Future of the Democratic Party


Off-Topic Discussions

2,001 to 2,050 of 4,260 << first < prev | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | next > last >>

1 person marked this as a favorite.
Freehold DM wrote:
CrystalSeas wrote:
Guys. GUYS
HEY YOU GUYYYYYYYYS

Pictures Freehold as Sloth

Have a Snickers, you're not yourself when you're hungry.


Interesting WaPo article discussing the overall loss of faith in America's institutions over time.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
thejeff wrote:
The Mad Comrade wrote:
CBDunkerson wrote:
Ryan Freire wrote:
I'm not convinced the american people are willing to accept self driving cars enough for them to really take off, which they'll need to do in order to actually be safer. Kind of a herd immunity thing.

A: I've heard an argument that people will want to keep 'the thrill of control' or somesuch... and yet it is very common for people who can afford it to have personal drivers. There is a lot to be said for convenience. Given the option to get in the car and work, play, or take a nap I believe the vast majority will want to do so. Not to mention the cost benefits. Many people living in cities already find it cheaper to not own a car... automated driving would extend that to the suburbs.

B: Every self driving car on the road is a car whose 'driver' cannot get distracted and has vastly better 'vision', driving skill, and reaction time than any human. Thus, there is no need of a certain level of adoption to start seeing safety improvements. There IS an additional 'herd immunity' factor once you get to the point that most cars are self driving and they can communicate with each other to further increase safety and efficiency... but automated driving on its own is significantly safer long before you get to that level of adoption.

2020- 2025 is the earliest probability of such vehicles being close to affordably priced based on articles such as this.

2020 isn't that far away.

And the driving jobs will likely go before personal vehicles will.

2020 at the earliest is my guess, presuming the Teamster's Union buys into the program. Ford Autolivery concept delivery truck, using drones to drop your crap at your step. They're predicting self-driving cars by 2021, a mere 4 years away.

We're heading arse-over-teakettle into a universal stipend society. Or a dystopian society. Or a bastard love child of both.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

I can't say I blame the folks who are less than excited about job retraining. The older you get the harder it is to pick up a new trade, especially if you have a family and other obligations weighing in on you, and you lack the mobility to just pick up and move to where ever the job openings are. And after you finish that job retraining, remember you are going to be competing with a ton of younger folks fresh on the job market.

I think at some point we are just going to have to put in place rules/taxes limiting automation, and start implementing laws which spread the fewer jobs out (4 day work weeks, etc), by mandating better pay and publicly provided healthcare and education. But a lot of that is frankly impossible in the current environment.


MMCJawa wrote:

I can't say I blame the folks who are less than excited about job retraining. The older you get the harder it is to pick up a new trade, especially if you have a family and other obligations weighing in on you, and you lack the mobility to just pick up and move to where ever the job openings are. And after you finish that job retraining, remember you are going to be competing with a ton of younger folks fresh on the job market.

I think at some point we are just going to have to put in place rules/taxes limiting automation, and start implementing laws which spread the fewer jobs out (4 day work weeks, etc), by mandating better pay and publicly provided healthcare and education. But a lot of that is frankly impossible in the current environment.

And it's not like job retraining actually creates jobs. It works when there's a shift in what fields need workers, but not when the economy is down more generally.

We're probably just about getting back to the stage where it's worth it in a macro-economic sense.

I do think, for the relatively near future, spreading the jobs out is a better approach then limiting automation. That's basically what we did last time we had this kind of problem. It's not like the 40 hour week has always been a given.
But yeah, it's going to be tricky in the modern political environment. And in the more global economy.


Dems go populist too as Senator Sanders attends a union rally at a Nissan plant in Canton, Mississippi.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Knight who says Meh wrote:
Scythia wrote:

The Democratic proposals for the loss of manufacturing jobs was retraining, and new fields like green energy.

Many workers didn't want that, they wanted their old jobs back.

This is why the options in this category are mostly "be honest, and lose those workers" or "lie".

That's one (of the many, many, many) reason(s) that Trump's election is so damaging to the country. When lying is so effective, who is going to choose telling the truth.

That would be Bernie!*

:D

* As always.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
CBDunkerson wrote:
Ryan Freire wrote:
I'm not convinced the american people are willing to accept self driving cars enough for them to really take off, which they'll need to do in order to actually be safer. Kind of a herd immunity thing.

A: I've heard an argument that people will want to keep 'the thrill of control' or somesuch... and yet it is very common for people who can afford it to have personal drivers. There is a lot to be said for convenience. Given the option to get in the car and work, play, or take a nap I believe the vast majority will want to do so. Not to mention the cost benefits. Many people living in cities already find it cheaper to not own a car... automated driving would extend that to the suburbs.

B: Every self driving car on the road is a car whose 'driver' cannot get distracted and has vastly better 'vision', driving skill, and reaction time than any human. Thus, there is no need of a certain level of adoption to start seeing safety improvements. There IS an additional 'herd immunity' factor once you get to the point that most cars are self driving and they can communicate with each other to further increase safety and efficiency... but automated driving on its own is significantly safer long before you get to that level of adoption.

No there is a level of adoption required for them to be safer, the last self driving car crashed, because of human error on the road coupled with a limited ability to program responses to events. A road filled with self driving cars who will respond the same way to sudden events is really safe. A handful of self driving cars whose programmed response to an event runs counter to the instincts and reflexes of the humans on the road isn't particularly safe.


Knight who says Meh wrote:
Irontruth wrote:
Ryan Freire wrote:
Irontruth wrote:
Cry about the jobs going overseas if you want, but if the production comes back, its coming back automated.
As long as this is the only answer the Democratic party has for the problem of middle class jobs that dont require a masters degree and 60k in debt disappearing they can look forward to increasing marginalization for at least a generation or two until people forget that such a thing used to exist.
And if you think it's just Democrats who don't have an answer for automation, feel free to share with me what the Republican strategy is to deal with automation.
That's easy. Blame democrats.

Pretty much, they dont have to have a strategy, they got way out ahead and slapped the "job killing" title on the opposition party.

Liberty's Edge

1 person marked this as a favorite.
Ryan Freire wrote:
No there is a level of adoption required for them to be safer, the last self driving car crashed,

What do you mean by "the last self driving car"?

There are hundreds of self driving cars (with humans available to take over if needed) on US roads every day. Most of these are being used for continual testing and improvement of the technology, but Uber is running a program in Arizona where they are commercially available to pick up passengers. Tesla has also, rather recklessly IMO, put an early form of the technology into public hands... relying on the customer to be aware of the limitations and take over when need be.

That action by Tesla has resulted in one fatal crash so far... which still makes even Tesla's 'worst in the business' record on self driving cars FAR superior to human driving. That is, average human driving over the number of miles Teslas have covered in automated mode would have resulted in numerous deaths.

Put another way... this is a debate which you have already lost. You are thinking that we won't really know how safe self driving cars are until they are on the roads. In reality, they've been actively driving for years and have an accumulated safety record vastly better than the human race.

Quote:
A road filled with self driving cars who will respond the same way to sudden events is really safe. A handful of self driving cars whose programmed response to an event runs counter to the instincts and reflexes of the humans on the road isn't particularly safe.

There are several examples of this kind of thing in the millions of miles of automated driving already recorded. For example, most of the collisions involving automated driving have been low speed rear end collisions where the autonomous vehicle came to a full stop (as required by law) and the human driven vehicle behind them did not because they assumed the other car would just go since the road was clear. The solution was simply to have the cars include the probability of a rear end collision (based on following car speed, distance, and acceleration/deceleration rate) in their accident avoidance logic... at which point they started detecting when a following vehicle would hit them and adjusted their own speed to avoid that along with collisions from vehicles ahead of them or merging traffic... since, unlike humans, autonomous vehicles can 'see' in all directions at the same time... with no 'blind spots'.

So basically... the fact that human behavior is different than machine logic is being factored in to the programming. Sure, you can't predict everything, but again... self driving cars already have a better safety record than humans... and it is only getting better with time.

Liberty's Edge

The Mad Comrade wrote:
We're heading arse-over-teakettle into a universal stipend society. Or a dystopian society. Or a bastard love child of both.

My hope is that instead of a stipend we eventually implement some form of guaranteed minimum employment. That is, if you want to work you are guaranteed to be able to do so for at least a minimum wage and some minimum number of hours per week... which together provide enough funds for basic necessities.

The obvious questions are what would all those people do and how would we pay for it. However, I don't think either is all that insurmountable. A lot of the funding would come from eliminating unemployment assistance, that would no longer be needed, and the increased revenue generated by increased economic activity from near universal employment and societal benefits from the work actually performed. The remainder would have to come from less imbalanced wealth distribution mechanisms than we have currently... which means the GOP and many of the wealthy would fight it to the death, but ultimately fixing that income imbalance is going to be the cornerstone of ANY solution to our long term finances.

As to what work all those people could do... everything which currently doesn't get done because there just aren't enough bodies to do so. Police get asked all the time why they don't prevent more crimes or vigorously investigate the theft of every wallet and cell phone... and the answer is because they do not have enough people to do so. Problem solved. Put an unarmed part time auxiliary police officer on every street with body cams to record everything going on around them and just have them 'observe suspicious activity'. If a crime is later reported in that area then the police have video of everyone who was around at the time... and then you can have as many people as you need to go through the videos to identify possible suspects... and as many as you need to file paperwork for warrants and do research on the suspects (e.g. financial records, past crimes, other videos they appear in)... et cetera.

And that's just one of dozens of possible fields. Why don't cities clean up all the graffiti right away? Not enough people. Why can't all the garbage along highways be collected? Not enough people. Why don't we have photos of erosion on all the bridges in the country so architects can review and see which are in danger of collapse? Not enough people. Et cetera. Oh... and then you should have another whole group of people who double check the work done by all these employees and keep records of who does a good job so that they can get better assignments or use it as references for private employment.

There are countless jobs which currently are not done AT ALL because there simply aren't enough people to do them all. Many of these would have tangible benefits to society. Ergo, there is every reason to pay people to do them... and if the pay is the bare legal minimum then any BETTER jobs will be able to lure competent workers away.


CBDunkerson wrote:
The Mad Comrade wrote:
We're heading arse-over-teakettle into a universal stipend society. Or a dystopian society. Or a bastard love child of both.

My hope is that instead of a stipend we eventually implement some form of guaranteed minimum employment. That is, if you want to work you are guaranteed to be able to do so for at least a minimum wage and some minimum number of hours per week... which together provide enough funds for basic necessities.

The obvious questions are what would all those people do and how would we pay for it. However, I don't think either is all that insurmountable. A lot of the funding would come from eliminating unemployment assistance, that would no longer be needed, and the increased revenue generated by increased economic activity from near universal employment and societal benefits from the work actually performed. The remainder would have to come from less imbalanced wealth distribution mechanisms than we have currently... which means the GOP and many of the wealthy would fight it to the death, but ultimately fixing that income imbalance is going to be the cornerstone of ANY solution to our long term finances.

As to what work all those people could do... everything which currently doesn't get done because there just aren't enough bodies to do so. Police get asked all the time why they don't prevent more crimes or vigorously investigate the theft of every wallet and cell phone... and the answer is because they do not have enough people to do so. Problem solved. Put an unarmed part time auxiliary police officer on every street with body cams to record everything going on around them and just have them 'observe suspicious activity'. If a crime is later reported in that area then the police have video of everyone who was around at the time... and then you can have as many people as you need to go through the videos to identify possible suspects... and as many as you need to file paperwork for warrants and do research on the suspects (e.g. financial...

Sorry, but I think you are off by orders of magnitude if you think current unemployment assistance would even dent the money required to implement your idea.


Ryan Freire wrote:
Knight who says Meh wrote:
Irontruth wrote:
Ryan Freire wrote:
Irontruth wrote:
Cry about the jobs going overseas if you want, but if the production comes back, its coming back automated.
As long as this is the only answer the Democratic party has for the problem of middle class jobs that dont require a masters degree and 60k in debt disappearing they can look forward to increasing marginalization for at least a generation or two until people forget that such a thing used to exist.
And if you think it's just Democrats who don't have an answer for automation, feel free to share with me what the Republican strategy is to deal with automation.
That's easy. Blame democrats.
Pretty much, they dont have to have a strategy, they got way out ahead and slapped the "job killing" title on the opposition party.

Blaming the opposition party works as long as you're not in power. Once you're in charge, the claim falls flat and people get fed up.

You're ignoring the obvious answer. It happened in 2006, 2010 and 2014.

Sovereign Court

Irontruth wrote:
Ryan Freire wrote:
Knight who says Meh wrote:
Irontruth wrote:
Ryan Freire wrote:
Irontruth wrote:
Cry about the jobs going overseas if you want, but if the production comes back, its coming back automated.
As long as this is the only answer the Democratic party has for the problem of middle class jobs that dont require a masters degree and 60k in debt disappearing they can look forward to increasing marginalization for at least a generation or two until people forget that such a thing used to exist.
And if you think it's just Democrats who don't have an answer for automation, feel free to share with me what the Republican strategy is to deal with automation.
That's easy. Blame democrats.
Pretty much, they dont have to have a strategy, they got way out ahead and slapped the "job killing" title on the opposition party.

Blaming the opposition party works as long as you're not in power. Once you're in charge, the claim falls flat and people get fed up.

You're ignoring the obvious answer.

You would think so, though teflon Don has an uncanny ability to deflect blame and loss on others. He never gets called on it either. This is a different animal we are dealing with.

Liberty's Edge

Caineach wrote:
Sorry, but I think you are off by orders of magnitude if you think current unemployment assistance would even dent the money required to implement your idea.

Depends on how broadly we are defining unemployment assistance. If we assume that the 'guaranteed employment' program would provide an income above the poverty line then a whole host of programs which provide benefits to individuals below that line (e.g. food stamps, housing assistance, medicaid, et cetera) would have vastly reduced numbers of eligible applicants and thus comparably more funds available. Certainly enough to 'make a dent'.

However, overall I agree... neither guaranteed employment, a universal stipend, nor any other plan for providing long term economic stability to the general public can stand solely on the basis of moving around current assistance funds. The only way we will fix things is by directing less money to billionaires and more money to everyone else... which will requiring reversal of the overall trend of the country going back to Reagan.


Pan wrote:
Irontruth wrote:
Ryan Freire wrote:
Knight who says Meh wrote:
Irontruth wrote:
Ryan Freire wrote:
Irontruth wrote:
Cry about the jobs going overseas if you want, but if the production comes back, its coming back automated.
As long as this is the only answer the Democratic party has for the problem of middle class jobs that dont require a masters degree and 60k in debt disappearing they can look forward to increasing marginalization for at least a generation or two until people forget that such a thing used to exist.
And if you think it's just Democrats who don't have an answer for automation, feel free to share with me what the Republican strategy is to deal with automation.
That's easy. Blame democrats.
Pretty much, they dont have to have a strategy, they got way out ahead and slapped the "job killing" title on the opposition party.

Blaming the opposition party works as long as you're not in power. Once you're in charge, the claim falls flat and people get fed up.

You're ignoring the obvious answer.

You would think so, though teflon Don has an uncanny ability to deflect blame and loss on others. He never gets called on it either. This is a different animal we are dealing with.

Not for all voters. You're right for those who most vehemently agree with him, but people who voted for Obama in 2012 and Trump in 2016, this isn't true.


2 people marked this as a favorite.
MMCJawa wrote:

I can't say I blame the folks who are less than excited about job retraining. The older you get the harder it is to pick up a new trade, especially if you have a family and other obligations weighing in on you, and you lack the mobility to just pick up and move to where ever the job openings are. And after you finish that job retraining, remember you are going to be competing with a ton of younger folks fresh on the job market.

There's also the psychological emasculation which goes from being a senior experienced practitioner in one career with all of the perks and status (including a higher salary) that implies to being asked to start all over at the bottom rung of a completely unrelated career.

So when some female liberal Democrat from New York comes and tells you that she's going to kill your industry and offer you retraining as compensation, it's understandable that you'll be a lot less than thrilled about it.


CBDunkerson: The problem with that is that if someone owns a billion dollars, much of which is due to ownership of companies and not liquid money, stripping them of every cent and distributing their wealth as a one time sum to each American gets that person... Three dollars. Multiply by number of billions owned by the billionaires, divide by liquidity of wealth, and you get... Not that much. And remember, it is just a one time sum.

That is a pipe dream. It doesn't hold up to scrutiny. It works when you pander to people's jealousy to get votes, of course.

As for your concept of guaranteeing people employment a certain number of hours per week, that was the Soviet concept. There were huge numbers of people employed everywhere. They were paid in rubles, with which you could only buy from shops without enough goods (bread queues). And people had to be at work, even though there was not enough work to do, or they got punished. So, they slept at work, giving them time to play the black market at night, usually stripping their workplaces of stuff they could sell, so they got dollars, which could be used to buy anything you needed.

Again, it is simply unworkable. Remove incentives and doom the economy.


Caineach wrote:
CBDunkerson wrote:
The Mad Comrade wrote:
We're heading arse-over-teakettle into a universal stipend society. Or a dystopian society. Or a bastard love child of both.

My hope is that instead of a stipend we eventually implement some form of guaranteed minimum employment. That is, if you want to work you are guaranteed to be able to do so for at least a minimum wage and some minimum number of hours per week... which together provide enough funds for basic necessities.

The obvious questions are what would all those people do and how would we pay for it. However, I don't think either is all that insurmountable. A lot of the funding would come from eliminating unemployment assistance, that would no longer be needed, and the increased revenue generated by increased economic activity from near universal employment and societal benefits from the work actually performed. The remainder would have to come from less imbalanced wealth distribution mechanisms than we have currently... which means the GOP and many of the wealthy would fight it to the death, but ultimately fixing that income imbalance is going to be the cornerstone of ANY solution to our long term finances.

As to what work all those people could do... everything which currently doesn't get done because there just aren't enough bodies to do so. Police get asked all the time why they don't prevent more crimes or vigorously investigate the theft of every wallet and cell phone... and the answer is because they do not have enough people to do so. Problem solved. Put an unarmed part time auxiliary police officer on every street with body cams to record everything going on around them and just have them 'observe suspicious activity'. If a crime is later reported in that area then the police have video of everyone who was around at the time... and then you can have as many people as you need to go through the videos to identify possible suspects... and as many as you need to file paperwork for warrants and do research on the

...

It's not going to happen at all without taxing production itself. Our industrial sector IS more productive than ever... That productivity however is being generated with fewer and fewer workers as time goes on.

Problem is as long a politics is dominated by the likes of Norwick and the Church of Reagan, we're a far way from the mental and cultural shifts that are needed to make this happen.


Forbes had some data: All American billionaires together are worth 2.4 trillion dollars together. Divided by 300 million, that is 8000 dollars per person. A few months' salaries. Then, of course, liquidating those companies is not going to net you all that money, etc.


Sissyl wrote:
CBDunkerson: The problem with that is that if someone owns a billion dollars, much of which is due to ownership of companies and not liquid money, stripping them of every cent and distributing their wealth as a one time sum to each American gets that person... Three dollars. Multiply by number of billions owned by the billionaires, divide by liquidity of wealth, and you get... Not that much. And remember, it is just a one time sum.

If you take just the 8 richest people in America (Bloomberg, Zuckerberg, Ellison, Koch, Koch, Bezos, Buffett, and Gates), their aggregate worth is over $4 x 10^11. Redistributed to 300 million Americans, that's over $1400 each. That's enough to make an enormous difference to the lowest-wealth households -- pay off debt, handle medical bills, what have you.

The important thing is it need not be a one-time thing -- if they're able to spend it at small locally-owned businesses who pay good wages, that money is in essence being handed back and forth between those 300M people instead of being re-concentrated to the same 8 people. Teddy "Trust-Buster" Roosevelt had the right idea.


Wait, what were they going to do? Pay off bills and medical stuff, or stimulate the local economy? And the multiplicator effect is dependent on low taxes. Since the state removes a part each time around, how many circles depends on the total tax percentage.


Sissyl wrote:
Wait, what were they going to do? Pay off bills and medical stuff, or stimulate the local economy?

See the rest of the post. Ideally those are both the same thing.


Scythia wrote:
Freehold DM wrote:
CrystalSeas wrote:
Guys. GUYS
HEY YOU GUYYYYYYYYS

Pictures Freehold as Sloth

Have a Snickers, you're not yourself when you're hungry.

gee, thanks.

<_<

>_>

eats snickers anyway

Liberty's Edge

2 people marked this as a favorite.
Sissyl wrote:

CBDunkerson: The problem with that is that if someone owns a billion dollars, much of which is due to ownership of companies and not liquid money, stripping them of every cent and distributing their wealth as a one time sum to each American gets that person... Three dollars. Multiply by number of billions owned by the billionaires, divide by liquidity of wealth, and you get... Not that much. And remember, it is just a one time sum.

That is a pipe dream. It doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

Yet an income tax rate of ~70% on the highest earners (far short of the 100% of all wealth you hypothesize) allowed continual middle class growth from the Great Depression until Reagan.

Reality holds up to scrutiny just fine.

Give a billionaire $100 and they'll leave it in one of their accounts earning interest w/o even noticing. Give a starving person $100 and they will spend it... which generates income for someone else. Shifting wealth from the poor to the wealthy, as we have done since Reagan, reduces overall economic activity. Ergo, you don't need to wipe out all the billionaires to improve the situation... just reverse the ridiculous policies which have more and more wealth concentrated in fewer and fewer hands so that more people have spending money and the economy as a whole becomes more liquid.

Quote:
As for your concept of guaranteeing people employment a certain number of hours per week, that was the Soviet concept. There were huge numbers of people employed everywhere. They were paid in rubles, with which you could only buy from shops without enough goods (bread queues). And people had to be at work, even though there was not enough work to do, or they got punished.

Let's leave out the parts about being forced to shop at under stocked stores and not having enough work to do. Also maybe not have the government own all of the major industry and virtually wipe out private sector employment. Should work much better.

Quote:
Remove incentives and doom the economy.

I agree with this, but have said nothing about removing incentives.

Indeed, the whole point of making any such 'guaranteed employment' plan provide a minimum income would be to give people reason to take less demanding and better paying private sector jobs. This is also why I prefer 'guaranteed employment' over a universal stipend... give people enough money to survive in exchange for doing nothing and some of them will be content to do nothing. Make them work at a kind of crappy job for the same money and they'll be much more inclined to look for a less crappy job which pays more. Meanwhile, they also get work experience and don't feel like leeches getting paid to do nothing.


That is assuming a whole lot. Between the Great depression and Reagan, Lots of Stuff Happened. Things like WWII, women's suffrage, post-war poverty in much of the world, the rise of high-speed economic systems for international trade, a large part of the world's population slashing their own economic power through inane political systems (Russia and China come to mind), computers, rapid transportation, antibiotics, widespread schooling, democracy as the dominant ideology, decolonization, relative peace, etc etc etc etc etc etc. But sure, higher taxes on rich people also happened. Why is that a more important factor than all the others to you?


Interesting note about automation (which may be a few days late but I was busy this weekend):

As jobs are deskilled and robotized and the workforce slashed this leaves more potential power in the remaining workers. With global "last minute" supply chains, etc., etc., the remaining workers have even more potential power to throw a monkeywrench in the system by withdrawing their labor and going on strike.

Of course, there are more unemployed workers to potentially replace them, what Marx used to call the "reserve army of the unemployed".

In the thirties, the unions (well, the communists in the unions) fought this by creating mass Unemployed Leagues and cementing them to the unions through a program that addresses their needs, for example, reduction of the work week (thirty for forty was the slogan in the thirties) and sharing out the work among all of the unemployed.

A fighting labor movement could do this today, too, but they are too tied to the Democratic Party of professionalism and job retraining (when they aren't too busy sucking up to Trump).

Not every one is in a position to join a union, of course, but some of you "take back the party" Democrats and those further to the left might consider, if feasible, joining the campaign to take back the unions.


Forget money. Money isn't important. It's a medium of exchange, not useful in and of itself.
The real measure is in production. Stuff. Goods and services. Do we have, can we make enough to support our population at a standard of living we want?

Everything else is a question of distribution.


thejeff wrote:

Forget money. Money isn't important. It's a medium of exchange, not useful in and of itself.

The real measure is in production. Stuff. Goods and services. Do we have, can we make enough to support our population at a standard of living we want?

Everything else is a question of distribution.

We can easily sustain the entire population IMO. The question becomes what is the answer to "a standard of living we want"? Defining this basic standard of living can be as simple as "house, clothes, food, basic education". Everything tacked onto these four items increases the production requirements.

Certainly one would tack on "circuses" at a bare minimum in the form of the internet, radio and broadcast television to go with the four cornerstones of "bread". In some areas of the country these are not available in anything remotely resembling parity with other geographic regions of the country.

Then one has to ask

  • Are these to be done on a for-profit basis (having existing small and large businesses meet these needs as is the case now) or a non-profit basis?
  • If non-profit, what is the incentive to do such work at all outside of some variation of occupational conscription?
  • What incentives are there to go beyond enjoying having one's basic needs met?
  • Ergo, is there a need to go beyond when there is not much of an option to do so due to a lack of upward mobility?

When automation ends up addressing a majority of current labor needs, one has a few hundred million people that you have to give them either something to do or otherwise occupy their time. The time for this is fast approaching at is current pace.

Liberty's Edge

Sissyl wrote:
That is assuming a whole lot. Between the Great depression and Reagan, Lots of Stuff Happened. ... But sure, higher taxes on rich people also happened. Why is that a more important factor than all the others to you?

Because, economically speaking, the shift in wealth distribution (of which tax rates were only a part) from the many to the few is the most significant factor. Many people with wealth to spend generate more economic activity than few people with lots and lots of wealth to spend.

Sure, the eight richest people in the world spend more on a meal (or clothing, housing, etc) than the eight poorest... but not more than the 3.6 billion poorest... whose total wealth they exceed. Shift some money from the 8 people to the 3.6 billion and you WILL generate greater economic activity and thus better results for everyone... even the eight richest IMO.


These are all great ideas. Each one more implementable than the last.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
The Mad Comrade wrote:
thejeff wrote:

Forget money. Money isn't important. It's a medium of exchange, not useful in and of itself.

The real measure is in production. Stuff. Goods and services. Do we have, can we make enough to support our population at a standard of living we want?

Everything else is a question of distribution.

We can easily sustain the entire population IMO. The question becomes what is the answer to "a standard of living we want"? Defining this basic standard of living can be as simple as "house, clothes, food, basic education". Everything tacked onto these four items increases the production requirements.

Certainly one would tack on "circuses" at a bare minimum in the form of the internet, radio and broadcast television to go with the four cornerstones of "bread". In some areas of the country these are not available in anything remotely resembling parity with other geographic regions of the country.

Then one has to ask

  • Are these to be done on a for-profit basis (having existing small and large businesses meet these needs as is the case now) or a non-profit basis?
  • If non-profit, what is the incentive to do such work at all outside of some variation of occupational conscription?
  • What incentives are there to go beyond enjoying having one's basic needs met?
  • Ergo, is there a need to go beyond when there is not much of an option to do so due to a lack of upward mobility?

When automation ends up addressing a majority of current labor needs, one has a few hundred million people that you have to give them either something to do or otherwise occupy their time. The time for this is fast approaching at is current pace.

That's sort of a separate problem though. If automation is addressing labor needs, that means we're making enough stuff and performing enough services without needing as many people to work full time doing it. That's a good thing.

The idea that the problem is that people won't work harder enough when there isn't much work to be done is nonsensical. The whole problem is all our incentives are set up to make people work harder when we're running out of work for them to do.

The first step would be the obvious - reduce standard work hours. Cut the work week to 20 hours and suddenly you need twice the work force and everyone has more leisure time.


Automation increased efficiency. Efficiency is good. The problem is the distribution of resulting additional goods/services, which is why income (and wealth) inequality are so important. Unfortunately, as the value of labor decreases, so will wages. Eventually, the only thing that will matter is capital: That is, how much money you start with. Good thing we're probably eliminating the estate tax!

It's all very dystopian, but that's the way we're headed at the moment.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Comrade Anklebiter wrote:

Interesting note about automation (which may be a few days late but I was busy this weekend):

As jobs are deskilled and robotized and the workforce slashed this leaves more potential power in the remaining workers. With global "last minute" supply chains, etc., etc., the remaining workers have even more potential power to throw a monkeywrench in the system by withdrawing their labor and going on strike.

Of course, there are more unemployed workers to potentially replace them, what Marx used to call the "reserve army of the unemployed".

In the thirties, the unions (well, the communists in the unions) fought this by creating mass Unemployed Leagues and cementing them to the unions through a program that addresses their needs, for example, reduction of the work week (thirty for forty was the slogan in the thirties) and sharing out the work among all of the unemployed.

A fighting labor movement could do this today, too, but they are too tied to the Democratic Party of professionalism and job retraining (when they aren't too busy sucking up to Trump).

Not every one is in a position to join a union, of course, but some of you "take back the party" Democrats and those further to the left might consider, if feasible, joining the campaign to take back the unions.

This is something I've been hoping for as well. I want strong, prevalent unions back.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Irontruth wrote:


Don't Blame China

Robots, not trade...

You are missing an incredibly obvious problem between the numbers, and the conclusions drawn from those numbers. And I think this is a perfect symbol of the problem Democrats have when they went from being the party of workers, to the party of... let me put this nicely, people who over-think things, without direct interaction.

"American" cars are made from overseas parts. This is the case with virtually everything manufactured in the US. So yes, GM has a bunch of robots that do the efficient-to-automate processes. But all the stuff that isn't cheep-and-easy to use robots for, is made in a sweatshop in China, or wherever is the best place to exploit workers and the environment. As an example, the GMC Arcadia is made from 60% non-domestic parts. The percentage of US made parts in an "American" car has been dropping every year, and I'm not even sure that you can find any car that is even 75% US parts anymore.* American manufacturing is NOT producing more with less people, they are just using sweatshop labor to produce labor intensive components overseas, and then automating what is left. If the US automakers had to do it all domestically, it would require more people.

This is what happens when you take something like outsourcing, and reduce it to over simplified numbers, and then make claims based on those numbers. You miss the incredibly obvious thing that everyone who is actually affected understands on the most basic level, yet you think you understand better then they do.

I think this is where the resentment felt by the working class toward their "educated" betters comes from. The elites and "well educated" can look at all kinds of reports and numbers, and the "smartest guys in the room" all agree, but working people know that they are so out of touch, they don't even know the most basic fundamentals of why people are suffering.

As I said before, you are failing to understand the difference between automation, and outsourcing. Automation will always be reducing the number of people required for a specific task - the printing press, the cotton gin, sewing machines, cars and trucks, etc. Always made the economy stronger in the long run. However, outsourcing, like slavery, is simply a way to exploit workers and the environment. It makes the owners very wealthy, and screws the poor. It doesn't make the economy stronger, just more unequal.

Unless the Democrats understand the difference, or lie the way Obama did, they are never going to win a national election, and will remain the party of the out-of-touch.

EDIT: Opps! I got the numbers on the GMC Arcadia wrong. I think they are actually one of the only 10 US made products with 75% or more domestic parts. Oddly the Honda Accord is the Most US made with something like 90% domestic parts.

top US parts made cars:

If you're looking to buy the most American-made car you can, start searching for a GMC Acadia, a Buick Enclave or a Chevrolet Traverse. Those SUV triplets topped the Made in America list from American University in Washington, D.C. The list ranks vehicles by the percentage of American-made components inside each one.

So exactly what percentage of American-made parts are inside the Acadia, the Traverse and the Enclave? An impressive 90 percent, which is higher than any other car on the market. Coming in a close second is the Ford F-150 with 85 percent, followed by the Chevrolet Corvette at 83 percent. Fourth place is a massive tie between eight vehicles -- the Chevrolet Equinox, Impala, Tahoe, Suburban and Malibu along with the Cadillac Escalade, the GMC Yukon and the Buick LaCrosse. Fifth place might be a surprise: It's the Honda Accord.

Yes, that's right: The Accord is one of the most American-made cars on sale today, with an impressive 81 percent of its components manufactured in the United States. In securing its place on the list, it beats out every single Chrysler product, along with every Ford except for the F-150 pickup.


CBDunkerson wrote:
For example, most of the collisions involving automated driving have been low speed rear end collisions where the autonomous vehicle came to a full stop (as required by law) and the human driven vehicle behind them did not because they assumed the other car would just go since the road was clear.

I don't know how many times i've had to turn right on red without stopping just because the guy behind me assumed i wouldn't


2 people marked this as a favorite.
Thejeff wrote:
That's sort of a separate problem though. If automation is addressing labor needs, that means we're making enough stuff and performing enough services without needing as many people to work full time doing it. That's a good thing.

Not when only people that meet labor needs get any kind of pay and the rest can go die in the gutter.


Fergie wrote:
Irontruth wrote:


Don't Blame China

Robots, not trade...

You are missing an incredibly obvious problem between the numbers, and the conclusions drawn from those numbers. And I think this is a perfect symbol of the problem Democrats have when they went from being the party of workers, to the party of... let me put this nicely, people who over-think things, without direct interaction.

"American" cars are made from overseas parts. This is the case with virtually everything manufactured in the US. So yes, GM has a bunch of robots that do the efficient-to-automate processes. But all the stuff that isn't cheep-and-easy to use robots for, is made in a sweatshop in China, or wherever is the best place to exploit workers and the environment. As an example, the GMC Arcadia is made from 60% non-domestic parts. The percentage of US made parts in an "American" car has been dropping every year, and I'm not even sure that you can find any car that is even 75% US parts anymore. American manufacturing is NOT producing more with less people, they are just using sweatshop labor to produce labor intensive components overseas, and then automating what is left. If the US automakers had to do it all domestically, it would require more people.

This is what happens when you take something like outsourcing, and reduce it to over simplified numbers, and then make claims based on those numbers. You miss the incredibly obvious thing that everyone who is actually affected understands on the most basic level, yet you think you understand better then they do.

I think this is where the resentment felt by the working class toward their "educated" betters comes from. The elites and "well educated" can look at all kinds of reports and numbers, and the "smartest guys in the room" all agree, but working people...

Just to be clear here, you're claiming that the various reports on how much manufacturing the US is doing only look at assembly of the final product and don't consider manufacture of components? Do you have any evidence for that claim?

Not the claim that parts for many things are made overseas. We all know and understand that. The claim that the reports on US manufacturing ignore that, either deliberately or through sheer incompetence.


BigNorseWolf wrote:
CBDunkerson wrote:
For example, most of the collisions involving automated driving have been low speed rear end collisions where the autonomous vehicle came to a full stop (as required by law) and the human driven vehicle behind them did not because they assumed the other car would just go since the road was clear.
I don't know how many times i've had to turn right on red without stopping just because the guy behind me assumed i wouldn't

I have never had that happen. I've certainly never been rear-ended because of it.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
BigNorseWolf wrote:
Thejeff wrote:
That's sort of a separate problem though. If automation is addressing labor needs, that means we're making enough stuff and performing enough services without needing as many people to work full time doing it. That's a good thing.
Not when only people that meet labor needs get any kind of pay and the rest can go die in the gutter.

Yeah, but the solution isn't to break all the machines and go back to making everything by hand any more than it was the last time.

It's a distribution problem. A social and political problem.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
thejeff wrote:


I don't know how many times i've had to turn right on red without stopping just because the guy behind me assumed i wouldn't

I have never had that happen. I've certainly never been rear-ended because of it.

Do you drive in canada? Stopping before you turn right on red seems to be an almost unknown and overlooked rule in new york, kind of like blinkers are in new jersey.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Fergie wrote:
Irontruth wrote:


Don't Blame China

Robots, not trade...

You are missing an incredibly obvious problem between the numbers, and the conclusions drawn from those numbers. And I think this is a perfect symbol of the problem Democrats have when they went from being the party of workers, to the party of... let me put this nicely, people who over-think things, without direct interaction.

"American" cars are made from overseas parts. This is the case with virtually everything manufactured in the US. So yes, GM has a bunch of robots that do the efficient-to-automate processes. But all the stuff that isn't cheep-and-easy to use robots for, is made in a sweatshop in China, or wherever is the best place to exploit workers and the environment. As an example, the GMC Arcadia is made from 60% non-domestic parts. The percentage of US made parts in an "American" car has been dropping every year, and I'm not even sure that you can find any car that is even 75% US parts anymore. American manufacturing is NOT producing more with less people, they are just using sweatshop labor to produce labor intensive components overseas, and then automating what is left. If the US automakers had to do it all domestically, it would require more people.

This is what happens when you take something like outsourcing, and reduce it to over simplified numbers, and then make claims based on those numbers. You miss the incredibly obvious thing that everyone who is actually affected understands on the most basic level, yet you think you understand better then they do.

I think this is where the resentment felt by the working class toward their "educated" betters comes from. The elites and "well educated" can look at all kinds of reports and numbers, and the "smartest guys in the room" all agree, but working people...

I'd love to hear your solution. When self-driving cars become legal and readily available, what is your solution for the 3.5 million truck drivers currently employed right now. Are you planning to fight the legalization of self-driving cars? What? Those jobs aren't going over seas, they're not being outsourced. What is your plan? What is the rhetoric you're going to use to convince people that your plan is better?

Driving is way more complex than most manufacturing jobs by the way, because it relies heavily on our ability to visually identify the world around us, something we're bad at programming machines to do. It's really amusing that you think we haven't been able to design machines to do much more simple tasks that take place in manufacturing.


BigNorseWolf wrote:
thejeff wrote:


I don't know how many times i've had to turn right on red without stopping just because the guy behind me assumed i wouldn't

I have never had that happen. I've certainly never been rear-ended because of it.
Do you drive in canada? Stopping before you turn right on red seems to be an almost unknown and overlooked rule in new york, kind of like blinkers are in new jersey.

Connecticut.

Blinkers are definitely optional. Full stops for right turns on red are pretty optional as well, but not actually dangerous. Anywhere I've driven.


Hmm, I seem to get different numbers everywhere I look, but this seems tied to the NHTSA so I think it might be the most accurate, and up to date.

What percentage of your car is made in America

I think "America" includes Canada, but not Mexico, but I could be wrong.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Fergie wrote:
Hmm, I seem to get different numbers everywhere I look, but this seems tied to the NHTSA so I think it might be the most accurate, and up to date.

Here is the source of the ABCNews information

Kogod Auto Index

Sovereign Court

Pathfinder Starfinder Society Subscriber
Fergie wrote:

You are missing an incredibly obvious problem between the numbers, and the conclusions drawn from those numbers. And I think this is a perfect symbol of the problem Democrats have when they went from being the party of workers, to the party of... let me put this nicely, people who over-think things, without direct interaction.

"American" cars are made from overseas parts. This is the case with virtually everything manufactured in the US. So yes, GM has a bunch of robots that do the efficient-to-automate processes. But all the stuff that isn't cheep-and-easy to use robots for, is made in a sweatshop in China, or wherever is the best place to exploit workers and the environment.

Places like Japan, Germany, Korea, and France? [PDF] China has only three entries on the top 100 parts suppliers. I think your point would be better made in a different industry.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Fergie wrote:
You are missing an incredibly obvious problem between the numbers, and the conclusions drawn from those numbers. And I think this is a perfect symbol of the problem Democrats have when they went from being the party of workers, to the party of... let me put this nicely, people who over-think things, without direct interaction.

It's not like the worker can't underthink things either. coal and forestry workers thinking that tree hugging hippies hanging out in trees took their jobs when these things are running laps around paul bunyan. Getting rid of the hippies won't put them back to work


Irontruth wrote:
stuff

Again, you are failing to understand the difference between automation and outsourcing. I NEVER claimed that automation wasn't reducing jobs - that is the entire point of automation.

And yes, I do plan on fighting self driving vehicles. As a cyclist and motorcyclist, there are a variety of unanswered questions that are really important, namely, who is responsible when your self driving vehicle destroys a bus full of school kids. The Chinese company that made the sensor, the third party software developer, the guy who kept driving with the service light on, etc? Also, I know cars, specifically beat up old cars and also old computers. They stop working so well after 10 years in the best conditions. Are people going to be allowed to operate old self driving cars? Who is going to be replacing all those old parts? How much public money is going into "self-driving roads"? But honestly that isn't the point of this thread at all.

My plan for unemployment is simple, and is over 75 years old. We did it before in the US, and it worked well. It has been used by most industrialized countries in one form or another.

W P A!
"At its peak in 1938, it provided paid jobs for three million unemployed men and women, as well as youth in a separate division, the National Youth Administration. Between 1935 and 1943, when the agency was disbanded, the WPA employed 8.5 million people."


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Fergie wrote:


My plan for unemployment is simple, and is over 75 years old. We did it before in the US, and it worked well. It has been used by most industrialized countries in one form or another.

W P A!

They made good stuff. It was all over the Parks where i worked, needed a little TLC after all these years but still...

Liberty's Edge

The important thing to remember in providing tax-funded public sector jobs is that these days the unemployed have a LOT, a LOT more people with college degrees than during the Great Depression. We have people who have studied maths and statistics that can do a lot more than pile rocks and clear underbrush. And if you're going to try to put people with extensive higher education into basically picking up litter, you are 1) wasting trained talent, 2) frustrating people who know they can do more valuable stuff, 3) eroding away the skills that they spent years training.

Public sector jobs in 2020 need to be significantly different than 1930. Building paved paths might have been sufficient then, but today, we need to also provide something to do for the highly educated.

1 to 50 of 4,260 << first < prev | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | next > last >>
Community / Forums / Gamer Life / Off-Topic Discussions / Future of the Democratic Party All Messageboards