Business model is not broken only due to artificial govt laws that do not operate in the free market but are there f9r political purposes.

All laws are artificial and do not operate in the free market.

If minimum wage was set tomorrow to 100 usd per hour by your logic it would mean that every business is broken, because near nobody can afford those labour prices.

No, this is what we call an excluded middle fallacy.

We (and this is a problem afflicting most western countries) don't have high unemployment because people are being paid too much. We have high unemployment because there's not enough work for them to do. Sure, you can get rid of the safeguards around things like minimum wage and worker safety, which will drop the unemployment numbers, but all you've done is engaged in a slightly different form of rigging the numbers. The core problem remains.

Employment for the sake of employment is not the goal. You can do that tomorrow by reinstating slavery and having people move piles of rocks around (which is, basically, what people who think there shouldn't be a minimum wage are arguing for). Creating wealth and increasing living standards for everyone is the goal.

Nonsense and propaganda. You cannot state anything until those increases actually kick in and are in effect for some time.

Actually I feel pretty confident stating that if more people have more money, economic activity will increase.

Minimum wage is actually minimum ability.

No, minimum wage is setting a floor on living standards.

It cannot extract non-existing money from small business, but it can prevent people with abilities that are below minimum wage from finding jobs.

If a business can't employ someone for minimum wage, then their business model is broken. They are basically saying that their product or service is of such little value, that people will not pay enough for it such that the workers involved in delivering that product or service can live a bare existence lifestyle.

Economic activity is increased by more people having more money to spend ?

Inconceivable !

As mentioned earlier, this government was not voted in, the previous one was voted out.

Exactly.

You've only got to look at where the votes went, and the approvals ratings of the current Government (and especially Abbot) to see that.

We got demoed this 6 months or so ago.

I still fail to see what this buys you over a bunch of regular blades or rackmounts running your virtualisation platform of choice.

They would get them back and then punish them and then separate them.

Exactly. If that's what he deserves, then truth will out.

And I have seen an awful lot of people saying that he wasn't worth any particular effort to get back, which is pretty close to "let him rot." That's just mind-boggling to me.

Heh. Yeah.

I was at Minot for five years, which seemed particularly like exile after having been in England, about an hour away from London, for two years before that. I will say that it wasn't quite as bad as I expected it to be when I got my orders.

If enough people are out of work without some sort of guaranteed income... they'll just eat the robot owners.

Right. Maybe they'll get lucky and the killbots will have a preset kill limit.

We are rapidly approaching the first time in history, when the rulers will no longer need any human servants at all.

...It's not the Engineers who decide whether or not the people get replaced.

We are within a generation - two at the most - of at least half of the population being made literally redundant. Any job they could possibly do, will be done faster, cheaper and better by robots. Basically, if it's a job involving manual labour, it'll be automated, with the possible exception of high-end positions catering to the luxury demands of the ultra-rich. Many management jobs will also go as collateral damage (don't need to manage robots, after all).

Probably a generation after that advances in AI will have taken over a huge swathe of lower-end "knowledge worker" jobs.

With greedy, psychopathic, neoliberal Governments running most of the civilised world, the future is looking pretty grim for the common man.

Were you at Dover? I've always heard that's kind of the East Coast's equivalent of Minot. [1/2 g]

It doesn't work to do this with a democratic government. We need a monarchy :-(

Or perhaps a font of sage wisdom? You know, like a Council? Composed of wise people, you know, like one's Elders? Something any sentient species ought to be able to figure out. Speaking of which, I feel another press release coming on...

K'Breel, Speaker for the Council, addresses the publication of the new report thusly:

"WE HAVE TRIUMPHED! Our skilled operatives from the Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Propaganda; Planetary Research Council have successfully infiltrated the blueworlders' technological and informational systems. One notable document, Pathways to Exploration makes clear the disarray in which the blueworlders' long-term invasion plans lie, drawing on the history of meat-controlled spaceflight to justify future programs in organic space exploitation. Although the report promotes the invasion of our world as the horizon goal for the program, it takes into account funding levels necessary to maintain a robust tempo of execution, current research and exploration projects and the time/resources needed to continue them, and intertribal cooperation that would be required to further oppress the citizens of our fair red world."

"And its conclusion? Although the mechanized threat remains, and we salute those still fighting pitched battles with the two active land-based invaders, Pathways to Exploration makes it clear that it is not possible for the blueworlders' organic-based self-replicators to invade our world, at least not without a sustained commitment to funding at a higher level than their own tribal leaders are currently providing."

When an intern from the defense engineering board suggested that improving the capabilities of the blueworlders' EDL systems, radshielding, and propulsion and power systems were ultimately matters of engineering and not physics, and could ultimately be addressed if the tribals of the blue world ever get it into their oxygen-addled brains to work together to achieve a common goal (as, the intern suggested, the way any sentient species does), K'Breel had the intern's gelsacs addled by immersing them in a suitably-merciful quantity of liquid oxygen.

Thus spake K'Breel, Speaker for the Council of Elders, Committee on Native Spaceflight; Arenautics and Defense Engineering Board; Defense Studies Board; Division of Blueworlder Social and Physical Sciences; Committee on Gelsacular Statistics.