Bank of England Chief Economist Warns On AI jobs Threat (bbc.com) 209
The chief economist of the Bank of England has warned that the UK will need a skills revolution to avoid "large swathes" of people becoming "technologically unemployed" as artificial intelligence makes many jobs obsolete. From a report: Andy Haldane said the possible disruption of what is known as the Fourth Industrial Revolution could be "on a much greater scale" than anything felt during the First Industrial Revolution of the Victorian era. He said that he had seen a widespread "hollowing out" of the jobs market, rising inequality, social tension and many people struggling to make a living. It was important to learn the "lessons of history", he argued, and ensure that people were given the training to take advantage of the new jobs that would become available. He added that in the past a safety net such as new welfare benefits had also been provided.
Training for what? (Score:5, Informative)
banks like student loans (Score:3)
banks like student loans
Labor Economist (Score:2, Interesting)
Any Labor Ecomomist will tell you the least educated are getting the stick. No High school - you will be worthless.Non-English speaking immigrant maybe aged - not good. That all the univertity clerks have a degree for simple admin is in itself an overkill.
The over educated and more youthful grab the spots of others - as any employer would.
Them dishwashers are well educated.
20% of the lowest pass university degrees will be lucky to get any job, let alone a return on their investment. Skills revolution is a
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> We can't all be doctors.
Can you imagine an AI that can diagnose what is wrong with a person and can you imagine that AI can do this with super human accuracy? Can you imagine that it can be done with the currently existing tech, once we just collect enough data to train it?
If you can, then consider this (this is a true story): A patient went to hospital. At the hospital the patient had clear symptoms of allergic reactions and the patient even asked the nurse that could this be allergy. The patient had
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We can't all be doctors.
Actually, doctors are the exact sort of thing that are probably on the chopping block. Sure, everyone is concerned about truckers and factory workers, as well they ought to be. But AI or expert systems or big-ass if-else chains given a list of symptoms and lab results and patient history can outperform the general practitioners that do the initial diagnostic and refer you to specialists. And there are a TON of GPs out there. A generation of people are going to get bit in the ass when they spend two deca
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oh, and also, BUSINESS.
With all the disruptive tech, there's plenty of call for people willing to try and carve out their own niche. If you look at the statistics, there's a big call for business degrees.
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> AI is going to EAT the white-collar class of people who have boring repetitive jobs.
Going to? It already is. Hell, even "smart" jobs like investment portfolio management are in the sights now. One of the banks in Canada laid off hundreds of investment advisers recently and replaced them with a piece of software and an automated phone tree.
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Then some of those people will have to become skilled labor, of which there is a massive shortage (at least in the U.S.).
AI is not going to replace pipe fitters, plumbers, HVAC installation and repairmen, carpenters, electricians, etc. etc., at least not any time soon.
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I'm not sure I understand the value of a math major. I've worked with people holding math degrees who were intelligent and competent, but never got to apply their field of study in any meaningful way. Meanwhile I was busy writing tools to make my job (and by extension, theirs) easier because I realized I was doing the same shit every month, and for the same clients. Why the fuck shouldn't I automate that? (Musicians are often thinking "how do I take this thing I want to do, and do it more accurately, faster
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But the big danger in these upcoming shifts, if they hit large industries, large percentages of the population, you no longer have the unaffected segments of the economy to
This is only the beginning (Score:4, Interesting)
It stops being an economy (Score:3)
without people to pay.
Money's purpose is to manage a human workforce.
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Money's purpose is to manage a human workforce.
Nope. Money's purpose in capitalism is to manage the means of production. If humans aren't the means of production, how are they going to get a piece of the money?
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It costs zero at that point. Money has no purpose then. Everyone gets to have mass produced items.
For non mass produced items, we wait in line. Same as now.
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That's back to slavery. I don't see that working when production becomes free cost.
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With or without human labour, the cost price is whatever the person who controls the supply can get people to pay for the end product.
If there are enough people that can pay the price the the supplier wants, then it's probably not going to matter to them how many other people might do without it, because presumably reducing the price to appeal to a larger market wouldn't necessarily increase their own bottom line.
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If there are enough people that can pay the price the the supplier wants, then it's probably not going to matter to them how many other people might do without it, because presumably reducing the price to appeal to a larger market wouldn't necessarily increase their own bottom line.
Well this is classic micro-economics, if they're not your customers they just disappear out into the great void. But if you're talking about society-level changes then those people don't just go away, they go on welfare, join gangs, create slums, start riots and if things get bad enough even revolutions. And things cost money for other reasons than labor, it doesn't help if you get something 20% cheaper but the labor now pays 50% of what it used to. The last decades capital has been diverging from labor, th
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My point is that it doesn't matter if the labour cost is zero, the person who controls the supply is still going to try and charge as much money as he possibly can for the product, and if there is nobody willing or able to pay the price that he wants, he may simply decide to not produce the product in the first place.
The ideal that savings are somehow always passed on down to the consumer is a myth in any industry where the supplies can be easily controlled, which is almost everything these days.
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This branch of the thread is about further in the future when machines are doing it all.
Without paid humans, there is no costs. Which also means no need for money or an economy.
Any attempt to maintain a financial system would be fully broken.
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Crap, my reply above was meant for mark-t
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Money does encourage that thinking.
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I replied to this: "We are a solved specie. In the future even the majority of developer jobs will be automated. Systems will be fully automated with a fully non-human supply chain, economy, and customers."
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Those are all human labour costs.
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Lol, ant colonies ain't no economy. For sure, you can say there is feedback loops and all sorts of functional behaviour. Many engineering and natural systems have feedback. It's a wave action, not an economy.
Assigning money to robot ownership for the purpose of faking an economy is pointless.
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Ant workers are effectively slaves, in human terms. Slaves are not part of an economy.
Just the same as the minerals mined are not part of the economy. It's only the paid workers doing the mining, and mining equipment built by human labour, that assigns any economic price.
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Also someone will have to pay the product/service manufacturer
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"We are a solved specie."
Speak for yourself. I, for one, am a federal reserve note.
When AI takes over our jobs (Score:2)
Training (Score:5, Insightful)
people were given the training to take advantage of the new jobs that would become available
Which jobs are these?
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Many of us work in jobs today that simply didn't exist when we were born. I don't think it's too much of a stretch to think that there will be jobs 20 years from now that don't exist today.
I find all this hand-wringing really strange. History is littered with jobs that have been removed by automation (lift operators, street lamplighters, pinsetters) but also littered with jobs that have come ab
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Re:Training (Score:4, Insightful)
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How many jobs can you name that fit your description of jobs that didn't exist when you were born, AND that can be performed by people of average skills and/or intelligence?
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At sizeable chunk of the jobs today that involve the use of the internet would easily fall into that category.
(I was born in the 70's)
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Many of us work in jobs today that simply didn't exist when we were born. I don't think it's too much of a stretch to think that there will be jobs 20 years from now that don't exist today.
Whats to stop AI doing those jobs too?
Re:Training (Score:4, Interesting)
I find all this hand-wringing really strange. History is littered with jobs that have been removed by automation (lift operators, street lamplighters, pinsetters) but also littered with jobs that have come about because of automation (the entire car and computer industry for starters).
The difference lies in the nature of automation. Early automation was only capable of repeating gross physical motions, and even that destroyed thousands of jobs. Eventually we got robotics, and even primitive robots did the same. Now we're getting "smart" robotics that can make decisions for itself, and that's going to eliminate more of them. In the former cases there was massive upheaval that resulted in re-authoring of the so-called "social contract" to include stronger safety nets, because they did disrupt economies. Why would you think that won't happen again?
The way people have survived to date is going into the service economy. But we can't all just stand in a circle and jerk each other off. People have to eat, they have to have a place to live, they have to have clothing on their backs. And what's new is that technology is now destroying even service jobs. So what's left? Answer, only an ever-diminishing number of highly technical jobs to which not everyone is suited. That makes this time different.
Ok, list some (Score:2)
Those jobs employ very, very few full time. Meanwhile automation eliminated millions of factory jobs and is about to do away with drivers, warehouse workers and cashiers. And that's just the ones I can rattle off. Hell, I used to do IT for a cabinet maker that couldn't
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> Many of us work in jobs today that simply didn't exist when we were born. I don't think it's too much of a stretch to think that there will be jobs 20 years from now that don't exist today.
That's because when jobs of old were automated, they were automated by job specific processes and machines. Today's jobs are going to get eaten by AI and quick learning systems. Which will open some more jobs, and some of those jobs will ALSO get eaten by the AI and quick learning systems before a human even has a
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Where are those jobs this time?
Bank of England Chief Economists.
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....said the horse-whip maker in 1890 before cars. ... said the account clerk in the 1960s before desktop computers. ....said everyone in 1990 before the interwebs.
Notice that no job having to do with the internet even existed in its current form before 1990, basically.
Machines don't produce added value (Score:2)
Secondly, added value appears when the product is sold, not when it is produced and waiting in the storage. And it is sold to humans which exchange their earned money for
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they pay taxes, so even the holy UBI is paid by the working class, not by robots.
The way to fix this problem is obvious; tax corporate income, not corporate profits. Take the tax burden off of The People, and place it on corporations. They're the ones who really have a meaningful vote, and they ought to be motivated to reduce taxation. Taxing their income is the way to achieve that.
New technology always brings threats (Score:2)
With every new generation of technology has come threats to low end jobs. The problem is that we are getting to the point where even mid-range jobs may be taken by automation. Now, to be fair, we are still looking at low end jobs that are being threatened by technology, mostly in the form of those who take orders for items. Ordering food that requires no adjustment to the menu items at all can already be done via an app. It won't take long before in-store food ordering kiosks reduce the need for peo
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One thing we can count on is that there WILL be a war between the wealthy and those who actually work for a living(or try to). Training for jobs that in turn will be eliminated by AI makes the future a lot more of a challenge, so figuring out how to provide services that AI just can't do, to adapt to unusual circumstances, that is the future.
The future could be pretty bleak if that war doesn't happen until after the wealthy have their own automated weapons systems powered by that same AI...
Maybe if you're a paper-shuffler.. (Score:2)
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Computers can't even "shuffle paper" properly. There are jobs where people deal with the fuckups computers make. We have a call center at my employer with a dozen people who do nothing but resolve computer fuckups. They're hiring.
It's clear from the last 50 years that computers create jobs with no end in sight.
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There are jobs where people deal with the fuckups computers make. We have a call center at my employer with a dozen people who do nothing but resolve computer fuckups. They're hiring.
Your statements are true but irrelevant. If the computer makes it possible to turn 1000 hours of work into 100 hours of work, it doesn't matter if it also generates another 100 hours of work cleaning up after the system. That's still a massive reduction in hours worked, with a corresponding reduction in head count.
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No reduction happened. my employer is decades old. staff is bigger than ever since they went to "Automated Data Processing" in the 1980s and all that is due to computers including jobs that didn't even exist like making web sites, IT department, data entry, etc.
Computers have created a massive amount of jobs in the economy. the curve has been going upward not down.
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staff is bigger than ever since they went to "Automated Data Processing" in the 1980s and all that is due to computers including jobs that didn't even exist like making web sites, IT department, data entry, etc. Computers have created a massive amount of jobs in the economy. the curve has been going upward not down.
Guess what? All of those jobs reduce jobs elsewhere. The IT department and data entry collectively eliminated many, many jobs in manual data management. So once again, this is not complicated, computers reduce the total number of jobs. It doesn't matter if they create jobs if they eliminate more than they create, and if they didn't do that, we wouldn't use them except to enable new technologies. But since we also use them to do things we've been doing for decades or in some cases millennia, they must offer
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Nope, Let's have some facts instead of your imagination.
For example, in the UK, automation eliminated 800,000 jobs, but created 3.5 million new ones.
https://venturebeat.com/2017/0... [venturebeat.com]
The numbers are even huger for the USA.
There is no problem. The work will never end.
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I'd quote the fine report, but it's a protected PDF. Guess they don't want anyone quoting it, which sharply reduces its usefulness. It says that the jobs being lost are lower-end jobs, and the new jobs require additional manual dexterity and creativity. How do you imagine that people inhabiting lower-end jobs are going to become more creative and dextrous? It goes on to say that the majority of those jobs created were service jobs, just as I've said. But also as I've said, computers are now taking over the
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eh, robots can't cook, that the thing the wondrous burger-flipping-robot has proved.
robotic delivery? well there are those 20 in Washington D.C. being tested. wait till a whackjob puts a bomb in one and that'll be the end of that. Not a threat to jobs in the near term. Meanwhile delivery jobs are going up...
You keep making things up seeing visions in your crystal ball and quoting fear mongering articles about The Future. Meanwhile, facts and reality are against you. Employment is going up, unemploym
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eh, robots can't cook, that the thing the wondrous burger-flipping-robot has proved.
The burger-flipping robot works fine, the humans have problems with it. Conclusion, get rid of the humans.
Employment is going up, unemployment going down if you haven't noticed....
I haven't noticed, because I am not stupid enough to buy the U-2 unemployment rate, which is a deliberate lie.
AI takes away doesn't give back (Score:2)
A halcyon call to re-education for re-employment ignores reality that there will be no employment to re-educate displaced jobless. Its platitude. It is so last century.
Tesla ' autopilot' categorically decimated ' private car ownership' i.e. FORD halted car production in US. AI is not even fun to drive much less fun paying for the thrill to own a car that has it.
Steampunk has arrived
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Tesla ' autopilot' categorically decimated ' private car ownership' i.e. FORD halted car production in US.
Totally, completely, and in all other ways false. Ford has not halted car production in the US, they've just cut way back on the models of car they offer so that they can focus on more-profitable vehicles which are only sold in the USA because no other market will accept them — which is in turn the result of the void between fuel costs and fuel prices — which is itself the result of America permitting fuel producers and consumers alike to avoid having to pay directly for externalities which are
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Private car ownership is here to stay, in the same way cash is; there's too much risk to freedom to ban it ouright, but the market will slowly switch to alternatives due to convenience. E.g. I haven't carried cash in years, except when planning to go to a restaurant in downtown that I knows only takes cash. In most cases I don't even bother choosing restuaunts that are cash only due to the inconvenience of locating and using an ATM. I can see a lot of younger generations growing up with self driving cars an
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New jobs (Score:2)
ensure that people were given the training to take advantage of the new jobs that would become available
What new jobs? AI engineer, AI salesperson, and AI journalist?
Re:Easy solution. (Score:5, Insightful)
How do you train, say, a lorry (truck) driver whose being replaced by AI-powered self-driving lorries? If the training involves a desk with a computer... one person can manage several of those self-driving lorries, so you might re-train a few. What do you suggest for the rest?
Re:Easy solution. (Score:4, Interesting)
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Well put, though in the specific example it takes a modicum of intelligence and a lot of diligence to be a truck driver. You could probably learn a skilled trade. (Heck, you could probably finish your career before we actually have self-driving vehicles.)
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Re:Easy solution. (Score:4, Interesting)
There is currently a serious labor shortage in the skilled trades. It's likely good work for someone with the skills to drive a truck. There are over a million skilled manufacturing jobs unfilled in the US right now.
We could do a better job as a society of making training available, but it's really not the people who already do skilled work that will be left out in the cold here. Unskilled labor has been going away for decades now, and will eventually vanish. What the heck happens to the 10% or 15% of people who simply can't cut it in a skilled job?
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Hired a plumber recently? Electrician? AC repair? They aren't just barely getting by. It's a labor shortage when it stops being a matter of price, and becomes one of availability. We have cultural issues preventing people from taking good jobs they could do.
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The guys who own the plumbing businesses do quite well, but starting your own small business (and succeeding) will always be the most valuable skill.
They're all "working class", by the way. It's not a dirty word. In fact, that's the cultural problem we need to fix. Especially the realization that a good working class job beats a crappy white-collar job any day. The difference is not one of how much you're paid, but the kind of work you do.
The point at which the lifetime earnings of a dentist (net of edu
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Re:Easy solution. (Score:4, Interesting)
As a person who is having a lot of renovation work done I look forward to the day there are 100, or even 20, electricians in my area begging for work.
Electricians control the supply of electricians. They've lobbied for laws which require that new electricians apprentice themselves to existing electricians, which sets an upper limit on the potential growth of the number of electricians. [A subset of] Doctors have achieved the same thing WRT the supply of doctors through the lobbying efforts of their trade organization, the AMA. The day when there are all those electricians in your area begging for work will never come, at the current rate. And the rate is artificially limited by people with effective lobbyists, so it's not likely to change soon.
Re:??asy solution. (Score:2)
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How do you train, say, a lorry (truck) driver whose being replaced by AI-powered self-driving lorries?
Same way you train anyone else. You just train/teach them to do something OTHER than driving a truck. They're probably not going to stay in the shipping industry. Same way that all those weavers never found work as weavers after the automated looms took over. "Trucker" as a profession will simply be gone.
The problem is that training and education has diminishing returns on the old. Which is why we send kids to school. Nobody wants to give a 50 years old a scholarship because they'll be dead or looking to re
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Teach kids the skills they need for tomarrow.
What skills would those be ?
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Posted below, but here it is. The common refrain is STEM:
Science: Make sure you get more than a BS. What do you do with a BS in physics? Teach highschool.
Technology: Because politicians are too dumb to distinguish between sysadmins and programmers. This is like.... everything the slahdot crowd does.
Engineering: It's all the other fields, but with more bloody paperwork and an extra $30K.
Math: Practically nobody is employed as an actual mathematician, but holy shit is it useful everywhere else. It's like the
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The existing current plumbers? They're not losing their jobs. Neither are all the people currently training to be plumbers. Everyone that employs plumbers will of course complain that there's a lack of plumbers, the same way that the tech companies complain about a lack of tech workers. Which is "we don't like paying them so much".
But yeah, sure, it's good to remind kids that the trades are also a viable career path. Especially if you can't pass calculus.
(Home plumbing has gotten way easier these days now
Six weeks of basic (Score:2)
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Easy solution, complex implementation.
For centuries, we have measured peoples "smarts" on their ability to remember things, focus on a task, and be able to work out problems quickly.
Skills like imagination, out of the box thinking, creativity, people relations... A lot of soft skills that havn't been associated with "smart" people, but with people who get kicked out of school, because they didn't fit the mold.
With AI and robotics taking a lot of the jobs away, this is actually an opportunity for a "Kindnes
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As with everyone who things we "measure intelligence wrong", you should take a look at the Big Five personality traits. [wikipedia.org] Those plus IQ explain all statistically measurable factors of human psychology.
What schools measure is intelligence plus conscientiousness, which is probably what matters on most jobs as well. Your "kindness economy", euphemistic at best, would be jobs for people who are high in agreeableness. Problem is, stubborn people need jobs too. Further, we already have a large economy around eld
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To paraphrase a TV commercial for an energy bar and Doctor Who.
There is a difference between Nice and Kind.
Nice is the person with a big smile who makes you feel good.
Kind is working to help someone with their long term goals.
So for example say currently your job is to approve or reject a license, say to build home extensions. You have a large collection of applications to deal with. You could be a perfectly pleasant person, but will rubberstamp reject on the bulk of them. Leaving the requester having no
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Well, I wouldn't call that a kindness economy, but I could certainly see jobs expediting permitting.
Personally, I already see a lot of new jobs around convenience - things people could do for themselves, but wold rather not be bothered. I've seen startups around car washing, lawn mowing, pickup/deliver clothes to the cleaners, and similar. All new companies, internet-dispatched, paying better than you'd think. Talking to a friend at a startup where they send people to wash your car, they pay $20/hr, whic
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A "Kindness economy" will be difficult to setup.
We literally cannot get from here to there without a revolution, because the people in charge of all the money now are so vehemently opposed to being kind. We know this because they are sitting on literally more money than they can possibly spend, but are unwilling to give it away to make the world a better place.
Wonderful! (Score:2)
What a completely shitty place that will be!
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Your superiority complex is showing. Keep believing how 65 million people are just beneath you, poorly educated and gullible. He's going to get even more votes next time because of the arrogance of the Left.
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Your superiority complex is showing. Keep believing how 65 million people are just beneath you, poorly educated and gullible. He's going to get even more votes next time because of the arrogance of the Left.
Your authoritarian complex is showing. Keep believing how a megalomaniac propped up by Americas long time enemy will stay in power. His authoritarian base are belong to Putin.
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The harder the better.
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You mean like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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that everyone could live a comfy life with barely having to work at all.
YES, and compared to the age when fields had to be harvested with a sickle and mines had to be dug with pickaxes and hammer, nearly anyone CAN live a "comfy" life with doing barely any hard labor at all.
BUT, the definition of "comfy" has changed. If you're ok with sleeping on a cobble-stone floor in the common room, some ways from the hearth, then GOOD NEWS! If you demand your own bedroom and wifi and air-conditioning, then you're going to have to work for it.
But if you live in a developed nation, they lik
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hmmm, probably every hour worked and every paycheck. I'm not sure if that's "training" or "spotting a trend". But that whole capitalism thing has worked out pretty well for me.
But I CAN save you. At long as you're a citizen in my country. I'm paying to keep you on the dole after all. No worries, you're welcome. We've honestly got plenty.
Gah, what's the point with anonymous crackpots though?
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