Because as stated about a bajillion times prior, wage increases do not exist in a vacuum. If wages go up by $x%, and inflation goes up by $x+1%, sure you 'make more money' (in the nominal sense) but you're actually poorer.
Are you saying that minimum wage is what determines the rate of inflation? Not the policies adopted by the Federal Reserve? Or will you acknowledge that it is possible to manage inflation independent of minimum wage?
See also: United States since about 1970. in *REAL* dollars, a janitor made about $17/hour back then.
In real terms, the minimum wage has fallen from $8.90 ($1.45 in 1970 dollars is $8.90 in 2014 dollars) back then. So then do wage decreases exist in a vacuum? Because the minimum wage has been decreasing (in *REAL* dollars) since then. That doesn't seem to jive with what you're saying.
In the case of McDonalds these kiosks will reduce the number of jobs that McDonalds directly supplies, but how many McDonalds are there worldwide and how many kiosks will they need? I imagine quite a few jobs will be created to create, ship, support, and maintain those kiosks which could very well lead to a net increase in the people employed both directly and indirectly by McDonalds. Furthermore they will be supporting much higher payed positions in IT and manufacturing.
There's one little piece of logic that seems to escape most people when this issue comes up.
If the number of jobs created is greater than the number of jobs reduced, then these kiosks decrease productive efficiency (by requiring more people to do the same amount of work). Since technological advances generally increase producitive efficiency, it is much more reasonable to assume that the number of jobs created is less than the number of jobs reduced.
That's why pointing to all these theoretical new jobs as though they somehow compensate for the real jobs that are eliminated is misleading at best. If you can lay off five $20k cashiers by hiring one $100k engineer to build/maintain/whatever some automation system (that does the work of those five cashiers), there is no gain in efficiency, and no financial argument for doing so. It only makes sense to automate when the costs of doing so are actually less than continuing to pay for labor, which necessarily implies that more jobs are eliminated than created (in dollar terms).
The "giving back" concept assumes they took something they shouldn't have.
No, it doesn't. It implies that they took something. There is no value statement about whether or not they should have. And they did take something. They took a lot. That's why they became rich. People raised by wolves don't become rich.
Secondly our tax rate (incl capital gains) is now HIGH compared to Canada and other countries.
False. Take your absurd unsubstantiated claims elsewhere.
And third people are leaving France because of socialist policies.
People? A person. And I'm still laughing at him. Depardieu is a fucking tool.
Why wouldn't it happen here as well if we continue down the path we're on?
It wouldn't happen here for the same reason it didn't happen in France.
I attribute it to poor/lack of training for employees working the register and taking the orders.
You're wrong. I've worked in the food service industry as well as the fast food industry. In fast food, the problem is not poor/lcak of training for employees. It's quite simply that they don't give a fuck.
And really, why should they? They're getting paid chump change to feed people the shittiest food around. If they make a mistake and get you a hamburger instead of a cheeseburger, nobody dies. Quite simply, the quality of the service they provide is nearly inconsequential, and their wages reflect this fact. American culture doesn't really promote the idea that one ought to take pride in their work (merely that one ought to take pride in their salary), so it's not reasonable to expect American workers to act Japanese about their jobs.
I'm with you. I actively choose to shop only at stores with a self-checkout option (when possible).
There's nothing worse than standing in a long ass checkout line, staring at a cashier that couldn't possibly scan items any slower, only to have a customer bust out their penny-purse or start writing a personal check. Fuuuuuuck.
I first encountered one of these at a soba noodle place in Tokyo. I don't speak Japanese, and the employees there didn't speak English. For a minute, I really thought I was about to buy a bowl of steaming hot noodles from a vending machine. When a little ticket popped out instead, I breathed a sigh of relief.
And why, exactly, do you think any of those rich individuals and corporations would remain in America, when you're forcing them to work just so you can steal their money and give it to the people who don't?
I'll overlook your obviously imflammatory language and answer your question in earnest.
I think that these rich individuals and corporations would remain in America for several reasons. Foremost is my belief that rich individuals specifically aren't generally sociopathic, and consequently understand the value of contributing back to the society in which one lives. Additionally, I think the comfort of living in America (partly because it's not so bad here, partly because it's a bit of a pain in the ass to uproot and emigrate) would prevent many from wanting to leave. Furthermore, I think any developed country they could move to would impose an even higher tax burden on them, and I don't think it's realistic to think any significant number will head out to the undeveloped corners of the world.
Now, to maintain some semblance of balance, I'd like to add some of my own obviously inflammatory language. Stop assraping this site with your retarded hypotheses.
I agree, with a caveat. Automation has indeed created a huge number of jobs. However, it has eliminated billions of jobs at the same time. Case in point: food production. It used to take a lot of people to feed everyone. Virtually all of them, actually. Let's be conservative and say that 50% of the population used to be involved in agriculture. Today, it's closer to 0%, all because of automation, increasing productivity, and all that other good stuff. That means that roughly 3.5 billion agriculture jobs were eliminated. And that's just in agriculture.
It's a win-win in the short term, even though it's disastrous for the economy in the long term.
Citation needed. In my opinion, the first scenario you set forth doesn't seem very "disastrous". A steady cycle of wage increases is what most people would describe as "awesome".
So tell me, am I an asshole for not caring about "Gamergate"?
This year, Islamic State has killed over 5000 Iraqis, probably closer to 10000 people total.
This year, ebola has killed about 5000 people, with another 10000 or so infected (most of who will also die).
This year, hundreds of people died by slipping and falling in their bathtubs.
And you want me to shed tears over video game players being mean to each other? Are you serious? Perhaps you're right and there's some ominous conspiracy trying to keep "Gamergate" coverage out of the media spotlight. Or perhaps you're wrong and it's been featured on Google News' main page regularly. Based on my personal observations, I'd guess the latter. Of course, feel free to continue protesting "the universal media blackout" that's keeping this epic tragedy under wraps.
Also, fuck all of you that fall into this *gate bullshit. I would've called it Gategate but apparently that's a thing already.
Skylon doesn't need to replace its heat shield. It performs a shallow re-entry that means it doesn't need nearly the same level of thermal protection as the space shuttle. No massive inspection/replacement of tiles.
So... no ceramics, no ablatives... How does it stay intact during reentry?
As for the GM argument... well, I'm from the UK. We used to have our own GM, called British Leyland. You can't buy their cars anymore. Now we assemble Nissans. Importing Japanese parts and assembling them here proved to be a better business model.
Who is "we"? Are you saying British Leyland assembles and sells cars made of Nissan parts? Or that Nissan came to the UK? Because those are two very different things, and only one of them makes any sense.
those that the ordinary consumers do not take seriously." e.g., "The Finest Fried Chicken in the World."
So I wonder how that works out in the context of:
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, do these sound like the actions of a man whose had ALL he could eat?
Is "all you can eat", from a legal point of view, considered an "exaggerated or puffing representation", i.e. one "that the ordinary consumers do not take seriously"? Or would Homer's complaint be taken up by the FTC?
The United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) defined puffery as a "term frequently used to denote the exaggerations reasonably to be expected of a seller as to the degree of quality of his product, the truth or falsity of which cannot be precisely determined."
The FTC stated in 1984 that puffery does not warrant enforcement action by the Commission. In its FTC Policy Statement on Deception, the Commission stated: "The Commission generally will not pursue cases involving obviously exaggerated or puffing representations, i.e., those that the ordinary consumers do not take seriously." e.g., "The Finest Fried Chicken in the World."
A SpaceX flyback first stage a) only resuse part of the rocket and b) has to be reintegrated with the rest of the rocket before launching again
Of course, you're ignoring that a) the first stage has most of the engines (and consequently most of cost savings) and b) SpaceX has been planning to fly the second stage back to the pad also
it seems without any further evidence that getting a Skylon prepared for reuse is simpler because you get the entire vehicle back just as it left.
Baseless assumption; you're looking exclusively at reintegration times when other factors could easily be dominant in this equation. How easy is it to clear Skylon's heat shield for another launch?
I doubt the future will be Falcon vs Skylon though. If Skylon proves viable, why wouldn't SpaceX just buy SABRE engines from reaction engines and make their own SSTO plane?
Ignoring the drawbacks of a lifting body design for a minute, why would SpaceX want to abandon their competitive edge to simply mimick a competitor? Your argument is as absurd as the suggestion that GM should stop making GM cars and instead start buying and assembling Honda parts. Even if you feel Hondas are better than GMs, how the fuck do you expect that business plan to work out?
I don't think you could possibly pick a more ridiculous technology for a custom, hit-and-run project that someone different will be reworking this time next year.
Project? Really? This could probably be implemented as a one-liner in Perl, and you're talking about "reworking" a "custom... project". Have some sense of proportion, man.
Any option that you can find in the top 20 used for web development would be more appropriate.
Why? Because of popularity? I don't think popularity is more important than simplicity when it comes to getting shit done.
But even Perl ACT seems to provide an order of magnitude more functionality than what's required!
An "online volunteer sign-up site", as far as I can tell from the stated requirements (of which there are none), needs to accept some user-provided text data fields (let's say name, address, phone number, email address) and store it somehow. This is easily accomplished using HTML forms and a Perl CGI script that simply takes the values from the form fields and drops them into a perl.db file. In fact, this is so easy that it's the equivalent of Perl/CGI's "Hello World" and the required code can be pilfered from any of the top Google hits for 'perl cgi example'. An experienced Perl coder could build this solution in minutes. Maybe even just one minute, literally. A total Perl noob might take a full day, at most.
Pretty soon we'll be seeing Ask Slashdot submissions like "We need some software that will print out the text 'Hello World', but management seems to be suffering from not-invented-here syndrome. How would you convince them to abandon their plan to dive into project management and instead use an existing solution?"
I feel like software developers are more like software integrators now, with all the hostility towards actually coding anything yourself.
Are you saying a hidden patrol car is a better deterrent than a visible patrol car?
Some people, myself included, regularly exceed posted speed limits. I'll speak for myself: I do this fully aware that sometimes, I'll be caught off guard and ticketed. I go to great lengths to minimize the chances of this, but I admit that it's still going to happen from time to time. Now, when I'm driving down the road, exceeding the speed limit (as I regularly do), a visible patrol car will cause me to decrease my speed to remain within the posted speed limit. A hidden patrol car will not. The only way hidden patrol cars would cause me to moderate my speed is if they were truly ubiquitous. However, visible patrol cars would also accomplish this if they were ubiquitous, and even if they weren't. Consequently, when it comes to my own personal driving, I can conceive of no situation in which a hidden patrol car is more effective than a visible patrol car at causing me to slow down.
How would you convince them to abandon their plan to dive into project management and use an existing solution?
I wouldn't. This seems like a trivial project, something you could whip up with Perl/CGI in a few hours. Is there something wrong with the "site written by a volunteer"? Why is the original developer the only one that can "maintain" and "enhance" the site? What exactly needs "maintaining"? Why do you expect that there is an "existing solution" that not only meets their needs but that also costs nothing to "maintain" and "enhance"?
I've noticed a sort of reverse-Not-Invented-Here syndrome recently, where problems that would be trivial to build one-off solutions for are instead solved with huge, unwieldy, general-purpose, off-the-shelf products. It seems the pendulum swings both ways.
Slashdot Mirror
See here.
See here.
Because as stated about a bajillion times prior, wage increases do not exist in a vacuum. If wages go up by $x%, and inflation goes up by $x+1%, sure you 'make more money' (in the nominal sense) but you're actually poorer.
Are you saying that minimum wage is what determines the rate of inflation? Not the policies adopted by the Federal Reserve? Or will you acknowledge that it is possible to manage inflation independent of minimum wage?
See also: United States since about 1970. in *REAL* dollars, a janitor made about $17/hour back then.
In real terms, the minimum wage has fallen from $8.90 ($1.45 in 1970 dollars is $8.90 in 2014 dollars) back then. So then do wage decreases exist in a vacuum? Because the minimum wage has been decreasing (in *REAL* dollars) since then. That doesn't seem to jive with what you're saying.
In the case of McDonalds these kiosks will reduce the number of jobs that McDonalds directly supplies, but how many McDonalds are there worldwide and how many kiosks will they need? I imagine quite a few jobs will be created to create, ship, support, and maintain those kiosks which could very well lead to a net increase in the people employed both directly and indirectly by McDonalds. Furthermore they will be supporting much higher payed positions in IT and manufacturing.
There's one little piece of logic that seems to escape most people when this issue comes up.
If the number of jobs created is greater than the number of jobs reduced, then these kiosks decrease productive efficiency (by requiring more people to do the same amount of work). Since technological advances generally increase producitive efficiency, it is much more reasonable to assume that the number of jobs created is less than the number of jobs reduced.
That's why pointing to all these theoretical new jobs as though they somehow compensate for the real jobs that are eliminated is misleading at best. If you can lay off five $20k cashiers by hiring one $100k engineer to build/maintain/whatever some automation system (that does the work of those five cashiers), there is no gain in efficiency, and no financial argument for doing so. It only makes sense to automate when the costs of doing so are actually less than continuing to pay for labor, which necessarily implies that more jobs are eliminated than created (in dollar terms).
The "giving back" concept assumes they took something they shouldn't have.
No, it doesn't. It implies that they took something. There is no value statement about whether or not they should have. And they did take something. They took a lot. That's why they became rich. People raised by wolves don't become rich.
Secondly our tax rate (incl capital gains) is now HIGH compared to Canada and other countries.
False. Take your absurd unsubstantiated claims elsewhere.
And third people are leaving France because of socialist policies.
People? A person. And I'm still laughing at him. Depardieu is a fucking tool.
Why wouldn't it happen here as well if we continue down the path we're on?
It wouldn't happen here for the same reason it didn't happen in France.
I know slashdot loves SJWs
It's a submission about the WSJ, not SJWs.
I attribute it to poor/lack of training for employees working the register and taking the orders.
You're wrong. I've worked in the food service industry as well as the fast food industry. In fast food, the problem is not poor/lcak of training for employees. It's quite simply that they don't give a fuck.
And really, why should they? They're getting paid chump change to feed people the shittiest food around. If they make a mistake and get you a hamburger instead of a cheeseburger, nobody dies. Quite simply, the quality of the service they provide is nearly inconsequential, and their wages reflect this fact. American culture doesn't really promote the idea that one ought to take pride in their work (merely that one ought to take pride in their salary), so it's not reasonable to expect American workers to act Japanese about their jobs.
I'm with you. I actively choose to shop only at stores with a self-checkout option (when possible).
There's nothing worse than standing in a long ass checkout line, staring at a cashier that couldn't possibly scan items any slower, only to have a customer bust out their penny-purse or start writing a personal check. Fuuuuuuck.
So very, very confusing for a westerner though.
I first encountered one of these at a soba noodle place in Tokyo. I don't speak Japanese, and the employees there didn't speak English. For a minute, I really thought I was about to buy a bowl of steaming hot noodles from a vending machine. When a little ticket popped out instead, I breathed a sigh of relief.
And why, exactly, do you think any of those rich individuals and corporations would remain in America, when you're forcing them to work just so you can steal their money and give it to the people who don't?
I'll overlook your obviously imflammatory language and answer your question in earnest.
I think that these rich individuals and corporations would remain in America for several reasons. Foremost is my belief that rich individuals specifically aren't generally sociopathic, and consequently understand the value of contributing back to the society in which one lives. Additionally, I think the comfort of living in America (partly because it's not so bad here, partly because it's a bit of a pain in the ass to uproot and emigrate) would prevent many from wanting to leave. Furthermore, I think any developed country they could move to would impose an even higher tax burden on them, and I don't think it's realistic to think any significant number will head out to the undeveloped corners of the world.
Now, to maintain some semblance of balance, I'd like to add some of my own obviously inflammatory language. Stop assraping this site with your retarded hypotheses.
Automation is good for the economy.
I agree.
Automation has created 100ks of jobs.
I agree, with a caveat. Automation has indeed created a huge number of jobs. However, it has eliminated billions of jobs at the same time. Case in point: food production. It used to take a lot of people to feed everyone. Virtually all of them, actually. Let's be conservative and say that 50% of the population used to be involved in agriculture. Today, it's closer to 0%, all because of automation, increasing productivity, and all that other good stuff. That means that roughly 3.5 billion agriculture jobs were eliminated. And that's just in agriculture.
It's a win-win in the short term, even though it's disastrous for the economy in the long term.
Citation needed. In my opinion, the first scenario you set forth doesn't seem very "disastrous". A steady cycle of wage increases is what most people would describe as "awesome".
So tell me, am I an asshole for not caring about "Gamergate"?
This year, Islamic State has killed over 5000 Iraqis, probably closer to 10000 people total.
This year, ebola has killed about 5000 people, with another 10000 or so infected (most of who will also die).
This year, hundreds of people died by slipping and falling in their bathtubs.
And you want me to shed tears over video game players being mean to each other? Are you serious? Perhaps you're right and there's some ominous conspiracy trying to keep "Gamergate" coverage out of the media spotlight. Or perhaps you're wrong and it's been featured on Google News' main page regularly. Based on my personal observations, I'd guess the latter. Of course, feel free to continue protesting "the universal media blackout" that's keeping this epic tragedy under wraps.
Also, fuck all of you that fall into this *gate bullshit. I would've called it Gategate but apparently that's a thing already.
Skylon doesn't need to replace its heat shield. It performs a shallow re-entry that means it doesn't need nearly the same level of thermal protection as the space shuttle. No massive inspection/replacement of tiles.
So... no ceramics, no ablatives... How does it stay intact during reentry?
As for the GM argument... well, I'm from the UK. We used to have our own GM, called British Leyland. You can't buy their cars anymore. Now we assemble Nissans. Importing Japanese parts and assembling them here proved to be a better business model.
Who is "we"? Are you saying British Leyland assembles and sells cars made of Nissan parts? Or that Nissan came to the UK? Because those are two very different things, and only one of them makes any sense.
Note that comparatives "our product A is better than B" are more likely to be actionable than superlatives "our product A is the best."
It's official. Doublespeak is now codified in law.
those that the ordinary consumers do not take seriously." e.g., "The Finest Fried Chicken in the World."
So I wonder how that works out in the context of:
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, do these sound like the actions of a man whose had ALL he could eat?
Is "all you can eat", from a legal point of view, considered an "exaggerated or puffing representation", i.e. one "that the ordinary consumers do not take seriously"? Or would Homer's complaint be taken up by the FTC?
The United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) defined puffery as a "term frequently used to denote the exaggerations reasonably to be expected of a seller as to the degree of quality of his product, the truth or falsity of which cannot be precisely determined."
The FTC stated in 1984 that puffery does not warrant enforcement action by the Commission. In its FTC Policy Statement on Deception, the Commission stated: "The Commission generally will not pursue cases involving obviously exaggerated or puffing representations, i.e., those that the ordinary consumers do not take seriously." e.g., "The Finest Fried Chicken in the World."
Source
In other words, caveat emptor.
A SpaceX flyback first stage a) only resuse part of the rocket and b) has to be reintegrated with the rest of the rocket before launching again
Of course, you're ignoring that a) the first stage has most of the engines (and consequently most of cost savings) and b) SpaceX has been planning to fly the second stage back to the pad also
it seems without any further evidence that getting a Skylon prepared for reuse is simpler because you get the entire vehicle back just as it left.
Baseless assumption; you're looking exclusively at reintegration times when other factors could easily be dominant in this equation. How easy is it to clear Skylon's heat shield for another launch?
I doubt the future will be Falcon vs Skylon though. If Skylon proves viable, why wouldn't SpaceX just buy SABRE engines from reaction engines and make their own SSTO plane?
Ignoring the drawbacks of a lifting body design for a minute, why would SpaceX want to abandon their competitive edge to simply mimick a competitor? Your argument is as absurd as the suggestion that GM should stop making GM cars and instead start buying and assembling Honda parts. Even if you feel Hondas are better than GMs, how the fuck do you expect that business plan to work out?
You forgot SolarCity, the largest residential installer of photovoltaic panels, also a Musk company.
I don't think you could possibly pick a more ridiculous technology for a custom, hit-and-run project that someone different will be reworking this time next year.
Project? Really? This could probably be implemented as a one-liner in Perl, and you're talking about "reworking" a "custom ... project". Have some sense of proportion, man.
Any option that you can find in the top 20 used for web development would be more appropriate.
Why? Because of popularity? I don't think popularity is more important than simplicity when it comes to getting shit done.
All valid points, I agree.
But even Perl ACT seems to provide an order of magnitude more functionality than what's required!
.db file. In fact, this is so easy that it's the equivalent of Perl/CGI's "Hello World" and the required code can be pilfered from any of the top Google hits for 'perl cgi example'. An experienced Perl coder could build this solution in minutes. Maybe even just one minute, literally. A total Perl noob might take a full day, at most.
An "online volunteer sign-up site", as far as I can tell from the stated requirements (of which there are none), needs to accept some user-provided text data fields (let's say name, address, phone number, email address) and store it somehow. This is easily accomplished using HTML forms and a Perl CGI script that simply takes the values from the form fields and drops them into a perl
Pretty soon we'll be seeing Ask Slashdot submissions like "We need some software that will print out the text 'Hello World', but management seems to be suffering from not-invented-here syndrome. How would you convince them to abandon their plan to dive into project management and instead use an existing solution?"
I feel like software developers are more like software integrators now, with all the hostility towards actually coding anything yourself.
Are you saying a hidden patrol car is a better deterrent than a visible patrol car?
Some people, myself included, regularly exceed posted speed limits. I'll speak for myself: I do this fully aware that sometimes, I'll be caught off guard and ticketed. I go to great lengths to minimize the chances of this, but I admit that it's still going to happen from time to time. Now, when I'm driving down the road, exceeding the speed limit (as I regularly do), a visible patrol car will cause me to decrease my speed to remain within the posted speed limit. A hidden patrol car will not. The only way hidden patrol cars would cause me to moderate my speed is if they were truly ubiquitous. However, visible patrol cars would also accomplish this if they were ubiquitous, and even if they weren't. Consequently, when it comes to my own personal driving, I can conceive of no situation in which a hidden patrol car is more effective than a visible patrol car at causing me to slow down.
Open to hearing the other side of the argument.
How would you convince them to abandon their plan to dive into project management and use an existing solution?
I wouldn't. This seems like a trivial project, something you could whip up with Perl/CGI in a few hours. Is there something wrong with the "site written by a volunteer"? Why is the original developer the only one that can "maintain" and "enhance" the site? What exactly needs "maintaining"? Why do you expect that there is an "existing solution" that not only meets their needs but that also costs nothing to "maintain" and "enhance"?
I've noticed a sort of reverse-Not-Invented-Here syndrome recently, where problems that would be trivial to build one-off solutions for are instead solved with huge, unwieldy, general-purpose, off-the-shelf products. It seems the pendulum swings both ways.
Waze is also available in the US market.