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Stop the federal reserve's devaluing of our currency!
Your currency has nothing to do with it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ottomobeale
One of those things that I think you are wrong...
And I hope that I am wrong and you are correct.
I am right. The effects are over-estimated for every field and industry.
A good example is the legal field, where it has been claimed that 69% of lawyer, paralegal and legal administrative assistants will be eliminated.
The actual figure is closer to 3%.
I just talked with some attorneys about this a few weeks ago. I'm all in favor of AI in the legal field, because one thing it will to is give greater access to legal services to a large number of people who cannot currently afford legal services.
Does giving greater access reduce the number of legal professionals? No, but the methodology is based on the flawed logic that it will.
Even so, access is only to certain select fields of law, primarily family law dealing with divorce, child custody, probate and estate planning.
There are severe limitations on AI in the legal field.
Take court appearances for example. A computer is not going to show up in court for you, and believe me, you wouldn't want a robot to do that.
The same is true for negotiations. In tort law, your attorney will always attempt to negotiate a settlement with an insurance company or other defendant, because legal action is always the last resort. Negotiations are also a large part of business and contract law, and also bankruptcy law, like creditor meetings.
AI is simply incapable of negotiating anything. Maybe 150 to 200 years from now, but not now, and not for anytime in the foreseeable future.
Fact investigation is something else AI is simply incapable of doing. That's also true for advising, communicating and developing legal strategy.
Legal research, legal writing and document drafting are all areas where AI fails miserably.
If you doubt, look at IBM's Watson and the debate thing. It requires human interaction. If AI requires human interaction, then it's not replacing jobs.
Where AI does have at least some impact is document production, also known as "coding."
We used to photocopy documents, then scan them, then code them by entering the date the document was created, the author(s), the recipient(s), the document type, the title or subject, a brief synopsis of the text, and maybe some key-words.
Now, we scan documents directly, and if copies are needed they're printed from the scanned images, and then they're coded.
That's reduced the number of labor hours, but not the number of workers.
Anyway, a chemical company had a number of illegal dumping sites scattered across several States which it sometimes referred to in documents as "site X."
The chemical company failed to disclose that fact to the company that bought them, and that company now inherited all of the criminal and civil liability associated with the illegal dumping sites.
The AI software that did the automated coding had no problem finding "site X" in documents, but it was unable and incapable of finding subtle references to "site X."
That left the attorneys flat-footed, because opposing counsel used people instead of the AI coding software (there are two companies that make such software) and they caught the subtle references, while the AI couldn't.
AI just can't think like a human. It might come close in approximation, but it will never be 100%.
AI is always going to require human interaction, and it's impact on jobs is greatly over-exaggerated.
Quote:
Originally Posted by OhioJB
My way of doing it:
1) Would start by making the minimum wage $10.50/hour.
Why?
Your own government says $6.73/hour is enough to live on in many areas of the US.
Maybe one day you'll understand that the US is not Iceland with a population of 379,000 people and a uniform Cost-of-Living.
I volunteered with Food Pantries (Food Bank, or whatever is the local vernacular) in the Chicago area all the time. Guess what? There were people who did "the circuit" every time they knew new/more food would be available. They went from one Food Pantry to the next, collecting as much free food as they could get.
"There were people" is one thing. All or most poor people as a rule is another thing...
Define "pretty good." People's lives depend on civil engineers, and the mistakes made by those who earned their degrees from "pretty good" schools and the subsequent casualties are epic.
Short answer is not to think there will ever be a day when we don't have poor people and/or rich people, but there is what can be done to help limit the disparities of opportunity between those born disadvantaged vs those born with advantage.
The income-gap between rich and poor has very little to do with opportunity. It is mostly to do with ingrained attitudes and natural ability.
It is already "free" for the poor to go to college. In fact, they effectively get paid to go. And yet almost none of them go. And the high school dropout-rate in urban areas is often over 50%.
You could double, triple, or quadruple spending on "education" and it would be more-likely to increase the gap between rich and poor than narrow it.
Healthcare also has virtually zero impact on the gap between rich and poor. And while poor people often eat less-healthily, it isn't because they don't have access to healthy foods. It is because they like to eat unhealthy foods.
Also, "wealth-inequality" and "income-equality" are completely different. People with the same income, don't have the same amount of wealth. Some will spend their money lavishly, while others will be more apt to save and invest it.
Also, what we call "wealth" is primarily real-estate and the stock-market. And the people who are wealthy, don't necessarily have a large income. In fact, many of the companies of some of the wealthiest people, operate at a loss. A CEO could earn $1 a year in direct compensation, and yet earn billions a year from his stocks.
And what causes stock prices to rise seemingly indefinitely at rates far faster than inflation? Well, where does the influx of new dollars come from?
Moreover, would you actually want wealth to be equal? Wouldn't it be more-efficient if the wealth was held by a small group of the most-intelligent, most-ambitious, and most-capable men? If you had a thousand acres of land, would it be better if a hundred people each owned 10 acres, or if two-three people owned all of it and everyone else worked for them?
It might feel nice in theory for everyone to own equal shares, but if no one owned large tracts of land, would tractors even exist? Who would make them? And what good is a tractor on only few acres? These mega-tractors are what allows only 2% of the population to be engaged in agriculture relative to the more than 90% in the past. The more land a farm owns, the bigger and more-productive their equipment and their farm.
And generally-speaking, the bigger a corporation is, the more-efficient it tends to be. Wal-mart is certainly more-efficient than mom-and-pop stores. So to maximize-efficiency, the ideal would be to centralize the means of production into basically as few hands as possible, while still having competition. And you don't need a hundred competitors, only a few.
You can't have "progress" without inequality. If you want equality, you'll have to be happy being a dirt-farmer.
The income-gap between rich and poor has very little to do with opportunity. It is mostly to do with ingrained attitudes and natural ability.
It is already "free" for the poor to go to college. In fact, they effectively get paid to go. And yet almost none of them go. And the high school dropout-rate in urban areas is often over 50%.
You could double, triple, or quadruple spending on "education" and it would be more-likely to increase the gap between rich and poor than narrow it.
Healthcare also has virtually zero impact on the gap between rich and poor. And while poor people often eat less-healthily, it isn't because they don't have access to healthy foods. It is because they like to eat unhealthy foods.
Also, "wealth-inequality" and "income-equality" are completely different. People with the same income, don't have the same amount of wealth. Some will spend their money lavishly, while others will be more apt to save and invest it.
Also, what we call "wealth" is primarily real-estate and the stock-market. And the people who are wealthy, don't necessarily have a large income. In fact, many of the companies of some of the wealthiest people, operate at a loss. A CEO could earn $1 a year in direct compensation, and yet earn billions a year from his stocks.
And what causes stock prices to rise seemingly indefinitely at rates far faster than inflation? Well, where does the influx of new dollars come from?
Moreover, would you actually want wealth to be equal? Wouldn't it be more-efficient if the wealth was held by a small group of the most-intelligent, most-ambitious, and most-capable men? If you had a thousand acres of land, would it be better if a hundred people each owned 10 acres, or if two-three people owned all of it and everyone else worked for them?
It might feel nice in theory for everyone to own equal shares, but if no one owned large tracts of land, would tractors even exist? Who would make them? And what good is a tractor on only few acres? These mega-tractors are what allows only 2% of the population to be engaged in agriculture relative to the more than 90% in the past. The more land a farm owns, the bigger and more-productive their equipment and their farm.
And generally-speaking, the bigger a corporation is, the more-efficient it tends to be. Wal-mart is certainly more-efficient than mom-and-pop stores. So to maximize-efficiency, the ideal would be to centralize the means of production into basically as few hands as possible, while still having competition. And you don't need a hundred competitors, only a few.
You can't have "progress" without inequality. If you want equality, you'll have to be happy being a dirt-farmer.
I could go down the line with just about every proclamation you make and argue these points, but I don't have that sort of time and to what end? Right?
I spent the latter part of my career working in the field of education, helping mostly working adults (or not working adults) get their college degree, but aside from that experience there is all it took to get our two kids through college. If free, I have to wonder, why did it cost us so much and even with our contribution, both our kids had to take on student loan debt. Perhaps the question is more about what we get for "free" and what it takes to get a degree that actually provides a ROI. MIght ask the hundreds I helped to get their online college degrees how "free" even those degrees were.
And this again at the end, about "if you want equality." That's simply not the idea, but just how many people love to use this straw man argument that I'm not about to entertain again...
Yes, the monopolies won't get bigger and stronger when the government steps away.
The good old 1890's, yep everything was great for the common man.
The 1890's had the law(government) bought off by the rich. No different than today.
Law enforcement(government) made sure the competition was run out of town, or their business burnt to the ground.
Shell Oil Corporation owns the Deer Park, TX Police Dept.
I volunteered with Food Pantries (Food Bank, or whatever is the local vernacular) in the Chicago area all the time. Guess what? There were people who did "the circuit" every time they knew new/more food would be available. They went from one Food Pantry to the next, collecting as much free food as they could get.
Not a case in the area where I live.
When I worked in S.A., all customers names were in the data base, ( in the computer.)
They couldn't get anything other than their usual set ( proteins, starches- canned fruit-vegetables - whatever was available according to the list) once a month. The other food pantry in town was cross -referencing that data base and was not allowing people to use it once a month as well, once S.A food pantry has been used.
And yes, you bet, if people are running short on food, they SHOULD go from place to place, ( the way you describe,) because if they can find only bread or canned vegetables in one place, they can find meat/dairy products in the other.
With that being said, for example state of Washington ( which used to be fairly wealthy,) would allow people to come to the food banks as much as they needed. And so on different days they were looking for different products - whatever was available ( I know Ukrainians were using this system a lot, since these are the people who don't like to "go out" to McDonalds or what's not, but mostly cook at home.) They are very thrifty, so it was helping them to save money to pay the bills.
However we are talking about the WEALTHY state here.
But for example a black guy who was coming to pick up some free bread and sweets (with expired date on them, usually) that our store was putting out, told me that there was NOTHING like that in the area he was originally from (South Carolina from what I remember.)
Now Illinois is not known to be a "wealthy state," so even if what you are saying is true, and people ARE allowed to use the food banks as much as they need, I can only imagine the crumbles they find at each and every place.
Being originally from the Soviet Union, even I was appalled by the POVERTY LEVEL of the black population in the US.
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