and participate in political censoring.

anyway!

So then, why not use the cheaper / open DB, and build out the thing with that room full of people?

Fair question, particularly given the extreme size in this case.

way more to prevent crime than investment in these kinds of things will.

Tax the fuck out of the regressives, like we used to do, so they keep their wealth in motion, in business, instead of gambling and big boats. take those dollars, and start another national build out, like we did last time, launch a mission to Mars, and pay for solid education (again), putting a lot of people to work, and presenting them with opportunity.

Excessive crime is what we get for failing to value people properly. It's a priority problem, not a technical one.

And, with that kind of policy in place, hiring a few more officers would be a no brainer too. Keep the fancy code, it might do some good, but it will do one hell of a lot more good coupled with more appropriate trade and tax policy than it will otherwise.

Very long runs can benefit from a nicer cable. Probably not 4000% better though.

One choice is to knock out the gen-ed requirements as quick and cheap as you can, then focus on comp-sci for the degree.

Or...

Start investing in your people skills big, and begin to market yourself.

Both of these are perfectly OK. Interestingly, you still need to do the marketing, whether or not you've got the degree, meaning there is a strong case for just investing a ton of resources in that, using the school to plug gaps.

If it were me, and I chose not to do gen-ed, I would do the following:

1. Get your online portfolio looking sharp. Knock out some projects, document anything else you've done, and put it all up on your domain, detailing where the value is, and what it all means to you personally and professionally. Keep that updated.

2. Do a few projects to highlight areas of passion, interest and skill. Again, document, etc... Also take some time to express who you are as a person, hobbies, kids, life interests, adventures, etc...

3. If you can't make those two look good, make some small investment in somebody who can.

4. Begin to network. Use all the online tools, and be sure and not forget meat-space. Professional lives often revolve around lunch. A few times a month, take interesting people, influential people to lunch, connect, ask for introductions, and follow up on them. Return all networking favors you are granted, and do not stop this process. It should become a way of life, and a part of your overall culture.

This is important because those people who lack the piece of paper are going to get hired by those other people who know their value, rendering the lack of paper largely moot. That is exactly why you need to put your package together and network consistently. The good jobs are often obtained by knowing the right people. The more people you know, the better you've expressed your value to them, the more opportunities you will encounter, and that means more and better jobs throughout your career. This also opens the door for consulting, or running your own show. Both work well, depending on how you plan to carry risk.

I know lots of people with degrees and without, and the most potent ones are those that invest in themselves, and the presentation of themselves. Do it, and it absolutely will pay off, paper or not. There is some discrimination present for those without the paper, but it's not too bad, if you've done the work to deal with it. The beauty of it, like I said, is that you really need to do the work anyway, so just do the work! Net gain all around, regardless of how you choose to deal with education.

Finally, if you have gaps in general presentation, fill them. Your writing skills need to be solid, as do your basic graphic skills. Competency in this has a lot of general value, the most significant one being the clarity only enhances your value proposition, and that is what will score you the better work. The secondary one is communication with the customers, and team project members. You will gravitate toward leadership positions because of that, and as you age, those positions will matter.

There are two general cases.

One is where there isn't a lot of competition. In that scenario, it's a pass through, though the margin difference isn't directly related to the increase in income.

So, if the laborer gets a coupla bucks more, that does not translate into $2 at the product.

In the second scenario, where there is competition, businesses can compete on innovation to take cost out of the product to continue to make it affordable.

Think about it. If we can't pay people enough to live on, the businesses that depend on those people have a problem. It's not a viable business plan to simply pay people something. That puts all the cost and risk onto the laborer, and in that scenario, how do we know the business owner actually is working for it?

We don't.

The reality is, Apple makes enough money to pay a solid wage. So they should pay it, period, because the people are worth it, period.

Why you ask?

It works like this. Life is broken into thirds. One third is basically sleeping, another third (or so) is being who we are, and the last third (or so) is labor. If the wage isn't enough to pay to be who we are, then we are living to work, working to live, and all our time is consumed, denying us the ability to go and do for ourselves. Say cooking food or building / fixing things, raising a family, instead of paying for others to do those things, like we see so often today.

We got unions early on because the buying power per hour worked, and the hours required were denying people the ability to prosper, simply existing to make profit.

That never changes. It always needs to be checked, and unions are one way we do that. minimum wage laws are another

In my state, minimum wage is ok. I think somebody could spend both their available thirds working it and make enough to live on, but that's about it.

So then, what are people to do, when we send the jobs that actually pay something overseas? There is a cost to that you know, and that cost happens to be the need for higher wages, or at least high enough wages that the labor makes sense.

Secondly, we suffer a overall national cost through that outsourcing, in the form of diminished national value. When we don't produce enough to pay for our consumption, we end up owned, or owing, or fighting with those that have done that work, which is the scenario right now.

When companies are making so much, it's entirely justified to expect a living wage working for them, or why bother?

There is always the desperate person right? How desperate are we, given we basically are gutting the opportunity to actually make a living, back filling with service jobs.

Tell you what. I'll back off on the need for unions and much better safety net kinds of things, when the free market people back off, realize there are no free markets, and advocate we return to a manufacturing policy in the US that makes some sense.

Until then, yes! Tax the fuck out of the wealthy, increase the wages, unionize, and do whatever it takes to keep people in a situation where they can actually labor a fair days work, and get paid a fair days wage.

One more thing to consider. We always need janitors, sales people, laundry, etc... Never goes away, so why can't we pay them? The only real reason is sheer greed, and a shitty policy. Compared to most of the world, we look like dumb asses, not making as much as we need to, then bitching about how massive compensation at the top, wars, and the sending of our jobs, along with foreign ownership of things is breaking the bank.

"bad working conditions" are were the labor is more costly than the reward given for the labor. It doesn't have to be physically bad, just enough of a time drain that somebody laboring that way does not have the time to do for themselves, which is the majority case on minimum wage jobs.

On top of all of that, we have these free market, corporate asses wanting to undo the few safety net, New Deal type programs we have running, still keeping wages flat, as if somehow all the risk will just go away!

I don't care that they don't want to reduce their margins. People don't want to work for shit 60-80 hours a week to pay for the basics either.

That is what unions and labor movements are for.

should be expected to work for a net loss, which a lot of minimum wage jobs are.

For luxury goods, I prefer a fairly free market. We don't need those things, we want them.

And there are no free markets anywhere in the world. Here, in the US, the law is we the people form the government, and it exists to protect us so that we may prosper and better enjoy being the free people we are. That government grants the authority for business to operate, and again, business meets demand, in other words, it serves us, so that we may better enjoy being the free people we are.

Now, socializing some things make great sense! Fire, police, HEALTH CARE, etc...

Other things don't make a lot of sense, like say iPads.

Here's the interesting part. When we balance that properly, the dude making $10 at retail can actually afford the products! When we don't balance that well, like we are failing to do in the US right now, cost and risk consumes too much of that income, meaning the laborer cannot afford the product!

The average person in the US today sees huge cost and risk now, compared to what they saw 30 years ago, and wages have been flat over that time. Health care has gone up huge, mostly because we allow private insurers to segment risk, and keep nearly 30 percent just because they want to, delivering NO value for it. All they are is money changers, and guess what?

When uncle sam does it, the margin on that is a few percent. When a private insurer does it, their CEO makes a ton, and they build expensive buildings and so on, taking up to 30 percent. That's right out of our pockets, and we get nothing for it. No wonder so many other nations either socialize their health care access costs, or they very tightly regulate them, so they get a very high value for their dollar.

Just that one effort here would change the game considerably.

Joe blow making $15 / hour can barely afford to eat, pay rent, and maybe buy a thing or two. Now, the standard line is, "improve yourself and make more money!" Well, what if there just isn't a whole lot of opportunity to do that?

That is what outsourcing did to us. Family wage jobs were replaced with service class jobs, and frankly, there aren't enough good jobs to resolve the problem, meaning most of the people are not making enough money, most of the time, taking on costs and risks they should not have to.

Raising a family, saving a little for retirement, getting access to health care exceeds 30K / year in most places. What are most of the jobs paying?

Less than that, so we have a problem, and that problem is people are not valued properly, and that means demand isn't where it needs to be, and we are racing to the bottom, draining the wealth right out of the nation, leaving us poor.

Here's what will happen, if we don't change that, increasing our domestic production to a level where it pays for our consumption. Right now, we don't do that, with a lot of money flowing out of the nation every day.

1. We will be owned by those people who do that work

2. There will be a very significant reduction in the standard of living, which can already be seen in terms of significantly reduced job opportunity, rotting infrastructure, rapidly escalating costs and risks, etc...

3. We might choose to fight about it, taking wealth from some other nation to cover our ass, since we don't do enough to take care of our own proper right now.

4. People die sooner.

The buying power per hour worked needs to come up, and the average person needs to see less cost and risk, or those things will come to pass.

Unions can help with that, bringing wages up. National manufacturing policy can do some serious damage on the problem through tariffs and other means to make it worth it to make it here, and either consume it here (good), and export it over there(also good, both better)

Finally, we can invest in domestic works of all kinds, so that we generate a lot of demand for said domestic production, thus circulating more of the dollars domestically more of the time. What does that do? It reduces the need to send dollars out of the nation to meet our basic needs, which will significantly reduce our debt burden over time.

Again, we have that debt because we've cut production, cut taxes on the wealthy and corporations (who don't come anywhere close to paying the rates that are on the books now, let alone higher ones), started very expensive wars, increased the cost of education, and allowed corporations to push cost and risk onto the middle class.

That all adds up people, and the whole "work harder", or "improve yourself" doesn't cut it when the majority of people do not see the opportunity necessary to keep up with the increased burden they have today.

And I'm writing that on career number three, each one jumping ahead of outsource waves that took most of my peers into far lower wages than they had before it happened, and it's pyramid! Each wave reduces the pool of family wage jobs, which employ the very best or lucky, leaving most people trapped, living beneath their means, praying that risk doesn't hit them.

Most of the hard ass types I meet, that try and call it communism just haven't been kicked in the teeth yet. It will happen to most, and when it happens to you, which is increasingly likely under the current manufacturing policy, which is no policy to speak of, you just remember what I wrote here, and know I told you so big.

If you don't pay the people enough to afford the products, the labor value is out of balance.

And you have it exactly right! People need to make more, because we've not compensated them properly for a very long time. Other nations demonstrate every day that it is entirely possible to run a corporation, turn a fine profit, and deliver enough money back to the laborer for a modest life.

That should be true for most laborers. It was true for most laborers, until we decided to go down the trickle down road, free market economically regressive wet dream.

Wages need to come up, benefits need to come up, and taxes on the wealthy and corporations need to come up. And that means big corporations and the wealthy will make less. They still will make plenty, make no mistake about that, but rather than over exploit people, they might reconsider that huge CEO compensation...

Right now, large corporations have structured things so that many people are undervalued.

When we've got people working two and three part time, minimum wage jobs, that's not properly valuing them. Ideally, you work, and you get enough to live, eat, and enjoy some free time. Proper health care needs to be a part of that as well.

Now, I don't want employers doing that. Much better when we just make it a blanket policy, taking it off the backs of the employers.

Better still?

Tax the big corporations and very wealthy more to pay for all the wealth those undervalued laborers created for them.

And remember, there are no free markets anywhere in the world. We have a government to protect us from many things, over exploitation being one of them, and unions help with that considerably.

have a poor work ethic.

It's understandable you would be a bit touchy about that. :)

I love how most of my American peers appear perfectly willing to blame "those other people". We have a long way to go, and a very hard road to follow, before things improve here.

Yes, I am clearly stating you are part of the problem.

The vast majority of the people, given the "do a good job" and "make a family wage" deal, to live a low cost, low risk life, would take it, just like those Germans do.

But you go ahead and keep thinking "those other people" are the source of the problem, when we are living under flat wages, and corporate profit is at record levels, while ordinary people see ever increasing costs and risks to fund those profits.

Sorry man. You've been swallowing a lot of dogma whole, for a considerable length of time it seems.

Over the last 30 years, the average American has been exposed to more cost and risk than they have increases in buying power per hour worked, and it's escalating.

Health care, in particular, is a huge risk point, with a large cost. Did you know we pay more than any other nation for that? Did you know we pay twice as much per capita as the next most expensive nation, which is France? Our access / per out of pocket dollar, and outcomes are far worse than theirs are.

I lost my home and all I worked for because of our health care policy. Had I lived in a nation that actually does value it's people properly, that would not have happened. And no, I was not the sick one, sadly.

Risk and cost are on the rise, with multi-national companies doing what they do best, which is push cost and risk away from the enterprise. Where does it go? On the US citizen, that's where it goes.

Clearly, you've had little real union involvement. I've worked for myself, in small business with a union, and without, and everything in between.

Secondly, average wages are far down now, if you exclude the very high percentages. For average people, the waves of outsourcing have forced them into jobs that pay far less than their old one did. Happening all over the place, and that too is escalating. New job creation is not generally family wage jobs, meaning we are moving more of our work force to poverty wages, than we are employing them at family wages.

You go ahead though. Ignore the contributions of labor to our past, and also ignore the lessons of other nations like Germany, who actually do target the welfare of Germans with their trade policy, instead of here, where we make sure our big corporations get all they want, leaving scraps for the average laborer to fight over.

Seriously, it's been a brutal 30, almost 40 years.

I'll take Germany instead.

As commented above, so long as our trade policy remains as it is, I am in full support of any and all labor movements that increase the overall labor value here. Wages have been flat far too long.