"Because I exist," you must surrender your merits and achievements...

I feel like I am encouraged to go out to get a job in a diminishing job market.Jobs are diminishing because:

1. companies are becoming more efficient at production and requiring less labor.
2. humans are accident prone and slower.
3. replacing humans with machines remove moral hazard.
4. a company does not have to pay taxes on employees if machines are doing the job.
5. production could go one 24/7 instead of waiting for the next shift.


"I exist" and I want my chance at a good job so that i can pay for a good life, but I see no incentive for companies to care about my existence and give me a job when machines can do a better job.

Sure without money in consumers pockets it creates less demand for goods. But companies priority one is not to ensure people near their facility have money in their pockets. Their priority is selling their product and taking money from as many people as they can.

Companies are bleeding the economy dry through automation.

My point extended in my thread: Give Jobs to Humans or Robots?

originally posted by: crazyewok

originally posted by: burdman30ott6

originally posted by: Krazysh0t
Like what? Got any solutions?

Does taking a noninterventionist position and allowing Social Darwinism space to do its natural thing count as a solution?

So anyone that falls on hard times your happy to let them die on the street like a third world country?

I am for scaling back wellfare and think my own countrys going in the right direction with it now.

But i still think there needs to be a short term saftey net for those in real need and long term help for those truely disabled.

This is something which I think is intentionally designed to be confrontational no matter how extreme or how moderate a person's position is, CE. I've never advocated elimination of safety nets which Americans have themselves paid into. Unemployment insurance, medicaid for workers and their families, food stamps for people who truly have "fallen on" hard times. I absolutely think there's merit to retaining some structural support for those programs because, at their core, they are accounts which workers are paying into to ensure the money is there when that same worker needs it... I just would prefer to see those be dedicated account, untouchable by other programs and, conversely, wholly solvent or insolvent on the individual program's collected funds alone. None of this robing Peter to pay Paul bullcrap the government seems so fond of.

What I have a major problem with are those who haven't "fallen on" hard times, but rather seem to be perfectly fine building their entire goddamn encampment on hard times. The folks who were born into food stamps and by god they're gonna demand the productive part of the country pay for their care and feeding until the day they die. I'm sorry, but if someone wants to be treated with dignity and respect and be viewed as an equal human, then living their life like a kept pet, dependent on their human to pay for their food, provide their shelter, see that they are entertained, and cover the vet bill, is NOT how to demonstrate "I'm equal to you."

There is a large swath of Americans in 2015, a swath which encompasses all races; white, black, latino, Asian, Native, all of them, who apparently embraced the "fed and housed" portion of slavery while rejecting the "work for me" portion of it. They are, for all intents and purposes, living like lazy slaves to the rest of America. Then, in an absolutely stunning display of passive aggressive fatuousness, some of them actually accuse America's productive workers of being "wage slaves." How amazingly dense between the ears does a person have to be to not only mock their meal ticket, but criticize the very portion of that meal ticket's life which effectively pays for the criticizer to be able to sit on their ass all day?

No more. It needs to stop and it needs to stop now.

a reply to: burdman30ott6

AHHHH

Now you put it THAT way I can 100% agree with that.

Yeah welfare needs to be stream lined made cost effective and targeted purely to those that need it.

We are starting to do that now here as our welfare system got out of control. There has been a lot of whining and bitching from the left over it but quite frankly the UK is seeing only positives. Costs are dropping, deficits due to go by 2017/2020 and productivity is going up.

originally posted by: burdman30ott6

originally posted by: Krazysh0t
Like what? Got any solutions?

Does taking a noninterventionist position and allowing Social Darwinism space to do its natural thing count as a solution?

Only if you are content with having a high crime rate.

a reply to: burdman30ott6

Why would ATS allow a moderator, you know, somebody who is SUPPOSED to be balanced use that set of icons in your herald?

What we progressives want is room for everybody. Room to expand intellectually, professionally and personally in order to conform to YOUR independent standard.

Believe it or not that means, you gotta move assets to folks who may, as yet, not be worth a darn.

If not, you do throw the babies out with the bathwater.

To maintain continuity of a culture (at least one that can survive), a certain amount of grace needs to be applied whenever someone in a lesser position demonstrates need.

I do notice your 'anti-poor' bias in the OP. Apparently the assumption you make is that biasing economics to favor inequality would somehow make things better. While I do not have a degree in Economics I do have several courses in under and post graduate school that reflect this.

The money must move to keep an economy healthy. It must move from the top (because they have most of it) to the lower on the ladder because it has no other place for it to come from. If the economic programs intensifies the maldistribution of wealth (and it only has for the past forty years) what do you see that would end this.

I think that since we have no pyramid of wealth (more like an obelisk), the haves certainly not into sharing, the poor and middle class in descendency, that the only fruitful path is shearing the tops off those top limbs.

Since you hold that sharing is not caring but merely the propping up of the 'undeserving', this method of managing wealth certainly supports you.

The problem for you and those of your philosophical clan, is that the poor are not going away and will eventually rebel. With the continued emphasis on roboticized everything (keep the money close) there will be NO jobs except those that are paying nothing now. A permanent underclass boiling away for eternity.

Much like single payer health care, I favor a base income for everyone. Tax whatever is necessary for what is needed by the masses. If yo can only work for millions, move to whatever Banana Republic that allows its people to be enslaved and live happily everafter.

a reply to: MoonBlossom

If you think that someone who is paying for cable and a cell phone and a car, NEEDS help putting food on the table, then you are NOT looking at this logically. Get rid of the cell phone, get rid of cable. Go to the public library for entertainment, spend your time learning new skills so you can get better pay. Lose your car and take the bus.

You don't deserve a hand out just because you exist. In fact, I would even go so far as to say you deserve less, because you've earned less.

If we aren't working toward maintaining a free society where people with the will, desire and ability are rewarded and those without are not, then go find a socialist utopia to live in elsewhere don't try to convert mine. Oh wait you mean those type of Utopias like Greece don't exist?

Well, then damn, maybe that logical thinking of yours should tell you something...

Jaden

a reply to: Sagitaris

Well then I would suggest you learn how to build robots then, wouldn't you?

Jaden

originally posted by: largo
a reply to: burdman30ott6



Why would ATS allow a moderator, you know, somebody who is SUPPOSED to be balanced use that set of icons in your herald?

Icons and herald? I have no idea what you just said. Please explain.

As to the rest of your post...

It must move from the top (because they have most of it) to the lower on the ladder because it has no other place for it to come from. If the economic programs intensifies the maldistribution of wealth (and it only has for the past forty years) what do you see that would end this.

Do you not see that the current system is only bleeding out the middle class? There is no easy answer here, but a system in which scarcely 50% of the people are paying for 100% of the people is sure as hell no answer at all.

If yo can only work for millions, move to whatever Banana Republic that allows its people to be enslaved and live happily everafter.

My friend, I agree... if we're expected to work for millions (of other people not working at all) that is absolutely slavery. The working class of America is enslaved by a bunch of politically valuable mindless voters who receive their dowries from the redistributive policies and, in exchange for having their lives subsidized for them, they continue to vote for whoever will redistribute the most while demanding they do the least. It's actually inverted slavery, slavery in which the weakest and most inept masters hold the most power and hire the harshest whip crackers to work for them out of DC, flogging the daylights out of the workers' paychecks to ensure Master doesn't have to actually do anything himself.

originally posted by: crazyewok

Because he's not making Cuba a allie or even a friend. Just opening a embassy and establishing formal diplomatic relations.

UK has formal diplomatic relations with cuba but we are not exactly friends and sure as hell are not allies with them.


Save your chickenhawk crying for if the US signs a defence pact with them or trys s to sell them weapons then I might share your selective outrage.

Many other people disagree with your claim...

We're Finally Friends with Cuba Again
December 17, 2014

By Grace Wyler

Politics Editor

After 50 long years of a pretend war, the US and Cuba are finally making up. On Wednesday morning, the White House announced that the US will restore full diplomatic ties with the island nation just 90 miles off the coast of Florida, and open up an embassy there for the first time since Dwight Eisenhower was president.
...

www.vice.com...

...
That's what Jaime Suchlicki, director of the Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies at the University of Miami and an opponent of the thaw, said was behind Obama's move.

"He comes with a philosophy based on the idea that you make nice with your enemies and they become your friends," Suchlicki said. "The President is doing this based on his own mindset, not on the reality of what is happening."
...

www.cnn.com...

You should save your insults and grow the hell up once and for all.

originally posted by: burdman30ott6
...
Do you not see that the current system is only bleeding out the middle class? There is no easy answer here, but a system in which scarcely 50% of the people are paying for 100% of the people is sure as hell no answer at all.
...

Unfortunately that's exactly what Obama wants, alongside many other people, and what they will get. After the economy crashes world leaders can come in and say "we must finally establish a world government with a new currency for the good of all, and to fight climate change". They can finally establish their socialist utopia, which is no utopia for the common people as people will unfortunately learn, but it will be too late.

a reply to: ElectricUniverse

They create the problems and then arrive with the solutions.

This thread is like blaming trains for going where the tracks we're laid.
While many, mostly the right mentality, just doesn't seem to see through it and keep blaming the poor.

If they wanted to fix the system and bring back a powerful middle class, they could. But no, they want us to go to some sort of feudal oligarch system disguised into what many will call socialism...socialism for the rich and slavery for the poor.

a reply to: ElectricUniverse

This is not an Obama unique situation, or even a Democrat owned problem. We've been blindsided in America by a confluence of labor laws, socialist benefits, and national-level regulations with a systematic stripping of national protectionist policies, free trade, and a weakening dollar. The recipe for disaster has already been prepared and cooked, now we're simply eating the meal.

The socialist policies we're seeing running rampant right now are absolutely speeding up our demise. *Some* of those policies work and are needed in very controled situations, but in absence of import tariffs along with a decidedly domestic production UNfriendly atmosphere, even the good socialist policies do little more than bleed the country's middle class dry.

I see the "blame the poor" heavily in this rant. Can I ask what YOU do that is so important to society that you have reached the pedestal you currently are standing on?

I get sick of this "minimal skills" crap. Skip that and go to the importance of the job. Sure being a McDonald's "burger flopper" doesn't take much skill, but as of right now, without it, I'm pretty sure McDonald's would fold in about 3 minutes. The POSITION is very, very vital to them, who cares who fills it? I bet people like you would quit in less than an hour and say it's"beneath" someone of your "skill"
People in, say, marketing, are extremely overpaid. It doesn't take much skill for McDonald's marketing team to basically say "Hey, keep eating here", oh but let me guess, they all have some sort of degree so they're entitled to more money?

Always remember, just because you could afford to get a degree, or have the government pay for you to get one, YOU are just as easily replaceable as the burger flopper

originally posted by: mymymy
I see the "blame the poor" heavily in this rant. Can I ask what YOU do that is so important to society that you have reached the pedestal you currently are standing on?

[SNIP]


Always remember, just because you could afford to get a degree, or have the government pay for you to get one, YOU are just as easily replaceable as the burger flopper

I'm a Civil Engineer. I design roads that are safe for the public to drive on, rails that are safe to transport goods along, airport runways that safely get passengers into and out of the skies, site design and drainage projects that keep homes and businesses operating free from flooding, and wastewater facilities that ensure runoff waters are high quality effluent prior to draining them into our rivers, lakes, and oceans. I manage these projects. Projects on which, if something is designed incorrectly and personal or property damages occur as a result, millions of dollars are at risk in the courts.

I paid for my own way through college, partly through working doing such exciting work as picking onions for $50 a day, chopping weeds on local properties for $20-$30 per job, working at an alternator rebuilding shop, digging post holes and building wood post fences for local ranches, and basically busting my ass all summer, and partly through student loans which I am still paying off.

I'm not entitled to a goddamn thing in my mind except for 100% of every dollar I work to earn. When the day comes that I am seen as replaceable, I'll either difersify myself or I'll hit that treeline and slip off into the woods where my family and myself are the only ones benefitting from my daily work and nobody will be blameable for any failures I encounter except for yours truly.

Now, I ask you with full sincerity and a set jaw, is there a reason outside of "because they exist" that those receiving government tax redistributed handouts as their routine method of income "deserve" for those policies to continue when it is paid for off the blood, sweat, and tears of those actually busting their asses to either advance themselves or just to stay afloat in this taxed to hell environment?

a reply to: burdman30ott6

I know it isn't just Obama, which is why i also mentioned world leaders in general. in another thread I even posted that the Vatican and the pope themselves are calling for a world government "to solve all the problems of the world."

i have even watched the pope call out in Spanish in socialist and communist meetings in south America for such a change away from capitalism and obviously in favor for socialism or even communism. A world government will be exactly that, socialist/communist.

...
That isn’t just the implication it’s the explicit call in the latest from the Vatican: that we need to move to a system of world government:

If Vatican cardinals have yet to join the Occupy Wall Street protesters, a document released by the Holy See calling for a “world authority” to crack down on capitalism suggests some are considering it.
...

The Vatican Calls for World Government

Pope Francis calls for a new system of global government to tackle climate change

a reply to: ElectricUniverse

Francis is, the Vatican is (maybe) not. There is supposedly an ever growing and ever strengthening faction within the Vatican which is distancing themselves from Francis. He has become an unpopular pope amongst traditionalist Catholics and is EXTREMELY unpopular among conservative Catholics all over the globe. Francis' recent statements demonstrate a clear schism from the history of the Holy See against socialism and communism. The Church has always held the private ownership rights of individuals as a part of Church Dogma and, frankly, Francis needs to watch his tongue because his words may ruffle the wrong feathers.

Then again, the Church has nobody to blame but themselves here... this is what happens when you construct a falsity that declares the infalibility of an individual human as being a "must believe" tennent of your Church. When you ultimately get one of those "infalibles" that goes off the rails and starts spouting foolishness, you're stuck trying to rationalize their errors with the flock that has been ingrained to consume every word they say as being straight from the Almighty.

a reply to: burdman30ott6

First off, hats off to you, if your sincere in your post. In this day and age, and especially on this site (deny ignorance or not, it's a slogan) it's impossible to be sure

BUT, you left it kind of wide open to whom you refer to "because they exist". More working people get food stamps than non working people. You didn't quite specify who you were talking about in your OP until you were called on it. it was a WIDE open OP that looked, not just to me, but to a lot of people, to be blaming the poor on everything. Welfare fraud is miniscule, corporate welfare (fraud in my book) is rampant. So when lazy Johnny six pack defrauds the GVT out of 10,000, but Oh so ambitious Johnny son of someone oh so important defrauds the GVT or a company out of millions just because who his daddy is gets a pass because he's "educated", I'm sorry but that ticks me off.

originally posted by: beezzer


Why does it need to be the responsibility of government?

Are we, as a culture, so morally bankrupt, that we can't take care of our own?

YES...we are

Trickle down works so well

You get a guy like Buffett who just donates like mad but how many? And how many people are still left hurting?

No...don't bleed yourself dry and don't harm your family to help...but instead we have a city like Detroit with homes all over the place to house millions...just sitting their. But we won't let anyone in...at least it would be a dry place

But forgetting all that for a moment

When you look at homelessness and welfare, there is a huge problem that people seem very ignorant of and that is we don't make it easy to rise up

All this "bootstrap" BS is so irritating when we spent time cutting the laces years ago

Now you look around and the help is barely there. Say you have a city like mine of 150,000 people. We have estimated 1000 homeless men and about 500 homeless women, some with kids

Total homeless beds in this town are 200

150 of them are men only...no option
The other 50 are women but they MUST have a child under 14 and MUST have just come from an abuse situation

But don't worry...about 1.5 hours drive from here is a town with a good 100 beds for women and children...ticket for the bus is a scant 25 dollars...damn that is good...Hang on let her just get her wallet out and....

oh wait

That's right she has no money...as in not a dime. So she exists on three meals at the shelter...hope they don't run out

She can always get medicaid, food stamps, and other pretty darn good programs

OOPS! office open three days a week for 3 hours each...first come first serve

no biggie...just get a job. I mean that's what these conservatives yell right? Let's see...entry level job...2 years experience needed. McDonalds! perfect...I am sure she will have a great interview with clothes she hasn't washed in two weeks and a child in tow.

Yeah it's dramatic...but to a VERY short point

All around the country with exception of a few places the situation is just as ugly...the resources are barely there

but then you get working men/women with kids...now they work two jobs for crap wages and STILL have to decide...medication or food....heat or doctors appointment...over and over...and since they work a solid 15 hours a day....OOPS...sorry office is only open banker's hours...Boss can I take some time off?"

"Well if you don't want to take your job seriously...maybe you shouldn't be here"

blah blah blah

and yet at the end of the day, only a small handful of people in the ghetto finally raise up because of exceptional luck...

we treat these people every day like total garbage..beneath us....we complain that welfare is the destruction yet we spend trillions on war and give WELFARE (sorry...tax benefits) to companies who threaten "give us savings and incentive or India we go!"

a reply to: mymymy

You anger is well placed...and so true. I don't doubt for one second that welfare cheats exist. We know they do. It happens. And punishment is always a bad thing. We can't allow people to unjustly steal but you make a huge point in that a vast majority of opportunity is given to those who already have all they need and many times more. Like you said Johnny six pack breaks the law and gets the slammer for years. Billy Boy the CEO who runs a bank into the ground and messes the already screwed economy up horribly and we say "tsk tsk...Bill come on now you know better"

and then STILL offer them a parachute but instead of silk it is made of millions of dollars

a reply to: Masterjaden

you really think 10 million robot engineers will fix this economy?


If robots take our jobs then a company that makes robots would only need a handful of engineers to make hundreds of thousands of robots. So become a robot engineer may give me a job but the rest of the US have no jobs because they have been automated.

SO whats your solution. what do we do with a population that we dont need as a work force anymore?

kill them?
let them kill themselves?
war?
or move towards a protectionist society?

Im pretty sure the elites would just say kill them or let them kill themselves...

my point is there arent enough jobs for the population. ITS impossible to keep unemployment down because automation is more efficient.