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HorseLord posted:Bugger it, any form of "topping up" wages to an actual living standard is just subsidizing the bastards who won't pay decent wages. But that's never going to be politically acceptable to those working for minimum wage, or even those working for a living wage. It also doesn't recognise the fact that many disabled people are capable of working, just perhaps not to 100% of the ability of someone who is fully able bodied. Ideally we could live in a post-scarcity society and have a guaranteed minimum income. But unless there's a fundamental shift in technology and social development, our politicians have to propose policies framed in the imperfect world they inhabit.
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Oct 15, 2014 15:28
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Shelf Adventure posted:Any links? All the ones I'm coming up with (post ITT SKE) just say they're free and you have to be already teaching at a school to do it. Just to say that apparently getting languages teachers in the more northern parts of Scotland is apparently impossible, so you could get £25k in your first year of doing that. Though you'd need to get GTCS registered, which can be a pain in the rear end if you didn't do your teacher training in Scotland. EDIT: And we don't have any stupid oaths you have to take up here 
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Oct 15, 2014 15:28
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Prince John posted:But that's never going to be politically acceptable to those working for minimum wage, or even those working for a living wage. It also doesn't recognise the fact that many disabled people are capable of working, just perhaps not to 100% of the ability of someone who is fully able bodied. We don't need the Culture's tech to achieve mincome, it could be done today. I do wholly believe we should be working for technological developments that reduce the need for sapient beings to do work of any sort, but it's far from a prerequisite for all sorts of other beneficial projects and policies.
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Oct 15, 2014 15:51
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We're already over halfway there with the technological developments anyway, it's the sociological developments that are sorely lacking. (And some of those were there in the past) e: But an immigrant might get them too  so let's burn everything!
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Oct 15, 2014 16:08
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Prince John posted:But that's never going to be politically acceptable to those working for minimum wage, or even those working for a living wage. It also doesn't recognise the fact that many disabled people are capable of working, just perhaps not to 100% of the ability of someone who is fully able bodied. It was as much the way he expressed himself as the thought you feel he was trying to express. If he had said 'companies are reluctant to employ the disabled because they fear they may be less productive, maybe there should be some sort of incentive for them to do so' then I doubt anyone would be up in arms. But he didn't. He said "I know exactly who you mean, where actually as you say they're not worth the full wage". He went on to say that "if someone wants to work for £2 an hour, and it's working can we actually... " The minimum wage is supposed to be the minimum. The absolute least a company is allowed to pay a human being to work for them. Allowing exceptions to that devalues the concept, and it devalues the people who would be working for it. He didn't just mis-speak, he directly connected a person's value to the wages the receive and implied that the national minimum wage is an arduous burden on companies that needs working around rather than one of the precious few protections people have from exploitation. Honestly, the fact that he believes there are people out there who want to work for £2 an hour and he sees nothing wrong with this should tell you everything you need to know.
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Oct 15, 2014 17:24
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm sure this isn't the first time a minister in this government has floated the idea of paying people with disabilities less than the minimum wage. It's happened at least once before IIRC, so why's this getting so much attention? i think I've become so desensitised to politicians saying horrible poo poo that it barely registers as being notable. 
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Oct 15, 2014 17:46
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The closeness of the general election is probably a factor. That and maybe the media have finally picked up on the Tories nastiness acceleration over the past weeks. That may be giving them too much credit.
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Oct 15, 2014 17:59
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Freud is the same guy who said food bank use had increased because there were more food banks, and that "Clearly food from a food bank is by definition a free good and there’s almost infinite demand."
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Oct 15, 2014 18:08
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Prince John posted:But that's never going to be politically acceptable to those working for minimum wage, or even those working for a living wage. Then raise minimum wage to slightly above living wage. There you go, people in work can feel secure in knowing the freeloaders don't have what they have. Prince John posted:It also doesn't recognise the fact that many disabled people are capable of working, just perhaps not to 100% of the ability of someone who is fully able bodied. Yeah it does. It's two tier. Work, and the employer pays. Don't work, government pays. What any disabled person would choose would be up to them as there is no coercion to work for survival, and they'd be financially safe enough to risk, dare I say it, creating themselves a job. Prince John posted:Ideally we could live in a post-scarcity society and have a guaranteed minimum income. But unless there's a fundamental shift in technology and social development, our politicians have to propose policies framed in the imperfect world they inhabit. Mincome has been tried and it worked without being in a post scarcity economy. It's kinda sad you're handwringing all "sadly, it's just the way it is" as if social change isn't a thing you can create and control by political means. There's, you know, the entire twentieth century there for you to look at. And it makes you look oblivious to the world around you considering that you can't go to the bank, supermarket or mcdonald's without noticing the technological shift you think is required; I can get a happy meal from a touchscreen kiosk now after i've bought my shopping at a self-serve till equipped tescos. It's going to take incredible bullshitting skills to create enough makework to prop up the current order in a few years, because even now most jobs only exist because minimum wage works out cheaper than a robot. HorseLord fucked around with this message at 18:14 on Oct 15, 2014 |
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Oct 15, 2014 18:09
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Prince John posted:I think that's a bit of a straw man - there's no difference in the ability of different races to do productive work. There is, in the sense that racist employers might not like minorities due to ill beliefs fostered by toxic newspapers. Or racist customers who have similar hang-ups about their proximity to minorities. And whilst the Remploy factories (which had been running since the end of the second World War, not something that "Labour ran for the disabled") were not profitable, they provided a fantastic charitable service in making those with more severe disabilities feel a lot more human. But if we're going to play silly bullshit, why not just stop paying pensions because people are useless after retirement?
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Oct 15, 2014 18:21
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Answers Me posted:Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm sure this isn't the first time a minister in this government has floated the idea of paying people with disabilities less than the minimum wage. It's happened at least once before IIRC, so why's this getting so much attention? A Tory backbencher said exactly the same thing back in 2011. I guess the fuss is because this time it's coming from an actual minister. http://www.theguardian.com/society/2011/jun/17/tory-philip-davies-disabled-people-work
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Oct 15, 2014 18:22
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Rat Flavoured Rats posted:Surely they'll be standing a different candidate? Probably, but since UKIP was originally going to stand an animal abuser, it won't reflect well on the party as a whole at a local level and it gives their opponents ammunition in the general election campaign. Granted, they could cover it up or reduce it to a non-issue by next May, but right now I don't see them taking the seat from the Tories.
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Oct 15, 2014 18:27
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David Cameron posted:Let me tell you: I don’t need lectures from anyone about looking after disabled people. So I don’t want to hear any more of that. The dead, disabled son card has been played again, stay classy Prime Minister.
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Oct 15, 2014 19:10
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Mister Adequate posted:We don't need the Culture's tech to achieve mincome, it could be done today. I do wholly believe we should be working for technological developments that reduce the need for sapient beings to do work of any sort, but it's far from a prerequisite for all sorts of other beneficial projects and policies. I would like to believe it could be meaningfully achieved today (i.e. at a level where you could live with all your basic needs met, including housing), but I'm not convinced. The potential disruption to the economy of people opting out of work would be enourmous. I'm having a bit of a failure of imagination seeing how it could work. jabby posted:It was as much the way he expressed himself as the thought you feel he was trying to express.<snip> Yeah, you're probably right and he is actually a bit of poo poo. Bad choice of person to try and defend. HorseLord posted:Then raise minimum wage to slightly above living wage. There you go, people in work can feel secure in knowing the freeloaders don't have what they have. Are wage price spirals a thing anymore, or have things moved on in the world of economics these days? quote:Yeah it does. It's two tier. Work, and the employer pays. Don't work, government pays. What any disabled person would choose would be up to them as there is no coercion to work for survival, and they'd be financially safe enough to risk, dare I say it, creating themselves a job. That two tier choice isn't something the able bodied population enjoy though - people have to work for survival, or struggle along on the pittance doled out by the welfare state. I would harmonise the treatment of the 'working disabled' with the able bodied population, and if that involves 'topping up' as a means to encourage employment, then I feel relatively relaxed about it. Clearly, I'm fully in favour of financial support for those unable to work, be it through disability or injury, and it goes without saying that all the ATOS bullshit needs to stop. quote:Mincome has been tried and it worked without being in a post scarcity economy. Are there any particularly good examples for me to go away and look at? Wikipedia cites France, which is hardly a bastion of eliminated poverty, and even the UK is included in the list, through income support. When I think of mincome, I think £10 or £12k a year before earnings. quote:It's kinda sad you're handwringing all "sadly, it's just the way it is" as if social change isn't a thing you can create and control by political means. There's, you know, the entire twentieth century there for you to look at. And it makes you look oblivious to the world around you considering that you can't go to the bank, supermarket or mcdonald's without noticing the technological shift you think is required; I can get a happy meal from a touchscreen kiosk now after i've bought my shopping at a self-serve till equipped tescos. It's going to take incredible bullshitting skills to create enough makework to prop up the current order in a few years, because even now most jobs only exist because minimum wage works out cheaper than a robot. Yeah, I have a pretty depressive view about the ability of the non-elites to achieve the kind of meaningful change that is needed. You're of the opinion that the current level of technical change will necessitate a mincome in the next few years? Haven't people been saying humans will be replaced by machines precipitating a crisis of unwanted labour for centuries now and somehow we always generate new industries to take up the demand?
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Oct 15, 2014 19:26
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Prince John posted:Yeah, I have a pretty depressive view about the ability of the non-elites to achieve the kind of meaningful change that is needed. You're of the opinion that the current level of technical change will necessitate a mincome in the next few years? Haven't people been saying humans will be replaced by machines precipitating a crisis of unwanted labour for centuries now and somehow we always generate new industries to take up the demand? This guy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU seems to think  it's different this time , but I couldn't tell you if there's anything substantive to the argument. 
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Oct 15, 2014 19:41
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Jack the Lad posted:Freud is the same guy who said food bank use had increased because there were more food banks, and that "Clearly food from a food bank is by definition a free good and there’s almost infinite demand." But we still have to go through the political circus of "he simply mispoke". No, he let the veil slip for a moment and gave us a glimpse into the heart of Tory. "No mask? No mask!"
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Oct 15, 2014 19:44
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Capitalism (and, consequently, the standard of life it affords those at the top) cannot survive a situation in which 99% of humanity is unemployed and unable to purchase the products of labour. It could still be pretty loving miserable though. I can imagine a situation in which most complex production is entirely automated - you have a tiny proportion of people employed designing and monitoring the machinery, and then perhaps 50% of humanity employed in the most menial and unskilled tasks such as service industry, etc. The remaining 40%+ unemployed acting as a reserve labour force to perpetually suppress the value of the labour that is performed. e: I wonder if Dave ever sits down quietly behind his desk and thinks I wonder how much mileage I can get out of my dead, disabled son?" It's one thing to trot it out as a spontaneous remark, but the Prime Minister does not, I think, get to be spontaneous very often. He's a machine made by PR people, and every public word that comes out of his mouth probably needs to be carefully crafted ahead of time. "Mister Prime Minster, we're fairly sure x issue is going to be raised today and we'd like you to deflect it with another reference to your dead son, please." "ok!" communism bitch fucked around with this message at 20:13 on Oct 15, 2014 |
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Oct 15, 2014 19:52
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Autonomous Monster posted:This guy: From the man who brought us videos like 'What is Reddit?' and 'How many countries are there?'. As with all speculation it can get a lot right and a lot wrong. It assumes a demand for wage labour is a necessity although the core of his argument is the exact opposite; that automation makes it unnecessary. It's absolutely true that the amount of capital proportional to labour has grown massively and there are many social forces for why that is so but the key is that they are social forces, not natural and unchangable forces. The major difference between humans and horses is simply politics; either we will actively use politics, the ability to organise and participate in group structures larger than ourselves and larger than basic instincts tell us to, to adapt to this change or humanity will for the most part have to be broken as you would break a horse to keep the system running. I forget where it was said on this forum but we know humanity in general is hosed when drones break up a protest being held by the police. As a part of that I feel he is arguing too strongly for the creative and thinking and learning instincts of machinery; they can examine input and data, find patterns, etc. It seems to rely on the big data argument that with enough data finding links you don't need analysis which will always be wrong to a large extent because it is analysis by humans, assessment of outcomes which will matter (unless there is a robot revolution). As such (as now) it'll be the directors, the owners of capital who have the final say in assessing what is good and bad. Hell that's a pretty good argument for democratic control of industry right there.
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Oct 15, 2014 20:27
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Prince John posted:Some good news on the jobs front. Even if there are quibbles about the types of jobs etc., or that wage inflation lags behind price inflation, it's nice to see the numbers all moving in the right direction, even youth unemployment. BBC posted:So what is going on? How can there be such demand for people while those in jobs apparently continue to get poorer (in real terms, or after adjusting our tiny pay rises for the impact of inflation)?  "
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Oct 15, 2014 20:58
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Hasn't the big drop in unemployment been due to a big drop out from the labour market as has been the case before with the headline grabbing percentage drops? e: Seems a bunch of these economists think so. More students with more debt. Yay recovery... A Sloth fucked around with this message at 21:25 on Oct 15, 2014 |
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Oct 15, 2014 21:22
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Autonomous Monster posted:This guy: That's a great video, even if I don't quite agree with it all, for the reasons stated by namesake above. Stupid question - is he using a really good computer voice, or is that his real accent? He talks in a really weird clipped style for individual words. namesake posted:As such (as now) it'll be the directors, the owners of capital who have the final say in assessing what is good and bad. Hell that's a pretty good argument for democratic control of industry right there. I've just plowed my way through Red, Green and Blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson. One of the key themes in the book is the transition from capitalism to a sort of cooperative-based system where workers own the means of production. Co-op sizes are limited and co-operatives can band together to get the scale of large companies where required. Assuming that this is the closest we can get to democratic control of industry, is it really plausible to think that if every company was forced to emulate the likes of John Lewis etc. that the worst capitalist excesses would be curtailed?
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Oct 15, 2014 21:27
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A Sloth posted:Hasn't the big drop in unemployment been due to a big drop out from the labour market as has been the case before with the headline grabbing percentage drops? Explicitly so over this quarter: quote:The number of jobless people fell by 154,000 to 1.97 million in the three months to the end of August, quote:The number of people in employment rose by 46,000 over the three months, which was the weakest quarterly gain since May last year. quote:Those classed as economically inactive, such as students, long-term sick and those retiring early, increased by 113,000 in the quarter to more than nine million
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Oct 15, 2014 21:30
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Good to see Dave's Long Term Economic Plan is working. With the help of Ian Duncan Smith, more working class single mothers are in part-time agency work than ever! The lucky ones get to balance multiple zero-hour contracts, escaping the dreadful cycle of welfare dependency. Fantastic news.
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Oct 15, 2014 21:44
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Prince John posted:I've just plowed my way through Red, Green and Blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson. One of the key themes in the book is the transition from capitalism to a sort of cooperative-based system where workers own the means of production. Co-op sizes are limited and co-operatives can band together to get the scale of large companies where required. I've always said no, but would be ok with living in such a world. The competitive nature of the market will still require workers pitting themselves against each other directly in terms of cost (of their products), working to the limits of their productive capacity for as little reward as they can manage rather than producing according to their own will. Marketing, quotas, typical management behaviour and politics, short termism would all be maintained but since it's pretty certain that you would at worst develop major inequality between industries rather than individuals the general standard of living for people would be improved.
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Oct 15, 2014 21:45
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Prince John posted:I've just plowed my way through Red, Green and Blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson. how long did it take you out of interest? i gave up a third of the way into Green many years ago and have always been tempted to try over
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Oct 15, 2014 21:57
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Prince John posted:That's a great video, even if I don't quite agree with it all, for the reasons stated by namesake above. Stupid question - is he using a really good computer voice, or is that his real accent? He talks in a really weird clipped style for individual words. That is the youtube v-blogger voice, most of the biggest creators have it. It's like an ultra phone-voice for clarity and so that they can chop up the audio to remove pauses cleanly. CGPGrey also has some minor English accent inflections because he has lived in London for like a decade.
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Oct 15, 2014 22:09
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Prince John posted:That two tier choice isn't something the able bodied population enjoy though - people have to work for survival, or struggle along on the pittance doled out by the welfare state. I would harmonise the treatment of the 'working disabled' with the able bodied population, and if that involves 'topping up' as a means to encourage employment, then I feel relatively relaxed about it. I don't think you're getting it. Sod all forms of "topping up", disabled or no. Mandate a living wage, make the welfare state actually capable of sustaining people. Prince John posted:Yeah, I have a pretty depressive view about the ability of the non-elites to achieve the kind of meaningful change that is needed. You're of the opinion that the current level of technical change will necessitate a mincome in the next few years? Haven't people been saying humans will be replaced by machines precipitating a crisis of unwanted labour for centuries now and somehow we always generate new industries to take up the demand? As I've pointed out there's been a trend towards replacing customer-facing retail jobs with self serve tills ever since the technologies became cheaper than workers. Even McDonalds do this, when it comes time to redecorate. This is when brick and mortar itself isn't replaced for cheaper, large sections of the highstreet have been buried by amazon.com. What new industry is absorbing those displaced? HorseLord fucked around with this message at 23:03 on Oct 15, 2014 |
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Oct 15, 2014 22:49
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Cerv posted:how long did it take you out of interest? Ah sorry, that was slightly misleading - I cheat and have been listening to it on Audible on my phone as I walk to work each day and treck around town for lunch. I found that I wasn't finding the time to read books for fun anymore, so it seemed like a good idea and some of the narrators can be quite immersive with different voices. If it helps, the length of the audio recordings are: Red Mars: 24h Green Mars: 27h Blue Mars: 32h Maybe knock a third off if you're a fast reader? For what it's worth, I would strongly recommend having a second stab at it. He's a really laborious writer at times, but it really scratches the sci-fi nerd itch later on, especially if you like mega engineering. In Blue Mars, without wanting to say too much, there's a lot more focus on the theoretical building blocks of a virgin society (social, political and economic) which I found quite interesting. twoot posted:That is the youtube v-blogger voice, most of the biggest creators have it. It's like an ultra phone-voice for clarity and so that they can chop up the audio to remove pauses cleanly. Thanks, interesting! HorseLord posted:I don't think you're getting it. Sod all forms of "topping up", disabled or no. Mandate a living wage, make the welfare state actually capable of sustaining people. No, I do get your point of view, I'm just not sure how viable it is. Given that you're proposing this as a structural measure, is it affordable, given that we're not going to be anywhere near a balanced budget for years yet? Is there a risk of a wage price spiral, like I mentioned in my earlier post? quote:As I've pointed out there's been a trend towards replacing customer-facing retail jobs with self serve tills ever since the technologies became cheaper than workers. Even McDonalds do this, when it comes time to redecorate. This is when brick and mortar itself isn't replaced for cheaper, large sections of the highstreet have been buried by amazon.com. What new industry is absorbing those displaced? I honestly don't know, but presumably something is? I haven't stumbled across any articles suggesting the large unemployment of recent years was related to anything other than the credit crunch and subsequent recession. Are you suggesting that a significant portion is due to replacement by machines?
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Oct 15, 2014 23:52
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Oberleutnant posted:Capitalism (and, consequently, the standard of life it affords those at the top) cannot survive a situation in which 99% of humanity is unemployed and unable to purchase the products of labour. It could still be pretty loving miserable though. I can imagine a situation in which most complex production is entirely automated - you have a tiny proportion of people employed designing and monitoring the machinery, and then perhaps 50% of humanity employed in the most menial and unskilled tasks such as service industry, etc. The remaining 40%+ unemployed acting as a reserve labour force to perpetually suppress the value of the labour that is performed. As much as communists have espoused the image of a burly working man wielding his hammer or sickle, a significant part of what Marx wrote about was that automaton is a good thing, that we should use and research and engineer labour-saving devices to get the toad of work off our collective backs as much as possible. The problem is that under capitalism labour-saving means savings-on-the-cost-of-labour. Instead of 'sweet! we can do four hour days now and produce the same amount! let's learn instruments and hug our children!' it's mass unemployment and still employed workers being forced to do more because of the rising threat of unemployment. It's the most perverse thing; a group of workers designs a genuinely useful, positive machine, another group of workers builds it, another group of workers ships it out, and the net effect is that workers suffer. There are some skilled jobs that could never be automated, I don't think you could ever have a non-human nurse for example, but otherwise yeah that situation is depressingly plausible.
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Oct 16, 2014 00:11
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I just (finally) got around to renewing my membership of the Lib Dems. I barely know why I do this to myself anymore. Next May's going to be an absolute massacre.
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Oct 16, 2014 00:27
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So Scotland will have a female First Minister and the three largest parties will be led be women; guess how the Scottish Sun covers this historic event You see, it's the ovaries that are the important part.
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Oct 16, 2014 01:06
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She's no black eyed ghost child.
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Oct 16, 2014 07:22
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StateOfException posted:I just (finally) got around to renewing my membership of the Lib Dems. Personally, I know why I don't (because they campaigned on one thing and did triple of the opposite).
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Oct 16, 2014 10:12
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gently caress's sake, and there are some people who actually believe feminism is unnecessary...
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Oct 16, 2014 10:45
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"Scottish Sun Classical Music Special"
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Oct 16, 2014 10:51
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Say Nothing posted:Let's ride! Cross post from the schadenfreude thread.
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Oct 16, 2014 10:52
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Phoon posted:"Scottish Sun Classical Music Special" 
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Oct 16, 2014 11:05
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I like the little Mozart head like "hey what's going on here?"
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Oct 16, 2014 11:07
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Mis-use of the word "twerking". The press try to fit it into everything, I thought it was just a bum dance people have done for ages and it got a name in the '90s and suddenly it's a huge deal now. Saw the Sun on sale in a display thing at about two feet off the ground right at the doors of my local Tesco this morning too, right where all the kiddies have to see the "twerking boobs". I'm no prude, I mean I'm fine with naked breasts on sunbathers or on nursing mums etc., but when it's clearly in a sexualised context like that and meant to titillate the pervy readers, they should be on the top shelf. If folks ITT haven't signed the No More Page 3 petition please do.
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Oct 16, 2014 11:24
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Stottie Kyek posted:Mis-use of the word "twerking". The press try to fit it into everything, Not nearly as much as "selfie", which they have mis-used so horribly the word has lost all of what little meaning it ever had.
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Oct 16, 2014 11:46
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