sorry, I'm not here to teach basic economic theory.
Sources are plentiful and Google is your friend, if you really are interested, it is very easy to find material in abundance.
The ultra-short version for the interested reader is that disposable income is what drives progress - economic, technical, social. If everyone is barely scraping by and needs all his money for essentials, there's nothing left to pay artists, inventors, etc.
The ultra-wealthy do drive some of this and for most of history, they did. But a middle class, where lots of people have disposable income, drives so much more and desires so much more diversity that more paths are explored in parallel.
The mechanism, just so nobody can complain about me not answering the question, is called "investment". And while, again, the ultra-rich do that as well, there is more diversity and dynamics in the system the more people are involved.
Go through the list of Fortune 500 companies and remove every company that would not survive if the options were reduced to selling to the super-rich only, or selling life-essentials only (food - essential food, not sweets or luxury wines; clothes - but not fashion, just basic clothes; etc.).
You'll end up with a very, very short list. I'd be surprised if you had a Fortune 50 after this.