Not if they target only young people which are outnumbered by the older folks. One just has to figure out where to draw the line to get 50%+1 support (along with some changes in the filibuster rules in the Senate). The hole has been dug, it will eventually have to be filled in somehow, the scheme can't last another 100 years without major changes (increased contributions and/or decreased benefits).
My guess is Social Security will begin to be means tested. Likely it will be based on income (which is kind of already done a bit as Social Security retirement benefits are counted as taxable income ONLY if your total income exceeds some amount) with the limit set high enough, perhaps $100K of income a year, that the majority (ref. tyranny of the majority) easily accepts it. This won't raise much money, but it does start the process of boiling the frog. Then the income limit will creep down - those already excluded won't complain (they will figure the more benefits are reduced, the less risk they will have to pay general income taxes to prop the system up in the future) and those well below the new limit won't see the risk. This can happen in about 10 steps over time because no more than maybe 20% of the people will feel that they will be affected by each step. Eventually, any non-Social Security income will simply be deducted from your Social Security benefit. Then, of course, it will be just a welfare program -- and since only about 20% of the people are benefiting, the other 80% will support dismantling the program.
There may also be some "asset based" means testing, but that is harder to implement so it will be less attractive to the politicians.
This is not unlike the early days of the modern Federal income tax. It started out as being 7% on incomes above $500,000 (more than $10 million in today's dollars). Of course, the rates went up and the brackets slid down over the years.
Yes, but all of those events (economic downturn, poor judgement etc) are known risks whose occurrence and impact on an individual are unpredictable. These are the sort of risks "insurance" pays out - but only when they occur. Social Security retirement (as contrasted to the disability portion of the program) pays the benefit based solely on the premiums, not on one of the risk events having happened. Therefore, I don't think it's properly characterized as "insurance" in the common usage of the word.
The retirement portion seems best characterized as an annuity you are forced to participate in and pay into on an installment plan.
It does, however, have a twist that most annuities don't have. In a typical annuity, if pay in another dollar, you get at least as much (actuarial) benefit from that dollar as the previous dollar you paid in. Social Security retirement is the opposite, as you pay in more, the dollars give you less incremental benefit. In fact, the first dollar you put in returns a benefit six times that of the last dollar put in just before the taxable salary cap is hit (see bend points here).
I'm worried about the transition period where the stupid humans are sharing the road with self-driving vehicles running release X for all X < 6. Even with decades of intuitive understanding of humans, the stupidity of human drivers still amazes me. I figure release 1.0 will handle other sane drivers on the road pretty well, but am thinking the insane ones interacting with the self-driving vehicles may increase collisions.
I'm also wondering how good the self-driving vehicles will be at detecting human cues like eye contact and a subtle wave of someone's hand indicating they are letting you merge in front of them. If the self driving cars can't pick up on these cues, it seems they will likely get themselves into "can't get out of here" boxes and/or confuse other human drivers by ignoring or interpreting their behavior incorrectly.
For example, I'm curious how they will merge onto a freeway with fairly heavy traffic moving at high speed when visibility is limited and the merge lane is short and on the inside of a slight curve in the freeway.
There was such a merge situation I used to do almost daily (thank you state highway department that thought there should be vegetation hiding the merging and mainline traffic from each other until the last second just to make it a bit more challenging - idiots). Enough people drove this stretch every day that it all sort of worked out because some kind/attentive soul on the freeway would detect your predicament and slow a bit and wave you in.
However, I'm pretty sure the only "safe" thing, in the absence of human cues, to do was to come to a complete stop on the on-ramp about 20 percent of the time because, technically, there just wasn't any safe way to merge "by the book" leaving proper clearances. Of course doing so would have been a disaster as (1) it would then have been impossible to merge into traffic (at least without a Highway Patrol rolling road block or a phalanx of self-drivers conspiring to do effectively the same thing) for up to two hours until traffic dropped and (2) you would likely be rear-ended by a car behind you on the on-ramp whose driver is paying more attention to the instant they can begin to see around the vegetation than they were to the car in front of them on the ramp.
My guess is the lawyers would tell the programmers to select the "Stop" option in spite of the societal cost (an unnecessary accident and/or an unusable on-ramp for a couple hours) because in court they could prove based on the speed of other cars and gaps, there was no safe way to merge and stopping was the only safe option and that any collision was the result of the driver behind not paying attention. By attempting the merge (possibly misreading some cue), an accident might occur on the freeway and the records on the self driving car would PROVE that the merge was unsafe.
Actually, the plumbing example is interesting. There is a strong focus on reducing the labor required to do plumbing work - esp. in new construction and remodeling.
Compare waste pipes in a new house of today to those of 50 years ago. 50 years ago they were cast iron and required cutting and hot lead sealing at joints - very labor intensive. Now, they are plastic which is much faster to cut, actually bends a little (okay, who hasn't done this just a bit although it's not good form), is lighter to carry (less labor), and joints are glued with a few seconds of work. As a result, much less labor is required to achieve the same result. And it's gravy that the pipes never rust so probably never require replacement and the associated labor, have a low coefficient of friction reducing blockages and the associated labor, and require less labor to repair if damaged or to retrofit during remodeling.
Compare water supply lines in a new house of today to those of 50 years ago. 50 years ago they were likely galvanized which is labor intensive to install (heavy, each joint needs to be cut, threaded, and tightened properly and if it leaks during test, replacing it is time consuming) and didn't last all that long (water conditions in some areas resulted in galvanized piping needing replacing in just a few decades - requiring yet more labor). Now, the piping is likely to be PEX which can eliminate virtually all joints (if run from a central manifold(s) directly to each fixture), much of the measuring, and is light -- dramatically reducing installation labor. PEX also is more tolerant of freezing so in climates where that's important, there's potentially less repair required. Also, if using a central manifold with valves and a run to each fixture, many plumbing problems can be isolated by the homeowner and eliminate the need for an "emergency" plumbing call.
Compare quality faucets of 50 years ago to those of today. New materials and designs make the requirement to change washers frequently a thing of the past. When the cartridge eventually needs replacing, it's about when the seat of 50 years ago would have required resurfacing so even the "cartridge drop in", albeit more labor intensive than replacing a washer, replaces an even more labor intensive operation.
It is true there have been some offsetting changes - such as some local codes requiring fire sprinklers (thankfully) which require plumbing skills for installation and, at least for a time, increasing house sizes w/more fixtures per occupant, these don't offset the reduced labor by the new materials which are produced in mass production environments with very low labor content.
Unfortunately the more educated people are, the fewer children they are having in the US. The more educated the parents are, the more likely their children are to become well educated as well. The birthrate among the less educated is much closer to replacement rate and in some demographics exceeds it substantially. The children of the less educated are less likely to be well educated so the jobs they are more likely to have (such as picking packages @ Amazon or asking "would you like fries with that" under the golden arches) are the very ones that are going away at the fastest pace. I agree that well educated (in a practical field - an education in Women's Studies likely isn't going to help much), intelligent, and hard working people in the US will have little problem getting jobs (albeit not, perhaps, at the take-home pay level they would like) for the foreseeable future.
While it's possible that the US will manage to change the culture to encourage hard work and eduction from kindergarten on and to get most people to believe that education is the key to success and that success is important, I'm not hopeful looking at the current crop of elementary, middle, and high school students. Too many of these students haven't been trained to "own" their answer. For example, I commonly observe students asking "is this right?" after putting down what they eventually admit was just a guess (and, not a well educated one at that!) - a question that I rarely heard when I was in school just a few decades ago - the more likely question then was "I don't understand this, can you explain how to do this?" Too many of these students also are unwilling to work hard and have been trained to work in groups where no one individual is responsible for solving the problem correctly (when I ask them if since they don't want to work individually on problems do they mind sharing one paycheck amongst the group when they get a job, they don't think much of that idea of course). As well, there is far to much rewarding for "showing up" and too little for true achievement - everyone gets a trophy for something (pro-tip kids: I have a relatively fixed raise pool and it goes to those who perform the best and I willingly get rid of those that I can replace with a more productive developer - no trophies for showing up, that's just a requirement). It's unlikely as these kids move on to minimum wage jobs and begin to have their own children within a few years that many of them are suddenly going to see the light of the folly of their ways and push their children to study hard. Indeed, it appears parents of the current generation of children in this class often seem to fear that their child will be "smarter" than they are (perhaps as a defensive reaction to their poor performance) so fail to encourage education.
The saying that "A managers hire A workers but B managers hire C workers" seems to apply to parenting also.
While the US has been a magnet for immigration for many years, I anticipate that will slow quite dramatically over the next 50 years for a variety of reasons. First, the alternatives for educated citizens of other countries, esp. India and China, are increasingly attractive in their native countries as their population moves up the economic ladder and increases their standard of living. Second is related to the very problem you mention - there will be too few young workers to support the retirees in the US which will make the US economy weaker and require raising taxes on every level of worker which will make the US a bit less attractive than "staying home" (the view that the US can just tax the wealthy decade after decade to "solve" the shortfall is, IMHO, a fantasy). Third, as the job market gets tighter in the US for the less well educated, the calls for protectionism and clamping down on both legal and illegal immigration (responding to the populace's cries of "immigrants take our jobs" and "foreign worker's products are undercutting ours and taking our jobs") will begin to echo from both sides of the aisles in Congress.
Exactly why they should be replaced with computers and robots as much as possible. Then the workers can go on welfare (or, actually teach their brood that education is the MOST important thing and hope their kids will support them in their old age and stop creating more offspring).
As others have noted, Amazon purchased Zappos which utilizes Kiva in their warehouses. I expect Amazon to adapt Zappos models more than Amazon to migrate Zappos to their model. Every time a robot/computer replaces a human (been going on for 40 years), the fractional replacement human is a high skilled person than the multiple people they replaced. Think stocking -- the programmer costs a lot more and requires a lot more education than the human picker -- but the programmer's work can be deployed without limitations to service 6 billion people (and more later).
The first world societies have to understand real soon that they need to figure out what to do with the jobless masses with IQs under 110 in fifty years. The answer can't be "pay them to breed more crack babies", the answer has to be "each generation values breeding less and eduction more" - or expect their economy to sink under the economic sea like most of the PIGS probably will.
Even for a purely passive RFID this can be tens of metres.
As opposed to those really scary things, human eyes, which have a range of tens of meters and, even more scary, cameras which can have effective ranges (w/appropriate lenses) of hundreds of meters.
On the other hand, in the scenario you describe, it could tell them exactly which camera footage to check immediately to identify what happened and get a description of the person who nabbed the student.
You are assuming the most incompetent response in the presence of the RFID badges, therefore it seems only appropriate to assume the most incompetent response in their absence. Without badges that response might be "we don't know where to start looking so we will send one administrator to walk the halls and checking classrooms and storage rooms looking for the reportedly missing student and if we don't find her in the two hours that takes, we will know she's not on school property".
Although, many years ago when they still offered but did not require Home Economics in high school and boys were allowed, some guys took it thinking it would be both an easy class and a good place to try to pick up girls. The former was true, the latter I'm not so sure of as I didn't hear many stories of "success" with this strategy.
Couldn't a good engineer (and a smart one!) just cut a deal directly with the employer and pocket some of that?
Often, yes (at least at a smaller company that doesn't have a lot of "cast in concrete" rules). It's likely to be in the form of a sign-on bonus which pays out after six or twelve months. It just becomes part of the cost of hire and if a recruiter doesn't need to be paid, there's more flexibility on the sign-on bonus.
In fact, if you are introduced to the company through an outside recruiter and get a good sign-on bonus, it's possible that the recruiter kicked in some of the bonus out of their fees. This is especially true if the bonus is increased during the negotiation process (the recruiter is facing losing 100% of the commission if the company refuses to pay enough of a bonus to entice the candidate so they will often decide to "top off" the bonus to make the placement -- the contract between the recruiter and the hiring company dictates this and the candidate is never aware of it). In fact, I've never raised my contribution to a sign-on bonus during negotiations with a candidate sourced through a recruiter taking a cut of the first year salary - but often the sign-on bonus goes up because the recruiter kicks in something.
So, a tip, if you're a candidate going through an outside recruiter, always request a sign-on bonus late in the negotiation game (to help compensate for loss of seniority in vacation time or whatever justification you can come up with). You might as well get a cut of the recruiter's fee and this is about the only way to do it. As the recruiter's supplier, you have quite a bit of flexibility.
Cars, buses, trains, bicycles, and airplanes all kill kids. Ban them all. Won't someone think of the children?
The number of reported serious injuries/deaths from these magnets is tiny compared to the above sources of serious injury and death..
One of the injuries was to a pre-teen or teenage kid who was playing with them and swallowed them. Now, wouldn't you think a kid should go to their parent and say "hey, I accidentally swallowed a couple magnets" and that the parent would say "hmm... probably should take you in to the doctor". If the doctor then says "oh, nothing to worry about", then we have a problem (and the doctor should be sued/banned/sanctioned, not the seller/manufacturer of the magnets).
He said: "Son, we EASILY could - but then, I'd be giving you my car, & you'd end up giving that same car to YOUR boy & who KNOWS how long that'd go on if the vehicle's well-maintained... the problem? How would they sell more cars, & keep people working + paying taxes?"
The real problem would be you'd be driving your great-grandfather's car. You would occasionally break your arm while trying to crank start it on a cold morning. It would spew smog. It wouldn't have airbags. It would have a cranky manual transmission w/o synchromesh. It wouldn't have AC. It wouldn't have power steering or brakes. It wouldn't have ABS or traction control. It wouldn't have turn signals. Its top speed would be 30 MPH(?). Its tires would last a few thousand miles instead of 60K miles. It would have a manual choke. You would have to adjust the timing on a regular basis. It wouldn't have any cupholders. It would not have a place to plug in your cell phone charger. It wouldn't have a vanity mirror in the sunvisor. It wouldn't have a car alarm. It wouldn't have remote unlock/start. The antifreeze would not last 40K miles or more.
A similar situation also happens (although I have no idea if it happened in this case).
The "preferred" vendor "assists" in writing the RFP. They get it written so they can fulfill it economically while competitors can't. Sometimes this is done by specing features missing from competitor's product or insuring competitors have to spec higher end products to pick up one "required" feature that the "assisting" vendor just happens to include in a lower priced model.
(Sorry, I have no idea how my comment didn't end up at the top level -- you'd think clicking the 'Post' button right under the story would post a top level comment.)
The police/government in this case are publishing the list for the sole purpose of punishing the alleged clients in hopes that that risk of such punishment will dissuade others participating in the behavior.
The "accused" johns never get to confront their accuser in court or provide their side to a jury of their peers. No matter what the topic is, this is just wrong. It's entirely possible that the madam included a few records for people that never actually used her services because she disliked them or was trying to get revenge or, perhaps most likely, hoping that the presence of the mayor's, DA's, or police chief's name in the client list would reduce the risk of prosecution.
If the government has a case, they should file charges against the alleged johns and let them have a fair trial. If not, keep the names secret (even seal them in trial if they come up).
I'm okay, to attempt to increase the odds of apprehension, with listing the names of those that appear to have fled to avoid prosecution as long as, upon the individual being located, they ARE prosecuted and given a chance to clear their name. That is not the case here. In this case, it appears the government has no intention of prosecuting, perhaps because they have insufficient evidence to convict, but wish to extract punishment anyway.
Probably they will start having permanent 2-for-1 specials on "spill proof" cups of soda containing 12 oz. of soda and 12 oz. of air to prevent spills from sloshing.
Perhaps some customers will notice that they can pour one into the other and throw out the now empty cup. Outside of the additional landfill fodder and greenhouse gases from the production and transportation of twice as many 24 ounce cups, all's back pretty much to normal.
Some employers in the U.S. charge employees who smoke extra for their insurance. I have no idea how widespread this is or to what extent the additional charges cover the increase in premiums caused by the smokers.
Smoking is, of course, something an individual can control (just stop smoking). Just as obesity usually is a choice.
Genetics are not a matter of choice (although, failing to manage a genetic defect can be a choice).
Personally, I think it's fine to charge employees a surcharge on their insurance for if they make a choice to engage in behaviors or activities that make them more costly to insure. However, I don't support a public agency refusing to hire or retain employees who engage in legal, but risky, activities or behaviors. I've got no problem with private businesses choosing to hire/not hire based on such activities or behaviors.
Riding motorcycles also likely increases health insurance costs for everyone - so the same logic should apply to that and the city should not hire (or should fire) those who ride motorcycles. Almost anything, including failing to exercise regularly, can/should be banned under the 'insurance premium' logic.
Also, smoking likely decreases lifetime medical costs so old age "socialized" medicine (Medicare in the US) benefits from smokers dying younger. Everyone dies of something and that something will often cost money to treat. A smoker who dies suddenly of a massive stroke at 70 costs very little to society. A smoker who dies at 72 of lung cancer costs a bit more but a lot less than the non-smoker who dies with dementia and various "old age" ailments at 95 in a state of severe dementia in a nursing home paid for by Medicaid. Of course, this logic doesn't apply as much to traditional insurance for younger people who, but for smoking and poor health choices, are usually pretty healthy on the average.
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Not if they target only young people which are outnumbered by the older folks. One just has to figure out where to draw the line to get 50%+1 support (along with some changes in the filibuster rules in the Senate). The hole has been dug, it will eventually have to be filled in somehow, the scheme can't last another 100 years without major changes (increased contributions and/or decreased benefits).
My guess is Social Security will begin to be means tested. Likely it will be based on income (which is kind of already done a bit as Social Security retirement benefits are counted as taxable income ONLY if your total income exceeds some amount) with the limit set high enough, perhaps $100K of income a year, that the majority (ref. tyranny of the majority) easily accepts it. This won't raise much money, but it does start the process of boiling the frog. Then the income limit will creep down - those already excluded won't complain (they will figure the more benefits are reduced, the less risk they will have to pay general income taxes to prop the system up in the future) and those well below the new limit won't see the risk. This can happen in about 10 steps over time because no more than maybe 20% of the people will feel that they will be affected by each step. Eventually, any non-Social Security income will simply be deducted from your Social Security benefit. Then, of course, it will be just a welfare program -- and since only about 20% of the people are benefiting, the other 80% will support dismantling the program.
There may also be some "asset based" means testing, but that is harder to implement so it will be less attractive to the politicians.
This is not unlike the early days of the modern Federal income tax. It started out as being 7% on incomes above $500,000 (more than $10 million in today's dollars). Of course, the rates went up and the brackets slid down over the years.
Yes, but all of those events (economic downturn, poor judgement etc) are known risks whose occurrence and impact on an individual are unpredictable. These are the sort of risks "insurance" pays out - but only when they occur. Social Security retirement (as contrasted to the disability portion of the program) pays the benefit based solely on the premiums, not on one of the risk events having happened. Therefore, I don't think it's properly characterized as "insurance" in the common usage of the word.
The retirement portion seems best characterized as an annuity you are forced to participate in and pay into on an installment plan.
It does, however, have a twist that most annuities don't have. In a typical annuity, if pay in another dollar, you get at least as much (actuarial) benefit from that dollar as the previous dollar you paid in. Social Security retirement is the opposite, as you pay in more, the dollars give you less incremental benefit. In fact, the first dollar you put in returns a benefit six times that of the last dollar put in just before the taxable salary cap is hit (see bend points here).
I'm worried about the transition period where the stupid humans are sharing the road with self-driving vehicles running release X for all X < 6. Even with decades of intuitive understanding of humans, the stupidity of human drivers still amazes me. I figure release 1.0 will handle other sane drivers on the road pretty well, but am thinking the insane ones interacting with the self-driving vehicles may increase collisions.
I'm also wondering how good the self-driving vehicles will be at detecting human cues like eye contact and a subtle wave of someone's hand indicating they are letting you merge in front of them. If the self driving cars can't pick up on these cues, it seems they will likely get themselves into "can't get out of here" boxes and/or confuse other human drivers by ignoring or interpreting their behavior incorrectly.
For example, I'm curious how they will merge onto a freeway with fairly heavy traffic moving at high speed when visibility is limited and the merge lane is short and on the inside of a slight curve in the freeway.
There was such a merge situation I used to do almost daily (thank you state highway department that thought there should be vegetation hiding the merging and mainline traffic from each other until the last second just to make it a bit more challenging - idiots). Enough people drove this stretch every day that it all sort of worked out because some kind/attentive soul on the freeway would detect your predicament and slow a bit and wave you in.
However, I'm pretty sure the only "safe" thing, in the absence of human cues, to do was to come to a complete stop on the on-ramp about 20 percent of the time because, technically, there just wasn't any safe way to merge "by the book" leaving proper clearances. Of course doing so would have been a disaster as (1) it would then have been impossible to merge into traffic (at least without a Highway Patrol rolling road block or a phalanx of self-drivers conspiring to do effectively the same thing) for up to two hours until traffic dropped and (2) you would likely be rear-ended by a car behind you on the on-ramp whose driver is paying more attention to the instant they can begin to see around the vegetation than they were to the car in front of them on the ramp.
My guess is the lawyers would tell the programmers to select the "Stop" option in spite of the societal cost (an unnecessary accident and/or an unusable on-ramp for a couple hours) because in court they could prove based on the speed of other cars and gaps, there was no safe way to merge and stopping was the only safe option and that any collision was the result of the driver behind not paying attention. By attempting the merge (possibly misreading some cue), an accident might occur on the freeway and the records on the self driving car would PROVE that the merge was unsafe.
Actually, the plumbing example is interesting. There is a strong focus on reducing the labor required to do plumbing work - esp. in new construction and remodeling.
Compare waste pipes in a new house of today to those of 50 years ago. 50 years ago they were cast iron and required cutting and hot lead sealing at joints - very labor intensive. Now, they are plastic which is much faster to cut, actually bends a little (okay, who hasn't done this just a bit although it's not good form), is lighter to carry (less labor), and joints are glued with a few seconds of work. As a result, much less labor is required to achieve the same result. And it's gravy that the pipes never rust so probably never require replacement and the associated labor, have a low coefficient of friction reducing blockages and the associated labor, and require less labor to repair if damaged or to retrofit during remodeling.
Compare water supply lines in a new house of today to those of 50 years ago. 50 years ago they were likely galvanized which is labor intensive to install (heavy, each joint needs to be cut, threaded, and tightened properly and if it leaks during test, replacing it is time consuming) and didn't last all that long (water conditions in some areas resulted in galvanized piping needing replacing in just a few decades - requiring yet more labor). Now, the piping is likely to be PEX which can eliminate virtually all joints (if run from a central manifold(s) directly to each fixture), much of the measuring, and is light -- dramatically reducing installation labor. PEX also is more tolerant of freezing so in climates where that's important, there's potentially less repair required. Also, if using a central manifold with valves and a run to each fixture, many plumbing problems can be isolated by the homeowner and eliminate the need for an "emergency" plumbing call.
Compare quality faucets of 50 years ago to those of today. New materials and designs make the requirement to change washers frequently a thing of the past. When the cartridge eventually needs replacing, it's about when the seat of 50 years ago would have required resurfacing so even the "cartridge drop in", albeit more labor intensive than replacing a washer, replaces an even more labor intensive operation.
It is true there have been some offsetting changes - such as some local codes requiring fire sprinklers (thankfully) which require plumbing skills for installation and, at least for a time, increasing house sizes w/more fixtures per occupant, these don't offset the reduced labor by the new materials which are produced in mass production environments with very low labor content.
Although they may increase employment in body shops until the "last bug" is fixed.
Unfortunately the more educated people are, the fewer children they are having in the US. The more educated the parents are, the more likely their children are to become well educated as well. The birthrate among the less educated is much closer to replacement rate and in some demographics exceeds it substantially. The children of the less educated are less likely to be well educated so the jobs they are more likely to have (such as picking packages @ Amazon or asking "would you like fries with that" under the golden arches) are the very ones that are going away at the fastest pace. I agree that well educated (in a practical field - an education in Women's Studies likely isn't going to help much), intelligent, and hard working people in the US will have little problem getting jobs (albeit not, perhaps, at the take-home pay level they would like) for the foreseeable future.
While it's possible that the US will manage to change the culture to encourage hard work and eduction from kindergarten on and to get most people to believe that education is the key to success and that success is important, I'm not hopeful looking at the current crop of elementary, middle, and high school students. Too many of these students haven't been trained to "own" their answer. For example, I commonly observe students asking "is this right?" after putting down what they eventually admit was just a guess (and, not a well educated one at that!) - a question that I rarely heard when I was in school just a few decades ago - the more likely question then was "I don't understand this, can you explain how to do this?" Too many of these students also are unwilling to work hard and have been trained to work in groups where no one individual is responsible for solving the problem correctly (when I ask them if since they don't want to work individually on problems do they mind sharing one paycheck amongst the group when they get a job, they don't think much of that idea of course). As well, there is far to much rewarding for "showing up" and too little for true achievement - everyone gets a trophy for something (pro-tip kids: I have a relatively fixed raise pool and it goes to those who perform the best and I willingly get rid of those that I can replace with a more productive developer - no trophies for showing up, that's just a requirement). It's unlikely as these kids move on to minimum wage jobs and begin to have their own children within a few years that many of them are suddenly going to see the light of the folly of their ways and push their children to study hard. Indeed, it appears parents of the current generation of children in this class often seem to fear that their child will be "smarter" than they are (perhaps as a defensive reaction to their poor performance) so fail to encourage education.
The saying that "A managers hire A workers but B managers hire C workers" seems to apply to parenting also.
While the US has been a magnet for immigration for many years, I anticipate that will slow quite dramatically over the next 50 years for a variety of reasons. First, the alternatives for educated citizens of other countries, esp. India and China, are increasingly attractive in their native countries as their population moves up the economic ladder and increases their standard of living. Second is related to the very problem you mention - there will be too few young workers to support the retirees in the US which will make the US economy weaker and require raising taxes on every level of worker which will make the US a bit less attractive than "staying home" (the view that the US can just tax the wealthy decade after decade to "solve" the shortfall is, IMHO, a fantasy). Third, as the job market gets tighter in the US for the less well educated, the calls for protectionism and clamping down on both legal and illegal immigration (responding to the populace's cries of "immigrants take our jobs" and "foreign worker's products are undercutting ours and taking our jobs") will begin to echo from both sides of the aisles in Congress.
(Replying to my own post - I know, poor form!)
And, of course, Amazon eventually acquired Kiva which is a strong hint that what I said in my post is likely to be their goal.
Exactly why they should be replaced with computers and robots as much as possible. Then the workers can go on welfare (or, actually teach their brood that education is the MOST important thing and hope their kids will support them in their old age and stop creating more offspring).
As others have noted, Amazon purchased Zappos which utilizes Kiva in their warehouses. I expect Amazon to adapt Zappos models more than Amazon to migrate Zappos to their model. Every time a robot/computer replaces a human (been going on for 40 years), the fractional replacement human is a high skilled person than the multiple people they replaced. Think stocking -- the programmer costs a lot more and requires a lot more education than the human picker -- but the programmer's work can be deployed without limitations to service 6 billion people (and more later).
The first world societies have to understand real soon that they need to figure out what to do with the jobless masses with IQs under 110 in fifty years. The answer can't be "pay them to breed more crack babies", the answer has to be "each generation values breeding less and eduction more" - or expect their economy to sink under the economic sea like most of the PIGS probably will.
As opposed to those really scary things, human eyes, which have a range of tens of meters and, even more scary, cameras which can have effective ranges (w/appropriate lenses) of hundreds of meters.
On the other hand, in the scenario you describe, it could tell them exactly which camera footage to check immediately to identify what happened and get a description of the person who nabbed the student.
You are assuming the most incompetent response in the presence of the RFID badges, therefore it seems only appropriate to assume the most incompetent response in their absence. Without badges that response might be "we don't know where to start looking so we will send one administrator to walk the halls and checking classrooms and storage rooms looking for the reportedly missing student and if we don't find her in the two hours that takes, we will know she's not on school property".
Although, many years ago when they still offered but did not require Home Economics in high school and boys were allowed, some guys took it thinking it would be both an easy class and a good place to try to pick up girls. The former was true, the latter I'm not so sure of as I didn't hear many stories of "success" with this strategy.
Often, yes (at least at a smaller company that doesn't have a lot of "cast in concrete" rules). It's likely to be in the form of a sign-on bonus which pays out after six or twelve months. It just becomes part of the cost of hire and if a recruiter doesn't need to be paid, there's more flexibility on the sign-on bonus.
In fact, if you are introduced to the company through an outside recruiter and get a good sign-on bonus, it's possible that the recruiter kicked in some of the bonus out of their fees. This is especially true if the bonus is increased during the negotiation process (the recruiter is facing losing 100% of the commission if the company refuses to pay enough of a bonus to entice the candidate so they will often decide to "top off" the bonus to make the placement -- the contract between the recruiter and the hiring company dictates this and the candidate is never aware of it). In fact, I've never raised my contribution to a sign-on bonus during negotiations with a candidate sourced through a recruiter taking a cut of the first year salary - but often the sign-on bonus goes up because the recruiter kicks in something.
So, a tip, if you're a candidate going through an outside recruiter, always request a sign-on bonus late in the negotiation game (to help compensate for loss of seniority in vacation time or whatever justification you can come up with). You might as well get a cut of the recruiter's fee and this is about the only way to do it. As the recruiter's supplier, you have quite a bit of flexibility.
Cars, buses, trains, bicycles, and airplanes all kill kids. Ban them all. Won't someone think of the children?
The number of reported serious injuries/deaths from these magnets is tiny compared to the above sources of serious injury and death..
One of the injuries was to a pre-teen or teenage kid who was playing with them and swallowed them. Now, wouldn't you think a kid should go to their parent and say "hey, I accidentally swallowed a couple magnets" and that the parent would say "hmm... probably should take you in to the doctor". If the doctor then says "oh, nothing to worry about", then we have a problem (and the doctor should be sued/banned/sanctioned, not the seller/manufacturer of the magnets).
Every "extra vote" cancels a large portion of someone's legitimate vote. So, it's important to worry about both.
The real problem would be you'd be driving your great-grandfather's car. You would occasionally break your arm while trying to crank start it on a cold morning. It would spew smog. It wouldn't have airbags. It would have a cranky manual transmission w/o synchromesh. It wouldn't have AC. It wouldn't have power steering or brakes. It wouldn't have ABS or traction control. It wouldn't have turn signals. Its top speed would be 30 MPH(?). Its tires would last a few thousand miles instead of 60K miles. It would have a manual choke. You would have to adjust the timing on a regular basis. It wouldn't have any cupholders. It would not have a place to plug in your cell phone charger. It wouldn't have a vanity mirror in the sunvisor. It wouldn't have a car alarm. It wouldn't have remote unlock/start. The antifreeze would not last 40K miles or more.
Libertarians are somewhat like stopped clocks -- they are right twice a day...
A similar situation also happens (although I have no idea if it happened in this case).
The "preferred" vendor "assists" in writing the RFP. They get it written so they can fulfill it economically while competitors can't. Sometimes this is done by specing features missing from competitor's product or insuring competitors have to spec higher end products to pick up one "required" feature that the "assisting" vendor just happens to include in a lower priced model.
(Sorry, I have no idea how my comment didn't end up at the top level -- you'd think clicking the 'Post' button right under the story would post a top level comment.)
I think this is completely wrong.
The police/government in this case are publishing the list for the sole purpose of punishing the alleged clients in hopes that that risk of such punishment will dissuade others participating in the behavior.
The "accused" johns never get to confront their accuser in court or provide their side to a jury of their peers. No matter what the topic is, this is just wrong. It's entirely possible that the madam included a few records for people that never actually used her services because she disliked them or was trying to get revenge or, perhaps most likely, hoping that the presence of the mayor's, DA's, or police chief's name in the client list would reduce the risk of prosecution.
If the government has a case, they should file charges against the alleged johns and let them have a fair trial. If not, keep the names secret (even seal them in trial if they come up).
I'm okay, to attempt to increase the odds of apprehension, with listing the names of those that appear to have fled to avoid prosecution as long as, upon the individual being located, they ARE prosecuted and given a chance to clear their name. That is not the case here. In this case, it appears the government has no intention of prosecuting, perhaps because they have insufficient evidence to convict, but wish to extract punishment anyway.
Probably they will start having permanent 2-for-1 specials on "spill proof" cups of soda containing 12 oz. of soda and 12 oz. of air to prevent spills from sloshing.
Perhaps some customers will notice that they can pour one into the other and throw out the now empty cup. Outside of the additional landfill fodder and greenhouse gases from the production and transportation of twice as many 24 ounce cups, all's back pretty much to normal.
Some employers in the U.S. charge employees who smoke extra for their insurance. I have no idea how widespread this is or to what extent the additional charges cover the increase in premiums caused by the smokers.
Smoking is, of course, something an individual can control (just stop smoking). Just as obesity usually is a choice.
Genetics are not a matter of choice (although, failing to manage a genetic defect can be a choice).
Personally, I think it's fine to charge employees a surcharge on their insurance for if they make a choice to engage in behaviors or activities that make them more costly to insure. However, I don't support a public agency refusing to hire or retain employees who engage in legal, but risky, activities or behaviors. I've got no problem with private businesses choosing to hire/not hire based on such activities or behaviors.
Riding motorcycles also likely increases health insurance costs for everyone - so the same logic should apply to that and the city should not hire (or should fire) those who ride motorcycles. Almost anything, including failing to exercise regularly, can/should be banned under the 'insurance premium' logic.
Also, smoking likely decreases lifetime medical costs so old age "socialized" medicine (Medicare in the US) benefits from smokers dying younger. Everyone dies of something and that something will often cost money to treat. A smoker who dies suddenly of a massive stroke at 70 costs very little to society. A smoker who dies at 72 of lung cancer costs a bit more but a lot less than the non-smoker who dies with dementia and various "old age" ailments at 95 in a state of severe dementia in a nursing home paid for by Medicaid. Of course, this logic doesn't apply as much to traditional insurance for younger people who, but for smoking and poor health choices, are usually pretty healthy on the average.