The devalued American worker
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
Before WWII there was 1930s depression(stock crash). In the WAR ALL CAPITAL was destroyed outside the US, making US to become the ruler of the world.
Today there has not been depression yet, the stock crash or hyperinflation or whatever happens is not here yet.
Bailouts, QE, Keynesianism, stock pumping means those that have created the crisis have not paid for it, but the people.
Everything else is just noise and confusion. The people that are controlling more and more wealth also control the media.
They are really scared about the future. They prefer to confront each other against each other("they are taking your jobs"), or against an external enemy(Russia, China) that to lose their current status quo.
You see all those articles about automation or immigration taking people's jobs, but in reality is as simple as those controlling the wealth's representation(money) giving it all to themselves first with the geometric, not algebraic methods of redistribution printing money gives them.
I have actually earned hundreds of times what I "invested" on the stock market. It is not because I am smarter, but because I understood the game. I have a company in the real world in which a 10% profit per year is great news. In the stock I have won 200% profit rates!! on recent years. This is unsustainable.
The big problem with this trend in the long term is that big masses of uneducated people might take control eventually; populist revolutions and communist-like rule of a Stalin-like redneck dictator is not at all out of the question. They may confiscate the technology, but they can't simply make a worthless worker do worthy work so they might be paid barely enough, for doing nothing worthy, an aberrant lifestyle anyway. And we may very well get there without a bloody revolution too, with most oblivious to the slow shift even.
I think a social awakening is more likely than a populist revolt. Simple solutions such as raising effective corporate tax rates, banning money from politics, and minimum wage reforms could avert revolution.
> might be paid barely enough, for doing nothing worthy, an aberrant lifestyle anyway
I don't agree this is the direction. And if we do head there, it's more likely due to total automation and AI (rather than a Stalin-like ruler). In that future, people won't starve in the streets, they'll be working subsidized jobs. And that sounds a lot like today's reality anyway (not a sci-fi dystopia).
Awakening is the opposite term for what that is. Rising the corporate tax until when? until businesses are barely profitable? that's effectively confiscating the technology and letting them run it more efficiently than the state can, that's the road to the new communism. Minimum wage reform, same thing. Plus, this is all economic suicide if we look at the rest of the economy, not just the automation-enablers, but that would be going too off-topic here.
Yes, this all sounds like today because we're on our way to that dark future. And we're calling it awakening apparently, see why I said people would be oblivious to the shift?
Fixing these problems isn't communism. It's a return to mid-20th century American policies.
With this type of reform in place, it's a lot easier to envision a nice future where some people get $200K/yr to solve puzzles, and others get a $40K/yr minimum wage to blog about their day. Edit: and aside from basic income or minimum wage, this is how I think a lot of people should be paid -> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8708820
As for the big companies, they use so-called tax loopholes to defer tax payment and keep foreign-sourced income offshore. They'd get taxed when/if that money reenters the US. And you can be sure they'll be taxed eventually as uncle Sam gets more needy to run a subsidized economy. State interventionism with FATCA and so on will only grow until there will be no way for them to avoid taxation.
That does not correspond with the latest news I've seen: http://www.aei.org/publication/new-cbo-study-shows-rich-dont...
Payroll taxes now make up 35 percent of all federal government tax receipts, up from 11 percent in 1950. Corporate income taxes, meanwhile, now make up less than 10 percent of federal revenue, down from about 26 percent in 1950.
Keep in mind, your article and mine are only counting federal taxes. The middle class pay a higher proportion of their income buying things than the rich, so they're hit harder by sales taxes. Same goes for property taxes. And many states tax low income workers on income even though the IRS cuts them a break. One should also factor in court costs and fines for petty crimes. There's gasoline tax and toll roads as well. These are all regressive.
Edit: the shift I mean is from corporations and super wealthy to the middle class generally. I would agree that upper middle class (doctors, lawyers, etc) probably carry most of the weight on taxes and the lower middle class gets many breaks (for good reason, though).
You do realize that's a symmetric slur, right?
Besides, from what I've seen in general the US is already the most progressive taxing country in the world. Like so many other "liberal" issues, there's never any stopping point, never enough, which is an incredibly dangerous way to operate (and is a great deal of the reason why we're in the final 10 years of liberal dominance as it is now tearing itself apart, because there is never enough, there can't be enough, there mustn't be enough, and if that means it must push beyond all bounds of reason or rationality, so be it...). And also, if the taxation level is a problem, given that our government spends radically more than it is taking in on taxes as well, maybe the government shouldn't be spending so much? Maybe the reason we are in such an economic funk is that we route too much wealth to the government, for it to expensively and poorly try to figure out what to do with it for us? Here's the symmetry: But of course I wouldn't expect a liberal source to even consider the possibility that handing all the money over to a centralized entity to disburse remains something that we have neither evidence nor experience to suggest is a particularly fantastic way to get things done at this scale.
I'd also observe the numbers are from the CBO, not the think-tank in question.
First, regarding sources: all I was pointing out is that there are multiple ways to frame the statistics, and that the framing is predictable based on the political bias of the source.
Second, liberals are fine routing less money to the government. The solution would be less DHS/war spending, less welfare for banks/corporations, and also re-balancing the tax burden of individuals vs. corporations and investors.
That's my perception, just curious if anyone else thinks so as well.
Not sure how I made that mistake, but that would explain the "change in viewpoint"...
"But the maps have problems, starting with the fact that the car can’t travel a single inch without one ... all 4 million miles of U.S. public roads will be need to be mapped, plus driveways, off-road trails, and everywhere else you'd ever want to take the car. So far, only a few thousand miles of road have gotten the treatment .., The company frequently says that its car has driven more than 700,000 miles safely, but those are the same few thousand mapped miles, driven over and over again."
Not an insurmountable problem - may even just be able to park the vehicle where a diversion route is unknown and wait for it to clear, but still an issue to deal with.
You read that correctly. The sooner we have a huge portion of the population become unemployed and unable to find other work (because all similar unskilled labor is automated), the sooner we can start to seriously reconsider the notion that everyone must have a job. I predict that the day automated driving becomes the norm is the day the first unconditional basic income bill is debated in Congress.
NO WAY
Minimum Wage leads to inflation, but printing money to bail out banks doesn't...