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posted by CoolHand on Wednesday November 11 2015, @02:50AM   Printer-friendly
from the rise-of-the-proletariat dept.

Hundreds of fast food workers are striking nationwide Tuesday, joining other workers in pressing for a more livable wage. But while some say $15 is a minimum needed to survive, some business owners say dishing out more pay would leave them struggling to keep their doors open.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/fast-food-workers-strike-again-nationwide-for-15-an-hour

In New York City, rallies are being held in Harlem, the Financial District and Brooklyn in support of efforts to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, reports CBS New York.

In Los Angeles, the local protests are organized by Service Employees International Union, and include fast-food, home-care and child-care workers, along with other "underpaid" employees, reports CBS Los Angeles.

"Is this the America we believe in? When someone works all day long and they still can't get by," New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said during an early-morning rally in Downtown Brooklyn. "Does anyone believe that it's easy to get by in New York City on less than $15 an hour?"

Critics say a $15 minimum wage would obliterate opportunity and usher in higher taxes, but de Blasio said the opposite is true -- with more money to spend, low wage workers contribute more to the economy.


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  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Wednesday November 11 2015, @03:21AM

    by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Wednesday November 11 2015, @03:21AM (#261558) Homepage

    They got kiosks for taking orders and machines for making burgers. Just throw 'em the damn bone.

    I've also got a few points I mention everytime this comes up:
    - I think they should get the raise, but raising the minimum wage shouldn't come at the expense of pushing the middle-class down and then calling it all "the new normal," which is what I think is going on.
    - See comment about automation above.
    - I've read that some who have receive the raise have asked their bosses for cuts to their hours so that they can continue to receive government assistance.

    But what if fast-food is automated away? Well, I think it'd be hilarious if all the disgruntled laid-off fast-food workers trashed the kiosks and burger-making machinery. Now THAT's an engineering problem to solve. Food terminals would have to be like armored ATMS and that still wouldn't stop angry folks from pissing in the food slots. Any ideas on how to solve that problem?

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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday November 11 2015, @03:32AM

    by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Wednesday November 11 2015, @03:32AM (#261564) Homepage Journal

    Fuck that. If an utterly unskilled teenager can do your job with little to no training, you should be paid like it.

    --
    My rights don't end where your fear begins.
    • (Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday November 11 2015, @07:07PM

      by DeathMonkey (1380) on Wednesday November 11 2015, @07:07PM (#261871) Journal

      Fuck that. If an utterly unskilled teenager can do your job with little to no training, you should be paid like it.
       
      There are plenty of teenagers out there who actually need to work for a living. If they are working full time they should be able to survive off it.

      • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday November 11 2015, @07:33PM

        by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Wednesday November 11 2015, @07:33PM (#261885) Homepage Journal

        Only if they offer enough in return. Everybody is entitled to life. Nobody is entitled to the means to support that life. For that you have to trade equal value.

        --
        My rights don't end where your fear begins.
        • (Score: 4, Funny) by NotSanguine on Wednesday November 11 2015, @10:26PM

          by NotSanguine (285) <NotSanguineNO@SPAMSoylentNews.Org> on Wednesday November 11 2015, @10:26PM (#261948) Homepage Journal

          Only if they offer enough in return. Everybody is entitled to life. Nobody is entitled to the means to support that life. For that you have to trade equal value.

          Absolutely correct.

          Being poor is a disease. We need to isolate those people so their evil doesn't rub off on us. I mean, if they were good people, they wouldn't be poor right? And if they're not good people, they need to be taught that they don't matter.

          I'm going to create a startup to take all those empty warehouses and factories around the country and put bunks in them. I'll advertise for $10/night beds (cheaper than any rent out there, that's for sure!) and sell franchises for food and cleaning services.

          Most of those who live there can take the $8/hour (contract labor, of course) and clean/feed themselves.

          We can adjust the pay (down, of course) to maximize profit for me and the franchisees. That makes sure these folks get exactly what they need without disturbing the real humans.

          Are you in, Buzzard?

          --
          No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
          • (Score: 3, Funny) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday November 11 2015, @10:54PM

            by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Wednesday November 11 2015, @10:54PM (#261956) Homepage Journal

            Being poor isn't a disease, it's a choice. You choose to either be poor or acquire skills through hard work and then work your ass off like the rest of the world who like to eat regularly. Bitching because flipping burgers or sweeping a floor won't get you a nice house in the burbs is childish bullshit and deserves to be treated as such.

            --
            My rights don't end where your fear begins.
            • (Score: 4, Insightful) by NotSanguine on Wednesday November 11 2015, @11:48PM

              by NotSanguine (285) <NotSanguineNO@SPAMSoylentNews.Org> on Wednesday November 11 2015, @11:48PM (#261979) Homepage Journal

              Being poor isn't a disease, it's a choice. You choose to either be poor or acquire skills through hard work and then work your ass off like the rest of the world who like to eat regularly. Bitching because flipping burgers or sweeping a floor won't get you a nice house in the burbs is childish bullshit and deserves to be treated as such.

              I appreciate your point and agree that hard work (I can certainly vouch for that) can help people to better their circumstances.

              However, I disagree with your conclusions. Given the state of education in many parts of the U.S., a lack of real opportunity for those few skills to obtain more of them, and the reality that if you have to work several jobs to pay for your living expenses, it's unlikely that you'll have the time (there are only 24 hours in a day) to invest in upgrading one's skills. Especially if you have children to care for and/or lengthy commutes (since most places in the US make it very difficult to get around without a car -- which adds thousands a year to the budget).

              I won't address the whole "privatizing profit and socializing the needs of workers" issue. That's been addressed pretty completely in other posts.

              Arguing that the poor must be stupid and/or lazy because they're poor ignores the reality of U.S. society. A 40 hour/week job that would allow a single person to support themselves without government assistance, and a serious reduction in the disdain and stigma of having less, would go a long way to creating the conditions that allow those without resources to better themselves. I'd also point out that in the 50s, 60s and 70s, it was actually possible for those with minimal skills to live on the income from a single job. That's no longer the case in many (if not most) places in the U.S.

              What's more, most people who have nothing would be happy with being able to take care of and better themselves if they could do so without being spat upon as lazy because they're poor.

              While there are myriad stories about people "pulling themselves up by their bootstraps," there are many, many more about being denied opportunities because society is structured for them to fail (e.g., crappy schools, lack of access to services, limited opportunity in their location, people looking down on them based on their economic circumstance, etc.).

              It's becoming more difficult for the have-nots to become have-somethings. I imagine that most would just like to be able to provide for their families without having to rely on government assistance just to keep from becoming homeless.

              --
              No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
              • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday November 12 2015, @12:10AM

                by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Thursday November 12 2015, @12:10AM (#261988) Homepage Journal

                Sounds like your hypothetical people made a hell of a lot of shitty decisions and are having to live with the consequences. I approve of this. People should have to live with the consequences of their choices. The state exists to secure our liberty not to hold our hands cradle to grave.

                --
                My rights don't end where your fear begins.
                • (Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Thursday November 12 2015, @12:16AM

                  by NotSanguine (285) <NotSanguineNO@SPAMSoylentNews.Org> on Thursday November 12 2015, @12:16AM (#261989) Homepage Journal

                  Sounds like your hypothetical people made a hell of a lot of shitty decisions and are having to live with the consequences. I approve of this. People should have to live with the consequences of their choices. The state exists to secure our liberty not to hold our hands cradle to grave.

                  Absolutely. These people [google.com] especially deserve everything they get, don't they?

                  --
                  No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
                  • (Score: 2) by Reziac on Thursday November 12 2015, @02:38PM

                    by Reziac (2489) on Thursday November 12 2015, @02:38PM (#262149) Homepage

                    Except for the minor detail that what we call "poverty" in America is roughly European middle class, and top-tier for the rest of the world.

                    --
                    And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
                    • (Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Thursday November 12 2015, @08:07PM

                      by NotSanguine (285) <NotSanguineNO@SPAMSoylentNews.Org> on Thursday November 12 2015, @08:07PM (#262327) Homepage Journal

                      Except for the minor detail that what we call "poverty" in America is roughly European middle class, and top-tier for the rest of the world.

                      You're lying to yourself [wikipedia.org] and others [wikipedia.org], friend.

                      --
                      No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
                      • (Score: 2) by Reziac on Thursday November 12 2015, @08:28PM

                        by Reziac (2489) on Thursday November 12 2015, @08:28PM (#262337) Homepage
                        --
                        And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
                        • (Score: 2) by Nollij on Thursday November 12 2015, @10:49PM

                          by Nollij (4559) on Thursday November 12 2015, @10:49PM (#262394)

                          Based on that very page, we can conclude that:

                          20% of poor households do not have A/C
                          over 25% do not own a car/truck
                          half do not own a personal computer
                          57% do not have internet access
                          and 17% of poor families do not have enough food to eat

                          The other side of the coin looks very different, doesn't it?

                          • (Score: 2) by Reziac on Thursday November 12 2015, @11:49PM

                            by Reziac (2489) on Thursday November 12 2015, @11:49PM (#262412) Homepage

                            If you neglect to control for those who live where A/C is redundant to the climate, and who use a cellphone instead of a PC and internet access... as to "not enough food" I have yet to see any starving poor in the U.S., and aside from having never broken the poverty line myself, I've lived in some very poor areas. Just today I was reading another study, tho, which noted that this was a self-reported stat and when broken down into food types, basically translated as "at least, we don't get to eat as much expensive junk food as we'd like".

                            --
                            And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
                            • (Score: 2) by Nollij on Friday November 13 2015, @04:11AM

                              by Nollij (4559) on Friday November 13 2015, @04:11AM (#262497)

                              I was actually referring to the different emotional reaction people have to the 2 stats, depending on phrasing

                              • (Score: 2) by Reziac on Friday November 13 2015, @04:28AM

                                by Reziac (2489) on Friday November 13 2015, @04:28AM (#262499) Homepage

                                Good point.

                                --
                                And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
                          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 13 2015, @01:24AM

                            by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 13 2015, @01:24AM (#262443)

                            20% of poor households do not have A/C

                            Twenty percent of poor household don't have their own Anonymous Coward? This is an outrage!

                • (Score: 2) by mhajicek on Thursday November 12 2015, @02:48AM

                  by mhajicek (51) on Thursday November 12 2015, @02:48AM (#262026)

                  Yup, it was really stupid of them to be born into poor uneducated minority families. Serves them right. Wrath begets wealth and poverty begets poverty. The world is not nearly as economically mobile as you seem to think.

                  --
                  The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
                  • (Score: 2) by mhajicek on Thursday November 12 2015, @02:52AM

                    by mhajicek (51) on Thursday November 12 2015, @02:52AM (#262027)

                    *wealth begets wealth.

                    --
                    The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
    • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday November 12 2015, @12:35AM

      by JoeMerchant (3937) on Thursday November 12 2015, @12:35AM (#261998)

      [QUOTE]If an utterly unskilled teenager can do your job with little to no training, you should be paid like it.[/QUOTE]

      Agreed, unfortunately there are precious few opportunities to do anything "better" even for people who have skills.

      I'm paid well, have valuable widely applicable skills, but in our job market I have found myself unemployed 3 times in the last 25 years for spells lasting a total of 8 months. During those job searches, I "couldn't get arrested," no one would hire me at any price because the jobs just weren't there. If I desperately needed money during those spells, I would have had to fall to near minimum wage employment to get it. My unemployment checks actually paid better than full-time minimum wage, barely, while they lasted.

      People who are railroaded into low paying jobs can find it very hard to get out, much harder than simply finding work while unemployed. So, are you a bigger problem to society if you take a job that doesn't use your valuable skills, or if you take no job at all? Is either your fault? Should you uproot your family (and possibly working spouse) every time jobs fitting your specific skillset leave town?

      I think a huge part of the solution can be found in remote work (via network connection), but we will need better global economic parity before that can work well in places like Europe and North America. Until that happens, minimum wage looks like a king's ransom compared to the competition on the other side of the globe.

      --
      🌻🌻 [google.com]
    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Reziac on Thursday November 12 2015, @02:35PM

      by Reziac (2489) on Thursday November 12 2015, @02:35PM (#262148) Homepage

      Especially if you want unskilled teenagers to be able to find jobs at all. Unskilled teenagers (still mostly supported by their parents, so hardly a family's breadwinner) staff the majority of these positions. So yeah, let's raise the wage beyond the value of the employee, and see how many of these unskilled entry-level positions remain. I'd guess about 30% go away, coincidentally the same as the increase in costs.

      --
      And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
  • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday November 11 2015, @03:32AM

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday November 11 2015, @03:32AM (#261565) Journal

    Pissing in the food slots? Just build the damned things so that it requires more than a 1 1/2 inch hose to reach. The kind of people who would do that won't have the necessary equipment.

    I seldom go to a fast food place anyway. Processed, predigested imitation food, for the most part. I'd much rather pay a dollar or five more, and visit a real restaurant. At that price, it's usually still not great food, but at least it's real food.

    • (Score: 2) by black6host on Wednesday November 11 2015, @07:05AM

      by black6host (3827) on Wednesday November 11 2015, @07:05AM (#261639) Journal

      What, you've never pissed up? Damn, I thought that was something everybody tried at some point in their life. Either young or drunk... It's like writing your name in the snow :)

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 11 2015, @07:27AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 11 2015, @07:27AM (#261643)

        My mom shot a picture of me once, back arched backward, pissing a neat arch right over my head.

        I guess I was three or four.

        Gee, I wish I could still do that.

        • (Score: 3, Insightful) by LoRdTAW on Wednesday November 11 2015, @12:38PM

          by LoRdTAW (3755) on Wednesday November 11 2015, @12:38PM (#261699) Journal

          That's one hell of a classy mum you got.

  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by K_benzoate on Wednesday November 11 2015, @03:43AM

    by K_benzoate (5036) on Wednesday November 11 2015, @03:43AM (#261574)

    Hire three minimum-wage "security" guards (8 hour shifts, 24 hour coverage) and park them in a McDonald's uniform near the kiosks. They can browse the Internet on their phones for all it matters. Just being there will stop almost every casual vandal. Call the cops if someone starts tampering with food or destroying property.

    I want some kind of basic income to be enacted, so automating away meaningless jobs is a high priority for me because it'll increase the amount of technologically displaced workers who will agitate for such a system. Humans shouldn't be making chips and milkshakes, and if that's all they're good for then we're all better off just paying them to sit home and watch Netflix, and occasionally spend money on other things to keep the whole project of civilization moving for the rest of us who care a bit more about the deep questions. And, of course, anyone is welcome to join that latter camp--and with a basic income there's virtually nothing stopping you if you have the interest.

    --
    Climate change is real and primarily caused by human activity.
    • (Score: 2) by mhajicek on Wednesday November 11 2015, @05:28AM

      by mhajicek (51) on Wednesday November 11 2015, @05:28AM (#261617)

      There are already robot security guards. No need to waste money on unreliable teenagers.

      Problem is, who's left to buy the food?

      --
      The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
      • (Score: 4, Informative) by sjames on Wednesday November 11 2015, @08:03AM

        by sjames (2882) on Wednesday November 11 2015, @08:03AM (#261651) Journal

        That's where the Basic Income comes in.

      • (Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday November 11 2015, @01:11PM

        by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday November 11 2015, @01:11PM (#261710)

        Install cameras, outsource watching the cams to India or mturk for "contractors" to watch them for pennies on the dollar of local security guard wages.

        Already being done, so I'm told. If you have sufficient internet upstream to give patrons internet access while they eat "food" then you can use the unused bandwidth to shove cam footage, plus or minus customers trying to torrent stuff or DDOS zombie participants it works pretty well.

  • (Score: 5, Informative) by Grishnakh on Wednesday November 11 2015, @03:56AM

    by Grishnakh (2831) on Wednesday November 11 2015, @03:56AM (#261584)

    This is exactly why we absolutely need a Basic Income pretty soon. Before long, most of the low-end jobs are going to be automated away. There's simply too many unskilled people for the amount of unskilled work available. The typical advice is for people to get an education, but our education system is a shambles, and many of these people aren't really capable of anything higher-level than this anyway. And finally, what other higher-level work is there, even if they could be trained for it? You only need so many robot repairpeople. And the last thing our society needs is more salespeople to sell us robot-made stuff, or more marketing dweebs, or other such parasitic jobs.

    • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 11 2015, @04:21AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 11 2015, @04:21AM (#261594)

      I hear that Grishnakh isn't capable of anything higher-level, for example. Grishnakh needs a basic income now to avoid eating several fingers.

    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday November 11 2015, @04:26AM

      by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Wednesday November 11 2015, @04:26AM (#261597) Homepage Journal

      There's simply too many unskilled people for the amount of unskilled work available.

      Then stop telling them to go to college and send them somewhere they'll learn something useful.

      --
      My rights don't end where your fear begins.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 11 2015, @04:39AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 11 2015, @04:39AM (#261599)

        Iraq?

        • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday November 11 2015, @11:16AM

          by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Wednesday November 11 2015, @11:16AM (#261689) Homepage Journal

          Possibly. You're less likely to find someone sitting on their ass playing XBox all day there, so there're probably a few skilled people who could use an apprentice.

          --
          My rights don't end where your fear begins.
          • (Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Wednesday November 11 2015, @01:07PM

            by LoRdTAW (3755) on Wednesday November 11 2015, @01:07PM (#261708) Journal

            Depends on your MOS. I have aheard of some who never leave the base and have lots of free time to dick around and yea thy do have laptops and consoles. Many of these were assigned to FOB's or forward operating bases. Those people were colloquially called fobbits.

            • (Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday November 11 2015, @01:59PM

              by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday November 11 2015, @01:59PM (#261718)

              Its an interesting generation gap. A quarter century ago I was a REMF. In the olden days there WAS a rear echelon, you see, whereas now a days everyone is an IED or suicide bomber target, so the RE part of REMF no longer means anything.

              Ironic today is veterans day, I was talking to a MUCH younger vet who recently got out and almost all the slang and racial epitaphs have changed, its almost a communication breakdown.

      • (Score: 1) by tftp on Wednesday November 11 2015, @05:04AM

        by tftp (806) on Wednesday November 11 2015, @05:04AM (#261608) Homepage

        Then stop telling them to go to college and send them somewhere they'll learn something useful.

        What would that be, I wonder? Not everyone can be a theoretical physicist.

        As others said, it's often easier to put them on basic income (a.k.a. social security) and forget about their existence. However this creates a few problems. First, it is psychologically damaging; then it builds a ghetto of unwanted, unusable people who are left to live however they want (and one doesn't need to think for more than 30 seconds to imagine how it will end up; hint: you'd need a wall.) Also, those social security monies (or just food/clothes) have to come from somewhere. Nice if you have robots that look like gods to you. But in the meantime - which may last a century - this is not going to be a stable solution.

        • (Score: 3, Funny) by mhajicek on Wednesday November 11 2015, @05:31AM

          by mhajicek (51) on Wednesday November 11 2015, @05:31AM (#261619)

          Get them hooked on mmorpgs. They'll waste their whole lives sitting in one spot, be unlikely to reproduce, and be happy the whole time.

          --
          The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 11 2015, @05:34AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 11 2015, @05:34AM (#261620)

            This is how we will all get lost in the matrix, imho.

            • (Score: 3, Insightful) by mhajicek on Wednesday November 11 2015, @05:43AM

              by mhajicek (51) on Wednesday November 11 2015, @05:43AM (#261624)

              Speaking of which, Aion is free on Steam now. Graphics are pretty, character appearance is very customizable, and you get wings! I blew way too much of my weekend on it.

              --
              The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
        • (Score: 3, Informative) by sjames on Wednesday November 11 2015, @08:40AM

          by sjames (2882) on Wednesday November 11 2015, @08:40AM (#261656) Journal

          Or perhaps they'll write the next Harry Potter (love it or hate it, it brought billions into the economy), make sought after handmade goods, etc.

          The key is to make the income actually high enough to actually get by.

        • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday November 11 2015, @11:13AM

          by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Wednesday November 11 2015, @11:13AM (#261687) Homepage Journal

          Skills not education, tftp. You can be dumb as a sack of bricks and become competently skilled at welding or any number of other skilled trades.

          As for "basic income"? The only way I'd ever agree to even a dime is if anyone taking it lost their right to vote until they got off of it. If we're going to support them like children, they don't get the rights adults get.

          --
          My rights don't end where your fear begins.
          • (Score: 4, Insightful) by aclarke on Wednesday November 11 2015, @02:28PM

            by aclarke (2049) on Wednesday November 11 2015, @02:28PM (#261728) Homepage

            There are different types of intelligence. Have you ever tried welding? Are you any good at it? "Skilled trades" are called "skilled" because they require ... skill. Welding isn't just moving a couple things across some metal. Here in Canada to get your tickets as a welder you actually have to go to college and learn a fair amount. Maybe you don't need to know astrophysics or Persian literature, but it does require some brains, as well as the ability to make good decisions on the fly.

            As for basic income, I don't think you're looking at it in the right way. I'll start in no particular order.

            - The current system is broken. The middle class is being decimated, the poor are getting poorer, and the rich are getting richer. I hope you see a problem with this.

            - If you look at why basic income can't work, start challenging those suppositions and assume that those problems and attitudes CAN be changed. Start looking for ways to change the system for the better, instead of assuming all those impediments have to stay the same.

            - There are many people who are employed who probably are overall a drain on their employers. They're unmotivated, lazy, dumb, burnt out, or maybe just stuck in the wrong sort of job for their temperament because they need to pay the bills. Is it such a bad idea to to free the workplace from this sort of person? It leaves the rest able to do their jobs, and it also opens up opportunities for others who may be looking for those positions themselves.

            - Many of those who are currently employed in the wrong place will go on to be productive in other ways. Perhaps they'll do a better job raising their children. Perhaps they'll look after their elderly parents, go plant a garden, clean up their neighbourhood, or do something else productive. The problem with financial capitalism is that it really only rewards jobs that can be monetized. A capitalistic society doesn't financially value taking care of our elders, so there's little financial motivation to do so. Universal basic income frees up people to work on making society better. Ultimately, a healthier and better-functioning society is a benefit to all of us.

            - Some people won't work on making society better. They'll sit around in their underpants at home, smoking weed and watching Ow my Balls. Guess what a lot of those people are already doing. Guess how they're being paid to do that. Government social assistance and/or crime. If you're already paying people to sit around and do nothing through government programs, how about doing it through a government program that might actually be more efficient?

            - Some of the people who are going to sit around doing nothing are already sitting around doing nothing in organizations all around the world. Do you really want to keep working with them if there's another alternative?

            - As alluded above, there are already a myriad of social programmes meant to look after teenage mums, kids in school, grandparents, blue-eyed amputees between the age of 45-49, whatever. Trying to make a whole lot of programmes for a bunch of special interests is an inefficient way of looking after human needs. One program, combined with a simplified tax structure and other changes aimed at streamlining the fact that you're going to start looking at peoples' economic and social needs in a different way, may actually cost less than you might think.

            - You might disagree with this, but in my opinion all humans deserve basic dignity. It's not right that some of us are getting richer and more comfortable while others in our same country are dying on the street because they lack the basic care they need. This is the case whether they're mentally or physically healthy or sick, lazy or hard-working, young or old. I don't want to be the one who, directly or indirectly, denies at least an opportunity to someone because, for example, they're mentally handicapped, bipolar, or whatever, and can't properly hold onto a job.

            • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday November 11 2015, @04:01PM

              by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Wednesday November 11 2015, @04:01PM (#261787) Homepage Journal

              Have you ever tried welding? Are you any good at it?

              Yup and not especially. My welds hold and every now and then I'll whip out a pretty one but not consistently enough to get paid for it.

              Skills are not intelligence though. Having skills has nothing to do with intelligence. Intelligence is simply the ability to learn. For instance, I learned how to weld properly (enough to do it, not enough to be paid to do it) very quickly. I know exactly what I'm supposed to be doing. I just don't have the motor control to do so. That's a muscle memory issue not an intelligence issue.

              Now the knowledge that comes along with being a badass welder, I'm not downplaying that. It's just that with enough effort, it's something that most people can learn if they put enough time and effort into it. It's valuable, specialized knowledge but it's not rocket surgery.

              The current system is broken. The middle class is being decimated, the poor are getting poorer, and the rich are getting richer. I hope you see a problem with this.

              I absolutely do not. The rich getting richer does not make the poor get poorer. Wealth is not finite. Wealth, both personal and universal, is limited only by the human mind's ability to create. You and you alone (the evils of involuntary taxation aside) determine how much wealth you will create and how your wealth will be allocated.

              Example: I code for SN here. Every bit of code I create is wealth because it, hopefully, is capable of making life a little bit easier or otherwise better for everyone who comes to the site. I do this for free because I find enough value returned to myself by having a good site and keeping my coding chops sharp. I receive value, all the other users receive value, the company receives value in the form of cash from subs, our hosting company receives value from us paying our bills, and so on and so forth. Wealth was thus produced from my mind and has added to the total sum of wealth in the world.

              Currency? That's simply one means of keeping score of how much wealth you have stored for easy exchange and it's not even a very good one.

              Do you have a car? A TV? A computer? How many mobile devices? The ability to instantly communicate with anyone on the planet? Central heat and air? Hot water? A refrigerator? The poor of today are insanely wealthy in comparison to the top 1% of a hundred years ago or even thirty years ago. The poor in the US are even a damn sight more wealthy than the poor of our neighbor Mexico. Relatively speaking, the US has no poor and I'm really getting sick of hearing that I'm a bad person if my heart doesn't bleed for them.

              Merging all programs into "basic income"? Fantastic idea. Still with the you do not get to vote stipulation. If you are a drain on the nation, you should not get to choose its direction.

              All humans are welcome to basic dignity. Dignity is not something you are given though; dignity is something you start out with and can either choose to keep or choose to drop in favor of comfort. They throw dignity out the window the first time they accept a handout. That makes them a bum and bums are without dignity.

              --
              My rights don't end where your fear begins.
              • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 11 2015, @08:51PM

                by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 11 2015, @08:51PM (#261916)

                "Wealth is not finite. Wealth, both personal and universal, is limited only by the human mind's ability to create."

                True (as with Julian Simon); however, a society made of humans will not work well if a few (greedy, unenlightened) humans have 99.999%+ of everything and so can buy the laws in their favor, where said laws can include imprisoning all the rest (including you) for, say, posting on the internet without an appropriate license.
                https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICP_license [wikipedia.org]

                Or, for that matter, reading the internet without a license.
                https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licensing_in_the_United_Kingdom [wikipedia.org]

                Or reading anything else for that matter.
                https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Right_to_Read [wikipedia.org]
                https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit_451 [wikipedia.org]

                See also:
                "The Richest Man in the World: A parable about structural unemployment and a basic income"
                https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p14bAe6AzhA [youtube.com]

                And also:
                http://www.pdfernhout.net/microslaw.html [pdfernhout.net]
                "My fellow Americans. There has been some recent talk of free law by the General Public Lawyers (the GPL) who we all know hold un-American views. I speak to you today from the Oval Office in the White House to assure you how much better off you are now that all law is proprietary. The value of proprietary law should be obvious. Software is essentially just a form of law governing how computers operate, and all software and media content has long been privatized to great economic success. Economic analysts have proven conclusively that if we hadn't passed laws banning all free software like GNU/Linux and OpenOffice after our economy began its current recession, which started, how many times must I remind everyone, only coincidentally with the shutdown of Napster, that we would be in far worse shape then we are today. RIAA has confidently assured me that if independent artists were allowed to release works without using their compensation system and royalty rates, music CD sales would be even lower than their recent inexplicably low levels. The MPAA has also detailed how historically the movie industry was nearly destroyed in the 1980s by the VCR until that too was banned and all so called fair use exemptions eliminated. So clearly, these successes with software, content, and hardware indicate the value of a similar approach to law.
                    There are many reasons for the value of proprietary law. You all know them since you have been taught them in school since kindergarten as part of your standardized education. They are reflected in our most fundamental beliefs, such as sharing denies the delight of payment and cookies can only be brought into the classroom if you bring enough to sell to everyone. But you are always free to eat them all yourself of course! [audience chuckles knowingly]. But I think it important to repeat such fundamental truths now as they form the core of all we hold dear in this great land.
                    First off, we all know our current set of laws requires a micropayment each time a U.S. law is discussed, referenced, or applied by any person anywhere in the world. This financial incentive has produced a large amount of new law over the last decade. This body of law is all based on a core legal code owned by that fine example of American corporate capitalism at its best, the MicroSlaw Corporation. ..."

                But even if you don't buy any of that, studies show more egalitarian societies tend to have happier wealthy people. Also, other studies show most families lose their great wealth within three generations, so what's the point?

                Given the enclosure and privatization of most the land by the government (to enforce land rights), one can argue peopel have a right to soem of the fruits of the land by right of citizenship as part-owners in that national enterprise of enclosing the commons.

                Also, all humans share in our collective cultural inheritance:
                https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_credit [wikipedia.org]
                "Douglas disagreed with classical economists who recognised only three factors of production: land, labour and capital. While Douglas did not deny the role of these factors in production, he considered the “cultural inheritance of society” as the primary factor. He defined cultural inheritance as the knowledge, techniques and processes that have accrued to us incrementally from the origins of civilization (i.e. progress). Consequently, mankind does not have to keep "reinventing the wheel". "We are merely the administrators of that cultural inheritance, and to that extent the cultural inheritance is the property of all of us, without exception.[8] Adam Smith, David Ricardo and Karl Marx claimed that labour creates all value. While Douglas did not deny that all costs ultimately relate to labour charges of some sort (past or present), he denied that the present labour of the world creates all wealth. Douglas carefully distinguished between value, costs and prices. He claimed that one of the factors resulting in a misdirection of thought in terms of the nature and function of money was economists' near-obsession about values and their relation to prices and incomes.[9] While Douglas recognized "value in use" as a legitimate theory of values, he also considered values as subjective and not capable of being measured in an objective manner. Thus he rejected the idea of the role of money as a standard, or measure, of value. Douglas believed that money should act as a medium of communication by which consumers direct the distribution of production."

                See also:
                https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201105/how-hunter-gatherers-maintained-their-egalitarian-ways [psychologytoday.com]
                "On the basis of such observations, Christopher Boehm proposed the theory that hunter-gatherers maintained equality through a practice that he labeled reverse dominance. In a standard dominance hierarchy--as can be seen in all of our ape relatives (yes, even in bonobos)--a few individuals dominate the many. In a system of reverse dominance, however, the many act in unison to deflate the ego of anyone who tries, even in an incipient way, to dominate them.
                    According to Boehm, hunter-gatherers are continuously vigilant to transgressions against the egalitarian ethos. Someone who boasts, or fails to share, or in any way seems to think that he (or she, but usually it's a he) is better than others is put in his place through teasing, which stops once the person stops the offensive behavior. If teasing doesn't work, the next step is shunning. The band acts as if the offending person doesn't exist. That almost always works. Imagine what it is like to be completely ignored by the very people on whom your life depends. No human being can live for long alone. The person either comes around, or he moves away and joins another band, where he'd better shape up or the same thing will happen again. In his 1999 book, Hierarchy in the Forest, Boehm presents very compelling evidence for his reverse dominance theory."

                • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday November 11 2015, @10:58PM

                  by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Wednesday November 11 2015, @10:58PM (#261959) Homepage Journal

                  tl;dr

                  Also, don't make arguments to me with other people's words. Especially not in video format. A quote or two is fine but I'm not going to read fifty pages or watch half an hour of people spouting idiocy for the sake of an Internet argument.

                  --
                  My rights don't end where your fear begins.
            • (Score: 4, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday November 11 2015, @07:10PM

              by DeathMonkey (1380) on Wednesday November 11 2015, @07:10PM (#261874) Journal

              There are different types of intelligence. Have you ever tried welding? Are you any good at it? "Skilled trades" are called "skilled" because they require ... skill. Welding isn't just moving a couple things across some metal. Here in Canada to get your tickets as a welder you actually have to go to college and learn a fair amount.
               
              Unfortunately, the majority of the welding jobs have already been automated.
               
              We're just an effective pipe-laying machine away from the rest going...

              • (Score: 2) by mhajicek on Thursday November 12 2015, @05:25AM

                by mhajicek (51) on Thursday November 12 2015, @05:25AM (#262050)

                Ever been in a Bobcat (skid-steer) factory? I got to see one and there were hardly any humans in it. That was in 2001.

                --
                The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
        • (Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday November 11 2015, @01:20PM

          by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday November 11 2015, @01:20PM (#261711)

          then it builds a ghetto of unwanted, unusable people who are left to live however they want (and one doesn't need to think for more than 30 seconds to imagine how it will end up; hint: you'd need a wall.)

          Its a racial / cultural thing. You give everyone retirement at 65 and they in general don't turn too deviant. Or you've basically described lower than tenure level academia, they have occasional issues but nothing too bad. This is also basically a bad K-12 school district, nothing too awful happens there, and if you take away mandatory physical proximity and mandatory insane guards (aka teachers) and insane guard management, K12 education isn't that bad of an experience.

          One argument I've always heard about social security style basic income and Medicare style socialized medicine is its not rocket surgery to just lower the minimum application age by two years for every calendar year or five years or however fast or slow you need it culturally and budgetar-ily.

          Long into the future, plus or minus civilization collapse, we're still going to have both medicare and social security and endless media battles about how we need or don't need socialized medicine and basic income. Of course the general population need not be told that in the old days you qualified for SS at 67 instead of when you got your high school diploma, or that you had to be 65 to get medicare in the old days and now you get it the day you roll off your parents income tax statement as a dependent.

      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by buswolley on Wednesday November 11 2015, @05:06AM

        by buswolley (848) on Wednesday November 11 2015, @05:06AM (#261609)

        (1) There is office/legal/management work.
        (2) There is research/engineering work.
        (3) There is skilled labor (e.g., in manufacturing, construction)
        (4) There is "unskilled" labor.

        In America there are jobs for (1), (2), and (4).
        see the problem?

        --
        subicular junctures
        • (Score: 4, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Wednesday November 11 2015, @05:41AM

          by hemocyanin (186) on Wednesday November 11 2015, @05:41AM (#261623) Journal

          Exactly. I say this from a pinko-commie-lefty standpoint, but the whole $15/hr thing is a bandaid for the real problem which is a complete lack of decent paying blue-collar work in America due to the fact that we exported it all. McDonalds should be a training-wheels job for high school or college kids -- something to learn about work and earn a little beer money. The fact that people are actually trying to live on these types of crap jobs is the problem, not that they pay crap.

          • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 11 2015, @08:53AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 11 2015, @08:53AM (#261659)

            The fact that people are actually trying to live on these types of crap jobs is the problem

            They're not trying to live on it by choice, they're trying to live on it because they have no other choice if they want to live, as there are no other jobs.

            • (Score: 4, Touché) by hemocyanin on Wednesday November 11 2015, @11:54AM

              by hemocyanin (186) on Wednesday November 11 2015, @11:54AM (#261694) Journal

              That's kind of exactly what I said.

              • (Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Wednesday November 11 2015, @02:35PM

                by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday November 11 2015, @02:35PM (#261730)

                With all due respect to you and AC I think what AC might have been getting at is there is a lot of Orwellian doublespeak and they're not "trying to live" they are "actually living" off minimum wage and its not "off minimum wage" but "off minimum wage and a ton of govt benefits like EBT etc".

                So the hard core marxists, never seen a government program they don't want to expand, all want the minimum wage to stay at $7.25 or heck even lower it back to $3.35 because the government can take $20 in tax revenue and national debt and provide the employee with $5 of food stamps etc, meaning the cat ladies in the government get to spend the delta of $15 on accounting and paper pushing and salaries for social workers and all that crap.

                Meanwhile the hard core capitalists want to eliminate socialism and have a fair and free market, so they want a minimum wage of $15/hr and get the government out of their employees lives. They find it offensive that someone like me, who buys nothing from McDonalds or Walmart, is having the crap taxed out of me so the .gov can pay the employees living expenses instead of their theoretical employer McD or walmart. Why should, say, the CEO of (insert your favorite real restaurant here) be happy that he's personally being taxed so that his competition doesn't have to pay a fair wage so the .gov can help his competition undercut his own real restaurant?

                In the endless discussion of basic income, I think we're missing the forest for the trees that what is actually being rolled out in the united states is a new communist system of serfdom. You have no rights anymore and have to pretend to work a crap job for crap pay, but the .gov will pay the balance for your food, housing, medical care, cell phone, all that stuff. Its a new lifestyle model. Its been in progress for a couple decades and expands by a couple million people every year in the USA. Eventually we'll all work for minimum wage, which won't provide even a tenth of what it costs to actually live, but that's OK because we'll all be wards of the state. Note how this dovetails nicely with other government policies like not providing services or benefits to people without drug tests or with drug convictions, sure you can try to live "in the free market without government support" but if everyone is a ward of the government under the new socialism, you won't be able to survive. Then the .gov can implement endless social engineering on its "freeloaders" or "wards of the state". Expect all kinds of behavior codes, weird mixtures of neopuritan christianity vs SJW signalling, etc. On the positive side the economy looks ready for collapse and during the hyperinflation getting literal government cheese for all and McJobs for all might mean the difference between coming out the other side as a unified nation vs basically a collapse and civil war. So shitty as it looks, the new lifestyle model for american peasants is none the less better than doing nothing or several of the alternatives.

                • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday November 11 2015, @03:06PM

                  by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday November 11 2015, @03:06PM (#261744) Journal

                  So the hard core marxists... want... [stuff completely at odds with what they really want]

                  Meanwhile the hard core capitalists want... [stuff completely at odds with what they really want]

                  And NASA wants to rebuild Saturn V so it can take the green cheese away from the Moon Nazis.

                  Eventually we'll all work for minimum wage, which won't provide even a tenth of what it costs to actually live, but that's OK because we'll all be wards of the state.

                  Eventually, we'll run out of a low cost workforce globally and the competitive pressure on developed world labor will ease up. I figure that'll happen around 2050-2070, depending on what Africa does. Whether your country is on top or bottom of the pile at that time will depend in large part on the labor policies and legal infrastructure you have. A high minimum wage is a guaranteed way to have a lot of permanently unemployed and unskilled people.

                  • (Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday November 11 2015, @03:25PM

                    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday November 11 2015, @03:25PM (#261758)

                    I think you're confusing what they want with weird corporate propaganda. If .com owns .gov, you're going to hear really weird nonsensical stuff from the two parties in .gov. My stuff makes sense, what the "lets boost quarterly profits" crowd says the politicians want is likely a pipe dream in the sense that it is formed completely out of large quantities of marijuana smoke.

                    Eventually, we'll run out of a low cost workforce globally

                    I donno man, the poor always reproduce the fastest leading to more poor, and for millennia whomever is the dominant empire has always been pretty good at creating new poor areas.

                    I kinda agree with your general outlook in that internationalization needs cheap infinite oil (which we don't have) and safe transport (no somali pirates on every coast in the world). Both trends look REALLY bad for the future. The future is containerships that can't run because of the cost of oil, which is good because every non dictatorship country and every dictatorship country not aligned with ours will pirate anything that none the less sails by. Emphasis on sails, BTW.

                    Africa is dead man walking. For a good laugh look at some population growth graphs showing Africa having 4 billion people by 2100 or other pure WTF. What they intend to eat and drink is carefully avoided in the discussion. Africa of the future is likely to have a lower, not higher, population than now. The Chinese are replicating parts of the western experience such as industrialization and having a great depression, and one other thing they're trying is imperialism and colonization, everyone's gotta try it once and get it out of their system, and they're trying it in Africa. So the African of the future is likely to be starved to death (aka not there) or be a Chinese immigrant along the lines of the former white output of South Africa.

                    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday November 11 2015, @03:40PM

                      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday November 11 2015, @03:40PM (#261774) Journal

                      My stuff makes sense

                      To rehash, hard core Marxists want lower minimum wage because it decreases the power of labor. No, actually they want the other thing. Similarly, hardcore capitalists want higher minimum wage because they want higher wage costs. No, actually they want the other thing.

                      Before asserting that your stuff makes sense, make sure it makes sense.

                      Africa is dead man walking. For a good laugh look at some population growth graphs showing Africa having 4 billion people by 2100 or other pure WTF. What they intend to eat and drink is carefully avoided in the discussion. Africa of the future is likely to have a lower, not higher, population than now.

                      If that's true and it may be, then 2050 is closer to when wage competition eases up.

                      I kinda agree with your general outlook in that internationalization needs cheap infinite oil (which we don't have) and safe transport (no somali pirates on every coast in the world). Both trends look REALLY bad for the future. The future is containerships that can't run because of the cost of oil, which is good because every non dictatorship country and every dictatorship country not aligned with ours will pirate anything that none the less sails by. Emphasis on sails, BTW.

                      Oil isn't magically disappearing overnight, it'll just get more expensive. And shipping stuff by sea is really cheap even with more expensive oil. As to piracy, there's a fix for that, but it requires someone to get their hands dirty, say like the European powers did in the 18th and 19th centuries.

                      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Wednesday November 11 2015, @05:03PM

                        by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday November 11 2015, @05:03PM (#261820)

                        To rehash, hard core Marxists want lower minimum wage because it decreases the power of labor. No, actually they want the other thing.

                        Um, OK.

                        I'll try some numbers. Some people like numbers. I'm cool with that.

                        Postulate it costs $14/hr income to live. Just stay with me here, its just a number, even if you'd prefer $30 or $3 or whatever. I just didn't want to use a variable "X" to keep the math simple, I want a nice easy number. Its sort of like a basal metabolic rate, if you eat under 1500 calories for too long you eventually die, you're burning 1500 from food or stored fat or you have genetically engineered green skin and do photosynthesis it doesn't matter you're burning 1500 to stay alive. Thats the concept here.

                        If the legal minimum wage is $7 then the welfare queen corporation pays $7 and the government chips in $7 worth of entitlements. No I don't want to debate the morality of entitlements in general or in specific examples or their costs. I just want easy math to get the point across. So the government being bloated and inefficient it needs to pull in like $70 worth of tax money from productive workers. So when someone eats a $5 chezeburger, it actually costs $6 to provide that burger and the government takes my money at gunpoint in the form of taxes, wastes most of it, and hands $1 my money to the worker because the workers employer is a no good Marxist commie welfare queen corporation.

                        If the legal minimum wage is $14, then the cheapest crappiest honest capitalist free market corporation pays all $14 of the cost of living for their human drone and the government chips in ... zilch. nothing. nada. Because this is a free market capitalist scenario not a "corporation as welfare queen" scenario. So the government being bloated and inefficient compared to the private sector and having to raise $0 for entitlement program expenses, it raises taxes of $0 ... oh wait, I'm liking this. So when someone eats a $6 chezeburger, it actually costs $6 to provide that burger and the person eating it pays the full price, not demanding that I, via the government taxes, chip in an extra buck or so. Also $70 of tax dollars not raised, means at least $70 of real economic activity, so the entire country is wealthier. Some people don't want america to be wealthy, they want america to fail, of course, we generally, unfortunately call them "leaders". So there's that problem.

                        So the marxists want a low minimum wage because they like higher taxation of the "right" people, employment by the .gov of cat lady types, and they like socialization of the economic system.

                        Meanwhile the free market capitalists want higher minimum wages because they like low taxes and the resulting economic growth and the effects of that growth, less government employed cat ladies telling them what to do, and generally feel its fairer to have people pay what stuff costs without government subsidies and also like not having to compete with competitors who are corporate welfare queens. Its just a win-win all around.

                        Now because .com and .gov have merged, AND because you haven't heard welfare queens squeal until you try to take away their .gov free cheese, you get endless 1984 style doublespeak about how "true scottsman" fallacy "real capitalists" want lower wages so the economy becomes ever more socialized and taxes always increase and free markets are evil and all that BS.

                        There are serious stock market type issues. For example, Walmart is a huge welfare queen and their entire sector is based on the idea that the government should pay about half their payroll costs. And that has certain stock price issues WRT comparison to something like IT, where the .gov doesn't chip in anything at all for your average $150K/yr software dev. So removal of corporate welfare would have some stock price impact etc.

                        Even more crudely, obviously walmart only has to pay millions to .gov reelection funds to get billions in payroll subsidies in the form of entitlement programs. So since they own the politicians they purchased, you can assume they're strongly against change.

                        You're not going to hear the whole story if you only hear the Marxist welfare queen corporation side in the multinational megacorporation controlled media.

                • (Score: 2) by mhajicek on Thursday November 12 2015, @05:33AM

                  by mhajicek (51) on Thursday November 12 2015, @05:33AM (#262051)

                  Mmm. Cheese. I know of a cheese stick in the fridge. I must eat it now.

                  --
                  The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
          • (Score: 1) by Kawumpa on Wednesday November 11 2015, @11:56AM

            by Kawumpa (1187) on Wednesday November 11 2015, @11:56AM (#261695)

            One major problem with exporting all or almost all skilled labor to other countries is that you also lose all creativity and innovation possible in this area. So while a company might gain a short term cost advantage it sacrifices a long term competitive advantage. On aggregate an economy loses much of its middle class and economic stability. Something that we can witness in quite a few industrialised nations, the US being a prime example.

        • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday November 11 2015, @11:06AM

          by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Wednesday November 11 2015, @11:06AM (#261686) Homepage Journal

          Go call a plumber/contractor/electrician/welder and tell me that again after you've paid them.

          --
          My rights don't end where your fear begins.
          • (Score: 2) by mhajicek on Thursday November 12 2015, @05:40AM

            by mhajicek (51) on Thursday November 12 2015, @05:40AM (#262054)

            I do my own plumbing, contracting, electrical and welding.

            --
            The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
      • (Score: 5, Interesting) by mhajicek on Wednesday November 11 2015, @05:41AM

        by mhajicek (51) on Wednesday November 11 2015, @05:41AM (#261622)

        I went to two years of tech school for machining and it worked out fairly well for me. I would not encourage my sons to follow in my footsteps however. It's gotten so that unless you're one of the best you're treated only a little better than a fast food worker. And yes, automation is making fast inroads on machining jobs. What employers want/need now are a small number of very skilled and experienced people to make the robots go, but there are fewer paths to develop those skills and they don't want to pay you to develop them. I'm thinking the industry is going to require mind uploading or memory copying to preserve skills and experience unless strong-enough AI can be implemented before too many of us retire or die off.

        --
        The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
        • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday November 12 2015, @04:07AM

          by Grishnakh (2831) on Thursday November 12 2015, @04:07AM (#262038)

          I'm thinking the industry is going to require mind uploading or memory copying to preserve skills and experience unless strong-enough AI can be implemented before too many of us retire or die off.

          No, it won't.

          The skills and experience simply *won't* be preserved. The BRIC nations will reinvent this stuff and they'll preserve it, while our society looks either like Somalia or Mad Max.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 11 2015, @06:03AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 11 2015, @06:03AM (#261629)

      People who go to college/university so they can get a good job and make more money really shouldn't be there in the first place. It should be for people who are primarily interested in gaining a deep, academic understanding of the universe, not for people with petty, shallow ambitions. Encouraging all these people to go into higher education just causes the colleges and universities to dumb it down further so they can make more money and also fills the environment with people who aren't really interested in education; most colleges and universities weren't that great to begin with, so this is especially disastrous. If people want free college, we should first vastly raise the standards of all existing colleges and universities that have poor standards so as to kick out all the losers, but I am sure most would not like that.

      • (Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday November 11 2015, @08:45AM

        by sjames (2882) on Wednesday November 11 2015, @08:45AM (#261658) Journal

        That would be fine if you can also convince HR departments that few jobs actually NEED college graduates rather than them claiming they need H1-Bs because there are no citizens who can do the job.

        • (Score: 2) by deimtee on Wednesday November 11 2015, @10:31AM

          by deimtee (3272) on Wednesday November 11 2015, @10:31AM (#261679) Journal

          You are conflating two different problems.
          The H1-B situation needs to be addressed by giving H1-B's improved access to green cards and job switching. If they are good enough to fly halfway round the world to work for you, surely they are good enough to make a home in your country.
          The HR situation with requiring degrees for everything would be self correcting if you could actually do that to the colleges. At the moment, I think the degree requirement is simply a basic check that you are not a complete moron, and that you can actually concentrate on working for ten minutes at a time.
          Also, the government likes the current situation because parking everyone at college for three or four years is equivalent to reducing the unemployment rate by approx 10 percentage points. Mostly direct removal of workers, but there are also all the jobs created to babysit them.

          --
          If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
          • (Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday November 11 2015, @09:59PM

            by sjames (2882) on Wednesday November 11 2015, @09:59PM (#261935) Journal

            I'm fine with more green cards and no H1-Bs. The point is to leave the various HR departments no option but adjusting expectations.

      • (Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Wednesday November 11 2015, @09:08PM

        by fido_dogstoyevsky (131) <axehandleNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Wednesday November 11 2015, @09:08PM (#261924)

        If people want free college, we should first vastly raise the standards of all existing colleges and universities that have poor standards so as to kick out all the losers, but I am sure most would not like that.

        Actually, (free education)+(raised standards)=(desirable long term outcomes for humanity).

        --
        It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
      • (Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Wednesday November 11 2015, @10:49PM

        by NotSanguine (285) <NotSanguineNO@SPAMSoylentNews.Org> on Wednesday November 11 2015, @10:49PM (#261955) Homepage Journal

        Your point reminded me of this Emerson quote:

        If the colleges were better, if they really had it, you would need to
        get the police at the gates to keep order in the inrushing multitude.
        See in college how we thwart the natural love of learning by leaving
        the natural method of teaching what each wishes to learn, and insisting
        that you shall learn what you have no taste or capacity for. The
        college, which should be a place of delightful labor, is made odious
        and unhealthy, and the young men are tempted to frivolous amusements to
        rally their jaded spirits. I would have the studies elective.
        Scholarship is to be created not by compulsion, but by awakening a pure
        interest in knowledge. The wise instructor accomplishes this by
        opening to his pupils precisely the attractions the study has for
        himself. The marking is a system for schools, not for the college; for
        boys, not for men; and it is an ungracious work to put on a professor.
                                        -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

        Higher education should be the means for those who love learning to expand their horizons and create new knowledge through discovery and synthesis. It shouldn't be a diploma mill for semi-literates to say that they have a piece of paper in hopes of increasing their pay package.

        Pushing everyone to go to college has created so many perverse incentives for the schools, the students and the greedy folks who prey like vultures on the gullible and needy.

        --
        No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
    • (Score: 5, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday November 11 2015, @12:52PM

      by Phoenix666 (552) on Wednesday November 11 2015, @12:52PM (#261702) Journal

      Why do they think automating away the jobs of burger flippers is easy, but automating away the jobs of Wall Street Bankers who do nothing more than play with spreadsheets all day is impossible? Because it ain't. It's quite the opposite. I've done it. I once automated an entire division at the Northern Trust Bank. They were so stunned they summarily fired me.

      Think of all the money we could save by automating away the jobs of each and every person in the finance industry. Literally trillions. So that's where the big wins are, not in getting rid of burger flippers.

      --
      Washington DC delenda est.
      • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday November 12 2015, @04:05AM

        by Grishnakh (2831) on Thursday November 12 2015, @04:05AM (#262037)

        Well you just answered the question yourself. It won't happen (before the burger-flippers) because it'd piss off too many powerful people. The people at the bottom of the totem pole (being unskilled workers) have the least power to protest their job being automated away, so their jobs will go first.

      • (Score: 2) by mhajicek on Thursday November 12 2015, @05:52AM

        by mhajicek (51) on Thursday November 12 2015, @05:52AM (#262055)

        Occasionally a score of five is not high enough.

        --
        The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
  • (Score: 2) by buswolley on Wednesday November 11 2015, @05:21AM

    by buswolley (848) on Wednesday November 11 2015, @05:21AM (#261613)

    Having relied on public assistance when I started my family years ago, I can tell you that currently the incentives are not right to encourage working. Past a certain income, benefits go sharply down so that marginal gains for each hour worked are minuscule..one or two hundred more dollars a month for the time you give up...a small but guaranteed basic income would not disincentive work...but encouraged it.

    --
    subicular junctures
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 11 2015, @01:59PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 11 2015, @01:59PM (#261717)

    Like this [businessinsider.com] one?

    Sounds like we'd get better burgers, and maybe could finally stop putting people to work in those godawful environments in the first place.

    We really need to get past this idea that automating away work is a bad idea, and move onto figuring out how to distribute the little work and more resources there are left in a remotely fair and social system. The 40 hour workweek was the labor struggle of the early 20th century; perhaps the 20 hour workweek could be the push of the 21st? The idea that we have millionaires living on capital denigrating anyone for handouts while living on the fruits of the labor of others in a market where supply is vastly outpacing demand is a bit absurd, and that anyone is actually listening to these sniveling twats seems only to revolve around their owning media outlets.

    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday November 11 2015, @03:14PM

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday November 11 2015, @03:14PM (#261748) Journal

      We really need to get past this idea that automating away work is a bad idea, and move onto figuring out how to distribute the little work and more resources there are left in a remotely fair and social system.

      This isn't a real problem. In societies that don't massively disincentivize employing people, they don't have to figure this out.