The Global Elite: Rigging the Rules That Fuel Inequality

[DigitalDave]

This is a thoughtful post which I like. You're right, we're nowhere near full automation YET. But all of the jobs you're saying we'll need manpower to fill will increasingly be taken over by the software/hardware we build - they are two ends of a tunnel moving toward one another; eventually they will collide. Eventually, (and the time when it will exactly happen is completely debatable) the machines will be self-aware and responsible for building and improving themselves, negating the need for all that manpower. It's coming sooner than many people think. We went from the Wright Brothers to the Moon Landing in well under the average American human lifespan.

The ever changing landscape that is software will never remove the need for developers. It can only create more opportunity for the less skilled. We help people do their every day jobs with less effort. Of course, there are sectors in our industry that helps US do our every day jobs with less effort, but nevertheless, we will be employed. Computers will always need someone to teach them, computers will always need someone to design them, computers will always need materials, computers will always need someone to sell them, and computers will always need an upgrade.

We're past the point of needing people to learn basic computing skills - it wouldn't do much good anyway, because those skills would become obsolete not long after they'd finished learning what they "needed" to know in the first place. Besides, we're continuously turning out people around the world with advanced computing skills, and they are continuously turning out technology that requires less people to maintain it, work with it etc, and indeed technology continues ramping up feeding a need for even fewer yet even more specialized tech workers with even more advanced computing skills all moving up to an ever sharpening point of expertise and further leaving more and more people behind as their skills and/or ability to learn them become increasingly obsolete as the technology continues to become more advanced.

I beg to differ. There are still other jobs to be had other than something a computer science degree will supply. We still need to prepare those sectors for what's ahead. They will more likely than not, have a computer or a tablet to do their job.

On the tech side, the more specialized things have become, the more jobs have been created. It's quite the opposite from what you assume. Here's an example of how things have evolved. When I started programming 13 years ago, I built websites from scratch in classic ASP and sometimes in Perl. I also knew Coldfusion. Those were the three big languages used to build a site. I could do any of them. Since then, we've seen a multitude of new languages arrive and take over niche markets. I still get calls asking to replace old Coldfusion sites into some of these new technologies. So now there is a job for us 'old foggies' still, but jobs for the new breed as well. Not only that, but the new breed has become more specialized within itself. No longer so they build a site from scratch, they form teams to handle different aspects of the site. We have UI developers specializing in whatever Javascript library they choose, and a .Net, Python, Ruby, etc.... developer handling the server scripting. Very rarely does a .Net developer take the time to learn Python because there is just too much to learn in the .Net world. It's created more jobs as skills have become more specialized. I used to know them all, now I only know a tiny portion. Yet my skills are sought out just as a Python developers skills are sought out, or a Java developers are. This is why there are now 4 jobs for every one of us.

Progress isn't learning basic technological skills in order to function, progress is changing the idea of what "function" means or what it is at its essence. It is not something we fuel with employable people from here on out, it is a process that continually puts more people out of work as it moves forward and upward. The jobs are becoming more specialized, and as the machines improve, less specialized workers are needed, and so it goes, and so it goes...

We don't defeat anything by taxing big business, we do it as a means to try and hang on to increasingly automated big business' coattails and continue to live somewhat well as technological innovation carries forward leaving the vastly lesser skilled workers (a huge majority, by the way) with no means of income. We cannot make every person alive into ever-increasingly advanced computer programmers, or software engineers, or this, or that, etc, so what are we to do - let everyone fend for themselves in an ever-advancing digital age? I think you know how that would go.

What we defeat is our ability to sustain employment with a tax rate that high. It is essentially an admission that we will eventually be doomed so let's just try and create as much havoc as possible on the way out. No, not everyone needs to be a computer programmer. We computer programmers though, will need sustenance, entertainment, a vacation once in a while, somewhere to live, you know, we need to survive and enjoy life too. So hopefully we will still have someone to make me a tasty sandwich for lunch. Or I can just make one in the 3d-printer!

That said, progress itself isn't an entity that is defeating us, it's transitioning us into a new kind of existence beyond what we'd traditionally come to know as "the norm". That transition is going to hurt for a while until we get to the other side, and until full automation becomes 'the new norm'. Maybe trying to cushion the blow of mass unemployment in the less technological sectors by building out a large social safety net isn't the answer - that may be true - but it's still better than resting on the tattered support systems we currently have on hand and thinking that they will sustain us as we move to 50% unemployment and beyond.

How about we just change our support systems to be more efficient as well, just like the rest of the economy is doing? Of course, we could just throw more money at failed policies, drain those they would create more efficient systems of any chance of growth, and go down down down into a burning ring of fire. That's what I like to call a slow death. You know, I'd prefer to be shot in the head like one of those zombies in the shows I like to watch than bleed out.

 

[Canceled.2014.1]

Sounds great on paper. Until you realize just how many people live in our society, and how completely non-feasible it is to educate most of our employable people in science and tech - and how would you pay for it? The cost of doing that would be enormous. There are millions of people working office jobs, government jobs, healthcare jobs, banking jobs, service sector jobs that would be completely out of their depth and in no way able to learn software engineering, or advanced computing in order to perform all of these so-called millions of new high tech jobs. And even IF you could educate all these people, even IF you could pay for it, and even IF the vast millions of people could all learn it - who's going to employ and pay all of these tens of millions of people a living wage?

You're not going to take a society full of paper pushers, data collectors and "would you like fries with that" workers and magically change them into the next generation of quantum engineers. Give me a break.

So, in the face of rampant progress and as all those people are laid off when a machine can do what they do without the need for breaks, salaries, benefits, pensions, etc - what are we to do with all of these millions of people not capable of learning the intricacies of A.I.? Let them all fend for themselves? And this seems like a more sane answer than asking the big corporations to give up big chunks of their profits in the mean time to ensure all these people are taken care of? Great plan.

So it is impossible to pay for better education, but you advocate taxing businesses 90% and more to fill coffers for the gov't?

 

[maineman]

The notion that Government should be the "arbiter" of what is fair and "adjust" wealth distribution is certainly Marxist in nature you incredibly dense buffoon.

It is also incredibly stupid to believe that corporations do not pass on their tax burden and costs of doing business to the consumers.

Do you even read the ignorant stupidity you type out before you hit the "post" button?

Good lord, you're special brand of stupidity should be put in a display case.

actually, if you want to have an argument about progressive income tax, that ship has sailed long ago. You ARE aware, are you not, that our country has had progressive income tax for over a century now? Would you say that the Eisenhower administration was Marxist when the top marginal tax rate was above 90%? yes or no?

 

[maineman]

Are you retarded? He was responding to your moronic rant about “adjusting the obscene inequity of the distribution of wealth in this country” you dishonest moron. What the fuck does that have to do with a progressive income tax dunce?

Damn you are one stupid MoFo.

can you REALLY be that stupid? Do you know what a progressive income tax DOES? Here's a clue... it adjusts the inequity between the wealthy and the poor by taxing the wealthy a greater percentage of their income than the poor are taxed.

good lord.... you have shown me a whole new level of ignorance here! wow!

 

[/MSG/]

And this seems like a more sane answer than asking the big corporations to give up big chunks of their profits in the mean time to ensure all these people are taken care of? Great plan.

So increasing the cost of business even further will somehow convince employers to hire more people, instead of more machines, how exactly?

 

[maineman]

what does progressive income tax have to do with adjusting the inequity of the distribution of wealth?

I am sitting here unable to contain a waterfall of chuckles thinking about how Truth Deflector actually asked that question.

Unbelievable. What does it have to do with it? It has EVERYTHING to do with it is the short answer!

:lol:

 

[maineman]

and truth deflector is strangely silent. Conjuring up some more bloviating insults to deflect the conversation from his own PROFOUND stupidity.

"What does progressive income tax have to do with adjusting the obscene inequity of the distribution of wealth in this country?"

Yep... he actually asked that question.

I remain stunned... and my sides are started to ache just a little bit from this lengthy spate of chuckling.

 

[signalmankenneth]

Inside the Obscene Lifestyles of the New Global Super-Rich

Meet the oligarch next door.

http://www.alternet.org/print/economy/super-rich-cnbc

 

[canceled.2021.1]

can you REALLY be that stupid? Do you know what a progressive income tax DOES? Here's a clue... it adjusts the inequity between the wealthy and the poor by taxing the wealthy a greater percentage of their income than the poor are taxed.

good lord.... you have shown me a whole new level of ignorance here! wow!

Well we have one of the most "progressive" income taxes in the world and yet here you sit whining and moaning about income inequality.


But reading your post it sounds like you are saying that instead of lifting up the poor, you are tearing down the wealthy. Nothing in your post highlights how the poor persons life improves. Maybe you can explain that?

 

[canceled.2021.1]

what does progressive income tax have to do with adjusting the inequity of the distribution of wealth?

I am sitting here unable to contain a waterfall of chuckles thinking about how Truth Deflector actually asked that question.

Unbelievable. What does it have to do with it? It has EVERYTHING to do with it is the short answer!

:lol:

So let's review your thesis.

Person A has 1000 times as much wealth as Person B. Without knowing anything else, you assume that it is not "fair" that Person A has all of that wealth. So you use the power of the government to confiscate that wealth and give it to someone who hasn't earned it. That is stealing. Just because you hide behind the government doesn't make it less so.

What if a person who made 1000 times less than you just came to your house and stole money for you? Are they stealing? Or are they merely reducing income inequality?

 

[maineman]

again.... if you two morons want to debate the efficacy of progressive income tax, I remind you that that ship sailed a long long time ago. It was designed - from it's very inception to adjust the inequality of the distribution of wealth in this country. It reached its most "progressive" levels during the administration of Dwight D. Eisenhower where it was nearly two and a half times more "progressive" than it is today.

and it is interesting that the usually loquacious truth deflector has remained strangely silent ever since the idiocy of his remarks was exposed.

 

[evince]

can you REALLY be that stupid? Do you know what a progressive income tax DOES? Here's a clue... it adjusts the inequity between the wealthy and the poor by taxing the wealthy a greater percentage of their income than the poor are taxed.

good lord.... you have shown me a whole new level of ignorance here! wow!

the republican base is really fucking stupid.


thank ronny for courting these know nothing voters.

that and cheating is they only way they win anymore

 

[evince]

So increasing the cost of business even further will somehow convince employers to hire more people, instead of more machines, how exactly?

consumers cant buy shit if they don't have disposable income fool.

 

[MAGA MAN]

The old 'ship has sailed' argument. Isn't that how the Democrat Party justified slavery?

Now they want to enslave the successful.

 

[maineman]

So Eisenhower wanted to enslave the successful? interesting thesis.

 

[maineman]

what does progressive income tax have to do with adjusting the inequity of the distribution of wealth?

I am sitting here unable to contain a waterfall of chuckles thinking about how Truth Deflector actually asked that question.

Unbelievable. What does it have to do with it? It has EVERYTHING to do with it is the short answer!

:lol:

Truth deflector! No comment???
:lol:

 

[maineman]

::: crickets chirping :::

 

[MAGA MAN]

So Eisenhower wanted to enslave the successful? interesting thesis.

Those rates were reduced from the Roosevelt era.

 

[Truth Detector]

again.... if you two morons want to debate the efficacy of progressive income tax, I remind you that that ship sailed a long long time ago. It was designed - from it's very inception to adjust the inequality of the distribution of wealth in this country. It reached its most "progressive" levels during the administration of Dwight D. Eisenhower where it was nearly two and a half times more "progressive" than it is today.

and it is interesting that the usually loquacious truth deflector has remained strangely silent ever since the idiocy of his remarks was exposed.

Dear shit-for-brains; it is not about having a progressive tax. But your teensy weensy brain cannot comprehend much beyond the DNC talking points you are fed.

It is how that taxation is used and the efforts by dishonest leftist politicians to "redistribute" wealth in order to dupe simpletons like you into voting for them because it makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside that you "care" more than anyone else on the planet.

So you see dunce, it is not an argument about progressive taxation, but about the concept of taking money from one class, to give it to another in the false belief that it will improve people's lives.

But it doesn't; and government redistribution schemes and the purveyors of fairness are a historic failure. Unfortunately, there are millions of low information fools like you that can't seem to learn from lifes lessons and history and who think winning is about how many Democrats you can place in Government and not about the failures of their ideology.

Im amused that you think wealth is about inequality and that politicians can "adjust" it by taking it from those who earn it and giving it to those who elect them. It's a buffoonish ideological view that can only be argued by painfully stupid individuals.

It's almost as stupid as claiming that the failure of our educational institutions can be attributed to a lack of funding.

 

[Truth Detector]

Truth deflector! No comment???
:lol:

Dear shit-for-brains; I work for a living. I don't cling to every moronic post you make thinking they need a rebuttal. The ignorance contained in most of what you post is sufficiently in evidence without the need for rebuttal.

Dunce.