There have always been certain issues that function as litmus tests, in that there is a factually correct position and many factually incorrect positions. Those wrong position, however, tell us things about the person holding them. Gun control is the best example. The right position is based on a mountain of data collected over generations. The wrong positions range from uninformed to the mendacious. As a result, the gun issues is a good litmus test. A person wrong on guns is telling us things about themselves.
The universal basic income is shaping up to be another one of those litmus test issues, where the self-righteous and fashionable use it to advertise their virtue and edginess, but also tell us about their ignorance. The other day, the leader of America’s hipster intellectuals, Claire Lehmann dramatically announced she is now on board with the universal basic income. In fact, Andrew Yang’s goofy Asian hipster populism platform is starting to become the cool thing among our edgy trend setters.
The giveaway at this point, with this issue, is in that linked Quillette post. “There are reasonable arguments to be leveled in good faith against the UBI platform, which Yang has dubbed “The Freedom Dividend,” but what was once considered a utopian pipe-dream is beginning to sound more plausible in light of the unfolding tectonic economic and technological shifts.” Are there reasonable arguments made in bad faith? That line makes clear that one side is virtue signaling, hoping the other side plays the role of skeptic.
What’s shaping up is the UBI is going to be the hipster beard for the politically active millennials, who dream of living as the Eloi. As was brilliantly explained before, it can’t possibly work as expected, but that is part of the attraction. That’s always part of the appeal to utopianism. The believers are emotionally wedded to the idea because the Promised Land always feels just out of reach. The world without work, where everyone is free to self-actualize and get a gold star from teacher is the millennial dream.
The math of UBI is really not worth discussing, however, as the people excited by it are incapable of grasping it anyway. They are simply using the issue to stake out what they think is the moral high ground. Yang is a very smart guy, who grew up studying the people now flocking to these sorts of ideas. The alt-right thinks they meme’d him into existence, but Yang looks a lot like an East Asian Obama. That is, he is the sort of minority who flatters upper-middle class white Progressives just be existing.
The real problem with the UBI is it is part of the larger trend of infantilizing people, turning them into wards of the custodial state. A society where everyone is watched, where everyone has their speech monitored, where everyone is on an allowance, is called a prison. That’s how prisons work. Given the tender sensibilities of the next generation, this world is evolving into a daycare center. Ideas like UBI are not about economics. They are about normalizing the custodial state. UBI is Faust’s poodle.
The problems that UBI are supposed to address are real and concerning. Automation is replacing labor at an alarming rate. Sure, the robot future is wildly exaggerated, mostly by people who have no experience in the real world. Most people reading this, for example, will not live to see robot trucks roaming the highways. Still automation is a serious issue facing the West. The consequences are frightening, not for material reasons, but because they will force the West to face up to the reality of culture and social organization.
You’ll note that in the linked Quillette article, there is no mention of immigration. The latest data show that Trump’s alleged jobs boom is mostly just a boom in migrants finding work in America. End immigration and automation suddenly is a different issue. In fact, it becomes a tolerable issue, because a society willing and able to put its own interest ahead of strangers is able to rationally address the sorts of welfare schemes required to support friends and neighbors. That’s the fear that truly haunts our ruling class.
In fact, the fear of facing up to the basic questions every society must address is what is behind the fear of automation and technology. When Tucker Carlson told Ben Shapiro that he would happily ban certain forms of automation, Shapiro nearly burst into tears because he lives in fear of ever having to face the questions Carlson raised. When you face the questions “Who are we and what sort of society do we want?”, things like automation and social welfare become less frightening. UBI is a way to avoid facing those questions.
Litmus tests like gun control or now UBI offer an opportunity to introduce the subjects that our betters would prefer not to discuss. UBI is a door that opens to a debate about who we are and what kind of society we want. That inevitably leads to the question of who gets to decide and why. That debate is always a part of what defines a society. For the modern West, it is a part that has no conscious place in our political life. Talking about the details may not be a lot of fun, but even a deal with the devil has opportunities.
People mostly don’t understand slavery. It isn’t maintained by the lash, or by oppression. Comfort is the principle tool of the slaveholder. To leave slavery requires an act of faith; it is to leave the certainty of regular meals and the ease of a mind freed from difficult decisions.
Fewer people than you think want the freedom typical Anglo Saxons are peddling . Most people are fine with serfdom so long as the Lord keeps his end of the bargain and they are left to their traditions
This includes me whose natural role is that of clergy or monk.
If UBI came with small strings and expectations, it would be a huge hit
How we pay for it? Well that is another question and even if we deal with the immigration issue in the alt right way, it still probably 1.5 trillion extra spending we can’t get in taxes.
That’s why Belloc used the term “wage slavery.” Oftentimes, people get used to the wage–and the attached comforts–and become slaves.
In the Roman Empire it wasn`t unknown for destitute Romans to voluntarily become slaves and put the responsibility for feeding and housing them onto their new owner.
James Kirkpatrick at Vdare just wrote this… “Yang has Leftist policies on many issues, but many disillusioned Trump supporters feel like those policies are coming anyway. If America is just an economy, and if everyone in the world is simply an American-in-waiting, white Americans might as well get something out of this System before the bones are picked clean. Ineligible for Affirmative Action, targeted by blisteringly hostile media for defunding and de-platforming, and utterly unrepresented by Conservatism Inc., to these [white] people a thousand dollars a month seems like something more tangible than anything President Trump has offered. If you… Read more »
The timeline of this Administration from campaign to the present has been one long chain of humilation for its supporters, other than the brief respite of the surprise election victory. Paul Ryan is rubbing it in our faces.
Any active supporter paid a social cost, some of that is due to our own mistakes to be sure. But the institutionalized disrespect from the jounolist, academic and “comedian” has not ceased. I challenge anyone to look at Stephen Colbert and say that he isn’t the most successful minstrel show in history. But is he ever deplatformed?
yeah but 6 years from now, when Trump leaves office, Colbert won’t have a career anymore.
Ha! Colbert thinks that what he’s doing will bring down Trump. No way.
The influence of the comedians was significant in defeating Bush, and then sparing Obama of their wrath. Of the 16 late night comedians, every one of them is left-wing. If you’ve ever had the displeasure of watching either Colbert or Kimmell, demonization is a good way of describing their attitude towards the Right.
“Representation matters”
Deplatform Late-Night Hate
UBI on the dissident right isn’t about edge for its own sake. They have a lot more to be edgy with, like nazi frog memes and various other totally-taboo cultural artifacts. Nor is it about economic populism. Most of the dissident memers on the yang wagon are fully aware it isn’t even a plausible system. The point is that they’re finally giving up on the GOP and on the US. Making the conscious decision to back the most absurd populist candidate on the left is their middle finger to everyone who wants to give the GOP another decade to reform… Read more »
Politicians and pundits constantly tell us, “That’s not who we are,” yet they never want to discuss in good faith and in any kind of detail “Who are we and what sort of society do we want?”
As soon as somebody brings up and endorses the UBI thing – my answer to their “what kind of society do you want” question is going to be:
One without you in it.
Careful; everyone always thinks they’re going to be the commissar standing over the bodies in the ditch, not the bodies. Your intended audience may very well take you up on your suggestion to rid their society of you (and your fellow boomercons)
The linked article on Andrew Yang fails to mention immigration AND all the existing forms of welfare.
Close the borders completely to legal and illegal immigration AND zero out every other from of welfare / state assistance. Then I would gladly entertain UBI proposals. I would probably embrace the idea as many people currently on the dole would use the unrestricted cash to dramatically shorten their lives.
A good rule is to start with two constraints. One is welfare is a permanent feature of a modern society and the government will never voluntarily shrink. There are other constraints, for sure, but those two are written in stone.
Sure – the fact that they want all this on top of the current welfare and immigration systems is why it’s a no-go.
Given that welfare is permanent, it may as well be smart welfare. UBI seems silly, but at least it opens the discussion. How about a negative income tax? I think Milton Friedman advocated this back in the 70’s. The idea is to crate a healthy incentive structure. Under out present system an individual gets de-facto UBI by being destitute, and is punished if he takes any initiative to better himself. Why not make welfare benefits a sliding scale? Conservatives have lost for 40 years by pretending lassaiz fare is an option.
I think starvation is a healthy incentive.
Starvation and/or freezing to death are terrific incentives. They still happen, but only to the most extremely dysfunctional. You have to really, really work at it to fail to become an obese consumer in the American system. Per Spandrel, the primary purpose of a society is to allow normal, healthy people to reproduce. Instead–we are incentivizing idiocracy.
@ReluctantReactionary yes exactly. Whenever someone at work starts sputtering about how poor and starving Americans are I point out that the number one health issue the poor have in American is obesity.
They respond to that by gurgling something about “food deserts” and how obesity is a form of starvation (I kid you not they say that).
So is being beaten over the skull by a hungry homeless person. This happened quite recently here in my part of So Cal though it was probably more drug related and while the person survived they have significant brain injury. Happily for them , the company they worked for kept them on the payroll but this is rarely the case Note these are often blitz attacks a CCW is of little use when the gun isn’t drawn before your the blow is struck The assumption that you have moral rights to safety, property or anyone else in a post Christian… Read more »
What is usually meant by “negative income tax” does not have a healthy incentive structure. At zero income, you get a large subsidy, but for low-paid work you face a very high marginal tax rate up until the subsidy is cancelled out. If you’re already getting free money, why give up your free time for a job that will only pay pennies after tax? (However, it’s less distorted than many forms of welfare, since the effective marginal tax rate is always less than 100%). Contrast this to something like an expansion/universalization of the EITC, which you can think of as… Read more »
The income tax credit is our form of negative income tax. We already have it.
Da Booby wonders if these UBI hipsters have never visited a Native American reservation, where everyone gets free sh*t yet still lives in squalor or like animals (at least the ones that don’t have casinos)? Have they never visited the remains of an Eastern European village, where unemployment, addiction, and decay are still rampant thanks to 70+ years of socialism? Bwahahahaha…. Of course, hipsters rarely venture beyond their gentrified neighbourhoods and urban farmer’s markets. And when they do get away it’s to hostels and hipster bars in places like Phuket or Antigua, which are just safe spaces for Westerners in… Read more »
Yep. UBI doesn’t lead to artists and thinkers. It leads to drunks and drug addicts.
The happiest people are those with a purpose, work that matters.
That said, I’m with Z-Man on this. Use the UBI to further our interests. We can fix the negative externalities later. Right now, the only issues are demographics and waking up white normies.
Work that matters is pretty much disappearing. The happiest people are those who live in strong communities, don’t do a lot of stressful work, eat healthy and have mild winters. The UBI as you say can lead us closer to that point. Most work these days is meaningless because it isn’t being done for own communities. A bit of meaningless work a day keeps us just busy enough. As for the winters though, that’s a whole new issue.
Facts have never mattered much to progs, and they matter even less to two generations of passive-aggressive Eloi. I can’t see how the U.S. is going to pull out of its death spiral, so the question becomes: what can we do to save the 25% or so of our brethren who are worth saving? Not much, I’m afraid, because they are an individualistic bunch who absolutely will not organize for their survival. I think I understand what it was like to be a genuine Roman in 350 A.D..
Yep, she’s going down. Only questions are who you are going to let over the gunwale of your lifeboat, and are you going to machine gun the ones who try to drag you under?
Like I said above – if it replaces all the other forms of welfare, it’s okay with me. I know a lot of scum will use it to kill themselves quicker. I see that as a “win win” as they will then be off the dole permanently. And we can fire about half the bureaucrats in DC and the states who administer those programs.
Booby; Can confirm wrt Native Americans and ‘da Rez’. Best example there is on the subject of Reparations: -‘You’re wrong Prog. grifters. The Reparations experiment has already been run with the casino money on da Rez. The results are already in. The results are increased addiction, stagnation, immiseration, all at a high cost economically and politically. The situation is made worse not better. (Is this what you really want for your Clients of Color_?)’ Now, we know, of course, that the demand for reparations has little to do with doing good for any Clients of Color. The strategic point is… Read more »
By the way, we already have a defacto UBI in the name of S.S. Disability.
Maybe not universal but ubiquitous in my area with tons of whiteys taken advantage of it.
And every last pajeet and Han Chinese brings their elderly parents here as free childminders and immediately puts them on Supplemental Social Security. Oh, and gets them a government-funded walker, as well.
I seem to recall an anecdote from grad school about Welsh coal miners (pre both WWs I think) getting long-term welfare and the to-be-expected resultant generational dependency that developed – but I cannot find anything via a quick on-line search. I seem to recall the prof (a visiting British socialist himself) indicating this developed dependency caught govt officials by surprise. MPAI.
Some of the other commenters here I think have nailed it in that the Yang thing is probably the last sort of hipster-ironic meme nihilism left before the actual shooting starts. Here’s where we are… MURCANS: You know, we’re really starting to get concerned about the sheer numbers of— GOV: Fuck you. Moar immigrants. MURCANS: Yes but in the last election we clearly indicated– GOV: Fuck you. Moar immigrants. MURCANS: Yes but see that’s the problem, we— GOV: Fuck you, racist. Moar Immigrants. MURCANS: Yeah but this jobs report clearly indicates– GOV: Fuck you, h8ter, Moar Immigrants! MURCANS: Have you… Read more »
Recall last year about how they were complaining in Maryland that the crabs were rotting in the pot for lack of foreign labor. I think it was mentioned on a podcast here. All the GOP pols immediately cucked and demanded more visa workers. The same dumb trick will be tried again this year.
This has been used again and again because America is addicted to cheap labor and always has been, slavery, indentured, prison labor, exploitation and chiseling is in our national DNA . God help the many who pays a decent wage as everyone else will run him into the ground if they can. well save Henry Ford but he was the exception not the rule I mean it took a near dictator in the form of F.D.R and the fear of an apocalypse to get even small changes and we still act as if unions are going to put us all… Read more »
Alas $1000 a month won’t buy the will to use those AR-15’s or the ability to organize or figuring out what to do to you get in charge
The problem is this is fundamentally a conservative revolt and that desire to conserve makes it too hard to act and too hard to get the the much needed burn everyone and everything on the other side without mercy and rebuild the way you like stage
The best argument against communism is obesity. Just like how screaming at people to drop the cheeseburger and go to the gym has left the country more obese, communism fails becuase it assumes rationality. Humans just want to be comfortable and, above all, they fear change to their self image. This is why Blacks dream about the voodoo of White Supremecy keeping them down. We know of course it is their lack of genetic potential. But even that isn’t completely true. High IQ individuals succeed in our meritocracy becuase of the actions they take every day. Their routines and mores.… Read more »
You ended yesterday’s column with this: “The system is now a form of defense in-depth, so even delusional morons can run it, without causing the whole thing to collapse. Perhaps it is just a matter of the right crisis coming along to breech the walls of the safe space, so reality can pour through.” UBI seems like it would help answer that call. We’re the tax cattle already providing a UBI to the brown mob and subsidies and a means of functioning to our rulers. We can moving things forward by producing less and demanding more. Let’s play gibsmedat. It… Read more »
Not yet.
Not during Trumps term.
During the next Dem president’s term.
Otherwise the right gets blamed for the inevitable collapse.
We are already in a post-Trump era. Jeb is now POTUS.
TradCons will jump in with good reasoned arguments against this, such as how it will devalue money more, it really isn’t enough anyways and the social repercussions of UBI.
Then they have us because that will legitimize the proposal. Then it will be about specifics. You really reasoned this one out extremely well Z. We will have to find a place in President Carson’s cabinet for you.
I am for UBI, socialized medicine, and every other fiscally and morally irresponsible program the “left” can think up. Our goose is already cooked so it’s just a matter of when the buzzer goes off. Let’s get this show on the road and get it over with. The rebuilding will not happen until after the collapse.
It took over a thousand years for the Roman Empire in the east to collapse. Won’t happen in your lifetime.
The lack of a fiat currency was a natural buffer that we don’t have. It breaks down to simple math. It can’t go on for much longer because the columns on the left are not in the same universe as the columns on the right. A trillion is a number that we cannot wrap our squishy brains around, much less hundreds of trillions. No, I think we are at that point when wile e coyote (super genius) has gone over the cliff, and is paused in mid air.
The physical capital and labor still exist. A bunch of rich people (mostly globalists) will lose a lot of electronic money. The bigger worry I have is a crisis in China or an India/Pakistan war. We’ll be hurting for 10-15 years until we get our own industrial base back online.
Its a short term fix as modern manufacturing is heavily automated and often needs less skills and thus less wages than in the past A lot of societies have been pushing Nationalism , Patriotism and Religion of late to try and push fertility up but this works nowhere and in no culture There are no memes or life hacks that work in urban societies only cold hard cash year after year along with maybe a sufficiency of patriarchy If our societies simply can’t afford that and can’t change than the only logical thing to do after repatriating enough people, depozzing… Read more »
The ancients had “fiat” currency as well. Martin Armstrong has covered this in detail a number of times. At the time of the Weimar Republic – the government got their hands on the currency – and just kept printing more paper to pay off their bills. It was good to be a wheelbarrow salesman back then. In the current age – the Fed just adds more zeros to the computer balance sheet – and then the Federal government spends the money into the economy. The net effect is pretty much the same: inflation. The Fed has destroyed the value of… Read more »
We simply can’t keep spending money we don’t have – AND doing all the other stupid shit we seem intent on doing. You can choose one or the other – but you can’t have all of them.
Damn Right
The difference between Rome in 100AD and 400AD was profound.
Yet we seem to forget that it took over a thousand years and hundreds of foreign invasions to finally finish off Constantinople. Collapse is not guaranteed, a slow death is just as likely as a quick one. Predictions of doom right around the corner seems to make our side feel better, since the truth is that we’re probably headed for a panopticon that will take decades to defeat.
Regarding Milton Friedman’s quote from the quilette article: “We should replace the ragbag of specific welfare programs with a single comprehensive program of income supplements in cash — a negative income tax. It would provide an assured minimum to all persons in need, regardless of the reasons for their need…A negative income tax provides comprehensive reform which would do more efficiently and humanely what our present welfare system does so inefficiently and inhumanely.” Friedman was a very smart guy and this is tremendously sensible. But. People are not sensible. The very first case of a bunch of urchins starving because Mommy and… Read more »
We already have UBI, it’s called the Earned Income Tax Credit, except that it’s not earned, it’s not income, and it’s not a tax (at least for them). Vehicles are purchased in February / March and repossessed in May / June. A good tote your note car dealer can sell the same car three or four times in a year.
Vizzini – very well said.
“The poor will always eat us whole, if given the chance. They are, by their nature, made up of people who characterize the very worst human impulses.
Democracies cannot be hard-hearted enough to maintain effective policy. Especially not democracies with a broad franchise that includes women and the poor.”
Slightly aside. What has been forgotten, or discarded, is the idea that children should always remain with their parents. An alternative would be to remove them into orphanages. Given the examples of poor children falling into cracks and their parents, I suspect it would be a win to spend money toward a program of orphanages. Even a better win is to sterilize the mother when such an order is of permanent custody removal is issued.
#YangGang isn’t about UBI actually working. It’s about crashing the plane with no survivors.
I’d be interested to see ZMan’s response to Anglin’s take.
What take is that?
After reading yesterday’s post and today’s post, I am wondering how to fight this?
If you say “yes,” and then discuss specifics, you are still playing the left’s game (reminds me of my college days during the apartheid debates). And you are still evil for not going “moar utopian.”
If you say “no,” and then enumerate the reasons why, you are playing the left’s game, but this time in a more TradCon role.
I am wondering if the correct strategy is to go “moar utopia” and crash the system?
You can’t ‘fight this’. As you guys note it’s a losers game either way. We responded to the Left’s war on guns by going to war with them. The assault rifle ban was chit canned, and then every gun owner went out and bought an AR15 and stocked upon high cap magazines. They were moved into the hunting fields and further entrenched in the hands of the 2A crowd. Lefty may win the odd legislative battle here and there but everyone who wants a gun has one and if Lefty wants to get stupid about it – eventually he’s going… Read more »
You can’t reasonably make your own smokeless powder, some kind of industrial facility is needed.
Good luck running all those guns on reloaded home-made black powder ammo.
And what is the use of your firearms when they have indoctrinated your descendants in the education system. They can just wait you out. Compliance with the Australian gun ban was actually rather low, but how many MPs paid for the ban with their lives? And what is the utility of firearms you cannot use in public?
Powder has always been an issue. Go read some history of the revolution. The colonials had a powder shortage – until somebody built a plant over here to make the powder (going by memory on this one). If you think that people haven’t already thought about this – you’re wrong. I know for a FACT that there are people out there who have stockpiled a cubic shitload of ammunition and ammo components. Pretty much every prepper site that deals with the subject of firearms has long winded essays on how much ammo you should have stockpiled. Anybody who truly believes… Read more »
They don’t have to take the guns they just have to change the laws. Makes it illegal for you to have one which makes it illegal for you to defend yourself with one. You do so you get charged with attempted murder or murder and charged with having an illegal gun.
They will still be helpful after the collapse but some people will be sacrificed for the cause
At that point after you kill the bad guy every killing after that is free. So you wait for the cops to show up and gun them down, then go out on the town and even the score with other liberals. Because that is what will happen if you make defending your family a death sentence for the gun owner. There is no reason for him to not kill as many Smurfs in their magic blue uniforms as he can because they are just as much the enemy as any MS-13 POS. Maybe even worse. Others will simply say f**k… Read more »
Lighten up, Francis…
Demography is destiny. If we have a democracy the Left will easily take over.
Guns are useless if no one has the will to use them or a goal to fight for. Also a simple ban on new arms other than ones that might be allowed in the UK say and ammo control requiring it to be bought in small amounts from a government package store all done under emergency powers to avoid the courts is more than enough to disarm you Throw in a gradual buyback and viola, yes you can mostly disarm the US There are options to stop this but they involve succession and/or civil war I don’t think people have… Read more »
@ConservativeFred
Let it crash, brother, let it crash.
Our work, sweat, and taxes are needed to fatten a political class that hates its own people. Don’t support it. Think 1980s Poland.
Fred Reed really brings home how much our political class depends on the very people it hates. Whether you like FR or not, he’s right on the money on this one:
https://fredoneverything.org/is-maureen-doud-obsolete-the-evidence-speaks-loudly/
This is why I’m thinking Trump has gone full accelerationist.
He’s faced with the globalist hires, Arkancide Inc spooks on one side and Conservative Inc sellouts on the other. He can’t stop them. If he wishes for his family to survive, he can’t name them or point them out.
But- he can get them to gleefully reveal themselves. Loudly announce all they profess to want- “you want more? Here’s more, and more on top of that!”
He might be a con man, sure, but the trick in politics is making bad men do the right thing.
Post-genocidal utopia.
A lot of the sectors in immediate line for robotization, are in the financial industry: banking, insurance and mortgages, where you don’t need the robots to drive trucks or cranes, but simply manipulate numbers. The data used to run the equations in these industries, are all but public domain; traditionally they made money by collating and evaluating these numbers, calculating an appropriate premium or interest rate.
Today, it’s mostly done by robots. People in the insurance industry are not worried about other insurance companies, they’re worried about Google.
Brick and Mortar bank branches are going the way of the dodo. Only reason they stay open is to deal in cash to small businesses. And now smart ATMs are making that go away too.
I’ll believe that when I see it. I work for a Fortune 500 and getting data right is still an intensive process with Analysts combing through multiple systems that don’t talk to each other.
Well, it’ll happen long before we have self-driving cars, at any rate.
And there are different kinds of Fortune 500s. A lot of them are legacy industries – exactly the dinosaurs that the robots will wipe out, only a clever algorithm away from being history. Your corp may not be hot on systems integration, but someone else will figure it out.
Its already happening . Jobs like fund raising which are shitty but provided a lot of jobs at a modest income are now done by bots that almost sound like people. I got a call from one this morning Less people may respond but bots are much much cheaper and employ no one. In the end, computers/automation will produce an unemployment rate I’d guess around 30% and an underemployment rate around 40% as well allowing maybe 20% to have OK jobs as they haven’t or can’t be automated and 10% to get all the gains This will make the US… Read more »
People have been making this same basic argument since the dawning of the industrial age – and they’ve been proven wrong at every turn. Automation is just an increase in efficiency – in the same manner that power tools made carpenters more efficient over just hand tools. Last time I checked you can still earn a decent living as a carpenter – as long as the illegal immigrants haven’t taken over the field. Point is: it’s not the automation that killed the jobs – it was the illegals (low cost labor and not having to abide by the same rules… Read more »
Immigration is the #1 issue but we do have less jobs. Why do you think we have a 40 hour work week? Its shares jobs. We also pushed women out of the work force for a few decades as we didn’t need the labor. We also have retirement and a defacto ban on anyone under 18 working. Hell if we had jobs galore we wouldn’t be pushing college as much. Sure there is the propaganda of college but we simply don’t have enough work for people to do in the developed world A lot of the jobs we create too… Read more »
“clever algorithms” are only written by people who have extensive experience in the industry that they’re trying to automate. That means you need a GUY who completely understands the process or function that needs to be automated – AND you need that guy to be a competent coder to actually write the software. That combination doesn’t come along all that often. It’s true though that if you can find the combination – you just need a few of them to automate the work done by a lot of people. The way things really get automated is by the usual method… Read more »
Mostly because Fortune 500 won’t spend any money on doing things right since there’s no short term gain when doing that.
Same here. I work at a Fortune 500 company that is in the hi-tech field, and deal with automation on a constant basis. Getting the data right is a constant process – and making sure the automation works is also a constant process.
There seems to be this assumption out there that something magical is going to happen the machines are just going to run themselves with no intervention from humans – and no mistakes from the machines.
I just don’t see it.
“and no mistakes from the machines”.
And now, for your viewing pleasure, I give you the plane that can fly itself-the737 Max.
Not the point. If i destroy 100 jobs with machines and replace them with say 75 at lower pay and 5 good ones, I’m still down twenty jobs and down a lot of spending power even though the losses aren’t that profound at first Do this enough and your economy is DOA A few guys being bot wranglers does not an economy make. A wide range of jobs for various temperaments and skills does ‘ And if you think the economy is fine and efficiency, things like Amazon is doing nothing, you need to bone up on retail store closures… Read more »
Yep. I’m not sure why people are always so focused on AI transforming physical things/jobs – trucking, manufacturing, etc. I suppose because they’re, well, physical, i.e. you can see the transformation with your own eyes. It’s much easier to program a computer to manipulate data than to move an exoskeleton or handle traffic.
In finance, banking and insurance, if you’re not dealing directly with customers – sales, explaining plans, etc. – or managing people – project manager, etc. – you’re in trouble.
I do not fear my job being automated — I shall Learn To Code!
An, “learn to code”—the great lie, but we all know that in this group, or we wouldn’t be here.
Don’t underestimate the guilds. My guild has made it a crime to do our work without joining our guild, and people in the guild are in charge of enforcing it. Realtors, bankers, etc. have spent boucoup deniro buying legislative protection in years past. There’s a lot of inertia protecting the professions, whether learned or just credentialed.
I’ve listened to some talk on the alt-Right about UBI, and I’ve concluded that for them this is, in no particular order, 1) a nihilistic way of saying, “the establishment wants me to be unable to work and unable to provide for my family, and they think it’s funny, and since the US is going down the toilet I’d rather go down with some of the gibs,” 2) a funny meme that is the answer to any question posed to them: “a thousand dollars,” 3) a tactic for disruption: Trump now wants “lots of immigrants, more than ever,” the exact… Read more »
There is an entire system based around a kind of UBI known as social credit economics, based on observations of an engineer named CH Douglas. He noticed that the cost of the goods his factory was producing was not equal to the sums paid out in wages and dividends. Intrigued, he analyzed the UK economy and saw the same pattern repeated over and over. The only way the economy could actually pay for the goods it was producing was to borrow. So he developed what he called the National Dividend. The power of banks to create credit would be curtailed.… Read more »
You’ve just nailed why I’m out-n-proud obnoxiously **in favor** of UBI. It’ll never happen, because it’s brain-blisteringly stupid, but it’s a wonderful position to take to screw with Millennials. I’ve always said that all you have to do to refute any item of #Woke dogma is take it completely seriously, so I do. The kids start nodding happily along as I preach it on UBI, until I get to the part about having to pay the garbage men overtime to dispose of all the bodies. Why, whatever else would we do with those folks who chose to blow their allowance… Read more »
There are other litmus tests. Like the single strip of hair comb-over. A ring that’s a bit too flashy. Yellow sneakers. Doing odd things at the gym, like jumping up and down like a frog. Spouting cliches that don’t make sense like “the coverup is always worse than the crime.” So raping and killing a prostitute isn’t as bad as burying her in the woods? Owning a Chihuahua. Even if your lady really wants one, there are certain small dogs a man must say no to. A Shih Tzu is a good option in that situation. Cute enough for the… Read more »
A Shih Tzu is a good option in that situation.
Oh, god, I had to google that! I’m hereby revoking your man-card for even knowing what a Shin Tzu is.
If Ms Krull came home with one of those, I’d donate it to a Korean restaurant, and tell her that she goes next if she tries that again.
Hellfire and Damnation! I’d rather have a gerbil.
Most of the Google images of the Tzu are long haired girly versions. You keep their hair short. Been around thousands of dogs. These little guys are cool. Just saying, if a man ever has to get a toy dog or an apartment dog, this is one you can take for walks around the neighborhood without feeling like a douche.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxNQXQgXYnk
Dude…
It’s pronounced Shitz Too.
Because that’s what they do – all over your rug.
At least the cat is smart enough to go in the litter box.
Shin tzu ‘s are the faggiest dogs ever. Most can’t even walk up stairs, jump onto a relatively low couch, or even take a walk around the block. They are also, without fail, dumb as a box of rocks. They can be good lap dogs, but all your litmus tests are suspect after that recommendation. In fact, chihuahuas are the superior lap dog. The short haired variety are remarkably soft and clean, shed very little, and are not athletically helpless. They also are much better and more convenient cuddlers than shih tzus. They are also more physically attractive than shih… Read more »
Z Man; I like where you’re going with this line of thought, even if I don’t exactly get what you’re driving at about UBI tactically. Pro, Con, Agree and Amplify, What_? The strategic point is to crack open the stale rhetorical paradigms of today’s politics. They are based on obvious falsehoods, after all. Actual first principles can then be advanced orthogonally, simply because they are based on fundamentals of human nature. With that in mind, even if disguised, it couldn’t hurt to inject a little basic theology, even if one is skeptical about the details of any specific doctrine. To… Read more »
My advice to young European-Americans is to learn to fix things and make stuff – mechanics, electronics, engineering etc. if our future is to be automated, then those machines will need constant maintenance and upgrading. The people who can make and fix things will actually rule the world.
The well organized guys with the most guns (i.e.governments and the people who actually control them) rule the world. People with useful skills are the most closely watched by the type of government coming to our future. The technically skilled might live a little better than the unskilled, but they don’t rule anything.
See the Soviet Union or East Germany for examples.
This was good advice twenty years ago. Today? Classes cost $4000 each at a state school, and you graduate to compete with all of the H1Bs from India.
He means trade schools and self-teaching. College is worthless today for learning useful skills and basically a threat to the mental and spiritual wellbeing of it’s students.
Eventually, these ignorant and deluded people will get their way; we will have ‘free everything’, from health care, college education (why this is needed when we will all get a paycheck for doing nothing but breathing), food, drugs (probably), housing and what ever else is decided upon. Then, very quickly, it will all come crashing down. Cities will become war zones, and then continents will burn. This is not hard to predict.
UBI is crack cocaine for parasitism. If you want to degrade the species quickly, then make dependency a government-fueled addiction. This policy goes hand-in-hand with hivemindedness and obesity. The Prog ideal man of the future is fat, lazy, controlled, and docile. Like the shit dog abomination described in a previous post, it is a monstrous perversion of what the species should be. We were built to innovate, move, kill, and prevail against all odds. I’d rather be a Viking than a shit dog.
This means we can’t have a society in which 70% of the population is urban or suburban and we can’t have the tech we use today
We also can’t support a fraction of the population and so 80-90% of the human race has to go in order to support a more rural, spiritually and mentally healthy species
This will happen in do time mind you we are entering a period of catabolic collapse but its unlikely any of us will be around in a few hundred years
Fitness selection can work in urban/suburban areas. It just produces a different set of adaption traits. The weak will die out much quicker in urban areas where food is scare, so turnover will be very high initially.
Why is anyone down voting this? I don’t think its accurate but its a genuine quality post which adds to the conversation That said historically cities are death traps, relying on people in the countryside supplying them and populating them as the inhabitants die of disease faster than they can replace themselves We’ve licked disease but we also don’t have much family formation in the cities and without that, as soon as we poach the global countryside, the cities will shrink. Its also an IQ shredder these days as historically the highest fertility rates are among religious extremists who don’t… Read more »
Whether or not the UBI is a workable proposition, I’m in no position to say. But at some point, I have to believe the people called upon to subsidize these endless welfare schemes are gonna realize that bullets are a lot cheaper.
It will never happen that way. This is the ‘race war’ fantasy of the WN movement that has been predicted for decades and will never come to pass. Too much inertia and too much lack of true pain. The only way you are going to see a hot conflict is a hard crash of some sort, likely economic. There will never be an uprising of huwhytes, the older ones that have the balls to do it have too much to lose, and the instinct for self-preservation has been bred out of the younger ones through 24x7x365 indoctrination. As an aside-… Read more »
“This Yang thing is the correct play. If you are going to be fleeced anyways may as well get some gibs back.” Amen. Whites have been playing the gibs game fairly well. Social Security, Medicare, Medicare Part D, Student Loans, etc. are all used by Whites. Since fiscal responsibility will never and can never happen in an excessively democratic system, the game is about how to advantage your group. Some kind of student loan remediation would be a Yuuge deal for young white families. Bigger than Yang bucks imo.
UBI is no more “workable” than is welfare, because it’s just another name for welfare.
The fact that you didn’t already know this means you just flunked the litmus test.
And yet somehow, after 1/2 a century of Great Society welfare and 90 years of New Deal welfare, welfare doesn’t “work”…. How? Are you making some sort of false-consciousness/The Matrix argument, our world collapsed under the weight of welfare and we just don’t know?
I believe reality has contradicted your conclusion. Maybe think about why that is.
I look forward to the day when we’ll all be earning a living income from the UBI and 100% of the population has joined the ranks of the “unwilling to work.” Because work is exploitative. What could go wrong?
This will not happen. If immigration and prices can be controlled for food and housing what might happen with UBI is women who work for money and don’t want to, won’t and many people without kids will leave the work force for long periods which will push wages up A lot of people will be slackers and stoners some or all of the time but given that most work is superfluous so long as UBI works out for those that do work, things will be fine I suspect you’ll impoverish the nation in some ways , our human capital will… Read more »
Sweden is dying. Those Apex whites as Sailer calls them are way too busy eradicating themselves from existence. They are the closet thing to a human equivalent of a Schmoo there is.
What eventually will happen once the Muzzies get the numbers they will simply take the country over from it’s p***that masters and slit their throats. That’s what I would do. The Muzzies I can respect, they understand violence, threats and have a survival instinct. Swedes OTOH have no understanding of anything.
Nonsense Sweden is in much better shape demographically than we are and probably has a higher White fertility . They are also well armed enough for rabble. As they have a very consensus driven culture and when they decide to do something it will get done Its taking longer than most of us would like but the Swedish Democrats and other nationalist parties are slowly but surely shifting the local Overton widow against immigration Americans, the most well armed people on Earth by far are completely subdued and have allowed 50 million people to invade them as they are utterly… Read more »
Think underground economy. The people with drive and ambition won’t take real jobs, they’ll do stuff under the table to make more like it was done in the Soviet Union, Argentina and other places. I see it here in CA, there are people who do quite well working off the grid. It’s just a matter of finding a niche and working from that. Another thing you can bet your bottom dollar any state that embraces UBI will have bare store shelves in short order. The pilferage will be off the charts and the goods sold on the black market for… Read more »
As i commented on Twitter, it is unbelievably naive to think that UBI would “replace” anything. Democracy doesn’t replace social programs, no matter how failed, as Head Start has demonstrated for 40 years…UBI is just another way to accelerate the swamping of Americans with 3d world immigrants.
To date, only one government welfare program has ever been repealed by Congress. CETA was actually done away with, after it became an embarrassing failure. Otherwise, programs live forever. They get renamed or folded into other programs, but they never go away. Rome was probably doling out the grain ration as Alaric as riding into town.
The CCC was shut down and never revived. Pulling aimless youth out of cities, putting them in barracks in remote federal lands, and then sending most of their income to relatives, doesn’t sound like the worst idea.
LOL. The CCC was shut down because the government decided to participate in another jobs program called World War 2. The men who might have gone into the CCC were instead sent all around the globe to cut down trees and break rocks.
True. In my lifetime the job of watching the English Channel to raise the alarm if the Spanish Armada was sighted was finally eliminated. Must have been a cushy featherbed job for several hundred years. A good reward for the party faithful.
At least, that is what the newspaper report said some decades ago. And they can certainly be depended on, right?
The only way the argument that “welfare programs never go away – hence UBI will just be added on top of the others” – can hold any validity at all , is to somehow explain how the Federal government can run the debt into infinity – and get away with it. By get away with it I mean – not bring the whole house of cards crashing down upon their heads on relatively short order. Since the WW2 era – government at all levels has only been able to extract about 20-21% of GDP out of the economy in taxation.… Read more »
Instead we will keep the maze of support programs – Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, Disability, Veterans’ Benefits, Welfare, WIC, SNAP/EBT, the EITC…
UBI at least would pay stay at home moms and the kids, and I’d get something back even though I would work.
All of the above are going to blow up anyway, consolidating it into UBI and putting it on the SNAP/EBT card will help. Of course I expect the grid to also collapse, but this way everyone can chimp out at once.
Subsidization without price controls, or some sort of brake on prices, causes the price of that which is subsidized to increase. UBI is a subsidy on everything, so you can expect prices to increase across the board, and not just from the VAT that is proposed to pay for it.
Mr. Yang is a well educated, intelligent grifter. He moves from one grift to another, just staying ahead of the facts on the ground. His ability to string really cool, empty phrases together attracts Boobus Americanus. Including Obama. Con men have been with us as long as Medicine Men. Medicine Men are probably a bit more straight forward.
“The real problem with the UBI is it is part of the larger trend of infantilizing people, turning them into wards of the custodial state.” Yeah, well. That horse done left the barn, fellas. Look, the first-best solution would be to remove the underlying causes of bad culture. In a world of second-best possible solutions, UBI has a couple things going for it. First, it will tend to remove women from the workforce and put them back raising kids. Not completely, of course, but very many White families reduce the number of children they have because of the cost of… Read more »
The only possible upside of UBI is that it will hasten the arrival of the financial crash that ultimately triggers an upheaval. An addict that hits a high bottom is more likely to recover than one than undergoes a slow decline to a very low bottom. The latter is usually dead stop. Kicking the can down the road is a fool’s errand.
Just think. They could add a “Reparations Supplement” to the UBI for certain POCs.
Side note. I’ve noticed the UBI in several sci-fi books. The Expanse novels are the biggest example. Most people on Earth are basically useless mouths to feed who collect the dole and do whatever they want. Maybe a quarter of the people have the ambition to get a job, join the military, or get off the planet.
if you have automation enough for an advanced space culture, anyone with an IQ under 120 maybe more which is 90%+ of the population is dead weight Of course outside of a few pro natal polemics like Children of Men SF hasn’t yet come to understand the idea of low fertility and the idea of future earth with a median age of say 55 seems nuts In any case , its awful hard to have much of a story when each year there is less people and really the population is too old to go into space Also a state… Read more »
Exactly. Guns are most definitely a litmus test. I think I had this figured out in my early teens, but it took me until my 30’s – when I had sufficient time and money – to go out and start buying guns, in good part just because I knew it pissed off the “right” people. I’ve told this to a good many gun owners: buying guns and ammunition is a vote. When Obama kept bringing up gun bans and kept trying to pick around the edges of gun ownership (they tried banning sales of used military brass at one point… Read more »
You cannot have a welfare system of any kind, without it devolving into a total
pervasive surveillance state.
Everything may be “free”, but in order to ensure “fairness”, i.e. nobody gets more than their fair share, you must track everything, you must surveill everyone, demand ID constantly, eventually demand fingerprints and DNA.
Otherwise I would be using all of my alter-egos and fake names to scam double or triple the UBI everyone else gets. I’ll Be Rich, I tell ya.
Oh, and “we” vote too.
Well, UBI or not, the inevitable biometric ID will arrive sooner or later. Scamming under a universal UBI payment system will entail the same individual getting two or more payments.
It will also create a massive underground economy the Feds won’t be able to anything about just like in Soviet Union. In turn it will create massive criminal cartels that control very lucrative portions of the black market and that means they’ll be owning the police and politicians.
People who want something won’t go to the government store, they’ll go to some jobber who gets it for them in return for some kind of barter.
Most of it will be low tech to make the Feds vast computer systems worthless in trying to monitor them.
The world is what it is, but if you could build a world of your own what would it look like? Would you have money. Would you make some people smarter than others? I think deep down we really don’t like the world regardless of who is running it. I think deep down we realize life is not some wonderful gift, and we have no idea who to blame for the circumstances we find ourselves in. Nevertheless, the absolute vanity of it all is to great to face, so we ignore the truth and grab hold of any idea that… Read more »
One law would solve automation and a host of other related problems. The law would simply disallow any business to directly own any form of automation. Rather, only employees can own a robot, which they could in turn rent to any business.
1- It will keep people employed.
2- Keeps businesses running at full efficiency.
3- Eliminates the need for UBI.
UBI is another Tower of Babel. God told us that the poor will always be with us, and the state says, “then we will build what You cannot.”
And we all know what happens to these towers.
One would think with all the discussion about ubi, welfare and free everything how the nation survived before fdr and lbj managed to screw things up
Lower technology for one and it was a mainly agrarian society with most people living in small towns and the country for generations on end
Mobility and later technology ruined everything and now that we are mostly an urban society (80%) the US is in a world of trouble
The UBI proponents know the math as well as anybody; they fully understand it (excepting donkey chompers Alexandria Occasional Cortex; she truly is a moron). They are proposing UBI because they are socialists or communists; it is that simple. There are many intelligent, high IQ, people who extol the virtues of communism despite it’s perfectly dismal record, but facts matter not. What matters is imposing a economic and political system organized and headed by the self anointed elites who propose a communist tyranny. It is a power trip for them. Proponents of tyranny have to disguise their goals by incrementally… Read more »
I think most people pushing UBI are just dumb. It’s one of those simple things they can grasp. “Hey, lets get rid of all these welfare agencies and just give everyone an allowance!” It lets them sound smart and compassionate, without thinking to hard about it. Some are supporting it for strategic reasons. The TRS guys, for example, are just doing it for gags and to make other points.
Like other litmus tests, this one will have a lot of uses.
Not sure I agree. First I heard of “UBI” was from Charles Murray in his book, “In Our Hands”. His proposal was for the government to get out of the charity and subsidy business. The idea was for a cutoff of all things welfare, including SSI and corporate subsidies, and replace them by a lifetime UBI. His figures were the soundest I’ve encountered since he worked from what money was currently being spent, rather than pick a sweet sounding number out of his ass and work backward ala the present bozo. Of course, one had to suspend disbelief that the… Read more »
I look at UBI as a way to prove a point. On Joe Rogans show Yang said his plan would deduct any welfare you already receive. If you already get more than 1000 in welfare you get nothing. In theory this money will disproportionately go to productive people, especially white males.
For that reason I bet you the colored coalition will raise hell about this. I can’t wait…
This idea was considered by some very smart people on both sides of the equation back in the 60’s when they figured we would have a lot less jobs and need a cheap fair replacement for the welfare state .
This includes Right, Left, Libertarian and others.
Its not workable with immigration though and its not cheaper than a welfare state . I don’t think we could afford it period but again we as a society don’t have any functional institutions other than the welfare office which should say something
We may not see boppers cooling their heels at the Flying J, but I think almost everyone reading this will see most of the global supply chain mostly automated before you can say Rudy Rucker.
Not even close. First off, they’re still a couple years away from a working prototype that can work in all conditions. A truck that navigates using cameras is SOL when dealing with a snow-covered Minneapolis parking lot. They’ll figure it out, but not tomorrow. Second off, even once they get that done, there are a whole slew of legal and regulatory issues to work through, most of which are at the state and sometimes even municipal level, which means you have to deal with 50 different legislatures and state DOTs. And every time there’s an accident, some pol will grab… Read more »
5-10 years is a short short time, Trump might still be in office . Also who says you won’t be able to retrofit rigs with a robot driver ? Beyond that you have to think long term, after the 1965 Immigration reform bill the effects wouldn’t be felt for decades . we must take risks to solve problems now or we will not be able to solve them when they are pressing. As for the regulatory hurdles, they’ll be nothing A few $$$ is pockets from the shipping industry and they’ll have very few regulations and no liability under law.… Read more »
If retrofits were economical, CARS would be retrofitted with all the latest sensors, LIDAR, etc., yada. They ain’t, for a reason.
Still waiting for the robot driver to meet black ice…..
We’ll let the Swedes who are testing autodriving trucks let us know how well they work if they work. Cars are not anywhere near as costly to operate as trucks and do not require a well paid driver. A rookie trucker is like 40K per year in the US and if its cheap enough to retrofit, hell up to $100,000 it will pencil out If a truck has a service life of 10 years, a retro-kit costs $50K and you can drop wages to say $20K for a partial driver , it will pencil out in 30 months. This would… Read more »
If they wanted autonomous shipping they would be focusing on trains.
If they wanted a cashless economy they could have transitioned us there with the advent of Visa in the 60’s.
If they cared about the children then Millenials wouldn’t be the most indebted generation ever.
Stop listening to what they say and watch what they do.
“Also who says you won’t be able to retrofit rigs with a robot driver?” The guys at my company that work on truck automation. More specifically, they say that some trucks will be, others not. (more accurately, not economically). Nobody is saying it won’t happen. But it’s a long-term issue, not something that will happen soon. And it likely will never be a pressing issue; the current trucker workforce is already old and getting older. Robots will be coming online as current truckers are aging out of the workforce. The young people of 2035 who could have been truckers will… Read more »
2035 is not a long time away. Its a meager 16 years, about with the time W. was in office till now or from 1965 till 1981 . My 81 we barely noticed the immigration but the problem has started Its a problem that must be dealt with in advance which we will not be able to do. And re: transportation, you are certainly correct I was thinking of it from the tech industry angle. That industry seems to be able to skate on regulation almost all the time and I see the robot driver industry as part of tech… Read more »
UBI is pro family. One person at $12K is not so good but a Man and a Women together at $24K is not so bad. It could very well completely change the inner city. Right now young Black Men are often thrown out on the streets when they turn 18. If a Black male could get $12K just by staying out of jail it might be a good incentive to do so. One of the keys to making this pro-genic as opposed to dysgenic is to make sure that the UBI can never be confiscated for any purposes except for… Read more »
What UBI is depends on who’s talking. If you’re a libtard it’s Cloward-Piven, and if you’re not a libtard and you espouse it then it’s Accelerationsim.
UBI would be a way of bribing people to remain silent. And it starts at $1000 per month but proceeds to free opioid enriched fast food. This is something we might have to deal with.They might offer all the wall mart, sex-bots, and drugs you want but you have to remain silent. Basically if you’re anti-white social credit score is high, you can stay HIGH. Trump is the only option in 2020. The guy is driven to be the best at what he does. But he knows when to keep his head down. He’s dealing with a lot. Trump can… Read more »
UBI just raises the floor of being broke from making $0/year to making the UBI. The prices of everything will simply rise to level with the new floor. A McDonald’s hamburger becomes $15; rent in a crappy apartment rises to $3K/month, etc. It will accomplish absolutely nothing, other than creating, as you say, a whole bunch of wards of the state who will, of course, reliably vote Democrat.
Semper UBI sub-UBI.
In order to be able to collect your Yang bucks, you have to be able to get this joke on sight.
Problem solved.
Close to the Edge
“Gun control is the best example. The right position is based on a mountain of data collected over generations. The wrong positions range from uninformed to the mendacious. As a result, the gun issues is a good litmus test. A person wrong on guns is telling us things about themselves.” Urban liberals with their guns always overthrow rural conservatives with a lot more guns, but also a lot more distance between them and the elites. 1789 France, 1848 Europe, 1917 Russia, and so on. Guns relatively strengthen the left far more than the right ever since the Protestant revolution. Conservatives… Read more »
Huh???
Guns give the weak an unnatural advantage against the strong. Conservatives like guns, but don’t like cities where all the elites live, so when the revolution comes the leftists seize the cities and win.
I like Andrew Yang. He seems to understand that white privilege and white supremacy are real evils that must be defeated at all costs.
The reason that Yang is popular with right wing white males is fourfold:
1. right wing white males are mad at Trump for backing down on the wall
2. right wing white males are mad at Trump for being friendly with Israel
3. right wing white males are all unemployable so they like the idea of UBI
4. Yang is also not very partisan and appeared on some white supremacist internet nerd shows
#5: Proclaiming support for UBI delivers the butt hurt to lefty anti-whites like Tom Collins.
I may debate point #3,a little. Most people are “employable,” but there is definitely a growing mindset of “why work for this system” on the right. I am struggling to disagree with it.
Fred, by the late seventies I had already arrived at the conclusion that desperate whites are just now grasping. I saw the end game then. And nothing happened in the intervening 40 years to dissuade me of what the ultimate outcome would be.
Epaminondas – I would appreciate other insights.
The problem from my perspective is that I know (have known for about 15 years) that I am a “tax crop” to be harvested every 2 weeks.
Whether it is genetic, cultural, or both, it is damn hard to NOT keep trying.
It’s pretty simple. You need to get paid if you want to keep a roof over your head and food in your mouth. If you’re middle class or some approximation thereof – then becoming a welfare recipient only comes with a complete and total abandonment of how you have lived your life up until now. It might mean losing your kids, losing your wife, it definitely means losing all your toys and your house and your gun collection. If you’re a white male it’s probably nigh-on to impossible unless you can legitimately get yourself disabled and get on Social Security… Read more »
I agree 100% with your comment. The idea that everyone will quit working if they get the UBI is nonsense. It might make it to where you can have enough financial room to maneuver yourself into a better job or working for yourself.
Yeah but by the same token plenty of guys have gone broke by being early on a trade. Sometimes being right too early is worse that just being wrong. The example i keep coming back to in my own mind is south africa. When i heard that black communists were going to take over.. well i thought cue news of famine and electrical grid collapse in 3-5 yrs. Well it might turn out i’m correct and it looks imminent, but we almost 30 yrs in now. Good thing i couldn’t find a financial instrument to short SA and bet on… Read more »
If you don’t know what ZAR is you shouldn’t be thinking about dicking around with sovereign risk.
Fred; Definitely agree that most millennials are actually employable. Like ‘most everybody else, they’re just not employable in ways they’d like to be at income levels they’d like to have. I always wanted to be a star QB, for example. For starters, they could do the jobs that illegals now do. Would it end the economy if those jobs paid better_? I’d say no. After all, who did the jobs that illegals now do_? It was me and my peers (adolescent Boomers) that’s who. Since we mostly lived at home and there were lots of us, the rate of pay… Read more »
Anecdotally I have noticed that whites are less employable today because for the drug issue. I work on a lot of construction sites. Ten years ago I worked on a casino project near Gary, IN. Even though the area is heavily Black, the work force was all white country boys. Today on job sites in rural Kentucky it is possible to see majority Hispanic job sites. Everybody piss tests for drugs now and a lot of the white guys fail. Even on majority Hispanic job sites, the Whites and Asians tend to do the more complex tasks.
True. A good friend of mine is the personnel recruiter at our regional hospital. Jobs pay well with really really good benefits.
After taking in an application, she explains to the job seeker about the mandatory drug test. She told me she never sees 80% of the applicants again.
I visited Kentucky last summer to pick up a piece of machinery I had bought. While down there I spent a decent amount of time talking to a number of the guys at the trade school where I did the pickup. I heard the same story you told from four different people. They said there was a factory built recently in the area – which has hundreds of well paying jobs. But they’re relying on import labor and illegal labor – because none of the white guys can pass the drug tests. One guy said his daughter is all screwed… Read more »
Reading Tom Collins post , who I think is our resident hasbara Tiny Duck BTW is enough to make me want chug a few of his namesake. Also Tom, Yang likes White people and knows they make a civilization he’d like to live in unlike POC’s Now re: jobs, jobs with no upward prospects that doesn’t pay enough to start a family are useless to the individual and a great many people, probably half the population or more isn’t going to “learn to code” even if we needed that many coders which we don’t I think there is an assumption… Read more »
Hi, Tiny Duck.
#3 is silly.
I’ve worked for a few large corporations. IT is now Indian country with a few white guys supervising. HR is the ladies’ club. Sales is a mix. Finance and Operations are almost exclusively the boys’ club.