The Welfare State

[Green Habit]

The article asserts Walmart is consuming the tax dollars in place of using it's own money to fund healthcare, when it's the minimum wage employees of Walmart that are the actual consumers of the federal aid. Walmart no doubt benefits from the healthier employees thanks to Medicaid, but that same argument could be applied to any service the government provides.

Well, yeah, there's a couple steps involved here. Walmart saves money in wages from employees, and employees then take taxpayer-funded services to make up for the low wages. I still don't see how that changes things.

[simple schoolboy]

We're there addition studies suggesting that Medicaid actually does improve health outcomes as BI implies?

[broken iris]

The article asserts Walmart is consuming the tax dollars in place of using it's own money to fund healthcare, when it's the minimum wage employees of Walmart that are the actual consumers of the federal aid. Walmart no doubt benefits from the healthier employees thanks to Medicaid, but that same argument could be applied to any service the government provides.

Well, yeah, there's a couple steps involved here. Walmart saves money in wages from employees, and employees then take taxpayer-funded services to make up for the low wages. I still don't see how that changes things.

How is Walmart saving money by paying the market rate for that skill level of labor? Again, there is an implied obligation to be provided those services by someone other than the government, assuming the government does have such an obligation which many libertarian types would argue against.


I am not suggesting Walmart should not be paying more, they would have more pleasant, better quality, and more dedicated employees if they did (like Whole Foods and COSTCO), but they are not cheating taxpayers by refraining from something they are not obligated to do.

[Green Habit]

How is Walmart saving money by paying the market rate for that skill level of labor? Again, there is an implied obligation to be provided those services by someone other than the government, assuming the government does have such an obligation which many libertarian types would argue against.

I am not suggesting Walmart should not be paying more, they would have more pleasant, better quality, and more dedicated employees if they did (like Whole Foods and COSTCO), but they are not cheating taxpayers by refraining from something they are not obligated to do.

It isn't a dilemma for orthodox libertarians, I'll certainly give you that. Their solution is to simply end any sort of social safety net. However, most people tend to believe that there should be some basic foundation that people should have for survival. And that's where I'm currently caught in a dilemma when I look at this pragmatically. Do we want some large government bureaucracy to provide those services at the cost of the taxpayers, or can we just make sure that employers pay employees enough so that they can pay for those service themselves?

[surfndestroy]

How is Walmart saving money by paying the market rate for that skill level of labor? Again, there is an implied obligation to be provided those services by someone other than the government, assuming the government does have such an obligation which many libertarian types would argue against.

I am not suggesting Walmart should not be paying more, they would have more pleasant, better quality, and more dedicated employees if they did (like Whole Foods and COSTCO), but they are not cheating taxpayers by refraining from something they are not obligated to do.

It isn't a dilemma for orthodox libertarians, I'll certainly give you that. Their solution is to simply end any sort of social safety net. However, most people tend to believe that there should be some basic foundation that people should have for survival. And that's where I'm currently caught in a dilemma when I look at this pragmatically. Do we want some large government bureaucracy to provide those services at the cost of the taxpayers, or can we just make sure that employers pay employees enough so that they can pay for those service themselves?

I like the idea of a near complete scaling down of government services but the provision of a guaranteed monthly income for everyone. I would tie any increase to the guaranteed monthly income to a flattening of the tax spread between high and low income earners. Making it in the richer peoples best interest to ensure a better paying guaranteed monthly income.

[broken iris]

How is Walmart saving money by paying the market rate for that skill level of labor? Again, there is an implied obligation to be provided those services by someone other than the government, assuming the government does have such an obligation which many libertarian types would argue against.

I am not suggesting Walmart should not be paying more, they would have more pleasant, better quality, and more dedicated employees if they did (like Whole Foods and COSTCO), but they are not cheating taxpayers by refraining from something they are not obligated to do.

It isn't a dilemma for orthodox libertarians, I'll certainly give you that. Their solution is to simply end any sort of social safety net. However, most people tend to believe that there should be some basic foundation that people should have for survival. And that's where I'm currently caught in a dilemma when I look at this pragmatically. Do we want some large government bureaucracy to provide those services at the cost of the taxpayers, or can we just make sure that employers pay employees enough so that they can pay for those service themselves?

I like the idea of a near complete scaling down of government services but the provision of a guaranteed monthly income for everyone. I would tie any increase to the guaranteed monthly income to a flattening of the tax spread between high and low income earners. Making it in the richer peoples best interest to ensure a better paying guaranteed monthly income.

I like the idea of merging all of the social safety net services into one agency, but I am a little hesitant about the concept of a government guaranteed monthly income. First and foremost, the government would have to always have that money to send out and secondly the income would have to be enough to provide an agreed upon set of basic services (food, medicine, shelter, etc.) but not so much that it would discourage people from working. IT can't be enough that people could sit at home smoking up and fucking all day while others bust their asses flipping burgers for a few bucks a week more.

[Green Habit]

It's only fitting that the moment my longtime support for primarily focusing on an expanded EITC begins to weaken, Obama decides to bring it up as an agenda. That's life, I guess.

Meanwhile, I found this graph interesting:

[Green Habit]

Some of you might find this video entertaining:

http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/c2deb9 ... isten-bell

And in the interest of fairness, the other some of you might be more interested in the rebuttal:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjGGS5L8NhU

For me, I'm just thinking on how about a generation ago, Homer's second line in this clip barely batted an eye:

[broken iris]

Be careful what you wish for:

[Fuck You Jobu]

Be careful what you wish for:

http://ovens.reviewed.com/news/will-thi ... topstories



“Anything you can do I can do better. I can do anything better than you.”

Forget Annie Oakley. That refrain may best apply to the robots that are gradually taking our jobs. The latest workers on the chopping block? Fast food line cooks.

A San Francisco startup called Momentum Machines has built a robot that can do anything restaurant employees can do, except better. That’s not hyperbole on our part—it’s a promise straight from the company’s website.

The robot is essentially a large, self-contained assembly line. It can create custom grinds for individual customers (e.g., a patty with 1/3 pork or bison meat), cook the patties, slice toppings and place them onto the burger, and even bag them. There! No more “sandwich labor” necessary.

Robot-Specs.jpg
According to the company, the burger-making bot is also more consistent and more sanitary than human chefs, and—here’s the meat of the matter—can produce roughly 360 burgers per hour, or one burger every 10 seconds.

Momentum co-founder Alexandros Vardakostas doesn't beat about the bush in explaining the ultimate goal of his machine:

“Our device isn’t meant to make employees more efficient,” he told Xconomy. “It’s meant to completely obviate them.”

“Our device isn’t meant to make employees more efficient. It’s meant to completely obviate them.”
Sounds pretty evil, right? Serious supervillain stuff.

But while the immediate implications for fast food workers are grim, the long-term effects are less clear. Will mass automation of low-wage work lead to widespread unemployment and social decay, or will the displaced workers simply move into new fields spun off from this so-called "third industrial revolution"?

Momentum addresses this question on its website, and even pledges to offer help to line cooks who lose their jobs to more efficient robot chefs:

"Our goal is to offer discounted technical training to any former line cook of a restaurant that uses our device. We will certainly need more engineers to design new devices and technicians to service a growing line of automated restaurant solutions."
The company goes on to argue that this sort of thing is nothing new, and that economic theory says giving these jobs to machines is actually a positive thing for the labor market:

“The issue of machines and job displacement has been around for centuries and economists generally accept that technology like ours actually causes an increase in employment. The three factors that contribute to this are 1. the company that makes the robots must hire new employees, 2. the restaurant that uses our robots can expand their frontiers of production which requires hiring more people, and 3. the general public saves money on the reduced cost of our burgers.”
It's a self-serving argument, but one that may have real merit. Still, only time will tell whether our robot underlings will guide us to a Star Trek–style utopia or a world that looks more like The Matrix. Most likely, we'll end up somewhere in between.

[McParadigm]

Yeah, the "This is a fast food worker on $15 minimum wage" graphic was pretty because, if you can successfully automate the process without loss of service, then that will be a fast food worker on $7, $5, or $3 minimum wage, too.

No amount of social defiance, human empathy, or proposed wage reduction was ever going to stop the loom.

[Heathen]

Hopefully some hacker fucks with this robot-cook and all the people who eat that kind of shit die instantly.

[McParadigm]

Hopefully some hacker fucks with this robot-cook and all the people who eat that kind of shit die instantly.

If anything, your average fast food fanatic is probably destined to ingest significantly less snot and semen in the years to come.

[Heathen]

Hopefully some hacker fucks with this robot-cook and all the people who eat that kind of shit die instantly.

If anything, your average fast food fanatic is probably destined to ingest significantly less snot and semen in the years to come.

The next generation of machines will probably allow them to opt for these dressing options.

[Alex]

Hopefully some hacker fucks with this robot-cook and all the people who eat that kind of shit die instantly.

If anything, your average fast food fanatic is probably destined to ingest significantly less snot and semen in the years to come.

The next generation of machines will probably allow them to opt for these dressing options.

i want to give you a backrub

[Heathen]

I feel like I don't deserve it. Opt for [...] options? Terrible wording.

[Alex]

par for the course, chica

[broken iris]

Yeah, the "This is a fast food worker on $15 minimum wage" graphic was pretty because, if you can successfully automate the process without loss of service, then that will be a fast food worker on $7, $5, or $3 minimum wage, too.

No amount of social defiance, human empathy, or proposed wage reduction was ever going to stop the loom.

That's the key though, isn't it? The customer never had to interact with a loom, only the tailor did. In this case it's pinpointing how much the wages will have to go up before their impact on profit outweighs the loss of sales due to the interaction with a McATM.

[McParadigm]

Yeah, the "This is a fast food worker on $15 minimum wage" graphic was pretty because, if you can successfully automate the process without loss of service, then that will be a fast food worker on $7, $5, or $3 minimum wage, too.

No amount of social defiance, human empathy, or proposed wage reduction was ever going to stop the loom.

That's the key though, isn't it? The customer never had to interact with a loom, only the tailor did. In this case it's pinpointing how much the wages will have to go up before their impact on profit outweighs the loss of sales due to the interaction with a McATM.

I know the only reason I ever go to McDonalds is for those touching human interactions.

[McParadigm]

I know the only reason I ever go to McDonalds is for those touching human interactions.

This is also why I choose to stand in line at the grocery store even when the self-service lane is open, by the way. I didn't come all the way to Safeway just to touch myself.