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The Old Guard: Confronting America's Gerontocratic Crisis

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Re: The Old Guard: Confronting America's Gerontocratic Crisis

#241

Post by WalterBright »

croon wrote: post #230
WalterBright wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are correct that there is no friction-less market. However, lack of information is called "risk", and risk strongly affects what you will pay for something. A low risk deal will cost you more than a high risk deal. Risk is part of every transaction in a market economy, and is priced in.

Ok, branching from your previous post again, why isn't what you're describing happening? https://fredblog.stlouisfed.org/2023/03/when-comparing-wages...

The article starts out being wrong by using wages rather than total compensation. The latter is the complete pay package, which includes paid time off, health insurance benefits, retirement benefits, etc. These typically add about 40% to the wages/salaries.

Re: The Old Guard: Confronting America's Gerontocratic Crisis

#242

Post by WalterBright »

Teever wrote: post #239
WalterBright wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Musk started with a $20,000 loan from his family. You could buy a used car for $20,000, no emerald mine and slaves required. Musk parlayed the loan into $trillions.

It would have been so cool if you didn't derail this conversation about 'Confronting America’s gerontocratic crisis' with your Elon Musk fanboy-ism. So cool.

I am indeed an unapologetic Musk fanboy. For good reason.

Re: The Old Guard: Confronting America's Gerontocratic Crisis

#243

Post by WalterBright »

lenerdenator wrote: post #236
WalterBright wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why wouldn't people "monetize" things before?

Because you can only monetize people so much before they get testy about it. They get tired of being advertised to. They start complaining about being nickeled and dimed for every single thing they used to get as a part of another purchase. They look at their wages staying flat while costs go up and up.

So why is it different now? Costs go up because of inflation (government deficit spending) and the ever-greater burden of government.

Re: The Old Guard: Confronting America's Gerontocratic Crisis

#244

Post by nixon_why69 »

WalterBright wrote: post #240
nixon_why69 wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sir, I understand that you did some cool, useful stuff in your career and got rewarded for it and that's a case of the system working, but if you can't see various sycophants and crooks getting just as rich or richer, while contributing nothing, then I can't see it for you.

I need to see some evidence that Musk contributes nothing.

Count his tweets over the last few years, WaPo did a big story on it recently, its like 70 tweets/day. Then divide his remaining attention over the number of companies he's running. Or look at the effectiveness of his management of DOGE which is the most public/transparent example we have.

I do think up until 2020 he was useful, there's a reason nobody else made electric cars or self landing rockets work. But most of his wealth accumulation has been since then.

Re: The Old Guard: Confronting America's Gerontocratic Crisis

#245

Post by WalterBright »

nixon_why69 wrote: post #244
WalterBright wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I need to see some evidence that Musk contributes nothing.

Count his tweets over the last few years, WaPo did a big story on it recently, its like 70 tweets/day. Then divide his remaining attention over the number of companies he's running. Or look at the effectiveness of his management of DOGE which is the most public/transparent example we have. I do think up until 2020 he was useful, there's a reason nobody else made electric cars or self landing rockets work. But most of…

1. I follow Musk on twitter, and most of them consist of a single emoji and retweet of some other post.

2. What better way to keep an eye on how things are working on twitter by dogfooding the platform?

3. An effective manager does not micromanage a company. He finds competent people and delegates the authority.

4. Most of his tweets are advocacy of the products of his various companies. A major part of being a CEO is being the top salesman for the company.

5. WaPo is owned by Bezos, who competes directly with SpaceX.

6. His companies seem to be doing quite well. Why mess with success?

Re: The Old Guard: Confronting America's Gerontocratic Crisis

#246

Post by Lutzb »

newsoftheday wrote: post #149
alphawhisky wrote: post #135

This article touches on the fact that old folks have much more money accumulated than younger people, and this causes a large social disconnect. Maybe if we put a cap on the age for voting (i.e. no voting once you retire) then older people would be incentivized to spend their wealth, time, and energy on young people in the hopes that they would carry the torch politically. Regardless, it's obvious by current inflatio…

> old folks have much more money I retired last year, lead software engineer, never got into management as a civilian, did software for over 3 decades. My salary was lower than it was as a mid level 20 years ago. What old people have "much more money", maybe they can send some my way. I thank God for Social Security and hope and pray it remains well into the future, even for the 99% of the people who are saying bigot…

Pensioners in most western countries are the second most affluent cohort.

Re: The Old Guard: Confronting America's Gerontocratic Crisis

#247

Post by nixon_why69 »

WalterBright wrote: post #245
nixon_why69 wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Count his tweets over the last few years, WaPo did a big story on it recently, its like 70 tweets/day. Then divide his remaining attention over the number of companies he's running. Or look at the effectiveness of his management of DOGE which is the most public/transparent example we have. I do think up until 2020 he was useful, there's a reason nobody else made electric cars or self landing rockets work. But most of…

1. I follow Musk on twitter, and most of them consist of a single emoji and retweet of some other post. 2. What better way to keep an eye on how things are working on twitter by dogfooding the platform? 3. An effective manager does not micromanage a company. He finds competent people and delegates the authority. 4. Most of his tweets are advocacy of the products of his various companies. A major part of being a CEO i…

Brother, both Twitter and Grok had to be folded into SpaceX to hide their abject failure while he was spending all day on social media. People change, he's not the same guy as the 2010s Elon.

Re: The Old Guard: Confronting America's Gerontocratic Crisis

#248

Post by croon »

WalterBright wrote: post #241
croon wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, branching from your previous post again, why isn't what you're describing happening? https://fredblog.stlouisfed.org/2023/03/when-comparing-wages...

The article starts out being wrong by using wages rather than total compensation. The latter is the complete pay package, which includes paid time off, health insurance benefits, retirement benefits, etc. These typically add about 40% to the wages/salaries.

This doesn't matter when the entire graph uses the same data. The growing divergence isn't because of differing accounting.

Re: The Old Guard: Confronting America's Gerontocratic Crisis

#249

Post by ungreased0675 »

applfanboysbgon wrote: post #83
ungreased0675 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your hypothesis had any merit, shouldn’t Congress work far better than it does?

No. Term limits have no bearing on the skill floor, only the skill ceiling. By capping employment at 8 years, you place a hard limit on how good your employees can become. However, removing that limit does not magically make all of your employees good. You are still responsible for choosing to employ competent employees. If, after 8 years, an employee is still not good at their job, you have the option to fire them.…

I understand your logic, but in practice the evidence for term limits seems stronger. Many states have term limits, and it seems to work better than the states with entrenched institutions.

Re: The Old Guard: Confronting America's Gerontocratic Crisis

#250

Post by tekne »

WalterBright wrote: post #225
tekne wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps -- "the baseline is a decent life". Lots of people are willing to work really hard for perks and glory -- honestly, you can even take more risks if you're young and you know your life's not on the line

> the baseline is a decent life The trouble with that is the same reason communism fails - too many people decide to just live off of the work of others, and play video games all day. Also, who is going to work as a janitor? Most jobs are not filled with glory. They're tedious - that's why they are called "work".

You know... janitorial work really is an excellent example:

- Some labor is easy both to offshore and to automate -- e.g. factory work

- Some labor can be offshored a lot more easily than it can be automated -- this causes at least a practical problem for the "nice UBI" countries. I'm struggling to think of particularly good examples...

- Some labor can be automated more easily than it can be offshored, e.g. self-driving

- Some labor is "rare enough" that it can potentially be well-paid -- my intuition says construction and repair, especially with the aid of machines

But janitorial labor is low-status, is required constantly, needs to be done on-site, and is really hard for a robot.

So a particularly good UBI test: how do you hire janitors?

It's not necessarily impossible -- for example, if a few shifts of janitorial labor could double this "decent baseline," would people pick it up? Would this leave it affordable?

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