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Whirlpool (the appliance manufacturer) donated washers and driers to schools and increased attendance.
According to Whirlpool's research, one in five school children report difficulty finding clean clothes to wear to school. It turns out that offering free in-school laundry services to kids with attendance problems increases their attendance.
When compared to factors like economic opportunity, unemployment, and institutional racism, laundry seems pretty inconsequential in the fight to keep kids in school. But while that might be the case for their parents, for a ten-year-old who already has the odds stacked against them, having nothing clean to wear to school could be the deciding factor in whether or not they want to face their classmates that day.
I can remember my grandmother telling me that she thought lunches in schools were a wonderful innovation, because they didn't have anything like that when she was a girl, and many children couldn't come because they wouldn't have lunch. I'm sure back then nobody thought of lunch as something school should provide. Now apparently laundry is the next big innovation.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Wednesday August 17 2016, @10:12PM
It's going to take something different for there to be any positive change I'm afraid.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 17 2016, @10:18PM
Using the political system to steal from each other is a big part of the problem.
Okay. Suppose I grant that.
However, you still have a resource allocation problem, and especially in a country of tremendous wealth, there really shouldn't be any reason for poverty.
So how do you fix it?
(Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday August 17 2016, @10:27PM
So you consider any plan that improves things at the bottom to be stealing from others? Your solution is that they shouldn't get all uppity and expect better?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 17 2016, @10:32PM
He's demonstrating your point that any attempt to fix the underlying problems gets blocked at every turn.
He's showing you that he is not part of the solution, he proudly part of the problem.
What else would you expect from someone so narcissistic that he uses the least legible font available for his posts even though the font he types in the text box is unaffected?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by TrumpetPower! on Wednesday August 17 2016, @11:06PM
It's also a perfect demonstration of the little-l libertarian mindset: "I've got mine, so fuck you."
In reality, society is, of necessity, going to be significantly (gasp!) socialist. I mean, that's kinda the whole point of society, to be social, no? A bunch of people banding together to do that which nobody can do alone?
Few people in America have a problem with our socialized paved road system, from the Interstate Highways to the streets leading to our houses. Few of us could even afford to pave just the half a street in front of our houses, let alone the whole rest of the block the fire trucks need to get to our own house in case of a fire, never mind the freeways we travel to work and which allow trucks to deliver the goods we buy.
Did I mention? We have socialized fire departments, too -- having long since learned the lesson with privatized ones. That was a double whammy: not only does letting your neighbor's house burn due to not paying the fire bill dramatically increase your own house's chances of burning, but the leading arsonists in the days of privatized fire departments were the firefighters themselves looking for a quick buck.
That's much the same reason why we have socialized police, too. Do you really want competing police departments having shootouts whenever there's a dispute between whose clients should be arrested?
Same with our socialized military. If your neighbor failed to pay his private military bill, would you really be okay with your own private military refusing to defend his property against invasion?
Socialized health care should be a no-brainer, too. Do you really want your neighbor to be sick and contagious? Or to become disabled from preventable reasons, and therefore no longer able to work and be self-supporting? How safe do you think you're going to be from said neighbor? How well do you think your own property values will sustain themselves when your neighbor can't afford to keep up on maintenance?
And, to tie it all together...it's the exact same story with education and childhood welfare. We can either all chip in a few pennies to ensure that all kids grow up healthy and well situated to become productive members of society themselves...or we can tell them, "I've got mine, so fuck you"...and watch them grow up dysfunctional and turn to crime (with us as victims) just to have some chance at survival.
It can't be said often enough: we all should be happy to pay taxes. With taxes, we buy civilization.
Yes, yes -- no system is perfect, and we should always be on the lookout for fraud and other forms of abuse. But thinking that instances of fraud are good reason to shut down the government entirely is exactly what the aphorism, "cutting off one's nose to spite one's face" is all about.
Cheers,
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 17 2016, @11:55PM
I fully expect you to share your wife/girlfriend/goat with the less fortunate sexually.
Socialized sexuality.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 18 2016, @01:56PM
My wife/girlfriend/goat are not my property, they are not mine to share with anyone.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 19 2016, @04:59AM
Oh, right, sorry.
I fully expect you to share yourself with the less fortunate sexually, hygenically, and medically. Us ugly HPV carriers need love, too!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 18 2016, @02:30AM
Have you noticed that the Internet favors extreme solutions (relative to the status quo, at least in the USA) such as libertarianism or socialism?
Because when you adopt an extreme position you stand for something. You can't be dismissed as being boring or wishy-washy. You can endlessly post, pointing out the latest abuses from the status quo as examples of why you're right.
And you can stop thinking about your fundamental positions, because you already have one that is easy to state, and has been stated by others.
If your post misses the mark, no problem - there will be others who share your position who can fill in the gaps, provide the talking points and the links you forgot to post.
In many cases you'll be modded up. Advocate a center-right, center-left or center position and you'll almost never be modded up. Why? Because it's not interesting enough, doesn't seem passionate enough.
But one can be passionate about crafting a society that works for almost everybody, but still encourages innovation and the development of talent. You probably won't be very loud about it, though, and you may be mistaken for being apathetic.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 18 2016, @02:53AM
I have noticed certain groups want to maintain control of the message, modding dissenting points of view into oblivion instead of a convincing critique.
You could have a happy medium between libertarianism or socialism.
But more these discussion seem less about actually solving the problem presented, and more about control.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday August 18 2016, @04:17AM
Define extreme, and define where the center is. The US is massively right of center ("Overton window"), so something that to many Americans would seem dangerously left-wing would be a no-brainer for the rest of the civilized world.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 18 2016, @04:37AM
The USA being insanely right-wing is a pretty popular idea. It gets thrown around a lot - and usually by people on the left, because it serves their needs - but rarely dissected and analysed.
So what is so insanely right wing about the USA? The idea of having a large military? Of course nobody else wants one, because they're insanely expensive and you can always give Uncle Sam a call if you're in NATO.
What else? No national medicine? Germany has a blended system with lots of private insurance options - not that far off the USA. The UK has private healthcare, but their heavyweight national health system is choking their budget so much that even New Labour had to do some fancy footwork around the amount of debt they were racking up to finance it. Canada's federal government was getting dragged down by the fiscal burden, so they palmed it off on the provinces, and a judge had to tell the government that private health care arrangements were necessarily legal. So the USA isn't that far off there.
What else is super right wing? Banned abortions! ... except no, wait, they're not banned. In fact, they pretty much have to be available. In reality access to abortions in the USA isn't that far off some other countries.
OK, so what else? Fiscal probity? More spendthrift than much of Northern Europe, in fact. So not that.
Anything else? Nazis have first amendment rights too? That's actually kind of liberal.
Next? Guns! Guns, zomg gunzzz! ... actually, Canada has very similar gun ownership per capita, and outside Europe large parts of the world are a lot more laissez-faire about it than the USA is.
You know, maybe I'm missing something, and I'm sure somebody will be around to talk about environmental regulations (where the USA is actually something of a tastemaker) or right wingers in government (like half of Europe) or the predominance of industry (but less so than so many countries with national champions or aggressive industrial policies like France's) or gay marriage or trans rights or something like that, but I'm really not seeing it.
The USA is maybe slightly more to the right of a cherry-picked few nations in the world. Strongly to the left of many.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday August 18 2016, @05:06AM
I said the civilized world. You don't get to point to the dysfunctional basket cases that are...well, hell, most of the Eastern Hemisphere, and go "we're left of THAT!" Being better than Iran is not exactly a stunning achievement in human rights, is my point.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 19 2016, @04:06PM
Aaaah, I get it.
You get to say "The US is way more right-wing thant he civilised world!" with a footnote of where the civilised world is defined as that part more left-wing on my preferred measures than the US.
Instead of throwing around general statements with hidden implications, how about stating straight up what your notion of left and right wing are, what your notion of the civilised world is, and why you chose those metrics?
Since you mention the eastern hemisphere, how about comparisons with some countries in the west? Ireland, that still has an official religion and kind of means it? Argentina, that's awash with protectionism and loves to beat a militaristic drum about the Falklands ... I mean, Malvinas? Jamaica, where anti-gay sentiment makes Mobile, Alabama look like a mecca of tolerance?
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday August 19 2016, @04:46PM
Oh quit the nitpicking. You know fucking well what my metric is: not letting a good 15% of your population be so poor due to dysregulated economics that they have to be on assistance. Not forcing people to choose between rent, food, and medical care. Not throwing people away like trash for being poor.
Basic. Human. Decency. That's my goddamn metric. No nation is perfect, but places like Norway do a hell of a lot better overall than the US does.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 19 2016, @08:18PM
Nits to pick matter in public policy. They matter a lot. Otherwise you're stuck at the level of bumper sticker policy.
And it's funny you should pick Norway, since they're actually gradually rolling back some of their social policies, on the observation that a heavily taxed and demotivated population with low incentive to invest leads to reduced capacity for growth and innovation. Not to mention, their right wing is (partly as a consequence) growing.
You know what else? Cherry-picking Norway as your point of comparison just means the US is far to the right of Norway, and means nothing whatsoever with respect to the rest of the world. So congratulations, you're right about one tiny corner case. The very fact that you have to reach for this corner case shows how weak your general case is.
So let's try this again, shall we? Take three deep, cleansing breaths and repeat after me:
"Politics in the USA is pretty middle-of-the-road in international terms, while being tolerant of lunatic extremes on pretty much all fronts."
There, was that so hard?
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday August 19 2016, @08:54PM
Again: we're only "middle of the road" in international terms because 2/3 of the planet is ratfucking insane. Beware, too, the golden mean fallacy: the truth is not always in the center of two competing opinions. Sometimes it's way the hell off to the side of one of them.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 20 2016, @05:13AM
This is a gold mine.
If you think that 2/3 of the planet is ratfucking insane (to use your pungent phrase) does that mean that 2/3 of the planet thinks that you're ratfucking insane (at least on policy grounds)?
Maybe what seems like obvious common sense to you seems like a really bad idea to a huge number of people?
Maybe what seems like crucially important stuff to you seems disgusting, vile, and possibly outright evil to most of the people out there?
But it's cool. You could very easily be right. So, all you have to do is prove it. Lay out your political philosophy. Be organised, detailed and specific. Hell, submit it to Soylent. Maybe we can figure out how to reshape America in your image? Or, you know, at least according to your ideals.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday August 20 2016, @06:43AM
My ideals are simple but they're never going to be implemented, because they would mean too many people who are enjoying their elite status at the cost of making the rest of us suffer to varying degrees wouldn't be able to do that any more. You can't fix sociopathy with technology, and there are some people for whom the feeling of control over others is their driving force.
That being said, we've seen what happens when the standard of living goes up. The problem is that we can't do that with the current production paradigm: our base resources are limited and a lot of our energy production methods are polluting. My policy starts with a massive push for thorium-cycle fission and renewables, with fusion as a hoped-for but not necessary development. Desalinization has to be developed along with it and ideally run in tandem with, say, a thermal-mass solar power plant. Hydroponics and tower farms figure heavily into this too. And something you might call synthesizable housing, more or less "we can basically 3D print standard housing/apartment spaces." Imagine a second Manhattan Project, but with peace instead of war as its aim.
We're going to need some form of basic income, though I would suggest that most of it be in the form of vouchers for specific goods (food, healthcare, etc) rather than straight money, as we know some people simply cannot handle money. This is less because I think this is a good idea in and of itself than because the amount of productive work that needs done is rapidly shrinking as the population continues to grow. Since the end result of that is either mass starvation and riots or a huge welfare state ANYWAY, we may as well be prepared for it and do it right. Personally, I think a lot of people will still choose to work, and ye gods, we will have need of workers for all the above-mentioned infrastructure.
There will also be a heavy emphasis on knowledge, especially scientific knowledge. No one will be forced to learn things past 12th grade, just like now, but I would like to see it become a cultural point of pride to be well-read, rather than today's ignorance. I also want to see people taught to build and repair and create things from early on, and taught to be proud of hands that create and shelter, rather than hands that destroy and rob. The outdoors needs to figure more prominently too.
You're probably assuming I'm a big government type. Quite the opposite, actually; the point of all the above is that it will free people from much of the current system, which is a corrupted, incestuous orgy of dysregulation and cronyism and abuse. The education and engagement parts of this are massively important: we do NOT want a race of idiot Eloi tended to by a Morlock caste, so "everyone" will need to know the basics of how things like a hydroponic greenhouse or a wind turbine work.
Pie in the sky? Sure. I doubt this will happen in my lifetime, or at all; I personally suspect the human race is doomed. But you asked, and I answered.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 20 2016, @04:51PM
What you're describing isn't a set of ideals so much as a programme for action. This isn't bad, but you're not saying how you would get there. Who gets to push thorium generation? How? Using which incentives, prohibitions and legal structures? What are the limits placed on government, if any? How do you prevent government agents from becoming the new elite? How do you prevent anybody else from becoming the new elite? Why hydroponics and tower farms? What about the limited resources upon which they rely? How are those allocated? How are conflicts adjudicated? How do you assure Pareto efficiency with your system of vouchers? How do you prevent voucher black markets from cropping up? What about commodity black currencies? How do you compensate people who deliver things paid for by vouchers? How do you ensure that they give voucher holders equal priority?
These questions, in case you're wondering, come pretty directly in most cases from world experience with proposals similar to yours, whether you're talking about war rationing systems, attempts to do various forms of alternative farming at grand scale, and alternative legal systems that left lacunae in terms of dispute resolution over access to resources.
To put it another way, you're a meta-level too high. Get down to more fundamental points.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday August 21 2016, @02:13AM
Yeah, I've thought about all this, and come to the conclusion that the blocker is lack of political will, not lack of technology.
At this point, unfortunately, I think only a tragedy (and I count massive, bloody revolution in this category) is going to allow these changes to happen. Too many people with too much power are too invested in the status quo, and as this seems to be a consequence of human nature, I don't think there's any way of putting a permanent end to that.
There is a reason "may you live in interesting times" is a swear-phrase in Mandarin.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by sjames on Thursday August 18 2016, @08:01AM
You keep claiming things that aren't that far left of the U.S. but in reality are quite different. You claim, for example that the health care systems in the U.K. and Canada are not that far from the U.S.
So you're saying the U.S. presumes that you have a right to healthcare? That they too have to haggle between insurance and the doctor to figure out how much they owe out of pocket after deductables, disallowed treatments, and co-pays are accounted for? That they get dozens of bills for a single instance of care? That they are considered personally responsible for whatever their insurance company decides (post-facto) that it doesn't care to cover?
I'd say there's a world of difference in healthcare.
To get a good idea of how far to the right the U.S. has moved, look at Eisenhower. If you didn't know he was a Republican, you'd swear he was a leftish Democrat. Pretty much every 1st world country's right looks left of the Republicans and often left of the Democrats as well.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 19 2016, @04:22PM
Funny you should bring that up.
Yes.
A right is something you are in the right to do. It doesn't mean that you can demand it as a prerogative, or that you can impose a duty on other; merely that you are at liberty to do so if you should choose. In the USA, if you can find a doctor with whom you are able to make a mutually agreeable arrangement (generally possible) then receiving medical care is not a cause for going to jail.
But let's go deeper, shall we? More than a right, in the US, it's actually a prerogative for many people, in many cases. You may not be turned away from an emergency room, should you seek medical care there. (There are some other cases, but this is the most famous so what the hell I'll make it my example.) There is a clear, legally enforceable duty on the part of an emergency room to offer you some level of access to medical care.
On top of that, there are quite a few cases where the cost of medicine is socialised to a greater or lesser extent. VA, Medicare, Medicaid are again the most famous but certain forms of Social Security payments can also go under that heading, depending on where you go.
The big difference in the USA with respect to the UK and Canada (both of which have private health care systems, however atrophied) lies in the question of payment, and how much of an open-ended guarantee it is. In point of fact, you could easily say that if the USA had a military relatively similar in size per capita to that of the UK, the USA could afford universal tax-paid health care. The problem is that the situations are not symmetrical. The USA has nobody to fall back on in military matters. The UK does - the USA. In other words, the american tax base is subsidising health care in the UK.
Now, conversely, the notion of a "right" to medical care in Canada and the UK is rather truncated, because if the public health care system decides not to offer you what you want, or need, or not in a timely fashion, you get to ... experience the reality that public health care in Canada is a privilege granted at the pleasure of the government, on its terms, with its formulary, and that it has so long been so hostile to its private health care system that the alternative barely exists any more. (Not speculation. Been there. Suffered that. And it's no joke that medical tourism in the USA from Canada is alive and well.)
Yes, Virginia, in Canada health care is a privilege. In the US it's a right.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by Arik on Wednesday August 17 2016, @10:35PM
Developments that genuinely improve things at the bottom are welcome. Politically driven 'wealth redistribution' does not do so, at least not in the long term, it only lowers all the boats.
And I guess that's where my ambivalence towards this laundry comes from. In the short run there's nothing you can do but praise it. But I think it raises very disturbing possibilities long-term.
A huge number of the problems we have in this world today are quite simply and obviously the result of our choices in the past - of choosing what makes sense in the short term and failing to take long-term affects into account, over and over and over and over for generations.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by sjames on Wednesday August 17 2016, @10:46PM
Well, I suggested better pay, less hours and full employment and you accuse me of suggesting we steal from people. What's left?
What magic solution do you have that doesn't involve parents having adequate time and financial resources or creating a creche?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 17 2016, @11:09PM
Exactly how do you "vote" for better pay short of being a member of congress?
How do you "vote" for full employment?
Not that politics hasn't always attempted to rechristened the entire field of economics in their image, but you have some 'splainin' to do.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday August 17 2016, @11:14PM
You vote for people who are willing to act in those directions rather than speeding up the wealth transfer to Wall Street (not allowing someone to steal is not the same as stealing from them).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 18 2016, @12:22AM
No need for your quote marks.
Could be voted for before July 2016 and for a living wage. [google.com]
.
Still on the ballot[1][2] [jill2016.com] and for a living wage. [google.com]
[1] Irritation alert for those using a Gecko-based browser:
View + No Style to kill the blinking text.
[2] South Dakota is run by Nazis, apparently.
.
On the ballot in some places and definitely for a living wage. [google.com]
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 18 2016, @12:44AM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Pi_Bill [wikipedia.org]
Fuck, let just change the value of pi while we're at it and "vote" instantaneous world peace.
We can then disband the government since all the work is done.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 18 2016, @01:21AM
Did I forget to mention Kshama Sawant? [google.com]
That professor of Economics and member of the Socialist Alternative Party got herself elected to the Seattle City Council and, within a year, got a $15 minimum wage enacted there, as had been the main plank of her platform.
Cities across the nation are following suit.
It won't be long until there is a nationwide $15 minimum wage.
(I expect Trump to cost the Republicans a bunch of seats this time around.)
...and, if wages had kept up with productivity or inflation, the minimum wage would be over $22.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 18 2016, @02:56AM
You forgot to mention that Seattle is now in the top ten for highest cost of living.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Arik on Wednesday August 17 2016, @11:58PM
No you suggested that we "vote for" those things.
A very different matter. Those things are great goals.
Voting is simply not a way to achieve them. How could it be? Voting is a way to direct political force.
You vote for a higher minimum wage, thinking that will produce better pay, calling it, in fact, 'voting for better pay' and who could disagree with that right? Who in their right mind could possibly have a problem with better pay?
But you don't produce better pay. You produce higher unemployment and foster greater dependency. You're making the real problems worse, not better.
And voting for full employment? Well yes in a sense the state CAN produce full employment. Draft everyone and unemployment will be 0. But we'll starve with no one doing anything productive.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Thursday August 18 2016, @12:39AM
I strongly suspect that Basic Income would guarantee full employment.
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Thursday August 18 2016, @12:51AM
Many western countries (not all) have higher minimum wages and lower unemployment than the US. Proof that higher wages do not directly translate to higher unemployment.
(Score: 1) by Arik on Thursday August 18 2016, @02:26AM
Sheesh.
Again, differentiate between actual market wages and state enforced minimum wages. Totally different things.
When you impose a minimum wage, this has only two possible outcomes. If it's low enough in relation to market wages, it has little to no effect at all. If it's high enough to have an effect, it produces unemployment, and raises the barrier to entry in the labor market, which helps to institutionalize unemployment.
To put it another way, you think you're helping Joe entry level worker with no job skills or experience trying to gets started. His pay is pitiful and they should really be forced to pay him more!
But the minimum wage law is unlikely to result in him getting a raise, and much more likely to result in him being let go, his position will either be automated or the work will be given to higher paid employees with other skills, and he'll be unemployed.
Plus his little brother who's going to need a job next summer? Yeah, good luck with that.
See you can't just legislate good outcomes and expect it to work like magic. Politics is a tool, a very particular form of tool. The government can only give with one hand by taking with the other. This is why the founders wrote of it as like fire, a dangerous servant and a fearful master, and wrote a constitution of limited powers to chain it down.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by dry on Thursday August 18 2016, @04:05AM
Another possibility is that some of the rich don't increase their wealth quite as fast. I understand one of the largest employers and the largest low wage employer in the USA is Walmart, a business owned by one of the richest families in the USA and a business that depends on welfare to make up the shortfall in their wages. Would you really feel bad if they had to pay a living wage, their employees got of welfare and your taxes went down while their wealth increase slowed.
As for the small businesses, they'll have to raise their prices instead of crying to the government, a $1 cup of coffee is not a right.
Where I live, the minimum wage is the lowest in the country while the cost of living is the highest, at least for a densely populated area. The small businesses don't raise wages, they cry to the government for subsidies or the right to bring in foreign workers who don't know what they're getting into and get royally screwed trying to pay of the debt they had to take on to get the job.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 18 2016, @12:56AM
In Denmark, no one is paid less than $20/hour.
There isn't a minimum wage law there.
The thing is, in Denmark,
1) they have strong labor unions.
2) they clearly don't have an ownership class dominated by sociopaths.
.
Between FDR (1933) and Nixon (1968), minimum wage laws worked to produce a strong USA with a stable, even prosperous Working Class.
(In that period, not coincidently, there were also tariffs[1] on imports; USA unions were strong too.)
Union bashing by Lamestream Media and Neoliberalism destroyed that stability for USAian workers.
[1] Germany doesn't have tariffs but they accomplish the same thing with a value-added tax and rebates.
The German economy is the strongest in the world because their economists are better that USA's.
...and it's clear that Germany won WWII.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 18 2016, @01:06AM
In Denmark, no one is paid less than $20/hour
Well, that's a good thing considering their cost of living is significantly higher.
http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/compare/Denmark/United-States/Cost-of-living [nationmaster.com]
(Score: 2) by sjames on Thursday August 18 2016, @08:08AM
Yet you're still better off getting $20/hr in Denmark than getting minimum wage in the U.S.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Thursday August 18 2016, @02:45AM
Since I don't have a magic wand, voting for people willing to move in that direction seemed more practical than wishing really hard. I'm still not seeing where stealing comes in.
The places in the U.S. that raised the minimum wage haven't seen higher unemployment. Tariffs and restricting H1-B would help with full employment (and improving wages) without a draft. We could try diverting money from the blowing up brown people fund to infrastructure improvements. That would improve employment without coercion.
Or we can mope around talking about how nothing will work and we're doomed (all while refusing to try any other approach) until the prophesy fulfills itself.
(Score: 1) by Arik on Thursday August 18 2016, @12:02AM
That's just it, I don't have any magic solution, I very much doubt there are any.
Which leaves us with little hope as a species.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Thursday August 18 2016, @01:03AM
Which leaves us with little hope as a species.
--
Just curious: what species would that be?
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 18 2016, @01:46AM
Narcissius Delusionius Libertarianius
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Hyperturtle on Thursday August 18 2016, @02:06PM
What I find striking is because none of the proposed ideas are perfect, the only acceptable perfect answer is to prevent the enemy, which is good in general, because it isn't the friend that is completely perfect. I do not really understand that argument. Compromise is what this is about. If you dont feed the kids, they won't be learning as well or paying as much attention, and your tax dollars later will end up trying to fix some problem that was mostly preventable if a compromise was reached before. A ounce of lunch provided now is a pound of paying taxpayers later.
Based on the responses, it doesn't sound like the perfect solution of doing nothing has many friends.
I didn't read the book, but I am going to guess Atlas Shrugged because he was indifferent to such burdens since he was carrying his own.
Similarly, we might next learn that my kids are not hungry because I haven't had any, so the solutions proposed are just as unacceptable because they are not perfect for my needs, which are presently none due to the lacking of said children to feed. Providing resources is unacceptable because The Man is stealing from my mouth no matter how you present the results.
I pay property taxes for schools I don't attend and don't send anyone to--but I see it as a benefit. A libertarian can view this two ways -- that this is a terrible expense that rips off able bodied tax payers to bulge the coffers of the local governments, or... that I can hope those kids that grow up in a relatively stable environment and good schools become adults that may be some of the young people that take care of me when I am old! Getting them angry and jaded now probably won't help me when I am in the old folks home... they might grow up into people that don't care about anyone else.
Of course I'd much rather that their parents foot more of the bill, but my demands for cheap stuff and inexpensive services makes it hard for their employers to pay much more and still be competitive and stuff. The invisible hand sometimes has an invisible middle finger that is more widely felt than one would expect.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 18 2016, @04:34PM
Ideology over rationality. Its the hallmark of fundamentalism.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by sjames on Thursday August 18 2016, @01:45AM
Well if it's all going to hell anyway, why not mandate a higher minimum wage and implement tariffs and see if we can slow it down a bit?
Perhaps the problem is people objecting to anything that even tries to act on the problem including a purely private and completely un-coerced initiative by Whirlpool.
They do that and already you're grabbing at your wallet with your eyes bugged out in fear.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by Arik on Thursday August 18 2016, @02:30AM
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by sjames on Thursday August 18 2016, @02:48AM
Gee, it sounds like we should just commit mass suicide, there being no solution and all. Or we can keep our eyes shut and our hands off the wheel until we crash into the rocks.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 18 2016, @02:02PM
I am getting so fed up with your mightier than thou attitude. I am a web developer you insensitive clod, ECMAscript is how I make my living, pay my mortgage, and feed my family. You can just go to hell!
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Thursday August 18 2016, @04:46AM
Hint: look outside of the US. In particular, have a look at the Scandanavian Countries. Things work pretty well there.
(Score: 2) by dry on Thursday August 18 2016, @03:41AM
So what do we do about Paul? He's already super rich and has way more influence over the law makers then the average person or the poor will ever have.
As long as Paul can push for welfare for his employees using his wealth, we're fucked, but at least Paul gets even richer and feels entitled as he got his and those horrible employees collecting food stamps, not being able to afford lunch for their kids or even find time to do laundry due to working 3 jobs to pay the rent, are obviously lazy.
Most socialization is pushed by the rich. From the fire insurance people pushing public fire departments after a disastrous fire to the car manufacturers pushing good roads to sell more cars to Walmart pushing food stamps and other subsidies for their employees so they can pay them less.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Thursday August 18 2016, @10:02AM
What if Peter has so much money that he'll never need to use it ever in his life and Paul is so poor, despite his best efforts, that he struggles to feed, clothe and shelter himself? What if the Great Sacred Market dictates that poor Paul shall have no more? I reckon Peter should give up a proportion of his useless (to him) wealth to help the Pauls of this world. I don't regard it as stealing, I call it social responsibility and advanced civilisation.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday August 18 2016, @04:12PM
Somehow I have a feeling you will have no problem "stealing" your social security check from these very same children you don't want to help.