That's called being employed.

Yes, non sequitur indeed. I'm sure government abuses of power are limited to the NSA.

So, do you believe abuses like those described here do not happen as a regular course of business: "NSA Employees Routinely Pass Around Nude Photos Obtained Via Mass Surveillance" http://www.zerohedge.com/news/...

I find that naive. Now, do I care? Not really. But I understand why some people might, and I don't consider that privacy purity.

There is some education going on in higher ed, but that is not why people go to college. They go to college to get away from their parents, to live "on their own", to black out from alcohol, to get laid, to get a diploma, get a job, and then supposedly get rich. There is very little impressive thinking going on at the undergraduate level. It is not a mecca of intellectualism by any means.

The cost of course delivery is not the reason for higher ed price inflation. The only way these resources could fix the problem is if they cause people to route around the higher ed system. That said, there is very interesting thinking partially along these lines at places like the http://saxifrageschool.org/

This reply is probably the only thing you could have said at this point to save some face. But I doubt anyone but you and me is reading this far down, so you come off a bit paranoid. Nobody knows everything; the trick you have yet to learn is to avoid asserting yourself beyond where your knowledge can support. In order for people to be fooled, they have to know less on the subject in question than you.

Thanks for talking about temporary welfare. I asked how much does an unemployed person make. The correct answer is $0.

Your scenario is no possible. What happens is that there will be a sub-optimal balance between automation and jobs, and the cause of this will be idiot voters using government for things that does not make sense.

Oh, right. I forgot that the main reason people buy biz class tickets is so they can check in with a human and not have a line.

> The employer wouldn't be prosecuted based on their evidence so there would be no 5th amendment issues.

You are clearly talking out of your ass, so I'm not going to waste too much time here. Outside of explicit immunity for employing an illegal immigrant and defaulting on payroll taxes and other various responsibilities, it absolutely would be protected by the 5th amendment.

> If you can't provide evidence of legal employment, then you suffer the consequences of illegal employment.

Are you a complete moron? If I go to the Feds and tell them I worked for you and you paid me less than min wage, can you prove I didn't? Is your failure to produce documentation proof that you paid me less than min wage? I never worked for you, so obviously you can't produce documents showing that you paid me more than min wage.

> At least in my fantasy land :).

At least one part of your comment was correct and logical.

It's well-known representative example and is not meant to be the best example.

Your premise is pretty egocentric, though. We are living through a relatively quiet period with new innovation, compared to the industrial revolution and the 1990s. If the social order didn't collapse then, I'm pretty sure we'll be fine.

But if you want to slow down even more the automation of jobs currently filled with humans, then stop adding to the price of employing humans while the price of buying automation falls. That means: no min wage increases, no Affordable Care Act, no payroll tax increases, no gas tax increases, no new family leave benefits, no new mandated paid sick leave, etc.

I won't hold my breath. Most people who sigh over automating away human jobs are the same people accelerating the process through idiotic policy prescriptions.

Employers do not need to prove they are paying minimum wage with illegals. You cannot force an employer to produce documents that would incriminate themselves by saying they employed illegal workers and avoided payroll taxes. 5th Amendment protections. Furthermore, there would be no documents; they're illegally working! They are being paid under the table. If you insist on surprise inspections, all that will happen is construction companies, etc. will constantly rotate day laborers vs. having someone there for any length of time. That would limit their exposure to a single day, and perhaps eliminate it altogether if they are paying at the end of the day (thus after the inspection opportunity has passed).

The only way this would work is literally planting an investigator to pose as an illegal and observe the transaction. It's just not a big problem relative to hiring illegals in the first place.

> if you know what you're doing, the last thing that you need is the kind of condescending "help" that gets in the way of getting your freaking boarding pass.

Bingo! People have the choice to check in with a human now. They use the kiosk. Why do I need someone to press a couple buttons for me?

Sigh all you want. If people like you were willing to pay extra for the human touch, then there would be two tiers of tickets offered by airlines: self-checkin and human check-in. Human check-in would of course be an extra $100 or so. Still interested?

To underscore this even more, every airline I know (US) has a choice between kiosk and human. The human check-in has no incremental monetary cost. You just have to wait in a significant line. Very few people choose to pay this tiny cost just to have a person click a few buttons for them. The only time they wait in line is when the kiosk can't handle their case.

So, yes, lament the loss of the human touch and the replacement with mindless robots. This is how an economy advances. Buggy drivers had to lose their jobs, too.

That's because consumers do not want to pay for more people just so they can have 'human touch' during check-in. In fact, I personally actively avoid talking to humans for processes that can easily be performed by myself. Why do I need a person who may or may not have a high school diploma click some buttons that I can click myself? Only about 5% of cases require a human to deal with an exception to the basic check-in process, which means you only need 5% of the staff.