Inside an Amazon warehouse

13 hours ago, Bass wrote

• Reduce the amount of hours worked in a standard workweek.
• Better incentives for going to school/specialized training, including paid time off. (This kills two birds with one stone - takes people out of the workforce and makes them more relevant when they come back in).

[/quote]

When I was young (quite a while ago) this is what we were told that life was going to be like when we grew up.  (Of course I never did grow up - but you get the idea)

2 hours ago, ScanIAm wrote

*snip*

The idea that a ditch digger is going to turn into an architect once his job is replaced by a backhoe is just not reality.

What's equally ridiculous is this notion that if everybody could just go to college, then they would no longer need to be ditch diggers. There are ditch diggers who, even with education, shouldn't ever be a backhoe operator.

10 hours ago, ScanIAm wrote

I agree with the ideals of taking people out of hard or dangerous work, but unless we pull them off the game board, they still need something to do.  The bootstrappers who complain about freeloaders aren't going to allow those folks to work less hours through public support, so again.  I'm not hearing any actual solution to what they will do. 

Yes, if we automate stuff lots of unskilled jobs vanish in the naieve very short term, but if a consequence of doing so means that we can compete once again with countries like India and China by being able to build stuff reliably, cheaply and at scale then those unskilled workers can work in my big callcentre selling our cheap wares to joe average in China, India and around the world.

It seems to me that deciding not to automate because we have lots of people is a pretty silly notion. Unskilled labour in the west is far too expensive for a global market. If someone in China is willing to sew socks for $1 a day, we shouldn't try and compete on their terms. If we're going to compete, we need to do it with technology.

Unskilled people slot into the workforce when the economy is good because there's money to go around and because demand is high. The worst thing we can do for our unskilled workforce is to cripple our own economy by failing to update it to be competitive - because in a recession, unskilled workers are the easiest to fire, the most likely to find it hard to get jobs and the most rapidly shrinking part of the economy.

So I contest quite the reverse. If we automate more, we'll be more competitive, which will drive the economy to have higher exports, leading to more domestic jobs which can be filled by unskilled labour.

Looking at these pictures gave me a keanu "woah" moment.

@evildictaitor: Why are we so expensive compared to China?

4 hours ago, Maddus Mattus wrote

@evildictaitor: Why are we so expensive compared to China?

Because working people for 20 hours a day in horrible conditions for a wage that barely buys you a bowl of rice for the day is not considered acceptable in western society. Also because child labour is not acceptable here. Buying products that are made that way somehow is, though. NIMBY, I guess.

1 day ago, evildictait​or wrote

It seems to me that deciding not to automate because we have lots of people is a pretty silly notion. Unskilled labour in the west is far too expensive for a global market. If someone in China is willing to sew socks for $1 a day, we shouldn't try and compete on their terms. If we're going to compete, we need to do it with technology.

I'm not against automation, but if we automate, and that displaces a bunch of manual labor, we have to accept the 3 premises I mentioned previously.  We, as a society, have to accept that there will be people idle.  Hopefully they will be training for something new, but not every one is suited to that.  And until the economy adjusts to this automation, a not-insubstantial population will be essentially unemployable.

And when I say 'we have to accept it', I mean that we have to quit this anti-entitlement BS that gets trotted out by the conservatives and libertarians every time this situation pops up.

@ScanIAm: society didnt pay for my vb.net to c#.net switch, why should I pay for another guy for a different switch?

It's your own responsibility to keep your market value up, not societies.

7 hours ago, Maddus Mattus wrote

@ScanIAm: society didnt pay for my vb.net to c#.net switch, why should I pay for another guy for a different switch?

It's your own responsibility to keep your market value up, not societies.

Qu'ils mangent de la brioche.

14 hours ago, Maddus Mattus wrote

@ScanIAm: society didnt pay for my vb.net to c#.net switch, why should I pay for another guy for a different switch?

Society didn't eliminate the concept of computer programming. You'd be singing a completely different tune had that been the case.

It's your own responsibility to keep your market value up, not societies.

If a society bears no responsibility to help the individual adapt, why have a society at all?

1 day ago, Bass wrote

*snip*

Qu'ils mangent de la brioche.

I think what Maddus is saying is 'let them starve.'

1 day ago, Maddus Mattus wrote

@ScanIAm: society didnt pay for my vb.net to c#.net switch, why should I pay for another guy for a different switch?

Yes, because the whole world economy revolves around .net 

If 'the other guy' cannot afford to retrain, then he will be out of work. If he is out of work he will starve. His family will starve. He will become desperate and will turn to crime to feed his family. He will start robbing people. 

He may, one day, decide to rob you.

Most of your 'I'm all right, Jack' monologues never account for the fact that politicians need to take into account the cost of every decision they make. It's very easy for you to say 'Stuff 'em! If they're poor then that's their problem' because you don't have to deal with the consequences of that decision. 

@Ray7: Only time I get robbed, is when I get paid, each month, for half my income.

It's still their responsibility to get a decent job skill. When electronics did not get me a job, I learned how to write professional software and I'm doing ok.

My father in law went from being a bank employee to a bus driver.

There are plenty of jobs out there, giving people free money only makes them dependent and not self sufficient.

If my father in law would hit rock bottom, I would help him out, sponsor his education into a different field. Why? Because he also helped me when I needed him.

Quid pro quo.

In no way I am saying let them starve, I'm saying that people should have incentive to get a job. And the risk of starving (no one ever starves to death, always a charity willing to help) is what is creating this incentive, take that away and people become lax. Or do you really think you have 40 million people starving in the US?

1 hour ago, Maddus Mattus wrote

@Ray7: Only time I get robbed, is when I get paid, each month, for half my income.

Yeah. But on the other hand, you spend most of your day robbing everyone else. I mean using their roads without paying a toll. Or whenever you deliver your kids to school and don't pay the couple-hundred dollars to pay them for their time. Or whenever you go and see your GP and fail to stump up your cash.

The great thing is, though, that you can always go to a different country and you get to pay different taxes! Try Saudi Arabia - they have stricter laws on some things, but lower taxes than the Netherlands.

Or try Somalia! Their country will never charge you taxes, and you can pave your own damn roads!

If you don't like paying your taxes, move to somewhere else. The world doesn't have a homogenized tax system, Maddus. So put up or shut up.

@evildictaitor: I'm quite happy to keep my income and pay for the stuff that I use.

You move!

32 minutes ago, Maddus Mattus wrote

@evildictaitor: I'm quite happy to keep my income and pay for the stuff that I use.

You move!

I don't mind paying 45% taxes in the UK, even though there are loads of countries with lower taxes (like the US). The reason? Because in the UK we have lower gun crime (thanks to our police), higher security (thanks to our home office), punch well above our weight in all business and foreign discussions (thanks to our foreign office). We have health care that's free at the point of use; it's also better than the US, and they have a tendancy to prescribe what works rather than what's expensive.

We have a second-to-none education system that regularly beats the pants off everyone else at key metrics like innovation - many of our government departments are waaay more effective than their US counterparts despite a tiny fraction of the money spent on them, and our roads, whilst not quite paved with gold, do the job admirably.

Even our TV is better because it's not filled with wall-to-wall adverts for pills that the vast majority of people watching aren't qualified to properly assess for safety or effectiveness.

The reason I don't mind paying 45% taxes is because living in the UK for 45% of my income is a great deal! I would certainly be on less than 55% of my current income if I had started life in Nigeria or Somalia - that's for damn sure. And every country I've been to in the world with lower taxes, just has different things you have to pay for.

My US colleagues are not better off with lower taxes, because they get less efficient services (like heathcare) and they cost more to boot. They also have to pay state taxes and road tolls and health insurance which takes their monthly outgoings much higher than the headline "federal tax" rate.

And my Saudi colleagues are not better off with lower taxes. They have to travel much more, and pay extortionate amounts to ensure personal protection of them and their families. They might not be paying for police, but they're sure as hell paying for protection.

45% taxes isn't a big deal to me. It's just the cost of entry to the club of awesome that is the UK.

If you don't like the cost of the ticket, Maddus, don't go to the gig. If you want to pay for stuff yourself, you're always free to leave and find a country that is closer to your right wing fantasy of perfect individualism. The Netherlands isn't going to change into a right-wing land of rainbows and Reagans in your lifetime. So learn to live with it, or learn to live somewhere else.

@evildictaitor:

And all what you have mentioned will be worthless in a decade, because your government cannot afford it anymore. It will go into decay, and all those months that you have forked over 45% of your labor under the threat of force (wich basically is slavery) will be in vain.

And ofcourse you like paying taxes, you are in the group that receives the most from government. Roads, healthcare, education, job security, yadda yadda yadda, all at the expense of others.

If you like paying taxes so much, fork me over $20.000,-, I'll spend it on projects for the good of the community, I promise.

If you don't like the cost of the ticket, Maddus, don't go to the gig.

I don't leave my community, just because I don't like the rules the guys with guns force upon me. I will not run away, I will fight to make my community free from the tyranny that people like yourself place upon them.

You try telling the people in Somalia that! You can always leave Somalia, if you don't agree. You brought this onto yourself.

@evildictaitor:

And btw, buying a ticket to see a show is a VOLUNTAIRY transaction,..