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Unnecessariat

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Re: Unnecessariat

#121

Post by School-Cotton »

mac01021 wrote: post #55
msandford wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is precisely the point. You don't get to TELL your elected officials how to vote. You just get to try and elect people who will HOPEFULLY do what's in your best interests. There are no guarantees in the system, anywhere. That makes the question you asked rather disingenuous.

> You just get to try and elect people who will HOPEFULLY do what's in your best interests. You get to do a bit more than that, though few ever do. Making full use of representative democracy means continuously contacting your representative, not leaving them alone until you're convinced they'll act in your interests, and not leaving your friends/family/community alone until you've got as many other people as you can…

Sure, you get to call an intern in their office who will put a tally mark in a spreadsheet. The congressman may use this "how many people called about X" data to make decisions on what to vote for, or they may not.

Re: Unnecessariat

#122

Post by School-Cotton »

aston wrote: post #18
dragonwriter wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why didn't they all vote for Obamacare and for the public option In substantial quantities, they did. That's what Obama in the general election (and with slight variations, he, Clinton and Edwards in the Democratic primaries) campaigned on. But they didn't get it, because by the time the health care bill got through Congress it had no public option, because while it was in the version passed by the House, it was ki…

And who elected those filibuster-threatening senators? Were the senators acting of their own accord, or on behalf of their constituents' desires?

Does it really matter? Senators representing around 10% of the population are enough for a filibuster.

Re: Unnecessariat

#123

Post by School-Cotton »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #31
maxerickson wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

99 out of 100 Senators voted on the issue. The abstained vote would not have changed the outcome. Is that rammed through?

It was not a midnight vote (or at least, not what the term implies), but yes, it was definitely rammed through. I've never seen such an absolutely-will-not-take-no-for-an-answer ramming job ever on anything.

How so? Obama didn't force anyone to vote a particular way, did he?

Re: Unnecessariat

#124

Post by labster »

robotresearcher wrote: post #111
labster wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to have missed the point of the article. The $15 minimum wage will most likely help the precariat. This is a good thing. But it will do little if anything to help the unnecessariat. > ... no matter how tenuous, the precariat had jobs. The new dying Americans, the ones killing themselves on purpose or with drugs, don’t. Don’t, won’t, and know it. Overtime and wage increases are not going to help people who do…

> Overtime and wage increases are not going to help people who don't have jobs Did you miss this bit, or do you not believe it? >> Goldman Sachs says this will add 100,000 jobs, as employers try to avoid paying time and a half for overtime.[2]

It will create jobs but not increase wealth at lower levels. Obviously not, because the whole reason companies do it is to avoid paying more to workers. It will just create more situations where people need to work two jobs, without the benefit of being paid overtime. Still no benefit to a man in his mid 50s looking for a low-skill job, because the job he was trained in doesn't exist now.

TL;DR yes, I don't believe it.

Re: Unnecessariat

#125

Post by dredmorbius »

labster wrote: post #112
mwcampbell wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Makes me wonder if we should eliminate the minimum wage altogether.

We should. And replace it with universal basic income. Also: GP makes an excellent point, which I should have thought of myself.

Replacing minimum wage with UBI shifts employment subsidies to the same firms which are now pressing their workers to apply for welfare benefits whilst pocketing massive profits, including the wealthiest family in the US, the Waltons, of WalMart.

Another model is UBI and government as employer of last resort (or a equivalent strong labour movement). If there is an employer who can absorb all applicants at a minimum wage, then the market floor is pushed up.

Remember, a living wage is the minimum all-in cost of labour. If you're operating a business which cannot afford to pay a worker what they need to survive, you're not operating a business, you're operating a charity supported by your workforce (or social welfare systems).

If you can and fail to, you're simply pocketing profits from the public purse.

This is straight-up Adam Smith: "A man must always live by his work, and his wages must at least be sufficient to maintain him. They must even upon most occasions be somewhat more, otherwise it would be impossible for him to bring up a family, and the race of such workmen could not last beyond the first generation."

https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/29ecw4nrl7ap2fu4chnjsw

Re: Unnecessariat

#126

Post by EGreg »

Animats wrote: post #15

From the article: "We aren’t precarious, we’re unnecessary. The money has gone to the top. The wages have gone to the top. The recovery has gone to the top. And what’s worst of all, everybody who matters seems basically pretty okay with that. " That's it right there. We just don't need that many people to do all the stuff. Some of that is imports, but not all, or even most, of it. Get behind the $15 minimum wage. The…

Little by little the argument that "taxation is theft" will come to sound like:

"But it's not fair to demand that the hard working robot owners pay more in taxes to help the people too lazy to own their own robots."

Re: Unnecessariat

#127

Post by mindcrime »

Animats wrote: post #15

From the article: "We aren’t precarious, we’re unnecessary. The money has gone to the top. The wages have gone to the top. The recovery has gone to the top. And what’s worst of all, everybody who matters seems basically pretty okay with that. " That's it right there. We just don't need that many people to do all the stuff. Some of that is imports, but not all, or even most, of it. Get behind the $15 minimum wage. The…

Get behind the $15 minimum wage.

Better yet, get behind eliminating minimum wage altogether. It's an unnecessary and immoral restriction on free and voluntary trade. If I want to offer up my time for $6.00 an hour, I have that right damnit. Especially if the alternative is doing nothing and netting $0.00 an hour.

Re: Unnecessariat

#129

Post by _tpzm »

vasaulys wrote: post #29

This reminds me of a This American Life episode where many members of a town collected disability because doctors there didn't consider them "smart enough to work". Seems to be the beginning of Universal Basic Income in all but name. On another note, it must be depressing to live there. http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/490/t...

Unfortunately it's not a Universal Basic Income at all.

UBI and related proposals like Negative Income Tax minimize economic distortion. As you make more money, there's a smooth transition from receiving money from the gov't to paying net money as your taxes increase.

When you're on disability, you are generally not allowed to work. Any "substantial gainful activity" beyond roughly $1k / month ends your benefits [1].

So you might have a choice between $13k/year working 0 hours a week, or he could make $15k/year working 40 hours a week doing something menial and unpleasant.

If you tried to design a system to incentivize the working poor to drop out and accept a lifetime of poverty and gov't dependence, it's hard to see how you could do more. The fact that the program also incentivizes states to convert welfare recipients into disability is just icing.

---

I think America needs sweeping entitlement reform. Not "entitlement reform" in the euphemistic Republican sense of cutting benefits, but reform done with empathy for the poor and guided by competent economists. IMO the goals should be to simplify and combine the many ways we have of giving money to poor people, and to reduce the perverse incentives that those programs create.

Re: Unnecessariat

#130

Post by mindcrime »

EGreg wrote: post #126
Animats wrote: post #15

From the article: "We aren’t precarious, we’re unnecessary. The money has gone to the top. The wages have gone to the top. The recovery has gone to the top. And what’s worst of all, everybody who matters seems basically pretty okay with that. " That's it right there. We just don't need that many people to do all the stuff. Some of that is imports, but not all, or even most, of it. Get behind the $15 minimum wage. The…

Little by little the argument that "taxation is theft" will come to sound like: "But it's not fair to demand that the hard working robot owners pay more in taxes to help the people too lazy to own their own robots."

"Taxation is theft" is true regardless of whether robots are employed or not. The fundamental issue is, simply, that it involves the use of force (or threat of use of force). As long as men with guns will come and arrest you if you don't "pay your taxes" then it is theft. No rhetorical flourishes or byzantine logic can alter that.
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