Given the ever growing taxes in various countries (US included) I find it harder and harder to blame tax-evaders.
If it keeps going like this, modern Robin Hoods may start appearing shooting those drones from the sky the way Mr. Hood was sabotaging tax-collecting efforts of the Sheriff of Nottingham.
That says only, women are paid less then men. It does not account for the fact, that women are also far more likely than men to give birth or to take weeks (and months and years) away from work (and the labor force altogether) to be a mother.
A woman returning into labor force after years will be — justifiably and justly — paid a newby's salary — which will drag down the entire gender's statistics. Indeed, the link you so kindly provided (but, evidently, failed to read) says so upfront:
The statistic does not take into account differences in experience, skill, occupation, education or hours worked, as long as it qualifies as full-time work.
It then cites some anonymous economist, who claimed, even after adjusting for such differences in experience, men still end up paid more, which some explain by discrimination...
Much too often the entire "wage gap" is blamed on discrimination, while, in fact, even that much smaller fraction of it can not be linked to discrimination indisputably...
Bell Labs, Xerox PARC and others existed to do research on things that weren't even close to core business.
Then they must've been looking to expand their core business. Could you provide examples?
The simple fact is there are almost no publicly traded companies today who can dump even a small fraction of their money into researching something that is not directly related to their product line without a shareholder revolt.
Any substantial expense needs — and always needed — to be justified to shareholders, yes. If you are hoping to profit from the research, then you should have no problem convincing the shareholders of the profit-potential. This has always been the case and I fail to see, what, in your opinion, is wrong about it. This does not mean, companies aren't doing scientific work (anymore) — as was alleged earlier in the thread. Not at all.
And I do agree, that convincing a handful of investors is easier than thousands — which does give privately-held companies more freedom to both rise and fail. But this also is not a "sad sign of modern times".
What exactly do you think Microsoft's shareholders would do if MS announced they were getting into gigabit fiber buildouts like Google is doing?
Are you saying, the gigabit fiber buildout Google is doing qualifies as research?
what advances in pay should be based upon, if not performance and time in job.
I don't know... Nor do I really care, because I am not running my own business. What I do know, however, is that any attempts to legislate salary increases will both be unfair and backfire...
is women who do NOT leave for childrearing or other pursuits still being paid less on the basis that males are the breadwinners in their families.
In a free-market society, one gets the salary one is able to negotiate — regardless of one's gender.
The problem is this all too often extends into not giving women promising assignments because she just got married and might start making babies soon. [...]
And they are absolutely correct — that risk does exist, there is no way out of it. That's how mammals are — bearing and rearing the young is primarily the females' burden...
women are still far from equal
They aren't — 100% of births are given by women. 100%! Think about it...
Men face a much higher arrest and conviction rate for sexual assaults. They also face stiffer penalties when convicted.
Worse! A pure 100% of people, who've ever given birth, are women... Until the Feminist movement acknowledges that giant elephant in the room, they can not be taken seriously harping on any other petty "imbalances".
The biggest problem is that women pressure other women to settle for less careerwise in order to put a priority on getting married and having a family. Mothers are the worst at this as they want grand babies.
The phenomenon obviously exists, but why do you attach such negativity to it? Without babies the humanity will cease to exist pretty soon no matter how successful "freed" women are at their other pursuits.
And pregnancy — and subsequent child-rearing — do cost women professionally. Not because anybody is "sexist", but simply because you can not give a promising assignment to an employee, who just is not there (because she is on maternity leave).
Some women may view this as unfortunate, others — as a privilege, but whatever you feel about it, there is no one to blame for it any more, than we can prosecute someone for gravity...
Maybe, some day, we'll have incubation centers freeing women from the need to carry the burden for months. But I'm not very optimistic, given that we are yet to solve even the much simpler problem of breast-feeding.
Women, in the same career field as a man, almost always makes less.
Citation needed.
You say that having sex with any woman that is infertile
You misunderstood. In my opinion, sex with someone, with whom you would not have children, is like that with an inanimate object or a prostitute, yes. You don't have to try to conceive every time to get my approval, but you should only do it with someone, whose baby you are willing (and able) to raise with them if — by nature or a miracle — the conception actually happened.
Also, people like you are the reason there are so many single mothers out there.
Whoa?! Quite the contrary. Men like me would not have had sex (other than with prostitutes) unless they were willing to raise the fruit of the flower they pollinated.
Someday you may grow to learn that women are more than just a vessel for your seed.
Women are much more than that indeed.
The enjoyment of sex, however — and it was that, rather than women's role in anything, that I was talking about — is predicated on the joy of (potential) reproduction implicit in the act with a beloved.
And until you've experienced that joy, you haven't grown up...
Look at Edison Labs, the Xerox PARC, Bell Labs...Do you actually believe that wall st today would support these kinds of long-term research projects, or shitcan them so fast it'd give a snowball in hell whiplash after they refused to promise "new deliverables that increase synergy and shareholder value" in time for the quarterly report?
Would they? They do! Examine the screen of your smartphone — is it not drastically better, than what was available 15 years ago? How much is Intel spending on further reducing the element sizes of their chips? Companies are doing the research — including long-term research — that they think, they need. That some people disagree with their opinion on what ought to be researched, that's a different story.
There are two other problems, that might be contributing to the problem you are talking about — not that we have any way of measuring anything. First is with the public's attitude — so often demonstrated on this very web-site — towards intellectual property in general and patents in particular. A lot of people believe, intellectual property — be it blueprints for some gizmo, or a dress-design, or a song, or a video-compression algorithm — is an "evil" concept, that, quite paradoxically, only cripples innovation.
People claiming: "Wait a minute! That was my idea!!" are immediately dismissed as "patent trolls" until proven otherwise — and those, who purchased an idea from the original inventor are almost never able to do the proving (not in the court of public opinion anyway) — an unfortunate state of affairs, that puts a heavy discount on active methodical research (though spontaneous innovations can still occur, of course). This removes the incentive from spending on research — you spend real tangible dollars, but the result is something, that can be stolen by others, who will not even risk being labeled (much less prosecuted) as thieves.
And the second problem is the research done by tax-funded universities. The corporations — as well as you and me — are taxed (and rather heavily) and then not us, and not the corporations, but "wise" men decide, how to spend that money. And on the occasion such public grants do result in a useful invention, the hitherto publicly-funded scientists open up their own company to exploit it...
We get the worst of both worlds: unlike a Socialist country, we don't get to force these public servants to share their invention with the rest of us, but, unlike a Capitalist country, we were forced to pay them and are still forced to pay others like them. And, to put us back on topic, none of that research counts as "corporate" leading the short-sighted public to accuse the (invariably "evil") corporations of being myopic themselves.
“One of the most important features of this invention,’ said Mr. Tesla, “‘will be the transmission of intelligence. It will convert the entire earth into a huge brain, capable of responding in every one of its parts. By the employment of a number of plants, each of which can transmit signals to all parts of the world, the news of the globe will be flashed to all points. A cheap and simple receiving device, which might be carried in one’s pocket, can be set up anywhere on sea or land, and it will record the world’s news as it occurs, or take such special messages as are intended for it. If you are in the heart of the Sahara, your wife can telegraph to you from Washington, and if the instrument is properly made you alone will get the message. A single plant of a few horsepower could operate hundreds of such instruments, so that the invention has an infinite working capacity, and will cheapen the transmission of all kinds of intelligence.”
If there aren't sex robots involved, I'm not interested.
Not until that machine can also give birth. Fucking someone(thing), that can not — even in theory — get pregnant is no better, than doing it with a pillow or, at best, a prostitute...
Please, don't hate.
Not being a Heinlein guru -- any 'predictions' he made that failed?
Yes, and he wrote about them himself — explaining the topic of such predictions in general and his own failures (and successes) in particular. I can not find those works online now (they are copyrighted, no doubt, you have to buy the book), but here is a critique of him — and a critique of the critique.
You could do (a lot) worse, than reading all of the Heinlein you can get — both Fiction and otherwise...
Myself, I'd add the following prediction for posterity — 50 years later, you can say, you read it on
And the other way around: whatever is not possible even in theory today (like faster-than-light movement or time-travel), will remain impossible in practice for the upcoming decades.
What the gods would destroy they first submit to an IEEE standards committee.
