With those ping times, you sure won't have the first laugh.

You still fail to deal with the fact that automated "labor" will get cheaper over time while human capital really can only get so much cheaper. Those huge up front costs you imagine will shrink and shrink. You know it's true and so do I. How do you imagine that human labor can do the same? Just get cheaper and cheaper? And why should it, to make the wealthy wealthier as we make less and less to compete with robots. You think this will work?

Bingo. Politicians allow the stats (and encourage them) to be taken this way so that they can claim they are making progress on the economy. Or even that joblessness isn't an issue! But look around, talk to people, the numbers don't match the reality.

The fundamental flaw is that you imagine "high" minimum wages (I hope you aren't talking about the US national minimum), and "plush" benefits are the cause of underemployment/stagnation in employment. I disagree, but, I also think it's a red herring. You miss the bigger picture: you can't compete with a robot. That's what the recent harvard business review article was about, what happen's when your job is replaced by automation. You can't find work in the same field for obvious reasons, so you look in another field: it's been automated too, or it has zero vacancies because everyone else wants that job. Historically, when buggy whip manufacturing went away, we started making cars. People that is, built cars. But when you and all your coworkers are replaced by machines that just *keep getting cheaper* you will never be able to compete. The developed vs developing world comparison you make is also not really valid to the topic at hand. We know human manufacturing jobs aren't coming back here, but the ones in asia are being displaced by robots as well. What NEW jobs does that make? Over time this is very likely to cause societal tension at bare minimum, bloody revolution and quality of life going backwards at worst. Do you get it? You could take away minimum wage, people would still not work for you for less than $5/hr for very well or long in any part of the country. They couldn't afford their basic needs. A robot needs only electricity and perhaps occasional repairs (but not enough to even come close to make up for the net loss in jobs).

But our current system means that companies are essentially punished (by lowered stock prices) if they don't make MORE every quarter. When automation comes so far, jobs are not cut to 20 hours a week at the same pay. Instead, half the people are simply fired!

I think what he means is more like what some call "socialism" in Europe. And it's not worker's necessarily controlling the means to production: it's about providing more of a "safety net" via social services. Communism as an economic theory and communism in practice are obviously two different things.

Cable subscription rates in the US are about 68%. Most of the truly poor I know do NOT have cable TV or a smartphone. They have a digital antenna if they have TV and an "Obama" phone as you republicans call it, this is a super basic phone that looks like it came from the year 2000. You need to actually go talk to poor people and turn off the TV that is feeding you this mind polluting garbage.

What the fuck ever, only in your dream world.

I'm not going to deny the problems in Europe (especially in some countries) are worse, HOWEVER: our labor statistics are quite cherry picked and that has been getting worse. People have been re-classified as "not looking for work" that are in fact looking for work. You can't compare our "unemployment" rate now to the numbers we used during the great depression.

Good news: Bennet Haselton is going away. Bad news: He is being replaced by the Ramble-bot 1000.

The cynic in me says they just want to flood the market with cheap labor. The bottom on many other skilled trades has fallen out. They want a piece of the profit action. Why? Because they have to remain ever more profitable every Q.

The hilarious part is the double standard of a lot of these people. "There is no racism, there is no sexism. More post-racial, post-feminism blah blah blah", but then if they hear mention of a program like this that caters to any group they are not in: it's racism or sexism and so unfair. They literally whine like they were the dis-empowered ones.

No one wants to read this much about a service that didn't work by Benny Horribleton.

This is decided by the professor individually where I am, even in a community college. Some profs can and do grade on a bell curve but in my experience they are by far the minority. The problem is you might not know until you get to the class and read the syllabus or hear the intro lecture that that is how it's done.

Thanks for your quick reply. This explanation was given to me around ~1995 so things may have been different ;-)