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OT: American Politics

That's what I was getting at. The immigrant dream will die. On the other hand, it's not all bad:

Every day, the number of people around the world living in extreme poverty (less than about $2 a day) goes down by 217,000, according to calculations by Max Roser, an Oxford University economist who runs a website called Our World in Data. Every day, 325,000 more people gain access to electricity. And 300,000 more gain access to clean drinking water.

It's probably better off long term for the world if modern immigration does die at some point. If we continue to siphon off their best and brightest, absolutely essential change those places need will likely take longer to occur. It sucks for the handful of generations of skilled professionals who would have to take one for the team and live in lesser conditions than they could earn elsewhere, but likely better long term for the nations they're from.
 
Something not mentioned that will further impact society and economics is increased digital education and working remotely from pretty much anywhere.

People really need to stop thinking of a school or work setting the way it has been. In the next 25-50 years many schools and offices will go by the wayside effecting everything from jobs to the real estate sector trickling down through companies like cleaners, security, delivery, energy, repair etc. The list actually goes on.

I was intrigued by the idea of a base salary for all citizens when that occurs because there is absolutely no way there will be enough jobs available for the uneducated. Parents need to get their shit together and ensure their kids are prepared for the future.

This is why Bannon is so dangerous. He is dreaming of an industrial world that ceased to exist decades ago. Trade agreements, border controls and his wildly dangerous view of China... those ships have all sailed. He sees the same challenges as the rest of us, but he’s framed it an extinct and almost violent zero-sum perspective. He’s a nationalist romantic with a narrative has very foolishly raised the expectations or stoked the resentment of people who will never have the way of life that once existed. In a sense, he’s like Putin with less kleptocracy: a loathing and distrust of liberal markets and the institutions that maintain and enforce rules. The reality is, globally, those markets and institutions have worked.

So, you are correct. Educate your children. We don’t know how work will be organized in the future and we may not know how knowledge and accreditation will be imparted (i.e. institutions). But, for most people, some things will be timeless. Math. Reading. Writing. After that, everything falls into place, including all varieties of fads.
 
It's probably better off long term for the world if modern immigration does die at some point. If we continue to siphon off their best and brightest, absolutely essential change those places need will likely take longer to occur. It sucks for the handful of generations of skilled professionals who would have to take one for the team and live in lesser conditions than they could earn elsewhere, but likely better long term for the nations they're from.

this i don't agree with. the bar is so low in most of the world - most of those people will never get very ahead in the country that they're from.

bring 'em in and the interim - the internet is going to unlock so much potential, that it will fill their bloodlines with talent even if everybody who leave these countries never come back (which many will do).
 
Something not mentioned that will further impact society and economics is increased digital education and working remotely from pretty much anywhere.

People really need to stop thinking of a school or work setting the way it has been. In the next 25-50 years many schools and offices will go by the wayside effecting everything from jobs to the real estate sector trickling down through companies like cleaners, security, delivery, energy, repair etc. The list actually goes on.

I was intrigued by the idea of a base salary for all citizens when that occurs because there is absolutely no way there will be enough jobs available for the uneducated. Parents need to get their shit together and ensure their kids are prepared for the future.

this is a great post. the gains being made in developing countries, because of technology (and specifically the smartphone and cheap data) is incredible. kids are not only becoming literate, but learning english.

the rest of the world really truly is catching up.
 
this i don't agree with. the bar is so low in most of the world - most of those people will never get very ahead in the country that they're from.

bring 'em in and the interim - the internet is going to unlock so much potential, that it will fill their bloodlines with talent even if everybody who leave these countries never come back (which many will do).

I was speaking specifically in the context of a world where western nations are dealing with the consequences of automation and UBI.
 
I've yet to hear a viable alternative

Solve the trilemma

https://www.google.ca/amp/nationalp...nes-put-in-a-guaranteed-annual-income-yet/amp

The Quebec government asked a committee of three economists to report on the feasibility of a guaranteed minimum income, and they presented their report last week. The basic thrust of the report — recommending some modest reinforcements of the existing income support system, and advising against grand schemes — was met with disappointment from the minister, and harsh words from anti-poverty groups for not coming up with a solution to poverty. This criticism is misplaced: no-one could have met those expectations.

There are three phases of the evolution of opinions about proposals for a guaranteed annual income (GAI). At first, you suppose it’s a joke. Then, after mulling the idea over for a bit, you come to the conclusion that a GAI is such a brilliant idea that you can’t believe it’s not already in place everywhere. The third and final stage is reached when you get to trying to figure out the mechanics of how it might actually work. It is at this point that you realise that while the GAI as it is usually imagined is not actually a joke, it’s not a proposal to be taken seriously, either.

At first, the GAI looks like Alan Frankel’s 1992 article in the satirical Journal of Irreproducible Results, which I quote here in its entirety: “Poor people do not have enough money. Give them enough money. They will no longer be poor.” Some people never get past GAI Stage I.

But once you get past the initial snort of derision, the idea of a guaranteed income starts to actually make sense. The idea of a “guarantee” is uncontroversial enough: we’ve already accepted that Canadians are entitled to a certain minimal standard of living. Why not make that implicit guarantee an explicit one?

There’s a lot good to be said for the idea of a flat, universal payment if you’re concerned about economic efficiency, A perverse result of means-tested benefits is that they effectively impose an extra level of income tax on low-income households: benefits are clawed back as incomes increase. Some low-income people face marginal tax rates in excess of 100 per cent: working more ends up in an actual decrease in their disposable income. A payment that doesn’t diminish as income increases would dismantle the “welfare wall” that blocks the path of many low-income people to economic independence.

In addition to these considerations of incentives, there is already a large body of convincing evidence documenting the benefits of direct cash payments. Some — if not all — of public money used to hire people to monitor and deliver services to low-income households could be simply sent out as cheques.

This is GAI Stage II, home to a small but vocal number of GAI enthusiasts. It’s a very comfortable place to be: you can spend your career campaigning for a GAI and writing about the benefits of a guaranteed income for low-income households (it’s almost always about low-income households) and for society as a whole. And fairly convincingly, too: the benefits are certainly real enough.

Finally, if you take the idea of a GAI seriously enough, you start working through the mechanics of how it would work. For example, suppose we want to send $2,000 a month to every Canadian — an amount approximately equal to Statistics Canada’s Low Income Measure — so that no-one would have to live in poverty. How much would that cost? The answer is $800 billion a year.

You’ve entered GAI Stage III when you grasp the implications of that sort of number: $800 billion represents roughly 40 per cent of GDP, or the entire take of all levels of government, including the public pension plans. (You’re still in GAI Stage II if I could have written “800 parsecs” instead of “$800 billion” without changing the effect or indeed the meaning of that estimate.) Unless you’re willing to try and persuade Canadians to accept a doubling of their current tax burden, you’re going to have to back well away from the sort of GAI that lights up everyone’s imaginations.

Some compromises are in order. There are three elements we’d like from a GAI: moderate cost, generous payments, and a low rate at which benefits are clawed back as income increases. (That last point refers to the welfare wall and the disincentives to work.) The UBC economist Kevin Milligan poses the problem as a trilemma: you can only have two of these three wishes. As we have seen, generous benefits with a zero clawback rate are hideously costly. You can have generous benefits at low cost, but only if they are focused on those with low incomes and are rapidly clawed back from those with higher incomes. And finally, you can have universal benefits with low cost, but the payments will be very small.

The committee mandated by the Quebec government could not avoid the implacable arithmetic of the GAI trilemma; all they could do was document it and identify the limits the trilemma imposes on the choices that are available. For example, if universal payments for people between the ages of 18 and 64 were to be financed with the existing income support budget, then they’d only receive $864 a year. Other scenarios for annual payments of $5,832 — an amount that was denounced as scandalously low — would cost around $30 billion, which is the equivalent to one-third of what the Quebec government currently raises on its own.

You’ve reached the third and final stage of opinions about the GAI when you conclude that all the things promised by GAI advocates are good and worth having, but that they are also impossible to combine in one package. Unless you’re willing to advocate for a drastic increase in taxes, the responsible thing to do is abandon the impossible GAI dream and focus on what is possible with current levels of tax revenues.


National Post
 
So the national post thinks it's largely a good idea, with the only real issue being the funding of it.

but in a world that will increasingly be dominated by a handful of corporations, obviously the decision would have to be made that those companies' profits be shared. and the companies would want to do this, because otherwise they would have no customers to make profits off of.

then again that sort of turns money into a complete farce, and maybe it'll be time for the human race to move beyond it. if all production and services become automated and there is no need for anyone to work, then maybe paying for things becomes a thing of the past.
 
Well, there's still the big question of what it costs to produce them. So while having a mobile kitchen or bathroom would be innovative, at that point you basically need something bus-sized to operate, and the costs of that become crazy higher.

think yachts.


More likely is that your new form of transit simply become just like a personal mass transit vehicle. Especially if you get all cars converted, then they can potentially navigate city streets at highway speeds, at which point I won't really care if it's a little cramped if it means I can get halfway across the city in 10 minutes.

..

yup
 
Until "we" (governments, urban planners, engineers, etc) see how this really changes the way humans operate within cities, it's difficult to make a grand vision that will have more lasting power than any of those deep dives into the future we laugh about now when we look at them (flying cars by the year 2000 eh?).

but we literally already have this tech. nothing i said requires any new tech innovation. it can already be done.


Oh, I agree that they'll become more than "cars" pretty shortly after mass adoption, but I think we'll be looking more at the creative use of existing space restrictions. So a mobile office? A mobile office that you can catch a somewhat cramped nap in? Sure why not. But a kitchen, or anything with plumbing? Well maybe for well off retirees (basically RV's) but for daily transportation? Nah. Wifi and some basic amenities (kuerig style coffee makers, small microwaves, larger screens, etc) is already all sorts of game changing.

again, think yachts.


Charging will be wireless at some point in the not so ridiculously distant future. You can already do it with cell phones, so I don't see any charging hardware built into road networks being a legit fixture but I don't see road repairs changing much until there is a significant change in the 100 yr old technology of taking old oil and mixing it with crushed rock to pave a road. Wear and tear on the "vehicles" themselves though, absolutely. So much damage is done to cars through poor driving habits and accidents. Slower acceleration, braking further in advance and a massive, massive decline in operator error will seriously limit repair work necessary to keep these things on the road.

oh when i said "drones" i meant the flying quadcopter kind (https://www.cnet.com/news/intel-shows-off-flying-car-at-ces-keynote-its-a-drone/, http://time.com/4171329/drone-helicopter-ehang-184-ces/). the only thing really holding us back from using that tech for personal vehicles is the power issue. and once you get vehicles off the ground, all that wear and tear on roads and on vehicles becomes a thing of the past. and if you're worried about the complexities of air traffic they don't even have to be high off the ground. even just a foot.
 
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I've yet to hear a viable alternative
Me neither.

Without something viable society will end up with the haves living in walled off cities with the rest living in squalor in the wastelands. Many a book/movie has touched upon this. Never seems to end well.
 
Me neither.

Without something viable society will end up with the haves living in walled off cities with the rest living in squalor in the wastelands. Many a book/movie has touched upon this. Never seems to end well.

But being poor is getting better all the time. I would choose to be poor today over being rich 100 years ago.

Tech continues to lower the price of food and entertainment. Housing is the big problem that will need to be addressed. Education will be disrupted online and will allow a small trickle of few folks to gain access inside the walled cities.
 
Just watched the David Letterman interview show on Netflix with Obama...... My God, how far we've fallen in leadership.

Must watch TV... Dave is still so good
 
Yeah, Dave is great. Terrific show.
It is so sad they went from Obama to a racist like Trump. What a monumental step down and a statement on Americans.
 
More horse shit.

I just don't get why you insist on reducing Trump's election to racism. It's a lazy analysis.
 
More horse shit.

I just don't get why you insist on reducing Trump's election to racism. It's a lazy analysis.

Well I didn't say that. But I do believe Trump is a racist.
It is very sad to go from Obama to Trump. It's going backwards.

Trump won because people reacted to a personality like his. It worked. No politician had ever tried it. Hilary, I guess got arrogant and thought she had it in the bag. She played it laughably safe.
 
So the national post thinks it's largely a good idea, with the only real issue being the funding of it.

but in a world that will increasingly be dominated by a handful of corporations, obviously the decision would have to be made that those companies' profits be shared. and the companies would want to do this, because otherwise they would have no customers to make profits off of.

then again that sort of turns money into a complete farce, and maybe it'll be time for the human race to move beyond it. if all production and services become automated and there is no need for anyone to work, then maybe paying for things becomes a thing of the past.

No, not the national post. A committee of three economists hired by the quebec government.

And they cannot solve the trilemma. One cannot have moderate cost, generous payments, and a low rate at which benefits are clawed back as income increases.

You do bring up a great point though. As automation starts to take over companies, less people will be employed. Less people employed means less people able to buy their products. Less people able to bye their products leads to less money for companies pushing automation. Never mind governments trying to live without the revenue from income tax.

It still doesn't solve the problem of guaranteed annual income being horrificly expensive.
 
No, not the national post. A committee of three economists hired by the quebec government.

And they cannot solve the trilemma. One cannot have moderate cost, generous payments, and a low rate at which benefits are clawed back as income increases.

You do bring up a great point though. As automation starts to take over companies, less people will be employed. Less people employed means less people able to buy their products. Less people able to bye their products leads to less money for companies pushing automation. Never mind governments trying to live without the revenue from income tax.

It still doesn't solve the problem of guaranteed annual income being horrificly expensive.

Yeah, you can't give a lot of money to a lot of people, without also taking a lot of money from a lot of people.

Basically, if we're going to switch to a basic income plan, we need to have marginal taxes probably at the 80% mark for corporations and individuals making a lot of money. But the flaw with that is that we really can't have Canada impose an 80% marginal tax rate on businesses, since then every head office will obviously up and move to a new jurisdiction. Plus you need to bring in a lot more protections so that landlords don't jack up rents to try to steal all of that free money. I do think we'll need to get there at some point, but I really don't know what path it takes to get there, barring going through another great depression with 25%+ unemployment rates.
 
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